Love Finds a Home. Kathryn Springer

would be just the three of them.

      The thought should have been accompanied by relief, but the emotion that skittered through Emma felt, strangely enough, like…disappointment.

      Jake watched Emma stumble in the sand again, only this time in her haste to get away from him.

      You charmer, you.

      Not that he’d tried to charm her. Jake was as out of practice at that particular skill as he was at making polite conversation over a glass of lemonade. Fortunately, what he did know how to do was diffuse a tense situation. And Emma had been strung as tight as a new bow when she’d discovered Jeremy by the lake.

      Her panic may have faded, but she obviously hadn’t changed her opinion of him. She’d barely been able to make eye contact. And when Jake had taken hold of her arm, she had reacted as if he’d burned her.

      What did Emma see when she looked at him? Did she see a man or a badge? Was he a person or the symbol of a career that had robbed her of a husband?

      The thought chafed.

      When he’d asked Phil about Emma after delivering the apple tree, the older officer had still been reluctant to talk about what happened. Jake had pressed a little, asking if Emma had changed after Brian died.