The Homecoming Queen Gets Her Man

Heat pooled in her gut. God, how she wanted to just look into his blue eyes and fall all over again. But she already knew where this led, already knew how he truly felt about her.

She put the cupcake on the counter and swept the frosting from her lips with the back of her hand. Who was she kidding? This wasn’t a chance to rewrite the past or show Jack she had changed. No, she wasn’t here for that. As even Jack had said, her main goal was restoring Grandpa Ray to health. Besides, whatever she might have felt for Jack Barlow when she was a silly teenage girl had evaporated that day in the garage, as fast as rain on hot tar. “I don’t think I ever loved them,” she said. “I just thought I did.”

Chapter Three (#ulink_8136d136-9856-5391-beff-9ebbc78f84ba)

Jack pounded out six hard and fast miles on the back roads of Stone Gap. The late-evening heat beat down on him, sweat pouring down his back, but he didn’t slow his pace. His punishing daily routine drove the demons back, so he kept on running until his body was spent and his throat was clamoring for water.

What had he been thinking, walking into the bakery yesterday? Did he think this time, finally, he’d get the courage to say what he needed to say? Once a week he stopped in to either Betty’s or George’s, and every time the words stayed stuck in his throat.

Then, seeing Meri with that little bit of frosting on her lip derailed all his common sense. For a moment, he had been eighteen again, half in love with her and thinking the world was going to go on being perfect and pure. Until he’d gone to war and learned differently.

Damn. Just going into that bakery hurt like hell, and he’d let himself get swept up in a past—a fantasy—that no longer existed. A mistake he wouldn’t make again. Add it to the long list of mistakes Jack never intended to make again.

Luke was sitting on the front porch of Jack’s cottage in the woods when Jack got back. “You look like you’re about ready to keel over.”

Jack braced his palms on his knees and drew in a deep breath. Another. A third. “I’ll be fine.”

Luke scoffed, got to his feet and shoved a water bottle under Jack’s nose. “Here, you need this more than me.”

Jack thanked his brother, then straightened and chugged the icy beverage. “What are you doing here? Not that I don’t appreciate the water, but this makes two days in a row that I’ve seen you. I didn’t see you that much when we lived in the same house.”

Luke shrugged. “Mama’s worried about you. Mac is off in the big city, pretending we don’t exist, working his fingers to the bone, so that leaves me as the designated caretaker.”

“In other words, she got desperate.”

“I prefer to call it smart.”

Jack scoffed. He drained the rest of the water, recapped the bottle, then three-pointed it into the recycle bin. “I gotta go to work.”

Luke stepped in front of him and blocked his path. “Promise me you’ll be at dinner on Sunday night. Mama said she’d tan us both if you don’t come.”

“First of all, the last time Mama spanked either of us was when you were six and you stole candy from the general store. You cried, she cried and she never spanked us again. Second of all, I am quite capable of eating on my own. I don’t need to show up for the whole family-meal dog and pony show.”

“Since when has dinner at Mama’s been a dog and pony show?” Luke gave Jack’s shoulder a light jab. “And what’s up with you, anyway? Don’t tell me you like eating those TV dinners on the sofa better than homemade pot roast?”

“Since when did you become my keeper?” Jack shook his head. “I’m busy, Luke. I don’t have time for this. I gotta get to the garage.”

Luke stood there a moment longer, as if he wanted to disagree but had run out of arguments. A part of Jack wanted Luke to drag him to dinner at Mama’s, because maybe being forced to be among the rest of the world would keep that panther at bay. Or maybe it would unleash the damned thing and Jack would ruin the only good he had left in his life.

“Fine, have it your way,” Luke said. “Enjoy your Hungry-Man dinners.”

His brother left, and Jack headed into the little house on Stone Gap Lake that he’d rented when he came home from the war. It wasn’t much as houses went, but it was set in the woods at the end of a desolate street, a mile as the crow flew from Ray’s house. If there was one thing Jack didn’t want, it was friendly neighbors who’d be popping by with a casserole or an earful of gossip. His mother had wanted him to stay in the family home, but the thought of being around all that...caring suffocated him. He’d rented the first house he found, and told his mother he’d be fine.

He heard the crunch of tires on the road and readied a sarcastic retort for Luke as he headed back onto the porch, where the word died in his throat. Meri sat behind the wheel of a dusty Toyota, sunglasses covering the green eyes he knew so well, her hair tied back in a ponytail. She pulled into the drive, rolled down the window, but didn’t turn off the car.

“I need your help. Grandpa Ray is fixing to climb a ladder and clean out the gutters, and refuses to wait for you to help him. He wouldn’t let me so much as touch the ladder, and I’m afraid he’s going to hurt himself.”

Jack let out a curse. “I told him I’d do that tonight, after I got done at the garage.”

“You know him. When he wants something done, he wants it done now.” She tucked the sunglasses on top of her head. Worry etched her face, shimmered in her eyes. “Can you help? I mean, if you’re busy or something—”

“I’m not busy.” Not busy enough, he should have said. Never busy enough. But Ray needed him, and if there was one man Jack would help without question, it was Ray. And with Meri looking at him like that, as though she’d pinned all her hopes on his shoulders...a part of him wanted to tell her to find someone else. Instead he said, “Give me five minutes to get cleaned up.”

“Sure.” She put the car in Park. “Thanks, Jack.”

He started toward the house, then the nagging chivalry his mother had instilled in him halted Jack’s steps. He turned back to Meri. “Uh, you want to come in? Have some iced tea or something? You shouldn’t wait in the car in heat like this.”

She hesitated a moment. Probably weighing the environment-damaging effects of running the car in Park for a few minutes versus the risks of being around him. “Sweet tea?”

He grinned. “Is there another kind?”

She got out of the car, one long leg at a time. She was wearing cutoff denim shorts and flip-flops, topped with a V-necked blue T-shirt. On Meri, the casual attire seemed sexier than the elegant dresses she’d worn in her pageants. It seemed more...Meri, if that made sense. More real. Prettier.

Damn.

All these years, and he still wanted her now as much as he had then. Back then, he’d been young and stupid and rash. He’d believed anything was possible in those days. That the world could be set to rights with a lot of laughter and a sweet kiss from her lips.

He knew better now. He knew about dark days and bad decisions and regrets that ran so deep they had scarred his soul. And so he looked away from Meri’s legs and Meri’s smile and headed into the house.

“Kitchen’s over there,” he said, pointing down the hall. “I’ll be done in a couple minutes.”

It wasn’t until he was standing beneath the bracing cold water of his shower, the droplets pelting his face, his neck, his shoulders, that Jack could breathe. He pressed his hands against the wall and dropped his head, letting the water rush over his skin until all he could feel was cold.

He stepped out of the shower, dried off and tugged open a dresser drawer. Almost empty. Maybe it was about time he got his crap together and did some laundry. He reached for a ratty T, then stopped when his hand brushed over a worn khaki cotton T, stuffed at the bottom of the pile after his last tour, forgotten until now.

Memories clawed at him. Reminded him exactly why he had rented a house in the woods by the lake, far from the rest of the world. Far from people like Meri.

People who would ask questions like why. Questions he couldn’t even answer for himself.

Jack cursed, grabbed the nearest plain shirt and slammed the drawer shut again. He finished getting dressed, then headed out of his bedroom. He’d help Ray and stay the hell away from Meri. The last thing he wanted was to have a conversation with her, one where she’d ask about Eli.

The only other person who knew about that day was Jack’s commanding officer, who had taken his report, then mercifully left him alone in his grief. Jack had served out the last month of his tour on autopilot, a shell of himself, then come home and done what the psychologist told him to do—tried to put it all behind him and move on.

Move on? Where the hell to?

Meri was standing in the kitchen, her back to him, looking out the back door. Her lean frame was silhouetted by the morning sun streaming in through the windows. His heart stuttered, but he kept moving forward, ignoring the urge to touch her, to get close to her. “You ready?”

She turned and a smile curved across her face. “There’s a deer in your yard,” she whispered with a sense of awe and magic in her voice. “A fawn.”

He moved to stand beside Meri. And just as she’d said, there was a deer standing like a brown slash among the green foliage. The fawn had the speckled back of a youngster, and the relaxed stance of one too new to know the dangers that lurked in the woods. He nosed at the shrubs, nibbling the leafy green delicacies.

“He’s so beautiful,” Meri said.

“He’s too trusting. If he doesn’t pay attention, some hunter or a loose dog is going to get him.”

She cast a glance at him. “That’s pretty pessimistic.”

“Realistic, Meri. There’s a difference.” He nodded toward the window. “I’m surprised you don’t have your camera out. You were always taking pictures of this or that when you were younger.”