UnderFire Read Online Free PDF Page B

with your burger?” he asked.
    She looked away, realizing she’d been staring like she’d
been starving and he was a piece of meat. “No. It’s great.”
    Before she’d decided to eat, she’d stripped off her boots
and coat. The Spartan room wouldn’t impress anyone but she’d been too cheap to
sign up for a week at the more upscale Monterey Hotel down the street. This
place would have to do. Although it was only Sunday night, she felt as if she’d
aged a year. Now the noise, confusion and fear had drained away she felt weak
as a lamb and hated it. She dove into her burger with gusto.
    They ate in silence, and then she realized that if she
planned to seduce him she’d better get into the bathroom and brush her teeth.
She smiled.
    “What’s so funny?” he asked, shoving the remnants of burger
and maybe a half dozen fries into the bag.
    She sure as hell wouldn’t confess to what she’d just been
thinking. “If anyone had told me yesterday that I’d be with you in a hotel room
eating a burger, I’d have told them they were full of crap.”
    He chuckled and his rugged features transformed from scary
handsome to charming and approachable. She blinked, afraid he was a mirage.
    “I don’t think I would’ve believed it either.” He turned the
desk chair toward her and sat with his long legs sprawled out. He clasped his
hands at his waist. “So, McSwain, I hear you’re a graphics designer with a film
company. You like the job?”
    People expected her to say yes. She knew Jake had heard
where she worked when they’d been at Danelle and Patrick’s party this weekend.
She knew he was only making polite conversation.
    But she would be honest with him. “No.”
    His eyes widened. “Really?”
    She took a long sip of diet cola. “Really. I live in Los
Angeles and I’m starting to hate the smog and noise and… You get the idea. The
film company I work with is full of self-important twits. My boss has decided
that since no one else in the office wants to do their jobs, he’ll just ask me
to do it all.”
    “Oh man. I’m sorry about that. You got a line on a new job?”
    She drew in a deep breath and chewed a fry before answering.
“No. I decided last week I need to, though.”
    “Staying in L.A.?”
    “I have some friends in the area but I don’t know if I want
to stay there. What about you? Are you going for twenty years in the army?”
    “Yep. I love my job.”
    “Even the war?”
    “No. No one with half a brain wants war.”
    Worry touched her. “You’re all right, though? Did it…affect
you?”
    “You mean did I come back with PTSD or something?”
    “Yes.”
    He shook his head. “I’m all right.”
    “You’re sure?”
    He smiled. “I’m sure. Not everyone comes back with PTSD, you
know.”
    She polished off another fry and topped it with a swig of
cola. “I know. Lena works with a lot of vets with PTSD. It seems like it’s
rampant.”
    His eyes were dark and serious. “A long war damages a lot of
soldiers. Not all of it’s visible on the outside. More than ten years of war
makes a hell of a mess.”
    She sighed. “Yes.”
    A smile warmed his mouth again. “Thanks for the concern. I
would have thought…”
    “Thought what?”
    “After the way things ended between us, I thought you hated
my guts.”
    “I never hated your guts.” Memories flooded her, far deeper
and more severely than they had in recent times. “I know what I said but that
was a teenager talking.”
    I hate you. I hate you. I hope you die. Those words
rang in her head on lonely nights. “All through the rest of high school and
college, I wondered if I’d cursed you. If I’d wake up some morning with a call
that you’d been killed. It terrified me.”
    “But there I was still in high school with you and then you
heard about me from time to time while we were away in college, right?”
    Big confession time. “Lena or Melanie would hear and they’d
tell me. I almost told them not to but in the back of my