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She squinted, studied the man’s features. The face was not familiar. She shrugged. He might be anybody. As she continued to peruse the contents of the file, her eyes narrowed in ALWAYS A WARRIOR Patricia Bruening

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fierce concentration. A duplicate driver’s license and a government employee identification card established the man’s identity: Nathaniel Crawford, born in Tucson, Arizona.

“That doesn’t mean anything,” she muttered to herself, but her heart skipped a beat as she flipped pages. Her fingers trembled.

His relationships were also clearly documented—a marriage license and birth certificates.

He had married Marjorie Crawford in the late sixties. Four birth certificates—Crawford, Marjorie, Laurie’s, and Stacy’s—confirmed definite family connections. Stunned, Laurie slammed the file closed and shoved it across the table.

“He’s not dead!” she exclaimed in disbelief. “She lied—for years!”

On a surge of rage, she pounded her fist on the table and ignored the pain. Standing, she knocked the chair back. It crashed to the floor. She righted it with a quick jerk.

“How could she?” Laurie demanded of no one in particular as she paced the wooden floor in long, angry strides. “She lied to me! He didn’t die. He left. Or did she leave?”

She clenched her hands into fists and forced herself to calm down. She had to shove emotional reactions aside until she sorted through and dealt with the implications of her discoveries. She drew in a deep shuddering breath and faced Damien, who eyed her impersonally.

“My mother has a lot of explaining to do,” she declared forcefully. “So does my father when I find him. He’s supposed to be dead!”

“Wait a minute,” Damien interrupted harshly and stopped her cold. “You won’t get near him. He’s a criminal—a traitor. He’ll be tried, convicted, and punished. It has nothing to do with you.”

“Nothing to do with me?” she echoed, staring at him as though he’d suddenly grown a purple head. “It has everything to do with me! We’re in this mess because of him!”

Her heart pounded fiercely. Her pulse raced. She held onto the rage so she would not wail in anguish.

“It doesn’t matter,” Damien insisted coldly. “All that matters is that we catch him.”

“It matters to me!” Laurie shot back. She clenched her fists even tighter and glared at him. “He betrayed us. I’m entitled to know why. Damn it!”

Damien leveled his frigid stare on her, but she was too enraged to squirm.

“Don’t make it personal,” he ordered icily.

Frustrated, fighting tears, Laurie shouted. “Of course it’s personal! He dragged us into this, turned our lives upside down, put Stacy in danger. You’re a psycho if you think I’m not going to take it personally!”

“Snap out of it!” Damien barked the command. “Get control of yourself! Hysterics won’t do you or Stacy any good.”

Laurie jerked back as though he had slapped her. Her eyes narrowed. Rigid determination held her in place. For an instant, she only wanted to claw him. But he was right. Personal business had to wait until Stacy was safely home. She faced Damien with a deceptive air of glacial calm.

“Now what?” she demanded coldly. “Sit and wait?”

Inside she fumed and despaired. Her whole life was apparently founded on lies.

“More or less,” he replied calmly, once more the professional soldier as he studied her through speculative brown eyes.

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How did he do that
, she wondered irately. How did he turn off emotions like that? She envied him the ability. Or did he actually feel any emotions? She remembered the tragedy in his eyes and how quickly it had disappeared.

“Unless someone finds us, we shouldn’t have to do anything,” he continued. Something flickered in his eyes. He scowled in disgust.

Laurie studied him suspiciously. He was keeping something from her and seemed disgusted not to be in the middle of the action. Anger slowly drained from her, leaving exhaustion in its wake, along with a storm of mixed emotions. She leaned on the table, needing the support.

“Get some sleep, Laurie,” he suggested. “It’s been a long day.” His expression softened for a moment, his gaze lingering on her face. “In more ways than one.”

She nodded wearily and stumbled up to the loft. Mentally and physically exhausted, she crawled into the remaining twin bed. Curling on her side, she pulled the blanket to her chin.

Though she was bone tired, everything she had learned whirled in her head, kept sleep at bay, until she dozed fitfully with disturbing dreams.

* * * *

Damien stared out the window into darkness and scowled at his reflection. He hated this highly unorthodox mission. Using a civilian in a mission went against everything he knew and believed. He snorted in disgust. Such a thing was unheard of in Navy SEAL history. He curled his hand into a fist on the wall beside him.

Her image slid easily into his mind. Her eyes had sparked emerald fire at him but he had also seen the turbulent swirl of raw emotions behind the anger. Every word, every shred of evidence, had torn apart whatever illusions she built her life on and it was his responsibility. He leaned his forehead on the cold glass and let out a ragged breath.

He wanted to hold her, to soothe her, and that shocked him. Women were nothing but sex partners for him—at least for the last several years. He frowned at his uncharacteristic urges. He could not feel anything for her, did not want to care for her. He was supposed to train her not lust after her. An untrained, emotional woman could get a lot of good men killed. He glared at his reflection then turned and stalked away.

“Hell and damnation,” he muttered as he switched off the lights and locked the door.

“Train a woman in only a week to wage war? I’m a Navy SEAL not a babysitter.”

Muttering under his breath, he put his gun on the small end table by the end of the sofa, stripped to his underwear, and climbed into bed. With the blanket pulled to his chest he lay on his back and glared at the ceiling.

“Christ!” he continued his angry muttering. “I can teach her to use a gun, train her to fight, but I can’t give her the instincts—not in a week.”

“Just get the job done,” he finally told himself just before exhaustion dragged him into tormented painful dreams, nightmares he had experienced for years. Almost twelve years ago, he had been a greenhorn—young and impressionable. Now he was a thirty-two year old combat veteran who lived only for the next mission.

* * * *

Sometime in the early morning hours, Laurie’s eyes snapped open. She listened intently and wondered irately what had dragged her out of sleep for the second time in as many nights.

She groaned in the dark and rolled over. Damien could deal with whatever had woken her.

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Moans and groans drifted up the stairs and caught her attention. She tried but could not close her mind to it. She slipped out of bed, pulled the blanket around her, and tiptoed downstairs. The moans were interspersed by unintelligible commands and stifled yells.

Halfway down the stairs, she glanced across the room and uttered a soft gasp. Damien tossed and turned amid tangled sheets and blankets. Sweat glistened on his body in the faint moonlight. Laurie caught herself staring at his muscular body but those muscles were not smooth. They tensed and trembled in some unknown torment. She approached the bed slowly, sitting cautiously on the edge so as not to startle him awake.

“Damien.” She kept her voice low and steady, placing a gentle hand on his shoulder. He had his back to her, his arm extended over her head. Her palm warmed, her skin tingled but she kept her hand on his shoulder. “Damien, wake up.”

He grunted and abruptly rolled to his back as he manacled her wrist in his tight grip. She gulped hard but ignored the discomfort in her wrist and let him keep it.

“Damien. It’s Laurie. Wake up,” she continued in firmer but still soothing tones. “It’s okay.”

“Laurie?” he mumbled, obviously still in the grip of his dreams. “Johnny! No—I can’t do it!”

Laurie wondered briefly who Johnny was as she examined him but it wasn’t important.

He was sweating. His eyes remained tightly shut. Muscles bunched under his damp skin.

“Okay, I’ll do it,” he muttered, his voice full of reluctance.

Tears leaked from his tightly closed eyes. He released her wrist, shifted closer. Her heart ached for him in this torment. It was no ordinary nightmare. His voice rang with the anguish of deeply painful memories.’

“I’m sorry. Please forgive me,” he begged, almost sobbing.

Laurie closed her eyes against her sympathetic tears and counted to ten. She longed to simply hold him until he slept more peacefully, but she had to wake him.

He suddenly sat up, wide-awake. He stared past her, grief and guilt clouding his eyes.

Reality slowly dawned. His eyes focused on her. His gaze traveled slowly over her then back to her face. Her skin tingled as though he had touched every inch of her. She realized with a jolt of embarrassment that the blanket had fallen around her waist. Only the thin spaghetti strap T-shirt she had worn to bed covered her. But even that could not hide his effect on her. Her nipples tightened and rose beneath the flimsy cotton. She yanked the blanket to her shoulders, wrapped it firmly around her.

“Are you awake?” she demanded softly, examining his tear-streaked face. “Are you okay?”

“Yes,” he murmured huskily. A dangerous gleam of stark desire lit his eyes.

Electric warmth spread out from her spine. She squirmed under his frank appreciation.

He leaned toward her and dropped his gaze to her mouth. She held her breath in anticipation of the touch of his lips. She wanted to taste him, to feel his mouth on hers. Anticipation exploded through her as he moved closer. His lips grazed hers, sent sharp jolts of excitement through her entire system.

An abrupt change swept over him and he jerked back, once again the professional soldier.

His dark glance flashed to the loft. “What happened? Is something wrong?”

Laurie hid her relief and the faint twinge of disappointment that he did not kiss her, though her lips tingled from that slight contact.

“You were dreaming—woke me up. So I came down,” she said steadily.

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He looked at her, his piercing dark eyes holding her in place. “You didn’t have to,” he muttered. “I usually sleep though them.”

“Okay.” Oddly hurt, she turned away. He obviously wanted to be alone.

His light, tentative grasp of her forearm halted her. Her skin tingled again, warmed under his touch, and she shot him an uncertain glance.

“Don’t go.” He peered intently at her, his words a hoarse whisper as he released her. “I don’t want to dream anymore.”

That vulnerable admission was her undoing. She scooted a little closer. She didn’t touch him, though she longed to feel his skin under her fingers. She tried to relax but images flitted through her mind; his hard body covering hers; the light touch of his fingers on her skin. Her whole system exploded in a kind of excited anticipation. Lightheaded, she forced herself to concentrate on him rather than her reaction to him.

“Nightmares are a way of life. It goes with the job.” He shrugged but the pain deep in his eyes tugged at her heart.

“But you don’t like it,” she surmised gently, quelling the urge to stroke his tousled hair from his face. “What were you dreaming?”

“I don’t know,” he muttered but averted his gaze from hers. “It was horrible. I don’t want to remember.”

Suspecting a lie, she took his hand in hers. “Sometimes it helps to talk about it.”

His eyes narrowed as he glared at her. “I don’t want to talk about it,” he snapped. “What are you—a psychiatrist?”

“All right,” she conceded, louder than she intended, again oddly stung by his reticence.

“Then don’t. And I’m a romance writer not a shrink. Didn’t your investigation tell you that?”

She had not realized it consciously but Laurie resented the government’s intrusion into her life, her privacy. He blinked, leaned closer, and studied her. She squirmed as though under a microscope.

“A romance writer,” he echoed in disbelief. “I don’t believe it.” He cleared his throat with a harsh rumble. “No, you weren’t investigated that I know of. I wasn’t interested in you.”

She jerked her hand from his and stubbornly defended her career. “I’m quite successful.”

“I guess you believe in love stories,” he derided, a cynical twist to his lips.

“I can be as romantic as the next person,” she admitted defiantly. “I do not believe love conquers all. If it did, I wouldn’t be here.”

He merely looked at her. Laurie took his silence for cynical agreement. He yawned behind his hand and she moved away.

“You should get some sleep,” she suggested gently and turned to leave him.

“Stay,” he simply, plainly, without touching her.

She turned slowly back to him. The tragedy in his eyes twisted her heart and turned automatic denial into uncertainty. Though his face remained blank, his eyes pleaded with her.

Reluctant, uncertain why she gave into him but afraid of what she might be getting into, she slid under the blanket beside him.

His body heat enveloped her and she shuddered, but not from anxiety. She wrapped her arms around him, his head on her breast, and comforted him as she would her daughter. She moved her hand, her fingers gliding through his thick silky hair. His deep sigh of relief brought a gentle, though shaky, smile to her lips.

* * * *

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A short time later Damien grunted in his sleep and Laurie slowly opened her eyes. The gray light of early dawn peeked through the windows. Damien’s arm lay across her stomach, a heavy but not uncomfortable layer of extra warmth under the blanket. It was a curiously pleasant sensation and for a brief instant she wanted it to last forever.

He snuggled, pulling her closer as he tightened his embrace. His deep even breathing caressed her ear. His chest pressed into her back with each slow rise and fall. She shifted slightly, felt the brush of his hairy muscular leg against hers and drowned in the sensations. There was something completely, decadently luxurious about snuggling with Damien in bed during the early, cozy dawn. Trapped by his strength but strangely secure, she sighed deeply and pulled the blankets to her chin. Closing her eyes, she tried to go back to sleep.