Snowbound - Harlequin.com

JANICE KAY JOHNSON
63
together a couple of times a year since they graduated
from college. Each took a turn choosing what they did.
A couple of them were married, he’d gathered. One
of the two single friends in particular had flirted like
mad with him. He hadn’t felt even a flicker of interest,
and she’d been more beautiful by conventional standards
than this slender teacher with the river-gray eyes.
He’d thought rather impassively that the woman who
kept making excuses to seek him out was attractive. He’d
been bothered then by the fact that he’d felt not even a
slight stirring of sexual desire. He hadn’t had had a woman
since the night before he’d shipped out for Iraq. He’d
missed sex the first months there. At some point, he’d quit
thinking about it. That part of him had gone numb.
It wasn’t that he felt nothing. Grief was his constant
companion, anger looking over its shoulder. He had
unpredictable bursts of fear. Once in a while, he allowed
himself to be grateful that he was alive and that he’d
found sanctuary.
Fiona MacPherson’s pretty gray eyes and cloud of
curly dark hair wouldn’t have been enough to draw him
from his preferred solitude. Not if something else about
her hadn’t sliced open the layer of insulation that had
kept him distant from the rest of humanity.
So what was different about her? What had he
sensed, from the moment their eyes first met?
He kept following her around in search of answers,
not out of lust.
John gave a grunt that might have been a rusty laugh.
Well, not entirely out of lust, he amended.
The sound he’d made brought her head around,