Those who had accused him had probably killed their own careers and knew it. After that, no one would want to serve with them again because they had violated the code of brotherhood, no matter how justifiably.

  Good men had risked everything to stand up for the right. Raising their voices to say that morality had its place even in the midst of war.

  Yeah, war was an atrocity-making situation. Atrocities happened because they couldn’t be avoided. But to intentionally commit them?

  No.

  The jury’s deliberations had taken some time. None of them wanted to convict a fellow Marine of war crimes. The whole idea of convicting one of their own had run counter to their grain. They’d spent a lot of time looking for exculpatory evidence, as if there was any.

  They’d spent almost none considering whether Theodore Albright had committed the acts for which he was standing trial. The evidence and testimony were too undeniable.

  The inescapable verdict had been rendered with heavy hearts. No sense of satisfaction at all. No sense of self-righteousness. As disgusted as Jax was that Albright was a Marine, he had taken no pleasure in convicting him.

  If someone really was killing jurors, he doubted Albright was directly behind it. He was in too much trouble already and still had the hope of an appeal.

  Ah, hell. This train of thought wasn’t helping, either. Sleep was determined to elude him.

  Then he remembered Luke Macy. He didn’t like the guy at all and didn’t trust him. Nancy had it right when she’d called him a slithering snake.

  Imagine him wanting to be friends now with Lynn after a lawsuit. The man had made her life hell, and Luke, after losing the case, should have gone away with his tail tucked. The man clearly knew no shame.

  What could Luke hope to gain now? Money? He doubted Lynn had much to spare with the cost of remodeling this house. But Luke might suspect otherwise, given that she was spending so much.

  God, he was surrounded by messes. With his face in the pillow he nearly laughed. And he’d thought he’d be bored hanging around here?

  It was a damn TV drama.

  Chapter 7

  In the morning, over toast and eggs, Lynn announced, “It’s time to get started on that living room wall whether I want to or not.”

  Jax, who’d made breakfast for the three of them, lifted his head. Nancy was busy shaking hers.

  “What can I do to help?” he asked.

  “Catch me when I collapse,” Lynn answered wryly. “God, I’m dreading this.”

  “You should call a contractor,” Nancy said.

  Lynn sighed. “Like it or not, I can do this myself. And it may not be as bad as I fear.”

  “I hope not,” Nancy replied. “But since you’re going to be banging around and stirring up dust, I think I’ll go out.”

  Lynn nodded. “Might be for the best. Meeting friends?”

  “I’m going to call them, maybe arrange for lunch or an afternoon tea.” Nancy favored her with a smile. “Have you looked outside yet? Cold and gray. A good time to stay indoors and visit. Before lunch, though, I may go shopping at the Mercantile.”

  “I doubt they’ll have anything to suit your style,” Lynn couldn’t resist saying.

  Nancy waved a hand. “You never know. Sometimes the larger world actually reaches this far.”

  “Just don’t buy anything for me.”

  Nancy laughed. “Banish the thought.”

  Lynn looked at Jax. “She keeps wanting to dress me up.” It had been an ongoing argument since Lynn’s childhood, and Lynn still wasn’t sure she’d won it.

  “Hopeless cause,” Nancy replied tartly. “Anyway, I’ll stop at the grocery on my way home. Maybe I’ll find something tempting.”

  “I could thaw the chicken that’s in the freezer.”

  “No,” Nancy said. “I most definitely do not want chicken again.”

  Dishes done, Nancy sailed out the front door dressed in emerald green wool.

  “That’s how she wants you to look?” Jax asked after the door closed behind Nancy.

  Lynn smiled at him and shrugged. “She used to want me to wear frilly things. Maybe she still does. I’m just practical, and that suit she was wearing is not practical.”

  “Not for what you’re doing.”

  She gathered up her inspection camera from the toolbox she kept in the dining room and grabbed her laptop as well.

  “Everything the camera sees will show up on my computer screen,” she said, then looked at Jax. “I’m sorry. You probably know that.”

  “As a matter of fact, I do. One of the lessons of my job.”

  God, he looked good this morning, Lynn thought. Yummy. Scrumptious. She was glad he was wearing jeans and a sweatshirt, not either of his uniforms, so she wouldn’t swoon.

  Hah! Swoon. Where had that word come from? Besides, she was still struggling with a feeling of guilt. Anyway, Jax was leaving soon and she didn’t want a fling. That went against her nature.

  Together, they traipsed into her living room, letting the plastic over the door fall behind them.

  “Have you made enough holes?” Jax asked, pointing to the gaping spaces in the wall. He grinned.

  Lynn laughed. “Enough that this wall could never be patched now. But I knew that when I started.” She’d also pulled pieces of lath out of all those walls, enough to peek inside. They were dark holes right now.

  Little light fell into the room through the window. Nancy had been right about the day’s grayness. Looking outside, Lynn saw the wind blowing autumn leaves from the trees.

  Oh, well, winter always came as sure as the sun rising in the east.

  She turned on two of the work lights that stood on tripods, then knelt, opening her computer and starting the correct program.

  Jax squatted beside her. “Want me to feed the camera in while you watch the screen?”

  Lynn nodded. “That would definitely save me some time.”

  “I doubt it, but it’ll make me feel like less of a fifth wheel.”

  She plugged the camera into the port on the side of her computer and saw the curtains show up on her screen. “It’s working. Okay, let’s go.”

  “Just tell me which way you want me to turn the camera when it’s inside.”

  “Dang,” she said, feeling butterflies in her stomach. “I don’t think I was this worried when I first discovered the water damage on the wall.”

  He had dropped to his knees, holding the camera, and agreed. “I imagine dealing with the roof was easier than having to reframe this wall would be.”

  “By far. I really don’t like unpleasant surprises, like seeing the water stains when I evicted the old furniture. New walls, and the flooring is warped as well. I need some good news in here.”

  “We can hope.” He turned to the wall. “Ready?”

  Not really, but she’d put this off long enough. “Go ahead.”

  Grimly, she returned her attention to the screen. Fiber optics ran through the cable, not only returning the image but delivering light at the camera end. She was now looking at studs.

  “No insulation in here?” he asked.

  “None. These old houses rarely had any, unless they used newspaper. No thanks.”

  “Tinder,” he agreed.

  At her direction, he ran the camera through the entire bay, up the studs as far as the camera would reach, then back down again and across the bottom plate.

  So far so good. She blew a sigh of relief. There was a little blackening of the wood at the bottom, but nothing major. Maybe it was good there’d been no insulation.

  Five more holes and she was satisfied. “No new frame required.”

  She switched off her computer and sat back on her bottom, braced by her arms. “What a relief! Now I can just go ahead with the drywalling.”

  “And insulation? Will you add any?”

  “Blown in, like I did upstairs. Easy-peasy.”

  He laughed as he coiled the camera wire. Sitting cross-legged, he faced her. “You have an interesting idea of easy.”

  Lynn shrugged. “Why? Because I’m a woman?”

  “No, absolutely not. Just because most people wouldn’t undertake this task.”

  She liked the way he was smiling at her, liked the tingle inside that ran all the way to her toes. Once again she felt sideswiped by the attraction she felt. Wow!

  All that because of a smile. She averted her gaze and tried to reach equilibrium. God knew how she’d react if he ever touched her. She closed her eyes, envisioning herself turning into a puddle. A hot puddle.

  It had been a very long time since she’d felt like that.

  She jumped up suddenly, shaking herself. “I need to get the mail.”

  It was a good excuse to run, except he followed her. Before she reached the curb, however, he’d taken over an Adirondack chair and leaned back, crossing his legs, one foot on the other knee.

  It was chilly out here, she thought. She wondered if Jax was thinking about sitting out on the porch long enough to turn blue.

  She pulled the door of the box open, started to reach in, then squealed and jumped back.

  Jax leaped instantly to his feet and charged down the short sidewalk. “Lynn, what’s wrong?”

  She pointed, her hand shaking. “Snake. There’s a snake...”

  * * *

  Jax peered into the box and saw a small snake coiled inside atop some mail. Maybe two feet long, max? How the hell did it get in there? And why? He could certainly understand Lynn’s shock.

  He started to reach in, but Lynn cried, “Stop! God, it’s a rattlesnake!”

  He glanced over his shoulder. “It might look like one, but it’s a milk snake.”

  “How can you be sure? It has a diamond pattern!” Her eyes were huge.

  Her fear was natural, especially in someone who probably didn’t see many snakes. “I recognize this type of snake, even used to play with them sometimes when I was a kid. Not that the snake appreciated it. Anyway, at most I’ll get a little bite.”

  Moving slowly, he was able to get his fingers around the snake just behind its head. “It’s logy because it’s so cold. It’s okay, Lynn.”

  Jax pulled the snake from the mailbox, holding its head, and watched it coil slowly around his hand and forearm. “See? It’s trying to get warm by wrapping around me.”

  “Ugh.” But she leaned closer to look. At last she said, “It’s kinda pretty. But I don’t like snakes.”

  “A lot of people don’t.”

  “Aren’t you going to kill it?” she asked when he took two steps down the street.

  He paused to look back at her. “I don’t know how it got in your mailbox, but it doesn’t deserve to die for it. I’m going to find a safe place to let it go.”

  He felt her eyes on him as he walked down the street, thinking this snake needed a decent space with some tall grass to hide in. He’d seen one by the college, he thought.

  But he couldn’t imagine how it had gotten into her mailbox. Someone must have put it there.

  * * *

  “A prank,” Lynn said decisively when he at last got back to the house. “It had to be a prank.”

  She’d changed into a green sweater, but still had her arms wrapped around her. Jax wondered if she was cold or still shaken.

  “Your roomers pranking you, maybe? Or some neighborhood kid?”

  To some people the snake might be funny, especially kids in their teens. He hadn’t gotten the impression from her roomers that they’d do something like this to her, but it was possible.

  She spoke again. “Well, it’s obvious that creature couldn’t have crawled in there on its own. But I don’t think my boys would prank me that way.”

  He shook his head. “Can I make some coffee? And I know from experience that young men can get up to the craziest things.”

  As indeed he did, having commanded many of them during his term of service as he rose in rank.

  “Why? Did you do crazy things?”

  He put a filter into the basket while he chuckled. “I didn’t, but I’m in the military, remember. Plenty of young people. I’ve been working with them all along, had to discipline some of them for acts of utter stupidity.”

  He turned to reach for the canister of coffee as she turned toward him at the same instant and brushed his arm against the peak of Lynn’s breast. He froze, then snatched his hand back. Hell!

  He looked at her, getting ready to apologize, but the expression on her face silenced him. Somehow her green eyes had turned almost smoky, and her lips had parted.

  Stillness filled him in the instant before his blood surged.

  Seeing his yearning reflected in her gaze almost tipped him over the edge, into drawing her close, into stroking her, learning her curves...

  Then she saved him from himself by turning quickly away. He stared at her back, hoping that accidental touch hadn’t offended her.

  When she spoke, her voice sounded a bit husky. “I’ll ask my boys about it. I doubt they did it, but they could have some idea of who might have.”

  He cleared his throat. “Good idea.” But all he could feel was the precipice he hovered on, and the desire to carry her over it with him. With difficulty, he banked his internal fire.

  This woman deserved better than a short-term tumble in the hay. She was a long-term type of woman.

  No way could he be that for her, especially when his own ideas of marriage were so polluted by his past. He couldn’t trust himself.

  * * *

  Lynn, wrapped in a hot haze, knew she had to escape before she did something she’d regret. Like throwing herself into Jax’s arms. Was that desire she’d seen in his eyes? Electric tingles were coursing through her own body, but she doubted what she’d glimpsed in him. No man since Matt had looked at her like that. Which was how she wanted it. Right?

  “I’m going upstairs for a little while,” she said, trying to regain command of her voice.

  Then she hurried away. Hurried to solitude. Hurried toward a chance to get a grip on herself. Fled from needs she wasn’t ready to handle.

  By the time she reached the sanctuary of her attic, she began to feel ashamed of herself. She’d never been one to run from anything, but she was running from perfectly normal feelings. Feelings that didn’t have to come to fruition.

  And she felt some guilt. Guilt because of Matt. Guilt because she had the niggling sense that she was cheating on Matt as if he were still alive.

  God, she was a hot mess.

  To an extent, her mother was right, damn her. She had been burying her grief in all the remodeling. But she loved the work, and while it kept her preoccupied, there were the long nights when it did not. Not at all.

  She flopped on one of the comfortable chairs she had reupholstered but ignored the matching hassock. She was too agitated to fully relax.

  Matt’s photo, in dress uniform, stood beside her bed on one side. Their wedding photo occupied the bookshelf. On the other end of the bookshelf she had built along one side of the room, there was another enlarged photo of Matt smiling at her. There were also five photo albums filled with prints of pictures she’d taken of him and he of her, plus all the cell phone photos she’d had turned into prints. They included his childhood photos, such as they were, as well as hers. Even a few other relatives, long since buried.

  A family history of sorts, and she still looked through them. Especially the photos of Matt and the two of them together.

  Each time she did, she felt a mix of happy memories and heartache.

  So much of her life had gone with him. Too much.

  These days the happy memories came more often. A good thing, because for a while, Matt’s death had banished them all. She could still remember that period when the world had turned gray and life had felt too difficult to live. The light had gradually returned, and along with it a desire to live.

  But the words you need to move on still irritated the hell out of her. She was moving on at her own pace, and nobody telling her to, however kindly meant, had helped at all. In fact, they’d implied something was wrong with her because she hadn’t moved on the way others believed she should.

  She had a tight-knit group of friends who’d remained blissfully silent except to listen to her and sympathize. Never suggesting how she should handle her sorrow. But there were plenty of others, causing her to narrow her world to a small group of people.

  That was probably bad for her, but here she was, buried in work she loved with little spare time on her hands. Although when her mother was here, she had almost no choice about making the time.

  She sighed, looking again at her favorite photos of Matt and smiling. He’d been wonderful. Oh, he had his faults like everyone, but she’d had hers, too. In her mind, however, he was as close to perfect as anyone could be.

  She remembered the day she’d met him. Oh, she’d seen him around school, knew who he was. Conard City was small enough that no one could escape notice.

  But that day, as she’d crossed the college campus in Laramie, he’d walked toward her in his ROTC uniform. A handsome figure, drawing her gaze. But then he’d stopped in front of her.

  “Excuse me,” he’d said politely. “You’re Lynn West, aren’t you? I’m Matt Macy.”

  She’d smiled. “I recognized you.”

  “Well,” he said, taking a deep breath, “every time I see you, I want to date you. How about some coffee?”

  Three months later they were engaged, and six months after that meeting on campus, they’d married.

  Almost a fairy tale.

  She cherished that memory, hugged it close to her heart. Fated, she often thought. For a while.

  She didn’t think she’d ever have that feeling again and wasn’t at all sure she wanted to. Not all fairy tales had happy endings.