Read Online Along the Broken Road by Heather Burch - Free Book Online

that kept her safe. In some ways he already was.
    “Evening.” Ian had a dangerous smile. Slightly crooked, curling up at one edge and exposing a line of white teeth beneath succulent lips.
    Charlee mumbled a greeting. When she moved to sit down, she was surprised to find a lap rather than a wooden seat. “Oh, sorry Wilma.” Embarrassment caused her to laugh. She hadn’t even seen Wilma there. Keeping her eyes on Ian as he sat at the table across from her, she moved to take the seat next to Wilma. The scraping sound drew her attention. Charlee looked back to find Wynona stealing her chair.
    After Wilma tossed an empty cup at King Edward, understanding dawned. Wilma gave Edward a sharp look. He shrugged; her eyes widened and shot to one of the empty seats at her table. Wynona had already taken Mr. Gruber by the hand and was leading him to the fourth and final seat at the table Charlee had tried to claim as her own. This of course left Ian alone. Sitting under the butterfly lights with the flame from the tiki torches reflecting in his dark eyes.
    She would have expected him to laugh at the scene. At her. But he didn’t. Ian Carlisle drew a deep breath and let his head fall back to gaze up at a star-studded sky. And Charlee’s heart melted by a tiny increment.
    Above them a sky filled with diamond specks glistened. It was beautiful and under the right circumstances could be wildly romantic. But this wasn’t the right circumstances because what she imagined that sky represented to Ian was a place he could—for possibly the first time in a long time—close his eyes and rest without the fear of waking to mortar shells, combat. War.
    Ian was finding home. She knew this because her brother Isaiah had told her about it when he first returned from Iraq. He’d been there a year and she’d been so happy to have him stateside until he was sent to Afghanistan. The joy had been short-lived. And might have done more harm to her than good. She understood the struggle soldiers go through, at least to some small degree.
    When Ian’s eyes opened, even though she’d moved from her previous spot, his gaze fell straight to her. And there he sat while she stood, and for the briefest of moments something passed between them. What it was to really come home. And what it was to know someone understood.
    Charlee pointed to the seat across from him. “May I?”
    Light danced across his features. “I’d be crushed if you didn’t.”
    His humor lightened the mood. Charlee cocked a hip. “I highly doubt that.”
    Ian’s face split into a wicked grin. “I’m beginning to think you’re going to doubt everything I say.”
    “Until I get to know you, yes.” She lowered herself onto the seat and pretended not to notice Ian’s careful scrutiny as she did. “I’ve learned men aren’t the most trustworthy of beings.” Why had she said that? Charlee pulled her hands through her hair, shaking off the past and all the memories with it.
    “Learned from?”
    Richard , she wanted to say, which really was strange because she never wanted to talk about him to anyone. “I learned from my brothers.”
    “Ah.”
    “The ones who fed me a spoonful of celery salt and told me it was cinnamon sugar, the ones who duct-taped me to an oak tree. The ones who swung me by my arms and legs and dropped me into the river. I could go on, but I think you get the point.”
    “Jeremiah is the oldest, right?” Ian threaded his hands together on his flat stomach.
    She tried not to notice, but her gaze dipped to the spot where his jeans met his shirt. “He’s thirty-one. Isaiah is twenty-nine. Gabriel, twenty-seven. And Caleb is the baby.”
    “Younger than you?”
    “By a year.” The breeze rose and carried the scent of honeysuckle to them. It grew wild along this side of the toolshed. “I suppose I shouldn’t call a man who carries an automatic weapon every day a baby, but he’s still my little brother.”
    At the table behind them King Edward dished