In the Arms of a Soldier Read Free Page B

apartment in his boxer shorts then.  Could I really never have noticed before?
    A little voice in the back of my mind reminded me that I’d still been with Mike when Josh had left.  Mike had spent nearly every night we weren’t working at Josh’s and my apartment.  Maybe I’d been too wrapped up in him to even notice the guy living right down the hall—the guy I’d known forever.  I glanced down at my own outfit—a stretchy camisole and boy shorts from Victoria’s Secret.  They were much less revealing than every single bikini that I owned, but I suddenly found myself wondering if I should have thrown on my silk robe or at least a long cardigan.  I was practically wandering around in my underwear myself.
    Josh turned to grin at me as I casually wandered over toward the coffee pot, acting as if everything were perfectly normal.  I poured myself a cup of dark roasted coffee—just the way both of us liked it.  “Morning sleepyhead,” he said.
    I laughed as I turned toward him.  “Sleepyhead?  It looks like you just got up yourself.  I just pulled three days of twelve-hour shifts—or maybe you forgot?”
    “ Nah, I’m just teasing you.  I’m so jet-lagged I thought it was already afternoon.  It was a relief when I finally glanced at my alarm clock and saw that it was only 8:30 a.m.  Man, do I feel groggy though.”
    “Welcome to my life,” I joked.  “Alternating between day and night shifts is no way to live—I can’t keep my days straight half the time.”
    “I’m sure you manage just fine,” he said reassuringly.
    “Yeah, well, now that you’re back, don’t be surprised if you come home and find me fast asleep as some ridiculously early hour.  You’ll be headed for a night out, and I’ll be headed to bed.  Hazard of the job,” I joked.
    Josh pulled a spatula from the drawer and scooped up fried eggs for each of us, delicately sliding them onto two plates so as not to break the tender yolk.   He then speared the bacon with a fork and divided the pieces he’d cooked between us.  “You bought new plates,” he commented.
    “Yeah, the old ones were from college.  I figured it was time to buy something new.”
    He nodded distractedly, turning off the stove as he grabbed utensils for each of us from the drawer.  I carried my coffee mug over to the table, knowing Josh would bring us each our plates.  A vase of fresh daisies sat at the center that one of my coworkers had given to me as a thank-you for covering her shift the other day.  For the briefest flash of a moment I wondered what it would be like to always have Josh in my life—to wake up to breakfast together every morning, to know that every holiday and family event would be spent at his side.  We had spent plenty of breakfasts together, not to mention holidays over the years.  Things were always so easy between us—of course they were, because we’d know each other forever.  Being with him felt as comfortable as being alone, if that made any sense.  It was hard to remember a time when Josh hadn’t been in my life.  I’d never really considered him in a romantic way before, and these sudden moments where I noticed his very male physique now that he was back and the few times I’d caught some emotion passing in the depths of his eyes were leaving me slightly confused.  Had it been so long since I’d been with a man that I was suddenly lusting after Josh?  Or had something between us really changed?
    “Go ahead, dig in,” he said, gesturing toward my plate.
    I realized that I’d just been staring at my food, lost in thought, and picked up my fork and speared the yolk of my egg, watching the yellow gooiness spread across my plate.  “Thanks for making breakfast,” I said, taking a bite of my food.
    “Of course.”  We dug into our food and didn’t speak for the next several minutes, each lost in our own thoughts.  “You seem different,” Josh said after he’d finished eating.
    “I do? ”  I