He couldn’t believe his luck. Less than a week ago, he’d been resigned to a life of single cursedness—the extreme opposite of blessedness—wrapped in his nightmarish memories of war and stuck with an inability to relate to people anymore except on a remote level. He made a good bar owner but a terrible companion. It was the strangest thing. He’d come home from Afghanistan not the least bit interested in connecting with a woman. Some days it was all he could do to connect with himself. The aftermath of battle, Darren’s death, his own wound and his nightmares had seen to that. Or so he’d thought. Now he wanted to pay homage to whatever stroke of fate had sent Charity Vance into his life. The only words he could use to describe their relationship were instantaneous combustion. When he thought about their first night together—sex in a meadow under a tree because he had no place to take her—he was amazed that she’d ever consented to see him again. But the shock was that she’d been as much into it as he was.
