Between Honor And Duty. Charlotte Maclay

he conceded.

      “Lemonade is fine by me, too,” Logan assured her, winking at her son.

      Kevin started eating right away, but Janice noticed Logan waited until she was seated and had picked up her fork. She’d let Kevin’s manners slip recently. Without Ray around, it had been easier to let things slide.

      Her throat tightened, and she laid her fork down. Whatever chance they might have had to get their marriage back on track was gone now. Forever.

      “You okay?” Logan asked from across the table.

      Lifting her head, she met his gaze. He had the most sympathetic eyes, a penetrating way of looking at her as though he understood her pain. Her loneliness.

      The guilt that she hadn’t been a better wife. Regret that she couldn’t mourn as deeply as others expected her to.

      “I’m fine.” She forked some beans into her mouth and forced herself to swallow. “Ray used to rave about your clam linguini and said you were the best cook on C-shift. I guess tacos are pretty simple fare—”

      “They’re perfect. Just what a man needs after hanging a screen door. Isn’t that right, Kevin?”

      The boy looked up, startled. “Yeah. Mom’s tacos are the best.”

      With a smile, Janice basked in her son’s compliment. Oddly, she felt like a houseplant that had been denied water for too long and at last someone had noticed. She drank in the refreshing nourishment Logan had made possible along with his praise. Then she felt foolish for making such a big deal out of something so insignificant.

      “I help my mommy make cookies sometimes,” Maddie said around a mouth full of taco.

      “I bet you’re good at it, too,” Logan responded.

      Kevin scraped the last of his beans from his plate. “Chief Gray gave Dad a Medal of Honor postumlous.”

      “Posthumously,” Janice supplied.

      “Anyway, you wanna see it? Mom lets me keep it in my room but I can’t take it to school ’cause I might lose it. I’ve got the flag they put over his casket, too. They told me it used to fly at the White House where the president lives.”

      “Logan may not be—”

      “Sure, I’d like to see it. After we finish dinner, okay?”

      Kevin beamed his pleasure, and Janice’s heart squeezed tight. Her son needed a man to show interest in him. Since Ray’s death, the boy had been more angry than sad. In a few short hours, Logan had turned Kevin’s sullen expression into one of anticipation. He’d make a wonderful father.

      Janice started at that thought. Ray had been gone only a month and she was already betraying him by comparing her husband to another man. She couldn’t do that.

      Ray’s children needed to honor their father’s memory. She needed to help them do that by being loyal to his memory, too.

      Acknowledging her attraction to another man, even to herself, would risk undermining the needs of her children. For Janice, her children had to come first. Not a fanciful relationship with a gentle giant who was only trying to be kind to her.

      Chapter Two

      Glancing around the cluttered office, Logan shook his head. After the kids had finally gone to bed, he and Janice had spent several hours going through financial records.

      “I’ve got to say, Ray wasn’t the most organized man I’ve ever seen,” Logan commented, in what had to be the world’s biggest understatement.

      Janice sat cross-legged in the middle of the room, the picture of dejection. Checkbooks and bank statements surrounded her, credit-card reports piled at her side.

      She sighed. “This is bad, isn’t it?”

      Logan hunkered down beside her, wishing he could find something encouraging to say. “We sure haven’t found any sign Ray paid the insurance premium in the past couple of years.”

      “If we were in such terrible financial trouble that we couldn’t afford it, why didn’t he tell me?”

      “I don’t know.”

      “For that matter, how did it happen? I mean, when we bought the house it was well within our budget. I’ve hardly been extravagant with my spending, and except for Ray’s convertible, neither was he.”

      While sifting through the credit-card statements, Logan had noted Ray was only paying the minimum amount each month, which meant the interest was building up. And there were a hell of a lot of charges from Las Vegas—hotels, restaurants, expensive items. Some pretty fancy meals locally, too. None of the charges looked like the bills any salesman Logan knew would run up.

      An uneasy feeling crept up his spine. He was damn curious about Ray’s sales job, assuming he actually had been moonlighting and not indulging in activities a wife wouldn’t want to hear about. Ray had been closed-mouthed, kind of standoffish. He hadn’t socialized much with the guys on their days off, which Logan had taken to mean he was busy with his family. Now he wasn’t so sure. He sure as hell hadn’t heard a hint about Ray holding down a second job.

      Dropping her head into her hands, Janice groaned, “What am I going to do?”

      “Shh, it’s going to be okay.” Tentatively, Logan stroked her hair in a gesture much like she’d used with her daughter, except he wasn’t feeling at all parental. Her husband might have screwed up, but Logan was sure the state benefits would tide her over, at least for the near term. “I want you to come down to the station tomorrow and talk to Chief Gray. He’s a good man and cares about his troops. He’ll make sure you get what’s coming to you.”

      She lifted her chin and looked him in the eye. “I didn’t want to ask for extra help. Ray wouldn’t have wanted me to—”

      “Ray would want you and the kids to be taken care of.”

      “Then why did he forget to pay—”

      “I don’t know, Jan.” He had the troubling feeling there was more to her husband’s neglect than met the eye. “At this point, it doesn’t matter. What you need to do is deal with one problem at a time. Paying the bills is the first problem. We’ll deal with the rest later.”

      Gathering herself, she leaned back against the desk leg and wrapped her arms around her midsection. “Why aren’t you married?”

      Her question caught him off guard. He didn’t often mention that part of his past. “I was. Briefly. It got so that my wife hated the sound of a siren. She couldn’t stand the thought of the fire chief pulling up in our driveway in his red car to announce I’d been killed in a fire. I guess you can understand that.”

      Visibly, Janice shuddered. “A firefighter’s wife’s worst nightmare. I knew when I saw Chief Gray—” She glanced away. The pain was so visible on her face, in her every gesture, Logan knew she’d never put herself at risk like that again. Or her children.

      He didn’t blame her. Despite the fact his mother and his sister-in-law managed to survive knowing that any given day could be their husband’s last, he understood why his wife hadn’t been able to handle that reality. And he hadn’t been willing to give up the career that was a family tradition.

      Since then, he’d vowed never to subject another woman to the same possibility. Certainly not a woman who’d already lost one husband to the job. That would be the worst form of cruelty.

      Janice scooped up the bank statements and stacked them neatly. “Someone very wise once said there was no sense crying over spilled milk. The kids and I sure could have used that insurance money, but if this is the worst that happens as a result of Ray’s death, we’ll get by.”

      “I think my mother used to say things like that.”

      “Mine,