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The Homecoming Queen Gets Her Man
Shirley Jump


Welcome Home, Meri Prescott!Roll out the red carpet—Meri’s back in town! But how could the jean-clad beauty fishing for crawdads be Stone Gap’s every-blond-hair-in-place princess? It seems the former Miss North Carolina has had it with pageants and perfection. Meri’s home to care for her ailing grandpa and realize her dream of becoming a photographer. If she could just ignore her treacherous heart when she gets her first gander at her gorgeous, all-grown-up first love.Meri was sweet fifteen when Jack Barlow gave her her first kiss–only to break up with her a year later and ship out to war. The soldier who comes home has changed, just like Meri. Doesn’t Jack know two can heal better than one? That it’s what’s inside that counts? And Meri’s got so much to give to that special Barlow man.









“I’m not who I used to be, and people in this town are never going to get past that.”


“Well then, they’re just ignorant. Don’t they realize you’re too damned old to be prancing down a runway in a tiara?”

Meri laughed. “Gee, thanks.”

“It’s true. You’re too old to be a beauty queen and too beautiful to be bothered by the pettiness of someone who should know better than to run their mouth.”

She cocked a grin at him. “Are you complimenting me, Jack Barlow?”

“Hell, no. Gentlemen compliment women, and I am no gentleman.”

He closed the gap between them and touched her cheek, and her heart tripped. She was sixteen again, thinking there was no one in the world she’d ever love as much as she loved Jack Barlow. Then he’d broken her heart, and she’d vowed to never, ever let anyone get that close.

When he brushed her hair back behind her ear and told her she was beautiful, she forgot her promise to herself. She’d thought about him kissing her—did she want him to kiss her? How would it be, after so many years? Better? Sweeter?

* * *

The Barlow Brothers: Nothing tames a Southern man faster … than true love!


The Homecoming

Queen Gets

Her Man

Shirley Jump






www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)


New York Times and USA TODAY bestselling author SHIRLEY JUMP spends her days writing romance so she can avoid the towering stack of dirty dishes, eat copious amounts of chocolate and reward herself with trips to the mall. Visit her website at www.ShirleyJump.com (http://www.ShirleyJump.com) for author news and a booklist, and follow her at Facebook.com/shirleyjump.author (http://Facebook.com/shirleyjump.author) for giveaways and deep discussions about important things like chocolate and shoes.


To all the brave heroes in our military, but especially to my husband and my father, who have demonstrated true heroism many times, both in the military and in life.


Contents

Cover (#u016b349b-5135-52b8-8cc9-1da12f19f210)

Introduction (#u4133d6df-81d4-5236-b332-968f039c35cb)

Title Page (#u0bf100a9-a0d5-5d48-8480-e489c00bb832)

About the Author (#uf76db015-58e1-54fc-8083-61f516676de5)

Dedication (#u97a0bf26-deb1-5815-8228-1677a0c6bc33)

Chapter One (#ufe5c8aaa-50fa-50e6-951c-2daad73f3877)

Chapter Two (#u279a96c5-2659-56ad-9028-5d006215ae3a)

Chapter Three (#u7d962f46-233c-5f9f-a4c6-ab515cc62f87)

Chapter Four (#ud37e4003-cc87-5d46-8d57-782122f8a757)

Chapter Five (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Six (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Seven (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Eight (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Nine (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Ten (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Eleven (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Twelve (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Thirteen (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Fourteen (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Fifteen (#litres_trial_promo)

Extract (#litres_trial_promo)

Copyright (#litres_trial_promo)


Chapter One (#ulink_6be4e19c-5251-5483-a2ad-967e860aaffa)

Five years ago, Meri Prescott left Stone Gap, North Carolina, with a fire in her belly and a promise that if she ever came back, she’d be doing it in style. She’d imagined riding down Main Street in the back of a limo while the blue-haired ladies at Sadie’s Clip ’n’ Curl gawked and the fishermen who parked their butts and their one-that-got-away stories on the bench in front of the Comeback Bar shook their heads and muttered about the good old days when a two-tone Chevy was fancy enough for getting around town.

Meri had imagined a homecoming that would tell everyone in this nowhere town that she had made it, become more than anyone imagined. That she was more than just a pretty face, someone who worried about her manicure but not her grade point average. A girl, really, who had thought New York City would be the cure for all that ailed her, and that in that giant city she had finally found the person she was meant to be, not one who had been manufactured like a store mannequin.

Okay, so she’d been blinded by the stars in her eyes. The Meri Prescott who had left Stone Gap with a tiara and a plan was not the Meri Prescott who was returning. Not by a long shot. And she wasn’t so sure Stone Gap was ready to accept the woman she had become.

Frankly, she didn’t give a damn either way. She was here for Grandpa Ray, for as long as he needed her. To help him, and in the process...help herself.

Her fingers drifted to her cheek, to the long, curved scar that had yet to fade, a constant memory of the division between her past and her present. There were nights when she woke up in a cold sweat, reliving the attack outside her crappy outer-borough apartment. She’d tried, tried so hard to stay in New York, to keep up with her photography job, but the city had changed for her, and the buildings she used to love had become like prison walls.

She needed air and space and warm sun on her face. Then maybe she’d be able to conquer the demons that haunted her nights and shadowed her days. Maybe then she’d be able to hold a camera again and see something through the lens besides the face of her attacker.

Maybe.

At the stop sign holding court in the intersection of Main Street and Honeysuckle Lane, her ten-year-old Toyota let out a smoky cough. The car’s AC had stopped working somewhere back in Baltimore, and exhaust curled in through the open windows, a sickly sweet stench that made it seem like she hadn’t journeyed very far from the congested streets of Brooklyn.

All it took to remind her that she was back in the small-town South was a glance out the window, at the wide verandas fronting the pastel Colonials lining Main Street, yielding after Honeysuckle Lane to quaint storefronts with happy flags and bright awnings, sporting first names as though they were residents, too. Joe’s Barber Shop. Ernie’s Hardware & Sundries. Betty’s Bakery. And then one that made her slow, almost stop.

Gator’s Garage.

One glimpse of the blue building, fronted by a hand-painted sign fashioned out of an old tractor-trailer tire, and Meri was fifteen again and getting her first clumsy kiss from Jack Barlow—and a year later, going through her first clumsy breakup. She remembered the smell of the motor oil, the dark spreading stain of it in the center of the garage floor, and most of all, Jack’s blue eyes, sad and serious, as he told her they were over. That he wanted more than a beauty-queen girlfriend, he wanted someone grounded, real. The words had stung and stayed with her long after he’d shipped out for the Middle East a week later. She’d headed in the opposite direction, to the Miss Teen America beauty pageant, and vowed to forget Jack Barlow ever existed.

A horn honked. Meri jerked her attention back to the road, and a moment later, Gator’s Garage was behind her. She took a right on Maple, a left on Elm, then turned again on Cherrystone and faced the house she had left in her rearview mirror five years ago.

It sat at the end of the cul-de-sac like a presiding queen, two stories of white clapboard with porches that stretched from end to end on both stories. The driveway flared out in pale bricks, laid before the Civil War and still flanked by twin willows draped with Spanish moss. It could have been 1840 instead of the twenty-first century, and in some areas of life inside that house, the world still ran as if Abraham Lincoln reigned in the White House.

The Toyota coughed again, jerked like an asthmatic, then sputtered to a stop in front of the house. Great.

Meri let out a long breath, but it did little to ease the tension in her neck, the tight band between her shoulders. With the car engine quiet and dead now, the North Carolina heat began to bake her in place.

The urge to turn around, to flee, to avoid what was coming, surged through her. Instead, she pulled out the keys and clasped them in her hand. The hard metal indented her palm with a dose of reality. She wasn’t running back to New York, not today, maybe not for a long while.

She had good reason to be here, one frail eighty-four-year-old reason. Grandpa Ray trumped everything else going on in her life.

Meri’s mother came out onto the front porch and crossed her arms over her chest. Meri could have spotted the look of disapproval and disappointment on Anna Lee Prescott’s face from the space station. She knew that look, knew it far too well.

Still, the masochistic hope that things might have changed rose in her chest and burned for a brief second. No, given the look on her mother’s face, there was little chance Anna Lee had done a one-eighty in the last five years. The best Meri could hope for was a forty-five-degree turn in the direction of common sense.

Meri ran a quick comb through her wind-blown hair, then headed up the sloping driveway and down the brick path leading to the front porch. Beside her, the manicured lawn unfurled like a lush green carpet, flanked by precisely pruned rosebushes and strategically placed annuals. A wooden swing hung from a long thick oak tree branch, drifting slightly in the breeze. It could have all been a spread in a magazine—and had been, twice, in Southern Living and Architectural Digest.

Her three-inch heel caught in the space between the pavers and Meri cursed her footwear choice. For hundreds of miles, she’d told herself she no longer cared what her mother thought.

Yeah, right. If that was so, then why had she exchanged her flip-flops for designer heels that pinched her toes and made her calves ache? Why had she spent twenty minutes smoothing the frizz out of her hair in the bathroom at a roadside truck stop?

Did I really think wearing heels and straightening my hair would make this easier?

Yeah, she had. Way to go, lying to herself.

When Meri reached the first porch step, an automatic smile curved across her face, as if she were stepping onto a stage instead of into her childhood home. All that practice had been good for something, it seemed. She could still prance around in high heels and look happier than a bird in the sky. “Hi, Momma.”

“Why, as I live and breathe,” Anna Lee said, emerging from the door frame to grasp Meri’s hand with both of her own. “My prodigal daughter has returned.”

Meri leaned in and pressed a kiss to her mother’s cheek. She caught the faint scent of floral perfume, mingled with the oversweet fragrance of hair spray and the mild notes of the powder dusting her flawless makeup. Everything about Anna Lee was as manicured and perfect as the lawn. Tawny hair sprayed into a submissive bob, white cotton shirt and navy shorts pressed into straight lines, and subdued, pristine makeup.

Anna Lee drew back and cupped Meri’s cheeks in her soft palms. “You look so worn-out, honey. Are you sleeping well? Eating right?” Her thumb skipped over the scar and she averted her eyes, as if pretending she hadn’t seen the red line would make the whole horrible thing disappear. “Why don’t you come in, splash some cold water on your face and get a little makeup on? You’ll feel right as rain.”

Irritation bubbled inside Meri, but she widened her smile and kept her lips together so she wouldn’t say something she’d regret. “It was a long drive, Momma. That’s all.”

Anna Lee’s thumb traced a light touch over the scar running down the left side of Meri’s face. “Is it...?”

Meri captured her mother’s hand and drew it down. “I’m fine, Momma. Really.”

Her mother looked as though she wanted to disagree, but instead she nodded and pasted on a mirror smile to Meri’s. “Let’s get out of this heat. I swear, I’m about ready to melt into a puddle, just stepping onto the veranda.”

Anna Lee drew out the syllables in true Southern belle tones, whispers tacked on the end of her consonants. Meri always had liked the way her mother talked, in a sort of hushed song that drew people in, captivated them.

And had captivated two husbands, both deceased now, God bless their souls, leaving Anna Lee a very wealthy woman. She had returned to her Prescott roots, the more respected name of her first husband, as if the second husband had never existed, a mistake she had erased.

Although Jeremy Prescott had come from the other side of town, he’d shed his past as if shaking mud off his boots and managed to put himself through school and make millions in investment banking before a heart attack took him down at the age of fifty. Meri had never understood why her father hadn’t wanted to be like his simple, homespun family—the very people Meri loved the most. Grandpa Ray was one of the most real people Meri had ever known, living in his cabin by the lake, a planet away from the son and daughter-in-law who had made their life in this over-manicured mansion.

Meri let her mother hustle her in and down the polished hall, because it was easier than trying to stop the tidal wave of Anna Lee. They took a left and entered the rarely used formal sitting room, where cushions held their shape and dust motes held their breath.

In five seconds, Meri realized why her mother had led her here. The room glistened with gold and silver, shining on glass shelves mounted against two walls. A rainbow of ribbons hung from a custom-made display rack, while a thousand rhinestones sparkled their way through the rows and rows of crowns.

Meri sat on the stiff white love seat, its curved lion’s feet pairing alongside her nude pumps. Her mother perched on the rose-colored armchair across the room, divided from her daughter by an oval mahogany coffee table and an Aubusson carpet that had cost more than a small car. The antique grandfather clock in the corner ticked away the moments with a beat of heavy, unspoken expectations.

Meri shifted in her seat. God, it was like being in a mausoleum. “Momma, wouldn’t we be more comfortable on the back porch?”

Her mother waved off that suggestion. “There are men out there.”

She said the word men as if referring to a plague of locusts. Anna Lee never had liked to be around those who performed manual labor. Maybe she was worried they might put a broom or a hammer in her hands.

“They are building a gazebo,” Anna Lee went on. “You know me, always changing this, fixing that.”

“Making everything perfect, especially your daughter.” The words sprang from Meri’s lips like a cobra waiting to strike. And she’d tried so hard to be polite and dutiful. That had lasted, oh, five seconds.

Anna Lee’s brows furrowed. “All I ever wanted was for you to be all you could be. You were always such a beautiful girl, so capable of—”

“I am not here to talk about might-have-beens, Momma. I’m no longer a beauty queen.”

“You will always be a beauty queen. That’s something no one can take from you. Why, look at all these crowns.” Anna Lee gestured toward the sparkling tiaras, the ribbons, the trophies, all reminders of a different time, a different Meri. “They prove you are the most beautiful girl in all the world.”

Meri sighed. “I’m not that person anymore, Momma.”

Anna Lee went on, as if she hadn’t heard Meri speak. “You could have been Miss America, if you had...” She pursed her lips. “Well, that’s neither here nor there.”

They’d had this argument a thousand times over the years. Some days Meri felt like she was arguing with herself, for all Anna Lee heard. “Momma, please. Let’s not get into that again.”

Anna Lee reached a hand toward her daughter’s face, toward the pale red scar that arced down Meri’s cheek like an angry crescent moon. “If you’d just let me take you to Doc Archer, he could fix you up and make you perfect again.”

“Don’t start, Momma. Just don’t start.”

Anna Lee let out a long sigh. “Well, you think about it.”

Meri had thought about it almost every day for the past three months, since the attack that had left her with the scar, changed in a thousand ways. But her mother still saw her as the same girl who had won a hundred beauty pageants, the one who had been destined for Miss America before she ran out of town and ditched everything and everyone.

She should have stayed in the car, kept driving, and avoided this senseless argument. When was she going to accept that her mother was never going to change?

Meri got to her feet and summoned up a little more patience. If she could have avoided stopping here, she would have, but after talking to Grandpa Ray a couple days ago, she’d been hell-bent on getting home and seeing him again. Which meant, for now, dealing with her mother. “Can I please get the key to the cottage so I can get settled in?”

Her mother waved behind her. “It’s in the same place as always. Though I don’t understand why you’d insist on staying in that shack when Geraldine made up the bed in your old room.”

Meri didn’t answer that. She crossed to the antique rolltop desk, pulled out one of the tiny drawers on the right-hand side and retrieved an old skeleton key. When she was a little girl, her daddy would use the guest cottage on the weekends for fishing—and, Meri suspected, time away from Momma and her endless list of expectations. A few times, Daddy had taken Meri along. She’d reveled in those days—when she could get muddy and messy, with no one around to straighten her hair or fuss over her meal choices.

As soon as Meri curled her palm around the heavy key, she was sixteen again in her mind, on a starlit night at Stone Gap Lake. She’d snuck down to the cottage with Jack, nervous and excited and completely infatuated. She’d been too foolish, too eager to prove she was mature and ready for what Jack wanted. In the end, she’d sat alone on the bank of the lake, confused and heartbroken.

Her cousin Eli had found her and driven her home, and helped her sneak up the rose trellis to her room before her mother found out she was gone.

Eli.

God, how could he be gone? Just being here, it seemed as if her cousin, with his giant personality, was still alive, that she’d see him at Sunday church or hanging out in the drive-through of the Quickie Burger. He was her best friend, one of the few people who could tease her out of a bad mood or a bad day, and more like a brother than a cousin. But in her head she could still hear that heartbreaking call from her aunt last year, telling Meri he was gone. The realization hit her anew with a sharp ache.

Meri drew in a breath, then tucked the key in her pocket and turned back to her mother. All Meri wanted to do was go see her grandfather, the most sane person on her father’s side of the family. “Have you seen Grandpa Ray?”

“I have had a number of commitments. Something I’m not sure you remember, Meredith Lee.”

The use of her formal name told Meri two things—one, her mother was trying to gain control of the situation, and two, she was gearing up to launch a criticism masquerading as a compliment. “I’m not here to discuss the past or what I’m doing with my present, Momma. I’m here to see Grandpa Ray, and be with him for as long as...” The words caught in her throat.

Too many losses. Meri couldn’t take another. Not now.

Her mother pursed her lips, then nodded. She waved a delicate, manicured hand. “Then go, go. But be back in time for supper. Geraldine is making roast chicken. She made up your bed with those floral sheets you like, if you change your mind about where you want to stay.”

Meri sighed. “You knew I wasn’t staying here. Grandpa needs me, so I’m staying at the cottage. Nobody’s living there, and it’s right next door.”

“Why, Meredith Lee, that is akin to sleeping in the woods. Your grandfather lives like a heathen and that guest cottage of his is no better. Good Lord, when was the last time he cleaned it? It could be positively infested. I don’t think anyone has been there since your father used to go for his fishing weekends.”

“Just because Grandpa Ray lives in a modest house and doesn’t give a rat’s a—” she cut off the curse before it fully formed “—care about what people think of the way he lives doesn’t make him a heathen.”

“Geraldine will be sorely disappointed.”

The maid had been with the family for thirty years, longer than Meri had been alive. She had no doubt the gregarious woman would miss having Meri around, and for a moment, Meri felt bad about that. Then she realized her mother had said Geraldine would be disappointed, not herself.

Nothing had changed. Nothing at all. “I have to go, Momma.”

She hurried out of the emotionally stifling house and into her car. She whispered a prayer, then turned the key and with a jerk the Toyota roared to life. Thank God. As soon as she pulled out of the driveway, the lump in her throat cleared and the air smelled sweeter. She wound her way through town, passing the statuesque old South mansions, the quaint storefronts, the moneyed world of Stone Gap, until she reached the southwestern corner, so disparate from the rest of the town it seemed as forlorn as a stepchild, forgotten and left behind.

This was where Meri fit in, where she could breathe. This hardscrabble section of town, where people let their lawns get overgrown and left bikes in the front yard and didn’t care if someone forgot a glass on the coffee table. She parked in Grandpa Ray’s stone driveway, kicked off the heels and switched them for the flip-flops she kept stowed under the passenger seat, and got out of the car. She swooped her hair up into a ponytail as she walked, and by the time she reached the porch, Meri felt like herself.

For half a second, Meri expected her cousin Eli to come loping down the street, with his ready smile and another one of his corny jokes. But as she gazed at the empty blacktop, the truth hit her again like a brick. Eli was dead. He had died in the war, on some dusty road in Afghanistan, and he wasn’t coming back. Not now, not ever.

But his spirit was still here, in the clapboard houses and the big green trees and the happy birds chirping from their perches. In the trees he had planted years ago, the windows he’d helped Grandpa install, the gazebo he’d spent an entire winter building. Eli would have wanted Meri to be happy, to enjoy the day, whether it was short or long, and to never let her grief stew.

And she was going to try her best to do just that.

Meri charged up the bowed front steps and banged on the screen door. “Grandpa? It’s Meri!”

No response. She called again, but got only silence. Her stomach lurched. Was Grandpa sick? Had he passed out? Or...

She heard a sound from behind the house, and the fear and worry ebbed. She hurried down the steps, skirted the paint-weary house, ducking under the Spanish moss hanging from an oak tree, a genuine, light smile already on her face before she rounded the last corner.

“Grandpa Ray, you silly man,” she said with half a laugh, “don’t tell me you’re already ignoring the doctor’s—”

The words died in her throat. Her gaze skipped past her grandfather, napping in the Adirondack chair, and stopped when she saw the only man in Stone Gap she never wanted to see again.

Jack Barlow.

He stood there, a hundred feet from her grandpa, with an ax in one hand and a pile of chopped wood at his feet. He wore an old hunting cap, the camouflage brim tugged down over his short dark hair. His khaki shorts looked as if they’d been through a shredder, and his concert T-shirt was so faded that only the letters R and H showed, but still—

He looked good. She hated that he looked so...grown-up and confident and strong. And sexy. The Jack she remembered had been a gawky teenager just growing into his height. He’d headed out to boot camp, then on to the Middle East, and come back—

With the body of a Greek god.

He arched a brow in her direction and she cut her gaze away. Damn. He’d caught her staring.

Jack put down the ax, wiped the sawdust off his hands, then crossed to her. He’d gotten taller, leaner, more defined, and her traitor stomach did a funny little flip when he closed the gap between them. “Figured it was only a matter of time before trouble showed up,” he said.

“Nice to see you, too, Jack.”

He grinned, that lopsided smile that had once melted her heart. It didn’t have one bit of impact on her now. Not one bit. “Glad to see you haven’t changed.”

She raised her chin. “I’ve changed, Jack Barlow. More than you know.”

His gaze lit on the scar swooping along her cheek. Her heart clutched and she held her breath. Something haunted his eyes, something darker, edgier, different than anything she had ever seen before. For a second she felt a tether extend between them. Then his gaze jerked away and the connection flitted off with the summer breeze.

“I think we both have, Meri,” he said, his voice low.

“Some things will never be the same, will they?” She thought of her cousin, who had gone off to war a little after Jack did, tagging along with his best friend, just as he had when they’d been little and he’d followed Jack to the creek, the lake, whatever adventure the day had in store.

Two had left. One had returned.

Did that thought break Jack’s heart as much as her own? They’d been inseparable as kids. Trouble triplets, her grandmother used to say with a smile. Not having Eli here was like missing a limb.

“I’ve got work to do.” Jack picked up the ax and went back to the pile of wood. He swung the metal into the stumps with furious whacks, and kept his back to her, wearing that look of concentration that she knew as well as she knew her own eyes. Message clear: conversation over and done.

One thing was sure—the charming Jack Barlow she had known in high school was gone. There was something about this new Jack, something dark, that she didn’t recognize. Was it because of what he’d gone through in the military? Was it the loss of Eli, who had been a best friend to both of them for so many years?

Either way, the turned back and the clipped notes in Jack’s voice threw up a big No Trespassing sign, one Meri intended to honor. She was here for her grandfather, not to solve decade-old mysteries. And definitely not to get involved again with the guy who had seen her as nothing more than a vapid, pretty face.

She strode across the lawn and bent down by her grandfather’s chair. Meri pressed a kiss to his soft cheek, trying to hide her alarm at how thin, how pale, how frail her once hearty grandfather had gotten. He seemed to be shrinking into himself, this once robust man who used to carry her on his shoulders.

His eyes fluttered open, and then he smiled and grasped her hand with his own. Joy shone in his pale green eyes, gave his wan face a spark of color beneath his short white hair. Behind him, the vast Stone Gap Lake sparkled and danced the sun’s reflections off Grandpa Ray’s features. “Merry Girl,” he said, stroking his palm tenderly against her scar, a momentary touch filled with love. “You’re here. How’s my favorite granddaughter?”

“Sassy and smart, as always.”

He laughed. “You know what tames sassy?”

“Sugar,” she replied to the familiar dialogue. Every time he’d seen her, for as long as Meri could remember, Grandpa Ray had asked her the same question and she’d given the same replies. The exchange always ended with the same sweet reward—a handful of miniature chocolate bars.

He gave her a wink and a nod. “I still have a bowl full of candies on the dining room table, waiting just for you.” He grinned. “And Jack, if you care to share.”

She wasn’t sharing anything with Jack Barlow. Not now, not in the future. He was a complication she hadn’t expected, but a complication she could surely avoid.

“Me? Share chocolate? Grandpa, you forget who you’re talking to.” Behind her, she could hear the steady whoosh-thwap-thud of Jack’s ax splitting wood. Jack was here, helping her grandfather, something he had done for as long as she could remember. Back when they were kids, it had been Jack and Eli, spending their hours after school and weekends helping Grandpa Ray, then dashing into the lake to wash away the sawdust and sweat. For all the heartbreak Jack Barlow had brought to her life, he’d brought something very good to her grandfather’s and for that, she was grateful. That little flutter earlier—all due to being surprised at seeing him, nothing more.

Last she’d heard, he was still in the military, fighting overseas. But judging by his appearance here and the buzz cut that was growing out, he was no longer the property of the US government. Not that she cared. At all. Then why did her mind keep reaching back to that moment in Gator’s Garage? The painful months after their breakup when she’d tried to forget Jack Barlow and his lopsided grin?

Whoosh-thwap-thud. Whoosh-thwap-thud.

Given the fast and furious pace Jack was attacking the wood, maybe she wasn’t the only one trying to pretend that running into each other meant nothing.

Meri blew out a breath and dismissed the thought. Jack Barlow was in her past, the last place Meri wanted to visit. “After this morning, I could use every last chocolate in that bowl, Grandpa.”

Grandpa Ray chuckled. “Been visiting your mother?”

“I thought she might have changed. But...” Meri shook her head. She’d done her daughterly duty and gone to Anna Lee’s house. That was enough. “Anyway, I’m not here to talk about her. I want to talk about how you’re doing.”

“I’m still warming a seat.” He grinned. “That’s all I’m asking from the Lord these days.”

Her chest tightened, and she felt tears burn the back of her eyes, but she blinked them away and gave Grandpa Ray a smile. She perched on the edge of the opposite chair and took his hands in hers. “I’ll be here, as long as you want.”

“I’d like that, Merry Girl.” His voice wavered a bit and his hand tightened on hers. “I’d like that very much.”

She sat back against the chair, turning her face to the North Carolina sun. It warmed her in a way nothing else ever had or ever would. Here, in the backyard of this run-down little bungalow, among the trees and grass and birds, she was home, at peace. Here, she could breathe, for the first time in a long, long time. “Me, too, Grandpa. Me, too.”

Then she heard the whoosh-thwap-thud again. Her gaze traveled back to Jack, down the muscles rippling along his back and shoulders, and the flutter returned.

Finding peace was going to be a lot harder than she’d expected.


Chapter Two (#ulink_5bd64cb9-450c-572a-b2be-00fcf5fdf163)

Forgetting. It wasn’t something Jack Barlow did easily.

When he was a kid, his grandmother used to tease him about his incredible memory. Looking back, he didn’t think that he had such a great memory as much as a penchant for paying attention to details. That had served him well when he worked in his father’s garage and needed to reassemble an engine, and when he’d been on patrol in Afghanistan. In those cases, lives depended upon noticing the smallest things out of place. Still, there were days when he cursed his mind and wished the days would become a blur, the details a blank.

A car door slammed somewhere outside the garage. Jack flinched, oriented his attention in the direction of the sound, adrenaline rushing through his body. To anyone else, it was just a car door, but Jack’s brain jogged left instead of right, and in that second, he saw the bright light of the explosion detonating, heard the roaring thunder blasting into the Humvee, then the spray of metal arcing out and away from the impact. Through the floorboards, the passenger seat, up and into—

Eli.

Jack squinted his eyes shut, but it didn’t erase the sounds of Eli’s agonizing screams, didn’t wipe away the sight of his blood on the truck, on Jack, on everything. Didn’t make him forget watching Eli’s big brown eyes fading from light to glass. Jack shut his eyes, but still all he saw was the moment when he’d turned the truck east instead of west, and the shrapnel intended for Jack hit his best friend instead.

Goddamn.

Jack took in a breath, another, but still his heart jackhammered in his chest, and his lungs constricted. Sweat plastered his shirt, washing him hot, then cold. The wave began to hit him hard, fast, like a riptide, dragging him under, back to that dark place again.

Blowing out a breath, he unclenched his fists and opened his eyes. He stared up at the underside of the Monte Carlo. The snake lines of the exhaust, the long rectangle of the oil pan. Inhaled the scent of grease, felt the hard, cold concrete beneath his palms. Listened to the sounds of passing traffic. Reality.

Finally, Jack pushed himself out from under the car and into the cool, dim expanse of the garage. He rubbed the tired out of his eyes, worked to uncoil the tension that came from snatching a few minutes of sleep every hour. But still the memories stayed, a panther in the shadows.

Ever since he’d come home from the war, Jack had done the only thing he could—worked until he couldn’t stay awake. He divided his days between his father’s garage and Ray’s cottage, because it was only when he was immersed in a disabled engine or surrounded by a stack of unchopped wood that he could pull his mind away.

Away from the past. Away from the mistakes he had made. Away from his own guilt.

And now, away from Meri. He hadn’t expected to see her—not today, not ever—and the encounter had left him a little disconcerted, unnerved. Meri represented everything he wanted to put behind him, everything he wanted to forget—

And couldn’t.

How the hell was he supposed to tell her the truth? Tell her that he was the one who should have protected Eli, who should have made damned sure Eli, with his perpetual smile, was the one who came home? How could Jack ever look in Meri’s eyes and admit the truth?

That it was Jack’s fault Eli had died. Jack’s, and no one else’s.

He threw the wrench in his hands at the workbench. It pinged off the wooden leg and boomeranged into his shin. Jack let out a long string of curses, but it didn’t ease one damned bit of the pain.

“Whew. I’m impressed. I usually only hear language like that when the Yankees lose.”

Jack turned, grabbing a rag to wipe off the worst of the grease on his hands, and to give him another second to collect himself, push that panther back into the shadows a little more. His brother Luke stood just inside the garage, looking as though he’d just come from the beach, or a vacation, or both. His brown hair had that lightened tint that came from too much time in the sun, and Jack suspected his brother’s khaki shorts had more sand in the pockets than dollars. Unlike their eldest brother, Mac, who worked so much the brothers had nicknamed him Batman because of how rarely he showed up at family events. “You here to help me change out that transmission?”

Luke laughed. “Work? That’s against my religion.”

Jack leaned against the tool chest and tossed the rag on a nearby bench. “Funny, I don’t remember laziness being a lesson in Sunday school.”

“That’s because you and Mac were too busy trying to compete for teacher’s pet.” Luke reached into the small fridge by the door, pulled out two sodas and tossed one to Jack.

Jack popped the top and took a long swallow of the icy drink. “And you were too busy trying to ditch.”

Luke grinned. “Something I have perfected as an adult.”

Jack snorted agreement. He swiped the sweat off his brow with the back of his hand and propped a foot against the front bumper of the ’87 Monte Carlo. The car had more miles on it than Methuselah had kids, but longtime customer Willie Maddox refused to junk the Great White Whale. The car was big and loud but classic and sporty, and Willie babied his ride like Evangeline Millstone babied her overdressed, overindulged Chihuahua. Hence the new transmission in the Great White Whale, and a decent payday for the garage. Ever since their dad’s knee replacement surgery, Jack had been shouldering the garage—and that meant shouldering the responsibility for his father’s income. Another week or so and Bobby Barlow would be back in the garage.

“What do you say you knock off early and we head down to Cooter’s for a couple beers?”

“It’s three o’clock in the afternoon, Luke.”

“All the more reason to celebrate.” Luke tipped his soda in Jack’s direction. “Come on, you workaholic. The world isn’t going to fall apart if you close down the shop a couple hours early. Besides, I hear Meri Prescott is back in town. All the more reason to grab a beer with me.”

Jack scowled. “What does Meri being back in town have to do with anything?”

“You telling me you aren’t interested?” He arched a brow. “Or horny?”

“Jesus, Luke, let it go.” Jack tossed the empty soda into the trash, grabbed the wrench and slid back under the Monte Carlo. He tightened a bolt and waited for the sounds of his brother leaving. Instead, a pair of familiar sneakers appeared in his peripheral vision.

“You still gonna stick to the I’m not interested in her line?”

“We dated a million years ago.” Eight, his mind corrected. “Of course I’m not interested.”

Yeah, right. Given the way he’d reacted to seeing her yesterday, and how many times his mind had wandered to thoughts of her, not interested was far from the truth. Either way, it didn’t matter.

Because getting involved with Meri would mean telling her what had happened to her cousin on that battlefield, and that was one thing Jack couldn’t do. Hell, he could barely handle the truth himself. Diving into that deep, dark corner of his mind would pull him down into the abyss, and right now he was barely clinging to the edge.

“Just leave me the hell alone, Luke. I have work to do.” There were days when he was glad neither Luke nor Mac had taken to working in the garage. Start talking alternators, and his brothers found other things to do.

It took a while, but eventually Luke’s feet moved out of Jack’s line of vision, then out of the garage. Quiet descended over the darkened world beneath the Monte Carlo and Jack told himself it brought him peace.

Seems he was just as good at lying as he was at forgetting.

* * *

Meri parked in the lot outside of Betty’s Bakery, a kissing cousin to George’s Deli—a husband-and-wife restaurant venture that had been a staple in downtown Stone Gap for as long as Meri could remember. Every time she saw the bakery and deli, she thought of her cousin Eli, who had worked summers and weekends here with his parents, and who never failed to bring home treats after his shift. Out of all the people Meri had known in the world, Eli had been the most gracious, most giving and most loving. There wasn’t a person in Stone Gap who hadn’t thought of him as halfway to a saint. When he’d died, it was as if something good and bright had left the world, leaving a sad dimness behind. Here, Meri could still feel Eli’s presence. That was nice.

Meri’s aunt Betty—her mother’s younger and sassier sister—and uncle George Delacorte loved creating food, loved sharing food with their customers, friends and families, but didn’t love working side by side, so when their first food venture, a small restaurant they ran together, failed, they moved into two locations as a way to keep the peace in their marriage. Betty provided the baked goods for George’s sandwiches, and he kept her stocked with disposable flatware and paper plates. It was, Betty often said, a marriage made in Fleischmann’s Yeast.

Aunt Betty and Uncle George had always been jovial people, a trait that Eli had had in abundance. The loss of their only son had dimmed their spirits, but not their giving to the community, Meri saw. Each of the shops sported an American flag, proudly waving in the wind. The front window of the deli held a service star, the blue star changed to a gold one, to represent a fallen soldier.

Meri’s heart clenched. She got out of the car and went into Betty’s first. The scent of fresh-baked bread and muffins greeted her at the door. Her stomach growled in what her mother would call a most unladylike manner. God, everything smelled so good, so decadent. For a second, the automatic response of I can’t have that dinged in her head. How many years had she resisted desserts and second helpings and carbohydrates?

“Well, as I live and breathe!” Betty came bustling around the counter, her arms outstretched, her generous hourglass frame outlined with a bright pink apron. “Meri! You are a sight for sore eyes!”

“Oh, Aunt Betty, you, too.” Meri returned Betty’s boisterous hug, enveloped by the scents of cinnamon and vanilla and homecoming. She had spent many an afternoon at this bakery, watching Betty make everything from doughnuts to rye bread, soaking up the scents of decadent foods along with her aunt’s offbeat wisdom. She glanced around the homey space. “I still half expect Eli to walk through the door every time I come here.”

“Me, too, sweetheart. Lord, I miss that boy.” Aunt Betty shook her head and her eyes welled. Her gaze lingered on a drawing tacked to the wall, a hand sketch of an indigo bunting, a bright blue bird that Eli had always said was a sign of good things to come. For as long as Meri had known him, her cousin had sketched the wildlife in Stone Gap. The two of them had taken many hikes over the years, she with her camera, he with a sketch pad. Aunt Betty looked at the drawing for a long time, her fingers fluttering over her lips. “He was my heart, don’t you know? A mother should never have to bury her son.”

Meri nodded, her throat too thick for words. The indigo bunting just stared back from its pencil perch.

Aunt Betty swiped at her eyes and worked a smile to her face. “Well, no more of that. I can just hear Eli now. ‘Mama, save your crying for another day. The sun is out, and that’s reason enough to smile.’”

“I swear, I never saw him depressed a day in his life.”

Aunt Betty’s smile wobbled. “He brought everyone who knew him a lot of joy. I’m sure he’s got every angel in heaven laughing as we speak.”

“I wouldn’t doubt it for a second. Probably pranking the Holy Ghost, too.”

That made Aunt Betty laugh. “True, so true.” She drew back and eyed Meri. “How are you doing, honey pie?”

The concern made tears well in Meri’s eyes. Her aunt understood her so well, a thousand times better than Anna Lee ever had. “I’m doing fine. Especially now that I’m back in town.”

“To stay?”

Meri shook her head. “To visit. Eventually I’ll need to get back to my photography job.” Assuming, that was, that she could ever get over her fears to do her job. She’d hoped that coming here, where the world seemed put to rights, would give her back the magic she had lost.

“I saw some of your photographs in a magazine, and Eli used to send them to me over the computer all the time. Such amazing talent you have, Meri.” Aunt Betty beamed.

“Eli shared them with you?”

“Of course. He was proud as punch that his cousin was taking the world by storm in the big city. Thought you were the next Ansel Adams. Can’t say I disagreed.”

Meri reached out and drew her aunt into a tight, warm hug. “Thank you, Aunt Betty. That means a lot, coming from you.”

The unspoken message—Anna Lee would have to be on her deathbed to say such a thing. There were many days when Meri wondered how her life would have been different had she been born into Aunt Betty and Uncle George’s house instead of Anna Lee’s castle on Cherrystone.

As if reading Meri’s mind, Aunt Betty shifted the conversation to Anna Lee. “Word has it that you’re staying out at Ray’s, in the guest cottage. Your mother is positively mortified. She feels like you’re, and I quote, ‘besmirching the family’s good name’ by refusing her hospitality.”

“I didn’t refuse. I made another choice.”

Betty cupped Meri’s face with her generous palms. Unlike her mother, Betty didn’t flinch away from Meri’s scar, and in fact, barely seemed to give it notice. “A good choice. Don’t let my sister push you around. Lord knows she’s been trying to do that since the day you were born. I swear, if she could have, she’d have told the doctor how to arrange the maternity ward and what temperature to warm the formula.”

Meri gave Betty another hug, then drew back. “Thanks, Aunt Betty.”

“Anytime.” Betty swung back behind the counter and readied a white box. “Let me guess. You’re here for Ray’s daily muffin supply?”

“Yup. Then heading to Uncle George’s to pick up Grandpa’s favorite sandwich for dinner. I tried to talk him into some salmon with a side of spinach, but he was having none of that. Said the only thing that makes him feel better is Uncle George’s sandwiches for supper and your muffins in the morning.”

“Ray’s a smart man. But not smart enough to know I make those muffins with whole wheat flour and add some flaxseed to the sandwich bread.” Betty loaded a quartet of muffins into the box, closed the lid, then tied it with thin red string. “And what are you getting for you?”

“Oh, I shouldn’t.” The response came like a Pavlovian reflex.

“Yes, you should. And you can. And don’t tell me about calories or fat grams or any of that nonsense. Food is meant to be enjoyed, not ignored. And besides, you deserve it. Why, I bet you already dealt with your mother today.”

Meri nodded. “It was as much fun as I expected.”

“Then all the more reason to indulge. Talking to Anna Lee will drive you to either sugar or pharmaceuticals. My vote is for sugar.” Betty placed a chocolate cupcake covered with fluffy pink frosting in front of Meri. “Cupcakes are like good men. Taste them, savor them and never, ever ignore them or someone else will eat them right up.” She nudged the cupcake closer. “So, come on now, quick as a bunny, take a bite.”

Meri picked up the dessert, inhaling the rich notes of the chocolate and the sweet confection of the raspberry frosting. She hesitated, then blew out a breath and sank her teeth into the side. Frosting curved on her lip, chocolate cake crumbs dusted her chin, but the bite in her mouth melted like heaven against her palate. She zeroed in for a second bite, then paused when the shop door’s bell rang.

And Jack walked into the bakery.

She turned part of the way toward him, the cupcake cradled in one hand, the frosting on her lip. He caught her eye, and something warm and dark extended between them, a whisper of a memory that bloomed in her mind.

Jack, tempting her with a cupcake, the day before a pageant. Telling her the contraband treat would be worth every bite. She’d refused, shaking her head, her body quivering with desire for him, for the chocolate, for everything that she had denied herself for years. Then he’d swiped a dollop of frosting off the top, placed it against her lips, and she’d opened her mouth to taste it, to taste him. Jack’s gaze had captured hers, and in that next instant, the cupcake was forgotten, and she was tasting his mouth, his body, him.

He’d been the one to end it that day, pulling away from her, telling her she was right, that she had a pageant to prepare for, and she needed to focus on that. Even then, a week before they’d broken up, he’d been drawing the line in the sand between them.

Aunt Betty greeted him, and Jack said hello back, but his attention stayed on Meri.

“What are you doing here?” she asked.

His gaze flicked to Betty, then away, and a shade dropped over his features. She could see him shutting the door, clear as day. Typical Jack—shut her out to whatever was going on inside his head.

“I’m surprised you’re still in town,” Jack said, instead of answering her question.

She bristled. “I just got here, Jack. I’m not going anywhere for a while.”

“Good.”

The single word surprised her, undid the ready fight in her head. “Why do you say that?”

“Because Ray won’t admit he needs a mother hen, but he does. And you’re the perfect person to tell him what to do.”

“Are you saying I’m bossy?”

A half smile curved across his face. “Darlin’, you’ve always been bossy.”

Something about the way he said darlin’ sent heat fissuring through her and made her think of the hot summer nights they’d spent together as teenagers, when temptation was their constant companion.

“I see you still love cupcakes,” Jack said, taking another step closer to her.

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.”

She shrugged. “Let’s just enjoy the moment, okay?”

He suspected she was hiding a few secrets in those words, burying a pile of her own regrets beneath that shrug. A different day, a different Jack would have asked, but this Jack had learned to leave well enough alone and not go poking sticks if he didn’t want one poked in the embers of his own past.

* * *

Meri stayed inside her grandfather’s house—banished there by Grandpa Ray, who’d told her that he and Jack had the gutter situation under control—washing the dishes and giving his refrigerator a thorough cleaning.

That’s what she’d told herself she was in here to do, but her attention kept straying outside, to where Jack and Grandpa Ray worked with easy camaraderie. Grandpa Ray did most of the talking; Jack did most of the working. Meri noticed how Jack would take care of Grandpa without being obvious, how he’d offer to lift something or grab an extra gutter to carry—“Because I might as well carry two if I’m carrying one”—and how he’d find ways to make Grandpa sit down. Have him crimp the ends or hacksaw the end of a gutter while sitting at a makeshift workbench.

The Jack she had known when she was a teenager had been a wild rebel, ready to take on the world, run from the responsibilities that being a Barlow brought. He’d been everything she hadn’t—brave and impulsive. She’d dated him partly because she admired him and wanted just a little of that to rub off, to give her the courage to tell her mother no, to walk away from the endless pageants and pressure.

But this Jack, the one changed by war and the military, was more reclusive, less impulsive. He had an edge to him that came with a Do Not Trespass sign. It intrigued her, but also reminded her that she wasn’t here to open old wounds.

She finished the kitchen, made up a grocery list of things that were healthier options than most of what Grandpa had in his cabinets, then grabbed her purse. She told herself she was helping Grandpa—not avoiding the camera that still sat in its padded bag, untouched for months. A job at a magazine that she had yet to return to, a career she had abandoned. Every time she thought about raising the lens to her eye, though, a flurry of panic filled her. So she did dishes and cleaned house and made lists.

She came around the side of the house to find Grandpa Ray and Jack sitting on the picnic table, under the shade. “I was going to run to the store to grab some food for you, Grandpa.”

“I have food in there.”

“Beef jerky is not food. And neither is fake cheese spread.”

“What can I say? I keep it simple.” Grandpa Ray shrugged. “I cook about as well as a squirrel scuba dives.”

She laughed. “Well, I’m here now and I’ll cook for you. Healthy stuff that’ll make you feel better and get your heart back on track and your cholesterol down. And don’t argue with me—I’m determined to sway you to the world of nonfried foods.”

“We’ll see about that. If you ask me, there isn’t one food on God’s green earth that isn’t improved by some batter and hot oil. While you’re there, if it ain’t too much trouble, throw an extra rabbit in the pot for this guy.” Grandpa Ray threw an arm around Jack’s shoulders. “He’ll starve to death living on his own. Plus, I owe him at least a meal for helping me today.”

“It was nothing, Ray, really.” Jack got to his feet. “Anyway, I have to go to the hardware store for a couple more pieces and then we can finish this up. While I’m there, I should pick up some more siding. That whole northern side is rotting away.”

“You two should go together. Save some gas.” Ray gestured between Meri and Jack and grinned. “Get the two of you out of my hair for a while, too.”

“Oh, I’m fine—”

“I’m good—”

“You’re both as stubborn as two goats in a pepper patch,” Ray said, then he reached forward and plucked Meri’s keys out of her hand and tucked them in his pocket. “There. Now you have to go with Jack.”

Jack scowled and cursed under his breath. “I gotta measure something first.” He stalked over to the makeshift workbench set on two sawhorses, grabbed a piece of gutter and a tape measure, but he moved too fast and the gutter slid through his hand. An ugly red gash erupted on his palm and blood spurted from the wound. He cursed again, pressed the hem of his T-shirt against his palm. “Got any Band-Aids, Ray?”

“Band-Aids? You need a tourniquet. They can see that gusher from Mars, boy. You gotta get someone to look at that.”

Jack shook his head. “I’m fine.”

Meri knew that stubborn set to Jack’s shoulders, the tightening of his brows. He’d probably let his hand succumb to gangrene before he asked for help. She marched over and took his hand in hers before he could protest. “Let me see.”

“I’m—”

“Bleeding like a stuck pig. Let me go get some first aid supplies and take care of it for you.” She pressed the shirt back down. “Hold this and don’t move.”

“Yes, ma’am.” A grin darted across his face then disappeared just as fast.

The way he said yes, ma’am caused a little hitch in her step, a catch in her breath. She forgot all those very good reasons why she wasn’t attracted to him anymore. Damn.

She hurried into Grandpa’s house, raided his medicine chest for some supplies, then went back outside. True to his word, Jack had stayed in the exact same spot. She uncoiled the hose and brought it over to him, then turned the knob and waited for a steady stream of cool water. “Here. We need to wash it out first.”

The instant the water hit his hand, Jack let out a yelp and pulled away. She smirked. “Are you going to tell me that a man who has fought in one of the most dangerous places in the world is afraid of a little water?”

“Hey, it stings like hell.”

She made a face at him. “Come on, buttercup, suck it up.”

“Okay. Just make it quick and try not to amputate my hand, Florence Nightingale.”

She dried his palm with a clean towel, then had Jack hold pressure on the wound. “I’ll have you know I got my first aid badge in Girl Scouts. On the second try.”

He chuckled. “That gives me comfort.”

“I can handle this. But if you break your leg, you’re on your own.”

“Hey, I can fashion a splint out of two twigs and a piece of ivy, so I should be good to go.”

She smiled, looked up at him, and in that moment, they were teenagers sitting by the banks of the creek, and Jack was doing his best to dry her tears and pull off a miracle with a handmade bandage. His hands that day had been careful and steady, the kind that told her anything she put in his grasp would be safe and cared for. “You remember that baby bird?”

A tiny robin that had fallen from its nest. Probably part of its momma’s attempt to get her little one to fly, to be independent, but in the process, the tiny thing had injured a wing and flapped in a panicked circle on the ground. Meri had gone to the only person she knew who could make everything right—Jack.

“I remember you finding it, and coming to me with tears streaming down your face, begging me to fix it.” He reached up his free hand and brushed a lock of hair away from her forehead. Her skin seemed to melt where he touched her, and she swayed a little in his direction. The world dropped away. All she saw was Jack’s blue eyes. All she heard was the steady rise and fall of his breath, the soft murmur of his deep voice. “You were always trying to save lost causes, Meri.”

Lost causes. Oh, how she knew about those. She was smarter now, no longer that foolish girl who believed in fairy tales.

“Not anymore,” she said, then looked away, back at his hand, blinking away the tears that sprang to her eyes. She cleared her throat, then pulled the rag from his hand to squeeze a little antibiotic cream on the wound. “Stay still, Jack.”

His large, strong hand was warm against hers, solid. She wanted to study the lines and muscles, to feel the touch of those confident palms against her skin. A long time ago, Jack’s hands had touched her, made her sigh and moan and almost want to cry with anticipation. Damn. All that from a memory of a wounded baby bird?

“Uh...let me put a couple bandages on this. With some, um...” She held up the supplies beside her. “Um...”

“Tape?”

“Yeah, tape.” She pressed a gauze pad onto his wound, then let go of his hand to tear off long strips of tape. She wrapped them around to the back of his hand, crisscrossing the gauze to hold it in place. “There you go. Almost as good as new.”

“I’ll never be good as new again. Too many scars.” He had a smile on his face, but it didn’t hold in his eyes, and for the hundredth time since she’d run into him, Meri saw that other edge to Jack, the edge that she didn’t know, or recognize.

“We should get to the store,” she said, releasing his hand and gathering the supplies before she gave in to the temptation to ask Jack what was brewing behind those blue eyes and why she cared so much. “Before anyone gets hurt again.”


Chapter Four (#ulink_4dcba0b6-d605-590d-8374-275fa5a3910c)

Kicking and screaming. That was how he went into Doc Malloy’s office. On their way into town, Jack had told Meri he was fine, damn it, just fine, but she’d seen the blood seeping through the bandage and insisted he needed stitches. He’d told her it wasn’t anything a couple butterfly bandages couldn’t fix, and she’d just given him that look of hers.

That look where her eyes narrowed and her lips pursed and one eyebrow arched. He’d wanted to laugh, to tell her that it didn’t work anymore, but then the light in her green eyes flickered, and for a second he thought maybe she was worried about him.

“Come on,” Meri said, when she returned to the truck. “I checked with his receptionist and she said there’s no wait.”

“I’m fine, Meri.”

She gave him the look again, then grabbed the sleeve of his shirt and tugged him out of the truck and up the walkway into Doc Malloy’s office. “Let the professional decide that.”

Jack paused a moment in the doorway, waiting for his eyes to adjust to the dim interior. Meri had released him, and stepped two steps to the left. For some reason he refused to decipher, a little shiver of disappointment ran through him when she did that.

“Jack Barlow. Always a pleasure to see you, sugar.” Corinna Winslow’s voice came across the room like warm honey. She slipped out from behind the reception desk and sashayed across the small room. Corinna had been a cheerleader in high school, and even back then, she had pursued Jack with single-minded determination. They’d gone on a couple dates, years ago, but Jack had little interest in Corinna and had put a quick end to it. When he’d come home, she’d been one of the first to call to see if he “needed anything. Anything at all.”

Now she put a palm on his chest, just a light, quick touch, but one that seemed to stamp him. “Don’t tell me you’re hurt.”

He held up his hand. “Nothing big. I figured I could get by with some bandages, but someone—” he jerked his head in Meri’s direction but she just gave him that look again “—insisted on stitches.”

Corinna took Jack’s injured hand in hers. “Oh, my. Yes, stitches indeed. Let me take you right back, sugar, and get you all fixed up.”

Before he could protest, Corinna was leading him down the hall and into an exam room. What was with the women in his life today? Herding him around like a wayward sheep, for God’s sake.

Corinna leaned in as she took his blood pressure and temperature—two things Jack was sure he didn’t need—but Corinna insisted. She wore a snug-fitting V-necked white T-shirt under an unbuttoned scrubs top, which meant he got more than one healthy look at her cleavage. Jack was pretty sure nurses weren’t supposed to bend like that to take a blood pressure, but he didn’t argue.

On any other day, he would have enjoyed the obvious flirtation. Maybe even traded a few innuendos with Corinna, who had never made a secret of her interest in him. Instead, he found himself wondering about Meri, sitting in the uncomfortable chair in the waiting room. Not just wondering about what her cleavage looked like—hell, he wasn’t dead, after all—but what he had seen in her eyes earlier today when she’d seen the vulnerable, determined fawn.

And why he still cared.

He, of everyone in the world, should stay far, far away from Meri Prescott. Not just because he had already learned his lesson about tangling with a woman who lived in that world of debutantes and beauty pageants, of hair spray and high heels. Once upon a time, that hadn’t bothered him. Then he’d gone to war and become a different man. Not a better man, some would argue.

And then there was Eli. Just those three letters sent a sharp pain searing through his chest.

“You okay?” Corinna asked.

He jerked his attention back. “Uh, yeah. The stethoscope was a little cold.”

“Oh, don’t tell me you can’t take a little cold, a big, strong man like yourself.” She gave him a playful swat. “Or, I can warm it up against my own skin first. If you’d like.”

Before she could do that—and Jack really didn’t want to know where the stethoscope was going to get warmed—the door opened and Doc Malloy came in. Corinna stepped back, fumbling with the blood pressure cuff.

“Why, hello, Jack,” the doctor said. “Haven’t seen you in a long time.”

Jack leaned forward and shook hands with the elderly doctor. He’d known Doc Malloy all his life, and except for a few more pounds around his gut and a few more white hairs on top of his head, the doctor looked about the same as he had when he’d given Jack his first vaccination shots. He was an amiable doctor, one often given to long chats with patients he knew well. Doc had fought in Vietnam, and had traded a few war stories with Jack over the years. “Nice to see you again, sir.”

Doc Malloy nodded at Jack’s bandaged hand. “What seems to be the trouble?”

“Just a little flesh wound. Meri thought—”

“Meri Prescott? She’s back in town?”

Jack nodded. God, he hoped they didn’t get into a lengthy conversation about Meri. He didn’t want to think about her any more than was necessary, and over the last day, that had been like every five seconds. “She thought I needed stitches.”

“If there’s one thing I’ve learned in thirty years of marriage, it’s that the woman is always right.” Doc Malloy grinned. “And even when you think she’s wrong, you agree anyway. Happy wife makes for a happy life.”

“Uh, Meri and I aren’t...she isn’t...” What was with him? Since when did he stumble and stutter? “She’s just visiting her grandpa.”

Across the room, Corinna’s face broke into a smile. She fiddled with the chart, but kept a pair of coquettish eyes on Jack’s face.

Doc Malloy bent to study Jack’s injury. In the end, he decided a few stitches were called for, after all. Corinna stayed by the doc’s side, handing him supplies, but keeping her attention on Jack. She’d flash him a smile from time to time, when she wasn’t contorting herself to give him a direct view of her best assets. Once Jack’s hand was bandaged, Corrina ducked out, with a little sashay, to refill the supplies.

“There you go, good as new,” Doc Malloy said.

It was almost the same thing Meri had said earlier. Did people really think a bandage or two would change anything about Jack?

“I’ve been so battered and bruised in the last year, Doc, I’ll never be good as new.” It wasn’t just what had happened to Jack on the outside—those scars had healed, faded to almost nothing—it was the burdens he carried inside his heart, the guilt that weighed down his every step, like an elephant hanging off his heel.

Jack was the one who could sit out on his back porch and look across beautiful Stone Gap Lake, soaking up the warmth of the sun, breathing in the fresh, clean air. Eli never would again. Would never know those joys or moments of peace. Because of Jack’s decisions, Jack’s choices, Jack’s mistakes.

Doc Malloy laid a hand on Jack’s arm and met his gaze. “You know how they temper steel? They take it to its limit over and over again, then let it cool, until it becomes so hardened and strong there’s almost nothing that can break it or change it. That’s how people get tempered, too. They get broken, they go through tragedies, triumphs, pain, loss, new lives being born and others lost to death.” The kindly doctor’s eyes met Jack’s with a knowledge that came from years of continuity. Doc had given Jack his kindergarten polio vaccine and his last checkup before he shipped off to boot camp. Doc’s blue eyes were eyes that knew Jack, knew him as much more than another file in the cabinet. “The hells people go through make them stronger in the end, stronger than steel.”

Jack lifted his newly bandaged hand and cradled it in the opposite palm. There was no bandage to fix what was wrong with Jack inside his soul. “Sometimes the tests go too far, the heat too great, and they break.”

“The people? Or the steel?”

“Doesn’t matter, Doc. Does it?” Jack slipped off the table and headed for the door. “Thanks again for fixing me up.”

“I only fix the outside problems, Jack. A man’s gotta fix the inside ones on his own.”

Jack just nodded to that and headed out to the waiting room.

Meri was reading a magazine when Jack entered the room, her blond head bent over the glossy pages. The sun streamed in through the window behind her. Like a halo, he’d say, if he was a sentimental guy.

She looked up and a smile curved across her face, and something caught in his chest, something that fluttered like hope, that made him feel like the kid he used to be a long time ago. Then the smile was gone and she was all business, putting the magazine to the side and fishing her keys out of her purse. “All set?”

“Yup.” He paid the bill, then the two of them walked back into the bright sunshine. Meri unlocked the truck and climbed in the driver’s seat, waiting for him to get in on the other side. Without a word, she put the truck in gear and traveled the mile to the hardware store. Jack glanced over at her, but she kept her gaze on the road. He told himself he was glad.

The air between them chilled, and the silence thickened the air in the truck. When he unconsciously reached for the door handle with his right hand, he winced when the newly bandaged injury let out a protest.

“You okay?” Meri asked. “Sugar?”

“Is that jealousy I hear in your voice?”

“I’m not jealous of anyone. And especially not of that plastic enhanced former cheerleader.”

He arched a brow. “Are you sure about that? Because it sounds like you might want to go back in there and stick her stethoscope in a painful place.”

Meri waved toward the hardware store. “Why don’t you go get what you need, and I’ll hit the grocery store. Kill two birds with one stone.”

On any other day, Jack would have welcomed the opportunity to be alone, puttering around among tools and nuts and bolts. But instead, he found himself raising the bandaged hand and giving Meri a pity-me smile. “I’m, uh, not so sure I should be lifting tools and plywood with this. I could open the stitches up. That could lead to an infection. Gangrene. Amputation.”

She shook her head and laughed. “Has anyone ever told you that you’re a drama queen?”

“I’m just trying to head off further injuries.” He worked up the pity-me smile again. “If you suffer through the hardware store with me, I promise not to complain when we’re picking out cereal at the Sav-a-Lot.”

She shifted in the seat and narrowed her gaze. “Your hand hurts that much?”

“Oh, it was a really deep cut. Doc Malloy said I almost severed a nerve.” Okay, so he hadn’t said any such thing, but Jack figured telling a white lie to garner a little sympathy from Meri wasn’t a bad thing.

“Okay. But only if you promise one thing.” She wagged a finger at his chest. “You won’t spend an hour in the power tool section, drooling like a five-year-old in the candy aisle.”

He caught her finger with his good hand. “I promise not to spend an hour in the power tool section. But I don’t promise not to drool.”

At least over the tools. Right now, with her hair loose around her shoulders and those faded denim shorts hugging her thighs, he couldn’t promise not to drool over Meri. Seemed his hormones kept forgetting his brain’s resolve to stay far, far away from her.

“It’s a good thing Nurse Sugar made sure you had plenty of bandages on your hand, should you need to wipe your chin.” Meri slid her finger out of his grasp, then stepped out of the truck and marched into the hardware store before he could even open his door.

Jack chuckled. Seemed Corinna’s flirting had lit a fire under his old flame. For a second he wanted to explore that spark, see where it led. To touch more than a single digit on Meri’s hand, to explore more than just the look in her eyes.

The glass door shut behind Meri’s curvy hips, and Jack’s reflection shimmered before him. He had a day’s worth of stubble on his chin, a tear in the neck of the faded T-shirt he was wearing, and a hole in the knee of his jeans. But like Doc Malloy had said, those outside imperfections were temporal, a mask for the damages underneath.

He closed his eyes for a second, and in his mind he was back on the battlefield, surrounded by dust and diesel fumes and frustration. He could hear the rumble of the engines, the whoop-whoop-whoop of the helicopters above them, and the frightened cries of the wounded. And he saw himself, standing there for a moment, just like he was now, his reflection shimmering in the panel of the Humvee, its back half still sitting as pristine as if it had just been driven off some car lot, while the front driver’s side was gone, erased with a blast.

“Jack?”

His mind was caught in a tumbling wave, spiraling backward, drowning, dark, as if he couldn’t find the surface.

“Jack?”

Then a soft touch on his arm. He jumped, adrenaline shooting through his veins, then his mind caught up with his eyes and his heartbeat slowed, one beat at a time. “Sorry. I was...daydreaming.”

More like having a waking nightmare, but Jack didn’t want to talk about that. Not with Meri, not with Doc Malloy, not with anyone.

“Are you okay? You look a little pale.”

“I’m fine,” he barked. “Now let me get what I need here so I can get back to work. I don’t have all day to stand around and jabber.” He brushed past her and into the store, knowing he was being an ass and not caring. Because caring would mean explaining, and he sure as hell wasn’t doing that.

She lingered at the back of the store while he grabbed a cart and filled it with the supplies he needed. By the time he reached the checkout counter, guilt weighed on his shoulders. None of this was Meri’s fault. Taking it out on her, simply because she reminded him of his mistakes, was wrong.

Jack shoved the change in his pocket, then wheeled the cart over to Meri. “Sorry for biting your head off.”




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