“Stop on the way home. There’s a barbecue place right on my route.”

  “That’s stupid.” She wasn’t usually so harsh, but at the moment she was peeved. The words slipped out.

  “Excuse me?”

  “You make dinner but won’t eat it with me?” Her gaze held fire when she looked at him, and if he read the challenge there, then good. It wasn’t like she was trying to hide it.

  He had the grace to look a little sheepish. “I knew you’d be tired and wanted you to be able to come home and just relax, not have to be worrying about having to entertain...”

  Bringing both bowls to the counter by the stove, she grabbed a ladle and started dishing out the mouthwatering meal that had been a boring staple in her home growing up. “Why don’t you stop thinking for me?” she said, still sounding a bit peevish, and then added, “Besides, who said I was going to entertain? I might not even speak again. My mama taught me that it’s impolite to talk with your mouth full.”

  Smart man that he was, he didn’t respond. Instead, he reached for the door of the toaster oven, pulling out warmed corn bread.

  What was the guy trying to do to her?

  “I have a favor to ask,” he said about two bites into the meal.

  And then it all made sense, him cooking for her, staying to eat. It wasn’t like he was taking them to a new level. It was because he needed something. She’d known that. He’d texted about a favor. She started to relax. “Shoot.”

  “I want to take Jedi with me to see Duke next week.”

  He considered that a favor?

  More like a godsend! Even more so than the most delicious chili she’d ever had.

  “He needs to start logging public hours,” Greg continued, “and I’d like to see what happens. I’m guessing nothing, at least not with Duke, but some of the other guys there...”

  “Are they all veterans?”

  “On his wing, yes. It’s a private facility, but they get some government assistance for their work with vets. They usually don’t take patients onto the wing who are so unresponsive, but my old man put in a word about Duke’s service, his medal...”

  His old man. Who lived in Arizona?

  “Your father has pull with the military?” Normally she wouldn’t have asked such a question, but ordinarily Greg didn’t speak enough words strung together to fill a paragraph.

  Ordinarily, they didn’t eat together. As in, never before now.

  “He’s a retired brigadier general.”

  Okay. She was impressed. “Wow.”

  He shrugged, dunked corn bread into his chili and consumed the whole thing in one bite.

  “Anyone else in your family serve?” she asked, mostly just to give herself some time to catch up with everything. Him cooking for her. Them sitting at her dining-room table together. Him actually opening up for a second. She had this sense of urgency, a need to squeeze out as much as she could before he clammed up again.

  “My grandfather.”

  “Don’t tell me. He was a general, too?”

  “Full colonel.”

  “And yet you got out?” His Pilot of Paws bio said that he’d been in the army. He wasn’t anymore.

  He shrugged. “My life went in a different direction.”

  Interesting.

  “How long were you in?”

  “A few years.”

  “Private rank?” She spent her life helping people who had been in service. She made it a point to understand their world. As though, somehow, she could turn back the clock and understand Michael.

  “Second lieutenant.” So he’d been an officer, not an enlisted man. That made sense, actually, if he came from a family of career soldiers.

  She was still processing that when he added, almost defensively, “My grandfather died, leaving me a large inheritance. Enough that I can live off the investment returns for the rest of my life.”

  So, he chose a career of managing his money over service. Most would. And yet...

  “These nonprofits you volunteer with...they wouldn’t happen to be yours, would they?” No way the Greg Martin she knew would take a cushy, rich life over serving.

  But she could believe he’d get out of the army if he saw an opportunity to serve in a bigger way.

  “Some of them are.”

  He wasn’t just a volunteer. Impressive.

  And a bit intimidating, too.

  Bunny and Birdie had told her that he lived in a gorgeous home, but they hadn’t mentioned that he was rich and came from an obviously powerful family.

  Of course, the women wouldn’t put a whole lot of stock in such things. Not to gossip about it with a volunteer who spent time at their shelter. After all, they’d come from money, too, but they were never the sort to put on airs over it.

  And there she was, little renting-a-small-house-bookkeeping-accountant-Wendy, thinking Greg Martin needed anything that she could offer. How silly of her.

  But no sooner had she had that thought than she remembered Greg’s anxiety over flying. Money didn’t fix what ailed Greg. And the things he’d just told her, the powerful men who’d bred him...it wouldn’t be easy for him to admit to himself, let alone anyone else, that he might need some help.

  Michael had been the same: adamant, so sure he knew what was right, certain that he knew best for himself.

  Her goal where Greg was concerned, her determination, her reasons for both hadn’t changed.

  So neither had their reasons for being together.

  “I’m fine with you taking Jedi to see Duke,” she said then, in between spoonfuls of chili. “If you wouldn’t mind, I’d actually like to tag along. To see how he does. Jedi, that is...” Yep, she was back on task.

  Right up until Greg smiled at her, thanked her and she got all warm and fuzzy inside again.

  Chapter Nine

  Wendy worked from home all day on Thursday, so once again, Greg took himself to the airstrip. He did his preflight check. He radioed a short flight, taxied, and...off he went. Down the runway, gaining speed and up in the air. Filled with elation, he gave a big whoop, hit a small pocket of turbulence and hit instant panic. He had to get down.

  It was all he could think about, landing the plane. On his headset, he stated coordinates, radioed a landing. Focused on listening for responses. He circled, sweating, hearing an ID he knew well, Beechcraft 1472, an older pilot he’d known for years, stating his location a mile behind Greg, coming in for landing. He had to get down to make room for Nate, Beechcraft 1472. And swiftly and smoothly came in for a perfect landing.

  Short of breath, he taxied to just outside his hangar, brought the plane to a stop and gasped for air.

  As he sucked in breaths, he told himself that the good news was he still knew how to fly and to do it well. He’d known to focus only on the job at hand, not to think about the sweating, the pounding of his heart, the shortness of breath.

  Bad news...well, he wasn’t going to look for that. Not going to dwell on it.

  He’d done what he’d set his mind to doing: he’d flown safely.

  And kept that in mind as Nate Bailey, still with headset in hand, came walking into his hangar five minutes later.

  “You got a problem with her?” the older man asked, nodding toward Greg’s plane. “I heard you radio take-off five minutes before landing. Something go wrong with the work Randy did?”

  Warren knew about the emergency landing, the damage to Greg’s plane. He’d been around when Randy Mitchell had been working to repair the damage.

  He absolutely did not know about Greg’s personal struggles. Which were quickly becoming moot, anyway.

  “She’s fine,” he said, also nodding toward his plane. “Just wanted to take her up quickly as a check before putting her back in service for Pets for Vets.”

  Truth. If by “her” he meant himself.

  He didn’t mention the brief flight to Wendy when she came for lunch on Friday to take Jedi out in public, the first of three outings they’d planned after committing to taking the dog to see Duke the following Wednesday.

  Jedi had to log in thirty public hours before he could be put into service, and Wendy, after consulting with Jedi’s former paid trainer at Furever Paws, had announced that the dog needed time out among people before they took him to visit a facility filled with possibly anxious patients.

  Wendy would serve as Jedi’s handler. Greg was a stand-in for Jedi’s eventual owner. The dog had to be trained, among other things, to pay attention only to Greg’s biological status, not to any of the other people who might or might not be exuding panic or migraine-like symptoms around them. He wouldn’t be working at Duke’s residence and would be on a leash at all times, but it was still a good idea to find out how on point Jedi stayed with other strangers around to distract him.

  While Greg, still fresh from his difficult and very brief flight, didn’t relish the idea of being a stand-in for a veteran needing a service dog, he very much understood the logic behind the choice. This was something that had to be done, and he most certainly wasn’t going to let down Jedi, Wendy or Duke because of his own private little drama.

  Wendy put on Jedi’s service vest before they’d even exited Greg’s SUV at the park she’d chosen for their first public appearance. She handed Greg the dog’s leash.

  Jedi had been trained to serve the person holding his tether, and this was their first chance to see how he did.

  Jedi did so well that they upped his game for Saturday. At Greg’s suggestion, they took him to Seaforth Beach, on Jordan Lake, one of his oft-chosen places to get out and relax. But he saw his mistake in suggesting the idea as soon as Wendy came out of her house in some mesh-shirt thing covering her deep maroon bikini top. He hoped to God she wasn’t planning to take off the bold yellow gym shorts she had on to reveal the bottom of that swimsuit.

  They were going to the beach to walk a dog for business purposes, not so they’d have a chance to go swimming. Or spend a day lounging on the sand.

  As evidenced by his own lightweight beige shorts, white short-sleeved shirt and flip-flops. No swim attire for him whatsoever.

  And how in the hell was a guy supposed to wipe his mind of the sight of the curves of her breasts, nearly exposed by a tank top as she lay tangled in rustled bedcovers, if their owner kept drawing his attention to them?

  By keeping his gaze averted, that was how.

  It was easier, once they were out of the vehicle and he had Jedi beside him. Knowing that the dog—and whatever future veteran Jedi was going to help—was counting on him, Greg relaxed into the man he knew himself to be.

  He was there to serve.

  Even with sun on his skin, the sound of children calling, laughing, screaming some, and with sand in his toes, he experienced it all through the lens of Jedi’s reactions, his behavior.

  “The water’s beautiful today,” Wendy said as they walked not far from the water’s edge with the dog between them. There was a strange note in her voice, almost of longing. It caught his attention.

  “You come here a lot?” he asked. The forty-minute drive from Spring Forest wasn’t bad. It was a little farther from his home in Hendrix, but he still made the trip several times a year.

  “I haven’t been here in years, not since I was little. I’m shocked by how much I remember it. You’d have thought it would have changed a lot in a quarter of a century.”

  She made herself sound so old, while he couldn’t shake an image of her as a little girl, playing on the beach, like some of the children who were playing around them. He’d been to the beach as a kid, too. Might even have been there on the same day as her.

  Would have liked to have known her.

  “Your family came here?” he asked, just to fill in the mental picture he’d drawn, watching as a couple of kids approached, looking at Jedi. The dog behaved perfectly, keeping his focus forward, his slow pace steady.

  “Not my dad. But yeah, Mom would bring us.”

  Us? He’d been under the impression she was an only child. The reminder that he didn’t know her as well as he’d thought he had was jarring, like a slap in the face.

  Recognizing the ridiculousness of his reaction, he walked silently, watching the lake lap the shore, while Jedi marched steadily beside him.

  A little girl cut them off as she ran from up the beach, crashing into the water so close by that they got splashed, and then squealed when her belly hit the water.

  Again, Greg paid attention to Jedi, looking for a reaction. The dog’s big brown eyes were focused on him as they stood there. And when Greg started walking, Jedi and Wendy kept pace equally beside him.

  He noticed, though, when Wendy glanced back at the little girl. Saw the distant smile that transformed her beautiful face into something almost sad. She caught him looking at her and turned forward. “My brother used to take me out and throw me straight up in the air to see how much of a splash I could make when I came down,” she said then, with a lighter tone. “I’d try to stretch myself out as far as I could, slamming my arms down into the water when I hit, ostensibly to get him soaked, but mostly to make him laugh.”

  It was a sweet story, but...it was another mention of a sibling. Another reminder that, even though he’d known her for years, he was just now hearing about a sibling.

  And he’d just mentioned that he had sisters, what, a few days before? The thought brought him back to reality.

  Still, he couldn’t not ask... “Your brother?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Older or younger?” He wondered if he was being nosy—but then, she’d asked him the question about his sisters. Surely that meant he could reciprocate.

  “Older,” she said, with emphasis. “Ten years older.”

  “It was just the two of you?”

  “Yep.”

  His mental portrait of her grew. A little girl with a big brother, taking her out to the lake to play. It was a nice image.

  “I idolized him when we were growing up,” she said then. And there Greg was, still wanting to listen. Still interested. “He left for the Marines when I was eight, and I thought I’d die of the loss.”

  The melodrama in her tone made him smile. And...her brother was military?

  “Is he still in the service?” he had to ask.

  “No, he left after six years. Joined my dad in his real-estate business. Dad wanted to open a brokerage in South Carolina and have Michael run it.”

  Jedi continued to walk with them, head high, facing forward, as though proud to be there. Seemingly unaware of the odd course Greg’s thoughts had taken.

  “You ever throw your sisters in the water?” Wendy turned, threw a grin in his direction, and he thought how beautiful she looked in sunglasses. Hoped that his own tinted lenses kept his expression as placid-looking as it should be.

  “Nope,” he answered. “I was too busy swimming, trying to see how far out I could go and beat my last time, to pay much attention to my sisters. Besides, they were busy with what I considered to be girly things...”

  “Girly things?”

  “Making castles in the sand. Sitting in the shallow water digging for treasure...” Maybe if he’d thrown the girls in the lake a few times, they wouldn’t think he was such a weakling who needed to be coddled like an invalid...

  “I made sandcastles.” Wendy’s tone was playfully defensive.

  “Why do I think they were planned and executed to specification and far enough from the water not to get flooded midbuild?”

  A grin and a playful punch to his shoulder were her only responses.

  They left him wanting more than just the touch of her fist against his shirt. More of the grin. More often. More of the way his breath caught when he looked at her. More of way his body lit up at even the slightest contact with hers.

  Left him wanting more of other things he couldn’t have. Like a future with Wendy always by his side. During good times and bad.

  * * *

  On Sunday Wendy took Jedi downtown for a stop at her office and then a walk on her own. She’d noticed Greg favoring his left leg by the time they’d come up off the beach the day before, noticed how almost dismissive his quick See ya later had been when he’d dropped her and Jedi off at home, and figured they both needed a day off from the partner training she’d initiated.

  She’d talked to him about Michael. Just the good stuff, but still...

  She never, ever mentioned her brother to anyone in the new life she’d built for herself. But there she was, having him in her home, telling him about Michael—she’d even told him her mother had died when she was sixteen.

  What was she doing? Really?

  On Monday, afraid of how much she was changing, Wendy almost texted Greg to tell him that he needn’t show up for his Jedi time. She could reschedule some appointments and be able to get home for training sessions.

  Almost texted him.

  She didn’t text him.

  Instead, she managed to calm her fear of letting him get too close by focusing outside of herself. Instead of thinking about her own reaction to Greg, she pushed that aside and thought about the two male figures who were suddenly taking up such huge blocks of her life. Greg’s time with Jedi wasn’t just for the dog. It was for him, too, and, as of yet, she’d seen no sign that the man had, in any way, formed any kind of ownership bond with the dog.

  Greg was doing exactly as he’d said he’d do. Helping her ready Jedi for service to a veteran who needed him.

  Greg wasn’t a needy veteran. Or if he was, he didn’t seem to be willing to admit it. Perhaps she’d been overreacting, thinking that she had to get him and Jedi together.

  Perhaps Greg helping Jedi was good for the dog as they’d planned. And nothing more. Where the handsome pilot was concerned, she couldn’t be sure anymore.

  He hadn’t mentioned flying at all that weekend. And she hadn’t asked. She’d had no valid reason to do so. Had no dogs that needed flights up north.