Read Online Because of You: A Loveswept Contemporary Military Romance by Jessica Scott - Free Book Online Page B

because of some dedicated spouses that soldiers weren’t charged travel days when they went on leave from the combat zone along with dozens of other quality-of-life improvements.
    Jen didn’t know how Laura balanced it all but she did. One of her duties as the family readiness group adviser was to check on the wounded and make sure they weren’t swallowed up by the medical system or forgotten by their unit. Not everyone had a family to come in and run interference between the hospital administrators and the docs.
    That’s where Laura and the rest of the family readiness group came in—all of them were volunteers. Laura’s was the only paid position. And asking a volunteer to sit with a family member who’d just lost a loved one … it was the hardest thing you could ask someone to do. Especially if that someone knew the next knock could be on their door.
    But today, her focus was elsewhere. She was checking on the wounded that’d just been flown in from Germany, doing her best to ensure that the officers and the wives all had the same information.
    Rumors could be deadly. But Jen was willing to bet that the soldiers’ recent arrival was not the main reason for the distracted look in her friend’s eyes. In the months following Trent’s departure, Laura had been relatively silent about her husband and that wasn’t like her. Laura
always
talked about her husband.
    Laura pressed her lips into a flat line, a shadow of her normal smile. “That obvious?”
    “Spill,” Jen said, as she threaded her arm through Laura’s, and started leading hertoward the small coffee kiosk near the hospital’s main entrance. There were exactly five tables and six chairs and, happy day, two chairs were empty. It wasn’t really a place designed for comfort or confessions, but then again, a caffeine fix required neither. “And it’s my turn to buy therapy coffee.”
    Laura attempted to perk up at the mention of her favorite food group. “Thanks, but I think it’s my turn, isn’t it?”
    “Not with that look on your face it isn’t.”
    They sat tucked into a corner table, far from the crowd. Laura fiddled with her coffee stirrer while Jen waited for her to speak.
    “I haven’t heard from Trent.” Her voice cracked ever so slightly. “I always hear from him.”
    Jen leaned forward and squeezed her hand. Laura was the strongest person she knew and part of her strength was in trusting her husband. Trent’s constant deployments had taken a toll, but Laura had always bucked up. That was because Trent had always kept in touch. If she was worried, she had reason to be.
    The thought left a deep disquiet in the pit of her stomach. “What do you mean?”
    “He called last week, right? And the entire conversation was all about work. He didn’t ask about anything back here. I know he’s busy and has a ton of responsibility, but he always asks how I’m doing. It’s not that I need to talk to him about everything back here, but it helps that he always asks. Jen, he didn’t even ask about Ethan or Emma. He didn’t crack any jokes. He sounded exhausted and just hung up after a minute. This isn’t like him.”
    “This is the Surge. We all knew this time was going to be different.” Jen heard thehollowness of her own words as she struggled to defend her friend’s husband. But sometimes she wondered what they did over there, twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week.
    “Jen, don’t make excuses for him. I know what he’s doing, and it’s not calling home. There is
always
time to call home. Hell, he called me right after a big fight in Najaf last time, just to ask me how my day went. It’s like he’s shut off or shut down. He never does stuff like this.” Laura rubbed her hands over her arms. “I just don’t know what’s wrong. I can’t fix it if I don’t know what’s wrong.”
    Jen stayed quiet, not sure what she could say to make things right again. Until her husband was home—permanently—nothing would be right in