A Soldier's Secret

by RaeAnne Thayne

  “The Lazy Susan is always great or any of the B and Bs, really.”

  Or you could invite him to breakfast.

  The thought whispered through her mind and she blinked, wondering where in the world it came from. That just wasn’t the sort of thing she did. Now, Abigail would have done it in a heartbeat, and Sage probably would have as well, but Anna wasn’t nearly as audacious.

  But the thought persisted, growing stronger and stronger. Finally the words seemed to just blurt from her mouth. “Look, I’d be happy to fix something for you. I was in the mood for French toast anyway and it’s silly to make it just for me.”

  He stared at her for a long moment, his eyes wide with surprise. The silence dragged on a painfully long time, until heat soaked her cheeks and she wanted to dive into the cold waves to escape.

  “Sorry. Forget it. Stupid suggestion.”

  “No. No, it wasn’t. I was just surprised, that’s all. Breakfast would be great, if you’re sure it’s not too much trouble.”

  “Not at all. Can you give me about forty-five minutes to finish with Conan’s morning walk?”

  “No problem. That will give me a chance to finish my run and take a shower.”

  Now there was a visual she didn’t need etched into her brain like acid on glass. She let out a breath. “Great. I’ll see you then.”

  With a wave of his arm, sling and all, he headed back up the beach toward Brambleberry House.

  With strict discipline, she forced herself not to watch after him. Instead, she gripped Conan’s leash tightly so he wouldn’t follow his new best friend and forced him to come with her by walking with firm determination in the other direction.

  What just happened there? She had to be completely insane. Temporarily possessed by the spirit of Abigail that Sage and Julia seemed convinced still lingered at Brambleberry House.

  She faced what was undoubtedly shaping up to be another miserable day sitting in the courtroom listening to more evidence of her own foolishness. And because she felt compelled to attend every moment of the trial, she had tons of work awaiting her at both the Cannon Beach and Lincoln City stores.

  So what was she thinking? She had absolutely no business inviting a sexy injured war veteran to breakfast.

  Remember your abysmal judgment when it comes to men, she reminded herself sternly.

  It was just breakfast, though. He was her tenant and it was her duty to get to know the man living upstairs in her home. She was just being a responsible landlady.

  Still, she couldn’t control the excited little bump of anticipation. Nor could she ignore the realization that she was looking forward to the day more than she had anything else since before Christmas, when everything safe and secure she thought she had built for herself crashed apart like a house built on the shifting, unstable sands of Cannon Beach.

  This might be easier than he thought.

  Fresh from the shower, Max pulled a shirt out of his duffel, grateful it was at least moderately unwrinkled. It wouldn’t hurt to make a good impression on his new landlady. So far she didn’t seem suspicious of him—he doubted she would have invited him to breakfast otherwise.

  Now there was an odd turn of events. He had to admit, he was puzzled as all hell by the invitation. Why had she issued it? And so reluctantly, too. She had looked as shocked by it as he had been.

  The woman baffled him. She seemed a contradiction. Yesterday she had been all prim and proper in her business suit, today she had appeared fresh and lovely as a spring morning and far too young to own a seaside mansion and two businesses.

  He didn’t understand her yet. But he would, he vowed.

  Not so difficult to puzzle out had been his own reaction to her. When he had seen her walking and had recognized Conan, he had been stunned and more than a little disconcerted by the instant heat pooling in his gut.

  Rather inconvenient, that surge of lust. His unwilling attraction to Anna Galvez. He would no doubt have a much easier time focusing on his goal without that particular complication.

  How, exactly, was he supposed to figure out if Ms. Galvez had conned a sweet old lady when he couldn’t seem to wrap his feeble male brain around anything but pulling all that thick, glossy hair out of its constraints, burying his fingers in it and devouring her mouth with his?

  He yanked off the pain-in-the-ass waterproof covering he had to use to protect his most recent cast from yet another reconstructive surgery and carefully eased his arm through the sleeve of the shirt. He was almost—but not quite—accustomed to the pain that still buzzed across his nerve endings whenever he moved the arm.

  It wasn’t as bad as it used to be. After more than a dozen surgeries in six months, he could have a little mobility now without scorching agony.

  He had to admit, he couldn’t say he was completely sorry about his unexpected attraction to Anna Galvez. In some ways it was even a relief. He hadn’t been able to summon even a speck of interest in a woman since the crash, not even to flirt with the pretty army nurses at the hospital in Germany and then later at Walter Reed.

  He had worried that something internal might have been permanently damaged in the crash, since what he had always considered a relatively healthy libido seemed to have dried up like a wadi in a sandstorm.

  He had even swallowed his pride and asked one of the doctors about it just before his discharge and had been told not to worry about it. He’d been assured that his body had only been a little busy trying to heal, just as his mind had been struggling with his guilt over the deaths of two members of his flight crew.

  When the time was right, he’d been told, all the plumbing would probably work just as it had before.

  It might be inconvenient that he was attracted to Anna Galvez, inconvenient and more than a little odd, since he had never been attracted to the prim, focused sort of woman before, but he couldn’t truly say he was sorry about it.

  And if he needed a reminder of why he couldn’t pursue the attraction, he only needed to look around him at the familiar walls of Brambleberry House.

  For all he knew, Anna Galvez was the sneaky, conniving swindler his mother believed her to be, working her wiles to gull his elderly aunt out of this house and its contents, all the valuable antiques and keepsakes that had been in his father’s family for generations.

  He wouldn’t know until he had run a little reconnaissance here to see where things stood.

  His father had been the only child of Abigail’s solitary sibling, her sister Suzanna, which made Max Abigail’s only living relative.

  Though he hadn’t really given it much thought—mostly because he didn’t like thinking about his beloved great-aunt’s inevitable passing—he supposed he had always expected to inherit Brambleberry House someday.

  Finding out she had left the house to two strangers had been more than a little bit surprising.

  She must not have loved you enough.

  The thought slithered through his mind, cold and mean, but he pushed it away. Abigail had loved him. He could never doubt that. For some inexplicable reason, she had decided to give the house to two strangers and he was determined to find out why.

  And this morning provided a perfect opportunity to give Anna Galvez a little closer scrutiny, so he’d better get on with things.

  Buttoning a shirt with one good hand genuinely sucked, he had discovered over the last six months, but it wasn’t nearly as tough as trying to maneuver an arm that didn’t want to cooperate through the unwieldy holes in a T-shirt or, heaven forbid, a long-sleeved sweater, so he persevered.

  When he finished, he put the blasted sling on again, ran a comb through his hair awkwardly with his left hand, then headed for the stairs, his hand on the banister he remembered Abigail waxing to a lustrous sheen just so he could slide down it when he was a boy.

  Delicious smells greeted him the moment he headed downstairs—coffee, bacon, hash browns and something sweet and yeasty. His stomach rumbled but he reminded himself he was a soldier, trained to withstand tempt
ation.

  No matter how seemingly irresistible.

  He paused outside Abigail’s door, a little astounded at the sudden nerves zinging through him.

  It was one thing to inhabit the top floor of Brambleberry House. It was quite another, he discovered, to return to Abigail’s private sanctuary, the place he had loved so dearly.

  The rooms beyond this door had been his haven when he was a kid. The one safe anchor in a tumultuous, unstable childhood—not the house, he supposed, as much as the woman who had been so much a part of it.

  No matter what might be happening in his regular life—whether his mother was between husbands or flushed with the glow of new love that made her forget his existence or at the bitter, ugly end of another marriage—Abigail had always represented safety and security to him.

  She had been fun and kind and loving and he had craved his visits here like a drunk needed rotgut. He had looked forward to the two weeks his mother allowed him with fierce anticipation the other fifty weeks of the year. Whenever he walked through this door, he had felt instantly wrapped in warm, loving arms.

  And now a stranger lived here. A woman who had somehow managed to convince an old woman to leave her this house.

  No matter how lovely Anna Galvez might be, he couldn’t forget that she had usurped Abigail’s place in this house.

  It was hers now and he damn well intended to find out why.

  He drew in a deep breath, adjusted his sling one more time, then reached out to knock on Abigail’s door.

  Chapter Three

  She opened the door wearing one of his aunt’s old ruffled bib aprons.

  He recognized it instantly, pink flowers and all, and had a sudden image of Abigail in the kitchen, bedecked with jewels as always, grinning and telling jokes as she cooked up a batch of her famous French toast that dripped with caramel and brown sugar and pralines.

  He had to admit he found the dichotomy a little disconcerting. Whether Anna was a con artist or simply a modern businesswoman, he wouldn’t have expected her to be wearing something so softly worn and old-fashioned.

  He doubted Abigail had ever looked quite as appealing in that apron. Anna Galvez’s skin had a rosy glow to it and the friendly pink flowers made her look exotically beautiful in contrast.

  “Good morning again,” she said, her smile polite, perhaps even a little distant.

  Maybe he ought to forget this whole thing, he thought. Just head back out the door and up the stairs. He could always grab a granola bar and a cola for breakfast.

  He wasn’t sure he was ready to face Abigail’s apartment just yet, and especially not with this woman looking on.

  “Something smells delicious in here, like you’ve gone to a whole lot of work. I hope this isn’t a big inconvenience for you.”

  Her smile seemed a little warmer. “Not at all. I enjoy cooking, I just don’t get the chance very often. Come in.”

  She held the door open for him and he couldn’t figure out a gracious way to back out. Doing his best to hide his sudden reluctance, he stepped through the threshold.

  He shouldn’t have worried.

  Nothing was as he remembered. When Abigail was alive, these rooms had been funky and cluttered, much like his aunt, with shelves piled high with everything from pieces of driftwood to beautifully crafted art pottery to cheap plastic garage-sale trinkets.

  Abigail had possessed her own sense of style. If she liked something, she had no compunction about displaying it. And she had liked a wide variety of things.

  The fussy wallpaper he remembered was gone and the room had been painted a crisp, clean white. Even more significant, a few of the major walls had been removed to open up the space. The thick, dramatic trim around the windows and ceiling was still there and nothing jarred with the historic tone of the house but he had to admit the space looked much brighter. Cleaner.

  Elegant, even.

  He had only a moment to absorb the changes before a plaintive whine echoed through the space. He followed the sound and discovered Conan just on the other side of the long sofa that was canted across the living room.

  The dog gazed at him with longing in his eyes and though he practically knocked the sofa cushions off with his quivering, he made no move to lunge at him.

  Max blinked at the canine. “All right. What’s with the dog? Did somebody glue his haunches to the sofa?”

  She made a face. “No. We’re working on obedience. I gave him a strict sit-stay command before I opened the door. I’m afraid it’s not going to last, as much as he wants to be good. I’m sorry.”

  “I don’t mind. I like dogs.”

  He particularly liked this one and had since Conan was a pup Abigail had rescued from the pound, though he certainly couldn’t tell her that.

  She took pity on the dog and released him from the position with a simple “Okay.”

  Conan immediately rushed for Max, nudging at him with that big furry red-gold head, just as a timer sounded through the room.

  “Perfect. That’s everything. Do you mind eating in the kitchen? I have a great view of the ocean from there.”

  “Not at all.”

  He didn’t add that Abigail’s small kitchen, busy and cluttered as it was, had always been his favorite room of the house, the very essence of what made Brambleberry House so very appealing.

  He found the small round table set with Abigail’s rose-covered china and sunny yellow napkins. A vase of fresh flowers sent sweet smells to mingle with the delicious culinary scents.

  “Can I do anything?”

  “No, everything’s all finished. I just need to pull it from the oven. You can go ahead and sit down.”

  He sat at one of the place settings where he had a beautiful view of the sand and the sea and the haystacks offshore. He poured coffee for both of them while Conan perched at his feet and he could swear the dog was grinning at him with male camaraderie, as if they shared some secret.

  Which, of course, they did.

  In a moment, Anna returned to the table with a casserole dish. She set it down then removed covers from the other plates on the table and his mouth watered again at the crispy strips of bacon and mound of scrambled eggs.

  “This is enough to feed my entire platoon, ma’am.”

  She grimaced. “I haven’t cooked for anyone else in a while. I’m afraid I got a little carried away. I hope you’re hungry.”

  “Starving, actually.”

  He was astonished to find it was true. The sea air must be agreeing with him. He’d lost twenty pounds in the hospital and though the doctors had been strictly urging him to do something about putting it back on, he hadn’t been able to work up much enthusiasm to eat anything.

  Nice to know all his appetites seemed to be returning.

  He took several slices of bacon and a hefty mound of scrambled eggs then scooped some of the sweet-smelling concoction from the glass casserole dish.

  The moment he lifted the fork to his mouth, a hundred memories came flooding back of other mornings spent in this kitchen, eating this very thing for breakfast. It had been his favorite as long as he could remember and he had always asked for it.

  “This is—” Aunt Abigail’s famous French toast, he almost said, but caught himself just in time. “Delicious. Really delicious.”

  When she smiled, she looked almost as delectable as the thick, caramel-covered toast, and just as edible. “Thank you. It was a specialty of a dear friend of mine. Every time I make it, it reminds me of her.”

  He slanted her a searching look across the table. She sounded sincere—maybe too sincere. He wanted to take her apparent affection for Abigail at face value but he couldn’t help wondering if his cover had been blown. For all he knew, she had seen a picture of him in Abigail’s things and guessed why he was here.

  If she truly were a con artist and knew he was Abigail’s nephew come to check things out, wouldn’t she lay it on thick about how much she adored his aunt to allay his suspicions?

  “That’s
nice,” he finally said. “It sounds like you cared about her a lot.”

  She didn’t answer for several seconds, long enough that he wondered if she were being deliberately evasive. He felt as if he were tap-dancing through a damn minefield.

  “I did,” she finally answered.

  Conan whined a little and settled his chin on his forepaws, just as if he somehow understood exactly whom they were talking about and still missed Abigail.

  Impossible, Max thought. The dog was smart but not that smart.

  “I’ve heard horror stories about army food,” Anna said, changing the subject. “Is it as awful as they say?”

  Even as he applied himself to the delicious breakfast, his mind couldn’t seem to stop shifting through the nuances and implications of every word she said and he wondered why she suddenly seemed reluctant to discuss Abigail after she had been the one to bring her into the conversation. Still, he decided not to push her. He would let her play things her way for now while he tried to figure out the angles.

  “Army food’s not bad,” he said, focusing on her question. “Army hospital food, that’s another story. This is gourmet dining to me after the last few months.”

  “How long were you in the hospital?”

  Just as she didn’t want to talk about Abigail, he sure as hell didn’t want to discuss his time in the hospital.

  “Too damn long,” he answered, then because his voice sounded so harsh, he tried to amend his tone. “Six months, on and off, with rehab and surgeries and everything.”

  Her eyes widened and she set down her own fork. “Oh, my word! Tracy—the real estate agent with the property management company—told me you had been hurt in Iraq but I had no idea your injuries were so severe!”

  He fidgeted a little, wishing they hadn’t landed on this topic. He hated thinking about the crash or his injuries—or the future that stretched out ahead of him, darkly uncertain.

  “I wasn’t in the hospital the entire time. A month the first time, mostly in the burn unit, but I needed several surgeries after that to repair my shoulder and arm then skin grafts and so on. All of it took time. And then I picked up a staph infection in the meantime and that meant another few weeks in the hospital. Throw in a month or so of rehab before they’d release me and here we are.”