Free Her Cowboy Soldier by Cindi Myers Page B

something else to focus on.”
    Amy realized she’d been watching the dog, avoiding looking at Gary. Here was another soldier who had returned home when Brent had not—though Gary had suffered his own injuries, ones not visible but still affecting his life.
    “So, are you living in Junction, or just visiting?” Gary asked.
    “I’m here for the day, shopping with a friend.” She turned to Charla. “This is Charla Reynolds. Charla, this is Gary Prescott.”
    He gave Charla a stiff nod, scarcely glancing at her. “So you live nearby?” he asked Amy.
    “Right now I’m staying with my grandmother in Hartland.”
    “Nice little town. My dad used to take me fishing near there.”
    “So, um, are you living in Junction now?” Amy struggled to keep the conversation going. She tried to catch Charla’s eye—why wasn’t she helping? But Charla was focused on arranging the items on her lunch tray with overly meticulous care.
    “I’m staying with my folks here in town,” Gary said. He switched the dog’s leash from one hand to the other and back again. “Maybe we could get together some time.”
    “Oh, I...I’m not sure that would be a good idea. I mean, I’m leaving soon and...”
    “Oh, yeah. Sure.” He took a step back. The dog nudged his hand and he absently patted it. “I understand. Well, see you around.” He turned and hurried away, dog and man threading through the crowded tables and melting into the mall traffic.
    Amy sat and focused on rearranging her cup, plate and silverware on her tray. Her hands shook, and she fought the urge to flee. Seeing Gary had been such a surprise—and not a pleasant one. “He seemed like a nice guy,” Charla said after a moment.
    “I’m sure he is.” Amazing how calm she sounded, though her heart pounded and she had trouble breathing.
    She stabbed her fork into a piece of chicken and forced herself to chew. If her mouth was full, she didn’t have to talk—she didn’t have to answer the questions implied by Charla’s steady, curious gaze.
    The food tasted like sawdust—she had trouble swallowing, her stomach in knots. Finally, she pushed her still-full plate away. “I just didn’t want to spend the evening with him reliving old times and talking about Brent or the war or anything like that,” she said. “I’m trying to put that part of my life behind me.”
    “I think that’s understandable,” Charla said. “Maybe he’s trying to move on, too.”
    “But it would always be there between us. Brent would always be there—the one thing we have in common. I’m not ready to deal with that.”
    “And nobody says you have to. Not now.” She added a packet of sweetener to her glass of tea and stirred. “But one day you probably will have to deal with it.”
    “You’re acting like a therapist again.”
    “I’ve never been a therapist, but I’ve seen them on TV,” she quipped. She leaned over and placed her hand over Amy’s in a comforting gesture. “I’m not judging you, honey. You do what you have to do.”
    Right. And what she had to do now was get through this dance with her dignity intact and a terrific story for the paper. “I’m going to write the best prom story anyone ever read,” she said.
    “And I can’t wait to read it.”
    Between the prom and the upcoming science bee, not to mention the baseball coverage, she was building quite a portfolio of high school stories. Maybe some teen magazine would be impressed. Not what she’d had in mind when she started at the paper, but one thing she’d learned in her years spent overseas—you had to take whatever bus came along to get you where you were going. Maybe high school stories would be the ticket out of town she’d been looking for.

CHAPTER FIVE
    J OSH MANAGED TO slip away from his cabin the night of the prom without his mother taking more than half a dozen photographs or fussing too much. “I’m only going as a chaperone,” he reminded her. “It’s not as if this is my