“He’s coming up tomorrow afternoon, which usually means he’ll be here tonight. I think he spends the night over at the Best Western in Fortuna. I’ll work till lunchtime tomorrow, then he’ll come over. He wants to take the girls to the redwoods and coast on a picnic before it gets too cold.”

“Nice,” he said. “I guess it’s working out.”

“So far,” she said. “I’m trying not to let the fact that he’s given me so much influence my opinion of him. Know what I mean?”

Tom nodded. Her love was not for sale. “You like baseball?” he heard himself ask.

She looked a little perplexed, but nodded. “Why?”

“Red Sox played the Yankees last night,” he said idly.

“Did you see that game?” she asked, suddenly excited.

“Did you?” he asked back.

“I don’t have a TV, but Buddy and Jerome were talking about it—Jeter took three bases. Must have been awesome. And he put it into overtime!”

“So, you’re a Yankees fan?”

“Me? I’m a California girl, it’s the Giants for me.”

“Well, I was raised here and I’m all about the Red Sox!” he informed her.

“I think I have a better track record, but you do what you have to do.”

“Hah! Maybe you’ve had a little luck here and there, but better record? I beg to differ.”

“What are you talking about? Giants knocked out the Sox 4-2!”

“And the next two games? Sox put ’em down!”

“Don’t get cocky—it’s not over.”

“It’s over—they didn’t make the series!”

“They will next year—and your sucky Sox won’t be there for it.” She stepped closer to him even though she had a full, heavy bag of apples hanging off her shoulders. “What are you doing throwing your lot in with an East Coast team? Have you no loyalty?”

He laughed and lifted the canvas apple bag from her. She would be fun to attend a game with. Not that that would ever happen, but it would be fun. “I spent a lot of time in other places, I guess I turned.” He walked to the big bin and unloaded her apples for her. Then he handed her back the bag. “I suppose you watch a lot of chick flicks,” he said.

“Tom, try to keep up here—no TV. And no money for movies.”

“Back when you did have a TV and went to movies…” he said.

“Some,” she admitted. “But I’ll tell you something if you promise not to share.”

“What?” he asked.

She leaned close. “I like disaster films,” she whispered. “The kind that blow up the world. I’m not fussy—it can be asteroids, aliens or Mother Nature. I think I’m a special-effects junkie.”

“Yeah?” he asked, feeling like he’d suddenly grown lots more teeth in his mouth, he was smiling so big. “What was the last good one you saw?”

“It’s been a while—but I think it was Day After Tomorrow—the glacier. I really loved that. Before that I saw New York City demolished about three times—asteroids and aliens and even volcanoes.”

He laughed, hands on his hips. “Tell you what, one of these times you come out with the kids, we’ll find a way to get them to sleep and watch a newer disaster movie.”

She actually took a step back. Away. “That could be fun,” she said. But her posture and the way she said it made it sound like anything but fun.

“What?” he asked.

“Nothing,” she said.

“No really. What?”

“I’d love that,” she said. “But the girls have to get baths and go to sleep after dinner and I have to get them home for that, Tom. And I get up at five. I mean, it sounds like fun, but it’s not practical.”

“We’ll do it on a weekend,” he said.

“I think you have other things to do on weekends…”

“Probably not every weekend,” he said.

She gave him a smile that said she was pretty sure he was booked.

So he got a little more aggressive. “Not every weekend. We’ll make it work because I love watching cities get blown up.”

“You do?”

He shrugged. “As long as it’s pretend. Get back to work—have to check the fence. Don’t want the bear family eating all our apples!”

* * *

Nora got back to her picking, though she wasn’t humming anymore. We’ll do it on a weekend kept circulating in her brain. He must have meant that he would include her along with his new friend. But then, when she suggested he seemed to be pretty busy on the weekend, he could have clarified that, but instead said he wouldn’t be busy every weekend, which almost sounded like he wanted to do something with Nora. Just Nora.

That would not be good, thinking he liked her.

When she’d thrown her life away the first time, she’d been nineteen, inexperienced, foolish and unquestionably starved for love. Now things were different—she was older, knew how bad things could get if one wasn’t cautious and she didn’t need the love of a young man to validate her.

She had no interest in a broken heart.

Chapter Twelve

October in the mountains was chilly, often wet, and the busiest apple harvesting time all year. Tom had worn a slicker all day and was still wet to the skin. He was bone tired by the time he was able to make it to the house at five o’clock.

“There you are,” Darla said, smiling. She jumped up from the table and Duke immediately thought she intended to pet him. He wagged and went to her and she put out her hands. “Ack! No, Duke, no! Sit. Sit.” Duke tilted his head and looked confused, then forlorn. But he stopped and sat.

Then she smiled at Tom and gave her clothes a brush as if to remove his hair that wasn’t there. She was decked out in a longish gray wool skirt, yet another pair of boots he didn’t recognize, a woolly orange jacket over a silky black blouse. Damn, but the woman could certainly look good.

He touched the jacket. “Nice,” he said.

She brushed the place he had touched, though he had washed his hands in the barn. “Cashmere,” she whispered to him. “So, when are we going out? Soon?”

“I can’t think of anywhere to take you that will justify that jacket,” he said. “I need a shower…”

Maxie was busy at the sink, washing up some of her baking dishes. “Long day, Tom?” she asked.

He frowned, then almost laughed at her. No one knew better than Maxie what the harvest was like. Two things occurred to him—Nora would have been helping with the dishes even though she hadn’t dirtied them and Darla hadn’t asked him if he was tired, if he’d had a hard day. But of course he wouldn’t say that. “Give me fifteen minutes.” He looked at his watch. “It’s still early.”

“I know,” she said. “But I’ve been reading all day and I’m bored. I’m ready for a change of scenery.”

Maxie turned from the sink. “I put your books on the stairs, Darla. Tom, since you’re going up for a shower, take them upstairs for Darla.”

“Oh, no, I’ve got them,” she said.

“I can do that,” Tom said.

“I’ll…I’ll read a little while you’re showering, then I’ll carry them—”

But he was already at the foot of the stairs. He picked up a stack of books—two textbooks and a paperback. He was transfixed by the paperback, the cover of which had a sexy vampire about to plunge his teeth into the neck of a beautiful woman on it. “Hmm,” he said. “I guess in pharmacology you have to be ready for anything,” he said.

She took the books away from him. “Sometimes I have to let my brain rest for a few minutes—what I study is pretty intense.”

He put the vampire book on top. “Yeah, this looks very relaxing…” Then he watched as she went up the stairs ahead of him. He followed. He braced both hands on the door frame of the guest room, leaning in. “Fifteen minutes, Darla. Just let me get cleaned up.”

“Take your time,” she said sweetly. “I’ll go downstairs and visit with Maxie.”

Twenty minutes later Tom was back in the kitchen and when he walked in, Darla’s eyes lit up as she looked him up and down. “Look at you,” she said, smiling. He wondered how he’d managed to please her; he wasn’t as spruced up as she was. He wore black jeans, a dark sweater and camel suede jacket. Instead of work boots, of which he had several pairs, he wore his going-out boots—polished and shiny like a good marine. She stood on her tiptoes and smoothed her hands along his shoulders. “This is a very good look on you. And I swear you must be six-five in your boots.”

“I doubt it,” he said. “Maxie, I don’t know where we’re going. You and Duke okay?”

“Oh, I think we’ll manage,” she said with a laugh. “Just have fun.”

“Want me to bring you home a dessert?” he asked.

She shook her head. “You eat two for me.”

“Let’s take my car,” Darla said. “That truck of yours is so high off the ground, I’m afraid I’ll break my neck getting in and out.” She held out her keys. “Want to drive?”

“Sure.” Then with a hand on the small of her back, he escorted her to her car. “This is new,” he said. “When did you get it?”

“Oh, about six months ago. Maybe nine. I can’t remember.”

“Nice,” he said. And when he got behind the wheel, “Lots of leg room.”

“You like it? You can heat your seat. Want me to show you how?”

“I’ll be fine,” he said with a chuckle.

This was all he had ever wanted, a woman just like this—sophisticated, accomplished, beautiful and already set up in life. A woman who would bring pride to his name, to his family. Darla was established and came from a good, strong, close family.

And yet it felt all wrong.

All the way to Arcata she told him about her current course of study, about drug trials and experiments and the FDA and the DEA and how people in her position had to be cognizant of the laws. As she had done before, she segued into the bonus perks after major sales and contracts, not to mention the generous expense account for the wining and dining of doctors and hospital administrators, as if these were the really important parts of her job. “That’s one of the best parts,” she admitted. “Entertaining my clients. And I’m good at it—I have one of the best client lists in the company, and I haven’t been there that long.”

“But what if Bob had lived?” he asked before he could stop himself. “You wouldn’t have been able to stay in one place long.”

“We’d been married less than a year,” she said. “Before he deployed.”

And it occurred to him, there was no Marine base in the Denver area. “How did you meet?” he asked.

She gave a heavy sigh, as if she’d rather not talk about it. Possibly the memories were still painful. “He was on leave, skiing with friends. I met him in Vail.”

“But he wasn’t stationed around there… .”

“No. But I traveled so often anyway, it was easy to go to him. Like all the time. I can work from home a lot as long as I have a phone and laptop, so I sometimes spent several days in a week with him.”

“But you lived in Denver?”

“Why are you asking this? Did he complain about this?”

Tom felt the icy wedge of her voice. He reached over and took her hand. “Never,” he said. “I just never thought of it before, and I wondered.”

“I was willing to move, to change jobs or companies, but Bob said it wasn’t fair—he’d just be deploying soon anyway. He didn’t want me to give up a good thing when in the end I was just going to sit alone, waiting, worrying…”