A Soldier's Secret

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.”

“Oh, I’m so sorry. It sounds truly awful.”

He chewed a mouthful of fluffy scrambled eggs that suddenly tasted like foam peanuts. He knew he was lucky to make it out alive after the fiery hard landing. That inescapable fact had been drilled into his head constantly since the crash, by himself and by those around him.

For several tense moments after they had been hit by a rocket-fired grenade as they were picking up an injured soldier that October day to medevac, he had been quite certain this was the end for him and for the four others on his Black Hawk.

He thought he was going to be a grim statistic, another one of those poor bastards who bit it just a week before their tour ended and they were due to head home.

But somehow he had survived. Two of his crew hadn’t been so lucky, despite his frantic efforts and those of the other surviving crew member. They had saved the injured Humvee driver, so that was something.

That first month had been a blur, especially the first few days after the crash. The medical transport to Kuwait and then to Germany, the excruciating pain from his shattered arm and shoulder and from the second-and third-degree burns on the right side of his body…and the even more excruciating anguish that still cramped in his gut when he thought about his lost crew members.

He was aware, suddenly, that Conan had risen from the floor to sit beside him, resting his chin on Max’s thigh.

He found enormous comfort from the soft, furry weight and from the surprising compassion in the dog’s eyes.

“How are you now?” Anna asked. “Have the doctors given you an estimate of what kind of recovery you’re looking at?”

“It’s all a waiting game right now to see how things heal after the last surgery.” He raised his arm with the cast. “I’ve got to wear this for another month.”

“I can’t imagine how frustrating that must be for you. I don’t know about you, but I’m not the most patient person in the world. I’m afraid I would want results immediately.”

They definitely had that much in common. Though his instincts warned him to filter every word through his suspicions about her, he had to admit he found her concern rather sweet and unexpected.

“I do,” he admitted. “But I was in the hospital long enough to see exactly what happened to those who tried to rush the healing process. Several of them pushed too hard and ended up right back where they started, in much worse shape. I won’t let that happen. It will take as long as it takes.”

“Smart words,” she said with an odd look and only then did he realize that it had been one of his aunt’s favorite phrases, whether she was talking about the time it took for cookies to bake or for the berries to pop out on her raspberry canes out back.

He quickly tried to turn the conversation back to her. “What about you? For a woman who claims she’s impatient for results, you’ve picked a major project here, renovating this big house on your own.”

“Brambleberry House belonged to a dear friend of mine. Actually, the one whose French toast recipe you’re eating.” She smiled a little. “When she died last year, she left it to me and to another of her lost sheep, Sage Benedetto. Sage Benedetto-Spencer, actually. She’s married now and lives in San Francisco with her husband and stepdaughter. In fact, you’re living in what used to be her apartment.”

He knew all about Sage. He’d been hearing about her for years from Abigail. When his aunt told him she had taken on a new tenant for the empty third floor several years ago, he had instantly been suspicious and had run a full background check on the woman, though he hadn’t revealed that information to Abigail.

Nothing untoward had showed up. She worked at the nature center in town and had seemed to be exactly as she appeared, a hardworking biologist in need of a clean place to live.

But five years later, she was now one of the owners of that clean abode—and she had recently married into money.

That in itself had raised his suspicions. Maybe she and Anna had a whole racket going on. First they conned Abigail, then Sage set her sights on Eben Spencer and tricked him into marrying her. What other explanation could there be? Why would a hotel magnate like Spencer marry a hippie nature girl like Sage Benedetto?

“So you live down here and rent out the top two floors?”

She sipped her coffee. “For now. It’s a lot of space for one woman and the upkeep on the place isn’t cheap. I had to replace the heating system this year, which took a huge chunk out of the remodeling budget.”

There was one element of this whole thing that didn’t jibe with his mother’s speculation that they were gold-digging scam artists, Max admitted. If they were only in this for the money, wouldn’t they have flipped the house, taken their equity and split Cannon Beach?

It didn’t make sense and made him more inclined to believe she and Sage Benedetto truly had cared for Abigail, though he wasn’t ready to concede anything at this point.

“The real estate agent who arranged the rental agreement with me mentioned you own a couple of shops on the coast but she didn’t go into detail.”

If he hadn’t been watching her so carefully, he might have missed the sudden glumness in her eyes or the subtle tightening of her lovely, exotic features.

He had obviously touched on a sore subject, and from his preliminary Internet search of her and Sage, he was quite certain he knew why.

“Yes,” she finally said, stirring her scrambled eggs around on her plate. “My store here in town is near the post office. It’s called By-the-Wind Books and Gifts.”

“By-the-Wind? Like the jellyfish?” he asked.

“Right. By-the-wind sailors. My friend Abigail loved them. The store was hers and she named it after a crosswind one year sent hundreds of thousands of them washing up on the shore of Cannon Beach. I started out managing the store for her when I first came to town. A few years ago when she hit seventy-eight she decided she was ready to slow down a little, so I made an offer for the store and she sold it to me.”

Abigail had adored her store as much as she loved this house. She wasn’t the most savvy of businesswomen but she loved any excuse to engage a stranger in conversation.

“So you’ve opened a second store now,” he asked.

She shifted in her seat, her hands clenching and un-clenching around the napkin in her lap. “Yes. Last summer I opened one in Lincoln City. By-the-Wind Two.”

She didn’t seem nearly as eager to talk about her second store and he found her reaction interesting and filed it away to add to his growing impressions about Anna Galvez.

He had limited information about the situation but his Internet search had turned up several hits from the Lincoln City newspaper about her store manager being arrested some months ago and charged with embezzlement and credit card fraud.

Max knew from his research that the man was currently on trial. He didn’t, however, have any idea at all if Anna was the innocent victim the newspapers had portrayed or if she perhaps had deeper involvement in the fraud.

Before coming back to Brambleberry House, he had been all too willing to believe she might have been involved, that she had managed to find a convenient way to turn her manager into the scapegoat.

It was a little harder to believe that when he was sitting across the table from her and could smell the delicate scent of her drifting across the table, when he could feel the warmth of her just a few feet away, when he could reach out and touch the softness of her skin…

He jerked his mind from that dangerous road. “You must be doing well if you’ve got two stores. Any plans to expand to a third? Maybe up north in Astoria or farther south in Newport?”

“No. Not anytime in the near future. Or even in the no-tso-near future.” She forced a smile that stopped just short of genuine. “Would you like more French toast?”

He decided to allow her to sidetrack him for now, though he wasn’t at all finished with this line of questioning. Instead, he served up another slice of the French pastry.

Being here in this kitchen like this was oddly surreal and he almost expected Abigail to bustle in from another part of the house with her smile gleaming even above the mounds of jewelry she always wore.

She wouldn’t be bustling in from anywhere, he reminded himself. Grief clawed at him again, the overwhelming sense of loss that seemed so much more acute here in this house.

Oh, he missed her.

He suddenly felt a weird brush of something against his cheek and he had a sudden hideous fear he might be crying. He did a quick finger-sweep but didn’t feel any wetness. But he was quite certain he smelled something flowery and sweet.

Out of nowhere, the dog suddenly wagged his tail and gave one happy bark. Max thought he saw something out of the corner of his gaze but when he turned around he saw only a curtain fluttering in the other room from one of the house’s famous drafts.

He turned back to find Anna Galvez watching him, her eyes wary and concerned at the same time.

“Is everything okay, Lieutenant Maxwell,” she asked.

He shook off the weird sensation, certain he must just be tired and a little overwhelmed about being back here.

Lieutenant Maxwell, she had called him. Discomfort burned under his skin at the fake name. This whole thing just felt wrong somehow, especially sitting here in Abigail’s kitchen. He wanted to just tell her the truth but some instinct held him back. Not yet. He would let the situation play out a little longer, see what she did.

But he couldn’t have her calling him another man’s name, he decided. “You don’t have to call me Lieutenant Maxwell. You can call me Max. That’s what most people do.”

A puzzled frown played around that luscious mouth. “They call you Max and not Harry?”

“Um, yeah. It’s a military thing. Nicknames, you know?”

The explanation sounded lame, even to him, but she appeared to buy it without blinking. In fact, she gifted him with a particular sweet smile. “All right. Max it is. You may, of course, call me Anna.”

He absolutely was not going to let himself get lost in that smile, no matter his inclination, so he forced himself to continue with his subtle interrogation. “Are you from around here?”

She shook her head. “I grew up in a small town in the mountains of Utah.”

He raised an eyebrow, certain he hadn’t unearthed that little tidbit of information in his research. “Utah seems like a long way from here. What brought you to the Oregon coast?”

Her eyes took on that evasive film again. “Oh, you know. I was ready for a change. Wanted to stretch my wings a little. That sort of thing.”

He had become pretty good over the years at picking up when someone wasn’t being completely honest with him and his lie radar was suddenly blinking like crazy.

She was hiding something and he wanted to know what.

“Do you have family back in Utah still?”

The tension in her shoulders eased a little. “Two of my older brothers are still close to Moose Springs. That’s where we grew up. One’s the sheriff, actually. The other is a contractor, then I have one other brother who’s a research scientist in Costa Rica.”

“No sisters?”

“Just brothers. I’m the baby.”

“You were probably spoiled rotten, right?”

Her laugh was so infectious that even Conan looked up and grinned. “More like endlessly tormented. I was always excluded from their cool boy stuff like campouts and fishing trips. Being the only girl and the youngest Galvez was a double curse, one I’m still trying to figure out how to break.”

This, at least, was genuine. She glowed when she talked about her family—her eyes seemed brighter, her features more animated. She looked so delicious, it was all he could do not to reach across the table and kiss her right here over his aunt’s French toast.

Her next words quickly quashed the bloom of desire better than a cold Oregon downpour.

“What about you?” she asked. “Do you have family somewhere?”

How could he answer that without giving away his identity? He decided to stick to the bare facts and hope Abigail hadn’t talked about his particular twisted branch of the family tree.

“My father died when I was too young to remember him. My mother remarried several times so I’ve got a few stepbrothers and stepsisters scattered here and there but that’s it.”

He didn’t add that he didn’t even know some of their names since none of the marriages had lasted long.

“So where’s home?” she asked.

“Right now it’s two flights of stairs above you.”

She made a face. “What about before you moved upstairs?”

Brambleberry House was the place he had always considered home, even though he only spent a week or two here each year. Life with his mother had never been exactly stable as she moved from boyfriend to boyfriend, husband to husband. Before he had been sent to military school when he was thirteen, he had attended a dozen different schools.

Abigail had been the rock in his insecure existence. But he certainly couldn’t tell that to Anna Galvez. Instead, he shrugged.

“I’m career army, ma’am. I’m based out of Virginia but I’ve been in the Middle East for two tours of duty. I’ve been there the last four years. That feels as much home as anywhere else, I guess.”

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