Marisa Carroll - Winter Soldier

“Chief of Neurosurgery is a long way from a small practice in Slate Hollow, Kentucky, Adam. Almost a different world.” “Chief of Neurosurgery is a long way from a small practice in Slate Hollow, Kentucky, Adam. Almost a different world.” Leah wondered why she’d said that. It sounded almost as if she was asking him—what? To leave Chicago and come to Kentucky with her? Wasn’t that what she really wanted? For him to make a commitment to her—and the baby he didn’t even know she was carrying? “Leah, my son is coming to live with me. We’ve been apart for a long time. I have to concentrate all my energy on Brian.” His energy. Not his love. His words took her breath and sent a stab of pain through her heart. Adam would never open himself to love and to being loved. Once more she realized how close she’d come to caring too much for this man. The decision she’d agonized over since learning she was pregnant was made in an instant. “I understand. I really have to be going.” “Leah, if there’s ever anything I can—” Leah took a step backward, avoiding his touch. She wasn’t made of stone, even if he appeared to be. “There’s nothing you can do for me.” Or our baby. ABOUT THE AUTHOR ABOUT THE AUTHOR Carol Wagner and Marian Scharf—the award-winning writing team of Marisa Carroll—are sisters living in a small northwest Ohio town, where they are surrounded by five generations of family and friends. Winter Soldier is their twentyninth book. Title Page Winter Soldier Marisa Carroll www.millsandboon.co.uk Epigraph These are the times that try men’s souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will in this crisis, Shrink from the service of his country, But he that stands it now, Deserves the love and thanks of man and woman. —Thomas Paine, December 23, 1776 CHAPTER ONE CHAPTER TWO CHAPTER THREE CHAPTER FOUR CHAPTER FIVE CHAPTER SIX CHAPTER SEVEN CHAPTER EIGHT CHAPTER NINE CHAPTER TEN CHAPTER ELEVEN CHAPTER TWELVE CHAPTER THIRTEEN CHAPTER FOURTEEN CHAPTER FIFTEEN CHAPTER SIXTEEN CHAPTER SEVENTEEN CHAPTER EIGHTEEN CHAPTER NINETEEN EPILOGUE Copyright

“Chief of Neurosurgery is a long way from a small practice in Slate Hollow, Kentucky, Adam. Almost a different world.”

Leah wondered why she’d said that. It sounded almost as if she was asking him—what? To leave Chicago and come to Kentucky with her? Wasn’t that what she really wanted? For him to make a commitment to her—and the baby he didn’t even know she was carrying?

“Leah, my son is coming to live with me. We’ve been apart for a long time. I have to concentrate all my energy on Brian.”

His energy. Not his love. His words took her breath and sent a stab of pain through her heart. Adam would never open himself to love and to being loved. Once more she realized how close she’d come to caring too much for this man. The decision she’d agonized over since learning she was pregnant was made in an instant. “I understand. I really have to be going.”

“Leah, if there’s ever anything I can—”

Leah took a step backward, avoiding his touch. She wasn’t made of stone, even if he appeared to be. “There’s nothing you can do for me.”

Or our baby.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Carol Wagner and Marian Scharf—the award-winning writing team of Marisa Carroll—are sisters living in a small northwest Ohio town, where they are surrounded by five generations of family and friends. Winter Soldier is their twentyninth book.

www.millsandboon.co.uk

These are the times that try men’s souls.

The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot

will in this crisis,

Shrink from the service of his country,

But he that stands it now,

Deserves the love and thanks of man and woman.

—Thomas Paine, December 23, 1776

CHAPTER ONE

THAN SON NHUT.

Even above the roar of the jet engine he caught the echo of the pilot’s words, felt them snag the edge of his consciousness. Than Son Nhut. For almost twenty-five years, more than half his lifetime, Adam Sauder, had returned to that place only in his nightmares. Today, he was actually going back.

Before he heard her voice he smelled her perfume, a light, lemony fragrance had tantalized his senses. “Dr. Sauder?” He pretended to be asleep. Maybe she’d go back to her own seat, leave him alone. God, it had been such a long flight. Thirty-six hours from Chicago to—

She spoke again, a bit more forcefully this time. “Dr. Sauder? Are you awake?”

Damn, she’s persistent.

He rolled his head toward the well-modulated but demanding voice, but didn’t open his eyes. “I’m awake,” he said in the don’t-tread-on-me tone that had struck fear into the hearts of interns and residents at St. Barnabas Medical Center for the past five years.

“I thought so.” She sounded neither cowed nor embarrassed. “We’ll be landing in Saigon in a few minutes. I thought I should introduce myself.”

She could have done that anytime since they’d left Chicago. Why did she have to pick now, when he had almost willed himself to that gray nothingness between waking and sleeping that was the only place he seemed to find peace? Saigon. Than Son Nhut. The names wouldn’t die, just like his memories of the days he’d spent there. “I thought they called it Ho Chi Minh City now.”

She chuckled, a sound as light and pleasant as her perfume. “No one calls it that. Even our luggage tags say Saigon.”

The laughter was irresistible. He lifted his heavy eyelids and looked at his tormentor. Clear hazel eyes, neither green nor gold, stared steadily back. He blinked and her face came into focus. She smiled, and like magic her deceptively ordinary features turned from plain to pretty. “I’m your gas-passer,” she said.

Gas-passer? She must have been raised on M*A*S*H reruns. “You’re my anesthesiologist?” She didn’t look a lot older than his nineteen-year-old son, Brian. She sure as hell wasn’t old enough to be a doctor.

“Nurse anesthetist,” she clarified.

They didn’t give out advanced nursing degrees to teenagers, either. Mentally he added ten years to her age, pegging her somewhere close to thirty.

“I’m Leah Gentry.” She held out her hand. He took it automatically. Her handshake was as firm and no-nonsense as her voice and, surprisingly enough, as potent as her smile. He pulled his hand from hers and her smile disappeared. “I’m in practice with Caleb Owens,” she said more formally.

He knew who Caleb Owens was, although he’d never met the man. He was a friend of a friend—or an ex-friend. Adam directed a sour glance at the back of B. J. Walton’s head, as his old Marine buddy lolled, snoring away two rows in front of him.

B.J. had made it big in computers in the eighties. He had more money than he could count—not that he didn’t put a lot of it to good use. He’d sponsored half-a-dozen private medical-aid missions to Central America, Africa and even Russia over the past ten years, and he’d badgered and bullied and made a damned pest of himself until Adam had promised to be part of the next one.

B.J. had made a big deal of Adam’s moment of weakness. He’d called a press conference and talked up the humanitarian mission of top-notch nurses and doctors taking time from their busy lives and careers to help the less fortunate. Then he’d promised a bundle toward the new spinal-injury rehab center if St. Barnabas agreed to let Adam come along. St. B’s knew a good deal when they saw one. They agreed to supply all the specialized equipment Adam needed and offered to send technicians to keep it running at peak efficiency. It was a hell of a public-relations coup, the hospital administrator had told him. And it wouldn’t do Adam any harm in his quest to be the next chief of neurosurgery, either. And then BJ. had dropped his bombshell.