A Soldier for Christmas. Jillian Hart

the strength of it, rocked through her.

      Instead of feeling afraid, peace ebbed into her heart. Even into the broken places.

      Her feet hit the concrete sidewalk, jarring her back into reality. Mitch let go, and shut the door with a thump. This gave her the opportunity to step away from him.

      That rare, warm peace ebbed away like a tide rolling back out to sea. Although the sun blazed already hot on her shoulders, she shivered, as if with cold.

      “I can see the campus from here, just down the street.” Mitch pocketed his keys, his movements confident and relaxed as if he hadn’t felt a thing. As if this hadn’t affected him this way. “Do you live in the dorms?”

      Somehow she managed to make her feet carry her forward as though nothing had happened, as though she were perfectly fine. Her voice came as if from far away. “No, the dorms are too expensive. I have a little apartment three blocks from here.”

      “Any roommates?”

      “Just one.”

      “An apartment sounds good to me. Right now I have the luxury of living in the barracks.”

      “The luxury?”

      “And so much privacy. Not. I’m happier in a hootch—”

      “A hootch?”

      “A tent—” he supplied, “in a camp somewhere overseas with my team. Give me a cot and I’m home. Better yet, I’d rather be sleeping out in the bush.”

      “Really, on the ground? You like that?”

      “Sure. It’s like camping, except for the grenades and C4 explosives. I grew up in these mountains.”

      “Really? The math whiz I remember from high school didn’t look like the outdoors type.”

      “Looks are deceiving, and I was at an awkward age. Okay, a very awkward age. My dad is a forest ranger. We’re gonna take one of these weekends I have free—if I get a whole one free—and hike up into the Bridger Mountains. Spend the night. Camp. Cook river trout over a fire.”

      “Sounds very rugged. I’m more of a stay-away-from-the-mountains kind of girl.”

      “You just haven’t been properly exposed to the wilderness.”

      “Where there’s no hot water, no plumbing and no electric blankets?”

      “Those luxuries are highly overrated. Trust me.”

      “I’m a little afraid to, with an attitude like that.”

      When she smiled, sweet as candy, his emotions jumbled into a wedge in his throat. The palm of his left hand still glowed from where he’d taken hold of her arm to help her from the Jeep, and the brightness of her touch remained, calming and terrifying all at once.

      Heaven was on his side, because Kelly chose that moment to pause in front of a store window. A striped yellow-and-white awning stretched overhead and he studied the way the hem ruffled in the breeze instead of figuring out what was happening to him.

      At the back of his mind, he knew. He had a life, he had a calling, and he had eighteen months left on his contract. So how was this going to work?

      “The lady who owns this shop is a good friend of the family—well, of Joe’s family.” Her voice broke on the sound of Joe’s name. “She takes antique gems and resets them in the most beautiful jewelry you’ve ever seen. I don’t know if you’d be interested in something like that for your mom, but Holly’s work is so beautiful, it’s like giving a little piece of love.”

      Okay, that was the word he was trying to avoid.

      “Do you want to go in and look? Or I have other suggestions. We can just go down the block and there’s—”

      “No, let’s start here.” It felt like a definite step on an unknown path in the dark, when there was no light to see by. But he wasn’t bothered by the dark.

      When he opened the door, he wanted to take her by the hand. But he figured she wasn’t ready for that. She breezed past him with a rustle of her cotton dress and the tap of her shoes, and he caught again the scent of vanilla and sweetness.

      Impossibly, his heart tightened even more.

      Chapter Five

      Kelly couldn’t help leaning closer against the display case to study the brooch Mitch had taken out of its velvet bed. It was an elegant piece of lacy gold with a baguette-cut ruby looking outrageously fragile against Mitch’s broad, callused palm.

      Stop looking at the man’s hand, Kelly told herself. She was supposed to be concentrating on the beautiful pieces of jewelry, right? Not noticing the deep creases in Mitch’s palm. Or how capable his fingers looked. The nicks and cuts and scars marred his sun-browned skin. Such powerful hands he had, just like the rest of him.

      She so remembered the peace his touch had brought her, when he’d helped her from the Jeep.

      “What do you think?” His hazel eyes met hers, and in those green and gold depths she saw glimpses of his big heart. He cared about the people in his life—and he cared about her opinion for some reason.

      He’s just too perfect. If he wasn’t, then she wouldn’t feel this turmoil seizing her up. Hard lessons learned ought to be enough to make her step away and stay firmly on the path she believed in. The path where God had placed her over and over again.

      Mitch waited for her answer, the delicate and expensive brooch resting rock-steady on his palm.

      Don’t just stand there, Kelly. Say something. Her gaze shot to the other box he’d chosen from among the many in the display cases. Which one did she like better? The dainty necklace shimmered in the sunlight, the delicate swoop of wings and halo around a thumb-nail-sized fresh-water pearl made her heart stop. “It’s a pearl. What can I say?”

      “You like pearls?”

      She supposed he was looking for a woman’s opinion on jewelry. “I think your mom might like the ruby better, though.”

      “You didn’t answer my question.”

      Which question? Her mind wandered. No matter how hard she tried to stop the caring from creeping into her heart, she couldn’t. She liked Mitch Dalton. She liked him very much.

      As a friend. She couldn’t dare think of him as anything else.

      “Why pearls?” He studied her, waiting.

      Oh, right. Pay attention, Kelly. “Pearls are so simple and unassuming. Everyone knows that a pearl starts with a tiny grain of sand, but to me, it’s like faith. We are like that grain of sand and it’s God’s grace that can cloak us and make us shine, if we are humble and faithful enough. In the end, it’s a thing of true beauty.”

      “Yes, it certainly is.”

      He wasn’t looking at the pearl. But at her. Somehow his gaze deepened and there he went, somehow feeling too intimate, as if he could see too much. But how could he look past the layers of defense in which she cloaked herself so carefully?

      The pieces of her heart stung like salt in a fresh wound, and she felt so vulnerable and wide open. It was Mitch. He made her feel like this. So wouldn’t the smartest thing be to head for the door and never look back?

      It would be the safest.

      “I’ll take the ruby,” Mitch told Holly, behind the counter. “But could you put the other on hold? I’d like to think about it. Christmas will be here before you know it.”

      “Sure.” Holly gladly set the pearl angel aside and took Mitch’s credit card with her over to the cash register.

      They were done. Kelly let out a deep breath she wasn’t aware she’d been holding. This was how worked up she was. But now Mitch had found his gift, and he’d be heading back to his base.