Chapter 29

She sat on her porch, cradling a hot cup of tea. Peppermint, with northern berries in it, or some such oddity. Another personally made creation by Rena P., from the new shop in town. Her owl mug was so hot, it almost burned.

Why should she be so shaken? She didn’t have any stake in her barely beginning relationship with Nathan Hero. None at all.

Sure, he’d turned out to be…decent. Honest. After all the brouhaha about the SEAL thing and Delta North subsided, what did you have?

He was a guy who’d belonged to two of Canada’s most elite warrior teams, who cared about people, and did so in action. The rest of the time, he struggled with the vagaries of life that had been tossed at him.

Like everyone else.

And a lot had been tossed at him, too. Now he was back, swimming against the tide, against the foul current of what his family had been, trying to come out decently in a small backwoods cabin, alone, with his dog.

Damn it. She’d felt a kinship with him, somehow.

And…he’d stopped their fledging relationship practically before it started.

It surprised her.

And it hurt.

A flurry of dead birch leaves descended on her in a flutter. Her gaze darted up and she caught two black blurs racing through the trees. One leapt a gap, and then it disappeared into the thick greenery to the right.

Squirrels. It signaled an end to her rumination. Time to get busy.

She’d gotten strangely invested, all too fast, with the broody Special Ops guy. With Hero.

She shrugged. If that’s what he wanted, that’s what she’d give him. She’d sensed there was unhappiness in his decision, and that played into her thoughts too, but it was what he’d decided.

And while she still didn’t quite understand, she had a sense he’d be sorry one day.

“I’m not proud, but damn it all,” she announced to the trees ringing her cabins and any errant squirrels that still might be playing up there. “He’s the loser. I’m a catch.”