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With a heavy heart she read her daughter’s chatty e-mail next

Sent: June 30

From:

[email protected]

To:

[email protected]

Subject: Update--sort of

Hi Moarden! She said we could grow vegetables and flowers I don’t want to plant green beans because then I h Will you give Aunt Shana your recipe for baked zucchini? Tell her to add ood recipe for green peppers, too, didn’t you? I could even eat those raw, but I like thearden will be lots of fun, don’t you? Uncle Adareat?

See you soon

Love,

Jazmine

Alison didn’t knohere Shana would find tiarden As it was, her sister worked from dawn to dusk, but the plans for this latest project showed her how hard Shana was trying with Jazed to talk Ada How much he could do was questionable, since he couldn’t risk da participant

The last e-mail came from onboard ship Not until she opened it did she see that it was from Commander Dillon Ali stared at his nae Five words said it all Thank you for your excellent care Commander Frank Dillon

"No," she whispered "Thank you, Corateful for Because even if this was as far as it went, Frank had shown her that her heart was still alive

Sheer weakness had proht as he returned to his stateroom at the end of his shift Frank was not a weak man, and he was irritated with himself for ood patient He just couldn’t tolerate lying around in bed all day He wanted to be back on the job, doing what he enjoyedhis skills where they were needed If his appendix was going to give out on him, he would’ve preferred it to happen while they were in port

The worst part of his ordeal wasn’t his ruptured appendix and the subsequent surgery That he’d coh with only minor difficulties But he wasn’t sure he would survive Lieutenant Commander Karas After all these years on his oithout female companionship, committed to the Navy, he was finally attracted to a woly attracted She invaded his drea moments Every day for damn near a week she’d been at his bedside

He didn’t like it Just when his mind had started to clear and his syste he hadn’t noticed earlier Her wedding ring It shook him

That first ti --on her left hand He stared at the cootten about it until this week Then, when he’d re about ato her right hand What did that say about her?

He’d been iet back to his duties before, but after he saw that wedding band, he was downright desperate to escape the infirmary There’s no fool like an old fool, as they said

His anger had turned on Alison and he wanted her as far away froretted that outburst She’d done nothing to deserve his tongue-lashing But he found it difficult to be civil, and all because he’d realized there was no hope of any kind of relationship, let alone a permanent one

He could accept that, but he wasn’t a man who enjoyed temptation and this woman definitely fit that description Still, he felt coain was out of the question, so he’d decided to send an e-mail He wrote a dozen versions before he settled on the brief and sie his mind

For better or worse, she had it now, and that was the end of it Hehis head he scanned the horizon All that stretched before hie blue expanse of emptiness He saw his life like that and it bothered him

Until now, it never had

Chapter Thirteen

Adaarden He’d ed to find someone to turn over a small patch at the back of Shana’s rental house Then Jazmine and her aunt had planted neat rows of red-leaf lettuce, peas, green peppers and three varieties of toh they’d been warned by the man at the local nursery, they’d purchased a number of zucchini plants, too Apparently it did exceptionally well in the Seattle area and supplied an abundant crop Jazmine claimed her mother had fabulous recipes for zucchini Baked zucchini and zucchini bread and so zucchini in the grocery, you’ll know that’s a person without a friend," the nursery owner had joked as he hauled their plants out to the vehicle

Once they were back at the house and the plants were in the freshly tilled soil, Adairl was out in the garden checking on the plants’ growth, s in the vicinity God help them if they were Just to be on the safe side, she carried a salt shaker

The flower beds--well, they were another story He’d lost track of all the seedlings Shana had purchased Most of thenize Pink ones and white ones, purple and yellow They certainly made the yard look colorful Pretty but…Women and flowers--he never could understand what they found so fascinating For hiht practical h he hadn’t shared that reaction with Shana