Feeling it sheer off the uterine wall and fall, she slipped it out easily and the job was done.
It was going to be a successful mission. She could feel it.
CHAPTER NINE
HAYDEN COULD SLEEP on a clothesline. Over a decade and a half in the army had allowed him to perfect that technique. But tonight he couldn’t even lie still. His thoughts were keeping his mind on a veritable assault course because he couldn’t pretend he wasn’t feeling this sleek, warm thing that moved around inside him every time he was with Bridget.
It was a madness, he knew that. Just as he knew he needed to put an end to it.
Yet he couldn’t seem to be able to.
The rational part of his brain tried to pass it off as little more than a sex thing. The fact that no man had ever touched her the way that he had done, had even slid inside her, meant that she had given him the most precious gift indeed. It was only logical that it should have brought out a primal response in him.
But it was more than that—more than just the physical. It was as though she made his life better, brighter, more vibrant, even though he’d thought his life had been just fine as it was.
And that was part of the problem.
It was making it impossible for him to distance himself from her the way that he should, because really what could he offer her in return? A life like his mother had led whilst he lived his army life as his father had? Who would want that?
Yet if he tried to explain it to anyone, he wasn’t sure they would have understood. How could they when his parents had appeared to have a happy marriage? And had loved each other?
Other people hadn’t seen what he had.
Those moments when he’d caught the utter loneliness in his mother’s expression before she’d smoothed her face out and smiled at him with so much love that it had been blinding. He could still recall the first fifteen years of his life—Mattie was much younger, of course—when his family had moved once or twice a year, following his father up and down the country for each new posting and promotion.
He and his mother had felt as though their entire lives were a series of packing up, moving, unpacking, trying to make new friends, him trying to fit into a new school and his mother trying to find a new part-time job, finally settling in only to be told to pack up and move again.
But that was a road he didn’t want to go down. Not now. So he found himself sitting by the fireside, chatting with the locals about nothing less beautiful than the carpet of stars that shone so brightly over their heads.
He’d learned how their names for the stars and the constellations differed so greatly from his own, and how their changing, flowing appearance throughout the year corresponded with the water missing from the sky during the rainy season, and the sky refilling during the dry season.
In turn, Hayden had answered their questions on why the moon was full some nights, yet not even there on others. And how the moon wasn’t a great bowl that was lit up from the inside at night, as some of them had been taught to believe.
But now he sat, still and watchful, and finally alone, as the reason for his apparent insomnia crept silently out of her tent and came to join him by the fire.
‘I heard you out here earlier, but I didn’t dare come out whilst the elders were here.’
‘Indeed,’ he managed, unable to drag his gaze from her as she settled prettily beside him. ‘Shouldn’t you be getting sleep before your main vaccination day tomorrow?’
‘Probably,’ she agreed mildly. ‘How did the drilling go today? Did I hear you were planning on building a high tank where the water could be chlorinated before collection?’
‘I thought that if we could increase the chlorination we might be able to reduce the number and severity of Hep E outbreaks that seem to occur in this region. Then again, there was a study carried out a few years ago that considered the likelihood of recontamination by the water bottles used by individual households before they even got the water back home.’
‘What were the results?’
‘I don’t know.’ He grimaced. ‘I couldn’t find them published anywhere. But I could rerun the tests if I use turbidity meters, chemical analysers.’
‘Is that in your brief?’
‘No,’ he confessed. ‘But I considered recruiting and training some locals to help us collect data in the field.’
How odd that her approval should affect him as it did.
‘That’s a good idea, Hayd. The locals really appreciate being taught new skills that can benefit their community. It makes them feel far more valued that if they had to simply stand by and watch others—outsiders—doing it for them.’
‘I figured as much.’
‘Sorry.’ She looked sheepish. ‘I guess you already know that. You must have worked with communities before.’