The Soldier's Legacy

Back Cover Text (#u7cd639b0-e1db-5e26-b244-5eb7670f33d1)

About the Author (#u35ef1dde-5c07-5faa-b086-a40f6181b3eb)

Booklist (#u49332432-2b23-5fa4-b2bd-cbb13d8e35de)

Title Page (#u5eeacb64-95ab-52c0-b26b-12f26825cce6)

Copyright (#u0149e98c-ff69-56e8-bb01-de78afbffcf3)

Introduction (#u956d7042-4301-54dd-a0cd-95d94e1157b8)

Dear Reader (#u7b1f2535-edc0-544e-a832-e1caaa190c7e)

Dedication (#ubd4c6ea2-b2fc-5aeb-b4e7-4aeea85da4c3)

Chapter One (#u1e8f2b57-0dd8-5748-9748-a59aef3d3043)

Chapter Two (#uf880208e-8e1e-5282-80a5-33fdcb2ffc4f)

Chapter Three (#u043fbfc3-1c90-533c-8e4c-edef4b57b201)

Chapter Four (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Five (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Six (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Seven (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Eight (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Nine (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Ten (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Eleven (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Twelve (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Thirteen (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Fourteen (#litres_trial_promo)

Epilogue (#litres_trial_promo)

Extract (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter One (#ub61669b5-04d8-5ebb-8e69-811668064e27)

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.