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her, some whispering about her, but she didn’t care. Just as she made it to the open sanctuary doors, the first minister walked up to the podium and requested a moment of prayer.

Cathy rushed into the crowded vestibule, overflowing with people who hadn’t been able to find seating in the huge church, neither upstairs nor down. When she finally managed to make her way through the horde of mourners and emerged on the church steps, she stopped dead still when she realized the churchyard was overrun and that apparently outdoor loudspeakers had been set up to carry both the choir’s songs and the eulogies and addresses by various clergymen and friends.

By the time she reached her car, Cathy was trembling so badly that she dropped her keys on the pavement. And once inside her car, it took her three tries to get the key into the ignition. She beat her fists against the steering wheel in an effort to vent her frustration, but within minutes grief overcame her and she laid her forehead against the steering wheel and wept.

Jack had spent a couple of hours this morning with his contractor, Clay Yarbrough. Reconstruction efforts had begun on the upstairs of the house, with his mother’s bedroom the first room to be renovated. He had told Clay that he wanted Cathy’s plans followed to the letter and if there were any questions concerning even the smallest matter, he wanted to be notified. He didn’t want Clay going to Cathy. Hell, he didn’t want the guy anywhere near her. Call him old-fashioned, but he was proprietary when it came to Cathy. Maybe he didn’t have a right to be, but he was.

They hadn’t made each other any promises of undying love or forever after, and for now that was what they both wanted. But that didn’t mean Cathy wasn’t his. For two nights, he had claimed her in the oldest, most primitive way a man can claim his mate. Yeah, sure, sex wasn’t love, and it never had been with any other woman; but Cathy was different. The way he felt about her was different. It had been seventeen years ago and it was now.

The June sun grew hotter the closer it drew to two o’clock, so Jack removed his shirt, tossed it on the back fence and then picked up the weed eater he’d laid on the ground. He’d thought about hiring someone to do the yard work, and in the future, he still might. But for now, when he needed to vent some sexual frustration, manual labor was the best solution. After two nights in Cathy’s bed, he had felt deprived sleeping alone last night. Actually, he hadn’t gotten much sleep. He’d had way too much on his mind. He had thought about Cathy, of course, and her son. He’d thought for sure he’d have to fight the boy tooth and nail, but Seth had surprised him at the Ice Palace last night when he’d all but given Cathy and him his blessing to date.

Then he’d gotten to thinking about renovating this old house and eradicating every bad memory from the place. He liked the plans Cathy had drawn for the interior and exterior, her work equal to any professional’s. Around midnight, he had admitted to himself that he’d been envisioning Cathy living here with him.

If he’d never been sent to the Middle East seventeen years ago during the Gulf War and wound up as a POW, and if Cathy had waited for him instead of marrying Mark Cantrell, how different their lives would be now. He figured they would be married and have a couple of kids, but they wouldn’t be living here in Dunmore.

As the night had worn on, he’d slept on and off, until a bomb had exploded in his nightmares and he’d found himself sitting straight up in bed and drenched in sweat. Damn, would those reenactment dreams never end?

Jack was so engrossed in his thoughts and with the weed eater’s loud motor drowning out every other sound, he wasn’t aware that a car had pulled into the driveway until he caught a glimpse of movement out of the corner of his eye. Instinctively, he snapped his head around to search and find what he’d seen in his peripheral vision.

Cathy, in a neat black dress and black patent-leather heels, emerged from her old Jeep Cherokee. The first thing he noticed was the necklace of stark white pearls caressing her throat and lying against the black bodice