by EMILIE ROSE
She sat up a little straighter and her breathing shallowed. Hope brightened her eyes and parted her lips. He knew his people-reading skills were top notch, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t ever wrong. Nerves tied his gut in knots because if he was misinterpreting the signs, laying his cards on the table would blow up in his face.
He tightened his grip on the hand he covered. “I never expected to fall in love with anyone—let alone a woman and her two children. But I have, Hannah. I’ve fallen in love with you, and I don’t want to go through the rest of my life without you, Mason and Belle by my side.
“But I want more than friendship with benefits. I want more than to be Uncle Brandon. If you’re not ready for that, then I’ll give you time for the idea to grow on you. But I’m hoping you want more, too.”
Love glowed from her and he basked in the light. “I do. I do want more. And I do want you, Brandon. Because I’ve fallen in love with you, too.”
The helium feeling returned to his chest, swelling until he thought he might burst. He cupped her face, stroked her soft skin then gently brushed his lips across the ones she loved to bite. When he lifted his head, her lids fluttered open.
“Marry me?” Then he shook his head. “Maybe I should ask the man of the house first?”
Her grin took his breath. “You’re welcome to ask Mason, but I want you to know I would be honored to marry you, Brandon Martin.” Then her glow dimmed and her teeth pinched her tender lip. Doubt creased her forehead. “If you want, we could sell the house and start over fresh somewhere,” she said so quickly the words almost ran together.
The house meant so much to her he hadn’t seen that coming. “Hannah, there’s a lot of you in that house. Are you sure you want to do that?”
“There’s a lot of you there, too.”
He nodded. “And Rick. There are a lot of great memories of projects the three of us did together—you, him and me. I’d hate to lose those.”
“You wouldn’t mind staying?”
“I’d rather stay there than uproot you from the only real home you’ve ever known.”
A smile bloomed on her lips. “Thank you. I hope I can make it into your home, too.”
“You’ll do that just by being there.”
He felt a tug on his pant leg and looked down to see Belle with Mason right behind her. “Does this mean you’ll go to church with us?”
Belle was channeling his mother again.
“Yes, he will,” Hannah answered before he could, then her warm brown eyes lifted to him. She winked. “I’ll explain later. But the answer is most definitely, yes.”
* * * * *
Keep reading for an excerpt from THE SOLDIER’S LEGACY by Gina Wilkins.
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The Soldier’s Legacy
by Gina Wilkins
Chapter One
ALWAYS-PRACTICAL SINGLE MOM Jade Evans had made detailed plans for the coming weeks for herself and her three children. A fire ignited by a careless construction worker had sent that carefully-crafted schedule up in smoke along with the kitchen of their new home, only days before they were to have moved in. Their furniture and most of their belongings had already been delivered before the fire, though fortunately most of the damage had been confined to the kitchen and roof.
“Wow.” Twelve-year-old Caleb stood with his mother and two sisters in a soaring entryway with a dining room on the left side and a front parlor on the right. Glass sliders at the back of the big den ahead looked out over a spacious deck, a glistening pool and a beautifully landscaped lawn that sloped gracefully down to a private dock on the Intracoastal Waterway. His brown eyes wide, Caleb pushed his floppy brown hair off the top of his glasses. “Nice place, huh, Mom?”
“Yes, it’s lovely.”
Jade could understand why her son was impressed. It was hard to imagine that this spacious house was home to only one man—Trevor Farrell, the son of her mother’s closest friend. An army veteran and now-successful resort owner, Trevor had been tragically widowed at just twenty-eight—almost a decade ago while he was deployed overseas. Jade didn’t think he’d owned this place when he was married. So, he’d bought it after his wife’s death, either as a private escape or as an investment. Perhaps he had plans to remarry eventually. His mother hadn’t given up hope for grandchildren to enjoy as much as Jade’s mom. Linda McGill relished being Nanna to Jade’s children.
Mary Pat Rayburn, the short, pleasantly rounded woman who’d opened the door and ushered them inside waved a hand toward the staircase in a warm welcome. “Let me show you up to your rooms.”
“We’re going to live here?” six-year-old Bella asked, slipping her hand into Jade’s. With her golden curls and huge amber eyes, Bella was the youngest and most skittish of the children, the one Jade thought of as her “loving little worrier.”
Notoriously impatient, ten-year-old Erin sighed as she pushed back her darker blond hair to focus on her sister. “We talked about this, Bella. This is Ms. Hester’s son’s house. We’re only staying here until our new house is fixed so we can move in. Right, Mama?”
“Yes, that’s right.” Jade agreed rather reluctantly. She was still finding it hard to believe that she and her children would be sharing Trevor’s home for the next couple of weeks.
Having accepted a job here in Shorty’s Landing, Jade had recently sold the house she’d owned, close to her mother’s home in Columbia, South Carolina.
She and the children could have stayed with her mother until the repairs on their new house here were completed, but school would begin in less than a week. It would’ve been difficult to get the kids back and forth with a ninety-minute drive each way, especially with Jade starting her new job. It was hard enough for them that they’d be in new schools, and now they had to deal with their home in upheaval, as well.
When she’d learned Jade needed temporary lodgings in the area, Hester Farrell had railroaded Jade into occupying Trevor’s rarely used second floor until the repairs were completed. Suspicious about Hester’s motives, Jade had initially resisted the offer. When it came to Jade and Trevor, Hester was no more subtle a matchmaker than Jade’s own mom.
Jade had been forced to inform her mother more than once that she wasn’t interested in being pushed into a romance with Hester’s handsome and successful son—despite hints that grew more pointed each time Jade’s path crossed Trevor’s. As if both being widowed early and having mothers who were close friends formed the basis for a lasting relationship between her and Trevor, Jade often thought
in exasperation.
She didn’t want to do anything that would throw more fuel on that particular fire. And accepting charity was difficult for someone who’d become accustomed to relying on no one but herself.
Still, the intimidatingly efficient Hester had forged on with her proposition. Both Hester and Jade’s mother had implied that it would be ungrateful of Jade to refuse the generous offer. So now here they were, being welcomed into Trevor’s home by his housekeeper less than two full days after Hester had extended the invitation on her son’s behalf. Jade couldn’t help wondering if Trevor was any more enthused about the situation than she was.
She and Trevor had been introduced for the first time only three years ago during a party at his parents’ house to celebrate Jade’s mother’s sixtieth birthday. Coincidentally in town for a class reunion, Trevor had dropped in to give his regards. Jade and Trevor had interacted on only a few occasions since, most recently when he’d accompanied his parents to Jade’s father’s funeral last year. Jade couldn’t claim to know Trevor well, but when she thought of him, she always recalled his impeccable manners and his charming, but unrevealing, smile. Despite his deeply ingrained courtesy, she’d had the sense that wherever he was at the time, he felt as though he should be somewhere else—a busy man with divided loyalties pulling him in many directions.
Having been wed to a man whose attention was always somewhere else, Jade recognized the type all too well. Stephen hadn’t been home much during their tragically shortened marriage, but when he was, she knew he’d been thinking of his responsibilities to the military. As much as he’d loved her and the kids, and she’d never had reason to doubt that he had loved them, he’d never seemed totally comfortable changing diapers or grilling burgers in the backyard or unclogging drains. The battlefield had called to him. She’d always wondered if he’d felt the pull of home when he was deployed or if a war zone was where he truly felt most himself.
She’d learned to be independent and almost completely self-sufficient during her somewhat unconventional but still happy marriage. She was chagrined to be in the position of having to accept Trevor’s help now, but she hadn’t had many other options. Finding a temporary place to rent for a family of four would have been difficult. She had to admit this was a convenient, if awkward, solution to her crisis.
With a resigned shake of her head, she motioned toward the stairs. “Everyone follow Mrs. Rayburn now.”
“Oh, y’all can just call me Mary Pat,” the housekeeper insisted with a musical chime of a laugh as she started up the stairs. “I’ve never cared much for formality, as Trevor would tell you.”
Reaching the second-floor landing, they faced a wall arranged with framed photographs of gorgeous landscapes, an intriguing mix of coastal and inland shots. Jade wondered if Trevor had taken them; she’d been told he was a talented photographer. If these photos were his, his talent hadn’t been exaggerated, she mused, studying an image of ocean spray blasting up from behind a boulder on which a heron posed with proudly spread wings. An aerial view of a wooded mountaintop was breathtaking both in theme and in the implied risk involved in taking the shot. Jade had heard Trevor’s mother bemoan her son’s proclivity for risky activities like riding fast motorcycles, mountain climbing and paragliding. As the widow of an adrenaline junkie, Jade didn’t fault Hester for wishing her son would pursue less risky hobbies.
“I like that one,” Bella whispered, pointing to a tableau of two brown horses standing nose to nose in a rolling green pasture as if sharing a secret from the photographer they side-eyed.
“I like it, too,” Jade said, smiling down at her youngest.
“There are three guest bedrooms up here and one downstairs, all with baths attached,” Mary Pat announced with a wave of a hand. “This door ahead of us leads into the bigger bedroom. I figured you’d want that one, Ms. Evans. The other two bedrooms are on either side of the hallway. Maybe the girls would like to share one and Caleb can have the third. Unless you’d prefer to use the downstairs guest suite, Ms. Evans?”
“No, we’ll all bunk up here, thank you. The girls will share. And please call me Jade. I’m not really the formal type, either.”
“Where does Ms. Hester’s son sleep?” Erin asked, peering into one of the open doors.
“Oh, his suite is downstairs,” Mary Pat replied. “He hardly ever comes up here, to be honest.”
“Then why does he have all these rooms?” Erin asked with typical blunt curiosity.
“He calls it an investment. But I think his mama talked him into buying the place,” Mary Pat added with a wink at Jade. “If you know her, you’re aware she’s a force to be reckoned with. Fine woman, but you don’t want to be getting on her bad side.”
Jade believed Mary Pat had just concisely summed up Hester’s personality. Jade’s mom insisted Hester was simply a well-intentioned meddler, but Jade had always been secretly intimidated by the woman. “Where do you sleep, Ms. Mary Pat?” Erin asked.
“Did you see that cottage off to one side of the property? Trevor had it built for me when my husband passed away three years ago. I was never blessed with children, and Trevor is like the son I always wanted. His mama is gracious enough to share him with me—probably because it takes both of us to keep him in line,” the housekeeper added with another of her musical laughs.
Jade was getting the distinct impression that while the likable Mary Pat adored her employer, she didn’t hesitate to speak her mind to or about him.
“There’s one other room up here y’all need to see.” Mary Pat turned to her left and walked to the end of the hallway. She opened a door and stepped back to invite them in with another wave of her expressive hands.
Jade heard the kids gasp in delight, and she sighed in surrender as she looked into a spacious rec room equipped with a large-screen TV with leather theater seating, a pool table and a foosball table. Tall, leather-covered stools drew up to a built-in bar on which rested a wooden bowl filled with assorted fruits. Two game tables sat in front of shelves stocked with books, games—both video and tabletop—and an impressive selection of movies. A smaller table had been tucked into a dormer nook, surrounded by inviting beanbag hassocks and topped with a nubbed baseplate for use with a big bin of brightly colored plastic building blocks.
Erin was already being drawn to the bookshelves while Caleb studied the video games. Bella, overwhelmed, clung to Jade’s hand, though she looked longingly at the blocks table. Considering this room and the pool in the backyard, Jade figured the kids were never going to want to leave this house for the more modest home she had purchased in a less-expensive neighborhood a few miles away. It was a nice place, but not like this one. No private pool. No extravagant entertainment room.
Still, she thought they’d be quite happy in their new house, once it was fire-damage free and habitable again, of course. The kids had examined and approved every inch of it before the purchase papers were signed. They’d miss their previous home and friends in Columbia, but Jade thought she’d prepared them well for their adventure here.
She’d been considering this move for more than a year, since her physician cousin had first approached her about taking a nursing job in a medical clinic in Shorty’s Landing. With all the children in school, Jade could put her nursing training to full use, having worked only part-time for Bella’s first six years. And frankly, it would be nice to start fresh in a new town with new acquaintances. As kind as everyone in her hometown had been to them after her husband’s death, there were times when it had become difficult for all of them to be always seen as the tragically bereaved survivors of a larger-than-life military hero.
“Mr. Farrell really never comes up here?” Caleb shook his head in disbelief. “If I had a room like this, I’d stay in it all the time.”
“This floor is set up for his guests. He has a big TV, a reading nook, and a home office in his private suite downstairs,” Mary Pat explained. �
��When he’s home, he’s usually there.”
“Although I have been known to sneak up here late at night to work on my pool-shooting skills,” a man drawled from the doorway. “I figure if I keep practicing, I’ll beat Mary Pat someday. Don’t ever bet against her, by the way. She’s a hustler.”
“Not a hustler,” Mary Pat said with a grin as everyone turned to watch Trevor Farrell enter the room. “Just better than you’ll ever be, practice or no.”
Trevor laughed, the sound deep and rumbly. Jade swallowed. He was even better looking than she’d remembered—tall and slim, with light brown hair, very blue eyes and a smile that could have come straight from a toothpaste ad. His posture was straight and he looked poised, a man accustomed to being in charge. His expression was warm as he approached her. “It’s nice to see you again, Jade.”
She tucked a strand of blond hair behind one ear. “Trevor, it was so generous of you to take us in while our house is being repaired. We appreciate it very much.”
“As you can see, there’s plenty of room. You aren’t putting me out at all. I’m only sorry the accident at your new house delayed your move-in. That must have been disappointing for you all.”
“Oh, I think everything’s working out just fine,” Erin proclaimed, running a hand admiringly along the back of a leather theater chair. “I’m Erin, by the way.”
“Yes, I recall meeting you at your grandmother’s sixtieth birthday party—what? Three years ago? You’ve grown quite a bit since then.”
Erin nodded. “I was just seven then. I’m ten now.”
“I remember you.” Caleb looked around from the video game selection as he spoke, pushing his glasses up on his nose. “Is it okay if I play Dougie the Donkey on your system later? I’ll be really careful.”
“Of course you can play the game, Caleb, if your mom approves. Maybe you could even show me a trick or two. I’ve never gotten past the Gator Boss fight on level nine.”
