A Few Good Men. Tori Carrington

face.

      He cleared his throat and propped himself up on his elbows, almost causing the sheet to drop lower. “Would you like me to leave?”

      “Yes.”

      ERIC FELT LIKE HE’D taken a rifle butt to the gut.

      Last night…well, last night had been one of the best nights he could remember experiencing in a long, long time. Merely holding Sara postsex and listening to her soft snores had made him feel more of a man than the past five years in the service.

      Of course, her calling out Andy’s name this morning he could have done without.

      He ignored the pain that made it almost impossible to breathe, trying to conjure up a response.

      Sara’s brow wrinkled. “Did you just expect to stay here your entire leave?” she asked.

      Yes, he realized, he had. They’d made such a connection that despite the considerable obstacles they faced, he’d assumed that once she let him into her house, she’d let him in all the way.

      How wrong he’d been.

      He scratched the back of his head and stripped the sheet off, moving to sit on the side of the bed. He noticed the way she watched his movements, especially a particular area of his anatomy with which she’d become quite intimately acquainted the night before, yet now apparently appeared embarrassed to see.

      “I don’t get it,” he said under his breath. “You’re like a faucet alternately running hot and then cold.”

      “Would you prefer lukewarm?”

      “I prefer a consistent temperature.”

      “Sorry if I’m not made of metal with knobs you can adjust.” She picked up his clothes with jerky movements and tossed them to the bed. His T-shirt hit the side of his head and stayed there so that he had to drag it off.

      “What did you think when I disappeared from the Internet?” she asked, giving up her efforts and stopping to stare at him. “That I was playing hard to get? That if you showed up on my front step I’d throw open the door and welcome you into my bed?”

      Her cheeks pinkened at her words. Eric didn’t speak the obvious because both of them knew that in the end, that’s exactly what she’d done.

      “I don’t need…” She gestured with her hand. “Want any of this, Eric. I’m not up for a relationship with anyone, much less my late husband’s best friend.”

      “So you’d rather continue to play the role of grieving widow?”

      “What?” she whispered. What color had seeped into her cheeks drained out.

      Eric sighed and ran his hand over his close-cropped hair. “That didn’t come out the way I meant it to.”

      “Well, what way would you have preferred it to come out? Because from where I stand, there aren’t very many ways to mean what you just said.”

      “Then let me take it back.”

      She shook her head slowly back and forth. “You should know that you can’t put the bullets back in the gun after they’ve been shot.”

      “Damn it, Sara.” Eric stood up and faced her.

      She turned away. “Please…just go.”

      She disappeared into the bathroom and he was left with little alternative as the door clicked closed behind her.

      Truman’s soft whine brought his gaze down to the questioning canine.

      “You think you’re confused?” he asked the mutt.

      He got dressed, gathered his things and headed for the front door, Truman following his every move.

      SARA CLEARED the dinner plates from the dining-room table and brought in the apple pie she’d made from scratch. Her father-in-law had moved his chair back to make more room for his expanding stomach and rubbed the area in question, a satisfied smile on his face, while her mother-in-law stood in front of the banquet against the wall, picking up the photos there as she did every time she visited. Nearly every shot contained Andy. On the first vacation together in Colorado, their first anniversary, Christmas with the in-laws…every photo marked a moment in their lives that would never be repeated.

      “We had a surprise visitor yesterday,” Gertrude said, putting down a shot of Andy and Truman as a puppy.

      “Oh?” Sara used the server to cut the pie and picked up a dessert plate.

      “Eric Armstrong dropped in as if he’d parachuted from a C-150.”

      “C-130,” Howard corrected.

      Neither of them seemed to notice that Sara had dropped half a piece of pie onto the white tablecloth.

      Gertrude turned from the banquet. “You remember Eric, don’t you?”

      “Sure, I remember him.” If they only knew that she had memories to draw on that were much more recent than their own.

      Howard picked up his fresh fork to dig into the pie. “He said he stopped by here to pay his respects.”

      Gertrude looked at him. “You didn’t tell me that.”

      He shrugged. “Didn’t think I had to. He was Andy’s best friend. He was there when he went down. Of course he’d want to see his widow.”

      “Yes, but why didn’t you tell me?”

      Sara was glad the two were too occupied with each other to see her reaction to the news that Eric had told them he’d stopped by there.

      She tried to stop her hands from shaking as she handed Gertrude her pie.

      “You’re not going to have any?” she asked.

      “No, no, I’m…” She swallowed hard. “I must have eaten too much pot roast.”

      “You didn’t eat any at all. Howard ate enough for all three of us.”

      He chuckled, his mouth full of pie.

      “You’re getting too thin, Sara. Is everything okay? You barely eat when we go out, your clothes are at least one size too big, if not two.”

      Howard looked at her. “She looks all right to me.”

      Gertrude gave an eye roll. “Of course, you would say that. Men don’t notice anything until it’s waving flags in front of them…or a gun.”

      “I’d notice if she’d gotten fat.”

      Her mother-in-law ignored him. “Sara? You haven’t answered my question.”

      “Actually, I think I will have some pie,” she said, concentrating on cutting herself a piece.

      “Good,” Gertrude looked satisfied.

      Problem solved. For now…

      LATER THAT NIGHT she sat in front of her glowing laptop, her fingers hovering above the keyboard. There was a time not so long ago when she’d looked forward to logging on to her e-mail account and checking for new messages. Rather, she’d been eager to check “Saman-tha’s” box. But now that Eric knew who she really was, would he seek her out at her regular account? And if he did, what would she do?

      “Ignore him,” she whispered.

      Easier said than done.

      Despite the awkward moments with her in-laws earlier, every time she turned around she was reminded of her time with Eric the other night. She hadn’t changed the sheets yet because at night she snuggled into the side he’d slept on, crushing his pillow to her nose, absorbing the scent of sandalwood and hot male.

      He’d tried calling, but she’d had the answering machine on. His first two attempts he’d merely hung up. On the third, he’d left a message: “Sara, call me, please. You and I need to talk.”

      What