A Soldier's Secret

by RaeAnne Thayne

  They chatted for a moment longer, about books and gardening and the best time to plant rhododendron bushes. Just as he was thinking again about trying to escape the store without being identified, he heard Anna say goodbye to the other woman. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Betsy heading to the checkout counter that was at the end of his aisle.

  He turned blindly to head in the other direction and suddenly ran smack into another cart.

  “Oh!” exclaimed Anna Galvez.

  “Sorry,” he mumbled, keeping his head down and hoping she was too distracted to notice him.

  No such luck. She immediately saw through the sunglasses. “Lieutenant Maxwell! Hello!”

  “Oh. Hi. I didn’t see you there,” he lied. “This is a surprise. I thought you were going to be out of town today.”

  Her warm smile chilled at the edges. “My, uh, obligation was postponed for the rest of the afternoon. So instead I’m buying refreshments for one of the teen book clubs that meets after school at By-the-Wind. They’re discussing a vampire romance so I’m serving tomato juice and red velvet cake. A weird combination, I know, but they have teenage stomachs so I figured they could handle it.”

  “Don’t forget the deviled eggs.”

  She laughed. “What a great idea! I wish I’d thought of it in time to make some last night.”

  When she smiled, she looked soft and approachable and so desirable he forgot all about keeping a low profile. All he wanted to do was kiss her right there next to the organic soup cans.

  He jerked his gaze away. “I guess I’d better let you get back to the shopping then. Your vampirettes await.”

  “Right.”

  He paused. “Listen, after I’m done here, I was thinking about taking a quick hike this afternoon. I know you said your dog could hang out with me but since you’re here, maybe I’d better check that it’s still okay with you.”

  “Absolutely. He’ll be in dog heaven to have somebody else pay attention to him.”

  “Thanks. I’ll bring him home about six or so.”

  “Take your time. I probably won’t be done at the store until then anyway.”

  She smiled again, and it was much more warm and open than the other smiles she’d given him. He could swear it went straight to his gut.

  “In truth,” she went on, “this will take a big weight off my shoulders. I worry about Conan when I have to work long hours. Sometimes I take him into By-the-Wind with me since he loves being around people, but that’s not always the easiest thing with a big dog like Conan. You’re very sweet to think of including him.”

  Sweet? She thought he was sweet? He was a lieutenant with the U.S. Army who had been shot down by enemy fire. The last thing he felt was sweet.

  “I just wanted a little company. That’s all.”

  He didn’t realize his words came out a growl until he saw that soft, terrifying smile of hers fade.

  “Of course. And I’m sure he’ll enjoy it very much. Have fun, then. I believe there were several area trail guides among the travel information I left in your apartment. If you don’t find what you’re looking for, we have several others in the store.”

  “I just figured I would take the Neah-Kah-Nie Mountain trail.”

  She stared at him in surprise. “You sound like you’re familiar with the area. I don’t know why, but for some reason, I assumed you hadn’t been to Cannon Beach before.”

  He cursed the slip of his tongue. He was going to have to watch himself or he would be blurting out some of the other hikes he’d gone on with Aunt Abigail over the years.

  “It’s been a while,” he answered truthfully enough. “I’m sure everything has changed since I was here last. A good trail guide will still come in handy, I’m sure. I’ll be sure to grab it back at the house before I leave.”

  “If you get lost, just let Conan lead the way out for you. He’ll head for food every time.”

  “I’ll keep that in mind.”

  He smiled, hoping she wouldn’t focus too much on his past experience in Cannon Beach. “Have fun with your reading group.”

  “I’ll do that. Enjoy your hike.”

  With a last little finger wave, she pushed her cart toward the checkout. He watched her go, wondering how she could manage to look so very delicious in a conservative gray skirt and plain white blouse.

  This was a stupid idea, he echoed his thought of earlier, for a multitude of reasons. Not the least of which was the disturbing realization that each time he was with her, he found himself more drawn to her.

  How was he supposed to accomplish his mission here to check out the situation at Brambleberry House when all his self-protective instincts were shouting at him to keep as much distance as possible between him and Anna Galvez?

  They were late.

  Anna sat at her home office computer, pretending to work with her spreadsheet program while she kept one eye out the window that overlooked the still-empty driveway.

  Worry was a hard, tangled knot in her gut. It was nearly seven-thirty and she had watched the sun set over the Pacific an hour earlier. They should have been home long before now.

  Without Conan, the house seemed to echo with silence. She had always thought that an odd turn of phrase but she could swear even the sound of her breathing sounded oddly magnified as she sat alone in her office gazing out the window and fretting.

  She worried for her dog, yes. But she also worried about a certain wounded soldier with sad, distant eyes.

  They were fine, she told herself. He had assured her he could handle Conan even at his most rambunctious. He was a helicopter pilot, used to situations where he had to be calm under pressure and he was no doubt more than capable of coping with any difficulty.

  Still, a hundred different scenarios raced through her brain, each one more grim than the last.

  Anything could have happened out there. Neah-Kah-Nie Mountain had stunning views of the coastline but the steep switchbacks on the trail could be treacherous, especially this time of year when the ground was soaked.

  She pushed the worry away and focused on her computer again. After only a few moments, though, her thoughts drifted back to Harry Maxwell.

  How odd that it had never occurred to her that he might have visited Cannon Beach before. Is that why he seemed so familiar? Had he come into By-the-Wind at some point?

  But if he had, wouldn’t he have mentioned it at breakfast when she had talked about buying the store from Abigail?

  It bothered her that she couldn’t quite place how he seemed so familiar. She usually had a great memory for faces. But thousands of customers walked through By-the-Wind in a given year. There was no logical reason she would remember one man, no matter how compelling.

  And he was compelling. She couldn’t deny her attraction for him, though she knew it was completely ridiculous.

  He was her tenant. That’s all she could allow him to be at this complicated time in her life—not that he had offered any kind of indication he was interested in anything else.

  Breakfast had been a crazy impulse and she could see now how foolish. It created this false sense of intimacy, as if an hour or so together made them friends somehow, when in reality he had only been at Brambleberry House a day.

  No more breakfasts. No more chance encounters on the beach, no more bumping into him at the supermarket. When he and Conan returned safely from their hike—as she assured herself they would—she would politely thank him for taking her dog along with him, then for the rest of his time at Brambleberry House, she intended to do her absolute best to pretend the upstairs apartment was still empty.

  It was a worthy goal and sometime later, when her pulse ratcheted up a notch at the sight of headlights pulling into the driveway, she told herself her reaction was only one of relief and maybe a little annoyance that he had left her to worry so long.

  She forgot all about keeping her distance, though, when she saw him in the pale moonlight as he gingerly climbed out of his SUV then leaned on Conan as he limped
his way toward the house.

  Chapter Six

  She burst through her apartment into the foyer just as he opened the front door, Conan plodding just ahead of him.

  Max looked up with surprise at her urgent entrance, then she saw something that looked very much like resignation flash in his expression before her attention was caught by his bedraggled condition. Mud covered his Levi’s and he had a long, ugly scrape on his cheek.

  “Oh, my word! Are you all right? What happened?”

  He let out a long breath and she thought for a moment he would choose not to answer her.

  “I’m fine. Nothing to worry about.”

  “Nothing to worry about?” she exclaimed. “Are you crazy? You look like you fell off a cliff.”

  He raised an eyebrow but said nothing and she could swear her heart stuttered to a stop.

  “That’s not really what happened. Surely you didn’t fall off a cliff, did you?”

  “Not much of one.”

  “Not much of one! What kind of answer is that? Either you fell off a cliff or you didn’t.”

  “I slid on a some loose rocks and fell. It was only about twenty feet, though.”

  Only twenty feet. She tried to imagine falling twenty feet and then calmly talking about it as if she had merely stumbled over a curb. It was too big a stretch for her and her mind couldn’t quite get past it.

  “I’m so sorry! Did you hurt your arm when you fell?”

  He shrugged. “I might have jostled it a little when I was trying to catch a handhold but I managed to stay off it for the most part and land on my left side.”

  “Please, just tell me Conan didn’t trip you or something to make you fall.”

  He gave a rough laugh and she realized with some shock this was the first time she had heard him laugh. Smile, yes. Laugh, not until just this moment, when he was battered and bleeding and looking like something one of Conan’s feline nemeses would drag in.

  He reached down to scratch the dog’s ears. “Not at all. He was off the leash about five meters ahead of me at the time I slipped. You should be very proud of him, actually. He’s a real hero.”

  “Conan? My Conan?”

  “If not for him, I probably would have slipped farther down the scree and gone off the cliff,” he answered. “I don’t know how he did it, as steep as that thing was, but he made it down the hill where I had fallen and practically dragged me back up, through the mud and the rocks and everything. With my stupid arm and shoulder, I’m not sure I could have climbed back up on my own.”

  She shuddered at the picture he painted, which sounded far worse than anything she had been conjuring up in her imagination before they arrived home. Twenty feet! It was a wonder he didn’t have a couple dozen broken bones!

  “I’m so glad you’re both okay!”

  “I shouldn’t be,” he admitted. “It was luck, pure and simple. I should never have gone across that rock field. I could tell it wasn’t stable but I went anyway. I don’t blame you if you don’t trust me to take your dog again. But I have to tell you, if not for Conan, I’m not sure I would be here right now. The dog is amazing.”

  Conan grinned at both of them with no trace of humility. She shook her head, fighting the urge to wrap her arms around her brave, wonderful dog and hold on tight.

  “It was lucky you took him, then. And of course you can take him again. Anytime. Maybe he’s your guardian angel.”

  Conan barked as if he agreed completely with that sentiment.

  “Or at least helping him out,” Max said with a rueful smile.

  “You’re so certain your guardian angel is a man?”

  He made a face. “I haven’t really given it much thought. Most women I know would have knocked me to the ground before I could take a step across dangerous terrain in the first place. A preemptive strike, you know?”

  “Sounds like you know some interesting women, Lieutenant Maxwell.”

  “I had an…older relative who taught me most women are interesting if a man is wise enough to allow them room to be.”

  She blinked. Now there was something Abigail might have said. She wouldn’t have expected the philosophy to be echoed by a completely, thoroughly masculine man like Harry Maxwell but she was beginning to think there was more to the helicopter pilot than she’d begun to guess at.

  “We could stand out here in the hall having this interesting discussion but why don’t you come inside instead and let me help you clean up and put some medicine and bandages on those cuts on your face?”

  As she might have predicted, he looked less than thrilled at the prospect. He even limped for the stairs and she felt terrible she had kept him standing even for these few moments.

  “Thanks, but that’s not necessary. I can handle it.”

  She raised an eyebrow. “One-handed?”

  He paused on the bottom stair with a frustrated sigh. “There is that.”

  “Come on, Max. I’m happy to do it.”

  “I don’t want to put you to any trouble.”

  “I had three rough-and-tumble older brothers and always seemed the permanently designated medic. I think I spent half my childhood bandaging some scrape or other. I’m not squeamish at the sight of blood and I have a fairly steady hand with a bottle of antiseptic. You could do worse, Lieutenant Maxwell.”

  He studied her for a moment, then sighed again and she knew she had won when he stepped gingerly down from the bottom stairs.

  “I’m sorry you have to do this. First your dog and now you. The inhabitants of Brambleberry House are determined to look out for me, aren’t you?”

  Somebody has to do it, she almost said, but wisely held her tongue while Conan barked his own answer as Max followed her into her living room.

  Anna Galvez intrigued him more every time he saw her.

  Earlier in the grocery store she had worn that slim gray skirt and white blouse with her hair tucked away and had looked as neat and tidy as a row of newly sharpened pencils.

  Tonight, as she led the way into her apartment he was entranced by her unrestrained hair as it shivered and gleamed under the overhead lights in a luscious cloud that reached past her shoulders.

  She had on the same white blouse from earlier—or at least he thought it was the same one. But she had traded the skirt for a pair of jeans and she was barefoot except for a flirty pair of turquoise flip-flop slippers.

  As she led him inside Abigail’s apartment, he caught sight of just a hint of pale coral toenail polish peeking through and he found the contrast of that with her slim brown feet enormously sexy.

  If he were wise, he would turn right around and race up the stairs as fast as he could go with his now gimpy foot from the ankle he was certain he twisted in the fall.

  The hard reality was he wouldn’t be going anywhere fast. He hesitated to take off his hiking boot for fear the whole ankle would balloon to the size of a basketball the moment he did. It had ached like crazy the whole way down the mountain and he had a feeling he’d only made it home because his SUV was an automatic and his right leg was fine to work the gas pedal and the brake.

  Like it or not, he was stuck in this apartment with Anna for the time being. He could probably do a credible job of washing the worst of the dirt and tiny pieces of mountain from his face but he had a couple of scrapes on his left arm that would be impossible for him to reach very well while the right was still in the damn sling.

  It was Anna or the clinic in town and after all the time he’d spent being poked and prodded by medical types over the last six months, Anna was definitely the lesser of two evils.

  “Sit down,” she ordered in a drill-sergeant sort of voice.

  He gave her a mocking salute but was grateful enough to take the weight off his ankle and the throbbing pain. He tried his level best not to wince as he eased onto her couch, feeling a hundred years old, like some kind of damn invalid in a nursing home.

  She watched him out of those careful, miss-nothing eyes and he saw her mouth firm into a
tight line. He suspected he wasn’t fooling her for a moment.

  “I just have to gather up a few first-aid supplies and I’ll be right back,” she said.

  “I’m not going anywhere,” he answered, which was the absolute truth.

  Conan had disappeared into the kitchen—probably to find his Dog Chow, Max figured. If he’d been thinking straight, he should have stopped off and picked up the juiciest, meatiest steak he could find for the hero of the hour.

  He leaned back against the sofa cushions and closed his eyes, ready for a little of the calm and peace he had always found in these rooms.

  An elusive effort, he discovered, especially since the scent of Anna seemed to surround him here, sweet and sultry at the same time.

  He allowed himself the tiny indulgence of savoring that delectable combination for only a moment before she bustled back with her arms loaded down by bandages and antiseptic.

  “I don’t need all that. Do I really look that terrible?”

  She gave him a sidelong look and for just a moment, he sensed something in her gaze that stunned him to the core, a thin thread of attraction that seemed to tug and curl between them.

  She was the first one to look away, busying herself with the first-aid supplies. “You want the truth, you look like you just tangled with a mountain lion.”

  He ordered his pulse to settle down and reminded himself of all the dozens of reasons there could be nothing between them. “Nope,” he answered, trying for a light tone. “Just the mountain.”

  She smiled a little, then reached for the iodine. “Let’s take care of the cut on your face first and then I’ll check out your arm.”

  “I can do the face. I just need a mirror for that. I, uh, would appreciate a little help with the arm, though.”

  For a moment, she looked as if she wanted to argue and he wasn’t sure if he was relieved or disappointed when she finally reached for his arm.

  Her fingers were deliciously warm on his skin. Sensation rippled from his fingertips to his shoulder and to his vast chagrin, his heartbeat accelerated with the same thick jolt of adrenaline that hit him just as his bird lifted into the air.