Between Honor And Duty. Charlotte Maclay

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      Automatically, Janice stroked her daughter’s crop of dark, flyaway hair. “Look what Mr. Strong did for us. He hung the screen door.”

      “My dad was gonna do that.” Curious, Kevin opened the screen. “He’s real good at stuff like this.”

      “He had some nice tools,” Logan said. “The door still needs a spring and a latch. You could help me with the rest of the job.”

      The boy glanced at his mother for guidance.

      Maddie popped to her feet. “I’ll help you.”

      Before Logan could respond, Janice said, “If you let these two minxes help, it’ll be another year before the job’s finished.”

      “It shouldn’t take too long. We just have to install a screw eye, fix the latch plate and we’ll be all set.”

      Janice looked at him skeptically. “You haven’t been around children much, have you?”

      “I’ve got a couple of nephews but they live in Merced.”

      “Well…” Smiling, she rose to her feet, the mail still in her hand. “Don’t say I didn’t warn you.”

      Two hours later, Logan discovered he should have listened to Janice’s warning. The kids had argued over every step, little sister insisting she was big enough to use a drill, big brother insisting she wasn’t, and Logan scared one or the other of them would ram the drill right through his palm while he was guiding their small hands. That didn’t begin to cover his concerns about them using a chisel and hammer.

      Finally he sent them both into the house to announce that the job was finished, and he put the tools away.

      Janice appeared on the other side of the screen door. She’d changed into a clean pair of shorts and it looked like she’d done something with her hair, the natural curl softer now. More touchable.

      “You must have the patience of a saint.”

      “If I do, it’s the only thing saintly about me.” Certainly his thoughts were anything but holy when it came to Janice.

      “We’re having tacos and refried beans for dinner. It’s not much in the way of a thank-you, but will you stay?”

      “I probably ought to get going,” he hedged.

      “I was hoping after dinner, when the kids are in bed and we can get a little quiet around here, you’d help me make sense of Ray’s record-keeping. But if you have something to do—”

      “No. Nothing important.” He only had an empty house to go home to, no one waiting for him on the porch that overlooked the small fishing lake in the foothills of the coastal range, an hour’s drive from Paseo del Real. His hideaway, his family called it. That wasn’t far from the truth.

      JANICE COULD BARELY remember the last time she’d served a man his dinner. Not that tacos and beans at the kitchen table qualified as anything special. But with Ray’s shift work, and then his second job, he’d been little more than a shadow member of the family, the most obvious sign he’d been home a new heap of dirty clothes in the hamper.

      How long had she been living like that, more housekeeper than wife? And why, she wondered with a pang of guilt, was her grief colored with an edge of relief that Ray was gone?

      Setting aside her troubling thoughts, she served up four plates and carried them to the table.

      “You want that beer now?” she asked.

      “I’ll have a beer,” Kevin piped up.

      She punched him affectionately on his shoulder. “Milk or lemonade, big guy?”

      “Lemonade,” he conceded.

      “Lemonade is fine by me, too,” Logan assured her, winking at her son.

      Kevin started eating right away, but Janice noticed Logan waited until she was seated and had picked up her fork. She’d let Kevin’s manners slip recently. Without Ray around, it had been easier to let things slide.

      Her throat tightened, and she laid her fork down. Whatever chance they might have had to get their marriage back on track was gone now. Forever.

      “You okay?” Logan asked from across the table.

      Lifting her head, she met his gaze. He had the most sympathetic eyes, a penetrating way of looking at her as though he understood her pain. Her loneliness.

      The guilt that she hadn’t been a better wife. Regret that she couldn’t mourn as deeply as others expected her to.

      “I’m fine.” She forked some beans into her mouth and forced herself to swallow. “Ray used to rave about your clam linguini and said you were the best cook on C-shift. I guess tacos are pretty simple fare—”

      “They’re perfect. Just what a man needs after hanging a screen door. Isn’t that right, Kevin?”

      The boy looked up, startled. “Yeah. Mom’s tacos are the best.”

      With a smile, Janice basked in her son’s compliment. Oddly, she felt like a houseplant that had been denied water for too long and at last someone had noticed. She drank in the refreshing nourishment Logan had made possible along with his praise. Then she felt foolish for making such a big deal out of something so insignificant.

      “I help my mommy make cookies sometimes,” Maddie said around a mouth full of taco.

      “I bet you’re good at it, too,” Logan responded.

      Kevin scraped the last of his beans from his plate. “Chief Gray gave Dad a Medal of Honor postumlous.”

      “Posthumously,” Janice supplied.

      “Anyway, you wanna see it? Mom lets me keep it in my room but I can’t take it to school ’cause I might lose it. I’ve got the flag they put over his casket, too. They told me it used to fly at the White House where the president lives.”

      “Logan may not be—”

      “Sure, I’d like to see it. After we finish dinner, okay?”

      Kevin beamed his pleasure, and Janice’s heart squeezed tight. Her son needed a man to show interest in him. Since Ray’s death, the boy had been more angry than sad. In a few short hours, Logan had turned Kevin’s sullen expression into one of anticipation. He’d make a wonderful father.

      Janice started at that thought. Ray had been gone only a month and she was already betraying him by comparing her husband to another man. She couldn’t do that.

      Ray’s children needed to honor their father’s memory. She needed to help them do that by being loyal to his memory, too.

      Acknowledging her attraction to another man, even to herself, would risk undermining the needs of her children. For Janice, her children had to come first. Not a fanciful relationship with a gentle giant who was only trying to be kind to her.

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