Heart of a Hero Read Free Page B

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 nevershared 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
    T he 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 beautifulPhoebe 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 amerry 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