back and get what I need.” Eli waved to Edna and Harry and walked toward the plumbing section. He lifted the valve he wanted from the display hook and turned toward the back of the store at the sound of a door opening. A woman emerged from the Employees Only area. Her gaze locked on his. Charlie Meade—Russell now. An unpleasant reminder of his past.
She quickly closed the distance between them. “Eli, I heard you were back.”
“It was time to come home.”
She wrinkled her nose in distaste.
“I’m surprised you’re still around.” In high school, Charlie’s number one goal was to leave Paradox Lake. And when his mother kept him up-to-date on Paradox Lake over the years, Charlie wasn’t someone she included in her updates.
“Where else would I be?”
Charlie couldn’t still be carrying a grudge because he hadn’t taken her with him when he left for the service. They hadn’t even been dating seriously. And the lies she’d spread about him afterward… He shook his head.
She glared at him. Evidently, she was still carrying that grudge.
“I’ve got to get back to work.” She turned on her heel and disappeared around the end-cap.
* * *
When Eli approached the checkout, Edna, Harry and his mother were still chatting, along with someone else blocked from his view by Harry and the magazine display.
“JR.” His mother used his childhood nickname, short for junior. The other woman turned, and his gaze locked with the warm brown eyes that had haunted him the past week in the guise of her son, Myles.
“Here’s someone I want you to meet,” she said.
“Eli.” Jamie’s greeting was tentative.
“Hello. Nice to see you again.”
Her eyes reflected the question he’d heard in her voice, as if she thought he was simply being polite. He didn’t do simply polite. It was nice seeing her. He enjoyed running into his students’ parents around town. It lent another dimension to working with the kids. Had his meetings with Jamie left her with that bad of an impression of him? He kind of liked her, and they needed to have at least a cordial relationship if they were going to work together for Myles’s benefit. Eli dismissed the flicker of concern in his gut. He’d only been doing his job.
* * *
“You know each other,” his mother said.
“Yes, he’s Myles’s guidance counselor.” Jamie ran her gaze over the tall commanding man standing next to the diminutive Leah and swallowed to extinguish the flash of attraction that flared. “I had no idea your son, JR, was Eli.”
Leah had been her daughter Opal’s preschool Sunday school teacher, and she’d often talked with Jamie about her son in the Air Force and his early tours in the Middle East as a helicopter pilot. Family in the military had been something they’d had in common when they’d first met. But the nickname, the fact that Leah’s last name was Summers, not Payton… Jamie hadn’t made the connection between them. And she’d stopped going to church long before Eli had returned to Paradox Lake.
Leah laughed. “That’s right. You’ve only been here a few years. You wouldn’t know he’s JR or that I kept my maiden name.”
“I’d never do that,” Edna said, resting her gaze fondly on her octogenarian fiance. “But I know a lot of my students have.”
“I thought I was such a radical back then.”
Leah’s pensive look made Jamie wonder if Leah had regrets, or if she was simply remembering a younger time when she’d made that “radical” decision. A time when she had a doting man like Edna did now. Now that some of her pain had dulled, Jamie found her thoughts going back in time more often.
“I hate to cut our visit short,” Edna said. “We have to get going. Harry wants to watch the Army-Air Force game at four. West Point is his alma mater.”
“Yeah, I want to catch it, too,” Eli said, checking his watch. “But you know I’ll be rooting for the Falcons.”
Harry chuckled as he took Edna’s arm. “May the