knitting talents are not your best asset and you have so many extraordinary others, perhaps you would strive to be a bit more diverting in your letters to keep me amused. Although I am not really ill, I am honestly cold at heart and could use all the warmth you can spare. Donât hesitate to be graphic. Hearing about your state of longing in detail would do wonders to raise my temperature. If you are diverting enough, I promise to hurry home all the faster to divest you of that inconvenient virginity I insisted you maintain before I left.
Frozen Until I Hear From You,
Eduardo
B RAD TURNED THE PAGE in the diary, but the next entry from Chloe was not a letter. Instead, she discussed the weather in California when theyâd made a trip to see her stepbrother Harold before he left for his next assignment. No mention of Eduardo.
Out of sight, out of mind? Brad didnât want to think that had been the case. He knew his naval history enough to know the Zeilin would have a rough time of it that year. If Eduardo was cold, he could have easily beenpart of the transportâs Attu landingâa hairy operation in the Aleutian Islands during a foggy, frigid spring. And damn it, how had he gone from thinking about Nikki to another crap mission?
He supposed the idea of Chloe forgetting about Eduardo while the guy was freezing his ass off in Alaska struck too close to home. But more often than not, those relationships couldnât survive time and distance. Maybe Eduardo had been right to concentrate on the physical in their letters.
Live for the here and now. When you risked everything day in and day out to perform a job you believed in, sometimes the best approach was to scrape together whatever happiness you could before it vanished. Orâin his caseâexploded.
5
T HE SHOUT IN THE MIDDLE of the night brought Nikki upright in bed.
Had the vandals returned to do more damage? Before she was fully awake, she was on her feet and running across her bedroom to the window overlooking the garden. Her gaze swept the landscape, the dark shape of the tractor taking form on the side of the yard. The overgrown rock garden tumbling down toward a small pond that needed to be cleaned and filled. But there were no people that she could see. All was quiet. Dark.
Her heart still pounding hard, she stood motionless. Alert to any hint of sound.
âGet them out of here!â Bradâs voice cut through the silence like a sonic boom.
She jerked away from the windowâstartled. Scared for him. Who else was in the house?
âBrad,â she shouted, running barefoot through the dark house. Thank God for the moonlight filtering in bare windows she hadnât bothered to cover yet. âBrad, whatâs going on? Whoever is down there, I have a gun and Iâm not afraid to use it!â
Heart in her throat, she plucked the cordless phone off an upstairs table. She pounded down the stairs double time and skidded down the hall into the den. At first, she didnât see anyone. On the verge of calling the police for the second time in a handful of hours, she stilled as she heard Bradâs voice. He bit off a ripe curse. Trying to quiet the rush of blood in her ears, she strained to listen to see where the sound came from. Then, a dark shape moved in the far corner of the room.
Bradâs blanket. Brad.
He was here. Alone. Dreaming.
Though relieved the vandals hadnât returned, Nikki had a whole new batch of different things to worry about now. First and foremost, should she wake him? She could hear his breath coming fast, a whispered litany of words muttered into the pillow and punctuated by curses. Clearly, he was distressed. But wasnât it a mistake to awaken someone in the midst of a nightmare for fear theyâd remember it all the more vividly?
âGet down!â he shouted, spiking up off the futon and scaring her so badly she stumbled back a step.
His eyes were vague and distant, the way her old
Frozen Until I Hear From You,
Eduardo
B RAD TURNED THE PAGE in the diary, but the next entry from Chloe was not a letter. Instead, she discussed the weather in California when theyâd made a trip to see her stepbrother Harold before he left for his next assignment. No mention of Eduardo.
Out of sight, out of mind? Brad didnât want to think that had been the case. He knew his naval history enough to know the Zeilin would have a rough time of it that year. If Eduardo was cold, he could have easily beenpart of the transportâs Attu landingâa hairy operation in the Aleutian Islands during a foggy, frigid spring. And damn it, how had he gone from thinking about Nikki to another crap mission?
He supposed the idea of Chloe forgetting about Eduardo while the guy was freezing his ass off in Alaska struck too close to home. But more often than not, those relationships couldnât survive time and distance. Maybe Eduardo had been right to concentrate on the physical in their letters.
Live for the here and now. When you risked everything day in and day out to perform a job you believed in, sometimes the best approach was to scrape together whatever happiness you could before it vanished. Orâin his caseâexploded.
5
T HE SHOUT IN THE MIDDLE of the night brought Nikki upright in bed.
Had the vandals returned to do more damage? Before she was fully awake, she was on her feet and running across her bedroom to the window overlooking the garden. Her gaze swept the landscape, the dark shape of the tractor taking form on the side of the yard. The overgrown rock garden tumbling down toward a small pond that needed to be cleaned and filled. But there were no people that she could see. All was quiet. Dark.
Her heart still pounding hard, she stood motionless. Alert to any hint of sound.
âGet them out of here!â Bradâs voice cut through the silence like a sonic boom.
She jerked away from the windowâstartled. Scared for him. Who else was in the house?
âBrad,â she shouted, running barefoot through the dark house. Thank God for the moonlight filtering in bare windows she hadnât bothered to cover yet. âBrad, whatâs going on? Whoever is down there, I have a gun and Iâm not afraid to use it!â
Heart in her throat, she plucked the cordless phone off an upstairs table. She pounded down the stairs double time and skidded down the hall into the den. At first, she didnât see anyone. On the verge of calling the police for the second time in a handful of hours, she stilled as she heard Bradâs voice. He bit off a ripe curse. Trying to quiet the rush of blood in her ears, she strained to listen to see where the sound came from. Then, a dark shape moved in the far corner of the room.
Bradâs blanket. Brad.
He was here. Alone. Dreaming.
Though relieved the vandals hadnât returned, Nikki had a whole new batch of different things to worry about now. First and foremost, should she wake him? She could hear his breath coming fast, a whispered litany of words muttered into the pillow and punctuated by curses. Clearly, he was distressed. But wasnât it a mistake to awaken someone in the midst of a nightmare for fear theyâd remember it all the more vividly?
âGet down!â he shouted, spiking up off the futon and scaring her so badly she stumbled back a step.
His eyes were vague and distant, the way her old
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