About Last Night

He closed his eyes, shutting out the memory of when he’d first met her. He didn’t want to remember the girl she’d been, or the fool he’d been, trying to explain to her why what he did was important.

No, right now he wanted to remember this moment. The moment he realized that he no longer cared about saving a marriage that never should have been in the first place.

The only thing in life he’d ever been good at was the army. He’d been a shitty son and a terrible husband. He hadn’t set out to be bad at either of those relationships. It had just turned out that way.

But he was a damn good infantryman. He had that going for him. His men needed their platoon sergeant focused and steady. He couldn’t be the leader they needed him to be if he was mooning over a woman who didn’t want to be with him. His hand didn’t even tremble when he signed the papers, ending the farce and freeing himself to focus on what he was good at: being a soldier. His marriage was over. This just made it official.

At least now their constant arguing about money and time—two things Shane had been too busy fighting a war and taking care of his soldiers to care about—was over. Sorry, but when asked to choose between picking out sheets at Bed, Bath, & Beyond or teaching a young soldier to shoot at the small arms range, he would always choose the range. Maybe that wasn’t fair to Tatiana, but it was who he was and she’d known that when she married him. Instead of trying to make things work, they’d done nothing but make each other miserable.

He tucked the papers back into the envelope and stuffed them into the cargo pocket on his uniform pants. Tonight, he wasn’t going to dwell on something he couldn’t change. Tatiana had made her choice a long time ago. No, tonight he was going to celebrate, and he wasn’t going to let the end of his marriage crush the victory that surged inside of him. His men didn’t need to know about his problems. He took care of them, not the other way around. Tonight, one of his boys was okay. Somehow, he’d made a difference.

And that beat the hell out of any bad news from back home.

Chapter 1

“What crawled up your ass?”

Shane shoved his last Ziploc bag of T-shirts into his army-issued duffel bag and tried to smother his rising irritation. “What part of no don’t you understand?”

Carponti—aka the most annoying soldier in Shane’s entire platoon—picked up Shane’s grey ACU pattern patrol cap and put it on, strutting around like he owned the place. Then he puffed out his chest and swung his arms wide, like a bad caricature of an angry gorilla. Sometimes Shane wished he didn’t let Carponti into his apartment as often as he did. But Carponti had recently turned into a permanent fixture in Shane’s after-duty life. Shane wasn’t sure what that said about the state of his affairs. As if Carponti mocking him in the empty apartment wasn’t enough of an indicator. “I’m Sarn’t Garrison. I’m too badass to relax and have a good time.”

“Piss off.”

“Did your wife take your sense of humor in the divorce, too?” Carponti asked, flopping into Shane’s chair. “Come on, man, it’s just a few hours and a couple of beers. The whole platoon is going to be there.”

Shane sighed and hooked his duffel bag shut, tossing it into the corner of his apartment near the front door. He flinched as the sudden movement stretched the fresh stitches that were holding two tiny holes in his abdominal wall closed. Carponti didn’t know about Shane’s recent brush with death and Shane intended to keep it that way. If Carponti wanted to believe the divorce was keeping him from going out, then so be it. But the truth was that Shane had been too busy, over the past five months, to dwell on the end of his marriage. Of course, he missed feeling like he had a home, but he couldn’t lie to himself—Tatiana hadn’t made their life together a home any more than he had. She’d been familiar, though, and he missed that. At least, that’s what he told himself when he had time to think about it. So many of his guys were having problems in the lead-up to this deployment that Shane had barely seen the air mattress on the floor of the apartment they’d shared, let alone slept on it. And tomorrow he was leaving for good.

Shane shoved his body armor into a second duffel bag, then stuffed socks and more T-shirts into the gaps. It was a pain in the ass packing for deployment. It was easier just being deployed.

“The whole platoon being there is the problem. Makes it kind of hard to explain why the platoon sergeant is in jail with the platoon if you guys get too fired up tonight. Someone has to be around to bail your sorry asses out of Bell County tomorrow.”

Carponti rolled his eyes and rubbed the back of his neck, serious for one hot second. “Look, just come out with us. You’ve been a real asshole since your wife left; you need to unwind, or we might just shoot your ass when we’re in country for being such a dick.”

Shane rested his hand over his heart and blinked rapidly. “God, I’m so touched by the depth of your concern. I can drink beer here. Alone. Quietly.”

“Sissy.”

Shane laughed and the feeling caught him off guard. If it had been that long since he’d laughed, maybe his wife had taken his sense of humor along with all of his furniture. He shook his head at Carponti’s relentless nagging and finally surrendered. Under duress, but still. “All right, fine. But I swear, if a single one of you miss movement tomorrow …”

Carponti made the sign of the cross over his heart. “Promise. Let’s go. I’m picking up Nikki on the way.”

Shane stuffed his wallet into his back pocket and grabbed the keys to his truck. At least he didn’t have to change. Killeen, Texas, didn’t exactly sport any high-class bars. The place they were headed to, Ropers, was only moderately slimy, meaning that he wasn’t likely to die of dysentery from the beer glasses and he was just fine in his T-shirt and jeans. They were clothes he didn’t care if he ruined if—scratch that, when—he had to drag one of his soldiers out of a brawl.

Truth be told, he didn’t have any problem with the boys going out. Shane just didn’t want to watch them say good-bye to their wives and girlfriends, and it had nothing to do with his own divorce. Shane hated the knowledge that he might not be bringing everyone home to their families.

It was 2007 and they were deploying as part of the Surge to stabilize Iraq. He knew he would probably bury some of his men this year. He’d deployed too many times to entertain the naive hope that all of his boys would come back in one piece. He’d move heaven and earth to protect them, and it looked like that would have to start tonight, instead of tomorrow. He couldn’t promise they’d all come home from the war, but they’d sure as shit make it to formation in the morning.

That much he could guarantee.

“Stop touching it.”

Jen St. James jumped and dropped her hand from the edge of her blouse. “I wasn’t.”

She should have known Laura would catch her tugging at her clothes, which, with the addition of a triangular-shaped silico

ne form, now fit much better. And that was part of what made Jen uncomfortable. She wasn’t used to her blouses hanging properly anymore. But she couldn’t tell Laura that. It had been hard enough to convince her that she wanted to buy only one form and not the entire shop.

Laura couldn’t seem to wrap her brain around the fact that Jen didn’t need to feel sexy, that she wanted to be comfortable instead.