The Army Doc's Secret Wife. Charlotte Hawkes
only for an hour of rest. It was probably the same part of him which was finding it so damned painful to put one foot in front of the other as he shuffled along at such an interminably slow pace.
Weakness, he thought with disgust, and his father’s words echoed in his ears. Weakness has no place here.
* * *
Ben grunted with effort as he executed a one-armed pull-up out of the wingback chair and into the wheelchair which would allow him off the ward without attracting attention. Ever since Thea had visited yesterday that intern had held him hostage, running unnecessary test after test. He hadn’t managed to get out once, and it had left him feeling irritable.
Yet he couldn’t deny that his body felt stronger than ever after a full twenty hours of rest. Maybe today was the day to push himself to walk outside in the fresh air. Once he was outside, in the quieter areas of the hospital grounds, he could discard the unwanted lump of metal and force his body not to be so weak. Dr Fields was wrong. He needed to push harder, not less.
He propelled the wheelchair along strongly with his good arm, only stopping once he’d reached the peaceful gardens outside and found a quiet spot. With a deep breath he pulled himself to an unassisted standing position. So much for a walk. He didn’t think he could even take a step. Thank goodness no one could see him like this—weak as a kitten and utterly tragic.
‘So now you’re trying to kill yourself trying to walk around outside the hospital, without even a wall to lean on?’
His head jerked up. It was an effort to stay upright, but he’d be damned if he fell over in front of her. In front of anyone.
He lashed out before he could stop himself. ‘What the hell are you doing here? Are you following me?’
Thea blanched visibly at his hostility and he immediately felt ashamed of himself. Yesterday she’d been so strong, so unintimidated, he had forgotten how easily undermined she could be. The last thing he wanted was to hurt her, yet he had to stay resolute. Thea was only here because the Army had contacted her as his next of kin—as his wife.
His wife. The words echoed around Ben’s head, taunting him.
For five years there had been no contact between them, and these sure as hell weren’t the circumstances in which Ben would ever have chosen to have her back in his life. When he was helpless and unable to provide for her...to protect her. A wave of self-loathing washed over him. He wasn’t even a proper man any more. Just a shell of a man who couldn’t walk without leaning heavily on a wall, a rail, a walking frame.
Pathetic, he thought scornfully.
He needed Thea to leave. Now. And surely she wanted to leave, deep down? She couldn’t want to be with him now. No one could. He had to convince Thea that her duty was done, that he was fine and that he didn’t need her. Then she could leave, get on with her life.
He steeled himself. ‘Hell, Thea, can’t you see that I don’t want you here?’
‘I don’t understand what I’ve done to make you hate me so much.’
As fast as the anger had arrived, it disappeared. Hate her? What on earth made her think that? If anything, it should be the other way around.
Suddenly he felt exhausted. He didn’t want to fight with her any more. He just wanted her to feel free to go back to her own life whilst he concentrated on his recovery.
‘I’ve never hated you.’ Ben spoke quietly. ‘But our marriage was never meant to be anything more than on paper. You shouldn’t be here now—this isn’t your responsibility. I was just trying to make you see that.’
‘If you don’t want me here, then answer me something.’
‘Answer you what?’ he asked, wondering why he felt as though he was walking into some carefully set trap.
‘Why am I still listed on your Army paperwork as your next of kin?’
Ben felt his breathing stop, before exhaling with a whoosh of air. So he was right—she was only here under obligation, because the Army had called her. She resented him for it, and he couldn’t blame her.
‘I left you on the Army paperwork because we were married. If I’d put down someone else as my next of kin it would have raised questions.’
‘I see.’
Something flashed across her face, but it was gone before he could identify it.
He’d also left her on it so that she would always have a direct means to get in touch with him if she ever needed his help. He’d even hoped she would—especially in those first months after their wedding night. After all, they hadn’t used protection. He supposed it was a blessing that nothing had ever come of it; in his experience an absent soldier never made a good dad. And yet he suspected a tiny part of him had once hoped otherwise. Not that he could say that now.
The silence hung between them.
‘Now I see that it was a mistake,’ he ground out eventually.
* * *
A mistake. Was that really how he thought of her?
Thea felt the nausea churn in her stomach, as it had been doing practically every day since she’d heard about Ben’s accident.
She watched him edge painstakingly to the rock wall across the hidden courtyard, and resisted the urge to leap down and ram his wheelchair under his backside, just to stop him from punishing his body.
She spotted a movement out of the corner of her eye—it was the man who had been outside Ben’s hospital room that first day. She’d thought he was some kind of Army specialist, but now she wasn’t so sure. She’d seen him a few more times over the last few weeks, always observing but never making any direct contact with Ben. Perhaps he was some kind of counsellor—someone Ben could talk to. Someone who might be able to understand this irrational need Ben seemed to have to push his body to breaking point—and maybe beyond.
The first time she’d seen Ben in the wheelchair she’d felt a laugh of disbelief roll around her chest. It had been a welcome light-hearted moment in days of frustrating ignorance and gloom. Only Ben Abrams could have engendered a posse of men from his unit marching down to the hospital to present their hero commander with a racing chair which had once belonged to a former Paralympic basketball champion.
And only Ben would have hurtled around the corridors in it the following week as though he was in a rally car on a racing circuit, pushing his one good arm past its limits.
Even she, who was impervious to him now—or at least ought to be—hadn’t been able to ignore the fact that the simple white tee shirt he’d worn had done little to hide the shifts and ripples of the already well-honed muscles which had glistened, to the delight of several of the medical staff, covered with a perfect sheen of sweat.
She could still remember the feel of that solid chest against her body...the sensation of completeness as he moved inside her.
You, my girl, have all the resistance of a chocolate fireguard. She shook her head in frustration. Hadn’t she learned anything from that night? Despite his warnings, despite his resistance, she had pushed and pushed until Ben had ended up hurting her—more than she could have thought possible.
Yet here she was. And she might have come for closure, but he was already shaking up her emotions. It was difficult to keep hating a real-life hero who was prepared to sacrifice his own life for others time and again. Not just on an everyday basis, or even after Daniel had died, but when he’d been so very badly injured himself in that bomb blast.
According to some of the neighbourhood wives, all the Army convoys used frequency-jamming devices—which meant that the enemy who had detonated the IED which had caught Ben’s patrol had to have been close by. Close enough to potentially have had a shooter to take individuals out.
Ben would have known that too. With all his training it would have been one of the first things he had realised. But instead of taking