Read Until There Was You (Coming Home, #2) for Free Online

often he’d glance in the massive oak mirror behind the bar. Who hung a mirror over a bar in an outdoor pavilion? Still, in theflickering firelight, it was beautiful. Intricate branches wove around the edge of the glass, giving it an aged, gothic look.
    He caught her watching him. He studied her now, his gaze dark and haunted. For the longest instant, their eyes met, and Claire could not look away. Frozen in the moment, echoes of torment lashed out at her from those dark depths, a violent storm she had never, ever expected to see in Evan Loehr.
    Loss. A deep, soul-crushing loss that he did not, for the barest flash of a moment, try to hide.
    Then he blinked and looked down at his drink and just like that, the spell was broken. And Claire turned away, before she did something infinitely stupid.
    Like ask him what was wrong.
    * * *
    Evan had already done the glad-handing with the commanders. As the party ground on, he waited for a good time to slip out and head to his room while trying not to freeze to death.
    At least the fire helped heat the frigid Colorado night. The pavilion was wide open on three sides, filled with tables that had small candles floating on gel. Everyone who wasn’t huddled around the fire congregated around the bar at the far end. A flash of red caught his eye and he paused, struck by the sight of Claire in her civilian clothes. He watched her from a distance, stealing glances at that beautiful red hair.
    Evan pulled his faded Patagonia jacket closed as he watched Claire. She stood at the edge, scanning the crowd of mostly unfamiliar faces. He had never considered himself a coward before, but approaching her took a different kind of strength. As he walked across the pavilion, he recognized it for what it was: a test. Facing someone who teased the edge of his control.
    “You look like you’d rather be walking patrols in Fallujah right now.” Claire’s spine stiffened automatically at the sound of his voice, and Evan smiled. He’d snuck up behind her on purpose, remembering that first night he’d met her.
    He studied her failed attempt at a poker face. The flicker of emotion that danced in her eyes reminded him that sometimes, jokes about combat were too soon. Fallujah had been bad—really bad—both times he’d been there. And Evan hated doing shoot houses to this day, because the reality was so much worse than anything they could do in training.
    “Pretty much” was all she said in response. He wondered if she’d almost choked on that unusually restrained remark. She shivered and pulled the neck of her coat tighter around her throat. “Whose brilliant idea was it to have a bonfire in the middle of winter? A bonfire, period.”
    Evan smirked. “There is always time to rub elbows,” he said dryly.
    “Yeah, well I’d rather not do it while freezing to death. I can’t get used to being cold all the time,” she said. Her eyes danced with flames from the firelight.
    “It’s not just you. I grew up here, and I’m freezing my ass off.” He wasn’t sure why he’d shared that with her. Some part of him just wanted her to know.
    “You’re from around here?” Claire asked.
    Evan breathed out a sigh of relief, determined to keep the tentative truce between them. Talking about home seemed to be a safe enough subject. For now. “Yeah, I grew up a few miles away.”
    She frowned and tipped her chin, studying him. Old memories swirled beneath his simple statement, closer to the surface than he preferred. “Huh. Never figured you from Colorado.”
    “What’s that mean?”
    “It means I figured you were hatched from an egg or carved from stone.” He almost took offense, but her lips curled in a slight smile, and he realized she was teasinghim.
    She always put on such a façade, hiding the real woman beneath the uniform. She always kept her distance from people, and had for as long as he’d known her—which was a while now, he realized. More than three years. He hadn’t seen her much that