A Soldier's Secret. RaeAnne Thayne

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      * * *

      He forgot about the damn dog.

      Max shut the door behind the two of them—Anna Galvez and Conan. His last glimpse of the dog was of him quivering with a mix of excitement and friendly welcome and a bit of why-aren’t-you-happier-to-see-me? confusion as she yanked his leash to tug him behind her down the stairs.

      It had been shortsighted of him not to think of Abigail’s mutt and his possible reaction to seeing Max again. He hadn’t even given Conan a single thought—just more evidence of how completely the news of Abigail’s death had knocked him off his pins.

      The dog had only been a pup the last time he’d seen him before he shipped to the Middle East for his first tour of duty. During those last few days he had spent at Brambleberry House, Max had played hard with Conan. They’d run for miles on the beach, hiked up and down the coast range and played hours of fetch in the yard.

      Had it really been four years? That was the last time he had had a chance to spend any length of time here, a realization that caused him no small amount of guilt.

      Conan should have been one of the first things on his mind after he found out about Abigail’s death—several months after the fact. He could only blame his injuries and the long months of recovery for sending any thoughts of the dog scattering. It looked as if he was well-fed and taken care of. He supposed he had to give points to the woman—Anna Galvez—for that, at least.

      He wasn’t willing to concede victory to her, simply because she seemed affectionate to Abigail’s mutt.

      Anna Galvez. Now there was a strange woman, at least on first impressions. He couldn’t quite get a handle on her. She was starchy and stiff, with her hair scraped back in a knot and the almost-masculine business suit and skirt she wore.

      He would have considered her completely unappealing, except when she smiled, her entire face lit up as if somebody had just turned on a thousand-watt spotlight and aimed it right at her.

      Only then did he notice her glossy dark hair, the huge, thick-lashed eyes, the high, elegant cheekbones. Underneath the layers of starch, she was a beautiful woman, he had realized with surprise, one that in other circumstances he might be interested in pursuing.

      Didn’t matter. She could be a supermodel and it wouldn’t make a damn bit of difference to him. He had to focus on the two important things in his life right now—healing his shattered arm and digging for information.

      He wasn’t looking to make friends, he wasn’t here to win any popularity contests, and he certainly wasn’t interested in a quick fling with one of the women of Brambleberry House.

      Chapter Two

      She could never get enough of the coast.

      Anna walked along the shore early the next morning while Conan jumped around in the sand, chasing grebes and dancing through the baby breakers.

      The cool March wind whipped the waves into a froth and tangled her hair, making her grateful for the gloves and hat Abigail had knitted her last year. Offshore, the seastacks stood sturdy and resolute against the sea and overhead gulls wheeled and dived in the pale, early morning sky.

      It all seemed worlds away from growing up in the high desert valleys of Utah but she loved it here. After four years of living in Oregon, she still felt incredibly blessed to be able to wake up to the soft music of the sea every single day.

      Abigail had loved beachcombing in the mornings. She knew every inlet, every cliff, every tide table. She could spot a California gray whale’s spout from a mile away during the migration season and could identify every bird and most of the sea life nearly as well as Sage, who was a biologist and naturalist by profession.

      Oh, Anna missed Abigail. She could hardly believe it had been nearly a year since her friend’s death. She still sometimes found herself in By-the-Wind—the book and gift store in town she first managed for Abigail and then purchased from her—looking out the window and expecting Abigail to stop by on one of her regular visits.

      I know the store is yours now but you can’t blame an old woman for wanting to check on things now and again, Abigail would say with that mischievous smile of hers.

      Anna’s circumstances had taken a dramatic shift since Abigail’s death. She had been living in a small two-room apartment in Seaside and driving down every day to work in the store. Now she lived in the most gorgeous house on the north coast and had made two dear friends in the process.

      She smiled, thinking of Sage and Julia and the changes in all their lives the past year. When she first met Sage, right after the two of them inherited Brambleberry House, she had thought she would never have anything in common with the other woman. Sage was a vegetarian, a save-the-planet sort, and Anna was, well, focused on her business.

      But they had developed an unlikely friendship. Then when Julia moved into the second-floor apartment the next fall with her darling twins, Anna and Sage had both been immediately drawn to her. Many late-night gabfests later, both women felt like the sisters she had always wanted.

      Now Sage was married to Eben Spencer and had a new stepdaughter, and Julia was engaged to Will Garrett and would be marrying him as soon as school was out in June, then moving out to live in his house only a few doors down from Brambleberry House.

      Both of them were deliriously happy, and Anna was thrilled for them. They were wonderful women who deserved happiness and had found it with two men she was enormously fond of.

      If their happy endings only served to emphasize the mess she had made of her own life, she supposed she only had herself to blame.

      She sighed, thinking of Grayson Fletcher and her own stupidity and the tangled mess he had left behind.

      She supposed one bright spot from the latest fiasco in her love life was that Julia and Sage seemed to have put any matchmaking efforts on hiatus. They must have accepted the grim truth that had become painfully obvious to her—she had absolutely no judgment when it came to men.

      She trusted the wrong ones. She had been making the same mistake since the time she fell hard for Todd Ashman in second grade, who gave her underdog pushes on the playground as well as her first kiss, a sloppy affair on the cheek. Todd told her he loved her then conned her out of her milk money for a week. She would probably still be paying him if her brothers hadn’t found out and made the little weasel leave her alone.

      She sighed as Conan sniffed a coiled ball of seaweed and twigs and grasses formed by the rolling action of the sea. That milk money had been the first of several things she had let men take from her.

      Her pride. Her self-respect. Her reputation.

      If she needed further proof, she only had to think about her schedule for the rest of the day. In a few hours, she was in for the dubious joy of spending another delightful day sitting in that Lincoln City courtroom while Grayson Fletcher provided unavoidable evidence of her overwhelming stupidity in business and in men.

      She jerked her mind away from that painful route. She wasn’t allowed to think about her mistakes on these morning walks with Conan. They were supposed to be therapy, her way to soothe her soul, to recharge her energy for the day ahead. She would defeat the entire purpose by spending the entire time looking back and cataloguing all her faults.

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