The Woman Left Behind: A Novel Read online

  Again the cutting glance. His eyes were so dark she couldn’t tell the difference between his irises and pupils. “Be still,” he said, and there was something in his voice, some subtle inflection, that she couldn’t decipher but nevertheless went all the way to the bone and froze her in place.

  Levi looked back down at the slender foot he held and concentrated on keeping all reaction out of his face. It was just a foot, for fuck’s sake—a girly foot, with bright pink polish on the toenails, and a glittery stripe painted diagonally across each nail, but still just a foot. The hard truth remained, literally, that he’d been less turned on by looking at a completely naked woman than he was by holding Babe’s bare foot. He was touching her skin. Not the skin he preferred to be touching, but still, her skin.

  And it was skin that needed some first aid. The blisters on her heels had broken open and could easily get infected.

  “How did your feet get wet?” he asked as he opened the kit and took out a squeeze-pack of antibiotic salve.

  “Drainage ditch. I didn’t see it until I was in it.”

  He gave a brief nod. Shit happened to everyone. He’d gotten his feet wet a time or twenty, about half the time on purpose. You had to plan for it, because dry feet were essential. All of them were former military, except for her. The importance of keeping their feet dry had been drilled into them, but he’d overlooked getting her in the same frame of mind. These blisters were his fault.

  “I should have told you to always pack extra pairs of socks,” he said, trying to ease the curtness of his tone. He fought a constant battle when he was around her, and only by erring on the side of asshole could he keep things completely hands-off. Now, in spite of himself, he was touching her, just like when she’d started to fall off the rope and before he knew it he’d grabbed her to keep her from getting hurt. Keeping his distance was getting tougher by the day. He didn’t have a noble bone in his body; his dick was pointing at her like a bird dog toward a nice fat quail, and telling his dick no didn’t come naturally to him.

  But she looked as if she’d jump like a scalded cat if he barked at her, or moved too fast, so he had to tone it down. Getting her feet taken care of was more important than keeping his distance. “My fault,” he said calmly. “I didn’t think about it. But in the future, always keep two or three pairs of socks with you if we’re in the field—as well as a first aid kit,” he added pointedly, squeezing the salve onto the broken blister on her right foot.

  “I wondered when you’d get around to that,” she grumbled.

  Deftly he plastered a bandage over her heel, then took care of the blisters on top of her toes, using one bandage to cover two toes, taping them together, then another bandage on the other two small toes on that foot. Only her big toe had escaped blistering.

  On her left foot, all five toes were blistered. He shook his head. “If you’re in a jungle and don’t take care of your feet, you’ll end up with jungle rot, and that’s a bad deal.” As he bandaged that foot he told her about the time he’d overlooked taking care of his feet in humid conditions, how he’d spent six days in sick bay, completely pissed off because his team deployed without him. All the while he talked, in a separate part of his brain he was thinking what it would be like to crawl up between her legs and put her flat on the big rock. He already had her foot in his hand, all he had to do was move it to the side, stand, and he was there.

  With his hands on her foot and ankle he could feel the fine tremors that were quaking her, though when he glanced up she was staring fixedly at her right foot as if she could will it to heal. Her cheeks were pink, though, and he could see her pulse fluttering at the base of her slender neck. Instinctively he looked lower, to where twin little points tented her tee, and his mouth started watering like a damn teenager’s. He wanted his mouth on those nipples. He wanted his mouth on her, period, wanted her under his hands, under him.

  Fuck.

  He set his jaw and finished slapping bandages on her left foot. Then, to give himself something to do, shifted around to sit beside her and picked up her boots, running his fingers around the inside to feel for any rough edges. Granted, her feet were soft, but she’d rubbed up those blisters faster than he’d have thought, even after getting the boots wet.

  No seams or edges. He frowned and looked at her socks, noticed that they were oddly lumpy. He turned one inside out and pieces of foam fell on the rock. “What the hell?”

  “Foam,” she said, picking up the pieces and slipping them into her pocket.

  “I can see that. Why do you have foam in your socks?”

  “To keep my boots from flopping up and down on my feet and rubbing blisters.” She scowled. “Doesn’t work when everything’s wet.”

  She could effortlessly punch buttons he hadn’t even known he had. Just the idea—“Why the hell don’t you just buy boots that fucking fit?” he snapped. At first they’d all tried to watch their language around her, but as the days had gone by they’d slipped back into their old habits, and she never paid any attention to their language or reacted in any way. But sitting so close to her, being turned on by her and knowing she reacted the same way to him . . . saying fuck wasn’t the smartest thing he’d ever done, because it took his thoughts right back to the track he’d been trying to get out of.

  She whirled toward him, amber and blue eyes spitting fire. “Because they don’t make these boots that fucking fit,” she snarled back at him. Then she caught herself and turned facing forward again. “At least not that I’ve found. I need size seven narrow, with extra narrow heels. These are medium width.”

  They looked like a kid’s boots to him, but then he wore a size thirteen. Again he felt an unaccustomed surge of guilt, because he should have realized she wouldn’t know how to find the proper boots—though, damn it, she could have asked.

  “How in hell have you been running?” Because she had. She’d had to work up to their stamina, but now she pretty much ran as much as the rest of the team, unless she was on drone training.

  Defiantly she pointed toward the foam. “That and insoles. Low tech, but it’s mostly worked. I stuff the foam around my heels. I guess now I’ll start putting it over my toes, too.”

  “No, now we’ll find you some boots that damn well fit. Where did you get these?”

  “The mall.”

  He muttered a few more cuss words. “Because it never occurred to you to ask us where to get boots that fit, huh?”

  She bristled up at him again. Even though they were sitting side by side, the top of her head barely came to his chin, but that didn’t stop her. She had no common sense, he thought; most men wouldn’t cross him, but she didn’t hesitate. But maybe she sensed he’d rather break his own hands than hurt her. No, that wasn’t it, because she fired up at all the other guys, too, and as far as he knew none of them were tied up in knots over her.

  “A: Y’all were gone. B: I needed them fast. Running in sneakers was hell, with sand getting inside them. C: I was too tired at the end of the day to do much more than eat a sandwich and take a shower. I found what I could find as fast as I could find it.” She bit the words off, clipping each sound with an audible snap of her teeth.

  He could chew her out, argue with her, or just cut bait and move on. He decided on the latter, because she’d argue until nightfall. “All right. I’ll find you some boots that fit. In the future, damn it, tell me if you have a problem. I’m not a fucking mind reader.” Again that uncomfortable awareness at his word choice zinged through him. Fuck, was he going to have to stop saying fuck?

  “Yes, sir,” she said so flatly he knew he’d be lucky if she so much as asked him what time it was.

  He scrubbed his hand over his face and blew out a frustrated breath. “I don’t know how much good it did to put those bandages on your feet when you have to put those wet socks back on, but it’s either that or I carry you to the pickup point. Boom should be there soon.”

  She muttered something that sounded like “cold day in hell,” but it wa