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