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about staying with them. Not until he had to.
    Stella spoke up, saving him from having to respond. “So what are you going to be doing with yourself, Adam? Now that you’re out of the service, I mean.”
    Adam nodded, grateful for the change of subject. “I’ve got a job lined up, helping supervise some houses that are being built down south, near Mount Vernon.”
    “Sounds like interesting work.”
    “Hope so. I liked the sound of the fella I talked to when I took the job. I’m starting on Monday, so we’ll see how it goes.”
    “Well, we wish you the best of luck,” Kitty said fondly. “But I’m sure you won’t need it.” She looked at Stella. “He’s quite brilliant, you know.”
    “I have no doubt,” Stella said, her face indulgent.
    Kitty turned back to Adam. “Oh dear, have you even seen Jenna yet?”
    “No,” he answered. “I just got here.”
    “I think she’s in the living room.” Kitty lifted her voice. “Jenna!” she called.
    The screen door opened almost immediately, and Adam turned his head in anticipation. But it was Fritz who came out of the door, trotting casually down the walk.
    “That’s Fritz,” Rose told Adam. “He’s very friendly. Usually.”
    “We’ve met before. I just hope he remembers as me fondly as I remember him — and not as something that might make a good dinner.” Adam reached out and let the big German Shepherd sniff his hand. When the colossal black nose had thoroughly investigated, the muzzle nudged his palm in a friendly gesture. Adam took that as a sign that he’d been officially approved and welcomed.
    As he was scratching Fritz’s ears, the hinges on the screen door squealed again. And that time when Adam looked up, he glimpsed the face he’d been waiting to see for five long years. She still took his breath away.
    Jenna was all angles, all arms and legs and elbows and knees. Her body was as long and lean as he remembered it. Adam was tall himself, and she came up almost to his nose. She towered over Kitty, who was smaller and plumper. Like Kitty, she wore pedal pushers and a cotton blouse, but hers were blue. The color brought out the blue in her gray eyes and heightened the pink in her cheeks. Her hair, that beautiful black hair that reminded him of a raven’s wing, had been cropped short around her head. If he hadn’t known her better, he would’ve said that she looked like a boy.
    But he did know better, and she might have been the most beautiful woman he had ever seen.
    When she saw him she pulled up short. As always, her face showed little to no emotion, but he read surprise in the way she blinked, and the hesitant manner in which she continued her graceful progress down the walkway.
    “Jenna, look what the cat dragged in!” Kitty said happily. Then to Adam: “She didn’t know you were coming.”
    “She didn’t?” Well, that accounted for the pale, pinched look that was visible around her mouth and nose.
    “I wanted it to be a surprise,” Kitty explained.
    Surprise was sure one word for it. Adam suppressed a grin. His Jenna had never liked surprises. They tended to interfere with her need to control everything.
    “Hello, Jen,” he said.
    “Adam,” she said, making his name sound less like a greeting and more like a grim statement. “How nice to see you.”
    Her expression belied her words. Adam would’ve given in and finally released the huge smile that wanted to make its way onto his face, except that her low, husky voice cut right through his humor. It cut right to the core of him, to the place where desire lived.
    “You came for the party?” she asked.
    “Indeed I did,” he said. He patted the package under his arm and smiled his most winning smile. “I even brought the little guy a present. Something that no American boy should be without.”
    From somewhere inside the house, a thin, excited voice called out, “Mom? Mommy!” Jenna stiffened at the sound of her son’s voice, glancing at Adam with lowered