Page 81 of My One and Only

Cam nodded. “I wasn’t totally shocked -- she drank far too much.” He sighed. “I’m just glad she didn’t have a collision and take someone else with her.”

“I’m so sorry, Cam,” Jo said, edging closer to him. She wanted to take him in her arms. Comfort him. Tell him there was nothing he could have done.

But he knew that. “Thank you for sharing that with me. Poor Fiona. She must have been so confused when her mother left the house and never came back.”

“She was,” Cam sighed. “I tried to explain to her that her mom had gone away.” He sighed. “You were right. I should have told her Ashley had died and was in heaven. But I was afraid she was too young to understand. We’ve talked about it since, and I told her that Ashley was in heaven with God and the angels.” He sighed. “Came out kind of flat, because I didn’t believe it myself.”

“You’re a wonderful father,” she told Cam. “Fiona is lucky to have you. And you seem to have a great relationship with her.” She touched his cheek, cupping it in her palm. “Thank you for telling me.”

“I wanted you to know,” he said quietly. “If Ashley hadn’t been pregnant, I never would have married her.”

“But you wouldn’t have had Fiona,” she said softly. “She’s a wonderful kid. You’ve done a great job raising her.”

He managed a tiny smile. “Yeah, she is. And I can’t take all the credit. My parents have helped a lot.”

“But you’re her father,” Jo said. “And you’re a really solid one.”

Cam sighed. He hadn’t wanted to tell Jo all the ugly secrets about his marriage, but he was glad he’d gotten it off his chest.

He reached for her hands. “You don’t have to tell me about your marriage, if you’d rather not,” he said. “I’m not going to press you.”

She twined her hands with his. “No, I want to tell you,” she murmured.

She looked down at their joined hands and took a deep breath. Blew it out. “I think I told you I was in Afghanistan,” she began. “I was a grunt, like almost everyone else. Doing patrols. Talking to villagers, trying to win them over to our side. Surveillance. All the stuff grunts do in the Army.”

She took a deep breath. “Mike was in Delta Force. It’s an elite group that’s chosen from Army Rangers. They do hostage rescues, reconnaissance, hunting down high value targets. Stuff like that. We were stationed at the same base.”

She sighed. “I wasn’t looking to hook up with anyone. But Mike was a charming guy. And very good at his job.” She gave Cam a half-smile. “Hard not to like a person who’s good at their job. We got involved, and it was all just fun and games.” She sighed. “Sex, mostly. Until he got injured.”

Cam tightened his grip on her hands. “What happened?”he murmured.

“His jeep ran over an IED. He was driving, so he got the worst of it.” She drew in a shuddering breath. “He lost both his legs. A very high injury, not much left of his thighs.” She swallowed. “He was in the hospital for a long time. I married him so he’d have someone to advocate for him. Someone to pay attention to what the doctors and nurses were doing for him.

“They transferred him to Germany, and I went with him. He was in bad shape. They weren’t even sure he’d be able to wear prostheses on his legs.” She looked down at her lap and swallowed hard. “He had several surgeries, but he wasn’t interested in doing the work to get strong enough to even try prostheses. He took a lot of painkillers, though. Needed them.”

“What happened, Jo?” Cam tightened his grip on her hands.

She sighed. “Turned out he wasn’t taking all his pain medication. He was hoarding it. And one day, when I went down to the cafeteria to have lunch, he took almost a whole bottle of opioids. By the time I got back to his room, he was already gone.”

“And you felt responsible,” Cam said softly. “You were eaten up by ‘what ifs’. What if you’d made sure he always took his medicine. What if you hadn’t gone down to lunch when you did. What if you’d just eaten lunch in his room. What if… what if… what if.”

“Yeah,” she said, staring at their joined hands instead of looking at him. “His parents didn’t blame me, but they didn’t have to. I blamed myself. I’d married him so I could take care of him, and I’d failed miserably.”

Finally she looked up at him. “That’s when I left the Army. While I was at the hospital with Mike, I met Mel. She was CIA at the time, and one of her men had gotten injured.” She shrugged. “She was the only person that I connected with, besides Mike. And she told me, if I ever wanted a job, to give her a call. She even gave me one of her cards.

“Eventually, I did call her. She and Dev, who I also had met, had started Blackhawk Security by then. She offered me a job, and I took it without hesitating. I wanted to get away from everything connected to the Army and how Mike had died.”

Cam tightened his grip on her hands. “Do you enjoy your work as a bodyguard?”he asked

“I love it,” she said. She closed her eyes and swallowed hard. “The only good thing to come of Mike dying.”

“Do you think that you and Mike would have made it if he hadn’t died?”

Jo stared at him for a long moment. Finally, she shook her head. “No. We wouldn’t have.”

Cam frowned. “How come?”

“Mike was a moment in time. I only married him so he’d have someone to advocate for him. Someone to get straight answers from the doctors. I liked him, but I didn’t love him.”

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