lighten the atmosphere between them. In the distance the sound of a bullfrog filled the silence. Jake took that as his cue. “Well, Mr. Bullfrog, I hope the lady you’re courting appreciates your fine bass baritone.”
Charlie sighed and relaxed. “I wonder what he did to shut down his rivals.”
An answering chorus settled that question.
“They sound like one of those Russian army choruses,” Jake said. “No tenors need apply.”
“The peepers have their own choir,” Charlie said. “And then there are the cicadas—they remind me of fingernails on a blackboard.”
“Not this late in the summer.”
Sitting beside him, Charlie felt grateful that he’d directed the subject away from her and her life. It was so easy to open up to Jake. Was that what Mary Anne had sensed? What had she told him when she was locked in her room? He might not trust himself, but Mary Anne trusted him. So did Charlie.
And boy, was that dangerous. “We’d both better get to bed,” she said, stopping the movement of the glider and standing up. “Tomorrow’s going to be a tough day.”
She left him sitting alone and fled up the stairs to her room. Did cold showers work for females? She washed off her makeup, brushed her teeth, pulled on the T-shirt she slept in and crawled into the big Lincoln bed, sure that she’d sleep. But her mind kept churning.
Jake was a stranger, a student and a soldier. Triple threat.
After Steve died, she vowed never to allow anyone remotely military into her life again. No more warriors. No more dragging around the world after them and making a new home each time, the way her mother had done for her father. No more sudden deployments to Nowheresville or the other side of the world. No more shaking with terror every time the doorbell rang for fear it was the bad one—the notification that her husband was dead. Once was enough. She and Sarah had never been enough for Steve. Oh, he’d tried, but in the final analysis the pleasure of being with his wife and daughter couldn’t compete with his need to be back in the action. Between deployments, he loathed being a garrison soldier. He was addicted to danger and eventually, like most addictions, it killed him.
Warriors were great to have around when Genghis Khan and Attila the Hun were just over the horizon and coming fast. Not so great when they weren’t.
Sitting next to Jake, she could feel her resolution to avoid warriors weakening. Bad. Bad and stupid. Jake might seem gentle, he might be an ex-soldier, but she could still sense the testosterone.
She’d fallen for Steve on sight. In the fourteen years they’d been married, she’d never looked at another man, even though that meant months of celibacy while he was on temporary duty or deployed somewhere she and Sarah couldn’t follow.
He’d really had to work to kill her love for him, but he’d finally managed.
No matter how attracted she was to Jake, he was her student. Not acceptable. He also had psychological problems that she couldn’t possibly inflict on Sarah.
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