Betrayal of the Dove - By Capri Montgomery Page 0,61

empathize with him because they knew what the life was—they had lived it themselves.

Here, he could talk to her, and she would understand a little, but she would never truly know the situations he had been in, or how he was dealing with the aftermath of them. She had military brothers so she knew something about it, but even her brothers were closed when it came to discussing the heartache they had seen during their career. She knew they had suffered. Gavin avoided an entire city when he vowed not to set foot in D.C. again, which was more to do with the Sabian issue than anything; and Thomas had gone on the hunt for over a decade, putting his personal life in the freezer, basically, so that he could get justice for his dead friends. Thena had thawed him a little, but even with her he had held on without wanting to promise her forever until his vendetta was over. And now, she was with another military man who seemed to fail the test of communication. The walls went up the second she asked about his family. She felt it, felt the tension, and knew the moment he shut down. If they were going to be more than bed buddies with each other then he needed to talk with her. She fell so hard for him in such a short time that it scared her. But what scared her more was knowing that he might not ever really be able to connect with her.

“Okay,” she sighed when she realized he had no plans of opening his mouth to speak. “I’ll tell you a little about me…about why I’m afraid to love again.” He just laid there looking up at the ceiling, probably counting the tiles above them so he could disconnect even more.

“My dad cheated on my mom. Nobody ever saw that one coming. He just…he left her, left us as a family. My mom was completely oblivious. Here she was, by his side during his stay in the hospital and he was busy falling in love with a volunteer assistant…think candy striper who looked like a Playboy cosmetically enhanced playmate and you have what he left my mother for.” She was still angry about it. Her dad had some blockage in one of his leg arteries and he had gone in for surgery. They were going to let him go home, but some complications arose and he ended up staying in the hospital for nearly three weeks. And in three weeks he had successfully destroyed over thirty years of marriage to the woman he claimed to love; to the woman who had been the mother of his children.

“I was so angry,” she told him. “I still am.” Her eyes drifted over to the far corner of the room, absently watching the floor as if there were some mysterious object there to entrance her. “Anyway, for a long time I just didn’t want to expose myself to that kind of heartache. I mean, I saw how my mom took it. She tried to be strong for us. She didn’t want us to think badly about our father. But I heard the tears she cried behind closed doors. I saw the pain in her eyes after every meeting with her attorney. I saw the longing for what used to be and I didn’t want that. But, she got over it, and she moved on. She found a good man, remarried, she’s happy, and in love. I guess I had gotten over my fear too—for a little while anyway.” She could hear the distant, detached tone her voice was suddenly taking. It was the only way she could tell anybody about what happened. “I met a great guy—at least I thought he was. He had walked into my store, so confident and sexy. He wasn’t tall, not even as tall as you,” she laughed, “but I’m short so his height never bothered me. He was cute too. And I fell for him hard. We were talking marriage. And when I went to surprise him in Utah I found out he was already married.” She laughed absently at her own stupidity. “Yeah, here I was, hating the “other woman” who had busted up my mom and dad’s marriage, and I was suddenly her—unknowingly and unwillingly, but just because I didn’t know didn’t change the fact that I was the other woman. And for a while I hated myself for that. And I