A Soldier for Keeps Read Online Free Page B

dropped behind the wheel.
    It was going to be interesting. The wipers on high were not keeping up with the snow. He buckled in, his gaze straying to the rearview mirror, where she was right there in plain sight. Her dark hair was slightly mussed and dappled with melting snow. His heart began to beat faster as he put the rig in gear and put in a prayer for a safe trip. He hoped the pass would be open when they hit it or they would all be stuck at the lodge for a good while.
    “Is this your first time rescuing a skier, or is this how all your days off go?”
    “My days off are far and few between. Even now, I could be called in.” He released the e-brake and eased away from the curb. “I have packed injured soldiers on my back before, just not on skis.”
    “Giselle has only mentioned you in passing, but I know she worries about what you do. If you’re an Army Ranger, you get into a lot of danger.”
    “Now and then.” Most of the time, but that was harder to say. He figured a girl as sheltered and as sweet as Lexie might not want to hear about the details he could tell her. “It’s a dangerous world, and the military keeps me pretty busy.”
    “You’ve been deployed for a long time. Am I remembering right?”
    “It started to feel like a decade.” He circled through the lot, squinting hard for the signs that ought to point him in the direction of the highway. There they were, coated with snow. He couldn’t read them, but he knew he was on the right track. In the vehicle behind them, he could just make out the flash signal of Hawk’s truck.
    He took the on-ramp at a crawl. If any cars were on the road ahead of him, he saw no evidence of them. The windshield wipers beat a quick cadence. The defroster blasted air on high. “You know when you watch a movie that’s set ten years ago, and you realize how everything used to be?”
    “I do. How funny the clothes back then were, when they didn’t seem funny at the time. And hairstyles.”
    “That’s how I feel a lot of the time. I come back from a forward base in the desert and suddenly I can order pizza with cheesy sticks.”
    “I love cheesy sticks.”
    “And there’s more channels than I can count on the TV. There’s TiVo and call waiting and people rushing around in their cars without worrying about mortar fire. It’s great, don’t get me wrong, just surreal. At first. Until I acclimate, which is just about the time I ship out again.”
    “You probably get used to living a pretty sparse existence when you’re deployed. One of my friends, weused to room together, she married a marine. He did recon, and it sounded as if his life was duty, training and missions.”
    “That about sums it up. Free time can be ten minutes a day. Other days, that’s just wishful thinking.”
    “And you had an entire afternoon off and I messed it up.”
    “You did.” His eyes twinkled at her in the mirror. “Because you were a bad skier, here I am.”
    “Hey! I’m not a bad skier. It wasn’t me. Exactly.” She liked that he was laughing; it was a cozy, friendly sound. “There was this teenager. He got in front of me and wiped out. I couldn’t get around him in time.”
    “I remember that kid. He was hanging out off the side, scratching his head, like he’d decided to take the harder run, gotten around the first turn and realized he’d made a mistake.”
    “That’s the one. I’m glad he wasn’t really hurt, but I could have done without the broken ankle. I have to work tonight. I hate to think about what my boss is going to say.”
    “You can still be a resident advisor, right?” He peered straight ahead, concentrating on navigating the dark, snowbound road. “You aren’t lifting heavy boxes or operating big machinery.”
    “No, I have a second job. At the library.”
    “Two jobs?”
    “Graduate tuition at a private university is way expensive. I went to a state university for my B.A., but bad memories.” She could only see part of his face reflected