Secrets of War: A Military Romance Read Online Free PDF Page A

effortlessly back into the lane ahead of the slow car.
    Silence reigned for a few more minutes.
    However, it wasn’t long before Jamie threw down the gauntlet, “So how is your boyfriend taking your relocation?”
    “I don’t have a boyfriend,” she snapped.
    “No. You do want a boyfriend, do you? Or is there another side of you I don’t know anything about?” he asked sarcastically.
    “I haven’t had the best luck with men. They’re all liars and don’t know the meaning of commitment,” she explained referring to both Jamie and her ex-fiancé. Suzy was diagnosed with HIV a little over two years ago. She’d contracted it from her longtime boyfriend and fiancé D.J. Gamble. Who she found out later had been cheating on her for years and using her money to frequent male prostitutes, having unprotected sex and using drugs.
    She’d gotten a flu she couldn’t shake for months and had barely been able to make it through the day. Then one day, when she was on the way to the ER, because one of her patients had been in a severe car accident where his parents had been killed. She’d passed out at the wheel of her car and crashed herself.
    When she’d awoken in the hospital with six broken ribs, a skull fracture and a broken leg, another doctor and colleague had explained she didn’t have the flu. She was showing the early stages of HIV.
    She’d been devastated. She’d loved DJ with all her heart. She only ever had one other boyfriend in her life and that had been Jamie. Even with the evidence in his face, D.J. had denied everything until he himself had very rapidly gotten sick and passed away within months of his diagnoses.
    The pain and humiliation of her diagnoses, had forced her to close her practice and notify all the parents of her patients.
    Suzy had been sued by dozens of parents who’d said she should have known her HIV status, but the court had thrown out the case, saying she hadn’t purposely put anyone in danger and had followed the law to the letter.
    She’d sunk into a deep depression for a while, not leaving her bedroom for three straight months, not taking her HIV meds, until one day her grandmother had burst into her room and yelled at her , “I have lost my husband and I have lost my daughter. Now you are going to give up? NO! You will get your ass out of that bed and keep moving forward! I am too old to watch you die too!”
    Suzy never heard her grandmother curse or cry until that day. She decided to get up and fight, if not for her, then for her sister and her grandmother, the people she loved the most in the world.
    Being in Jamie’s car in such close proximity to a man she realized was still THE MAN for her, reminded her of how she could never date again, or get involved with anyone. Especially, with this man. Who’d dumped her cruelly when she was but a teen. Now, he insisted on seeing her? Why did she even agree to this supposed coffee and a so called talk ? He was already being rude and disagreeable.
    Jamie slowed the Jag down and stopped at a red light in town.
    Taking a deep breath, Suzy decided to bail. She just couldn’t stay in such close confines with this sexy man, she still had feelings for. OR, allow him to be so rude, after what he’d done to her in the past. She opened the car door.
    Jamie snapped his head over to her. “What are you—?”
    “I’m sorry. I just can’t…” Suzy got out and slammed the car door shut. Her insides felt like jelly and she knew she was being a total coward as she took off along the sidewalk heading to her store. Luckily, it was just two blocks up.

 
    CHAPTER FIVE
     
     
    I t was eight o’clock before Suzy got home to her grand Victorian that night. She and Izzy had worked on inventory after the store closed and she was physically and emotional drained. Especially after arguing the entire time with Izzy about her not going to the barbeque. As she pulled into her driveway, she marveled again at how great this old house was.
    “I’m