Page 59 of The Woman Left Behind

After that she took a nice long shower, shampooing twice, conditioning, and sighing with relief because her skin could breathe again, without all the dirt and sweat. Doing girl stuff felt sogood. She moisturized, put on scented body lotion, then pulled on a pair of cuddly flannel pants and a long-sleeved thermal shirt. She removed her chipped toenail polish and put on a pair of moisturizing socks to pamper her feet.

There! Human again.

She was on the couch catching up on some programs she’d recorded when the doorbell rang. She scowled at the door. No way should her doorbell be ringing, unless maybe the downstairs neighbors had a dead battery and needed their car jumped off. That was the only possibility that got her to her feet.

But it wasn’t either of her neighbors she saw through the peephole, it was Levi.

I don’t need this,she thought. This wasn’t how to keep his distance. She could get angry at him, she could sometimes hate him, but what she could never do was be indifferent to him. She needed his help, she needed him to stayaway.

“Go away,” she said aloud, leaning her head against the door.

“It’s important.”

Of course it was.Damn.She unlocked the door and opened it, standing in the threshold so he couldn’t come in. “What?”

He came in anyway, simply stepping forward and putting his hand on the side of her waist, muscling her back, then closing the door behind him. Jina’s heart tripped at his expression, both grim and remote. She knew he’d gone first to debriefing, but evidently he hadn’t had an opportunity to shower and change clothes. He still wore the grimy clothes he’d had on when he drove away a few hours ago, he still had a two-day stubble darkening his jaw. Whatever had happened was bad enough that he’d come straight here.

Her thoughts flashed to her family. If anything had happened to one of them, was it somehow set up that Levi would be notified first if the team was on a mission? They weren’t on a missionnowbut they’d just returned, so that was possible. She hadn’t checked her personal cell phone for messages or looked at Facebook. She had no idea what could have happened.

She kept on moving back, putting distance between them. “What?” she asked again, but this time there was alarm in her voice, because she’d never seen him look like that.

“There’s no easy way to tell you,” he said, striding forward and gripping both her elbows before she could back even farther away. “Babe—Donnelly got hit.”

“Hit” could mean slapped. “Hit” could mean struck by a car. But in their world, “hit” meant something else entirely. She felt as if she’d been hit herself and would have reeled back if he hadn’t been holding her, his big hands like clamps on her arms. His dark gaze was steady on her face, reading and assessing every thought and emotion that flickered past.

She looked around, as if her condo could give her some safe, reassuring answer. Donnelly was her friend. Donnelly had the same job she did; they stayed out of the action—though hadn’t she almost gotten “hit” herself, about fifteen hours ago?

“Is he...” Her voice was faint and faded away. Her lips felt numb, barely able to move. She swallowed, tried again. She couldn’t ask if he was dead, couldn’t make herself say the word. Instead she said, “Will he be all right?”

Levi slowly shook his head. His voice was quiet. “No.”

She stood very still, staring at his chest, about three inches from her nose. She didn’t want to look up into his eyes, she wanted to pull into herself and not move at all for a very long time, until she could process this and handle it, get her emotions under control.

Donnelly was dead.Donnelly.He was a nice guy, everyone said, and he had been. Good-looking, good-humored, intelligent, friendly, sharp—what wasn’t to like?

She wished she could have loved him.

Very gently Levi eased her forward until she was resting against him and closed his arms around her.

Gentleness from him was devastating. It shattered her self-control, allowed the grief to come roaring up. A sob caught in her throat, broke free, and she began crying. Levi pulled her even closer, his big hand coming up to cradle the back of her head, his strength wrapping around her as if giving her permission to turn to mush within that sturdy framework of protection. She still tried to resist, for maybe a second, then she rested her forehead against the hard muscle of his chest, circled his waist with her arms, and gave in.

Even when the sobs dwindled down to sniffles and trickles of tears she stood there in the circle of his arms, tiredly astonished that he was holding her and just letting her cry, because Levi didn’t strike her as a man who was very patient with shows of emotion. The hand on the back of her head was slowly rubbing, his fingers sifting through her damp hair, his fingertips brushing the nape of her neck.

“Where were they?” she finally asked, her voice nasally and thick with tears.

“I don’t know. I can find out, but does it matter?”

She felt something brush the top of her head. Had he kissed her, or had he rubbed his chin against her hair? But as he’d said—did it matter?

“No,” she said, to both questions, and fell silent again.

After a while she withdrew her arms from around his waist and gently pulled back. His arms tightened briefly, then he released her and stepped back. She scrubbed her hands over her damp cheeks, wiped her eyes on the hem of her shirt. “Have you had anything to eat?”

“Haven’t had time.”

Meaning he’d come straight here to give her the news before she could find out from someone else. She nodded and managed to look at him. “Are you hungry?”

“As a bear.” A small quirk curled one corner of his mouth.

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