âAnd are you now?â Avery asked, her light blond eyebrows furrowed.
âAm I what?â
âYou know,â she said, as if he held the key to some mystery she didnât quite dare talk about. âHappy.â
He stopped walking and turned to face her, thinking in silence for a moment, lost in the blue-gray storm clouds in her eyes.
âThatâs a complicated question, isnât it?â
âNot particularly,â she challenged, a twinge of sorrow in her voice.
âWell, then, perhaps itâs the answer thatâs complicated.â
âYes, maybe so, but I still want to knowâare you happy, Isaac Meyer?â
In her question, Isaac sensed she was really asking something elseâsomething along the lines of was it possible that sheâd ever be happy again?âand he wanted, badly, for her to believe that, yes, she could be. Yes, despite everything that had happened to her, despite all the evil he could assume sheâd witnessed, she could indeed find happiness again â¦
* * *
Peach Leaf, Texas: Where true love blooms
Chapter One
A blast rang out in the still night air, rattling windows and setting off the bark alarm of every canine within a mile radius.
In a small guest room of her younger brotherâs ranch-style home, Avery Abbottâs eyes shot open as she was ripped suddenly from what had passed as sleep for the past few monthsâa shallow, daydream-like consciousness that really didnât qualify as true rest.
Pulse thumping against her temples, Avery kicked her legs free from tangled sheets and fumbled in the darkness for the baseball bat she kept nearby, cursing when her fingers didnât grasp it immediately. Her nerves had always been her biggest weakness during army basic training. Even the tiniest spark of fear or anxiety could transform her otherwise capable hands into jelly. The slightest hesitation or worry over a possible imperfection had the potential to eradicate months of training in an instant, leaving Avery, who was at the top of her class, one of only a handful of females in a company dominated by males, frozen and utterly useless. It hadnât happened often during her service, but the occasion it did stood out in her memory, far above her many accomplishments.
Seconds, Abbottâher sergeantâs voice boomed through her brain as Avery finally gripped solid material and held it poisedâseconds mean the difference between the life and death of your comrades.
As she made her way from her room into the hallway, through the house and out the front door into a thick darkness punctuated by only a thin sliver of light from the waning crescent moon, her nightmare blended seamlessly with reality.
Her brotherâs small farmhouse and the old red barn disappeared as Avery stalked the grounds, weapon firm and steady against her side, its material solid and reliable in her grip, searching for the source of the noise that had awoken her and threatened the safety of her fellow soldiers.
When the flashback gripped Avery, it was no longer cool, wheat-colored, late-autumn grass her bare feet plodded through, but the warm desert sand of a country in which sheâd served three tours.
She wasnât safe at home in Peach Leaf, Texas, anymore, but a stranger in a foreign land, her vulnerability evident in every accented word she spoke, in her uniform, in the caution she knew flickered behind her eyes each time she faced a potential enemy.
She would be okay, she thought, pacing the too-quiet darkness, so long as she didnât run into any kids.
The women and children were the worst part of combat. You never knew whose thumb they were under, who controlled their futures...whoâd robbed them of their innocence, threatened their families if met with anything but obedience, and turned them into soldiers to be sacrificed without a choice.
Regardless of where their loyalties were planted, they were children... It didnât make sense to hold them responsible for their misguided actions.
Avery wanted to bring the many homeless ones back with her when she returned to the US. She had something in common with them. She knew what it was like to be an orphan, to feel alone in the world, unprotected.