That’s all it took for her shoulders to begin to shake with the strain of barely audible sobs. “Don’t,” she said in a tense whisper. “Don’t you dare tell him!”

“Here,” he said, reaching for her hand. She had little choice but to comply and he pulled her to her feet, then took her chair and brought her down on his lap, holding her like a small child. “It’s sure no crime to cry when you miss someone,” he said.

She leaned her head against his shoulder and sobbed. “It is,” she choked out. “Because I understand what he needs. I do! This is so important to him. This is what I want for him. To feel like he’s one hundred percent again, to feel like himself again!”

“That doesn’t seem to be working for you, Jillian,” he said. “You’re falling apart.”

“That’s why you can’t ever tell him! The thing he loved best about me was that I was strong enough and loved him enough to encourage him to go, to do what he had to do. If going was what he needed, I wanted him to do it.”

“Ever consider telling him what you need?”

She shook her head. “What I want, you mean? What I don’t want is a man who did what some woman asked of him even though it left something empty and unfulfilled inside him. That would be like asking him to give up what he needs just so I can be more comfortable. I couldn’t do that to Colin….”

“Jill, you should have told him you love him.”

“Of course I told him I love him. That I love him and want him to have everything he needs. Luke, that accident—it cost him more than any of us can relate to. It left not only his body broken, but his spirit, too. If he doesn’t get that back, what good is he? To me or anyone? I love him. I want him to be whole again.”

Luke snorted. “He looked all right to me.”

She shrugged her shoulders. “I thought he was in good shape, too. But I can’t count the number of times he told me he just wanted to fly again, to challenge himself again. He told me painting was good, but too tame. He’s forty years old and since he was twenty he’s been flying, traveling, skydiving and who knows what else. He said he’d be ready to slow down someday, but he wasn’t about to let that accident and the problems that followed do it for him.” She looked into Luke’s eyes and a fat tear ran down her cheek. “I sure wasn’t going to be the second thing in his life to force him to settle for less. To live a life that didn’t suit him, that didn’t give him a sense of value. Do you have any idea what it’s like when a man feels like a failure?”

Oh, let’s see, Luke thought to himself. He’d been in three Black Hawk accidents in his career, the first one in Mogadishu and it had been pretty serious. He had been young then and had come home to his pregnant wife only to learn the baby she was having wasn’t his. So long ago. Suicidal tendencies had followed that…. Years of living on the edge to avoid living an authentic life. And later, after finding Shelby, almost losing her out of the sheer stupidity of believing he couldn’t deserve her. “He’s such an idiot,” Luke muttered. “I thought I had the franchise on that.”

“You must promise you won’t ever tell him you found me like this,” she said. “I don’t want him to come home because I need him, because I’m pathetic. I want him to come home because this is where he wants to be. Do you promise?”

He wiped a tear off her cheek. “I promise. Have you heard from him?”

“Just the emails. The same ones you got. And there was one short one just for me. Two weeks ago.”

“No phone calls?” Luke asked.

“He’s in the jungle, Luke.”

“Don’t they have some kind of communications?”

“I don’t know,” she answered. “He told everyone not to be worried if he was out of touch. I just wish… It would have been nice to hear his voice before he went into the wild. You know.”

“Do the two of you have some kind of plans for after this? Like when he comes back? Because…”

But she was shaking her head. “He said he’d keep looking for a good flying job, an exciting flying job. Something that can compete with flying for the Army, I guess. If not Africa, maybe New Zealand or Alaska. And he said he’d paint, but he couldn’t be happy just painting. I think I’m smart enough to know he couldn’t be happy on a farm where the most exciting thing that happens is the first Russian Rose tomato comes in.”

“He had no idea what’s next for him? Because he never suggested to the rest of us that this was just the beginning… He said six months….”

She shook her head. “Unless he found that flying job he’s looking for,” she said. “He said he told you all that if he found something he liked, it could be longer than six months.”

“Yeah, I guess he said something like that.”

“Maybe that’s what’s so hard now. He might find he does just fine without me, that it’s time to move on….”

Luke started to laugh.

“Funny?” she asked.

“Yeah, it’s funny. I really thought I was the biggest blockhead in the family. Good of Colin to outshine me in this area. Remind me to thank him.”

“Sure,” she said. “Can I show you something private?”

Luke frowned. “I don’t know if I want to see anything private. Could be embarrassing…”

“You’ll get over it, Luke. You might not know all about your brother. Come with me,” she said, getting off his lap. She let the quilt drop in the other porch chair and walked through the kitchen and up the stairs.

As Luke followed her, he was vaguely aware that she’d grown thin. Well, she didn’t have much to spare to begin with, but it seemed she’d been more solid before Colin’s departure. He followed her into the bedroom and there, over the bed, were two large oils. Nudes. A woman in a big straw hat that hid most of her face. Only the curve of a breast or roundness of her butt were visible, but just the line of the jaw and tilt of the smile made these portraits out to be Jillian. And the Jillian in the paintings was much rounder, fuller, more muscular than the one who stood before him, her pajamas hanging off her trim frame.

“He gave me these before he left. They were a complete surprise.”

“My brother painted these?” Luke asked, though he knew the answer.

She nodded.

Luke shook his head. He whistled. “I was never exactly jealous of this, that he could do this. I don’t have any interest. But damn. I wonder if that pain-in-the-ass brother of mine has any idea how much he has to be grateful for.” He turned to look at Jillian. “I kind of doubt it. He’s got a gift, but he’s not all that bright.”

Jillian laughed in spite of herself. “Stop. He’s very smart.”

“Aw, you and Shelby, always sticking up for him. I don’t get it.”

“You’re both good guys. I don’t know why you don’t get along better.”

“Because he’s a blockhead and a pain in the ass,” Luke said. “Now you get a shower and get on some jeans. I’m taking you home to dinner and don’t argue. We’re not going to say anything to Colin, should we ever hear from that lowlife idiot again, but you’re obviously not eating. Probably not sleeping much, either. Waste of your time, crying over that ass**le if you ask me, but this is gonna get fixed. Don’t tell Shelby I said this, but she’s not a great cook—but tonight is pot roast and she hardly ever makes it inedible. There will be plentiful wine with it and dessert which, thank God, she bought. The food and wine will go a long way to helping you sleep. I’m going to make sure you eat and sleep until you get back to your old self.”

“You don’t have to do this, Luke….”

“But I am. You think you’re the first person whose heart hurt? Aw, hell, Jillian—the Riordans are famous for it. Since we can’t change Colin, we’re gonna have to get you on your feet.”

“It’s pretty embarrassing,” she said. “I didn’t want anyone to—”

“To care about you?” he asked. He took a step toward her. “I think my brother made a mistake. I think he’s going to regret it—taking off like that. I think it’s possible he’s an idiot savant and this is just something he got, this painting thing. But he should have planned ahead better, made sure you were willing to wait for him while he did whatever it is he thinks he has to do. There should have been an expiration date on this ego-feeding thing he has going on. But the man who painted those,” he said, glancing over his shoulder, growing serious and even respectful. “That man worships you. It’s obvious.”

Jillian smiled sentimentally. She knew that. Colin loved her. But would that ever bring him back to her?

“Now let’s concentrate on getting you back on your feet. You have a farm to run. My wife loves getting your vegetables. She hardly ever screws up salad.”

Nineteen

Luke brought Jillian to his house, fed her, plied her with good red wine, dessert and left her in Shelby’s expert hands. For three days Shelby carried food and understanding to Jillian at the Victorian, or forced Jillian to come to her house. Jillian might not have eaten otherwise. They talked about their men and experiences with them, about how much they loved them and how much it could hurt while waiting for them to figure out their heads. In that time Jillian began to sleep better at night, regain her appetite and cry less often. She also became very close to Shelby.

Who would figure Luke could be capable of knowing how to help heal a woman’s broken heart? But in an abstract way, he’d been responsible.

“It’s strange that Luke, such a clumsy romantic, came to you to help,” Shelby said. “But these Riordan men. They have so much conflict between them and yet they do all they can for each other. Aiden came to me. He flew all the way to Hawaii to find me, dry my tears, prop me up. His mission was to try to explain why Luke was so impossible to reach.”

“And did he?” Jillian asked.

“He did. But you’ve met Aiden. It doesn’t take long to figure out how wise and sensitive he is—I guess he has to be as a woman’s doctor. Who would guess Luke could be sensitive enough to do the same thing?” She smiled. “I’m glad you got to see that, Jill. I’m glad someone besides me knows how really special my Luke is.”

In no time Shelby was harvesting right alongside Jillian, taking home great quantities of delicious and precious vegetables and melons.

And Jillian was feeling stronger and more confident. She wasn’t missing Colin any less, but she realized she had to fill her life with more than grief and worry. There were people in her life who would be friends. And there was her work—she vowed to focus on her own ambitions while Colin experimented with his.

She took pictures of some of the crop and she fired off a few emails for Colin to receive whenever he was able to next make an internet connection.

She was no longer sobbing and losing weight, thanks to Luke and Shelby. But she still thought about Colin constantly. She slept on his pillow, inhaling that special scent that grew fainter by the day, and she dreamed about him. She had taken to lying down in the afternoon for a while to make up for the sleep she lost at night. But she was on the mend. For the first time since he left almost four weeks ago, she believed she would survive no matter what came next.

Jillian was ready for some semblance of normalcy, but it was not to come quickly. On the morning she would have expected Denny to return to work with her, he crept silently up her drive, tiptoed onto the back porch and slipped an envelope in the crack of the back door. It wasn’t even 6:00 a.m. but she happened to be up. She’d been awake since five, on the heels of another vivid dream about Colin, and since she was awake she wanted to see the sun rise over the tall trees that surrounded the house and gardens. Because of that, the only light on in the big Victorian was the little red light on the coffeepot. Denny would have assumed she was still in bed.