She wrote it all down, her heart lighter than it had been since her father walked out of his hospital room, his ability to remember still in question.
“I’m thirty-two.”
She was so focused on what she was doing that the sound of Daniel’s voice from behind her made her jump. She spun around in her task chair, her heartbeat accelerated. “What?”
He leaned against the doorjamb, his arms crossed, black hair framing his taciturn features. “I’m thirty-two.”
“I’m twenty-six. Is there supposed to be something significant about that?”
“Everyone else thinks I’m thirty-four.”
“Everyone?”
“Everyone but Master Sergeant Cordell.”
“Why?”
“Because that’s what I told them.”
“Oh.” Was she losing her mind, or was it him? Most people lied about being younger than they were, not older.
“I joined the army when I was sixteen, and I had to lie about my age to do it. I’m much better at prevaricating than you are. I’ve got a lot of practice.”
She wasn’t sure how she felt knowing that. “But your birth certificate…”
“Faked.”
“I feel like you’re trying to tell me something, but I don’t know what it is.”
Subtle tension seeped into his features. “I ran away from home when I was sixteen because when my dad lost his temper, he hit. Drinking made him more susceptible to anger, and he’d begun drinking more and more.”
Daniel had said his mother was dead. Maybe his dad drank to forget her. Some men did. “Was your mom gone then?”
“No. She was the reason I left.”
Josie felt her stomach twisting in a tight knot of apprehension. “How so?”
“They fought about me most of the time. She wanted me to go to school, to make something of myself. It made him furious. He accused her of thinking he was less of a man because he wasn’t educated.” Daniel pushed away from the door and came into the room, his tension more pronounced. “Thunder was raised on the reservation. He was an artist, following the old ways, but in order to live, he sold his work in a gallery that catered to tourists.”
“Your mom had a problem with this?”
Daniel’s face contorted for a second before all expression smoothed from it. “Not really, but she grew up off the reservation until she was sixteen. Her parents died in a sailing accident that year, and she went to live with my great-grandfather.”
“Is that how she and your father met?”
“Yes. She never complained about her life with my father, but she wanted me to experience life beyond the reservation. She believed that a person’s life should not be limited by their birth.”
That was something Josie was trying to prove. Being born a soldier didn’t make her a soldier. “Smart lady.”
“Not smart enough to leave my father. He said she wanted me to deny my heritage and leave the reservation because our way of life wasn’t good enough for her. When he drank, he did more than accuse.”
“He beat her?”
“Sometimes he only yelled; sometimes he would yell until he totally lost his cool, and then he’d hit her. He had a violent temper, but I knew it was mostly my fault, that without me to fight about, he wouldn’t get so mad at her.”
Josie made a sound of distress, her heart constricting at Daniel’s belief he was responsible for his dad’s lack of self-control, or his mother’s choice to tolerate it.
His eyes reflected pain she wished she could assuage. “The worst of it was that I never wanted my mom’s dream for me. I wanted to be a soldier, had wanted it since I was a little kid. I wanted to know how to fight and how to win, how to stop my dad from hurting me and my mom.”
“What happened?”
“After my first tour of duty, my mom begged me to get out of the army, to come home to the reservation and take care of my father. He was drinking more then and was finding it hard to keep a job.”
“But you refused.”
“I was a Ranger, and for the first time in my life, I was proud of what and who I was. I told my mom to leave him, that I would take care of her, but she refused. She loved him.” He said the words with such scorn, and finally Josie understood where it came from.
His mother had used love as an excuse to stay in an abusive relationship that had destroyed her family and caused a separation with her son.
“A year after I signed on for my second tour, my dad lost his temper again and threw my mom against a wall. Her head hit at the wrong angle, and she was knocked out. She went into a coma. I flew home and sat beside her hospital bed for three days, but she died without ever coming out of it.”
And he had been denied the opportunity to say goodbye, or tell his mom that he loved her. Josie’s eyes stung with tears. “It wasn’t your fault. Your mother chose to stay in a destructive relationship. She knew the risks, and she stayed.”
“If I’d gone home, I could have been there to stop him. I should have gotten out of the army and stayed with her. I should have taken care of her, but I’m no good at taking care of other people.”
“Your mother didn’t ask you to come home to protect her; she asked you to come home and take care of your drunk of a father,” she said, taking a stab in the dark, “didn’t she?”
“Yes.”
“She wanted you to protect him, not her, and you couldn’t have done that. You would have hurt him physically the next time he lost his temper and hit your mother. She would have kicked you out of the house and blamed you for not being patient enough.” Josie didn’t have a lot of experience with abuse victims, but Claire had taken her to a women’s shelter once so she could teach a class in self-defense.
Most of the women there wanted new lives, but they had shared with her the kind of twisted thinking that had kept them in their victim roles.
Daniel moved toward her, his expression grim. “You’re wrong. I was an adult then. I could have convinced her to leave him if I’d taken the time to go home, if I’d cared more about her safety than my pride.”
“No. You’re a good man, Daniel. You had to make a life for yourself away from your parents, or you would have ended up in the same ugly cycle they lived in.”
“I’m not getting married, so that can’t happen. I’ll never hurt a woman like he hurt her.”
So many things became clear to Josie. Daniel hadn’t been rejecting her earlier. He’d been rejecting himself as someone who could make her feel safe. His mother hadn’t been safe, and he thought that was his fault. He’d spent his adult life fighting other people’s battles, saving people as part of a mercenary team that specialized in extractions, but he still believed he wasn’t a protector.
It would be laughable if he didn’t believe it.
Running his latest words through her mind again, she realized something else. He wasn’t against a long-term commitment with her; he really did have an aversion to marriage.
“Are you seriously afraid you’d end up like your father?” The same man who had practically given himself a heart attack assuring her first time making love was special and as painless as possible.
“Everyone who’s ever met the both of us says we’re carbon copies, that we could be twins.”
“On the outside maybe. Even if you got your to-die-for good looks from him, you’ve got something he didn’t have where it counts.” She stood up and reached for him, pressing her hand over his heart. “You aren’t alike inside. You’d die for me before you would hurt me, no matter how angry you were. I know it.”
Something sparked in his almost black eyes. It looked like hope, but then it was gone. “I don’t believe in love and commitment, Josie.”
“I know.” And she understood, but that didn’t change the way she felt. “It doesn’t matter because I do believe in you. I still feel safe with you, Daniel.”