He's the One. Jackie Braun

letter made Brand think, sadly, that things didn’t change. Young men went away to war, and left sweethearts behind them.

      “Did you find something?”

      Things didn’t change, but people did.

      Sophie stood in the doorway, watching him, and he put away the letter he was reading.

      Why did he feel reluctant to let her know what he had found? Because those letters were making him feel something. Uneasy.

      “Just some old letters. They might have value. I haven’t finished reading them yet. Bitsy is probably better qualified than me to decide what has historical value, but I’m willing to go out on a limb and guess these two items don’t.”

      He handed her the recipe for Corn Flakes casserole and the garter.

      She laughed, and it was a good sound. Not a girlish giggle, but genuine. He was unaware how he had longed for genuine things until he heard it. It pulled him toward her like a beacon guiding a fisherman lost in a fog.

      “Are you ready for lunch?” she asked.

      There was something shy in that, his old Sophie, not the girl she had tried to convince him she was when she had kissed him. This Sophie’s laughter was so genuine it made him ache.

      Brand glanced at his watch, amazed at how much time had gone by. Somehow the genuineness in her, coupled with the genuineness of the emotion in Sinclair’s letters made him feel bad about playing with Sophie’s world.

      He didn’t want to have lunch with her and look at her lips and be the kind of guy who plotted another taste of them.

      “You know what?” he said. “You were probably right. Let’s follow your schedule. I’ll see you tomorrow night after supper. We’ll ride our bikes down Main Street, go for ice cream. It will be a highly visible activity that the whole town can see.”

      She stared at him. Disappointed? Annoyed?

      That was good, he tried to tell himself. If they were going to carry off this courtship thing with no one getting hurt, it would be for the best if she found him disappointing and annoying.

      “I’ll take these with me,” he said, gathering up the letters. “And get them back to you when I’m finished going through them.”

      Why did he feel that he had to protect her from the letters? They were just sweet letters a young, heartsick man had written home.

      For some reason, Brand wanted to make sure they had a happy ending.

      As though he needed to protect her if they didn’t.

      He had a feeling this desire to protect Sophie was going to do nothing but get him in trouble. Especially since it was now evident this was a more complicated mission than he had first perceived.

      He had to protect her from himself and his reaction to her hunger.

      “See you tomorrow,” he said breezily. “Are you still a purely vanilla girl?”

      “You think I’m really boring,” she said.

      Her lips had already told him there was a secret side to her that was anything but boring, but he was determined he wasn’t going there.

      He thought of the world he had lived in for four years, where God forbid anybody should ever be bored, and so they had become adept at manufacturing all the excitement money could buy. And become so addicted to it, they were prepared to do anything to keep a lifestyle they had not legitimately earned, were not legitimately entitled to.

      He thought of the letters in his hand, letters from a young man who was probably beginning to yearn for all those things he had once called boring.

      “Don’t,” he told Sophie sternly, moving by her, the letters in his hand, “say boring as if it’s a bad thing.”