Homefront Hero. Allie Pleiter

leg was screaming at him from inside perfectly pressed trousers. His shirt collar tightened around his neck like a starchy, menacing hand. At least in war, no one gave a fig what a man looked like or how he stood, as long as he got where he needed to be. Here, he was waging a battle with the barbed wire under his skin while smirking and making small talk with a dozen people who had no idea what torture it was to bend his right leg at a natural angle. And hold it for the endless seconds it took to get the right image. They’d been at it for hours, and already he was coming to hate the funny accordion-faced camera as much as he loathed the pointed metal knitting needles. People said the camera loved him, but he did not return the affection.

       “You were right,” Leanne remarked after the first handful of photos. “It would have been dreadfully hard to learn under these conditions.” A man in a plaid vest had repositioned her hands dozens of times, and even John could hear the frustration in Leanne’s words. Obviously the wonder born of buzzing activity and bright lights had died down quickly for her, made worse by the tactless positioning of photographers who made it very clear they weren’t too worried about getting her in the shot.

       Which was a waste, for she looked beautiful today. John could tell she’d taken extra care with her hair and dress. “You should wear that color more often,” he ventured when one assistant all but pushed her out of the way. The bright yellow made the peach of her skin fairly glow. He yanked his hat back from some apple-cheeked boy charged with brushing nonexistent lint from it. “Clark, I want Miss Sample in the next shot.”

       Clark Summers looked up from his camera with a dubiously raised eyebrow. “Do you now?” His tone implied that what Captain Gallows wanted didn’t much matter at the moment.

       Someone fired off one of those flash contraptions, making Leanne jump. The photographer rolled his eyes as if he considered working with such innocents penance for some earlier photographic sin.

       “I do,” John replied. He poured so much Gallows command into those two words that the hat boy sat down in deference. “Surely you don’t plan to slap me on some magazine cover without a pretty girl by my side. I’m supposed to recruit young lads to the cause, aren’t I? You don’t expect me to do that without a lovely lady on hand to admire my efforts?”

       John regretted those last words the minute he’d said them, but his leg was making it hard to think well. Miss Sample’s spine shot straight and the needles dropped to her lap. Worse yet, her foot began tapping. Nothing good ever came out of a lady tapping her foot, ever. The fire he had suspected was lurking under all that peaches-and-cream was sneaking out under all this scrutiny. He liked that, although John was convinced that amusement could well be the death of him. If his leg didn’t kill him first.

       He made up his mind, then and there, to ensure he saw Leanne Sample someplace much closer to his own territory. Someplace where he held most of the cards. He smiled as it came to him just where that was.

      * * *

       The captain had nerve, she’d give him that much.

       It wasn’t that she minded being pulled out of the standard nurse’s rotation—those shifts could be dreary, indeed—it was that she hadn’t been given a choice at all. The smug grin on John Gallows’s face as she signed the clipboard admitting her to the reconstruction gymnasium pressed down on her, glossy and manipulative. Clearly he thought he’d done her some kind of favor. While other nurses might fawn over the chance to work so closely with such “a hero,” Gallows’s manipulative nature canceled out any gratitude Leanne could muster.

       She walked straight toward him, hoping her annoyance showed as she held his gaze. “You press your advantage with entirely too much ease, Captain Gallows.”

       He sat lengthwise on a bench, slowly hoisting a small weighted bag on his ankle. He was pretending it took no effort. “Not at all. We’re allowed to request specific attendants. I requested you.”

       Leanne stood over him crossing her arms over her chest. “I fear I’m not sufficiently qualified to supervise your exercises.” She stopped short of saying “given the extent of your injuries” because she knew that would bother him. Then again, perhaps he deserved to be bothered after the way he’d behaved at their photographic session yesterday.

       John leaned back on the bench, the white of his exercise shirt stretching across his chest. “Nonsense. You’d only be taking temperatures and walking lads out on the lawn anyway. I know you like a challenge.” It really was a crime what white did for the man’s eyes.

       “You do not know me at all, Captain. If you did, you would know I’m not one to play favorites. Or be played as one.” She wouldn’t give him one inch of the satisfaction of thinking that she’d been even the smallest bit flattered by his special request of her—she was rather ashamed of it herself. She wasn’t blind to the way women looked at John Gallows, how they flocked around him like gulls to a fish boat, circling and diving for scraps of regard. There was something regretfully pleasing in being singled out, even by him. But her mission here was so much more important than any small boon to her vanity, and she was aggravated with herself for forgetting that—and aggravated with him as well, for making her forget.

       She watched his eyes narrow the slightest bit as the orderly pulled his leg farther up, noticed the teeth grit inside his constant smile. “Would it help you to know I had a practical reason for requesting you?”

       She raised an inquiring eyebrow.

       The leg started its descent and she could see his grip on the bench loosen. “They’re going to stuff my leg into horrid packs of ice this afternoon, and I’ll have to sit there like a landed fish at market.” He nodded at the large orderly currently removing the weighted bag from his ankle. “No offense to Nelson here, but I’m going to need more distraction that he can provide. And it might prove a good time to practice my—” he hesitated a fraction of a second “—new skill.”