He laughed shortly, shoved his hands into the pockets of a battered, brown leather bomber jacket and said, “Trust me, everyone’s up.” He turned and pointed across the wide compound at a smaller log version of the main house. “Sam and the guys live there and they’ve got a small kitchen outfitted so they can make coffee or whatever. You won’t see them much in the mornings, but come lunchtime and at dinner, they’ll be crowding around the table like they’re starving.”
“Good,” she said, looking up at him with a determined smile. “I like cooking for people who like to eat.”
“They do,” he told her. “As for right now, they’re all just busy doing the daily chores.”
“Right. Of course.” Foolish, she supposed, to have assumed she’d had the place to herself. But yesterday, all she’d seen was the main house and the barn. She’d never noticed the other building set back against the trees. Now she at least knew why the house had been so empty when she and Nikki had gotten up.
As if the thought of her had conjured the dog from thin air, Nikki barreled across the lawn, charging Jericho with a ferocity belying her size. Her low growl erupted from her tiny chest and when she reached them, she stood in front of Daisy as if daring the big man to hurt her.
Shaking his head at the dog, Jericho said, “You know that’s just coyote bait.”
She gasped, bent down and snatched up her dog. Cradling her close, Daisy stroked a hand down Nikki’s back and shot a nervous glance around her at the surrounding trees. “Don’t say that.”
“Dogs like that don’t belong here,” he told her and his blue eyes were cold and remote. “Hell, it’s small enough it could get carried away by a hawk.”
“Great,” she muttered, looking up. “Now I have to check the skies, too?”
“Wouldn’t be a bad idea,” he said, shooting the still growling dog a look of mutual dislike. Then he shifted his glance to Daisy. “Why are you really here?”
“I told you.”
“Yeah, but you could work anywhere. You’re a good cook.”
“Thanks!” She smiled at him and accepted the casually delivered compliment as if he’d delivered it with a speech and a glass of celebratory champagne.
“So why here?”
Daisy thought about that for a long minute. Wasn’t as if she could tell him why … not exactly, anyway. So she did the best she could and walked a wide circle around the absolute truth. Setting Nikki down on the grass, she stood up and said, “I told you that I wanted a change …”
“Yeah, but this seems like a radical jump to make.”
“Maybe,” she admitted, taking another look at the fantasy lodge draped in sunlight, “but what’s the point in making a change if it’s a safe one? If I just move from one apartment in the city to another? From one restaurant to another? That’s not change. That’s just … ch.”
“What?”
“You know,” she explained, “not a whole change, just a partial one, so a ch.”
He shook his head again and rolled his eyes. “Why here, though?”
“Because you knew my brother,” she blurted, giving him at least that much of the absolute truth. “And because Brant wrote to me about you. He admired you. A lot.”
His features froze up and his eyes went glacial. Daisy had to wonder why.
“He was a good kid,” Jericho said after a long moment or two of silence.
“Yeah,” she agreed, “he was.”
She’d come a long way in the past year. Used to be that thoughts of Brant would have tears filling her eyes and her throat closing up on a knot of emotion. Now, though, she could remember him and smile. She drew on all of the happy memories she had of him to comfort her and the tears were coming fewer and further between these days.
Still, when she spoke about him, her voice went a little wistful. “He was several years younger than me, you know. Our parents died when he was very small, so I practically raised him. Always felt more like his mom than his sister.”
“He told me about you.”
“He did?” An eager smile curved her mouth. Oh, this was what she’d wanted. What she’d hungered for. Someone else who had known Brant. Who could remember him with her and keep his memory fresh and meaningful. Plus, Jericho King had known him at the end of Brant’s life and those were pieces that Daisy needed. She wanted to know everything. “What did he say about me? No, wait.” She stopped and held up one hand. “If he was complaining about me, maybe I don’t want to know.”
His features relaxed enough that one corner of his mouth lifted. “Don’t worry,” he told her. “Brant only had good things to say about you. Used to tell his buddies all about your secret sauce for hamburgers. Talked about it so much he had the other guys begging him to shut up because he was torturing them.”
“Oh, I’m so glad.” Her eyes welled with unexpected tears and a too-familiar ache settled around her heart. “Thank you for telling me. It’s hard for me, you know, not knowing what his life was like before he died. I mean, some of his friends wrote to me after … but it’s really good to hear you talk about him. To know you knew him. And liked him. I—Damn it.”
“Hey, don’t cry.” His eyes flashed and his voice was sharp. “Seriously. Don’t.”
She sniffed and huffed out a laugh. “I’m not going to. Oh, trust me, when I got word that Brant had died, I cried for days. Weeks.”
Turning, she started walking because she just couldn’t stand still a moment longer. Nikki was right on her heels as she moved across the lawn and Jericho was just a step behind the dog.
“It felt sometimes that I’d never stop crying. The slightest thing set me off. His favorite song playing on the radio. Finding his old first baseman’s glove on the floor of his closet. Even Nikki made me cry.”
“That I understand,” he muttered.
Daisy laughed and was grateful for it. He was such a guy. “I meant, Brant gave her to me for my birthday just before he shipped out. So she was my last link to him and when he was gone—” Shaking her head a little, she sighed, looked down at the tiny dog and smiled. “But I realized after a while that Nikki was a blessing. With her, I wasn’t completely alone, you know? I still had something from Brant with me.”
“Yeah, I get that,” he said softly.
She looked up at him, her gaze locking with his. “I appreciated the letter you wrote me.”
His jaw worked as if he were chewing on words to taste them before allowing them to escape. “And I’m sorry I had to write it.”
“Oh,” she said, giving him a tremulous smile as she reached out to lay one hand on his arm, “so am I. I wish with all my heart that Brant was still here. But he isn’t. And I wanted you to know that it helped hearing from you. That reading about his friends and how much he meant to all of you gave me some comfort. You know, in case you were wondering.”
He looked mortally uncomfortable and Daisy asked herself again, Why? Surely it would be a good thing for him to know that what he’d done had helped her get through a truly hideous slice of life.
“He was a good Marine,” he said after a long moment of silence.
“High praise indeed, coming from you,” she said, remembering all the letters Brant had written to her. “My brother talked about you all the time in his letters to me. About how he admired you. How he tried to emulate you. Learn from you.”
Clearly unhappy with the conversation, Jericho bent down, snatched