Heart of a Hero. Anne Marie Winston

bombarded her….

       She was twelve. Her twin sister Melanie perched beside her on a pink bike exactly like Phoebe’s purple one, and they both watched the neighborhood boys playing baseball on the local park’s grassy ball field.

       “I’m gonna marry Wade when I grow up,” Melanie announced.

       Phoebe frowned. “He’s going to be grown up before we are. What if he marries somebody else?” The thought of Wade Donnelly marrying anybody made her feel all twisted up inside. Wade lived across the street from them, and he was four years older than they were. Phoebe had had a crush on him since before she could remember.

       “He won’t marry anybody else,” Melanie said confidently. “I’m going to make him love me.”

      And she had.

      When they were seniors in high school, Melanie had initiated her move. Phoebe went to the prom with Tim DeGrange, a friend from her Latin class. Melanie had asked Wade, even though he had just graduated from West Point that year, and to Phoebe’s shock he had said yes. Prom night had been long and miserable. Melanie had clung to Wade all evening. He’d looked so handsome in his brand-new dress uniform that he’d made Phoebe’s heart hurt, and she’d been suddenly so shy she could barely force herself to talk to him.

      That had been the beginning. Melanie and Wade had dated through the early summer until his leave had ended and he’d headed off for his first assignment at a training school. It had been hell for Phoebe, seeing them together. But it had grown much, much worse when Melanie had begun seeing other guys while Wade was away….

       “We’re not exclusive, Phoebe.” Melanie’s voice was sharp as she responded to the censure in her twin’s eyes.

       “Wade thinks you are.” Phoebe was certain of that. She’d been all too aware of Wade’s devotion to her sister throughout the early weeks of the summer.

       “I’m sure he doesn’t expect me to just sit at home while he’s gone,” Melanie said. “It’s not like he’s on a short vacation. He’s in the army.”

       “If you’re going to date other people, you should tell him.”

      But Melanie hadn’t listened. Which was nothing new. Melanie had never listened to Phoebe’s words of warning since they’d been very small girls.

      It hadn’t taken Wade long to realize that Melanie’s affections for him were…something less than he clearly wanted. And it had wrung Phoebe’s heart when he’d come home on leave to find that Melanie wasn’t waiting for him. The two had had fight after fight. They’d finally broken up for good a year and a half later, after Christmas of the girls’ sophomore year in college. Phoebe only knew the details from a distance, since she’d gone to school at Berkeley, hours north of their home in Carlsbad, California. Melanie had stayed closer to home and, although the sisters had stayed in touch largely through e-mail and instant messaging, Melanie hadn’t volunteered much about Wade. Phoebe, always terrified her attraction to him would be noticed, had never asked.

      After Wade and Melanie had broken up, Phoebe had noticed Wade came home less and less often over the next few years. His parents, who lived two doors down the street, had occasionally mentioned his travels to her mother, but they never shared enough information to satisfy Phoebe’s hungry heart. And after her mother had passed away at the end of her junior year at Berkeley, she’d heard even less.

      Then came her high-school class’s five-year reunion. Melanie had invited Wade…and everything had changed forever.

      Two

      The following evening, Wade was ready a full fifteen minutes early. He went down to the bar in the restaurant and took a seat facing the door. And barely ten minutes later, Phoebe arrived. Also early.

      He took the fact that she was early as a good sign. Did she still want to be with him the way he wanted her? Yesterday’s conversation on her porch had been confusing. One moment he’d have sworn she was about to fall into his arms; the next, she seemed as distant as the moon, and only slightly more talkative.

       How had he missed seeing how beautiful Phoebe was all those years they’d been living on the same damned street?

      Wade knew the answer as he watched her come across the room toward him.

      Both Merriman sisters had been pretty, but Melanie’s dramatic coloring had always drawn more attention. Melanie had been a strawberry redhead with fair, porcelain skin, and eyes so blue they looked like a piece of the sky. Phoebe’s darker, coppery curls and deeper blue eyes were equally lovely but her quiet, reserved personality kept her from joining her exuberant, vivacious sister in the limelight. Which wasn’t a bad thing, he decided. Melanie had been volatile, her moods extreme, her desire for attention exhausting sometimes. Hell, most of the time, if he were honest.

      She had had a sunny, sweet side and, when she was in a good mood, she was irresistible. But she’d always been excited about something, always looking for something to do.

      Phoebe was calm and restful. And capable. She had always seemed very self-sufficient to him. If Melanie had had a problem, Phoebe had been the one to whom she’d turned.

      Melanie. He’d successfully avoided thinking about her for a very long time. It seemed inconceivable that she wasn’t leading some man in a merry dance somewhere in Southern California. Instead, she was locked forever in his memory at the age of twenty-three.

      The same age Phoebe had been when he’d realized he had been chasing the wrong twin for several years.

      As she drew near, he drank in every detail of her appearance. Her hair was longer than it had once been, and she wore it up in a practical twist. She had on a khaki-colored pencil-slim skirt with a sweater set in some shade of a pretty green-blue that he didn’t even have a name for. Although she probably thought it was a modest outfit, the skirt ended just above her knees, showing off her slender, shapely calves and ankles, and the sleeveless top beneath the outer sweater clung enticingly to her curves. Tendrils of curls had escaped from the twist and danced around her face in the light breeze.

      She was looking down at the floor rather than at him and he had a sudden moment of doubt. She’d been all he’d thought about since the last day he’d seen her. Even when he’d been in combat, or leading troops, he’d carried the memory of her deep in the recesses of his mind, where everything he couldn’t afford to think about in the heat of battle lived.

      Guilt—and being deployed halfway around the world—had kept him away from her in those months after the funeral, but nearly losing his life in the mountains of Afghanistan had made him realize how sorry he would be if he walked away from the possibility of a life with Phoebe.

      Had he waited too long? It had been fifteen months since the fateful class reunion that had changed their lives forever, since Melanie’s death and their unexpected intimacy after the funeral.

      Did Phoebe regret that? Or even worse, did she blame him for Melanie’s death? That niggling little fear had lodged in his brain months ago and, despite the memories of Phoebe’s shining eyes at the reunion and the sweet way she’d kissed him a few days later, he couldn’t shake his worry. It didn’t help that deep down, he knew he was to blame. He’d been Melanie’s date that night, he’d known how possessive she could be and yet, when he’d taken Phoebe in his arms on that dance floor, he’d forgotten everything but the wonder of what had suddenly flared between them.

      After her initial shock had faded yesterday, she’d been a little too distant for comfort. She’d always been reserved, but never with him. He’d enjoyed drawing her out and making her laugh, even when they’d been young, but he’d never realized just how much he took it for granted that she relaxed around him.

      On her porch last afternoon, she hadn’t been relaxed.

      Maybe she had a serious relationship, even though she