The Homecoming Queen Gets Her Man

Chapter Three

Jack pounded out six hard and fast miles on the back roads of Stone Gap. The late-evening heat beat down on him, sweat pouring down his back, but he didn’t slow his pace. His punishing daily routine drove the demons back, so he kept on running until his body was spent and his throat was clamoring for water.

What had he been thinking, walking into the bakery yesterday? Did he think this time, finally, he’d get the courage to say what he needed to say? Once a week he stopped in to either Betty’s or George’s, and every time the words stayed stuck in his throat.

Then, seeing Meri with that little bit of frosting on her lip derailed all his common sense. For a moment, he had been eighteen again, half in love with her and thinking the world was going to go on being perfect and pure. Until he’d gone to war and learned differently.

Damn. Just going into that bakery hurt like hell, and he’d let himself get swept up in a past—a fantasy—that no longer existed. A mistake he wouldn’t make again. Add it to the long list of mistakes Jack never intended to make again.

Luke was sitting on the front porch of Jack’s cottage in the woods when Jack got back. “You look like you’re about ready to keel over.”

Jack braced his palms on his knees and drew in a deep breath. Another. A third. “I’ll be fine.”

Luke scoffed, got to his feet and shoved a water bottle under Jack’s nose. “Here, you need this more than me.”

Jack thanked his brother, then straightened and chugged the icy beverage. “What are you doing here? Not that I don’t appreciate the water, but this makes two days in a row that I’ve seen you. I didn’t see you that much when we lived in the same house.”

Luke shrugged. “Mama’s worried about you. Mac is off in the big city, pretending we don’t exist, working his fingers to the bone, so that leaves me as the designated caretaker.”

“In other words, she got desperate.”

“I prefer to call it smart.”

Jack scoffed. He drained the rest of the water, recapped the bottle, then three-pointed it into the recycle bin. “I gotta go to work.”

Luke stepped in front of him and blocked his path. “Promise me you’ll be at dinner on Sunday night. Mama said she’d tan us both if you don’t come.”

“First of all, the last time Mama spanked either of us was when you were six and you stole candy from the general store. You cried, she cried and she never spanked us again. Second of all, I am quite capable of eating on my own. I don’t need to show up for the whole family-meal dog and pony show.”

“Since when has dinner at Mama’s been a dog and pony show?” Luke gave Jack’s shoulder a light jab. “And what’s up with you, anyway? Don’t tell me you like eating those TV dinners on the sofa better than homemade pot roast?”

“Since when did you become my keeper?” Jack shook his head. “I’m busy, Luke. I don’t have time for this. I gotta get to the garage.”

Luke stood there a moment longer, as if he wanted to disagree but had run out of arguments. A part of Jack wanted Luke to drag him to dinner at Mama’s, because maybe being forced to be among the rest of the world would keep that panther at bay. Or maybe it would unleash the damned thing and Jack would ruin the only good he had left in his life.

“Fine, have it your way,” Luke said. “Enjoy your Hungry-Man dinners.”

His brother left, and Jack headed into the little house on Stone Gap Lake that he’d rented when he came home from the war. It wasn’t much as houses went, but it was set in the woods at the end of a desolate street, a mile as the crow flew from Ray’s house. If there was one thing Jack didn’t want, it was friendly neighbors who’d be popping by with a casserole or an earful of gossip. His mother had wanted him to stay in the family home, but the thought of being around all that...caring suffocated him. He’d rented the first house he found, and told his mother he’d be fine.

He heard the crunch of tires on the road and readied a sarcastic retort for Luke as he headed back onto the porch, where the word died in his throat. Meri sat behind the wheel of a dusty Toyota, sunglasses covering the green eyes he knew so well, her hair tied back in a ponytail. She pulled into the drive, rolled down the window, but didn’t turn off the car.

“I need your help. Grandpa Ray is fixing to climb a ladder and clean out the gutters, and refuses to wait for you to help him. He wouldn’t let me so much as touch the ladder, and I’m afraid he’s going to hurt himself.”

Jack let out a curse. “I told him I’d do that tonight, after I got done at the garage.”

“You know him. When he wants something done, he wants it done now.” She tucked the sunglasses on top of her head. Worry etched her face, shimmered in her eyes. “Can you help? I mean, if you’re busy or something—”

“I’m not busy.” Not busy enough, he should have said. Never busy enough. But Ray needed him, and if there was one man Jack would help without question, it was Ray. And with Meri looking at him like that, as though she’d pinned all her hopes on his shoulders...a part of him wanted to tell her to find someone else. Instead he said, “Give me five minutes to get cleaned up.”

“Sure.” She put the car in Park. “Thanks, Jack.”

He started toward the house, then the nagging chivalry his mother had instilled in him halted Jack’s steps. He turned back to Meri. “Uh, you want to come in? Have some iced tea or something? You shouldn’t wait in the car in heat like this.”

She hesitated a moment. Probably weighing the environment-damaging effects of running the car in Park for a few minutes versus the risks of being around him. “Sweet tea?”

He grinned. “Is there another kind?”

She got out of the car, one long leg at a time. She was wearing cutoff denim shorts and flip-flops, topped with a V-necked blue T-shirt. On Meri, the casual attire seemed sexier than the elegant dresses she’d worn in her pageants. It seemed more...Meri, if that made sense. More real. Prettier.

Damn.

All these years, and he still wanted her now as much as he had then. Back then, he’d been young and stupid and rash. He’d believed anything was possible in those days. That the world could be set to rights with a lot of laughter and a sweet kiss from her lips.

He knew better now. He knew about dark days and bad decisions and regrets that ran so deep they had scarred his soul. And so he looked away from Meri’s legs and Meri’s smile and headed into the house.

“Kitchen’s over there,” he said, pointing down the hall. “I’ll be done in a couple minutes.”

It wasn’t until he was standing beneath the bracing cold water of his shower, the droplets pelting his face, his neck, his shoulders, that Jack could breathe. He pressed his hands against the wall and dropped his head, letting the water rush over his skin until all he could feel was cold.

He stepped out of the shower, dried off and tugged open a dresser drawer. Almost empty. Maybe it was about time he got his crap together and did some laundry. He reached for a ratty T, then stopped when his hand brushed over a worn khaki cotton T, stuffed at the bottom of the pile after his last tour, forgotten until now.

Memories clawed at him. Reminded him exactly why he had rented a house in the woods by the lake, far from the rest of the world. Far from people like Meri.

People who would ask questions like why. Questions he couldn’t even answer for himself.

Jack cursed, grabbed the nearest plain shirt and slammed the drawer shut again. He finished getting dressed, then headed out of his bedroom. He’d help Ray and stay the hell away from Meri. The last thing he wanted was to have a conversation with her, one where she’d ask about Eli.

The only other person who knew about that day was Jack’s commanding officer, who had taken his report, then mercifully left him alone in his grief. Jack had served out the last month of his tour on autopilot, a shell of himself, then come home and done what the psychologist told him to do—tried to put it all behind him and move on.

Move on? Where the hell to?

Meri was standing in the kitchen, her back to him, looking out the back door. Her lean frame was silhouetted by the morning sun streaming in through the windows. His heart stuttered, but he kept moving forward, ignoring the urge to touch her, to get close to her. “You ready?”

She turned and a smile curved across her face. “There’s a deer in your yard,” she whispered with a sense of awe and magic in her voice. “A fawn.”

He moved to stand beside Meri. And just as she’d said, there was a deer standing like a brown slash among the green foliage. The fawn had the speckled back of a youngster, and the relaxed stance of one too new to know the dangers that lurked in the woods. He nosed at the shrubs, nibbling the leafy green delicacies.

“He’s so beautiful,” Meri said.

“He’s too trusting. If he doesn’t pay attention, some hunter or a loose dog is going to get him.”

She cast a glance at him. “That’s pretty pessimistic.”

“Realistic, Meri. There’s a difference.” He nodded toward the window. “I’m surprised you don’t have your camera out. You were always taking pictures of this or that when you were younger.”

She shrugged. “Let’s just enjoy the moment, okay?”

He suspected she was hiding a few secrets in those words, burying a pile of her own regrets beneath that shrug. A different day, a different Jack would have asked, but this Jack had learned to leave well enough alone and not go poking sticks if he didn’t want one poked in the embers of his own past.

* * *

Meri stayed inside her grandfather’s house—banished there by Grandpa Ray, who’d told her that he and Jack had the gutter situation under control—washing the dishes and giving his refrigerator a thorough cleaning.

That’s what she’d told herself she was in here to do, but her attention kept straying outside, to where Jack and Grandpa Ray worked with easy camaraderie. Grandpa Ray did most of the talking; Jack did most of the working. Meri noticed how Jack would take care of Grandpa without being obvious, how he’d offer to lift something or grab an extra gutter to carry—“Because I might as well carry two if I’m carrying one”—and how he’d find ways to make Grandpa sit down. Have him crimp the ends or hacksaw the end of a gutter while sitting at a makeshift workbench.

The Jack she had known when she was a teenager had been a wild rebel, ready to take on the world, run from the responsibilities that being a Barlow brought. He’d been everything she hadn’t—brave and impulsive. She’d dated him partly because she admired him and wanted just a little of that to rub off, to give her the courage to tell her mother no, to walk away from the endless pageants and pressure.

But this Jack, the one changed by war and the military, was more reclusive, less impulsive. He had an edge to him that came with a Do Not Trespass sign. It intrigued her, but also reminded her that she wasn’t here to open old wounds.

She finished the kitchen, made up a grocery list of things that were healthier options than most of what Grandpa had in his cabinets, then grabbed her purse. She told herself she was helping Grandpa—not avoiding the camera that still sat in its padded bag, untouched for months. A job at a magazine that she had yet to return to, a career she had abandoned. Every time she thought about raising the lens to her eye, though, a flurry of panic filled her. So she did dishes and cleaned house and made lists.

She came around the side of the house to find Grandpa Ray and Jack sitting on the picnic table, under the shade. “I was going to run to the store to grab some food for you, Grandpa.”

“I have food in there.”

“Beef jerky is not food. And neither is fake cheese spread.”

“What can I say? I keep it simple.” Grandpa Ray shrugged. “I cook about as well as a squirrel scuba dives.”

She laughed. “Well, I’m here now and I’ll cook for you. Healthy stuff that’ll make you feel better and get your heart back on track and your cholesterol down. And don’t argue with me—I’m determined to sway you to the world of nonfried foods.”

“We’ll see about that. If you ask me, there isn’t one food on God’s green earth that isn’t improved by some batter and hot oil. While you’re there, if it ain’t too much trouble, throw an extra rabbit in the pot for this guy.” Grandpa Ray threw an arm around Jack’s shoulders. “He’ll starve to death living on his own. Plus, I owe him at least a meal for helping me today.”

“It was nothing, Ray, really.” Jack got to his feet. “Anyway, I have to go to the hardware store for a couple more pieces and then we can finish this up. While I’m there, I should pick up some more siding. That whole northern side is rotting away.”

“You two should go together. Save some gas.” Ray gestured between Meri and Jack and grinned. “Get the two of you out of my hair for a while, too.”

“Oh, I’m fine—”

“I’m good—”

“You’re both as stubborn as two goats in a pepper patch,” Ray said, then he reached forward and plucked Meri’s keys out of her hand and tucked them in his pocket. “There. Now you have to go with Jack.”

Jack scowled and cursed under his breath. “I gotta measure something first.” He stalked over to the makeshift workbench set on two sawhorses, grabbed a piece of gutter and a tape measure, but he moved too fast and the gutter slid through his hand. An ugly red gash erupted on his palm and blood spurted from the wound. He cursed again, pressed the hem of his T-shirt against his palm. “Got any Band-Aids, Ray?”

“Band-Aids? You need a tourniquet. They can see that gusher from Mars, boy. You gotta get someone to look at that.”

Jack shook his head. “I’m fine.”

Meri knew that stubborn set to Jack’s shoulders, the tightening of his brows. He’d probably let his hand succumb to gangrene before he asked for help. She marched over and took his hand in hers before he could protest. “Let me see.”

“I’m—”

“Bleeding like a stuck pig. Let me go get some first aid supplies and take care of it for you.” She pressed the shirt back down. “Hold this and don’t move.”

“Yes, ma’am.” A grin darted across his face then disappeared just as fast.

The way he said yes, ma’am caused a little hitch in her step, a catch in her breath. She forgot all those very good reasons why she wasn’t attracted to him anymore. Damn.

She hurried into Grandpa’s house, raided his medicine chest for some supplies, then went back outside. True to his word, Jack had stayed in the exact same spot. She uncoiled the hose and brought it over to him, then turned the knob and waited for a steady stream of cool water. “Here. We need to wash it out first.”

The instant the water hit his hand, Jack let out a yelp and pulled away. She smirked. “Are you going to tell me that a man who has fought in one of the most dangerous places in the world is afraid of a little water?”

“Hey, it stings like hell.”

She made a face at him. “Come on, buttercup, suck it up.”

“Okay. Just make it quick and try not to amputate my hand, Florence Nightingale.”

She dried his palm with a clean towel, then had Jack hold pressure on the wound. “I’ll have you know I got my first aid badge in Girl Scouts. On the second try.”

He chuckled. “That gives me comfort.”

“I can handle this. But if you break your leg, you’re on your own.”

“Hey, I can fashion a splint out of two twigs and a piece of ivy, so I should be good to go.”

She smiled, looked up at him, and in that moment, they were teenagers sitting by the banks of the creek, and Jack was doing his best to dry her tears and pull off a miracle with a handmade bandage. His hands that day had been careful and steady, the kind that told her anything she put in his grasp would be safe and cared for. “You remember that baby bird?”

A tiny robin that had fallen from its nest. Probably part of its momma’s attempt to get her little one to fly, to be independent, but in the process, the tiny thing had injured a wing and flapped in a panicked circle on the ground. Meri had gone to the only person she knew who could make everything right—Jack.

“I remember you finding it, and coming to me with tears streaming down your face, begging me to fix it.” He reached up his free hand and brushed a lock of hair away from her forehead. Her skin seemed to melt where he touched her, and she swayed a little in his direction. The world dropped away. All she saw was Jack’s blue eyes. All she heard was the steady rise and fall of his breath, the soft murmur of his deep voice. “You were always trying to save lost causes, Meri.”

Lost causes. Oh, how she knew about those. She was smarter now, no longer that foolish girl who believed in fairy tales.

“Not anymore,” she said, then looked away, back at his hand, blinking away the tears that sprang to her eyes. She cleared her throat, then pulled the rag from his hand to squeeze a little antibiotic cream on the wound. “Stay still, Jack.”

His large, strong hand was warm against hers, solid. She wanted to study the lines and muscles, to feel the touch of those confident palms against her skin. A long time ago, Jack’s hands had touched her, made her sigh and moan and almost want to cry with anticipation. Damn. All that from a memory of a wounded baby bird?

“Uh...let me put a couple bandages on this. With some, um...” She held up the supplies beside her. “Um...”

“Tape?”

“Yeah, tape.” She pressed a gauze pad onto his wound, then let go of his hand to tear off long strips of tape. She wrapped them around to the back of his hand, crisscrossing the gauze to hold it in place. “There you go. Almost as good as new.”

“I’ll never be good as new again. Too many scars.” He had a smile on his face, but it didn’t hold in his eyes, and for the hundredth time since she’d run into him, Meri saw that other edge to Jack, the edge that she didn’t know, or recognize.

“We should get to the store,” she said, releasing his hand and gathering the supplies before she gave in to the temptation to ask Jack what was brewing behind those blue eyes and why she cared so much. “Before anyone gets hurt again.”

Chapter Four

Kicking and screaming. That was how he went into Doc Malloy’s office. On their way into town, Jack had told Meri he was fine, damn it, just fine, but she’d seen the blood seeping through the bandage and insisted he needed stitches. He’d told her it wasn’t anything a couple butterfly bandages couldn’t fix, and she’d just given him that look of hers.

That look where her eyes narrowed and her lips pursed and one eyebrow arched. He’d wanted to laugh, to tell her that it didn’t work anymore, but then the light in her green eyes flickered, and for a second he thought maybe she was worried about him.

“Come on,” Meri said, when she returned to the truck. “I checked with his receptionist and she said there’s no wait.”

“I’m fine, Meri.”

She gave him the look again, then grabbed the sleeve of his shirt and tugged him out of the truck and up the walkway into Doc Malloy’s office. “Let the professional decide that.”

Jack paused a moment in the doorway, waiting for his eyes to adjust to the dim interior. Meri had released him, and stepped two steps to the left. For some reason he refused to decipher, a little shiver of disappointment ran through him when she did that.

“Jack Barlow. Always a pleasure to see you, sugar.” Corinna Winslow’s voice came across the room like warm honey. She slipped out from behind the reception desk and sashayed across the small room. Corinna had been a cheerleader in high school, and even back then, she had pursued Jack with single-minded determination. They’d gone on a couple dates, years ago, but Jack had little interest in Corinna and had put a quick end to it. When he’d come home, she’d been one of the first to call to see if he “needed anything. Anything at all.”

Now she put a palm on his chest, just a light, quick touch, but one that seemed to stamp him. “Don’t tell me you’re hurt.”

He held up his hand. “Nothing big. I figured I could get by with some bandages, but someone—” he jerked his head in Meri’s direction but she just gave him that look again “—insisted on stitches.”

Corinna took Jack’s injured hand in hers. “Oh, my. Yes, stitches indeed. Let me take you right back, sugar, and get you all fixed up.”

Before he could protest, Corinna was leading him down the hall and into an exam room. What was with the women in his life today? Herding him around like a wayward sheep, for God’s sake.

Corinna leaned in as she took his blood pressure and temperature—two things Jack was sure he didn’t need—but Corinna insisted. She wore a snug-fitting V-necked white T-shirt under an unbuttoned scrubs top, which meant he got more than one healthy look at her cleavage. Jack was pretty sure nurses weren’t supposed to bend like that to take a blood pressure, but he didn’t argue.

On any other day, he would have enjoyed the obvious flirtation. Maybe even traded a few innuendos with Corinna, who had never made a secret of her interest in him. Instead, he found himself wondering about Meri, sitting in the uncomfortable chair in the waiting room. Not just wondering about what her cleavage looked like—hell, he wasn’t dead, after all—but what he had seen in her eyes earlier today when she’d seen the vulnerable, determined fawn.

And why he still cared.

He, of everyone in the world, should stay far, far away from Meri Prescott. Not just because he had already learned his lesson about tangling with a woman who lived in that world of debutantes and beauty pageants, of hair spray and high heels. Once upon a time, that hadn’t bothered him. Then he’d gone to war and become a different man. Not a better man, some would argue.

And then there was Eli. Just those three letters sent a sharp pain searing through his chest.

“You okay?” Corinna asked.

He jerked his attention back. “Uh, yeah. The stethoscope was a little cold.”

“Oh, don’t tell me you can’t take a little cold, a big, strong man like yourself.” She gave him a playful swat. “Or, I can warm it up against my own skin first. If you’d like.”

Before she could do that—and Jack really didn’t want to know where the stethoscope was going to get warmed—the door opened and Doc Malloy came in. Corinna stepped back, fumbling with the blood pressure cuff.

“Why, hello, Jack,” the doctor said. “Haven’t seen you in a long time.”

Jack leaned forward and shook hands with the elderly doctor. He’d known Doc Malloy all his life, and except for a few more pounds around his gut and a few more white hairs on top of his head, the doctor looked about the same as he had when he’d given Jack his first vaccination shots. He was an amiable doctor, one often given to long chats with patients he knew well. Doc had fought in Vietnam, and had traded a few war stories with Jack over the years. “Nice to see you again, sir.”

Doc Malloy nodded at Jack’s bandaged hand. “What seems to be the trouble?”

“Just a little flesh wound. Meri thought—”

“Meri Prescott? She’s back in town?”

Jack nodded. God, he hoped they didn’t get into a lengthy conversation about Meri. He didn’t want to think about her any more than was necessary, and over the last day, that had been like every five seconds. “She thought I needed stitches.”