Chapter Five
Theresa closed the postal trailer’s door with her hip, the sun-parched afternoon making her squint after the dim interior. The two packages in her arms were the first good omens since she’d realized Sergeant Wardsen must be avoiding her.
“Captain Chiesa!”
She couldn’t mistake that voice after listening to it through the curtain and on the ride where they’d struggled to help Nazdana. Before she turned, she knew Sergeant Wardsen would be there, his warm melody of words able to comfort in any language. He could probably soothe the damn dust if he spoke to it.
Three feet away, he stood like a granite monument, one hand on the pull door that covered the letter slot. Her exit had caught him in the middle of depositing a handful of letters.
If she hadn’t been holding the boxes, she could’ve touched his cheek. Clean-shaven, he was as delicious as a recruiting ad.
“How are Nazdana and the little guys?” Below his reflective sunglasses, he grinned like everyone in camp did when they asked about Caddie’s favorite guests.
“Great. Eating lots.” She wanted to keep him there, talking, even if only about this safe topic. “Someone made two cradles and the nurses are stitching quilts out of the camouflage patterns of all the NATO uniforms.” Refusing to obey her brain’s warning to keep her distance, her feet carried her down the steps. “They’ll be ready to go home after this weekend.”
“We’ll be on a mission. Can they stay until Tuesday?”
“Sure.” Then we’ll have to see each other again. “Extra days can’t hurt.” Her goal wasn’t to stand here and stare at him, especially when she couldn’t see his eyes through the lenses, so she asked, “Does your team know any other women who need maternity care?”
“Planning to open a women’s clinic?” His lips twitched at one corner of his mouth. “What’s the regulation authorizing that, ma’am?”
“No idea.” She squeezed her packages tighter, unsure how to present her half-formed plan to Colonel Loughrey. The sixteen hours it had taken her to track down a supply of vitamins with extra folate deliverable to Caddie hadn’t left much time to refine her idea of mobile prenatal visits.
“Kidding.” He caught the smaller box as it slipped across the larger one’s top. “It’s a great idea, and we’ll find you someone.” He gestured to the bigger package she held. “I’ll trade you.”
Her mother could fit an entire vacation wardrobe and dozens of cookies into a box the size of a file drawer, but it was heavy enough to make her arms ache. Asking him to carry it would be wimpy, but he’d offered. She wouldn’t lose her atta-girl credentials if she accepted his help as far as her hut.
He palmed the carton as if it were a basketball and handed her the smaller one to tuck at her hip. “So, what exciting contraband am I hauling? It’s not heavy enough to be beer.”
“Shoes.” She looked at her tan suede boots. “I need civvies for leave next week.”
“I’m carrying women’s shoes? Spiky things?” He shortened his stride to stay next to her.
“Probably.” She had no idea what her mother had sent, but smart money would be on black kitten heels. Refusing her stepfather’s dubious cash was one thing, but Theresa had long ago resigned herself to her mother’s extravagance. Buying clothes for her only child was an expression of love, as well as an attempt to make up for the losses of Theresa’s early years. Despite Carl’s jokes about his wife’s skill at money laundering whenever she went to the mall, Theresa knew everything in the box had been selected and mailed with her mother’s love.
“This is cause for despair?” He pulled his sunglasses halfway down his nose so she couldn’t miss his raised eyebrows.
“I asked for something comfortable for walking. I doubt that describes anything here.” A strong mother-daughter bond didn’t guarantee the same taste.
“Next you’re going to tell me there are clothes in this.”
Part of her knew she shouldn’t follow the conversation away from safe medical subjects and into the risks of personal details so easily, but that part had lost its voice.
He stopped moving and his eyes skimmed her body all the way to the ground. “Silk.”
His single word conjured a lush image that brought her to a standstill, an image of a man’s hand sliding a swath of fabric over her throat and chest to caress her skin. Her eyes locked on his fingers, tanned and strong, spread wide on her carton. They weren’t too thick, and his nails were clean. At his wrist, blond hairs touched his watchband. The hand would be just like Wulf’s.
“Or lace?” His voice had slipped to a depth that she rarely heard, because men didn’t describe medical symptoms in that slowly melting tone or present slides at battle update briefings with that husky vibration deep in their chest.
“I hope not.” Her voice barely squeezed out of her paralyzed throat, but she had to answer. Why was he flirting with her? She wanted to ask about helping Afghan women—she couldn’t allow anything more—but why did he want to talk to her? They both knew army rules; a relationship between them was off-limits. Special ops soldiers calibrated risk and quantified outcomes as finely as neurosurgeons, or they didn’t stay alive, yet he wrapped his voice around her like a net. She swallowed the knowledge that he wanted to take his chances.
“Dare I imagine a dress?”
A dress. She focused on her gray-and-brown pants fabric. This close, the blocks in the design were right angles, orderly and regular, like her life. To keep it that way, she had to stay far away from this man. A semisecret maternal clinic was enough professional risk. To pile on more by—no—they could be nothing to each other but people who nodded and exchanged half smiles across the dining facility.
“Imagine a dress if you want.” She started to shrug, but the move would lift her chest, so she turned and spoke over her shoulder as she moved away. “I’ll imagine practical pants.” Whatever her mother had sent, she doubted it would be practical, unless it was a nail file. “I hope being that close to something the army didn’t issue won’t cause you problems.”
“If I have a heart attack, I’m confident I’m in good hands.” He came even with her in three strides.
The image of leaning across his body to press his chest flashed in her mind, so real that her arm spasmed on the smaller box until its corner dug into her waist. She’d almost reached the end of temp city, rows of tents for soldiers taking breaks from more remote outposts. By comparison, the plywood hut she and Jennifer shared with four other females seemed posh.
“Where you headed?” he asked as they approached the rows of prefabricated housing that marked the main area of Camp Caddie.
“Bravo 8.” Revealing her hut location felt like giving out a phone number at a bar, but this afternoon she couldn’t blame alcohol.
His glasses re-covered his eyes. “For leave.”
“Oh.” She’d misinterpreted his question. Maybe she had read too much into all his conversation. “Rome.”
“Ahhh.” His sigh reminded Theresa of someone sinking into a hot tub. “Lucky you.”
“I know.” She lifted the smaller box. “Guidebooks.”
“Meeting someone?” A casual, polite question. He wasn’t fishing for her dating status.
“No. Planned it myself. The books should be enough, although I might join a Vatican tour. I’ve read that—” His sideways smile made her want to slap a hand over her inner babbler.
“So.” He stopped walking. The banter, and his smile, faded. “Someone sent the clothes and shoes?” His attention fixed her to the gravel.