Free The Sweetest Gift (The McKaslin Clan: Series 1 Book 2) by Jillian Hart

lull of the waves on the shore below, just outside the window. A beautiful place. The beach was rocky, and evergreens grew right up to the shore. The waning sunlight gleamed like polished glass on the moody gray waves. A big white-and-green ferry, the same one they’d ridden in on, honked long and loud, then eased away from the dock, loaded with cars and passengers headed toward Seattle.
    “It must be a nice way to live. To commute by ferry.” She tried to imagine it for herself, but couldn’t. She wouldn’t want to live anywhere but in Montana.
    “This is the view I kept in my head when I needed to remember why I thought joining the army was a good idea. When I was being shot at. I used to tell myself I would come here, when I retired, and live near the water in peace.”
    “Did you?”
    “Not the peace part.”
    “Do you think you’ll be happy in a small town in Montana?” Kirby looked around her, at the bustling city and its inviting skyscrapers and every entertainment under the sun—theater and universities and museums.
    “I have a helicopter. I can fly anywhere I want. I like Montana. It has a lot of good qualities I wouldn’t trade for anything. Like wide-open spaces. Sincere people. Clean air. A quiet neighborhood.”
    “The downside is moving in next to me.”
    “I’ll suffer through, somehow. Except one thing is going to be intolerable, and I might as well get it off my chest now. If we’re going to be neighbors, I don’t think I can take much more of this.”
    “Of what?” She looked sincere, caring and concerned. As if she would fix whatever it was, if she could.
    It was wrong to tease her, but he couldn’t help it. She brought out the worst in him. “There’s this odor wafting over the fence.”
    “Are you saying my yard stinks?”
    “That’s what I’m saying, and it’s only going to get worse when those long green stem things start to bloom. If I see one rose peeking over the fence into my yard, I’m going to kill it. Deadhead it right there. I’m a man, and I have a man’s yard and I’m not putting up with dainty little roses peeking over the fence to mock me.” He winked and polished off the last of his sandwich.
    There was the Sam she knew and liked. Glad he was no longer so quiet and distant, she did her best to rise to the occasion. “Why, will a few pretty flowers diminish your value as a man?”
    “Absolutely. Leo and I don’t do flowers. Unless I forget to pull weeds and they bloom.”
    “That’s too bad. I was going to offer you some of my cuttings. Oh, and I have the cutest little stepping stones. I have extra, if you’d like them.”
    “Please. Stepping stones. What I need is a big hammock. Maybe an extra refrigerator on the deck so I don’t have to go inside to grab a soda.”
    “Plus, it will be handy when you have your band members and biker-gang friends over for a backyard music jam.”
    “Good idea.” He was really starting to like her. It had been a long time since a woman had come along who could make him laugh.
    This was the problem with getting to know someone. At first glance, she looked a certain way and he could make assumptions about how she was. If he hadn’t been with her through the night and into this morning, he would have thought she was like one of those perfect girls on TV sitcoms, the kind that had no real troubles. Not ones that couldn’t be resolved in thirty minutes, anyway.
    That wasn’t Kirby. He was close enough to see the faint lines in the corners of her eyes and by her mouth made by sadness. The furrows in her brow that told him she had plenty of worries. She had known sorrow.
    Yet she was strong and self-sufficient. She had her own house, her own car and a nursing degree. In her spare time she saved little girls’ lives, and when she smiled it was a wholesome beauty he saw. The genuine thing.
    It wasn’t so easy not to care about her now.
    He stared at the window, troubled. The lap of water on the shore, an eternal rhythm,