Snowbound - Harlequin.com

130 SNOWBOUND
“Does it happen often? I mean, flashbacks?”
“No. Not like that. I duck when a garbage truck
clangs, but so do most vets at first.”
Her eyes, perplexed, met his at last. “Then why…?”
“There was an incident…” He cleared his throat. He
didn’t like talking about the war at all, but he owed
her an explanation. “Three soldiers. Something about
the way the boys arranged themselves today, their
voices…” He stopped, found himself hunching his
shoulders. “When Hopper turned back and then fell
just as that branch snapped… It was so familiar. I wasn’t
in Iraq. I knew there was snow on the ground, and that
it was you I was throwing down.”
“Protecting,” she said softly.
“But for a minute I saw blood. I thought two of the
boys had gone down.” Feeling incredibly awkward, he
studied the grain of wood in the plank floor. “It was
brief, but vivid.”
“You’ve had things like this happen before, haven’t
you? That’s why you moved up here.”
He lifted his head and glared at her. “You think I
walk around hallucinating? You’re wrong. This was an
isolated incident. War messes with your head. It takes
time to clear it.”
Puckers between her eyebrows showed that she was
still troubled as she studied him, but after a minute she
nodded. “My father was in Vietnam. To this day he
hates the Fourth of July.”
“Yeah, that would be even worse for Vietnam vets.
We didn’t have to deal with constant shelling.”
“What was the worst part?” she asked.