A Soldier's Secret

She made a face. “A little over-the-top, I know. Sorry. I tend to be a bit obsessive about those kinds of things.”

“No, it sounds perfect. I’ll be sure to look through it as soon as I get a chance. Maybe you can tell me the best place for breakfast around here. I haven’t had much chance to go shopping.”

“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 tomen, 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 greataunt’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 temptation.

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.