LITMIR.BIZ

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was struck by a tingling awareness along the back of his neck. It was his sharply honed instinct. It always warned him when danger was near.

      He had done many, many dangerous things.

      But he doubted any of them were going to hold a candle to pretending to be Miss Sophie Holtzheim’s beau.

      Why had he agreed to this?

      Partly because he couldn’t resist protecting Sophie. It seemed that’s what he had been born to do, protect.

      It was going to be a long, hot month in Sugar Maple Grove, and a man couldn’t be faulted for finding a way to entertain himself.

      His father, with one last look at him, not friendly, shoved back his chair. “I’m going to be late for church.”

      “Oh, that time already?” Hilde said in English, and in German, “We’ll leave you two alone, Sophie. Do something romantic, for God’s sake.”

      In a flurry of activity his dad and Hilde left and it was suddenly so quiet he could hear birds singing and bees buzzing.

      He waited to see if Sophie would do something romantic. Sophie, predictably, did nothing of the sort.

      “Don’t you have a girlfriend who’s going to object to this?” she asked. It sounded like an effort—albeit a weak one—to find a way out.

      “I don’t have a girlfriend,” he said. “This job busts people up. It’s too hard on the ones left behind. I was undercover for four years. Can you imagine what that would do to a woman?”

      “The right one would be okay with it,” she said with an edge of stubbornness. “It’s not just what you do. It’s who you are.”

      “Well, who I am can’t just drop everything for the birthday or wedding anniversary. You get in too deep to be pulled out. Sometimes you have to pretend to have a wife or a girlfriend. Another agent plays the role. How does the woman waiting at home handle that?”

      “Badly,” she guessed.

      “Exactly.”

      “I guess that overcomes the girlfriend thing.”

      “I guess it does.”

      “If we do this right,” she said, “maybe your father won’t be quite so antagonistic toward you.”

      On the other hand, Brand thought, if he did more damage than good, he would confirm his father’s worst thoughts about him.

      “I don’t understand why he’s not proud of you,” Sophie said.

      He didn’t like it that she cut so quickly to his own feelings. Why was it a man never quite got over that longing to be something good in the eyes of his father? To make his family proud?

      “There was only one way to make my father proud of me,” he said, “and I didn’t do it. I didn’t go to medical school and become a doctor willing to take over the Sugar Maple Grove General Practice one day.”

      “I still remember how shocked your parents were when you quit college and joined the military.”

      “My dad can trace eight generations of Sheridans. The men are doctors, professors, writers. And then along came me. I couldn’t fit the mold he made for me.”

      “But the marines?”

      “A recruiter at college found me on a climbing wall and asked if I’d ever considered making a living doing something like that. He made the whole thing sound irresistibly exciting.”

      “And has it been?”

      Brand was aware it was so easy to talk to Sophie. “It’s been pretty much what I told your grandmother. Ninety-nine percent tedium, one percent all hell breaking loose.”

      Sophie smiled. “And you live for that one percent. Adrenaline junkie.”

      “You know, that’s the part my mom and dad never understood. The military is a good place for an adrenaline junkie. I’ve always been attracted to adventure. I’ve always needed the adrenaline rush. Left to my own devices, especially in my younger years, that could have gotten me in a lot of trouble. I needed to balance my love of height and speed with discipline and skill.

      “But my dad can’t forgive me my career choice. We were a long way down the road of not seeing eye to eye even before I missed my mom’s funeral.”

      “Was there really no way for you to come home, Brand? None?”

      He shook his head. “You have to understand how deeply I was in and how long it took me to get there. Word of my mom’s death reached me via a quick and risky meeting with my handler—that’s your contact with the real world. The less you see anybody from that world, the better.

      “At that point in the operation, I had to assume everything was suspect, everything was listened to, everything was watched. One wrong step, one wrong breath could have gotten people killed, could have blown nearly four years of work.

      “What I said to my dad was true. I’m basically a soldier. I take orders. Even if it had been my call, which it wasn’t, I wouldn’t have jeopardized the team. Couldn’t.

      “And I’ll tell you what else I couldn’t have done—risked someone following me back here, knowing anything about this place or the people in it, retribution for what I was about to do raining down on the innocent.”

      Her eyes were wide. “Did you ever tell that to your father?”

      “He doesn’t listen long enough.” Brand was surprised by just how much he’d told Sophie. He usually didn’t talk about work. He usually carried his burdens alone.

      “Are you in danger now?” she asked, always intuitive.

      But he’d said enough, there was no sense scaring her. He sidestepped the question. “My identity will be protected, even in the coming court cases. I’ll be kept pretty low-profile for a long time.”

      His father didn’t know about that kind of world, and neither did Sophie Holtzheim. If he told them all the details, if they fully understood the danger, they might feel the kind of helpless fear that tore apart the ones who stayed at home.

      Better his father be angry than that.

      And her? He could never subject someone as sweet and sensitive as Sophie to what he did for a living. Was this brief tangling of their lives—him entertaining himself at her expense—going to hurt her?

      It was going to be just like being undercover. Get the job done, no emotional attachment, keep mental distance. Pretend.

      He looked at Sophie, so adorable in her earnestness. Pretense around someone so transparent, so genuine, seemed wrong. Still, it bugged him that she wasn’t able to hold her head high, so he listened without comment as she outlined her plans for a romance.

      Ice cream. A bike ride or two. Blue Rock.

      Again, he was struck by the innocence of it all. He felt a flicker of trepidation about his ability to play the role she was outlining. But he didn’t let on.

      “Sure,” he agreed to all her plans when she finally stopped and looked at him with wide-eyed expectation. He took a big bite of his mar-malade-covered croissant. “That should be fun.”

      He remembered, too late, he too hated marmalade.

      But just for practice at concealing how he really felt, he chewed thoughtfully and proclaimed it delicious.

      Sophie was looking at him as if she didn’t believe him. What if she proved to be the person who could see right through all the masks he’d become so adept at wearing?

      For some reason that thought was scarier than the four years he had just spent in a den full of rattlesnakes.

      Because it threatened him as he had never once allowed himself to be threatened.

      It

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