Page 69 of A Soldier's Return

The name meant nothing to Rosa, who knew all the past tenants going back to the original owner. Still, she felt a stirring of unease.

“I know no one by this name,” she said. She was nervous, which was probably the reason that her Spanish accent became more pronounced. “I believe you have the wrong house.”

“It’s not the wrong house,” he said flatly. “I know she’s here.”

“And I know she is not,” Rosa retorted. Like her accent, her unease was becoming more pronounced, as well. This man made her nervous, though she couldn’t have said why.

She wondered, for one fleeting moment, whether she should pull her phone out and call 911. It was a crazy reaction, she knew. The man wasn’t threatening anyone. He was only looking for a woman who did not live there. She could only imagine trying to explain why she had called the police for such a reason to the frustrating but gorgeous new police chief. Wyatt Townsend would look at her with even more suspicion than he usually did.

“Now, I must ask you to leave.”

She saw frustration cross features that she would ordinarily call handsome. Right now, they only looked dangerous.

“Sorry, ma’am, but I’ve come too far to leave now.”

There was a bit of a Western twang to his voice, one that seemed similar to those she heard throughout her teenage years living in Utah.

“The woman you are seeking, this Elizabeth Hamilton, she does not live here.”

He let out a sigh and looked down at the piece of paper. “What about Sonia Davis. Is she here?”

Now her nervousness bloomed into full-on fear. What could he possibly want with their Sonia?

Her neighbor was home. Rosa had seen her come in earlier and make her painstaking way up to her second-floor apartment, looking more weary and sore than usual.

She wanted to tell him no. She wanted to tell him to go away and not come back. Some instinct warned Rosa that this man was a threat to her secretive, vulnerable neighbor, who had already been through so very much.

She opened her mouth to lie but closed it again. What if Sonia was expecting him? What if she wanted to see this handsome man in cowboy boots and a worn ranch jacket, who drove a pickup truck that had Idaho license plates and the words Hamilton Construction on the side.

“She lives upstairs.” She couldn’t see any point in lying. He obviously knew Sonia lived here. “If you would like, I can see if she is home. What name should I tell her? And is there a message you would you like me to give her?”

He glanced up, almost as if he could see through the porch ceiling to the floor above. Now the tight expression showed a crack of emotion, something stark and raw. She thought she saw longing, frustration, pain, before his features became closed again.

“Sure. My name is Luke Hamilton. And you can tell this Sonia—whose real name, by the way, is Elizabeth Sinclair Hamilton—that her husband has come to take her home.”

Watch for Luke and Elizabeth’s story, the next book in the Haven Point series, available this September from HQN.

Rosa Galvez’s story, next in The Women of Brambleberry House series, will be coming soon.

The Daddy Makeover

Contents

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

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