A Soldier's Secret

by RaeAnne Thayne

  “My plans changed. I was released from the military hospital a few days earlier than I expected. Since I didn’t have anywhere else to go right now, I decided to head out here.”

  How sad, she thought. Didn’t he have any family eager to give him a hero’s welcome?

  “Since I was early, I planned to get a hotel room for a couple days,” he added, “but the property management company said the apartment was ready and available.”

  “It is. Everything’s fine. I’m just sorry I wasn’t here.”

  “The real estate agent handled everything.”

  Not everything Tracy probably wanted to handle, Anna mused, then was slightly ashamed of herself for the base thought.

  This whole situation felt so awkward, so out of her comfort zone.

  “You were able to find everything you needed?” she asked. “Towels, sheets, whatever?”

  He shrugged. “So far.”

  “The kitchen is fully stocked with cookware and so forth but if you can’t find something, let me know.”

  “I’ll do that.”

  Despite his terse responses, Anna was disconcerted by her awareness of him. He was so big, so overwhelmingly male. She would be glad when the few months were up, though apparently Conan was infatuated with the man.

  She had a sudden fierce wish that Tracy had found a nice older lady to rent the attic apartment to, but somehow she doubted too many older ladies were interested in climbing forty steps to get to their apartment.

  Thinking of the steps reminded her of his injury and she nodded toward the sling on his shoulder. “I’m really sorry I wasn’t here to help you carry up boxes. I guess you managed all right.”

  “I don’t have much. A duffel and a suitcase. I’m only here for a short time.”

  “I know, but it’s still two long flights of stairs.”

  She thought annoyance flickered in his eyes, as if he didn’t like being reminded of his injury, but he quickly hid it.

  “I handled things,” he said.

  “Well, if you ever need help carrying groceries up or anything or if you would just like the name of a good doctor around here, just let me know.”

  “I’m fine. I don’t need anything. Just a quiet place to hang for a while until I’m fit to return to my unit.”

  She had the impression Lieutenant Harry Maxwell wasn’t a man who liked being in any kind of position to need help. She supposed she probably shouldn’t be holding her breath waiting for him to ask for it.

  “I’m afraid I can’t promise you complete quiet. Conan is mostly well-behaved but he does bark once in a while. I should also warn you if Tracy didn’t mention it that there are children living in the second-floor apartment. Seven-year-old twins.”

  “They bark, too?”

  She searched his face for any sign of a sense of humor but his expression revealed nothing. Still, she couldn’t help smiling. “No, but they can be a little…energetic…at times. Mostly in the afternoons. They’re gone most of the day at school and then they’re usually pretty quiet in the evenings.”

  “That’s something, then.”

  “In any case, they won’t be here at all for several days. Their mother, Julia, is a teacher. Since they’re all out of school right now for spring break, they’ve gone back to visit her family.”

  Before Lieutenant Maxwell could respond, Conan broke free of both the sit command and her hold on the leash and lunged for him again, dancing around his legs with excitement.

  Anna reached for him again. “Conan, stop it right now. That’s enough! I’m so sorry,” she said to her new tenant, flustered at the negative impression they must be making.

  “No worries. I’m not completely helpless. I think I can still manage to handle one high-strung mutt.”

  “Conan is not like most dogs,” she muttered. “Most of the time we forget he even is a canine.”

  “The dog breath doesn’t give him away?”

  She smiled at his dry tone. So some sense of humor did lurk under that tough shell. That was a good sign. Brambleberry House and all its quirks demanded a strong constitution of its occupants.

  “There is that,” she answered. “We’ll get out of your way and let you settle in. Again, if you need anything, don’t hesitate to call. My phone number is right next to the phone or you can just call down the stairs and I’ll usually hear you.”

  “I’ll do that,” he murmured, his mouth lifting slightly from its austere lines into what almost passed for a smile.

  Just that minimal smile sent her pulse racing. With effort, she wrenched her gaze away from the dangerously masculine appeal of his features and tugged a reluctant Conan behind her as she headed back down the stairs.

  Nerves zinging through her, Anna cursed to herself as she let herself back in to her apartment. She did not need this right now, she reminded herself sternly.

  Her life was already a snarl of complications. She certainly didn’t need to add into the mix a wounded war hero with gorgeous eyes, lean features and a mouth that looked made for trouble.

  He forgot about the damn dog.

  Max shut the door behind the two of them—Anna Galvez and Conan. His last glimpse of the dog was of him quivering with a mix of excitement and friendly welcome and a bit of why-aren’t-you-happier-to-see-me? confusion as she yanked his leash to tug him behind her down the stairs.

  It had been shortsighted of him not to think of Abigail’s mutt and his possible reaction to seeing Max again. He hadn’t even given Conan a single thought—just more evidence of how completely the news of Abigail’s death had knocked him off his pins.

  The dog had only been a pup the last time he’d seen him before he shipped to the Middle East for his first tour of duty. During those last few days he had spent at Brambleberry House, Max had played hard with Conan. They’d run for miles on the beach, hiked up and down the coast range and played hours of fetch in the yard.

  Had it really been four years? That was the last time he had had a chance to spend any length of time here, a realization that caused him no small amount of guilt.

  Conan should have been one of the first things on his mind after he found out about Abigail’s death—several months after the fact. He could only blame his injuries and the long months of recovery for sending any thoughts of the dog scattering. It looked as if he was well-fed and taken care of. He supposed he had to give points to the woman—Anna Galvez—for that, at least.

  He wasn’t willing to concede victory to her, simply because she seemed affectionate to Abigail’s mutt.

  Anna Galvez. Now there was a strange woman, at least on first impressions. He couldn’t quite get a handle on her. She was starchy and stiff, with her hair scraped back in a knot and the almost-masculine business suit and skirt she wore.

  He would have considered her completely unappealing, except when she smiled, her entire face lit up as if somebody had just turned on a thousand-watt spotlight and aimed it right at her.

  Only then did he notice her glossy dark hair, the huge, thick-lashed eyes, the high, elegant cheekbones. Underneath the layers of starch, she was a beautiful woman, he had realized with surprise, one that in other circumstances he might be interested in pursuing.

  Didn’t matter. She could be a supermodel and it wouldn’t make a damn bit of difference to him. He had to focus on the two important things in his life right now—healing his shattered arm and digging for information.

  He wasn’t looking to make friends, he wasn’t here to win any popularity contests, and he certainly wasn’t interested in a quick fling with one of the women of Brambleberry House.

  Chapter Two

  She could never get enough of the coast.

  Anna walked along the shore early the next morning while Conan jumped around in the sand, chasing grebes and dancing through the baby breakers.

  The cool March wind whipped the waves into a froth and tangled her hair, making her grateful for the gloves and hat Abigail had knitted her last year. Offshore, the seastacks s
tood sturdy and resolute against the sea and overhead gulls wheeled and dived in the pale, early morning sky.

  It all seemed worlds away from growing up in the high desert valleys of Utah but she loved it here. After four years of living in Oregon, she still felt incredibly blessed to be able to wake up to the soft music of the sea every single day.

  Abigail had loved beachcombing in the mornings. She knew every inlet, every cliff, every tide table. She could spot a California gray whale’s spout from a mile away during the migration season and could identify every bird and most of the sea life nearly as well as Sage, who was a biologist and naturalist by profession.

  Oh, Anna missed Abigail. She could hardly believe it had been nearly a year since her friend’s death. She still sometimes found herself in By-the-Wind—the book and gift store in town she first managed for Abigail and then purchased from her—looking out the window and expecting Abigail to stop by on one of her regular visits.

  I know the store is yours now but you can’t blame an old woman for wanting to check on things now and again, Abigail would say with that mischievous smile of hers.

  Anna’s circumstances had taken a dramatic shift since Abigail’s death. She had been living in a small two-room apartment in Seaside and driving down every day to work in the store. Now she lived in the most gorgeous house on the north coast and had made two dear friends in the process.

  She smiled, thinking of Sage and Julia and the changes in all their lives the past year. When she first met Sage, right after the two of them inherited Brambleberry House, she had thought she would never have anything in common with the other woman. Sage was a vegetarian, a save-the-planet sort, and Anna was, well, focused on her business.

  But they had developed an unlikely friendship. Then when Julia moved into the second-floor apartment the next fall with her darling twins, Anna and Sage had both been immediately drawn to her. Many late-night gabfests later, both women felt like the sisters she had always wanted.

  Now Sage was married to Eben Spencer and had a new stepdaughter, and Julia was engaged to Will Garrett and would be marrying him as soon as school was out in June, then moving out to live in his house only a few doors down from Brambleberry House.

  Both of them were deliriously happy, and Anna was thrilled for them. They were wonderful women who deserved happiness and had found it with two men she was enormously fond of.

  If their happy endings only served to emphasize the mess she had made of her own life, she supposed she only had herself to blame.

  She sighed, thinking of Grayson Fletcher and her own stupidity and the tangled mess he had left behind.

  She supposed one bright spot from the latest fiasco in her love life was that Julia and Sage seemed to have put any matchmaking efforts on hiatus. They must have accepted the grim truth that had become painfully obvious to her—she had absolutely no judgment when it came to men.

  She trusted the wrong ones. She had been making the same mistake since the time she fell hard for Todd Ashman in second grade, who gave her underdog pushes on the playground as well as her first kiss, a sloppy affair on the cheek. Todd told her he loved her then conned her out of her milk money for a week. She would probably still be paying him if her brothers hadn’t found out and made the little weasel leave her alone.

  She sighed as Conan sniffed a coiled ball of seaweed and twigs and grasses formed by the rolling action of the sea. That milk money had been the first of several things she had let men take from her.

  Her pride. Her self-respect. Her reputation.

  If she needed further proof, she only had to think about her schedule for the rest of the day. In a few hours, she was in for the dubious joy of spending another delightful day sitting in that Lincoln City courtroom while Grayson Fletcher provided unavoidable evidence of her overwhelming stupidity in business and in men.

  She jerked her mind away from that painful route. She wasn’t allowed to think about her mistakes on these morning walks with Conan. They were supposed to be therapy, her way to soothe her soul, to recharge her energy for the day ahead. She would defeat the entire purpose by spending the entire time looking back and cataloguing all her faults.

  She forced herself to breathe deeply, inhaling the mingled scents of the sea and sand and early spring. Since Sage had married and moved out and she’d taken over sole responsibility of Conan’s morning walks, she had come to truly savor and appreciate the diversity of coastal mornings. From rainy and cold to unseasonably warm to so brilliantly clear she could swear she could see the curve of the earth offshore.

  Each reminded her of how blessed she was to live here. Cannon Beach had become her home. She had never intended it to happen, had only escaped here after her first major romantic debacle, looking for a place far away from her rural Utah home to lick her wounds and hide away from all her friends and family.

  She had another mess on her hands now, complete with all the public humiliation she could endure. This time she wasn’t about to run. Cannon Beach was her home, no matter what, and she couldn’t imagine living anywhere else.

  They had walked only a mile south from Brambleberry House when Conan suddenly barked with excitement. Anna shifted her gaze from the fascination of the ocean to see a runner approaching them, heading in the direction they had come.

  Conan became increasingly animated the closer the runner approached, until it was all Anna could do to hang on to his leash.

  She guessed his identity even before he was close enough for her to see clearly. The curious one-handed gait was a clear giveaway but his long, lean strength and brown hair was distinctive enough she was quite certain she would have figured out it was Harry Maxwell long before she could spy the sling on his arm.

  To her annoyance, her stomach did an uncomfortable little twirl as he drew closer. The man was just too darn good-looking, with those lean, masculine features and the intense hazel eyes. It didn’t help that he somehow looked rakishly gorgeous with his arm in a sling. An injured warrior still soldiering on.

  She told herself she would have preferred things if he just kept on running but Conan made that impossible, barking and straining at his leash with such eager enthusiasm that Lieutenant Maxwell couldn’t help but stop to greet him.

  Maybe he wasn’t quite the dour, humorless man he had appeared the day before, she thought as he scratched Conan’s favorite spot, just above his shoulders. Nobody could be all bad if they were so intuitive with animals, she decided.

  Only after he had sufficiently given the love to Conan did he turn in her direction.

  “Morning,” he said, a weird flash of what almost looked like unease in his eyes. Why would he possibly seem uncomfortable with her? She wasn’t the one who practically oozed sex appeal this early in the morning.

  “Hi,” she answered. “Should you be doing that?”

  He raised one dark eyebrow. “Petting your dog?”

  “No. Running. I just wondered if all the jostling bothers your arm.”

  His mouth tightened a little and she had the impression again that he didn’t like discussing his injury. “I hate the sling but it does a good job of keeping it from being shaken around when I’m doing anything remotely strenuous.”

  “It must still be uncomfortable, though.”

  “I’m fine.”

  Back off, in other words. His curtness was a clear signal she had overstepped.

  “I’m sorry. Not my business, is it?”

  He sighed. “I’m the one who’s sorry. I’m a little frustrated at the whole thing. I’m not a very good patient and I’m afraid I don’t handle limitations on my activities very well.”

  She sensed that was information he didn’t share easily and though she knew he was only being polite she was still touched that he would confide in her. “I’m not a good patient, either. If I were in your shoes, I would be more than just a little frustrated.”

  Some of the stiffness seemed to ease from his posture. “Well, it’s a whole lot more fun flying a helicopter than r
iding a hospital bed, I can tell you that much.”

  They lapsed into silence and she would have expected him to resume his jog but he seemed content to pet Conan and gaze out at the seething, churning waves.

  It hardly seemed fair that, even injured as he was and just out of rehab, he didn’t seem at all winded from the run. She would have been gasping for breath and ready for a little oxygen infusion.

  “It looks like it’s shaping up to be a gorgeous day, doesn’t it?” she said. “Forecasters are saying we should have clear and sunny weather for the next few days. You picked a great time of year to visit Cannon Beach.”

  “That’s good.”

  “I don’t know if you’ve had a chance to notice this yet but on one of the bookshelves in the living room, I left you a welcome packet. I forgot to mention it when I stopped to say hello last night.”

  “I didn’t see it. What kind of welcome packet?”

  “Not much. Just a loose-leaf notebook, really, with some local sightseeing information. Maps of the area, trail guides, tide tables. I’ve also included several menus from my favorite restaurants if you want to try some of the local cuisine, as well as a couple of guidebooks from my store.”

  She had spent an entire evening gathering and collating the information, printing out pages from the Internet and marking some of her favorite spots in the guide books. All right, it was a nerdy, overachiever thing to do, she realized now as she stood next to this man who simmered with such blatant male energy.

  She really needed to get a life.

  Still, he didn’t look displeased by the effort. If she didn’t know better, she would suspect him of being perilously close to a surprised smile. “Thank you. That was…nice.”

  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.”