Snowbound - Harlequin.com

CHAPTER FIVE
JOHN COULDN’T REMEMBER enjoying a day more since
before he’d gone overseas. He was hungry to learn more
about Fiona, and regretted it every time she walked
away to deal with the kids.
He couldn’t figure out why he didn’t feel disdain and
even contempt for someone who struck him as remarkably
naive. These days, most teenagers like her
charges had long since shed their innocence. Yet
somehow she’d held on to a basically sunny faith that
other people had good intentions.
What would someone like her make of Iraq now, he
found himself wondering, with its confusion of loyalties
and ancient hatreds and modern, militant Islamic
fanatics? How would she deal with the sight of a
recently beheaded hostage, a man who’d come over
with no interest in war or politics, intending only to
work in the oilfields and make the extra money that
would get his family out of debt?
John found, to his surprise, that he didn’t want to
know how she’d react. He thanked God she’d never seen
anything so horrific, and hoped she never would. There
was a place for her kind of optimism in the world, even