The Army Doc's Secret Wife

CHAPTER TWO

Five years earlier

‘SHOULD I...? THAT IS...do you want me to carry you over the threshold?’ Ben hesitated at the cottage door, his key still unturned in the lock.

‘Sorry?’

Her voice sounded thick, as if she was in some kind of fug. He could empathise with that.

‘Now we’re married...’ Ben shrugged, feeling uncharacteristically helpless. He didn’t do emotion at the best of times. But Thea’s brother—his best friend—had just died. How was he supposed to support her? ‘I just wondered...’

He trailed off, hating these alien feelings. His career depended on him being decisive and sure. He gathered the best intelligence he could and made his plan of action accordingly. But how did he gather intel on the right way to help a grieving sister? How did he ensure he said the right thing, did the right thing? He didn’t know the right protocols. He didn’t know the rules. It left him feeling ineffective and uncertain.

But he did know it was now his responsibility to help Thea. And that ignoring loss, pretending it didn’t exist, didn’t make it go away. He knew that from bitter experience.

‘I don’t know if I’m expected to carry you over the threshold,’ he stated uncomfortably.

‘Oh. No, Lord, no—of course not.’ Thea shook her head in distress. ‘I just want to get into the house and off this street. I can practically feel the curtains twitching.’

Ben glanced around. Not a single curtain had moved, but he could understand Thea’s discomfort and her need to escape inside.

Marrying someone with whom he’d only been on one date wasn’t something he’d ever thought he would do. He wasn’t impulsive. At least not in his personal life. But this wasn’t about impulsiveness. It was about practicality. It was about fulfilling his promise to Dan—Thea’s brother and his army buddy—that he would take care of Thea. The guy had taken a bullet for him—fulfilling that promise was a given.

Ben had taken over payment of the fees for Thea’s medical degree, given her access to other necessary finances, but finding her a new home had been harder, given the time constraints. Her landlord had evicted her the moment he’d discovered Dan was dead and she could no longer pay the rent. Finding her a new flat would have taken more time than he had.

The only solution had been to marry her, so that the Army would allocate them a house within the officers’ married quarters on the base. With its tight-knit community, and the fact that he was often away on courses, exercises and tours of duty, he’d thought it the safest place for a twenty-one-year-old girl who had already lost her parents at...what had Dan said...eight? Nine?

‘I’m just not used to all...this.’ Thea waved her hand in the direction of the cul-de-sac as Ben opened the door and she practically fell inside.

‘Community?’

She shook her head. ‘People knowing your business.’

There were boxes in the hallway. He hadn’t had time to sort anything out yet, although neither of them owned much stuff. She didn’t seem to hang on to personal effects; that was something they both had in common.

‘It’s...pretty,’ she sounded surprised. ‘Until the other day, I’d always assumed married quarters just meant a different wing in the barracks,’

‘No. Married soldiers get a house either on, or near to, the camp,’Ben dredged up a smile. ‘The higher rank the soldier is, the nicer the accommodation. And the quieter the area on camp.’

‘Right,’ Thea nodded robotically.

He doubted if she had even really seen the place properly when the Housing Officer had marched them in a week ago to take inventory and do a damage report. She had still been coming to terms with burying Dan.

He knew Dan hadn’t been able to afford to rent more than a one-bedroom flat for his sister, so she could have a roof over her head. He had always put Thea first.

Dan had been a great medic, but he would have made a great doctor—a great officer. Just as Ben was. The only reason Dan hadn’t become one was because he hadn’t been able to afford the time out for courses. The guy had signed on into the Army the moment he’d been able to, just to get out of that children’s home and earn enough money to send the gifted Thea to uni when she came out of foster care.

He’d given his sister every advantage he hadn’t had, and the fact that she was in the third year of her medical degree was as much down to his love and encouragement as Thea’s ability.

Now Dan was gone, and Ben had promised to take on the mantle of responsibility. To put Thea first. He’d be damned if he was going to betray the promise he’d made to his dying buddy. But that meant he was also going to have to remember his own promise to himself never to go near the only woman he’d ever felt strongly about.

For one dangerous moment memories of their one incredible date together assailed him. Instantly Ben slammed the shutters on his mind before those memories could take hold and complicate matters. He could not afford to go there. He would have to keep reminding himself that he wasn’t the right man for Thea. He would only end up hurting her, and she had enough to contend with.

‘I thought you might feel more secure here.’ Ben forced himself to go on. ‘The neighbours are all army spouses too. You’ll have a support network when I ship out in a few days—they’ll look after you.’

‘Yes, it should help,’ she agreed flatly.

‘Plus, getting something through the Army was the fastest thing I could do in the time frame.’

He saw her wince, regretted his directness. But the truth was he had only been given one month of compassionate leave. One month in which to break news to Thea which would destroy her whole life as she knew it. One month in which to fulfil his promise to look after Thea for life. One month to convince her that marrying him wasn’t lunacy, but necessary to ensure her financial security.

‘Can I get you anything? A drink? Something to eat?’

She shook her head, refusing to meet his eye. Spying her canvas clothes bag, she made a relieved grab for it. ‘If you don’t mind, I just want to go to bed.’

‘It’s barely eight-thirty,’ he noted with surprise.

‘It’s been a long day.’ Thea shrugged. ‘I figure I could try to sleep. Just hope that, if I do, when I wake up it won’t be this day any longer.’

‘Right.’ He nodded quickly. He doubted she’d slept much in the three weeks since he’d told her that Dan was dead. ‘Of course. I understand.’

She was still standing there, as if waiting for him. Was he supposed to go with her? That wasn’t the agreement they’d made.

‘Um...which room is mine?’

She flushed a deep red and Ben cursed his lack of sensitivity. The sooner he was redeployed, the better.

‘Oh, the second on the right. But we can swap later, if you prefer. I won’t be here much.’

She gave an uninterested nod and, dismissing his words, turned swiftly to head up the stairs. He heard her moving around up there as he tried to still his mind with the banal task of unpacking some of the boxes. The kettle, some mugs, teabags for a start.

He opened the first box and came face to face with a photo of himself and Dan on their first tour of duty together. This was harder than he had feared. Slamming the box shut, he grabbed a sleeping bag and followed Thea’s lead, heading upstairs to the other bedroom.

Ben lay rigid and motionless on his back in the bed, his hands locked behind his head. There was no way he could sleep. He watched the numbers counting up painfully slowly on the clock projecting the time onto the ceiling. Twenty-one hundred hours. It wasn’t just the time. Normally he could sleep on a clothesline, and anyway he’d been to bed at more ridiculous hours in his time on tour. It was more the fact that on the other side of the wall he could hear Thea in her own bed as she shifted, coughed and sporadically sobbed.

He had no idea if he’d done the right thing by marrying her, but he knew he was honouring his promise to Dan and that was all that really mattered. Plus, even if their marriage was fake their friendship didn’t have to be. Thea was grieving, and Ben knew just what she was going through.

Unable to lie there listening to her distress, he got up off the creaking bed and ducked out of his door to knock gently on Thea’s. No answer, but by the sudden silence it was clear that she had heard him. She didn’t respond.

He should leave. She obviously didn’t want him there. But a little voice told him she needed him. He knocked again, then turned the handle, tentatively at first.

‘Thea, is there anything I can do?’

Thea was sitting up, her knees pulled to her chest. Her tense features relaxed slightly as she looked up and saw him.

He crossed the room in a couple of long strides, scooping her up and pulling her into his arms, assiduously ignoring the pretty lacy lemon negligee. One hand secured her to him, the other smoothed her hair gently, and he let her cry it out. Holding her until she finally grew still.

When she did, he shifted as though to lower her back onto the bed.

‘Don’t go,’ she whispered. ‘Please, stay with me...just for tonight....’

‘It’s not a good idea.’

So why was he so tempted?

Lifting herself, Thea searched his face with red-rimmed eyes. ‘Then at least talk to me, Ben.’

Talking. The thing he was least good at.

‘What about?’ he asked, faltering.

‘Anything...’ She hiccupped. ‘Distract me.’

‘Why did Dan always call you Ethel?’ he blurted out, his mind having gone suddenly blank. ‘I never knew your real name was Thea until our date. When I found out you were Dan’s sister.’

Way to go, idiot. Talk about the very person she doesn’t want to think about.

But Thea smiled. A small, fond smile which tore at Ben’s heart.

‘When I was a kid I couldn’t pronounce Alethea, so I used to tell people my name was Ethel. Dan loved it. Even when I started to be known as Thea he still called me Ethel. It was our thing. No one else could share in it.’

‘Right...’ Ben swallowed uncomfortably. He wished he’d never asked. Somehow it had made him feel closer to Thea. He didn’t want to feel closer to Thea. He clenched his fists as the image that had haunted him for the last three weeks swam into his head in high definition.

Dan...cradled in his arms as he lay dying on that hard desert ground.

Their two-man patrol had walked straight into an ambush and the two of them had been alone and pinned down by the enemy, with only a rocky outcrop for protection. Ben had tried and tried to stem the bleeding but it had been just too severe. Time had started to run out for the guy he’d fought alongside twenty-four-seven, for three hundred and twenty days of their last year’s tour of duty. And for multiple tours over the last seven years before that.

Grief hovered in the back of his mind but he refused to let it in. There was no place in his mind for mourning—he had to stay strong for Thea. She didn’t know the half of it. And he was never going to tell her. Besides, wasn’t he the king of shutting out emotions? He’d been doing it well enough for the last decade and a half.

‘Did you ever wonder how we’d never met before?’ Thea asked suddenly. ‘I mean, you were Daniel’s best friend and I was his sister.’

‘Not really.’ Ben paused thoughtfully. ‘Dan was always careful to keep the two sides of his life separate—his personal life and you, and his Army life. I think after your parents died he didn’t have the easiest time of it in the kids’ home. He never really talked about his past to anyone.’

‘Except you?’ Thea observed. ‘Because he trusted you?’

‘Right,’ Ben answered bleakly.

‘But still...’ Thea shook her head, still confused. ‘If he trusted you that much, surely you’d have come with him round to the flat?’

‘No, I never came round.’ Ben shrugged. ‘You have to understand I’m a commissioned officer. Dan wasn’t. Being part of a team and in each other’s company twenty-four-seven is one thing, but socialising back home isn’t that easy.’

‘Because the Army don’t allow it?’

Thea frowned, confused. Ben didn’t blame her. The Forces had their rules, their protocols, and if you were a part of it then it all made sense. It could save lives. But to an outsider trying to understand it might seem strange.

‘They don’t encourage it,’ Ben admitted. ‘We have separate messes for socialising. But the Army do realise that the bonds formed in war time don’t just dissolve when you get back home. So, like some of the others, Dan and I used to go on training runs together, and we headed into the mountains once or twice a year—but always off the base.

‘Right...’ Thea hedged. ‘But when you were deployed together he never even showed you a photo of me?’

‘Having a photo of your wife, or girlfriend, or baby is one thing. But having a photo of your sister... There’s no way Dan would have risked the guys seeing a photo of a girl like you. It would have invited attention...comments that a brother wouldn’t want to hear about his sister.’

‘Oh.’

Thea flushed a deep scarlet as the meaning of his words sank in. He found it surprisingly endearing—a reminder than she had never really appreciated just how stunning she was. Even now.

‘Tell me what you thought the first time you met me,’ she said. ‘On that date we went on together.’

He stiffened. This wasn’t a conversation he wanted to be having.

‘Please, Ben. I need to hear something...pleasant... Everything’s gone so very wrong. I just want to hear what you told me that night.’

Ben met her wobbly, pleading gaze. She wanted distraction, a better memory to offer some flicker of consolation at one of the worst times of her life. After the way he’d treated her, surely he owed her that much?

‘I thought you were the most beautiful woman I’d ever met,’ he said quietly. ‘Not just aesthetically, but on the inside, too. You were fun, impetuous...you had a vibrancy about you which was wonderfully infectious to all those around you. You made everyone want to be near you, to be part of your group.’

He’d been on a rare night out with some other officers—at a crowded bar—when Thea had slipped into the space beside him. They’d started talking casually and that had been it—he’d never felt such an inexorable attraction to a woman before. He’d excused himself from his group as soon as he’d been able to, just to spend the rest of the evening in Thea’s company.

‘Oh...’

She sounded let down, and he knew why. She thought he’d understood her better.

He hesitated, then conceded. ‘At least that’s what you wanted people to see. But beneath that veil there was a quietness, almost a shyness about you when you thought no one was watching you. Judging you. I assumed it was a defence mechanism you’d created after your parents had died, to stop people asking if you were all right.’

‘Really? You saw that?’

Her evident pleasure that he’d seen a part of her others had been only too happy to ignore made him want to kiss her and berate her all at the same time. And that was the damned problem.

‘So the next day, when you told me we couldn’t see each other any more...?’ She hiccupped, clearly torn between not wanting to say the words and needing to know the truth. ‘You didn’t have feelings for me anymore?’

How was he supposed to answer that? From the moment they’d met he had been hooked. This spellbinding young woman had persuaded him to take her to a funfair. There had been a small group of them—Thea’s friends—but he hadn’t even noticed them after the first few minutes. He had only seen Thea.

They’d hurled leather balls at the coconut shy, laughed their way through the hall of mirrors and shared an incredible, intense first kiss at the top of the Ferris wheel.

In most of his life—even much of his childhood—Ben had never felt as happy and free of responsibility as he had that evening with Thea. And he’d known even then that she had an ability to make him fall for her such as no other woman ever had.

And now she wanted to know why he’d walked away from her. What could he say? He owed her something. Perhaps a variation on the truth was the safest option.

‘We’re just...weren’t a good match. I’m sorry, Thea.’

Her body seemed to curl even more into his arms and he felt worse than ever. But it was a necessary lie...no, a half-truth... They weren’t a good match. Ben could recall tantalising glimpses of a real inner confidence and a love of life, rippling constantly beneath that artificially shimmering, vivacious exterior. He had seen them from the beginning. She was the kind of person who made people feel good, want to bask in her warm glow for ever.

He wished he could be the kind of person who made her feel good, who could inspire that hidden side of Thea.

Instead he knew that he was the kind of person who would eventually extinguish that dancing light in her soul. If he was the kind of man his father had been he would drag Thea down, as his mother had been dragged down. What kind a life would that be for a woman like Thea?

He’d known as he’d walked her home that night, wondering at the way she had made him feel about her after just one incredible date, that he needed to walk away from her before he did hurt her. But he hadn’t been able to. Even as he’d walked up the pathway to her ground-floor flat his head had been telling him one thing whilst his heart had been making plans to take her out the next day. Imagining a future with her.

And then Dan had opened the door and demanded to know what the hell Ben was doing with his sister.

Dan—the guy who’d had his back through countless tours of duty. The buddy who would have given his life for Ben, and for whom Ben would have sacrificed his own.

Only Dan had and Ben hadn’t.

So, just like that, the woman he had thought he might actually be able to fall in love with had been off limits. Still, Ben had to wonder whether Dan had been the real reason that he’d walked away from Thea.

Or just the excuse.

He could have fought for her. The thought slid, unbidden, into his mind. But would that have been fair? All the women he’d dated in the past...he’d never felt strongly enough about any of them. With Thea it was different. It had been even from that first meeting. But the closer you were to someone, the more hurt you could cause. Ben had learned that from his parents. If his father had taught him anything, it was never to get close to anyone. Or let them get close to you.

It was a lesson he’d do well to remember with Thea.

Lost in his own dark thoughts, it took Ben a while to realise that she was asleep. He heard her breathing ease and deepen, felt her heartbeat drop to a slow, rhythmic pulse. And for the first time in a long time—with Thea still wrapped in his arms—Ben fell into a deep, restful sleep of his own.

He woke to the sound of an unfamiliar phone alert. A text? An email? Not wanting to wake Thea, Ben squinted through the curtains to the darkness beyond. Years of field experience told him it had to be around four in the morning.

Nevertheless he felt her stir beside him, felt her raise her head up and then reach across him for her phone. He felt the skim of soft breasts and lacy fabric against his bare chest and fought to stop his body’s primal reaction. He didn’t stand a chance.

Thea froze.

For a moment Ben vacillated. Should he apologise? Leave? She had wanted him there, to comfort her. She had trusted him. Such a base reaction was the ultimate betrayal of that trust. He had no doubt she would consider it as unexpected as it was unwanted.

He was shocked when, instead of scooting off the bed away from him, Thea reached out and touched his face.

‘Don’t, Thea. It’s not a good idea.’ He gripped her wrist, stilling it and moving it away from him as he opened his eyes and came face to face with her direct gaze.

She still looked pale, drained; but there was a glint in her eyes which he hadn’t been expecting—something he couldn’t quite pinpoint.

It held him in her bed, motionless. Part of him knew he should leave. He had promised her this was a marriage on paper only, assured her she could trust him. Still, part of him wanted to stay. He couldn’t deny his attraction to her, and all their talk last night had only made it harder to put his feelings for her safely away in their box.

‘Why isn’t it a good idea?’ she whispered, gently twisting her wrist from his loosened grip, slowly returning it to his face.

She traced the outline of the scar which pulled at the corner of his eye. ‘Some war wound, huh?’ Her voice shook as she spoke,

Memories punched into him. The last time she’d asked that exact question had been on their one and only date, moments before they’d shared their first kiss. Could it only have been six weeks ago? It had been a gentle yet powerful kiss which had rocked him to his foundations in a way he’d never suspected a mere kiss ever could. It was the moment he’d realised he wanted more, so much more, from this woman.

She’d asked him how he’d got it—assuming, as others had done in the past, that it was something to do with the Army. Ben had always been happy to go along with their assumption—not that he’d dated a lot since his career had begun to come first. But instead he’d found himself telling Thea how the scar was a result of running into an open kitchen drawer when he was boy.