Battle for the Soldier's Heart

Because he had caught her in a terrible moment. Running after renegade ponies, her shoe broken, her hair clasp lost, her strap sliding around and her dress stained beyond repair.

If she’d known he wasn’t going to take no for an answer, she would have invited him to the office she was so proud of on the main street of downtown Mason.

Where she could have been in complete control of this reunion!

“What do they call you?”

His voice was deep and sure and sent unwanted shivers down her spine.

Miss Day would have sounded way too churlish, plus she was wobbling on one shoe, and feeling damp and disheveled and not at all like the cool professional woman she wanted him to believe she was.

“Grace.”

“Ah.”

She didn’t like the way he was looking at her, his gaze probing, those deep green eyes feeling as though they were stripping away her maturity and success and exposing the vulnerable and gauche girl she was so startled to find was alive and well within her.

“Graham’s the only one who called me that. Everyone else called me Grace. Even my parents.”

“Graham and me,” he reminded her.

Gracie-Facie, pudding and pie, kissed the boys and made them cry …

On those rare occasions when Rory Adams had noticed her, it had been to tease her mercilessly.

But that boy who had teased—the one with the careless grin, and the wild way—seemed to be gone. Completely.

Why couldn’t her inner child be so cooperative?

“So, how’s life?” he said.

As if he’d just been walking by, and happened upon her. Which she doubted. When she’d talked to him a week ago, she’d told him she didn’t want to see him.

She should have guessed that would not have changed about him. He was not a man who had had to accept no for an answer very often. Especially not from those of the female persuasion. She should have guessed he would not accept it from her.

“The same as when I talked to you a week ago,” Grace said stubbornly. “Fabulous.”

This was not true. In fact, nothing could be further from the truth.

“Except for the ponies,” he commented dryly, but he she had a feeling he wasn’t buying it, and not just because of the ponies. Not for a second.

Couldn’t he see that her dress was perfectly cut fine linen? That the shoe he had handed her was an expensive designer shoe? Couldn’t he see that she was all grown up and that she didn’t need any help from big, strong him to get her through life’s hurdles?

Of which, at the moment, she had more than her fair share.

“Fabulous,” she repeated, tightly.

“You look worried,” he said after a moment.

And then he did the darndest thing. He took his thumb, and ever so gently pressed it into her forehead.

Where she knew the worry lines had been building like storm clouds for a whole week!

Ever since Serenity had arrived with her entourage. Ponies. Tucker.

There was a momentary sensation of bliss: a momentary desire to lean into that thumb and all it offered. Someone to lean on. Someone to talk to. Someone to trust.

Hopeless illusions that she, of all people, should have left far behind her. The end of her engagement really should have been the last straw.

Had been the last straw, Grace told herself firmly. Her business was everything now. Everything. She had laid herself out on the altar of romantic love—and had been run through by love’s caprice—for the last time.

She was not leaving herself open to hurt anymore. She had made that vow when her fiancé of two years, Harold, had bade her adieu. Vowed it.

And then, as if to test that vow, Serenity had come.

And now Rory was here. This man appearing in her life, her entertaining the notion it would be nice to hear his opinion about Serenity—or feel his whiskers scrape her face—those were tests of her resolve.

When he had phoned, she had contemplated asking him a few questions, but in the end she had decided not to.

And the deep cynicism that permeated his expression should only confirm how right she had been in that decision.

Because he could lay her hope to rest. Dash it completely before it was even fully formed.

Hope was such a fragile thing for her.

Hope was probably even more dangerous to her than love. But still, not to hope for anything at all would be a form of death, wouldn’t it?

She was not about to trust her hope to someone like him. And yet, there it was—the temptation just to tell him, to see what he thought.

Not to be so damned alone.

Recognizing the utter folly of these thoughts, Grace slapped his thumb down from her forehead. “I’m not worried.”

No sense giving in to the temptation to share confidences, to tell him she’d spent years building up her business. One incident like this, and it could all crumble, word spreading like wildfire that she was unprofessional, that she’d had a disaster.

Thank goodness the party had been over, the last of the pint-size revelers being packed into their upscale minivans and SUVs when the ponies had made their break for it. Hopefully the park people—or the press—wouldn’t come along before she got this cleared up.

But that was only the immediate problem, anyway, although all her problems were related at the moment.

“Didn’t the ponies come with a pony person?” he asked.

Ah, that was the other problem. The pony person was exactly the secret she wanted to keep.

“The pony person is, um, incapacitated. Not your problem,” she said, flashing him a smile that made him frown. She had been aiming for a smile that said, This? Just a temporary glitch. Nothing I can’t handle.

And she had obviously missed that smile by a long shot. Grace hoped he didn’t catch her anxious glance toward the parking lot.

Thankfully, she’d had the trailer the ponies had arrived in moved way across the parking lot into the deep shade of the cottonwoods on the other side. She had not wanted the partygoers to bump right into it in its decrepit condition.

“Maybe we’ll meet again under different circumstances,” she said, hoping he would take the hint and leave.

But he did not have the look of a man who responded to subtlety, and he had caught her glance toward the parking lot. Now he was looking past her. She moved in front of him, trying to block his view, but it was no use. He looked over her head, easily.

Not a single person at the party had mentioned the trailer. It was as if they hadn’t seen it at all.

But then, most people weren’t like him.

And Rory Adams had become a man who saw everything, who missed absolutely nothing.

Of course, she knew from the few things Graham had said when he came home on leave that these men led lives that depended on their ability to be observant of their surroundings, every nuance of detail, every vehicle, every person, every obstacle.

Rory stepped around her, and headed right toward where the ramshackle horse trailer was. It was painted a shade of copper that almost hid the rust eating away at it around the wheel wells.

On the side, in fading circus letters, three feet high, it said, Serenity’s Wild Ride.

He looked over his shoulder at Grace, his eyes narrow. “What’s she doing here?”

He recognized the trailer. He knew Serenity. Was it what Grace feared? Or what she hoped?

CHAPTER TWO

“YOU know her,” Grace said, scrambling to keep up with him on her one shoe. “You know Serenity.”

She stopped and picked up the other on her way. Since one had a heel and the other didn’t, she took them both off and dangled them from her fingertips.

“A chance encounter a long, long time ago.” Rory glanced back at her, hesitated, and then waited. “Watch for pony poo.”

“Oh!” Life was so unfair. Well, that was hardly a newsflash. But, if Grace had to see Rory Adams, wouldn’t it have been nice if she had been sipping a glass of white wine and looking entirely unflappable, rather than chasing after him in bare feet, avoiding poo?

“What’s she doing here, Gracie?”

She wanted to remind him she didn’t want to be called Gracie, but something about the way Rory had stopped and was looking down at her made her feel very flustered.

The weak compulsion to share the burden won.

“She came by the office a week ago.”

“She knew where your office was,” he said flatly.

“I’m in the phone book. She said she knew Graham.”

Grace did not miss how his eyes narrowed at that.

“She knew I had an event company.”

“So, she’s done some homework.”

“You don’t need to make it sound like she’s running a sting, and she found an easy mark.”

He raised an eyebrow. It said exactly.

“She just wondered if I could give her some work. She had ponies, I had an upcoming birthday party. It seemed like it might be win-win.”

“What aren’t you telling me?”

Hell’s bells. She did not like it that he could see through her that easily. It meant she had to avoid looking at his lips.

Naturally, as soon as she told herself not to look at his lips, she did just that. Why did men like him have this kind of seductive power over people? Female people anyway!

“What makes you think I’m not telling you something?” she hedged.

“I was Graham’s best friend for ten years and you refused to see me, but a complete stranger shows up who claims a passing acquaintance to your brother and you’re forming a business partnership with her?”

“I rented her ponies for an afternoon. That’s hardly a business partnership.”

“It’s not ‘I can’t see why we need to talk,’ either.”

Something crossed his face.

“I hurt your feelings,” Grace said, stunned.

For a moment, he looked stunned, too. Then a shield came down over his eyes, making them seem a darker shade of emerald than they had before. A little smile tickled the sinfully sensuous curve of his mouth. His expression was not exactly amusement, and not exactly scorn. More a kind of deprecating self-knowledge.

“Gracie, honey—”

Gracie wasn’t bad enough? Now he had to add honey to it?

“I don’t have feelings for you to hurt.”

That was what he wanted for her to believe. And she saw it was entirely possible that he believed that himself. But she didn’t.

And suddenly Rory Adams was more dangerous to her than ever. Because he wasn’t just handsome. He wasn’t just the first man she’d ever had a crush on. He wasn’t just her brother’s best friend and fellow adventurer.

Because just before that shield had come down in his eyes, Grace was sure she had caught a glimpse of someone who had lost their way, someone who relied totally on himself, someone lonely beyond what she had ever known that word to mean.

“There was a complication,” she admitted slowly. “That’s why I agreed to have her provide ponies for the party.”

“The thing about a woman like Serenity?”

She hated the way he said that, as if he knew way too much about women in general and women like Serenity in particular.

“What kind of woman is Serenity?” Grace demanded sweetly, though the kind of woman Serenity was was terribly obvious, even to Grace. Serenity was one of those women who had lived hard and lived wild, and it was all catching up with her.

The line around Rory’s lip tightened as he decided what to say. “She’s the kind who used to own the party,” he said. “And then the party owned her.”

Grace suspected that he had sugarcoated what he really wanted to say, but what he had said was harsh enough, and it was said with such a lack of sympathy that the moment of unwanted—and weakening sympathy she had felt for him—evaporated.

Thank God.

“And what about women like Serenity?” she said, yanking her strap up one more time.

“There’s always a complication.”

Then he strode over to the horse trailer, and Gracie could not help but notice he was all soldier now, totally focused, totally take-charge and totally no-nonsense.

It felt like a terrible weakness on her part that she was somewhat relieved both by the fact his armor was back up and by the fact he was taking charge.

So she had to say, “I can handle this.”

He snorted, glanced meaningfully at the pony in the wading pool, trampling what was left of the soggy Happy Birthday banner, and said, “Sure you can, Gracie.”

I hurt your feelings. Really, Gracie Day couldn’t have picked a more annoying thing to say to him.

Feelings? Weren’t those the pesky things that he’d managed to outrun his whole life? Starting with a less than stellar childhood—no ponies at birthday parties, for sure—and ending up in a profession where to feel anything too long or too intensely would have meant he couldn’t do his job.

No, Rory Adams was a man ideally suited for soldiering. His early life had prepared him for hardship. The little bit of idealism that he had managed to escape his childhood with had soon departed, too.

So, Rory Adams had hated the look in Gracie’s eyes, just now, doe-soft, as if she could see right through him.

To some secret longing.

To have what she and Graham had had. Their house the one on the block that everyone flocked to, and not just because there were always freshly baked chocolate chip cookies, either. There was something there. That house was full of laughter. And love. Parents who actually made rules and had dinner on the table at a certain time.

Rory remembered calling Graham once about a party. And Graham saying, “Nah, I’m going fishing with my dad.”

A family that enjoyed being together. That had been a novelty in Rory Adam’s world.

Is that what he’d wanted when he’d called her? Had it been about him and not about her—or his obligation to Graham—at all?

No, he reminded himself. He’d been relieved by her rejection.

Rory shrugged off the thoughts, annoyed with himself. He was not accustomed to questioning himself or his motives. Except for the event that haunted his dreams, he moved through life with the supreme confidence of the warrior he was. The qualities that had made him an exceptional warrior also made him good at business.

So it flustered him beyond reason that a single glance from her had shaken something deep, deep within him.

He drew in a long breath, steadying himself, clearing away distractions, focusing on what needed to be done.

Poking out from underneath the horse trailer, near the back bumper, was one very tiny, suede, purple cowboy boot, with a fake spur attached.

He nudged at the boot with his shoe and then a little harder when there was no response. The boot moved away.

Sighing, he bent down and tugged. And this time he met some real resistance.

He felt under the trailer, found the other boot and pulled. Out came long, naked legs, and then short denim shorts, frayed at the cuffs, and then a bare belly, and then a sequined pop top with fringes. And then the face of an angel—if it weren’t for the circles of black mascara under her eyes—and blond curls topped with a pink cowboy hat.

He studied her for a moment. Despite her prettiness, she was aging badly. He and Graham had partied—hard—with her and her rodeo crowd. They’d been a rowdy, rough bunch. It had been a brief interlude—a few crazy days before their unit had mustered out the very first time.

That made it eight years ago, about the same amount of time since he had seen Gracie in her braces.

But whereas Grace had come into herself, Serenity had deteriorated badly. She must have been in her twenties at that first encounter, which meant she was way too old now to be wearing short shorts and a pink cowboy hat. She was on the scary side of skinny, her hair had been bleached once too often, and she was definitely drunk.

Well, that part was the same.

“Leave me alone,” the black-eyed angel mumbled, swinging at air.

“Yes, leave her alone,” Gracie said. “Really, there’s nothing here I can’t handle.”

He ignored them both.

“Look, Rory, you just don’t understand the delicate nuances of this situation.”

“Uh-huh,” he said, but he was pretty sure he got the “delicate nuances” just fine. Serenity had probably come across the obituary for Graham somewhere, and zeroed in on the grieving sister.

It made him mad, but one thing that the military had been really good at was training him to channel aggression, control it, unleash it only as a last resort.

So he satisfied himself with giving Gracie a sour look that let her know he was not impressed with how she had handled this so far.

And he was rewarded with a look that had nothing doe-soft about it.

“There’s nothing here I can’t handle,” she said, again.

“Given that this woman is bad, bad news and her ponies are devouring Mason’s most prime real estate, you might want to consider the possibility you are in over your head.”

Her mouth worked, but she didn’t say anything. He could tell that Gracie had suspected Serenity was exactly what he said. Bad news.

And she had suspected that she was in over her head.

But there was something else, too, something glittering at the back of her eyes that gave him pause.

For some reason she wanted Serenity here.

What did Serenity have to offer that Grace had rejected from him?

Sheesh. His damn feelings were hurt. That was a stunner. A weakness about himself that he could have lived quite happily not knowing he had!

“Hey,” he reached down and took Serenity’s shoulder. “Wake up, get your ponies and clear out.”

The attack came from the side. At first, confused, Rory thought it was Grace who had hurled herself at him, nearly pushed him over.

He stumbled a step sideways, straightened and felt a warrior’s embarrassment at not even having seen the attacker coming, at having been caught off guard.

It made it worse, not better, that his attacker was pint-size.

The attacker aimed a hard kick with cowboy-boot-clad feet at Rory’s shin. Still slightly off guard, Rory shot out his arm and held the child at arm’s length. The kick missed but, undeterred, the kid tried again.

A boy. Rory had not been around children much, so he didn’t know how old. Seven? Eight? Maybe nine?

Despite his size, the boy had the slouch and confidence of a professional wrangler. And he was dressed like one, too. His jeans had holes in both knees, his denim shirt had been washed white. A stained cowboy hat was pulled low over his brow. It was more than obvious this child had not been at the upscale birthday party that had just ended.

“Don’t you ever touch my mama,” he said, glaring up at Rory, not the least intimidated by the fact his opponent was taller than him by a good three feet and outweighed him by about a hundred and fifty pounds.

He was the kind of kid—spunky, undernourished, defiant—that you could care about.

If you hadn’t successfully killed the part of yourself that cared about such things. Rory had seen lots of kids like this: chocolate-brown eyes, white, white smiles, spunk, and he’d learned quickly you couldn’t allow yourself to care. The world was too full of tragedy. It could overwhelm you if you let it.

Rory let go of the boy, backed away, hands held up in surrender. “Hey, I was just trying to rouse her so she could catch her ponies.”

“I’ll look after the ponies,” the boy said fiercely.

“It’s okay, Tucker,” Gracie said, and put a hand on the boy’s narrow shoulders. “Nobody’s going to hurt your mother.”

The boy flinched out from her touch and glared out at her from under the battered rim of his straw cowboy hat with such naked dislike that Rory saw Gracie suck in her breath.

Rory looked at the boy more closely.

And then Rory looked at Gracie’s face.

She was clearly struggling to hide everything from him, and she was just as clearly a person who had never learned to keep her distance from caring. Her tenderness toward that boy was bald in her face. And so was the hope.

But she hid nothing at all.

Rory Adams was a man who had lived by his instincts, by his ability to distance himself from emotion. He had survived because of his ability to be observant, to see what others might overlook.

Rory looked back and forth between the boy and Grace, and he saw immediately what the complication was.

He studied the boy—Tucker—hard.

“How old are you?”

Grace gasped, seeing how quickly he had seen the possibility.

The boy did not look like Graham. But he certainly looked like Grace had looked just a few years older than this: freckle-faced and auburn hair.

A million kids looked like that.

For a moment, Rory thought the boy wasn’t going to answer him at all.

From Serenity, a moan, and then, “Come on, Tuck, tell the man how old you are.”

“I’m seven,” he said, reluctance and belligerence mixed in equal parts.

So, there it was. A little quick math and the complication became a little more complicated, a little more loaded with possibility. And Grace was clinging to that possibility like a sailor to a raft in shark-infested waters.

Serenity crawled back under the truck.

“I need to talk to you,” he said, grimly, to Grace. He pointed at the boy. “And you need to go catch those ponies.”

“You’re not the boss over me,” Tucker said.

The flash in his eyes and the tilt of his chin were identical to those of the woman beside him.

And the defiance was likable, if you were open to that kind of thing. Which, Rory reminded himself, he wasn’t.

“You’re the one who said you’d look after the ponies,” Rory reminded him. Tucker left, making it clear with one black backward glance it was his choice to go.

When he was gone, Rory turned his full attention to Gracie, whose expression clearly said he was not the boss over her, either.

“Did Serenity tell you that kid was Graham’s?”

“Don’t call him that kid! His name is Tucker.”

“Okay,” he said, feeling how forced his patience was, “did she tell you Tucker was Graham’s?”

“No.” That very recognizable tilt of chin.

“Did she insinuate it?”

“No. I had them over for dinner the other night. She never said a word about Graham and Tucker. Not one word.”

“You had them over for dinner? At your house?”

The you’re-not-the-boss-over-me expression deepened. Rory had to fight an urge to shake her. All those years of discipline being tried by a hundred-and-ten-pound woman!

“Why wouldn’t I have them over for dinner?”

Because it’s akin to throwing a bucket of fish guts to seagulls. They’ll be back. He said nothing.

“I actually enjoyed it. She’s had a very tough life, but she’s very interesting.”

“You don’t know anything about her!”

Her chin was tilting stubbornly.

“You can’t save the whole world, Gracie.”

“No? Isn’t that what you and Graham were so fired up to do?”

He let that bounce off him, like a fighter who had only been nudged by a blow that could have killed had it landed.

His voice cold, he said, “That’s precisely why I know it can’t be done.”

Instead of having the good sense to see what he was trying to tell her—that he was hard and cold and mean—that soft look was in her eyes again.

It made him wonder if maybe, just maybe, if she couldn’t save the whole world, if she could save one person.

And if that person was him.

The thought stunned him. It had never occurred to him he needed to be saved. From what?

“You want desperately for that boy to be Graham’s,” he said softly.

“Don’t you? Don’t you want some part of Graham to go on?”

He heard the desperation, the pure emotion, and knew he could not rely on her to make any rational decisions.

“Look, the things that made Graham who he was are not exactly purely genetic. Those things are the result of how the two of you were raised.”