Snowbound

kept making excuses to seek him out was attractive. He’d

been bothered then by the fact that he’d felt not even a

slight stirring of sexual desire. He hadn’t had had a woman

since the night before he’d shipped out for Iraq. He’d

missed sex the first months there. At some point, he’d quit

thinking about it. That part of him had gone numb.

It wasn’t that he felt nothing. Grief was his constant

companion, anger looking over its shoulder. He had

unpredictable bursts of fear. Once in a while, he allowed

himself to be grateful that he was alive and that he’d

found sanctuary.

Fiona MacPherson’s pretty gray eyes and cloud of

curly dark hair wouldn’t have been enough to draw him

from his preferred solitude. Not if something else about

her hadn’t sliced open the layer of insulation that had

kept him distant from the rest of humanity.

So what was different about her? What had he

sensed, from the moment their eyes first met?

He kept following her around in search of answers,

not out of lust.

John gave a grunt that might have been a rusty laugh.

Well, not entirely out of lust, he amended.

The sound he’d made brought her head around,

although neither of the girls seemed to hear. When

Fiona saw him leaning against the wall, she smiled. As

if glad he was still here.

There, he thought in shock, might be his answer.

She saw him. Really saw him. Not as a Heathcliff she

was bent on seducing as part of a weekend’s adventure,

but as if she were interested in him as a person. As if

she might even like him.

In fact, she was the only person outside family and

old friends who’d ever bothered to wonder if he suffered

from PTSD—and he could tell she had been curious,

even if she hadn’t meant to ask. He’d only admitted to

having served in Iraq to a couple of other veterans who’d

stayed at the lodge over the past year. They had recognized each other. If others had speculated after seeing his scar, they’d kept the speculation to themselves.

What he didn’t know was whether Fiona MacPherson looked at everyone the way she did at him. Why that mattered, he didn’t know. In a few days, she’d be gone.

But he still wanted to know.

CHAPTER FOUR

FIONA COULDN’T BELIEVE John Fallon had thought she

would come right out and ask if he suffered from

post-traumatic stress disorder. She didn’t know him

anywhere near well enough to be that personal. The embarrassing part was that she had wondered, and he could probably tell.

In the privacy of the laundry room—where she was

shifting loads again perhaps an hour later—she groaned

aloud. He must think she had no better manners than

Amy! She couldn’t even blame him.

Should she apologize once more? Or would it make

things worse if she brought the subject up again?

Definitely worse, she decided.

Folding towels in the same style he did, lengthwise in

thirds, she couldn’t help thinking about what he’d said. He

needed to decompress, which must mean he was having

trouble with… She didn’t know. People, noise, nightmares? Of course, there was his limp, too. She’d seen how much his leg hurt him on occasion. He’d go utterly still,

his jaw muscles locking, and a sheen of sweat would

break out on his face. Was he continuing to do physical

therapy, or had he recovered as much as he was going to?

“Gee, why don’t I just ask him?” she said aloud,

rolling her eyes.

His voice came from behind her, mild but impossible

to ignore. “Ask him what?”

Fiona froze. Her fingers tightened on the towel in her

hands and she said the first thing that came to her. “Oh,

um, whether you have more laundry soap.”

“Why? Are we running low?” He came closer to her

and peered into the tall plastic bucket. Which was half

full.

Even more flustered by his nearness and the woodsy

scent that clung to him, she babbled, “No, no, I’m just

afraid we’ll use it up. I thought maybe we should start

hanging the towels after baths instead of washing them

incessantly.”

“We have plenty of soap.” He nodded past her, where

half a dozen plastic buckets were stacked against the