A Soldier's Secret

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.”

Chapter Four

Oh, the poor man.

Imagine considering some military base a home. She couldn’t quite fathom it and she felt enormously blessed suddenly for her safe, happy childhood.

Her family might have been what most people would consider dirt-poor. Her parents were illegal immigrants who had tried to live below the radar. As a result, her father had never been paid his full worth and when he had been killed in a construction accident, the company he worked for had used his illegal immigrant status as an excuse not to pay any compensation to his widow or children.

Yes, her family might not have had much when she was a kid but she had never lived a single moment of her childhood when she didn’t feel her home was a sanctuary where she could always be certain she would find love and acceptance.

Later, maybe, she had come to doubt her worth, but none of that stemmed from her girlhood.

And now she had Brambleberry House to return to at the end of the day. No matter how stressful her life might seem sometimes, this house welcomed her back every night, solid and strong and immovable.