Operation Soldier Next Door - Justine Davis

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friendliest guy in town. “Whole different kind of headache.”

      He smiled back. He couldn’t seem to help it. It even lasted a second or two. It seemed enough for her, because she turned to go, stockpot in hand. Then she turned back.

      “Anything more on your explosion?”

      She’d been here when the lab had called, he remembered. As if he could forget. “No. I think they still suspect Gramps left the valve open.”

      “Bull.”

      She said it so bluntly he drew back slightly. She kept going, rather fiercely.

      “One, Martin was sharp as a tack and would never forget something like that. Two, he was always aware and careful about propane in the first place, double-checking everything when he was done with the grill. Three, I’ve been around the back often, checking on the place, and I never once smelled even a trace of it. And the back corner of my garden is close enough, and I’m there often enough, I would have smelled it, anyway. It wasn’t leaking all this time.”

      Halfway through her surprisingly impassioned declaration he was nodding. By the time she finished, he was nodding and smiling again as she echoed his own thoughts and reinforced his position.

      “Thank you,” he said, meaning it from somewhere deep inside him, where his unfailing love for his grandfather resided.

      “And I thought of something else last night,” she went on, clearly not done yet. “I never saw two tanks. In fact, a few times I took the one tank he had to get it refilled, to save him the trouble since we used his grill so often.”

      Now, that he hadn’t known, Tate thought, feeling both gratified that she was echoing his confidence in Gramps, and sad that he hadn’t known. He should have spent more time with him. But he’d spent as much as he had. When he got enough leave to come home, it had been here he’d come, not the fancy, over-decorated house in So Cal where his parents lived.

      “You don’t believe it, do you? That he was careless or forgot?”

      She seemed as concerned as if he’d been her own grandfather. And Tate felt an odd kernel of a different kind of warmth finally blossom inside him.

      “No,” he said softly. “I don’t.”

      She smiled, seeming to be relieved. “Good. Because he wasn’t. And didn’t.” But then a frown creased her brow. She shifted the big, heavy pot in her arms. “But that leaves us with a big question.”

      Us.

      Funny how she assumed that kind of involvement.

      Not at all funny how that simple, ordinary, two-letter word made his stomach knot up.

      “A couple,” he said, trying to ignore the odd sensation. “Like where’d the second tank come from? And what really did bring on the explosion?”

      “I was thinking more like—was it an accident at all?” she said, her tone grim.

       Chapter 8

      Lacy stirred the sauce, her nose telling her she had the blend close to right. She wondered if it needed a bit more basil, so she lifted out a tiny bit in the spoon. She blew on it to cool the hot sauce, then took a careful taste.

      “Nope,” she said aloud, happy she’d hit the balance right off the bat. Everything had come together as planned, flavor and timing, and the afternoon-long project was done.

      And this time she would put the portion for her neighbor in a storage container, one he could just throw away when he was done, since the pot had apparently caused too much trouble.

      “Stop it,” she muttered to herself. He had his reasons for being less than sociable. He’d come here for peace and quiet and had gotten little of either so far. She would drop this off and then leave him alone. This would fulfill her ingrained instinct to help a neighbor—strengthened immeasurably by the fact that he was a wounded veteran—going through a rough patch.

      Once the sauce was cooled, she portioned it out into containers, including one for next door, leaving some in the pot for her own dinner tonight. She limited her intake of her favorite pasta dish because it spiked the number on her scale if she went overboard. And although it would taste even better after it sat and the flavors mingled, the making of it had whetted her appetite and she couldn’t resist.

      She’d just leave the sauce on his doorstep with a note, except she wasn’t sure how long it would take him to find it. So she would take it over, hand it off and leave quickly without bothering him too much.

      She hoped.

      And then she would spend what was left of this lovely, warm, late spring day in her garden, catching up on tasks she’d put off when the quiet had been so severely ruptured Monday morning. And tonight she would finish up her study plan for the book she had chosen for her newest student. After chatting online with the boy for nearly an hour last week, she’d picked a newly released story about a boy whose fascination with a world-building video game led him into a fantastical place where his game expertise had turned him into a hero. She had a good list of questions she hoped would result in her student reading more carefully, which would spark thoughts of his own.

      When she stepped outside, the still-warm container in hand, she heard the whine of a power tool coming from the back of Martin’s house. His grandson was clearly determined to get the damage repaired quickly.

      And just as determined, it seemed, to do most of it himself.

      As she picked her way across the yard, she wondered if that was because he wanted to or couldn’t afford to do it otherwise. But he was surely going to have to have roofers and such come in, so perhaps that was where money was going. Martin had said he was leaving his grandson everything, including what money he had saved, but he couldn’t have foreseen anything like this. Either way, Tate clearly had no hesitation about diving in. It was clear he was used to tackling things himself, which she would have expected since he was—

      Her breath jammed up in her throat as she rounded the corner of the house. He was there, all right, leaning into the damaged wall with some sort of long, narrow power saw, lit up by the afternoon sun shafting through the trees. And wearing only a pair of low-slung jeans, lace-up boots and a serious-looking black watch.

      He hadn’t heard her over the sound of the saw so she had a chance to just look as she tried to regain her equilibrium. It made no sense, really; she’d certainly seen this much and more of him the night of the explosion when he’d been propelled outside in just boxers. But somehow it was different, seeing him like this, working, a slight sheen of sweat on his skin from the work and the warmth, the muscles of his arms and back and ridged abdomen all involved in the effort.

      A sizable wood chip flew out from the cut he was making, and only then did she notice he also had on sunglasses, a wise bit of protection given that piece bounced off the side of his face. He barely flinched, she noticed. She probably would have dropped the saw on her foot and done untold damage, she thought wryly.

      Stop gawking at him, she ordered silently. She drew in a deep breath to steady herself, then started to walk forward again.

      The sound of the saw stopped. His head snapped around at her first step. She noted the instant the tension faded as he saw her, recognized her. He put down the saw, reached down and picked something up from the ground. A T-shirt, she realized as he shook it free of chips and sawdust and pulled it over his head. A sight she regretted, even as her gaze lingered on his flat belly as he did so.

      Stop it! she repeated to herself, embarrassed to think she had been staring at him so blatantly he felt the need to cover up. She hurried over, set the container down on the board set across two sawhorses, making a temporary workbench.

      “Spaghetti sauce,” she reminded him. He looked at the large container, then back at her. “This way you can focus on repairs, not cooking.”

      He hesitated,

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