More Than a Touch (Snowberry Creek #2) (27 page)

See what happens next in the Snowberry Creek series in

A Reason to Love

Available in May 2014 wherever books and
e-books are sold.

Turn the page for a special preview. . . .

A
last name shouldn’t be a burden, but Melanie’s sat squarely on her shoulders as she strolled through the cemetery. The pressure increased dramatically as she passed the neat rows of nearly identical markers, all bearing the same inscription: Wolfe.

The library in town had the same name carved in the arch over the front door, as did the local high school. There was no escaping her family heritage here in Snowberry Creek, so Melanie moved on down the hillside, taking her time to enjoy the fresh air and warm sunshine. Rushing wouldn’t change a thing.

Her great-great-grandfather, Josiah Wolfe, had parked his covered wagon next to a small stream tumbling down through the foothills of the Cascades and shoved the family’s roots down deep into the rocky soil. He’d been an ambitious man, one determined to make his mark in the world, and the town of Snowberry Creek was his creation.

There, under his firm hand, the family had proudly flourished in both number and wealth for two generations. Even the stock market crash and the Great Depression had been mere setbacks. Since that time, the size of the family had dwindled dramatically in number until there were only two Wolfes left in town: Melanie and her mother, Sandra. But the money had slowly found its way back into the family coffers, and the Wolfe fortune was rock solid.

Or at least that was the fairy tale Melanie had always been told.

She reluctantly started down the slope to where a brand new granite headstone had been set in place. Her mother had instructed Melanie to ensure that everything had been done properly. Melanie had bitten back the suggestion that if her mother was worried about it, she could always come back to check it out for herself. Lord knows there were more important things on Melanie’s to-do list screaming for her attention right now.

Instead, here she was playing the part of a dutiful daughter again. It was a role she’d never been well-suited for, but right now she had no other choice. Not since something inside her mother had shattered the day her husband’s heart stop beating. Three weeks after the funeral, the reality of their changed circumstances had come crashing down. Sandra had immediately left town on an extended visit to her older sister, Marcia, down in Oregon, abandoning Melanie to deal with the fallout from her father’s death alone.

It would take a better person than Melanie to not resent having her whole life uprooted, especially when she’d worked so hard to escape Snowberry Creek in the first place. But unfortunately, according to Melanie’s aunt, Sandra Wolfe had become little more than a shadow of herself and rarely left the house at all. Figuring out what to do about that was also on Melanie’s to-do list.

She coasted to a stop a short distance from her father’s grave. From a distance, the gray granite marker blended in seamlessly with all the others. It was only on closer inspection that she could see the polished stone was a little shinier than those on either side of it.

Edmond Wolfe would’ve approved. Even in life, he’d preferred to maintain a quiet, dignified lifestyle. The only anomaly had been that bright red pickup truck he’d loved so much. Looking back, Melanie should’ve known something was wrong when he’d sold it days before he’d died. What other signs had she missed that all was not as it should have been? She’d grown up believing her parents were financially secure and that her father had inherited her great-great-grandfather’s head for business.

As it turned out, she’d been wrong on both counts.

The silence in the cemetery was oppressive, but what could she say to a slab of granite? She settled for the obvious. “Well, Dad, looks like they got everything on your headstone right. It suits you.”

Considering all it contained was his full name and the years that spanned his life, there wasn’t much that could’ve gone wrong. The Wolfe family didn’t go in for inspirational sayings or emotional displays, private or public. Melanie snapped a picture with her phone to text to her mother after she got home. For now, she set down the small bouquet of lilies she’d brought for her father’s grave.

Staring down at the headstone, she whispered, “Dad, the business is on the brink of disaster. I’m doing my best to figure things out, but I’ve got so many questions I wish I could ask you right now.”

Not that he would’ve liked answering them. He’d never discussed finances with his wife, much less his only daughter. No, like his father and grandfather before him, her father had preferred to shelter women from the hard realities of the business world. Well, that train had left the station. Melanie now knew all too much about the precarious state of the family’s finances.

It was time to get moving. She had other, happier places to be this evening. Turning to leave, she realized she was no longer alone on the hillside. A man dressed in a camouflage uniform stood by a grave on the far side of the cemetery. He had his back to her as he stared down at one of the markers. From the slump in his shoulders, the name on the headstone had to be causing him great pain.

She knew why because she knew who was buried there: Spence Lang. Last summer, the whole town had turned out for his funeral to pay homage to one of their own. The war was being waged on the other side of the world, but that day it had come home to Snowberry Creek.

Although she’d been living in Spokane at the time, Melanie had taken the day off work and had driven down to attend the service. She’d owed Spence that much. The solemn ceremony had been excruciatingly painful in its intensity. As the final strands of “Taps” faded away, the army honor guard had carefully folded the flag that had covered the coffin and presented it to Vince Locke, Spence’s uncle.

Melanie bet she hadn’t been the only one who had wanted to snatch it right back out of that bastard’s hands. Considering the despicable way that man treated his nephew in life, Vince didn’t deserve the honor of claiming that last reminder of Spence’s service to their country. It had been a relief to see Callie, Spence’s best friend, take it from him before he left the cemetery.

Even now, months later, the memory still made Melanie’s heart ache. He’d been such a force of nature, always a bit wild but with an easy smile for everyone.

Even the shy daughter of the first family of Snowberry Creek.

God, she’d had such a crush on Spence back in their senior year, not that she’d ever admitted how she felt about him. If anyone had found out, it would’ve only embarrassed Melanie in front of the whole school. Not to mention her parents would’ve been horrified to learn their daughter was attracted to the town bad boy.

Enough about the past.

No doubt the soldier had come to town for the wedding, the same one Melanie would be attending. Callie was marrying Nick Jenkins, who had served in Afghanistan with Spence. The couple had met when Nick had driven across the country to bring Callie the dog their unit had adopted over there. The couple might have bonded first over their shared loss, but there was no doubt about how much they loved each other. In truth, Melanie was a little jealous.

It was time to get moving if she was going to arrive at the church on time. But before heading for her car, the least she could do was introduce herself to the soldier and maybe nudge him along, too, since he hadn’t moved since she’d first spotted him. Visiting Spence’s grave was no doubt hard for the guy, and who could blame him? How many of his other friends had been wounded or killed over there?

As she made her way across the cemetery, she decided to do more than simply exchange names with the man. For Spence’s sake, she would offer to show him the way to the church. If he was in town by himself, maybe she would even invite him to sit with her. That way he would meet at least one other person in the crowd of locals besides the groom and his best man, Leif, another member of Spence’s unit.

If the soldier was aware of Melanie’s approach, he gave no sign of it. He remained frozen in that one spot even though Melanie made no effort to be especially quiet as she approached. She stopped a few steps away, pausing right in front of the double headstone that marked the grave of Spence’s parents.

“Excuse me? I don’t mean to intrude, but I was wondering if you were in town for the Jenkins-Redding wedding. If so, I’m headed there myself and thought you might like to follow me to the church.”

The soldier’s shoulders snapped back as if coming to attention. He didn’t turn to face her, but something about his rigid stance and clenched fists bothered her. Melanie backed up a step, keenly aware that she was a woman alone with a strange man on an isolated hillside.

Suddenly, she didn’t want him to turn around even if she couldn’t pinpoint the reason for her misgivings. When he finally glanced back over his shoulder, her pulse went into overdrive as she tried to make sense of what she was seeing. That jawline. That profile. They were all too familiar even as her head tried to convince her heart that what she was seeing—no, make that
who
she was seeing—just wasn’t possible.

“Melanie?”

With that single word, her lungs quit working altogether as her knees buckled and the ground came rushing up to meet her. She heard a muttered curse as a pair of strong arms caught her right before she hit the ground. She stared up at the man’s face, blinking hard as if that would clear her vision. When that didn’t change the new reality of her world, she pointed out the obvious.

“Spence?”