the arm on top of the cedar chest, and draped the sock over the side.
Paula lifted a hand. "Do you mind if I ..."
She didn't finish, but he clearly knew what she was asking, and held out the stump.
It wasn't unpleasant or even strange. His arm ended halfway between the elbow and shoulder. There was some scarring around the end, but when Paula laid a hand on the skin just above it, she found that it was smooth and normal. His shoulder on that side wasn't any less muscular than the other, although his biceps was a little less impressive.
She ran her hand up his arm, slipping it under the sleeve of his T-shirt, reveling in the feeling of his skin against hers. Then she slid her hand down the arm, hesitating as she approached the scarred area. "Does it hurt?"
"Not really." He was watching her hand, his head turned to the side to follow it with his gaze. "I rub lotion on it all the time. It's a little sensitive, but that's not a bad thing."
She carefully ran her hand over the end. It was actually very soft. The skin puckered slightly when the muscles of his arm flexed.
"Do you mind ..." She hesitated, feeling her way around the question she wanted to ask. "I was wondering—"
"What happened to me?"
Paula nodded. "Only if you don't mind talking about it. I don't want to push you into anything."
"You told me about your ex. I could tell that was hard for you." He turned to meet her eyes, his gaze steady and serious. "And honestly, this isn't actually that bad for me to talk about. I kinda got used to it, talking to shrinks at the VA."
"It happened in the military?"
He nodded. "On deployment. It's really not that much of a story. I mean, it's not a huge exciting thing, nothing like you might be thinking. It wasn't in combat. It was more of a dumb accident."
"You really don't need to tell me unless you want to."
"I don't mind," he said gently. He reached around and brushed a curl out of her eyes. "It was a vehicle crash. Just an ordinary thing, like might have happened on a wet road here in the States. The vehicle in front of me in the convoy had to stop suddenly, and I rammed a Humvee up his ass—er, rear-ended him, that is. It shouldn't have done more than shake me up, but the road was really bad, and when the guy behind me hit me too, the Humvee ran its two side tires up on a pile of rubble and flipped. I was trapped in the wreckage."
His voice had gone tight. She smoothed a hand over his shoulder and chest, ran it up the back of his neck.
"Was anyone else hurt?" she asked quietly.
"Nah, just me. Some bruises for the other guys, that's all. But my arm was crushed. It took them hours to cut me out, and then it was straight to the hospital, and ..." He drew a shaky breath. "Yeah. So there's my big damn hero combat story."
Paula kissed the corner of his mouth lightly. She could tell he was underplaying it, that the story was more painful for him than he wanted to talk about. But she was honored that he felt comfortable enough to tell her.
"You could tell people that you were hurt saving a bunch of kids," she said. "No, orphans. And kittens. Orphans with kittens."
Dan laughed quietly. There was a hitch in the middle of it, but it sounded sincere.
She snuggled closer to him. "No, seriously, I think you were brave. Knowing you, I bet you did everything you could to avoid that accident and make sure no one else got hurt. Sometimes things like that just happen to people."
Dan didn't answer immediately, but she could feel him playing with her hair, stroking his hand through the curls. After a moment he said, "You know, a lot more vets are wounded like that than in actual combat. Just dumb accidents. The kind of thing that you get when you have a whole lot of people running around on no sleep, especially when half of them are 19-year-old kids."
"How old were you then?" she asked.
"Early thirties. Practically a geezer by military standards. I was a supply specialist."
"That sounds important."
"Well, if you ask anyone in my department, it's obviously the most important job you can have. After all, how far is anyone going to get without food, boots, or