Because of You: A Loveswept Contemporary Military Romance

  Because of You is a work of fiction. Names, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

  A Loveswept eBook Edition

  Copyright © 2011 by Jessica Dawson

  Excerpt from This Fierce Splendor by Iris Johansen copyright © 1988 by Iris Johansen.

  Excerpt from Spellbound by Adrienne Staff copyright © 1994 by Adrienne Staff.

  Excerpt from Tender, Loving Cure by Gayle Kasper copyright © 1994 by Gayle Kasper.

  All rights reserved.

  Published in the United States by Loveswept, an imprint of The Random House Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.

  LOVESWEPT and colophon are trademarks of Random House, Inc.

  Cover photograph © George Kerrigan

  eISBN: 978-0-345-53386-9

  www.ReadLoveSwept.com

  v3.1

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Epilogue

  Dedication

  Acknowledgments

  Author’s Note

  About the Author

  The Editor’s Corner

  Excerpt from Iris Johansen’s This Fierce Splendor

  Excerpt from Adrienne Staff’s Spellbound

  Excerpt from Gayle Kasper’s Tender, Loving Cure

  Prologue

  Sergeant First Class Shane Garrison knew that life wasn’t fair. But after thirteen years in the army, it still surprised him what a relentless bitch reality could be sometimes. He stood outside the tactical operations cell in the middle of the California desert and studied the legal-sized envelope he held in his hand. Everything out here was supposed to be a training exercise to prepare his men for their upcoming combat tour in Iraq. No one was supposed to get hurt. But they did anyway, and just like in Iraq, the wounded were sent on to the nearest hospital while their buddies were left behind to worry.

  Noise raged around him—shouts, the constant crunch of boots on gravel, and the rumbling of the generators that powered the servers, radios, and—most important—the coffeepots that kept the war running at all hours of the day and night. There was no escape for him, not from the noise or from the fact that sometimes, life just sucked. He turned the envelope over in his hands. He didn’t need silence to guess what was inside.

  A shadow passed in front of him and Captain Trent Davila heaved himself up onto the hood of one of the command-and-control Humvees next to Shane. By regulation, when Trent had been commissioned as an officer several years earlier, they shouldn’t have remained friends. Relationships were prohibited between officers and enlisted soldiers, but they’d gone through too much together over the years to let something trivial like army regulations dictate the terms of their friendship.

  “Any word on Morrell?” Shane finally asked when Trent didn’t speak. The sun slid behind Tiefort Mountain, sending the desert sinking into darkness.

  “Just came out of surgery. He’s going to keep the leg.” Trent cleared his throat. “That was real quick work you did, getting him out from under that Bradley track so fast.”

  Shane shrugged and spat into the dirt. “Just doing what Uncle Sam pays me for.”

  “Yeah, well, most people Uncle Sam pays wouldn’t have known what to do with a guy screaming under a thousand-pound vehicle.” Shadows cast by the headquarters’ floodlights cut across Trent’s cheeks as he nodded toward the envelope. “Anything good in the mail?”

  “Divorce papers.”

  “Shit.”

  “Guess my wife decided not to wait for me to get back to make things official. Like I deployed to the National Training Center just to keep her from running off with her shiny new lover.” He couldn’t hide the bitterness in his voice. But he wasn’t irritated over the fact that his wife had left him for another man. He was irritated because she’d made him feel like shit when he should have been having a cigar because Morrell was going to be okay.

  He was hot, tired, and dirty from forty-five days in this California desert paradise. Before today, he’d wanted nothing more than to pack all of his soldiers off to their wives and girlfriends, and then go home to try to save a few mementos from his dying marriage.

  Funny how five years of marriage had finally ended with a whimper, and the only thing he’d spent the day worrying about was whether one of his boys would make it out of surgery alive and intact. Trent’s good news had sent that worry scrambling into the night, leaving only his failed marriage to occupy his thoughts.

  Guess that had been part of the problem all along for him and Tatiana. He’d always been more focused on his men.

  “Who pissed in your cornflakes?”

  Shane sighed as Carponti strolled up. In any other unit in the army, no sergeant would talk to his platoon sergeant or company commander the way Carponti did to Shane and Trent. For some reason, though, Shane let him get away with it. He was pretty sure it was because he’d never trained anyone who was better at infantry squad tactics at such a young age. Even in the middle of a firefight, Carponti would crack jokes while he maneuvered his fire team into position. He’d had Morrell laughing his ass off today as they’d carried him to the medical evac flight. Granted, the medics had Morrell so drugged, he hadn’t known his own name, but still, Carponti had a gift.

  “My wife.”

  “What, did she finally leave you? Good, now you can stop feeling bad about doing what you do best.”

  “Dickhead, I’m getting divorced. That’s not exactly great news.”

  “Hell yeah, it is. Your wife has made your life miserable for the last five years. She’s got her new man, you’ve got your freedom, and now I’ve got a designated driver whenever we go out to Ropers.” Carponti hopped up onto the hood next to Trent. “And speaking of which, Ramirez turns twenty-one when we get home. We’re christening him the first weekend we get back and it’ll get you back in the saddle.”

  Trent snorted and choked on a laugh, and Shane hid his own wry grin. He’d love to go out with the boys, but contrary to what Carponti believed, it wasn’t as simple as sign the papers, get your life back.

  “He’s right,” Trent said, still chuckling.

  “About which part? Christening Ramirez?”

  “About getting your life back. No one should make you feel guilty for leading our boys. You’re damn good at what you do. You make a difference and you know it.”

  Shane glanced over at his longtime friend. “Does Laura still understand? You’re gone more than you’re home. How many birthdays and anniversaries have you missed?”

  “Laura gets it. She understands what we do.”

  Carponti snatched the papers from Shane’s hand. “Laura sends cookies to NTC, unlike your wife, who sends this bull.”

  “Ex-wife,” Shane corrected, and snatched them back.

  “Put this crap away and let’s go smoke a cigar. Morrell’s going to be okay and that’s worth celebrating.”

  “I’ll catch up
in a sec.”

  He pulled out the papers. Tatiana Garrison, Plaintiff vs. Shane Garrison, Defendant.

  He stared at the formal letter, lit by the floodlights overhead. He knew the exact moment his marriage had stopped being anything but a farce.

  It was the first time he’d missed her birthday. She hadn’t understood that he’d had no access to a phone or the Internet. She hadn’t understood that he’d spent that day and the next two days in the hospital with one of his boys, who’d been on life support after being hit by shrapnel. Oh, she’d pretended to be sympathetic, but she had never gotten over it, and Shane had paid for it every single day since.

  Divorce.

  He closed his eyes, shutting out the memory of when he’d first met her. He didn’t want to remember the girl she’d been, or the fool he’d been, trying to explain to her why what he did was important.

  No, right now he wanted to remember this moment. The moment he realized that he no longer cared about saving a marriage that never should have been in the first place.

  The only thing in life he’d ever been good at was the army. He’d been a shitty son and a terrible husband. He hadn’t set out to be bad at either of those relationships. It had just turned out that way.

  But he was a damn good infantryman. He had that going for him. His men needed their platoon sergeant focused and steady. He couldn’t be the leader they needed him to be if he was mooning over a woman who didn’t want to be with him. His hand didn’t even tremble when he signed the papers, ending the farce and freeing himself to focus on what he was good at: being a soldier. His marriage was over. This just made it official.

  At least now their constant arguing about money and time—two things Shane had been too busy fighting a war and taking care of his soldiers to care about—was over. Sorry, but when asked to choose between picking out sheets at Bed, Bath, & Beyond or teaching a young soldier to shoot at the small arms range, he would always choose the range. Maybe that wasn’t fair to Tatiana, but it was who he was and she’d known that when she married him. Instead of trying to make things work, they’d done nothing but make each other miserable.

  He tucked the papers back into the envelope and stuffed them into the cargo pocket on his uniform pants. Tonight, he wasn’t going to dwell on something he couldn’t change. Tatiana had made her choice a long time ago. No, tonight he was going to celebrate, and he wasn’t going to let the end of his marriage crush the victory that surged inside of him. His men didn’t need to know about his problems. He took care of them, not the other way around. Tonight, one of his boys was okay. Somehow, he’d made a difference.

  And that beat the hell out of any bad news from back home.

  Chapter 1

  “What crawled up your ass?”

  Shane shoved his last Ziploc bag of T-shirts into his army-issued duffel bag and tried to smother his rising irritation. “What part of no don’t you understand?”

  Carponti—aka the most annoying soldier in Shane’s entire platoon—picked up Shane’s grey ACU pattern patrol cap and put it on, strutting around like he owned the place. Then he puffed out his chest and swung his arms wide, like a bad caricature of an angry gorilla. Sometimes Shane wished he didn’t let Carponti into his apartment as often as he did. But Carponti had recently turned into a permanent fixture in Shane’s after-duty life. Shane wasn’t sure what that said about the state of his affairs. As if Carponti mocking him in the empty apartment wasn’t enough of an indicator. “I’m Sarn’t Garrison. I’m too badass to relax and have a good time.”

  “Piss off.”

  “Did your wife take your sense of humor in the divorce, too?” Carponti asked, flopping into Shane’s chair. “Come on, man, it’s just a few hours and a couple of beers. The whole platoon is going to be there.”

  Shane sighed and hooked his duffel bag shut, tossing it into the corner of his apartment near the front door. He flinched as the sudden movement stretched the fresh stitches that were holding two tiny holes in his abdominal wall closed. Carponti didn’t know about Shane’s recent brush with death and Shane intended to keep it that way. If Carponti wanted to believe the divorce was keeping him from going out, then so be it. But the truth was that Shane had been too busy, over the past five months, to dwell on the end of his marriage. Of course, he missed feeling like he had a home, but he couldn’t lie to himself—Tatiana hadn’t made their life together a home any more than he had. She’d been familiar, though, and he missed that. At least, that’s what he told himself when he had time to think about it. So many of his guys were having problems in the lead-up to this deployment that Shane had barely seen the air mattress on the floor of the apartment they’d shared, let alone slept on it. And tomorrow he was leaving for good.

  Shane shoved his body armor into a second duffel bag, then stuffed socks and more T-shirts into the gaps. It was a pain in the ass packing for deployment. It was easier just being deployed.

  “The whole platoon being there is the problem. Makes it kind of hard to explain why the platoon sergeant is in jail with the platoon if you guys get too fired up tonight. Someone has to be around to bail your sorry asses out of Bell County tomorrow.”

  Carponti rolled his eyes and rubbed the back of his neck, serious for one hot second. “Look, just come out with us. You’ve been a real asshole since your wife left; you need to unwind, or we might just shoot your ass when we’re in country for being such a dick.”

  Shane rested his hand over his heart and blinked rapidly. “God, I’m so touched by the depth of your concern. I can drink beer here. Alone. Quietly.”

  “Sissy.”

  Shane laughed and the feeling caught him off guard. If it had been that long since he’d laughed, maybe his wife had taken his sense of humor along with all of his furniture. He shook his head at Carponti’s relentless nagging and finally surrendered. Under duress, but still. “All right, fine. But I swear, if a single one of you miss movement tomorrow …”

  Carponti made the sign of the cross over his heart. “Promise. Let’s go. I’m picking up Nikki on the way.”

  Shane stuffed his wallet into his back pocket and grabbed the keys to his truck. At least he didn’t have to change. Killeen, Texas, didn’t exactly sport any high-class bars. The place they were headed to, Ropers, was only moderately slimy, meaning that he wasn’t likely to die of dysentery from the beer glasses and he was just fine in his T-shirt and jeans. They were clothes he didn’t care if he ruined if—scratch that, when—he had to drag one of his soldiers out of a brawl.

  Truth be told, he didn’t have any problem with the boys going out. Shane just didn’t want to watch them say good-bye to their wives and girlfriends, and it had nothing to do with his own divorce. Shane hated the knowledge that he might not be bringing everyone home to their families.

  It was 2007 and they were deploying as part of the Surge to stabilize Iraq. He knew he would probably bury some of his men this year. He’d deployed too many times to entertain the naive hope that all of his boys would come back in one piece. He’d move heaven and earth to protect them, and it looked like that would have to start tonight, instead of tomorrow. He couldn’t promise they’d all come home from the war, but they’d sure as shit make it to formation in the morning.

  That much he could guarantee.

  * * *

  “Stop touching it.”

  Jen St. James jumped and dropped her hand from the edge of her blouse. “I wasn’t.”

  She should have known Laura would catch her tugging at her clothes, which, with the addition of a triangular-shaped silicone form, now fit much better. And that was part of what made Jen uncomfortable. She wasn’t used to her blouses hanging properly anymore. But she couldn’t tell Laura that. It had been hard enough to convince her that she wanted to buy only one form and not the entire shop.

  Laura couldn’t seem to wrap her brain around the fact that Jen didn’t need to feel sexy, that she wanted to be comfortable instead.

  “Yes, you were. No one can tell and
the more you play with it, the more horny GIs are going to check your boobs out.” Laura raised her glass, and then lowered it. “On second thought, keep playing with them.”

  “Boob. Singular.”

  “You still have two. Just not a full set. And honestly, no one can tell. So please quit worrying and relax. You look amazing.”

  “Except for the silicone stuck to my chest.”

  “That no one can see. Here,” Laura said, shoving a sweating green Heineken bottle into Jen’s hand. “Drink. Don’t argue. I finally got you out of the house to have a good time and damn it, I’m going to accomplish that mission if it kills me.”

  “You sound like a soldier,” Jen said with a smile.

  Laura took a pull off her drink. “I can’t help it. I spend all day every day around soldiers. I’m bound to pick things up here and there.”

  It had been a long time since Jen had been around this many people. She felt the proximity of too many bodies, too much cologne and spilled beer. The smells bombarded her and reminded her of the life she’d had once upon a time. A time when she would have danced until dawn and then closed the night out with pancakes at IHOP.

  Jen had not been inside a bar for more than two years, and she was no more comfortable today than she’d been the last time she’d been out when her ex had made a point of announcing to everyone in the bar that she had only one breast. So the fact that she was here was amazing in and of itself. The loud music, the crowd, and the GIs mingling with the wannabe cowboys was not an ambience Jen typically sought out. The smoke grated on her lungs but wasn’t nearly as smothering in the seat she’d managed to snag at the edge of the bar. Still, anything was better than the sterile smell of the hospital, and she wanted to get back to feeling normal, really she did. Whatever normal meant nowadays.

  Laura was the one saying good-bye to her husband for the fifth time in seven years. Jen was just here for moral support, so the least she could do was put her own demons to rest and have a good time. She lifted the beer to her lips.

  “I can’t believe you dragged me here,” she shouted in Laura’s ear over the din of Kenny Chesney.