Sunday, July 25. 7:26 p.m. Khandallah, a northern suburb in Wellington, New Zealand.

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From the haunted expression on Daniel’s face, Ana knew she risked hurting him. But the habit of digging for the truth wouldn’t let her rest. A part of her she could barely admit to needed to know what this woman meant to him.

His eyes were weary, dully resigned when he glanced up. “She’s a soldier I trained.”

“Oh.” She shifted on the hard ground. Daniel didn’t seem inclined to elaborate. “You’re still in contact?”

He shook his head. “I haven’t spoken to her for years. She moved to Australia.”

“Why did you say her name when you were yelling at me?”

“I shouldn’t have yelled. I apolog—”

“You’re changing the subject.”

“Am I?”

“Yes. I seem to recall you wouldn’t let me get away with doing that earlier.”

Daniel stared at her through the flickering shadows for a beat. “What I said to you about not following orders brought up some bad memories.” He pressed his lips together and remained silent.

Would she have to coerce the rest of the information from him? “Of?”

He chuckled but there was little humor in the sound. “You call me persistent and bull-headed?”

She refused to let him off the hook. “Were you two…involved?”

“No.”

“Then?”

Daniel dropped his head backward with a groan and she added, “Yeah, I know I’m pushy and won’t let it go. That’s why my colleagues used to call me a pit bull.”

“Fitting,” he muttered, tipping his head forward again to meet her eyes. “Jodie was a new recruit in my last year of service. She was twenty-two years old, with a little bit of a spoiled princess about her. She wanted a bit more adventure than shoe shopping, and enlisted. She had a tendency to try and get away with slacking off, but I pushed her to give a hundred percent. On the morning of the accident I’d had another fight with Charlotte and I didn’t notice—” He swallowed audibly and swiped a hand across his mouth. “I didn’t notice how pale she was…”

When three more seconds ticked past, she whispered, “There was an accident?”

Daniel nodded. “I ordered her on the course and she hauled herself up on the ten-foot wall, got stuck at the top. I could see her shaking, sweating.” He picked up the can of beans and stirred the spoon around for moment before releasing it. “I ran, yelling at her to halt until I got there. She didn’t listen, tried to position herself to climb down, and got dizzy. She fell. Hard.”

“God. Daniel.”

“I found out later she’d been feeling nauseous all morning. She had an ear infection which shot her balance to hell.”

“What happened to her?”

“Spinal injury. She regained some function in her legs with a shitload of therapy, but she can’t walk without a cane and she still suffers from chronic nerve pain.”

“You felt responsible.”

Daniel shot her a look that clearly said well, duh.

“Jodie didn’t tell you she was sick,” said Ana. “It’s not your fault. You can’t carry that burden of responsibility.”

“I was her superior. She was an inexperienced cadet.”

Ana reached over and plucked the can from his hands, putting it to one side. She squeezed his fingers, her chest tightening as she felt them tremble. “Did she blame you?”

“No.”

Ana cocked her head. “Tell me what you did to help her afterward.”

Daniel looked uncomfortable. “I only did what anyone else would’ve done. I visited her from time to time, kept in touch.”

She shook her head. “I know you did more than that. You went out of your way to help her.”

He shrugged. “I contributed a little financially to pay for some of her house alterations.”

“Ahh, I see.” Ana allowed a pause to grow before she spoke again. “So even though this girl didn’t blame you for the accident, it wasn’t enough for you to stop dragging that misplaced guilt around?”

“No, you don’t see. Jodie didn’t listen to me—didn’t wait for me to help her—and she’s the one permanently scarred by it.”

Connections snapped together like Lego blocks in her mind. “Oh. So you think, like Jodie, I’ll end up getting hurt because I don’t…trust you?”

“Trust is important.”

He studied her with such intensity that suddenly the space in the tent seemed to collapse around her. Were they still talking about her physical safety?

It was her turn to swallow deeply. “Yes.”

“I seem to recall you didn’t answer my question about trust earlier.” Sarcasm laced his words.

She forced herself to meet his gaze with a boldness she didn’t feel. “I trust you to get me home to my kids. Without question, I know you’ll do everything you can to make sure we get there safely.”

“That’s not the only kind of trust we’re talking about.”

Ana picked up the nearly empty can that Daniel had been playing with. She stared at a rivulet of tomato sauce dribbling down the side that looked eerily like blood. “That’s the only kind of trust I’m prepared to talk about.”

“You assume the worst of all men, or is it only me?”

She slid the can across the sleeping bag toward him. “I don’t assume anything about you; I barely know you. We’re one of those ‘six degrees of separation’ kind of deals. We’re just about strangers.”

“You don’t believe that now, any more than I do. We’re waaaay past strangers.”

They stared at each other in the flickering light. Outside a brief flash lit up the tent and seconds later thunder trundled noisily across the sky.

“Alyssa loves thunder and lightning.” It was something to say. Something to try and ease the raw, sizzling tension arcing between them.

Daniel offered her the last spoonful of beans. A peace offering, she guessed, since he sighed when she shook her head. He spooned the cold beans into his mouth.

“I would think most little kids would be scared of it,” he said once he’d swallowed.

“Most little kids are. Alyssa was, too, until Theo told her thunder was the sound of angels moving furniture around in heaven and the lightning was their flashlights searching for where to put it.” Ana wanted to smack herself on the head then clamp a hand over her mouth that wouldn’t stop flapping, fueled by an unstoppable deluge of nerves.

“No hiding under the bed with a teddy bear like Nadia used to do?”

She wrinkled her nose. “No, Alyssa’s pretty fearless.”

He moved the can off to the side. “Tell me more about her.”

Stretching the sweater over her knees and tucking them close to her chin, her eyelids drifted shut. This, at least, was safe territory. Picturing Alyssa’s toothy smile and pink cheeks turned up to her like tiny crab apples lodged a lump of bittersweet joy deep inside her. God, she loved her little girl.

“She’s got a beautiful, caring spirit. She loves people and completely skipped the stranger-danger phase that most kids go through. She adores being the center of attention and gets the biggest kick out of making people laugh.”

“She sounds like a little dynamo.” He rolled onto his side and stretched out his long legs, patting the sleeping bag. “If you’re cold, crawl in here.”

She opened her mouth to object that she wasn’t cold, but snapped it shut again.

Perhaps she’d feel less exposed and vulnerable if she were covered from neck to toe. Not to mention the warmth of the sleeping bag would neutralize the need to steal any of Daniel’s body heat. She still cringed at the memory of clinging to him like a limpet on the first night after the earthquake.

So she unzipped the sleeping bag and slithered in, managing to keep the sweater yanked down past her knees. She tugged the zipper up, enclosing herself in a mothball-scented cocoon. Hopefully, the smell of camphor would be enough to mask the masculine scent wafting off Daniel. Boy, you couldn’t swing a cat in this tiny tent without it colliding with some part of the man’s body. His seriously hot body.

“Uh. I’ll turn this lamp out, shall I? Better save the batteries.”

And save my sanity from having to look at his aforementioned hot body. She wriggled to her knees inside the sleeping bag and shuffled the few yards to the end of the tent to extinguish the comforting white light of the lamp.

Outside, a sudden squall sent a long branch of gorse scraping the side of the tent with an undulating whisper across the nylon. She crouched in the stillness, listening to the sounds of wind and rain, waiting for her eyes to adjust to the total absence of light.

“You all right?”

She turned at his voice, but the darkness was so absolute she couldn’t see any part of him.

“Yes.”

Shuffling backward, holding onto the sides of the sleeping bag so she didn’t slip out of it, she estimated her position on the floor and lay down. Her head, instead of touching the cold, hard surface of the tent’s groundsheet, came to rest on the warm, hard surface of Daniel’s arm.

“Oops—sorry!” She rolled away fast, tucking into herself, her nose inches away from the vibrating nylon. Little wonder the redness flooding her cheeks didn’t light up her nose, too, like Rudolph’s on Christmas Eve.

He chuckled. “No worries. Sweet dreams, Counselor.”

The night stretched before her, an endless loop of time spiraling off into infinity. She felt like she’d overloaded on caffeine—hyperaware and jittery—and after a few endless minutes every deep, sleepy breath that came from Daniel ratcheted up a tension in her equally created from annoyance and arousal. How would she ever make it to morning?