Page 18 of All I Want For Christmas

“This will be a short call,” he growled. God, he loved her. And he needed her again. Wrapped around him all night long.

She blew him a kiss and moved off to give him a little space for the call.

“LaSalle,” he answered a moment later, watching Lindsey talking to Dana.

“Everyone’s confirmed,” Steven Simon, his superior officer, told him without preamble. “We leave Tuesday and oh-six-hundred.”

Matt blew out a breath. “How many casualties?”

“Fifteen confirmed dead so far.”

“Fuck,” he breathed.

“I’m sorry to cut it short.”

Matt shoved a hand through his hair. It felt sticky and stiff from the white hairspray he’d used to match it to his Santa beard. “It’s never enough time,” he said honestly. “But we have a job.”

“Yes we do,” Simon said seriously.

Of course, it didn’t get a lot more serious than government forces bombing a series of their own tiny villages, supposedly to drive out the rebel army. Except the rebels weren’t there and the government forces knew it. What they were really doing was methodically going village by village searching for Dr. BadihKahn, the brilliant scientist who the government wanted to “employ”. He was now in hiding in the U.S. but, thankfully, the foreign government hadn’t figured that out yet. Matt and his men were going in to protect the villages, protect Dr. Kahn’s location, and hopefully make a few opposing soldiers very sorry they’d dropped bombs on innocent people.

He gripped his phone tightly. “Is Tuesday soon enough?”

Damn, he didn’t want to leave earlier than that, but as always, he was torn. Torn between the woman and two children who were his, who he needed to see, who had been without him for the past two Christmases, and the dirt-poor farmers and laborers on the border of two war-torn countries who had no one to protect them from their own corrupt government.

He looked over at Lindsey again, noting the familiar wave to her long dark hair, the smile that made his heart warm and his cock hard at the same time, and the he-would-be-able-to-pick-it-out-even-blindfolded curve of her cheek. The truth was, the people across the ocean needed him more than she did.

“Temporary troops will arrive at midnight,” Simon told him. “They’ll hold things until we get there.”

And again that restlessness tripped through him. Dammit. He wanted to behere. Of course he did. But he needed to bethere. That was their territory. Enemy troops had come intotheirarea. The area they’d kept safe for the past eight months. He wanted to get on the plane now.

He heard Lindsey’s laugh and his gut knotted. Because he also never wanted to leave again.

“Enjoy your time,” Simon said. Firmly. As if it was an order rather than just a pleasantry. “You need it. You all do. There’s plenty of time to be pissed off.”

Matt swallowed. Yeah, there was. He needed to dive deep into the Christmas spirit and his family and friends and all of the good things. All of the things that were, in the end, what he wastruly fighting for. Keeping their lives here safe and happy and peaceful. And giving even a little of that, as much as they could, to those people overseas.

“Will do,” he finally answered. “Keep me updated.”

“Of course.”

Matt disconnected and forced himself to take a few deep breaths. He could, of course, tell Lindsey all about what was going down. What had happened. What was going to be happening. She’d understand. She’d give him perspective. She’d have the same feelings of helplessness and righteous anger that he was feeling. But she didn’t even know he’d been promoted. She didn’t know he was with a special ops force with even more secretive and specific missions. She didn’t know that he was the leader of a kick-ass, tough-as-hell group of men who were the bravest, smartest, best men he’d ever known.

He’d planned to tell her while he was home. When they were wrapped up together. Where he could assure her that this was what he wanted and that he was following his passion.

Now… He blew out a breath. Now he was going to take his wife home and hide out while she put their boys to bed and then he was going to lose himself in her, probably two or three times before sunrise. And then he was going to give his boys a Christmas memory to hold on to forever. And he was going to throw himself into as much fun and tradition as he could cram into three days.

And he was most definitely going to play the Christmas cookie game.

“Okay, Mrs. LaSalle, time to go,” he said, interrupting whatever she’d been telling Dana about dropping Dana’s girls off somewhere sometime.

“I’m definitely ready, First Sergeant.”

They said good night to everyone again and finally made it out to her car. “Logan picked you up and everything?” she asked, unlocking it and climbing behind the wheel.

He got into the passenger seat as she started the car. “Yeah. He picked me up at the airport and took me over to the bar to get ready.”

Lindsey grinned as she backed out of the parking spot. “I’m still so amazed by it all.”

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