Winter Soldier

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She looked a little surprised to see Leah up and around. “I thought I told you to sleep till noon.”

“I guess my internal clock had other ideas,” Leah fibbed. “I was just going to take a shower.” Adam’s scent, the scent of their lovemaking, clung to every inch of her.

Kaylene grimaced. “My internal clock can stuff itself. I’ve had my ice-cold shower, and I’m still going to sleep till noon.”

“I’ll make sure no one disturbs you.” Leah wanted to ask Kaylene if she’d seen Adam. Perhaps he’d gone to the hospital to check on Ahn Lyn, but she didn’t think so. He’d probably left her bed just to spare her the embarrassment of Kaylene finding them together.

“Who’s sitting with Ahn Lyn?” She held her breath, waiting for Kaylene’s answer.

“B.J. He relieved me about half an hour ago. She’s had her pain meds and she’s sleeping soundly. Still moving all her extremities. So far, so good. Sister Grace’s vitals are stable, and the other kids are fine.”

B.J. was with Ahn Lyn, not Adam. She stretched her mouth into a smile. “Thanks for the report. Pleasant dreams.”

“Mmm.” Kaylene was already in bed.

Twenty minutes later, showered and with her hair back in its habitual French braid, Leah faced B. J. Walton across Ahn Lyn’s bed.

“You’re looking for Adam, aren’t you?” he asked her bluntly.

“Yes. I...I’m worried about him.”

“He’s gone, Leah,” B.J. said, his sympathetic gaze taking in the dark circles beneath her eyes. “I found a note when I woke up this morning. It was too late to stop him.”

“He’s left the compound?”

“He’s leaving Vietnam.” His hand fisted on the bed rail. “Damn. I should have never talked him into coming back.” Ahn Lyn stirred in her drugged sleep and BJ. lowered his voice. “He wasn’t ready.”

Leaving the mission? Leaving the country? She hadn’t expected that. Her aching heart jerked painfully in her chest Gone. Out of my life.

“What happened to him here, B.J.?” She had to know.

“He won’t tell me. I have my suspicions, but he refuses to talk about it. Maybe it wasn’t a bungeestakes-and-jungle-patrols kind of war here at the end. But it wasn’t pretty. Snipers, shellings, the refugees scrambling to get out. I’m sure it was hell being the last ones out of the only damned war we ever lost. I thought maybe you...”

“No,” she said. “He told me nothing. Not even that he was leaving.” But what had she expected? Adam was a stranger to her. He had taken what she’d freely offered and promised nothing in return. Once more she’d let her heart overrule her reason. She’d given a piece of herself unwisely. Now he was gone, and she was left alone to consider the consequences of her actions and, God help her, to want him back again.

CHAPTER SIX

“DOES YOUR MOTHER know you’re here in Chicago?”

Brian Sauder shifted his attention from the view outside the office window to his father’s face. “Not exactly,” he answered carefully. “She knows I’m spending the weekend out of town.” He’d driven seventeen hours straight to get to Chicago from Cambridge. His brain was nearly fried, but what he had to say to his dad was too important to wait until he got some sleep. That was why he’d come straight to St. Barnabas, instead of waiting for his dad at his condo.

“Out of town, but not out of state.” Adam stood up and walked around his desk. Brian stood up too. Jeez. I’m an inch taller than he is. When had that happened?

Adam waved him back to his seat. “Are you in trouble, son? Is that why you came to me?”

“No, it’s nothing like that.”

His dad picked up a big piece of quartz he used for a paperweight and held it in his hands. “You’re not having problems with your grades, are you?”

“Solid B’s.”

“Good.” One corner of Adam’s mouth curled up in an expression Brian couldn’t quite classify as a smile. “I doubt even Elliot’s connections would get you back into Harvard if you flunked out.” Elliot Carlton was his stepfather, an investment banker in Boston where he lived with Brian’s mom and his little half sister, Megan.

“Yeah, I know. He keeps reminding me what a generous donation he made to get me considered in the first place. That you and Mom made a big mistake sending me to public school all those years.” His dad had gone to a public high school in Pennsylvania, and then on to the University of Michigan after he got out of the Marines. Brian thought it would have been good enough for him, too.

“A fact your mother pointed out to me many times as you were growing up.” This time Adam did smile. His mom smiled like that, too, when she talked about his dad. They were still friends, sort of, and Brian was glad.

“She’d have a fit if she knew I was here.”

His dad was still holding the big piece of quartz—tightly. His knuckles were white. When he saw Brian look at his hands, Adam put the rock down, then walked behind the desk and gazed at the snow falling in huge, wet flakes outside the window. “Why didn’t you tell her you were coming to see me?” he asked.

“Christmas break doesn’t start till the end of the week. I...left early.”

“She won’t like that.” Adam turned and spread his hands flat on the teak surface of the desk.

“That’s why I didn’t tell her.”

Adam frowned at his reply, accentuating the harsh new lines around his mouth. Jeez, Dad’s looking old. He hadn’t looked like that when he saw him last at the end of the summer. Was he sick? Did he have cancer or something? Or had he caught some weird disease in Vietnam? Is that why he’d come home almost two weeks before he was supposed to? Brian hadn’t lived with his dad since he was eleven, but he loved him. He didn’t want anything to be wrong with him.

“Why did you come here, Brian?”

Worries about his dad’s health were forgotten for the moment. It was now or never. Adam had just asked the million-dollar question and he had to answer it. “I don’t want to be an investment banker. I don’t want to go to work for Elliot at Carlton, Lieberman and Carmichael. I don’t want to go back to Harvard.”

“Have you told your mother this?”

Brian snorted. “Are you kidding? She’d have a stroke. She’d have me committed.”

“A lot of other mothers would feel the same way.”

Brian stood up again and started pacing the width of the office. “I’ve given it a year and a half, almost. It’s not for me.”

“Math has always been your strongest subject.”

“That doesn’t mean I have to be a banker or, God help me, an economist.”

“No, it doesn’t.”

“I don’t know exactly what I want to do with my life, Dad, but I know it isn’t following in Elliot’s footsteps. I’m dropping out of Harvard at the end of the semester. I need some time to think things through. I’d like to come here and live with you. God knows Mom and Elliot would make my life miserable if I stayed in Boston.”

“Brian, I don’t know what to say.”

Adam’s hesitation hit Brian like a fist to the gut. He hadn’t let himself believe his dad would turn him down. “It’s okay, Dad,” he made himself say. “I’ll find somewhere else to live if you don’t want me at your place.”

Adam was silent for a long moment. “Why don’t you try sticking it out until spring?”

“I’ve made up my mind, Dad.”

“I think you’re making a mistake.”

“Maybe I am, but I’ll never know if I don’t give it a try. That’s all I’m asking. The chance to make my own mistakes. I can live with the consequences.” His dad had been a Marine in Vietnam when he was nineteen. All Brian wanted to do was figure out his own path in life. Surely he had a right to do that.

“Okay. Call your mother and break the news to her. I’ll back you up.”

Brian pushed away from the credenza, his heart beating madly in his chest. He wanted to give his dad a hug, but the desk was still between them, so he held out his hand, instead. “Thanks, Dad.”

Adam didn’t take his hand right away. Brian held his breath. Then his dad leaned forward and clasped Brian’s hand in both of his. “I’m not giving you a free ride. You’ll have to get a job, and you’ll have to promise me you’ll consider going back to school next year.”

“I’ll start looking for a job first thing tomorrow.” He couldn’t stop the grin spreading over his face. “Thanks, Dad. I knew I could count on you to see my side of this.”

“I’m not looking forward to talking to your mother.”

“Neither am I, but I might as well get it over with. Can I use your phone?”

“Dr. Sauder?” His dad’s secretary opened the door between their offices and stuck her head inside.

“Yes, Camilla?”

“There’s a young woman here to see you.”

“I don’t have any patient appointments scheduled for this afternoon.”

That was odd, Brian thought. His dad always had patients scheduled on Wednesdays. He operated on Tuesday and Thursday, and saw patients on Monday and Wednesday. At least he always had.

“She’s not a patient,” Camilla said. “She says she’s a friend. Her name is Leah Gentry.”

“Leah?” The way his dad said the name caught Brian’s attention.

“Leah Gentry,” Camilla repeated. “Should I tell her you’re busy?”

“No.” Adam ran a hand through his hair. His expression didn’t give much away, but Brian could have sworn he saw his hand shaking. “Send her in.”

“You have a meeting with Dr. Fenimore at twothirty, don’t forget.”

“I won’t.”

Camilla opened the door wider. His dad was staring at it like he expected a ghost to walk through it. Instead, a very ordinary young woman with dark brown hair in a French braid entered the room. She was wearing a military-issue parka, and she had a lime-green backpack slung over one shoulder. The backpack had a picture of Minnie Mouse on it, just like the one his little sister had. Her nose was red from the cold, and there were pale blue shadows under her eyes, as though she’d been awake for a lot of hours in a row.

“Hello, Adam,” she said stopping just inside the door.

“Hello.” His dad came out from behind his desk and took a couple of steps toward her.

“It’s good to see you again.” She held out her hand.

“It’s good to see you, too. Welcome home, Leah.” His dad came just close enough to take her hand. He held it for a long moment, and they stared at each other like they’d thought until that very moment they’d never see each other again.

Brian cleared his throat. The woman turned her head in his direction. Her eyes widened momentarily. She had very pretty eyes, all kind of green and gold mixed together.

“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to interrupt.”

Adam dropped her hand and retreated behind his desk. “This is my son, Brian.”

She smiled, and he smiled back. He couldn’t help himself. “Hi,” he said.

She held out her hand again. “Hello, Brian. Your father told me a lot about you.”

“Leah was my anesthetist in Dalat,” Adam explained.

“Nice to meet you,” Brian said.

“I...I just got back to the States. B.J. and I were the last to leave. I have a four-hour layover.” She turned back to Brian. “So I thought I’d look up your father and make sure he’s okay. He left the mission so hurriedly I...I didn’t get to say goodbye.” A tinge of color stained her cheeks.

“I’m fine,” Adam said, and his voice was suddenly cold and hard.

“I can see. I’m sorry I barged in on you this way. I...I should have called, I guess.”

She looked uncomfortable. So did his dad. There was something going on here, undercurrents he couldn’t understand. This might be a good time for him to make an exit. “I have a phone call to make. It was nice meeting you,” he said again, smiling at her once more, hoping she’d smile back. She did.

“It was nice meeting you, too, Brian, but please, don’t hurry off on my account. I truly did only stop in to see if your father was all right, and to thank him.”

“For what?” Brian asked. He wasn’t flirting with her, not really—she was too old for him. But it was hard not to want to coax her to smile again.

“For seeing that Vo and My Lei found sponsors here in the States.”

“Vo and My Lei?”

“Yes, a Vietnamese man and his daughter. Your father operated on the little girl—”

“I’ll tell you about them later, Brian,” Adam broke in. “Don’t you want to make your call?”

“Yeah, sure I do.” He tried one more smile, but this time she didn’t smile back, only nodded a little distractedly. “I’ll use Camilla’s phone to call Mom.” Brian left the room wondering just what had gone on between his dad and this woman in Vietnam. Maybe if he worked it just right, he’d find out, but he doubted it. His dad never talked about his love life—if he had one, and besides, right now Brian had more important things on his mind—like changing the entire course of his life.

THE DOOR CLOSED behind Adam’s son, and Leah wished she’d left the office with him. Why had she .given in to the impulse to come here and see for herself that Adam was all right? He obviously was. And he obviously wasn’t happy to see her. She said the first thing that popped into her mind. “Your son is a very good-looking young man. Very nice, too.”

“Yes, he is.”

“I’m sorry I interrupted your visit.”

“It’s okay,” Adam said. “Can I get you something. A cup of coffee?”

“Yes, thanks.” She wanted to refuse, but he might think it odd—their love of coffee was one thing they had in common. But she wouldn’t have more than a swallow, not now. Because now she was pregnant

She’d bought a pregnancy-test kit as soon as they landed in Frankfurt and confirmed what she’d suspected almost from the moment she’d awakened alone in her bed that morning. She should never have made love to him without protection when she knew she might be ovulating, but she hadn’t been thinking with her head that night, only with her heart.