The War at Home | Adult F/F Romance [COMPLETE]

Part XVIII (new)

Elliot halted, his anger thwarted in progress. "What are you doing here?"

Romana interposed herself between Jordie and Elliot. "Protecting my best friend." She looked back at Jordie. "I heard shouting. Shall I summon the constabulary?"

"There's no need for that." Elliot crossed his thick arms and tapped the toe of his Oxford on the parquet floor. Romana considered this.

"The way you're looming, I'm not so certain."

He huffed, indignant. "I'd never strike a woman."

"How reassuring. Get away from her."

Elliot took a couple of steps backwards from both women. "What'll Edgar say when he hears about this?"

"I wouldn't worry about Edgar. The embarrassment would surely drive him to call you a liar, after he'd drunk himself sick. I'll save you the shame and exile from your band of chums. I left him because he found himself a lovely young nurse willing to fawn over his every word. Then I took him for every dime he had." Romana smiled. There were tiger sharks less frightening. "Not the story he told you, I presume. I thought not. He saved face, I got everything else. I may not have my reputation any longer, but I have everything that counts. Save. Your. Breath." She poked him in the chest with each final word till he had retreated well out of reach.

Elliot worked his jaw, looking back and forth between the two women.

When his shoulders slumped, Jordie knew he'd come to the same inevitable conclusion they had.

Their endgame was set.

"This is my mother's house, you can't have it." She had left it to Elliot when she retired to the country and they had called it home.

"You can stay with me," Romana interjected, swiftly. "There's plenty of room, for you and the little ones."

"I won't let you take the children," he objected.

Romana narrowed her eyes to slits. "When do you see them, Mr. Duff? Between your many, many surgeries and shifts on the ward? Who cares for them when you're away? The kind and maternal Mrs. Bosley?" Elliot didn't offer a rebuttal to the slight. "A lovely woman, I'm sure, but she isn't their mother."

"She left, you know. Them, me. She'll leave you. The next war will come along, the next disaster that needs a hero, and she'll be off. You aren't special. She only lets you think you are."

Romana elided this slip of Elliot's emotional mask. Her sudden reserve was daunting. Elliot was wrong. Romana had to know he was wrong.

"Let her take them for now. Stopping her, going to the courts would mean admitting the truth. Do you want to admit the truth, Elliot? In front of everyone?"

He worked his jaw. "I won't be blackmailed. This is unacceptable."

"The children couldn't have a finer mother and they will never be safer than in her care. You know that as well as I do."

Jordie resumed her place in the conversation. This was her fight and one she should be arguing herself, however she might like to take the rearguard. Jordie was the soldier; fighting was what she was for.

"Elliot, enough. I won't keep you from them. You can see them whenever you like. We won't be far."

"You were gone for years," he countered, his mien frustrated in mounting defeat. There was love there, too, she supposed. Twisted by resentment and distance, it hadn't stood a chance. Caught in a web of obligation that never should have existed, it had withered to this.

"All the more reason for me to be with them now. They need both of us. Have your anger, I accept that, but don't punish the children for it."

"If I sniff even a hint of unnatural behavior—"