Navy Christmas. Geri Krotow
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loved you so much. She never stopped talking about you.” As if she’d read his mind. As if she knew he needed that reminder of Dottie’s love for him.
“Funny, because she was the same way about you—she went on and on in her emails and our few phone conversations about how thrilled she was to finally have met you, to have closed the family circle by meeting her long-lost niece.”
Her eyes narrowed and she took a step back. “You’re right, Jonas. We need to have this conversation elsewhere.”
Her anger had melted into another emotion he didn’t want to consider. Sadness?
“Mom, Doc Franklin says I can go back to soccer next spring!”
“That’s nice, Pepé.” Her shoulders sagged and Jonas made a conscious effort not to offer her an arm, a shoulder of his own.
“What’s going on with Pepé?” If he was going to check her son in and probably see more of him in the clinic, he’d better do his best to be professional.
“He’s had a rash of ear infections. The last one took him out of the second half of soccer season. He loves soccer, as he’ll be sure to let you know any minute now.”
Her exasperated expression reflected her obvious love for Pepé.
“I understand. I get antsy when I can’t get to the gym. You two must have a special bond.”
A small line appeared between her brows and Jonas swore he tasted the bottom of his uniform boots. How many times could he say the wrong words in one afternoon?
“I’m sorry, Serena. Obviously small talk isn’t my forte any more than pediatrics is.”
She opened her mouth to speak but Doc interrupted them.
“Commander Scott, this is Pepé, my main man. I’ve known this kid since he moved on island last spring. He’s a champ. Pepé, this is Commander Scott, and he’s going to take care of you.” Doc raised his hand for Pepé’s high-five slap.
“Yes, sir.”
Jonas gritted his teeth for the fifteenth time in as many minutes. This wasn’t going to be easy. If Doc Franklin had made the connection between Serena and Jonas, he wasn’t talking. And Jonas wasn’t about to mention it now, not after already shoving his foot down his throat twice.
Jonas walked Pepé and Serena back to the check-in station. He gestured for her to take the seat next to the computer desk as he smiled at Pepé.
“Go ahead and scoot up on the table for me, buddy.”
“Am I going to get a sticker?”
“After I check your ears, sure.”
“You sounded angry about the stickers, Mr. Scott.”
“It’s Commander Scott, Pepé.”
Serena’s smooth correction made Jonas smile. He had to hand it to her—she was raising the boy to show respect and courtesy.
“If it’s okay with your mom, you can call me Jonas, Pepé. I’m not a doctor like Doc Franklin. I’m a nurse practitioner and I can take care of you, too.”
“Mom, is it okay?”
“Sure, mi hijo.”
Jonas didn’t like the tired lines under her eyes. He disliked more that he cared about her parental exhaustion.
This was the woman who Dottie had given his house to.
Best to stick to the basics.
“ID?”
She handed over her and Pepé’s military ID cards.
Jonas’s fingers flew over the keyboard as he automatically typed in Pepé’s last name, the active-duty sponsor’s social security number—
His hands stilled.
Delgado, Philip. Gunnery Sergeant, U.S. Marine Corps. Deceased.
He knew Serena was a war widow. That she had a son. But to read it, in black and white, made him wish he could have been there, could have saved her husband. Anything to take the sorrow from her eyes.
He looked back at her. Her gaze was intent on her son and Jonas waited for her to look back up at him. When she did he saw the cold edge of distrust in her eyes.
She’d never believe his thoughts—she’d assume he wished her husband had lived so that Dottie wouldn’t have left the house to her. As he typed in the pertinent information about Pepé, his mind kept going over his last conversation with Dottie.
“You’ll love Serena. It’s as though she’s always been here. And her son, Pepé, is a doll.”
“Mom, I don’t understand why you never met her before now.”
Dottie had been his stepmother but he’d always called her “Mom.”
“Your uncle was a troubled man ever since he was a teenager. My father sent him to his family in Texas to get his life together after his Navy time was up. Instead of working on the ranch, making a living, he got a girl pregnant—Serena’s mother—who never wanted anything more to do with him. Her family supported her and her new baby. Serena didn’t know she had a biological family on her father’s side until your uncle died.”
Dottie’s heart had been so big. She’d been a successful Realtor—a single, never-married woman, liberated for her generation. Until Jonas’s widowed father, more than a decade her junior, showed up with four little boys. After that, she’d become a devoted wife and mother without missing a beat.
It had always been understood that Jonas would get the farmhouse. Dottie had repeatedly promised it to him. She’d planned to move into a more senior-friendly condo in downtown Oak Harbor once he returned from his seven-month deployment.
Instead, she’d died at the hands of a murderer soon after changing her will to leave Serena and Pepé the house.
Would Dottie have done that if Serena had a husband and home to go back to in Texas?
They’d never know.
* * *
SERENA WATCHED JONAS’S face closely. Only a quick intake of breath, a scant second’s pause, as he read over her military dependent ID card. She forced her shoulders to relax—he knew about her and Pepé; there was nothing to hide. His emails inquiring as to whether she’d be willing to sell the house to him hadn’t surprised her, but the strength of her reaction had.
She’d made it clear that it was her house now, and it wasn’t for sale. It was going to stay in the Forsyth family as Dottie had wished.
He’d never replied in full to her last refusal of his offer, sending her a one-liner stating that he’d come to meet with her once he returned from downrange.
When he looked back up at her now, she tried to glance past him at the computer screen, anywhere but at the eyes as blue as Texas bluebonnets, blazing with an intensity that made her blood feel like lava in her veins. This heat didn’t come from the anger she’d experienced moments before. It was the kind of heat that two people share when they’re attracted to each other.
Her hormones had been relatively dormant since Phil’s death. Why did they have to start humming now? With the man who wanted to take Dottie’s house from her?
Not for the first time since Dottie’s will was read, Serena wondered what Dottie had been thinking. She must have expected her change of plans to upset Jonas, her stepson. She’d betrayed the man to whom she’d originally promised the house.
Jonas handed her ID back to her and she reflexively reached for it. But he held on to it for a moment, and she forced herself to look at him again.
“Again, Serena, I’m sorry. I’m afraid you’ve caught me at my most butt-faced