Navy Seal's Deadly Secret. Cindy Dees

his cabin. Grabbing a coat, he headed outside quickly, lest she try to kill herself on his porch steps again.

      Fine crystals of snow were drifting down as he stepped out into the soft darkness. Anna had just gotten out of her car and turned to face him as he jogged down the steps.

      “Hey,” she murmured shyly.

      “Hey,” he muttered back.

      “Looks like more snow tonight,” she commented awkwardly.

      “It’s supposed to get colder,” he replied equally awkwardly. “Why don’t we take my truck just to be safe?”

      “But then my car will be stuck up here.”

      “I can give you a tow down the mountain.”

      “That sounds like a lot of trouble,” she said doubtfully.

      He shrugged. “It’s better than you ending up in a ravine and freezing to death.”

      “Well, when you put it that way…”

      He moved to the passenger door of his truck and held it open silently, waiting. She took a step toward him. Another. His heart rate leaped. She was as skittish as a deer, and he stood perfectly still lest he scare her off. Step by step she approached him, and he took deep satisfaction in her hesitant trust.

      Smiling a little, he backed up the truck, turned it around and headed down the mountain. They came out of the high valley above the main ranch complex, and the huge stone-and-log mansion his mother had insisted on building a few years back came into sight, a warm, golden jewel glowing against the snow.

      “Your family’s home is magnificent,” Anna commented.

      “I guess. It’s a house.”

      “But not a home?” she asked astutely.

      “My family’s complicated.”

      She tensed beside him, and he glanced over at her curiously.

      “Don’t get me wrong,” he added. “We get along for the most part. We Morgans are just a noisy, rowdy bunch.”

      “Sounds awful.”

      He shrugged. “It was fun growing up here.”

      She didn’t speak, so he asked, “Did you like growing up in Sunny Creek?”

      “I had nothing against the town.”

      But her childhood hadn’t been happy. Was that why she was so jumpy about men?

      Silence fell in the cab of the truck as he turned out of the ranch and onto the main road.

      “Why the Army?” she queried, surprising him.

      “Mom, apple pie, and patriotism, I suppose.”

      “What did you do in the Army?”

      His knuckles tightened on the steering wheel. “Kill people,” he bit out.

      She stared at him, wide-eyed. Welcome to the monster I really am, he thought bitterly.

      “Want me to take you back to your car?” he asked tightly.

      A heartbeat’s hesitation, then, “No.” Another hesitation. “I trust you.”

      Aw, honey. That’s a mistake. He wished it wasn’t so, but he didn’t even trust himself.

      He and his team had been ordered to patrol that stretch of terrorist-infested road. It was their duty to make sure convoys could pass through the area without getting shot to hell and back. But something had gone terribly wrong. That had been no simple improvised explosive device that blew up, killing four of his guys. What the hell had he missed? Had there been intel he’d failed to read? A report by a local liaison that should’ve warned him to expect more than crude IEDs?

      If only he could remember exactly what happened. But the ambush was a blank in his mind. The shrinks said it was obscured by battle stress. That maybe someday he would remember it all. Or not.

      Everyone hoped that coming home would relax him enough to cut the memory loose. A military board of inquiry was waiting for his testimony—but they wouldn’t wait forever to hear his side of the story. Eventually, they would run out of patience and charge him with dereliction of duty.

      He realized he was jerking the steering wheel roughly, barreling along the main road toward town. He took his foot off the accelerator and slowed to a saner pace. It was harder to force his fists to ease up their death grip on the steering wheel.

      “Where would you like to eat?” he managed to grind out past his clenched teeth.

      “Not Sunny Creek,” she blurted. “There’s a new Italian place in Hillsdale. Want to try that?”

      “Sure.” Not Sunny Creek, huh? Was she afraid to be seen with him? Not that he was complaining. Lord knew he wasn’t interested in feeding the local gossip mill.

      “What brought you back home to Montana?” he asked curiously.

      “I have no idea what I was thinking when I came back here.”

      Despair laced her voice, reminding him sharply of that moment in the diner when she’d seemed to long for death. Obviously, she and Eddie had split up. He would have to ask his mother for details. She knew everything about everybody in town.

      Anna was silent, pensive even, for most of the drive to Hillsdale. But as he ushered her into a blessedly dark little dive of a restaurant, she smiled bravely at him across the candle in the middle of the table.

      “You okay?” he asked quietly.

      She blinked like she was startled. “I am, actually. You?”

      He considered. “I guess I am.” Color him surprised. Since when had he gotten comfortable with her? Maybe when it had dawned on him that she didn’t want a darned thing from him.

      The food was average, but given that he didn’t have to cook it, clean up after it and, furthermore, it was the first chicken parmesan he’d had in years, he enjoyed the meal far more than he’d expected to. He and Anna chatted about harmless topics—movies he’d missed in the past few years of being deployed, how bad he thought the coming winter would be this year, where kids they went to high school with had ended up. She conspicuously avoided discussing the fate of her husband.