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nice, though, using some of his savings. He hadn’t expected anything different. He’d been sending money to her every month, knowing that her health limited the number of houses she could clean, knowing that her idiot of a husband did a poor job of providing for them. About the only thing he did well was run his mouth and swing his fist.
    Ethan had survived the verbal and physical abuse his stepfather had dished out because he knew that Mack McCann and Brody Donovan were going to grow into men that others would be proud of.
    And Ethan wasn’t going to get left behind.
    A week after graduation, he’d enlisted in the army.
    He’d always known he was going to have to find a different path than his best friends because there weren’t any prestigious military academies or fancy colleges in his future. But he had been determined to be a man others would respect.
    Which led him to the second reason why there was no way, no how, that there would be any “hooking up” between him and Chandler. Nobody would respect a man who got involved with somebody when his personal and professional lives had fallen apart. Under investigation.
    Ugly words that had come on the heels of ugly accusations. And even though the wildebeest was finally off his back, there were still many who didn’t believe in his innocence.
    And that had hurt him more than he expected it would. When he’d made the decision to retire, his supporters had urged him to reconsider. This will blow over, they’d said. But it hadn’t. And all the long months while he waited for his paperwork to be processed, he’d dreamed about a few weeks at the cabin, knowing that if there was anywhere that he could get his head back on straight, it was here.
    The timing was fortunate in that he’d been here to offer Chandler a helping hand. The McCanns had been family when he’d needed it the most. Now was his chance to pay back some of that kindness.
    And one didn’t pay back kindness by jumping into bed with the only daughter.
    He needed to focus on offering assistance and getting her back on her merry way. But something didn’t seem quite right. It was almost as if the explanation of her accident had been too easy. She hadn’t seemed embarrassed about her carelessness or even angry. She’d reported the facts calmly with relatively little emotion.
    Which made him question whether she was telling the truth.
    He rounded the last curve in the path and raised the beam of his flashlight to show the Donovan cabin. Then he turned to look at her. “Still doing okay?”
    “Yes. As we were walking, I kept thinking of all the times you, Mack and Brody used to sneak out at night and meet one another. This path was well traveled. You could probably still walk it with your eyes closed.”
    “Almost,” he admitted.
    “Remember the time I tried to follow you? I got about halfway down the path and it was so dark that I tripped on something. That’s when you heard me.”
    It had been toward the end of his last summer here and he and the others had taken a liking to fishing in the lake in the middle of the night.
    “Mack tried to send me back. You said I could come but only if I wore a life jacket in the boat.”
    He smiled at her. “If Baker found out, I sure as hell didn’t want to have to tell him that we’d taken you out on a lake, in the middle of the night, without a life jacket.”
    “The three of you didn’t wear them. As I recall, when Mack and Brody got done fishing, they jumped over the side and swam for a while. You stayed in the boat with me.”
    “We were too stupid to wear life jackets,” he said. “You were the smart one.”
    “I always appreciated that you stuck up for me. And it was such a cool night, almost magical. I could understand why the three of you were willing to give up sleep to do it.”
    Magical. That was a good description of most of his experiences at the cabin.
    He stepped up onto the front porch, unlocked the door and pushed it open. He