A Soldier's Secret

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.