A Soldier's Secret

by RaeAnne Thayne

  She couldn’t make him stay. She knew that with the same conviction. She might want him to, with sudden, fierce desperation, but she couldn’t hold him here.

  When his shoulder healed, he would return to his unit, to his helicopter, and would go wherever he was needed, no matter how dangerous.

  Even if his arm didn’t heal as well as he hoped, she couldn’t see him sticking around. Brambleberry House was a temporary stop on his life’s journey and there was nothing she could do to change that.

  She sighed, just a tiny breath of air, but it was enough to awaken him. Watching him come back to consciousness was a fascinating experience. No doubt it was the soldier in him but he didn’t ease into wakefulness, he just instantly blinked his eyes open.

  Her brothers always told her she did the same thing—one minute, she could be in deep REM sleep, the next she was wide-awake and ready to rock and roll.

  They used to tease her that she slept with the proverbial one eye open, as if she was afraid one of them would sneak into her room during the night and steal her dolls. Not that she ever had many, but could she help it if she liked to protect what little she had from pesky older brothers?

  “Hi,” Max murmured, a sexy rasp to his voice, and Anna forgot all about brothers and dolls and sleeping.

  “Hi yourself.” She smiled, determined to savor every single moment she had with him. Why waste time wishing he could be a different sort of man, the kind who might be happy rattling around an old house like this for the rest of his life?

  “Have I been asleep long?”

  She shook her head. “A half hour, maybe.”

  “Sorry. I didn’t mean to doze off on you.”

  “I didn’t mind. It was…nice.” A major understatement, but she wasn’t about to risk scaring him off by revealing just how much she had treasured a quiet moment to savor being in his arms.

  He gazed down at her, an oddly tender expression in his hazel eyes that stole her breath and left her stomach doing cartwheels again.

  “It has been. Everything. I never expected this, Anna. You have to know that.”

  She smiled, her heart full and light. “I didn’t, either. But a gift can be all the more rare and precious when it’s unexpected.”

  “Is that more of Abigail’s wisdom?”

  “No. Just mine.”

  With surprising dexterity, he tugged her with his left arm so she was lying across his chest, then he twisted his hand in her hair so he could angle her mouth to meet his kiss. “You are a wise woman, Anna Galvez.”

  She smiled. “I don’t know about that. But I’m learning.”

  They kissed and touched and explored for a long time there in the dark, quiet intimacy of her room. At last he pulled her atop him, letting her set the pace.

  Their first union had been all heat and fire. This was slower, sweet and sexy and tender all at the same time.

  I love you.

  She almost blurted the words just before she found release again, but she caught them in her throat before she could do something so foolish.

  He wasn’t ready to hear them yet—and she wasn’t sure she was ready to say them.

  It took a long time for his heartbeat to slow back to anything resembling a normal pace. He lay in the dark watching the moonlight dance across the room and listening to Anna breathe beside him.

  The soft tenderness seeping through his insides scared the hell out of him.

  This wasn’t supposed to happen. He wasn’t supposed to care so much. But somehow this woman, with her tough shell that he had discovered hid a fragile, vulnerable core, had become fiercely important to him.

  She soothed him. He didn’t know how she did it but these last few days with her had been filled with a quiet peace he only now realized had been missing since his helicopter crashed.

  He had been so damn restless since he was injured. But with Anna, the future didn’t seem like a scary place anymore. She made him think he could handle whatever came along.

  Except telling her the truth.

  He let out a long, slow breath, guilt pinching away at the tranquility of the moment. He had to tell her Abigail was his aunt. The very fact that he was lying in her bed having this conversation with himself while she was naked and warm in his arms was evidence that he had allowed the deception to go on far too long.

  But how, exactly, was he supposed to tell her that now? She would be furious and hurt, especially after they had shared this.

  He stared up at the ceiling, trying to figure out his options. He ached at the idea of hurting her but he couldn’t see any way out of it. Maybe it would be best all the way around if he just left town before this could go on any further.

  She would be hurt and baffled if he suddenly disappeared. But what would hurt her more—wondering why he left or discovering he had deceived her, that he had slept with her under false pretenses?

  What he had done was unconscionable. He could fool himself that his intentions had been honorable, that he had only wanted to make sure Abigail had been competent in her last wishes when she left the house to Anna and Sage Benedetto. He had been compelled to do something, if only to assuage his own guilt over his negligence these last few years.

  Then he had come to Brambleberry House and Anna had made Abigail’s French toast for him and bandaged his wounds and kissed him senseless and everything had become so damn tangled.

  He hated the idea of leaving her. It seemed the height of cowardice, especially after what they had shared tonight. But what would cause the least harm to her?

  “Will you come with me next week when the verdict is read?”

  Her voice in the darkness startled him and he shifted his gaze from the ceiling to see her watching him out of those huge dark eyes.

  “I thought you were asleep,” he said.

  “No. I was just thinking.”

  “About the trial?”

  “Sorry. Everything comes back to that right now. I’ll be so glad when it’s over.”

  He kissed her forehead, pulling her into a more comfortable position. “It’s been rougher on you than you let on, hasn’t it?”

  She didn’t answer but he thought her arms tightened around him. “I’ve been okay. I have. I just…I think I could use someone else in my corner during the verdict. Would you come?”

  Like his aunt, Anna was a strong, independent woman. He had a feeling asking for anything was difficult for her. The fact she had asked him to stand by her touched him deeply.

  He could stay a few more days. He owed her that, and perhaps giving her the support she needed at this critical time would be a small way to atone for his deception.

  “Yeah. Sure. I’ll come with you,” he answered. “And if he’s found not guilty, we’ve always got clubbing him senseless with my cast to fall back on as Plan B.”

  She laughed and kissed him. He pulled her close, pushing away the chiding voice of his conscience for now.

  A few more days of this sweet, seductive peace. That’s all he wanted. Surely that wasn’t too much to ask.

  “Are you ready for this?” Max asked her three days later as they sat on a park bench outside her store in Lincoln City enjoying the afternoon sunshine, the first since Sunday.

  She made a face, her stomach fluttering with nerves. “Do I have a choice?”

  “You always have a choice. You could just forget the whole thing and catch the next fishing boat out of town. Or I could make a phone call, get us a helicopter in here to fly us down the coast to an excellent crab shack I’ve heard about in Bandon.”

  “You’re not helping.”

  He gave her an unrepentant grin and she couldn’t help thinking how much lighter he had seemed these last few days. The occasional shadow still showed up in his gaze but he laughed more and seemed far more comfortable with the world.

  The time they’d spent together since Sunday night had seemed magical. She never would have expected it, but the last two days of the trial passed with amazing swiftness. Even listening to th
e defense’s closing arguments, where she had been painted as everything from an incompetent manager to a corrupt manipulator, hadn’t stung as much as it might have a few days earlier.

  Now she saw it for what it was—Grayson’s desperate ploy to escape justice.

  Between the trial and trying to stay on top of administrative duties at both stores, her days had been as packed and chaotic as always.

  But the nights.

  They had been sheer heaven.

  When she returned to Brambleberry House Monday night, Max and Conan had been waiting for her with what he called his specialty—take-out Chinese. After dinner, Max started a fire in her fireplace and read a thriller with Conan at his feet while Anna did payroll and caught up on paperwork.

  Eventually she gave up trying to concentrate with all this heat jumping through her insides. She had joined him on the couch and Max had tossed her reading glasses aside and kissed her while rain clicked against the window and Conan snored softly beside them. Later—much later—she had fallen asleep holding his hand.

  Tuesday had been largely a repeat, except he had grilled steaks for her out in the rain while she held an umbrella over his head and laughed at the picture he made in one of Abigail’s frilly flowered aprons.

  That was the moment she knew with certainty that what she felt for him wasn’t some passing infatuation, that she was hopelessly in love with him—with this wounded soldier with the slow smile and the secrets in his eyes.

  She had no idea what she was going to do about it—except for now, she was going to live in the moment and enjoy every second she had with him.

  Her cell phone rang suddenly and she jumped and stared at it.

  “Are you going to get that?” Max asked.

  “I’m working up to it.”

  She knew it must be the prosecutor, calling to tell her the verdict was in and about to be read.

  The jury had been deliberating for four hours and Max had been with her for two of those hours. She had called him as soon as the jury had started deliberations and he had rushed down to Lincoln City immediately, even after she told him it might be hours—or possibly days—before the jurors reached a verdict.

  She was immeasurably touched that he had kept his promise to come with her when the verdict was read—and she was grateful now as she answered her phone with fingers that trembled.

  “Hello?” she said.

  “They’re back,” the prosecutor said. “Can you be here in fifteen minutes?”

  “Yes. I’ll be right there.”

  She hung up the phone and sat, feeling numb and shaky at the same time.

  Max reached for her hand. “Come on. I’ll drive your car. We can come back for mine.”

  He kept his hand linked with hers as they walked into the courthouse. “What will you do if he’s exonerated?” he asked, the question she had been dreading.

  A few days ago, she was quite certain that possibility would have devastated her. But she had learned she had a great deal in common with Abigail’s favorite sea creatures. Like the by-the-wind sailors her store was named for, she would float where fate took her and manage to adapt. Even on that fishing boat Max joked about.

  “I’ll survive,” she said. “What else can I do?”

  He squeezed her fingers and didn’t let go as they walked into the courtroom and sat down.

  So much of her life the last several months had been tied up with this trial but in the end, the verdict was almost anti-climactic. When the jury foreman read that jurors had found Grayson Fletcher guilty on all counts of fraud, Anna let out a tiny sob of relief and Max immediately wrapped her in his arms and kissed her.

  Max stayed by her side as she hugged the prosecutor, who had worked so tirelessly for conviction, and as she received encouraging words from several others in the community who had come to hear the verdict.

  She finally allowed herself to glance at Grayson and found him looking pale and stunned, as if he couldn’t quite believe it was real. A tiny measure of pity flickered through her, even though she knew he deserved the consequences for what he had done.

  Still, she wasn’t going to hold a grudge the rest of her life, she decided. Life was just too short for her to be bitter and angry at being duped.

  “We need to celebrate,” Max said after they left the courtroom. “I’m taking you to dinner tonight. Where would you like to go?”

  “The Sea Urchin,” she said promptly, without taking even a moment to think about her answer. “Sage’s husband owns it and since it’s a Spencer Hotels property, of course it’s fabulous. The food there is unbelievable. The best on the coast.”

  “I love a woman who knows what she wants.”

  If only he truly meant his words, she thought, then pushed the thought away. She was deliriously happy right now and she wasn’t going to spoil it by worrying about the future.

  She had a hard-and-fast rule never to use her cell phone while she was driving except in an absolute emergency, especially on the sometimes curvy coastal road, but she was severely tempted as she drove her van home from Lincoln City to phone everyone in her address book to give them the happy news.

  She restrained herself, focusing instead on following Max’s SUV, since they had both driven down separately, and trying to contain the happiness bubbling through her.

  Still, even before she had a chance to greet Conan, her cell phone rang the moment she walked in the door at Brambleberry House. She grinned when she saw Sage’s name and number on the caller ID.

  “All right, that’s just spooky. How did you know the verdict was in?” she asked, without even saying hello.

  Sage shrieked. “It is? I had no idea! Sue called me from the store hours ago when the jury went out for deliberation. I was just checking the status of things since I haven’t heard from you. Tell me!”

  Anna took a deep breath, thinking again how her life had changed since she inherited this house. A year ago, she would have had no one to share this excitement with except her employees. Now she had dear friends who loved her. She was truly a lucky woman.

  “Guilty. Guilty, guilty, guilty!”

  “Yes!” She heard Sage shouting the news to Eben and even over the phone, Anna could hear her husband’s delighted exclamation.

  “Oh, that’s wonderful news. I hope they throw the book at the little pissant.”

  “This, from the world’s biggest bleeding heart?” she teased.

  “I care about things that deserve my time and energy,” Sage said primly. “Grayson Fletcher does not.”

  “True enough,” Anna replied.

  “Oh, I’m so happy. I’m only sorry I wasn’t there. With Julia gone, too, you’re not going to have anyone to celebrate with!”

  “Am, too,” she answered. “For your information, I’m going to the Sea Urchin for dinner with Max.”

  There was a long, pregnant silence on the other end of the phone. “Max? Upstairs Max?”

  Anna smiled, wondering how he would react to that particular nickname. “That’s right.”

  “All right. What other secrets have you been keeping from me, you sly thing?”

  Anna grimaced. She probably shouldn’t have let that slip. But now that she had, she knew she wouldn’t be able to fool Sage for long. “Nothing. Well, not much, anyway. It’s just that Upstairs Max has been spending most of his time downstairs the last few days,” she finally confessed.

  That long pause greeted her again. “So does Conan like him?”

  “Adores him. He treats him like his long-lost best friend.”

  “And have you smelled any freesia lately?’

  Anna made a face. “Cut it out. Abigail’s not matchmaking in this situation. She must be taking a break.”

  “Or maybe he’s not the one for you.”

  Her heart gave a sharp little tug. “Of course he’s not,” she answered promptly. “He’s only here a short time and then he’s leaving again. I know that perfectly well.”

  “Are you sure?”

&n
bsp; She wasn’t certain of anything, other than that she was fiercely in love with Harry Maxwell. But she wasn’t about to reveal that little tidbit of information to Sage.

  “You know I’m going to insist on a full report from Julia as soon as she gets back. And the minute we get back to the States, I’m coming up there, even if I have to use up all my carbon offsets for the year.”

  “Sage, honey, stop worrying about me, okay? You don’t have to come up here to babysit me. Max is a wonderful man and I know you’ll love him. But I also know this is only temporary. I’m fine with that.”

  After she hung up the phone some time later, those words continued to echo through her mind. Had she ever lied to Sage before? She couldn’t remember. This one was a doozy, though. She wasn’t fine. No matter how cool and sophisticated she tried to be about things, she knew she would be devastated when he left.

  And he would leave. She knew that, somewhere deep inside of her, with a certainty she couldn’t explain. Her time with him was limited. Even now, he could be preparing to leave.

  Fight for him. He needs you.

  The words whispered through her mind, so strong and compelling that she looked around the room to find a source.

  He needs you.

  The smell of freesia floated across the room and Conan looked up from his rug, thumped his tail on the floor, then went back to sleep.

  Anna shivered, her heart pounding, then she quickly caught herself before her imagination went crazy. That’s what happened when she talked to Sage. She lost every ounce of common sense and started believing in ghosts.

  Not that it was bad advice. If she loved Max, shouldn’t she be willing to fight for the man?

  Starting tonight, she decided, and went to her closet for her favorite dress, a shimmery sheath in pale green that made her dark skin and hair look exotic and sultry.

  She might not have a matchmaking ghost on her side, but she could take control of her own fate.

  Max wouldn’t know what hit him.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Max rang the doorbell to Anna’s apartment, aware of the sense of foreboding in his gut.