Shielded by the Ruthless Military Boss novel · Chapter 15 of 24

Chapter 15: Leah's POV

Leah's POV

I had packed in nine minutes.

Clover sat on the porch steps with her phone in her lap, pretending not to listen, and I stood in the hall with my coat on when the front door opened.

He stopped when he saw the duffel bag.

"Colonel Kerrigan," I said.

"Leah."

"You bought my family and let me think it was mine to fix."

He did not move.

"For three years I worked doubles and nights," I said. "Every month I sent my mother six hundred dollars for the house."

"I know."

"You know now. Did you know then?"

"Not until Sunday dinner." His voice was rough. "You looked at the envelopes on her sideboard, and your face changed."

"Because I had."

My hands shook, so I put them in my pockets.

"She took my money and yours. She took the same daughter to two buyers, and you were one of them."

"I was never a buyer."

"You paid her."

"I paid a bank," he said, "so that no bank and no Pollard could ever use that house to make you do anything. Your mother did the rest on her own."

That was an answer, and I hated that it was one.

"And the coffee."

He went very still.

"Clover says it comes from the Army liaison," I said. "There's no liaison, is there?"

"No."

"It's you."

"Every night shift."

I looked at him, at the gray eyes and the gray at his temples and the hand that had stayed flat on the wall beside him as if he needed it.

"Why didn't you say anything?"

"Because you would have said thank you."

"That's a terrible reason."

"I'm finished with your thanks, Leah." His voice cracked on my name. "I never wanted it. I wanted you. I wanted you before you knew my name. The marriage was the only way I could keep you alive, and I took it, and I am not sorry. I'm sorry I did not tell you why."

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