Page 6 of A Veteran's Protection
I have a hundred questions. Who is she? Where did she come from? And what the hell is she doing on the Reilly property? But she seems skittish, and I need to go slow.
“What’s your name, firefly?”
She tilts her head, and her gaze sweeps over me. I like the way she looks at me, assessing me, and the half-smile and wide eyes tell me she likes what she sees.
“Lexi.”
“Lexi.” I try it out on my tongue. “What you doing here, Lexi? This place is abandoned, but I don’t know who owns it now.”
My gaze sweeps over the pile of broken furniture and the charred pieces already in the bonfire. The door to the house is gaping open, so she got these from inside.
If she’s homeless, I want to know why. There are better places she can spend a night than out here, in my bed being one of them. Where I can keep her safe and get to know her.
“I own it.”
That’s not what I expected her to say. From what Joel’s told me, the place has been abandoned since Vaughan Reilly passed away over a year ago. No one’s claimed it since.
“My father left it to me,” she added.
She hurls the table leg into the fire, and it goes up with a crackle. The flames leap around it, making her face glow orange.
“I didn’t know Vaughan had a daughter.”
Joel told me about his old neighbor, a veteran who kept to himself. He never mentioned any family. The town expected the property to go to the state, and Joel was thinking of buying it to expand the retreat.
“Only by name. I never met him.”
She says it casually as she slings another piece of wood into the fire.
I know what it’s like to grow up with no father. The military became my family and provided the brothers I never had, and there were enough mentors to be father figures to me. I’ve long gotten over my fatherless childhood, but I wonder if Lexi has.
“That’s too bad. I’m sorry.”
She shrugs her pretty shoulders. “Don’t be. You can’t grieve someone you never met.”
Crouching by the fire, she puts her hands up to toast her fingers. Seeing her relax further in my company, I move around to the pile of broken furniture to check it out, and her wary gaze follows me.
Up close, the small holes that indicate termites are obvious. No wonder she’s using these for firewood. If she’s planning to move in here, then there’s a hell of a lot of work to be done.
“You having a clear out before you move in?”
She shakes her head, making her hair bounce, and I wonder what it would feel like to run my fingers through it.
“I’m clearing a space to camp out.”
“What, inside?”
I glance at the house, silent and dark. I expect the electricity is still disconnected, and if it’s been sitting empty for over a year, I can only imagine what vermin has moved in. Termites are the least of her concerns.
“You can’t stay here. It’s not livable,” I tell her, worry threading through my voice.
She shrugs, nonchalant, though I see the tenseness in her posture. “It’s only for three nights. Then I’m heading back to Jersey.”
Whoa, did she say three nights? That stops me in my tracks, and my heart takes a nosedive. I’ve just met the woman whomakes my heart beat faster, and she’s only in town for three nights?
That means I’ve only got three nights to win Lexi over.
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