Yours to Keep by Shannon Stacey Page A

immediately, standing next to a tall, good-looking man who was scanning the airport, watching people. A year and a half of civilian life hadn’t taken much of the edge off the soldier.
    Emma hadn’t seen her yet and she took a few minutes to give her granddaughter a good looking over.
    She was thinner, which wasn’t surprising since the girl couldn’t cook worth a darn. Her work was so physical she was burning through her steady diet of take-out and microwave meals. She’d have to put some meat on the girl’s bones while she was there.
    Emma looked so much like her mother at first glance, but it was mostly the hair. In the lines of her nose and mouth and the dark brown of her eyes, Cat could see glimpses of the son and husband she’d lost. As always, she felt the pang of grief like a constant and unwelcome companion, but it was overshadowed by her gratitude for the blessing that was her granddaughter.
    Then Sean’s eyes met hers and he obviously recognized her—no doubt from the photos she sometimes remembered to email from Florida. He touched Emma’s arm and Cat didn’t miss the way she jumped, her cheeks flushing pink.
    Then Emma was running across the lobby and Cat opened her arms for a fierce hug. “Gram!”
    She squeezed Emma, rocking a little, until she caught sight of her future grandson-in-law through the corner of her eye. He looked anxious, shifting his weight from foot to foot while he watched their reunion.
    Cat let go of Emma and turned to him, extending her hand. “You must be Sean.”
    He had a decent grip. She didn’t trust men with weak handshakes. “It’s nice to meet you, Mrs. Shaw.”
    Lovely manners, too. “Please, call me Cat. Being called Mrs. Shaw makes me feel old.”
    He grinned, a naughty grin that probably weakened her granddaughter’s knees. “Anybody can see you’re anything but that…Cat.”
    “I think you and I will get along just fine.”
    “How was your flight?” Emma asked as Sean relieved Cat of her luggage and began herding them toward the exit.
    “Uneventful, which is never a bad thing.”
    When they made their way through the parking lot, the first light drops of rain were falling, so Sean put her luggage in the backseat of the truck and Emma climbed in after it. Cat was impressed when he took her elbow to help her into the passenger seat before closing her door and going around to his own side. He was a nice boy.
    “So you have family around here, Sean?” she asked when they were on the highway, heading north.
    “Yes, ma’am, I do. My aunt and uncle live about fifteen minutes from…home, and I’ve got four cousins and their families nearby.”
    “Oh good. I can’t wait to meet them all.”
    He turned his head and gave her a quick glance before looking back to the road, and she wondered why it would come as a surprise his fiancée’s grandmother would want to meet his family.
    “They’re always pretty busy,” he said, “what with all the kids and everything, but I’ll see what I can do. Maybe a barbeque or something soon.”
    It was a little over an hour’s ride, giving Cat plenty of time to not only listen to Emma’s constant chatter about the house and work, but to feel the anxiety in the truck. Her granddaughter’s voice was a little too chipper. Sean’s fingers kept tightening on the steering wheel, then he’d flex them and relax, but they’d tighten again. She’d almost think they’d had a fight before her arrival, but there wasn’t any anger simmering between them. Just nervousness.
    Cat stopped worrying about them when Sean turned onto the driveway and drove up to the beautiful old house she’d called home since she was a young bride of nineteen. She and John had borrowed down-payment money from his father to buy it when she got pregnant, expecting to fill it with a large and noisy, but loving, family.
    They had no way of knowing at the time Johnny would be their only child or that the two of them would end up spending several years