“No.” Panic roared through Jake. But he realized he’d spoken too sharply, so he added, “Thanks, but I have to finish some paperwork tonight.”
“Don’t worry. I’ll fix something quick and easy.”
Jake opened his mouth on another protest and felt it die in his throat. How could he decline such a generous offer without stomping all over her feelings? “All right,” he said unhappily. “Thank you.”
“Don’t look so delighted.” Gazing at him with amused affection, she ruffled his hair. “You can work until dinner’s ready, and as soon as we’ve eaten, you can go right back to your papers. It’s not like this will be a date or anything.”
No, it would certainly not be a date or anything. Not with her. Jake would give up women entirely before he’d make a mistake of that magnitude.
Her expression turned wistful. “It’s been a long time since we shared a meal.”
At those words, memories Jake had been fleeing for years caught up to him and swirled around him like the rising waters of a flash flood. During his and Noah’s second year at West Point, they’d spent the first few days of their Christmas leave at Noah’s home in Dallas. Jake had liked Noah’s mother and his happy, bouncy little sister, who must have been six or seven at the time. Maddie and her mama had more or less adopted Jake, and he’d seen them often in the years that followed. But in those dark days when Jake had lain in the hospital broken in body and spirit, his faith failing as guilt consumed him, he had refused their visits.
Since that time he’d had no contact with the Brights. Then last month Maddie had appeared, all grown up and exquisitely lovely, right here in Prairie Springs. She’d been openly delighted to see Jake, who was still resolved to stay out of her life. The problem was that whenever this grown-up Maddie smiled, every molecule in Jake’s body shifted toward her, as though she was the moon and he was an ocean tide.
Defeated, he opened his wallet and handed her some grocery money.
“What sounds good to you?” she asked.
She sounded good to him. Her melodious drawl made him think of warm honey dripping from a spoon. His gaze strayed to her mouth and he wondered what it would be like to—
“Jake?”
He hastily collected his wandering wits. “Maybe some kind of pasta. And I like salad. But you should know I’ve developed a severe allergy to peanuts.” And you, he added silently. Just look what she was doing to his brain at this very moment.
Her fine dark eyebrows drew together. “Peanuts?”
“Yeah. I had my first reaction about four years ago. I guess it happens that way sometimes.”
“Do you carry—”
“Epinephrine.” He patted the right front pocket of his jeans. Since that horrifying episode at the restaurant in Austin, he’d never been without his emergency lifesaving kit.
Maddie nodded. “I’ll be careful to read the labels on everything I buy.” She stepped back and started to close his car door, then hesitated. “What about dessert? Do you still like sweet things?”
Sweet things? “Oh, yeah,” he breathed, trying not to stare at her mouth. Her rosy pink lips looked natural, but she might have been wearing lipstick. “I’m a sugar fiend. Cookies, cakes, pies, ice cream…”
“Ice cream.” Her smile blossomed. “Jake Hopkins, you’re a man after my own heart.”
He managed a weak smile to hide his terror.
Chapter Two
As endless waves of oppressive heat shimmered up from the parking lot’s surface, Maddie bit the insides of her checks and watched Jake drive away. Something was troubling him, and she was determined to get to the bottom of it.
He was no longer the brash, swaggering helicopter pilot she’d sighed over as a girl, but she admired the man he’d become. Jake had pulled himself together and risen like a phoenix from the ashes of his grief. He had learned to walk again. He’d gone to law school. And while he didn’t appear to be attending church anymore, he was supporting an eminently worthwhile Christian charity; according to their mutual friend, Anna Terenkov, Jake made substantial gifts of his time and legal expertise to Children of the Day.
He looked dearly familiar, yet he had changed. Time had softened the sharp angles of his jaw and filled out his tall, lean-as-a-whippet frame. His dark, straight hair, which he still wore in a traditional cut parted on the side, was now shot with silver, and his brown eyes crinkled at the corners when he smiled. His mouth seemed firmer and thinner than Maddie remembered, but it hinted at a determination she liked. He was more handsome than ever, she concluded as she turned back toward the grocery store entrance.
He intrigued her on every level, but she was beginning to despair that he would never stop thinking of her as Noah’s baby sister and see the woman she’d become. She had never flirted so hard in her life, or to so little effect.
She claimed a shopping cart and pushed it toward a pair of automatic doors. As they swung open, delivering a welcome blast of chilly air, Maddie squared her shoulders and resolved not to give up on Jake. He might be uninterested in romance, but he still needed a friend, and friendship just happened to be Maddie’s specialty.
She tossed a cheery wave to a new acquaintance behind one of the cash registers, then made a beeline for the produce department. After a year’s deployment to a place where she couldn’t always count on having a banana to slice over her breakfast cereal, being able to buy all the fresh produce she wanted was true luxury. She halted beside a display of golden pineapples and selected one that seemed heavy for its size.
That means it’s full of juice.
As Maddie heard the voice of Whitney Paterson Harpswell in her head, a pain zinged through her chest. It just didn’t seem possible that her best friend might never come home.
They’d grown up together in Dallas. Whitney had joined the army, too, but had gone into a different field, so she and Maddie now did most of their confiding via e-mail. Whitney had recently married fellow soldier John Harpswell, and their unit had subsequently deployed to the Middle East. The day after Maddie’s arrival in Prairie Springs, she’d heard the devastating news that Whitney and John had been missing for more than a month.
Since then, Maddie had been fighting to hold on to hope.
She sighed heavily and moved to the lettuce counter to select salad greens for Jake’s dinner.
Jake. She couldn’t recall the last time they’d had dinner together, but she clearly remembered the first time. She’d been a lisping first-grader when Noah had brought one of his fellow West Point cadets home for Christmas.
Maddie had fallen instantly in love. She’d dreamed about Jake until her sophomore year of high school, when she finally began to notice boys her own age. But even after her childish crush had run its course, she’d kept a special place in her heart just for Jake, and he continued to be a powerful influence in her life. It was Jake who encouraged her to pursue her dream of becoming a nurse. Later, after he expressed his profound admiration for the doctors and nurses at the combat support hospitals overseas, Maddie had joined the army in hopes of becoming one of those heroes.
That had turned out to be a mistake. While she was proud of her affiliation with the U.S Army Nurse Corps, she wasn’t cut out for nursing soldiers and civilians in a war zone. The horrors she’d witnessed during her deployment had nearly crushed her naturally sunny spirit.
As she slipped a bunch of green onions into a plastic bag, she recalled the day she’d e-mailed Whitney and confessed that she was terrified of losing herself. Every time she watched a boy-soldier die and every time she saw a child who had been maimed by an insurgent’s bomb, another piece of Madeline Bright disintegrated.
“You’ve done a wonderful