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He’d started cooking meals here because he liked it, and because short order cooking required that he think about the cooking and not a lot else. Hard not to like it, especially when he was freshly out. He still cooked now and then, because customers liked to claim that they could taste the difference in his bacon.

And because that claim pissed off their current chef, the generally irascible Jeremiah, who had been a fighter pilot and now considered himself a culinary artist. Not that he wasn’t an artist, but nothing was more entertaining than ribbing him about it. Usually he had a temper tantrum and then cooked whole special meals about it. Win/win.

These days, the diner was pretty crowded during the morning rush and again at lunch. So it was pretty lively as Noah made his way over to the door, and part of him was proud of that. Like he could point to the fact that he’d built something, something that had nothing to do with death and war, and that might mean something to this woman whose brother’s death was on his hands.

That’s wishful thinking, asshole, he told himself curtly.

He scanned her almost absently as he drew near, because that was proper operating procedure. Particularly in the case of unfriendly approaches.

Not that Raemy Miller looked like an enemy combatant.

Noah took a moment to think about the fact that he was far more worried about interacting with this woman—all wild blonde hair and all those colors, as if she was trying to brighten up the Oregon coast with a spectacularly pink raincoat and matching boots over a very turquoise dress—than he would have been if she’d been a big, jacked dude who looked like trouble. Noah knew how to handle trouble. Raemy, on the other hand, was an explosion of color instead of testosterone and if the situation wasn’t so serious, he might have laughed about that.

Internally, that was. Noah Kendrick wasn’t exactly known for his good humor. Most people in this tiny little town would have said he had none.

That wasn’t true, but he didn’t spend a lot of time worrying about entertaining his neighbors. He also didn’t care if they talked shit about him behind his back, because that was none of his business.

Raemy was bringing it face-to-face. He cared about that.

When he reached her side, she was looking around the diner, so he did the same. The usual motley crew of veterans were doing their thing: waiting tables, running orders, and talking their usual shit behind the counter. They’d been written up in the local news as a special interest story, which made Noah want to throw himself off the nearest monolithic rock standing tall out there in the Pacific, because he didn’t want attention. Ever.

But if attention brought more veterans to his door, wild-eyed, feral, and looking for a kind of halfway house between the shit they’d seen and the life they needed to figure out how to live, it was worth it.

So he suffered the attention and he framed the articles and put them on the wall.

Besides the articles, there were pictures of lost friends in between the old Vietnam, Korea, and World War Two paraphernalia that his grandfather had collected. There were also a lot of fishermen’s keepsakes—old tide clocks and pieces of old boats—which shouldn’t have worked. Yet, somehow, it was all the same thing in the end.

Grumpy men who’d seen too much crap they didn’t want to talk about, Noah thought. That was the theme. That, and astonishingly delicate baked goods plus hearty, delicious food.

Not a bad life, to Noah’s mind, but he was all too aware that Raemy Miller wasn’t here to commend Noah on his life. She was probably more interested in the lives he’d had a hand in losing, her brother’s chief among them.

“Hi,” said Raemy at last, turning and looking up at him. “I’m⁠—”

“I know who you are, Raemy.” Noah sounded rough, and he hated that. He reminded himself to keep it steady. “Why don’t we take a walk?”

She blinked, then pointed at the closest empty table.

“Do we have to take a walk?” she asked, and as she spoke, he found himself... not staring, obviously. That would be completely inappropriate, particularly in these circumstances, and he had enough on his conscience these days without adding being a complete dick to the tally. But he was alive, so he definitely noticed how ridiculously blue her eyes were, and how they sparkled when she talked. And that wasn’t even getting into the way her hair was a big mess of blonde waves that she just shoved this way and that as she spoke, or that almost-smile on her mouth that seemed to be breaking containment. “It’s just that I’ve been driving forever, literally, and I’m so hungry, and everything in here looks delicious and smells even better. Can we sit down?”

Then she flashed that smile at him at full strength. A megawatt disaster.

Because for a moment, Noah forgot himself. He forgot who he was. He forgot what he’d done—not just in general, but to this woman and her family.

For just one moment, Noah Kendrick was nothing more than a man looking at a pretty woman, and that smile hit him like mortar fire.

He was hard. He was horrified. He cleared his throat and scowled.

This did absolutely nothing to change the way she was smiling at him, he noted.

“Of course,” he said gruffly, hoping she had no idea how he was reacting to her. “Please. Sit.”

And she did, in a rush of headache-inducing pink and turquoise and all of that blonde, flinging herself into the nearest chair at that empty table and then smiling at him some more while he sat down in front of her like a man facing a firing squad.

“It’s good to see you, Noah,” Raemy said when the silence stretched out across the table that he thought could probably use a condiment refresh, tilting her head a little as she looked at him. “It’s been a long time.”

He couldn’t do it. He couldn’t make small talk. “I know why you’re here,” he said roughly, and he didn’t try to smooth it over. “You don’t have to pretend.”

“What?”