A Soldier's Secret

by RaeAnne Thayne

  He laughed and turned her to face him. She raised her eyebrows in a look of mock surprise as she slid into his arms. “Oh. Max. Hi.”

  He kissed her properly this time, astonished all over again at the little bump in his pulse, at the love that swelled inside him whenever he had her in his arms.

  “It’s been a beautiful day, hasn’t it?” she said, soft joy in her eyes for her friends’ happiness.

  “Beautiful,” he agreed, without a trace of the cynicism he had expected.

  His own mother had been married six times, the most recent just a few weeks ago to some man she’d met on a three-week Mediterranean cruise. With his childhood and the examples he had seen, he had always considered the idea of happy endings like Julia and Will’s—and Sage and Eben’s, for that matter—just another fairy tale. But this time with her had changed everything.

  “Anna, I want this,” he said suddenly.

  “The shrimp? I know, they’re divine, aren’t they? I think I could eat the whole platter myself.”

  “Not the shrimp. I want the whole thing. The wedding, the flowers. The crazy-spooky dog with the bow tie. I want all of it.”

  She blinked rapidly, and he saw color soak her cheeks. “Oh,” she said slowly.

  He wasn’t going about this the right way at all. He had a feeling if Abigail happened to be watching she would be laughing her head off just about now at how inept he was.

  “I’m sorry I don’t have all the flowery words. I only know that I love you with everything inside me. I want forever, Anna.” He paused, his heartbeat sounding unnaturally loud in his ears. “Will you marry me?”

  She gazed at him for a long, drawn-out moment. Through the open window behind her, he was vaguely aware of the band starting up, playing something soft and slow and romantic.

  “Oh, Max,” she said. She sniffled once, then again, then she threw herself back into his arms.

  “Yes. Yes, yes, yes,” she laughed, punctuating each word with a kiss.

  “A smart businesswoman like you had better think this through before you answer so definitively. I’m not much of a bargain, I’m afraid. Are you really sure you’ll be happy married to a weekend warrior and high-school physics teacher who’s greener at his new job than a kid on his first day of basic training?”

  “I don’t need to think anything through. I love you, Max. I want the whole thing, too.” She kissed him again. “And besides, you’re going to be a wonderful teacher.”

  Of all the careers out there, he never would have picked teaching for himself, but now it seemed absolutely right. He had always enjoyed giving training to new recruits and had been damn good at it. But high-school students? That was an entirely different matter.

  Anna had been the one who’d pointed out to him how important the teachers at the military school Meredith sent him to had been in shaping his life and the man he had become. They’d been far more instrumental than his own mother.

  Once the idea had been planted, it stuck. Since he already had a physics degree, now he only had to finish obtaining a teaching certificate. This time next year, he would be preparing lesson plans.

  It wasn’t the path he had expected, but that particular route had been blown apart by a rocket-fired grenade in Iraq. Somehow this one suddenly seemed exactly the right one for him.

  He couldn’t help remembering what Abigail used to say—A bend in the road is only the end if you refuse to make the turn. He was making the turn, and though he couldn’t see it all clearly, he had a feeling the path ahead contained more joy than he could even imagine.

  He rested his chin on Anna’s hair. Already that joy seemed to seep through him, washing away all the pain. He couldn’t wait to follow that road, to spend the rest of his life with efficient Anna—with her plans and her ambitions and her brilliant mind.

  Suddenly, above the delectable smells of the wedding food, he was quite certain he smelled the sweet, summery scent of freesias.

  “Do you think she’s here today?” Anna asked him.

  He tightened his arms around her, thinking of his aunt who had loved them all so much. “Absolutely,” he murmured. “She wouldn’t miss it. Just as I’m sure she’ll be here for our wedding and for the birth of our children and for every step of our journey together.”

  Anna laughed softly. “We’d better hold on tight, then. If Abigail has her way, I think we’re in for a wild ride. A wild, wonderful, perfect ride.”

  * * * * *

  Read on for an exclusive extended excerpt of

  A Soldier’s Return,

  the newest book in

  New York Times bestselling author RaeAnne Thayne’s

  Women of Brambleberry House miniseries.

  Also available from

  RaeAnne Thayne

  and Harlequin HQN

  Christmas in Snowflake Canyon

  Willowleaf Lane

  Currant Creek Valley

  Sweet Laurel Falls

  Woodrose Mountain

  Blackberry Summer

  Harlequin Special Edition

  **Christmas in Cold Creek #2149

  **A Cold Creek Reunion #2179

  **A Cold Creek Noel #2228

  **A Cold Creek Christmas Surprise #2299

  Silhouette Special Edition

  **Light the Stars #1748

  **Dancing in the Moonlight #1757

  **Dalton's Undoing #1764

  +The Daddy Makeover #1857

  +His Second-Chance Family #1874

  %A Merger…or Marriage? #1903

  +A Soldier's Secret #1918

  **The Cowboy's Christmas Miracle #1933

  #Fortune's Woman #1970

  **A Cold Creek Homecoming #1996

  **A Cold Creek Holiday #2013

  **A Cold Creek Secret #2025

  **A Cold Creek Baby #2071

  @A Thunder Canyon Christmas #2083

  Silhouette Romantic Suspense

  The Wrangler and the Runaway Mom #960

  Saving Grace #995

  Renegade Father #1062

  *The Valentine Two-Step #1133

  *Taming Jesse James #1139

  *Cassidy Harte and the Comeback Kid #1144

  The Quiet Storm #1218

  Freefall #1239

  Nowhere to Hide #1264

  ^Nothing to Lose #1321

  ^Never Too Late #1364

  The Interpreter #1380

  High-Risk Affair #1448

  Shelter from the Storm #1467

  High-Stakes Honeymoon #1475

  Harlequin Books

  Special Edition Bonus Story: The Anniversary Party—Chapter One

  *Outlaw Hartes

  ^The Searchers

  **The Cowboys of Cold Creek

  +The Women of Brambleberry House

  %The Wilder Family

  #Fortunes of Texas: Return to Red Rock

  @Montana Mavericks: Thunder Canyon Cowboys

  Other titles by this author available in ebook format.

  RAEANNE THAYNE

  finds inspiration in the beautiful northern Utah mountains, where she lives with her husband and three children. Her books have won numerous honors, including a RITA® Award nomination from Romance Writers of America and a Career Achievement Award from Romantic Times BOOKreviews magazine. RaeAnne loves to hear from readers and can be reached through her Web site at http://www.raeannethayne.com.

  SPECIAL EXCERPT FROM

  Army doctor Eli Sanderson always had a thing for Melissa Fielding so when he returns home to Cannon Beach, Oregon, he’s determined to make a move. After a divorce and her own need to start over, will Melissa’s walls be insurmountable?

  Read on for a sneak peek of

  A Soldier’s Return

  by New York Times bestselling author

  RaeAnne Thayne.

  CHAPTER ONE

  Some days, a girl reached a point where her best course of action was to run away from her problems.

  Melissa Fielding hung up the phone after yet another unproductiv
e discussion with her frustrating ex-husband, drew in a deep, cleansing breath, then threw on her favorite pair of jogging shoes.

  Yes, she had a million things to do. The laundry basket spilled over with clothes, she had bills to pay, dirty dishes filled her sink, and she was scheduled to go into the doctor’s office where she worked in less than two hours.

  None of that mattered right now. She had too much energy seething through her, wave after wave like the sea pounding Cannon Beach during a storm.

  Even Brambleberry House, the huge, rambling Victorian where she and her daughter lived in the first-floor apartment, seemed too small right now.

  She needed a little good, hard exercise to work some of it off or she would be a stressed, angry mess at work.

  She and Cody had been divorced for three years, separated four, but he could still make her more frustrated than anybody else on earth. Fortunately, their seven-year-old daughter, Skye, was at school, so she didn’t have to witness her parents arguing yet again.

  She yanked open her apartment door to head for the outside door when it opened from the other side. Rosa Galvez, her de facto landlady who ran the three-unit building for her aunt and a friend, walked inside, arms loaded with groceries.

  Her friend took one look at Melissa’s face and frowned. “Uh-oh. Bad morning?” Rosa asked, her lovely features twisted with concern.

  Now that she was off the phone, the heat of Melissa’s anger cooled a degree or two, but she could still feel the restless energy spitting and hissing through her like a downed power line.

  “You know how it goes. Five minutes on the phone with my ex and I either have to punch something, spend an hour doing yoga or go for a hard run on the beach. I don’t have a free hour and punching something would be counterproductive, so a good run is the winner.” Melissa took two bags of groceries from Rosa and led the way up the stairs to the other woman’s third-floor apartment.

  “Run an extra mile or two for me, would you?” Rosa asked.

  “Sure thing.”

  “What does he want this time?”

  She sighed. “It’s a long story.” She didn’t want to complain to her friend about Cody. It made her sound bitter and small, and she wasn’t, only frustrated at all the broken promises and endless disappointments.

  Guilt, an old, unwelcome companion, poked her on the shoulder. Her daughter loved her father despite his failings. Skye couldn’t see what Melissa did—that even though Skye was only seven, there was a chance she was more mature than her fun-loving, thrill-chasing father.

  She ignored the guilt, reminding herself once more there was nothing she could do about her past mistakes but continue trying to make the best of things for her child’s sake.

  Rosa opened the door to her wide, window-filled apartment, and Melissa wasn’t surprised to find Rosa’s much-loved dog, an Irish setter named Fiona, waiting just inside.

  “Can I take Fiona on my run?” she asked impulsively, after setting the groceries in the kitchen.

  “That would be great!” Rosa exclaimed. “We were going to go on a walk as soon as I put the groceries away, but she would love a run much more. Thank you! Her leash is there on the hook.”

  At the word leash, Fiona loped to the door and did a little circular dance of joy that made more of Melissa’s bad mood seep away.

  “Let’s do this, sweetheart,” she said, grabbing the leash from its place by the door and hooking it to Fiona’s shamrock-green collar.

  “Thank you for this. Have fun.” Rosa opened the door for them, and the strong dog just about pulled Melissa toward the stairs. She waved at her friend, then she and the dog hurried outside.

  The April morning was one of those rare and precious days along the Oregon Coast when Mother Nature decided it was finally time to get serious about spring. Sunlight gleamed on the water and all the colors seemed saturated and bright from the rains of the preceding few days.

  The well-tended gardens of Brambleberry House were overflowing with sweet-smelling flowers—cherry blossoms, magnolia, camellias. It was sheer delight. She inhaled the heavenly aroma, enjoying the undernote of sea and sand and other smells that were inexorable scent-memories of her childhood.

  Fiona pulled at the leash, forcing Melissa to pick up her pace. Yes. A good run was exactly the prescription she was writing herself.

  As she headed down the path toward the gate that led to the water, she spotted Sonia, the third tenant of Brambleberry House, working in a bed of lavender that hadn’t yet burst into bloom.

  Sonia was an interesting creature. She wasn’t rude, exactly, she simply kept to herself and had done so for the seven months Melissa had lived downstairs from her.

  Melissa always felt so guilty when she watched the other woman make her painstaking way up the stairs to her second-floor apartment, often pausing to rest on the landing. She didn’t know the nature of Sonia’s health issues, but she obviously struggled with something. She walked with a limp, and Rosa had told Melissa once that the other woman had vision issues that precluded driving.

  Right after moving in, Melissa had offered to switch apartments with her so Sonia wouldn’t have to make the climb, but her offer had been refused.

  “I need…the exercise,” Sonia had said in her halting, odd cadence. “Going upstairs is good...physical therapy…for me.”

  Melissa had to admire someone willing to push herself out of her comfort zone, sustained only by the hope that she would grow from the experience.

  That was a good life lesson for her. She wasted entirely too much energy dwelling on the painful reality that life hadn’t turned out exactly as she planned, that some of her dreams were destined to disappointment.

  Like Sonia, maybe it was time she stopped being cranky about things she couldn’t control and took any chance that came along to force herself to stretch outside her comfort zone. She needed to learn how to make the best of things, to simply enjoy a gorgeous April day.

  “Beautiful morning, isn’t it?”

  “Lovely,” Sonia said with her somewhat lopsided smile. “Hello...Melissa. Hello...Fiona.”

  She scratched the dog under her chin and was rewarded with one of Fi’s doggie grins.

  While the Irish setter technically lived with Rosa, the cheerful dog seemed to consider all the occupants of Brambleberry House her particular pack. That shared pet care worked out well for Melissa. Her daughter had been begging for a dog since before the divorce. Skye had been in heaven when they’d moved into Brambleberry House and discovered Rosa had a dog she was more than willing to share. This way, they got the benefits of having a dog without the onus of being responsible for one all the time.

  That was yet another thing she had to be grateful for on this beautiful spring day. She had been so blessed to find an open apartment in Brambleberry House when she and Skye returned to Cannon Beach after all those years of wandering. It was almost a little miracle, since the previous tenant had only moved out to get married the week before Melissa returned to her hometown and started looking for a place.

  She didn’t know if it was fate or kismet or luck or simply somebody watching out for them. She only knew that she and Skye had finally found a place to throw down roots.

  She ran hard, accompanied by the sun on her face, the low murmur of the waves, the crunch of sand under her running shoes. All of it helped calm her.

  By the time she and Fiona made it the mile and a half to the end of the beach and she’d turned around to head back, the rest of her frustration had abated, and she focused instead on the endorphins from the run and the joy of living in this beautiful place.

  She paused for a moment to catch her breath, looking out at the rock formations offshore, the towering haystacks that so defined this part of the Oregon Coast, then the craggy green mountains to the east.

  It was so good to be home. She had friends here, connections. Her dad was buried not far from here. Her mom and stepfather were here most of the time, though they had just bought an RV and were spending a
few months traveling around the country.

  She would have thought being a military wife to Melissa’s dad would have cured her mother’s wanderlust, but apparently not. They would be back soon.

  Melissa didn’t envy them. After moving to a new base every few years during her childhood and then following Cody around from continent to continent, she loved being in one place. This place. She had missed it more than she even realized, until she finally decided to bring Skye here.

  She should have done it years ago instead of trying so hard to stay close to her ex-husband for Skye’s sake. She had enjoyed living on Oahu, his home training location, but the cost of living had been prohibitive. Most of her salary as a nurse had gone to housing and the rest to food.

  When he decided to move to South America on a whim, she had finally thrown up her hands and opted not to follow him. Instead, she had packed up her daughter for one last move and come home to Cannon Beach.

  She started her run again, not wanting to spend more time than she already had that morning dwelling on her mistakes.

  It made her sad, wondering if she should have tried harder to make things work, even though she was fully aware both of them had left the marriage long before they finally divorced.

  Now wasn’t the time to obsess about her failures or the loneliness that kept her up at night.

  He had gotten married again. That was what he called to tell her earlier. It had been a spur-of-the-moment decision and they’d gone to St. Croix for their honeymoon, which had been beautiful but expensive. He’d spent so much on the honeymoon, in fact, that he couldn’t make that month’s child support payment, but he would make it up to her.

  He was coming back to Oregon to stay this time, and was willing to finally step up and be the dad he should have been all along. She’d been hearing that story or versions of it for fifteen years. She hoped it would happen, she really did.

  Cody wasn’t a bad man. She wouldn’t have loved him all those years and followed him from country to country to support his dreams if he were. But with the birth of their child, her priorities had changed, while she was afraid his never would.