With one hand, he gripped the steering wheel as if it were a lifeline. With his other hand, he flexed his fingers beneath hers, but Sarah didn’t let go.

“The quilt you donated to the Quilts of Valor Foundation,” he clarified, keeping his gaze toward the road. “I have it. It’s in the duffel bag behind your seat.”

“How…I… Wow.” Bodie was the soldier who’d received her quilt? All the hours she’d put into that quilt, thinking of who it would go to, not once could she have imagined someone like Bodie.

“I came to Pine Hill to say thank you.”

Trying to let what he was saying sink in, Sarah stared at his tense profile. “And you went to work for me instead?”

Still not looking her way, he shrugged. “You needed my help and I owed you.”

“You didn’t owe me anything.” Sarah’s stomach lurched as ugly realization hit. “That’s what all this has been? Repayment for my having donated a quilt? That’s why you’re at Hamilton House? Why you’ve worked so hard?”

He’d helped her out of a sense of obligation. Had that been what everything between them had been about? Even his kiss?

Of course he’d felt obligated.

They’d been sitting beneath mistletoe with her ordering him to kiss her. The whole time he’d been in town, he’d done everything she’d asked of him. She’d thought it was because he cared about her—as a friend, at the very least. But now… He’d played along with the kiss. How could he have not, without embarrassing her in front of the Harveys?

She was embarrassed now.

He met her gaze for a second before returning his focus to the road. “The pattern of stars, the hand-quilting, the time you put into that quilt, the words you wrote in the attached note about life in Pine Hill and thanking me, an unknown soldier, for making that life possible…” His voice held awe. “I don’t think you understand how much your quilt meant to me.”

Bodie had her quilt. The one she’d started prior to Aunt Jean getting sick, the one she’d quilted by hand while sitting at the hospital with her aunt hour after hour. The quilt she’d let dry her tears of sorrow when her aunt had passed.

She’d almost kept that quilt. Instead, she’d reminded herself of why she’d made it, reminded herself that there was someone out there who needed it more than she did. So, instead of keeping it, she’d written a note of all notes, expressing her gratitude for her life and all her blessings, her gratitude for those who made her life in Pine Hill possible.

Bodie had been that someone, that soldier.