Serving the Soldier - Part 4 (An Alpha Military Romance) by Helen Grey Page A

quality of life.
    No actions limiting family access were ever taken lightly, and only in the most extreme and serious circumstances. Sometimes families did more harm than good, but this was mainly caused by their lack of knowledge. Maybe Stephanie had not thought of the repercussions of removing the bandage from Jax’s back. If I tried really hard, I suppose I could understand her curiosity. I wasn't the only one who sometimes allowed my curiosity to override my better judgment.
    Maybe I had been judging Stephanie too harshly. I glanced back down at them, standing on the deck surrounding the pool. I saw Jax laugh, and then I gasped in dismay when Stephanie slapped him. He laughed again. My blood boiled. What the hell? To my surprise, Jax merely placed his hands on Stephanie's shoulders and pulled her toward him. He began to kiss the living daylights out of her, or at least that's how it looked from my perspective.
    My heart sank. He still had feelings for her. Shit. I turned away from the window. I didn't want to witness another display of affection, animal attraction, or whatever those two called it.
    I paced my room for several minutes, and then my curiosity got the better of me. moved out into the hallway. From the window at the end, I could see the driveway, her fancy-smancy car parked in the middle, nose end pointing toward the street. I stood beside the window and glanced outside, trying to keep myself hidden so that on the off chance that Jax looked up, he wouldn't see me spying on them. They were getting into her car. He was getting into the passenger seat. Good. At least he was using his head for a change. Once again, I wondered what had attracted Jax to Stephanie, other than her beauty, because her personality sucked.
    I had no idea how long they'd be gone and I told myself that I didn’t care. I didn't really have anything to do, so I meandered around the house, straightening up. I started in the kitchen, washing the dishes and then putting them away. Of course he had a dishwasher, but I'd never gotten used to using one so it wasn’t a big deal for me to wash dishes by hand. It was actually kind of calming and therapeutic.
    After the dishes were done, I looked under the kitchen sink and found an old feather duster and some furniture polish. There wasn't that much polish left in the can, but I would do what I could. Might as well make myself useful, I thought. Besides, I needed something to distract myself anyway.
    I took a quick turn around the living room and then headed into the den across the hall, the cozy, lived in room with the television set. Plenty of wood work to dust in here. In addition to the entertainment center, a wall of cabinets, broken up by a wooden shelf that might have served as a bar in times gone by, took up the short wall. I straightened it up, dusted, and then accidentally bumped my knee into one of the lower cabinets. One of the doors popped open.
    I crouched down and peeked inside. Stacks of what looked like bound reports and papers. Reams of them. By the dust on the top layers, it looked as if they had been accumulating and been added to for some time. They didn't seem to be in any particular order. I reached in and pulled out about five inches worth of paper and balanced them on my knee. A lot of them look to be of military origin; on-base housing information, copies of orders, payment statements, and so forth. It wasn't like I was looking through every single document, but just shuffling through the stack.
    About halfway down, I came across a stapled set of papers that look like divorce documents. I paused, knowing I had no business to be snooping again, especially through what looked to be more of Jax’s personal paperwork. But once again, and inevitably, my innate nosiness was going to kick me in the ass.
    I carefully read through the divorce papers. He had filed for divorce from Stephanie a little over a year ago. They had been married less than four years. He had listed