Read Her Cowboy Soldier for Free Online Page B

paper.”
    “Oh. Well, maybe I’ll call her tomorrow.”
    He started to tell Erica to avoid talking about his involvement in the project when she talked to Amy. No sense stirring up animosity. But explaining his reasoning to “Love Soldier” would be too awkward. “I guess you want to talk about the irrigation system,” he said. “We could discuss it over coffee.”
    “Thanks. We should do that, but not tonight. My boyfriend is waiting up, and I really want to get home and tell him all about what happened tonight.”
    “What’s his name?”
    “George Ramirez. You don’t know him. He’s from Berkley.”
    “And his name’s George?” Not Rainbow or Peace Brother or something equally as colorful as Love Soldier?
    She grinned. “He’s not into the name thing like I am. Though I’m beginning to think Love Soldier might be a little too far-out for Hartland.”
    “Erica is a nice name.”
    She wrinkled her nose. “But it doesn’t really say anything, you know?”
    Josh thought he understood. He was proud of the name he’d been born with, but he sometimes wondered if it wouldn’t be easier if he’d come to town as a stranger, without his family name and history to brand him as a local. Would people like Rick and Amy hassle him less if he was an outsider?
    “Anyway, thanks for backing me up tonight,” Erica continued. “We’ll talk soon, I promise.”
    She left in a flurry of gauze skirts and flying pigtails. Home to share her news with the man she loved. A tightness in his chest pinched at him. If he hadn’t known better, he might have thought he was jealous of Erica and George—and Rick and his wife and all those people who had other people to go home to.
    How much worse was it, though, for Amy? She had known that kind of love, that connection with another person, and war had taken that away. Josh might have lost a hand in Iraq, but she had lost so much more. He could replace his hand with a hook or a prosthesis, but would another man for Amy be like his hand—a dim imitation of what she really wanted?
    Maybe that was at the heart of all his mixed feelings for Amy. As much as her treatment of him in the paper angered him, he sympathized with her plight. The war hurt men and women like her who had waited at home every bit as much as it injured and killed their loved ones who fought. He was one more reminder of that hurt. Just as well she wasn’t planning to stay in Hartland long. Her leaving town would be the best thing for both of them.

CHAPTER THREE
    O F ALL HER jobs at the farm, Amy liked working in the greenhouses best. The long rows of tomatoes, peppers, lettuces and herbs made a fragrant jungle around her as she weeded, pruned, watered and picked. Worries and stress vanished as she focused on the plants. “You have a knack for gardening,” her grandmother told her as the two women worked side by side the morning after the school board meeting.
    “Isn’t it funny, since I didn’t grow up around gardening? Mom didn’t even keep houseplants.” The family moved so often plants and pets and other dependents made little sense.
    “They say sometimes a talent will skip a generation.” Bobbie leaned over and deftly pinched back a tomato plant. “Your mother didn’t have the patience for gardening. You have to stick around a whole season or more to see the fruits of your labors. She always wanted to move on to the next big adventure. She still does, I guess. Where are your folks now—South America, isn’t it?”
    “Chile. Guiding tours to see penguins and whales.”
    “That’s all pretty exciting, I’m sure, but I’d rather stay here and watch a plant grow and develop and bear fruit.”
    “Look, Mama!” Chloe tiptoed carefully toward them, her eyes fixed on the bright red-and-black ladybug that crawled along her finger.
    “That’s a ladybug,” Bobbie said. “She helps protect the plants from aphids and other bad bugs.”
    “She’s so pretty.” The ladybug spread her wings and