Deb Kastner - The Soldier's Sweetheart

“Wow,” he said, whistling under his breath. He almost smiled at her. “Talk about customer service.”

Samantha laughed. “That’s how we do it in the country. Up close and personal.”

“I’ll say.” Now he was teasing her. Honestly! The man was jerking her strings. “As I’m sure you’re becoming increasingly aware, everything is more difficult with children in tow.”

“Tell me about it. I can’t seem to get anything done when Genevieve is with me. It’s all I can do just to keep up with her.”

There it was. Finally. A real half smile. He shrugged one shoulder and strode toward Delia and her children, and offered his assistance with a grin.

Samantha’s breath caught in her throat. Will was quite attractive when he relaxed—which he never seemed to do around her.

“You’re staring,” said a high-pitched voice from beside her. Samantha started, audibly gasping and laying a hand to her racing heart as she turned.

“Where did you come from?” she asked Alexis, who was grinning like the cat who ate the canary. Mary stood beside her, a smirk on her face that said she shared Alexis’s good humor—at Samantha’s expense.

“Back door,” Alexis replied with an offhanded wave. “Same as always.”

That was the problem with back doors, Samantha decided. They could allow best friends to sneak up on her. There was no bell to announce them, although with the twitter they usually made, she was surprised she hadn’t heard them coming.

“Did you ever think about knocking?” she groused.

Alexis hoisted one dark blond brow. “And why would we do that?”

She was right, of course, though Samantha was loath to admit it. There was no good reason for her friends to all of a sudden start knocking when they stopped by. They’d been visiting the shop unannounced since they were all in kindergarten together. This had to be the one and only time they hadn’t made enough noise to be a circus parade—and of course it was when she’d really needed them to broadcast themselves.

This time, they’d come in on the sly and caught her staring at Will—which, of course, Alexis had announced in a none-too-quiet voice. It was unlikely that he hadn’t heard her outburst.

“We’ve been here for a while now,” Mary added. “We were eavesdropping on you and Will from the back room. That little girl Genevieve sure is a cutie. And Will is—” She broke off her statement with a sigh. “If you ask me, there’s potential.”

Samantha did not want to ask what kind of potential her dear friends had in mind.

“How is Sergeant Sweetheart working out for you?” Alexis asked with a loud chuckle. “Have you set a date yet?”

Will glanced in their direction, his brown eyes flickering with surprise. Samantha knew the best part of valor in this instance would be retreat.

Quickly.

“Sidebar,” Samantha hissed, shaking her head. She grabbed each of her friends by an elbow and propelled them into the back room. “He was a corporal. And would you mind not bringing attention to him?”

“He’s handsome,” Mary disputed. “And single. You’re single. I don’t see the problem with it.”

“Okay, there are a lot of problems,” Samantha said, “but let me just start with three. One, he isn’t single—he’s a widower. Quite recently, I might add. Two, he is shy. And three, he is here to build a relationship with his daughter, not to have a romantic tryst with me, or any other woman in Serendipity, for that matter.”

“Strong and silent,” Alexis said, stroking her chin thoughtfully.

“What?”

“Not shy. Strong and silent. That’s more poetic.”

“More romantic, you mean,” Samantha corrected. “And I don’t like the insinuation in your tone, thank you very much.”

“Will lost his wife, but that doesn’t mean he has to be alone forever,” Mary protested. “He deserves someone special in his life. I’m not saying you’re going to marry him tomorrow or anything, but you could at least give him a chance when he’s ready to move on.”

“What I’m giving him,” Samantha explained, thoroughly exasperated with both of them, “is space. And that’s what you two ought to be doing, too. He’s still grieving. Leave the poor man alone.” She knew as she said it that that wasn’t likely to happen.

Her friends would keep pushing and she’d balk, just like always. Whenever she’d start dating, her friends would be quick to call for further commitment, but it never happened that way. She’d find some reason or other to break things off.

She didn’t know why. As cliché as it might be, it wasn’t the men, it was her. She believed marriage was God uniting two hearts in an inexplicable way. And until she found that, she saw no point in pursuing anything with anybody. Especially not with Will, who wasn’t even a Christian.

“Samantha?” Will called from the front room. “Can you give me a hand? I’m having a bit of trouble with the register.”

It didn’t surprise her that Will couldn’t pick up on the rusty machine. The cash register was older than she was, the ancient iron punch-the-dollar-sign kind that had faded out with the advent of the first computer. It fit the country feel of the grocery, though, so Samantha had kept it. She’d been using it for so many years she didn’t think twice about it, but she could definitely see where Will might get confused.

“I’m going back in there to serve my customers,” Samantha whispered. “And you two are going to get out of here and leave us in peace. Please, please promise me that you won’t put Will on the spot.”

“Yes. No. Maybe so,” Alexis responded with a matchmaking gleam in her eye.

* * *

“So what do you do for fun around here?” Will asked as he swept dust out the front door and across the clapboard sidewalk. Samantha had just turned the sign from Open to Closed and they were cleaning up before leaving for the night. “Ride horses?”

He thought it seemed like a reasonable question. So far he’d seen a lot of trucks on the road, and at least an equal number of horses on the ranchland he passed as he walked every morning from the Howells’ bed-and-breakfast to the store, and then back again each evening.

Samantha stopped wiping the front window she’d just sprayed with glass cleaner and narrowed her eyes, one hand drifting to perch on her hip. “Why would you say that?”

“I don’t know. I guess because I noticed the old hitching post in front of Cup o’ Jo’s Café when I passed it this morning. Watering trough, too, I think. The thing looks like it’s been there for a hundred years.”

Samantha shrugged. “It probably has been. Folks do occasionally use it when they stop at Cup o’ Jo’s, if they’re out riding that way. It doesn’t happen very often, though. We’re not quite as backward here as you might imagine.”

He held up his hands. “Innocent observation. No offense meant.”

“None taken.” Samantha laughed. The sound was unmistakably feminine and it mixed Will’s insides all up. He cast around for something to say.

“Your friend Alexis reeked of horse when I met her.” As soon as he said the words he realized how awful they sounded. He was used to saying what he thought without sifting it through the filter of what was appropriate in mixed company. Being around Samantha really messed with his head.

She lifted her chin, regarding him closely, the hint of a smile playing on her lips. He turned his gaze back to the cracked wooden clapboard and swept harder. It made him uncomfortable when she looked at him that way. Tingly all over, like last year when he’d caught a bad case of the flu and had suffered a raging fever of over a hundred and two degrees.

He remembered the incident well. It had already been inconceivably hot in Afghanistan, even without his fever. Every inch of his skin had felt like it was on fire, just as it did now. His breath came shallow and ragged, and his chest hurt with every lungful of air.