Battle for the Soldier's Heart (6 page)

Was it just about his instincts being muddied? Or was part of it about his family’s history with alcohol, trying to divorce himself from that completely?

And he was acutely aware there was already something about being with her that had impaired his judgment.

He didn’t talk about his family,
ever,
and he tried not to think about them. What had made him bring it up? Just the fact she already knew? The fact she had grown up just down the street from the ongoing circus that had been his family life?

No. More than that.

He had trusted her with something about himself he did not trust everyone with.

“What happened to your fiancé?” he asked. For a guy who prided himself on his instincts, it was probably the wrong question. The door of camaraderie that had been opening between them snapped shut.

Or maybe that was exactly what he wanted to happen.

“What do you know about my fiancé?” she asked warily.

“Graham talked about your engagement when it happened. He didn’t much care for, um, Herbert.”

“Harold.”

“So, what happened?”

She was so silent that for a moment he thought she wasn’t going to tell him. She looked out at the lake, where children were playing on a float. Pushing each other off it, their splashing and laughter shivering on the air.

But when she looked back at him, he saw she was struggling to contain her emotion.

He was not good with emotion.

He wished he hadn’t opened this kettle of fish. That door of camaraderie that had squeaked shut, was suddenly flung open, wider than before.

“He left me,” she said bravely, tilting her chin up as if she didn’t care. Her eyes told a completely different story, and he was aware he was seeing Gracie at her most real and her most raw.

And that she was trusting him with that.

Just as he had trusted her.

He waited.

“He left me because he couldn’t stand the grief. He said it was time to get over it. He said it was time to be who I was before.”

Rory felt a ripple of pure fury that he was very careful not to show her. In fact, his voice was very measured when he spoke. “Gracie?”

She looked at her hands.

“He was wrong. You never get over it. You’re never who you were before.”

She looked up at him, and the gratitude in her eyes was so intense it shook him. But he understood then, that the death of Graham was a bond between them. Unbreakable. They, alone, understood what it was to lose a man like that, how it changed the world forever for the worse.

“I hope I never meet old Herbert,” he said, getting the name wrong deliberately, letting her know the name was not important. The character of a man was important.

“Why is that?” she asked.

“Because I won’t be responsible for what happens next.”

He thought she would reprimand him for his insinuated violence. Maybe he even hoped for it: to close that open door again. That something about showing her this little flash of who he
really
was, how quickly he could go to the dark side, would frighten her just a little bit.

He was not sure he was ready for her trust.

Yes, she could rely on him to be her go-to guy; no, she could not rely on him to handle things her way, which would be all sweetness and light.

He was aware, again, of having darkness in him that could snuff her light.

But instead of her seeing that, instead of her being properly wary of him, she said, ever so softly, “Thank you.”

Still, the intensity of that moment must have shaken her nearly as badly as it shook him: how fiercely protective he felt of her, how joined to her.

Grace changed the subject abruptly. “Tell me about your business, and what you’d like to do for Warrior Down.”

Or maybe it was the most natural of segues, thoughts of her brother turning to ways that they could both honor his memory.

Rory was more an action guy than a talker, so it surprised him how easily he opened up to her.

“When I first enlisted, my brother, Sam, was just getting out of high school. He was a really talented artist and he wanted to get into graphics. I didn’t have much to spend my money on, so I invested in him. In his education, later in his idea for a company.

“He got his big break doing graphics on a car for Saul Bellissimo. Do you know that name?”

“A race-car driver?” she ventured.

“
The
race-car driver of the past few years. Anyway, he did Saul’s car, and that got him all kinds of other jobs and publicity. Sam just kept pushing the envelope, first graphic wraps for race cars, then he got the contract to do some buses.

“He’s an artist, and to everyone’s surprise I’m good at business.”

“I’m not surprised,” she said. “Tell me more.”

It was another moment where something shivered along Rory’s spine. It was as if Grace saw things in him that others didn’t. And her interest in him was genuine. He should not allow himself to be flattered, but he did.

“Because of good access to the internet most of the time, I could even keep involved while I was overseas. When I decided to leave the service, I was a little astonished to find myself the CEO of a pretty viable company. In the past couple of months we completed our first contract for an airline company, graphic-wrapping their planes. In the next month or so, we’re going to do our first graphic wrap on a building.”

“A building?” she said. “Where?”

“Melbourne, Australia.”

“My goodness, Rory, you’re an international mogul!”

He felt the danger zone he was in. Boy from the wrong side of the tracks basking in the admiration of the wholesome girl from next door.

Enjoying her admiration in no way meant it was going any further.

He scrambled to keep it impersonal. “It all puts us in a pretty good position to sponsor something for
Warrior Down.”

“What did you have in mind?”

“I went on the internet and looked at your outline for the event. It sounds great. Dinner. Dance. Silent auction, everything set up here on the edge of the lake. I thought we might contribute something to the silent auction.”

“Like?”

“What if we thought outside the box? Something like ‘A Perfect Day.’ A helicopter ride to the top of a mountain for a champagne lunch, something like that? Or maybe a ride in Saul’s car, a turn or two around the track. Or maybe both.”

“That’s fantastic.”

It was wrong to be so darned pleased that she was so darned pleased. It was wrong to want to bask in her admiration all afternoon. Still, a man was allowed a few weaknesses, wasn’t he?

“What’s your perfect day?” he asked her. “Because we could do anything—an elephant ride in Thailand, bungee-jumping… Literally if you can think of it, we can do it.”

Now he was just showing off, plain and simple. He thought he’d better buy Bridey some flowers tomorrow, since she’d be the one executing whatever scheme they came up with.

“Oh.” Grace looked flustered. “I thought I was a bit of an expert on perfect days, but my mind doesn’t even begin to work like that. Elephants in Thailand?”

“Just close your eyes, then, and tell me what comes. Your perfect day.”

And suddenly he wanted to know very, very badly, because it seemed like it would tell him secret things about her.

“Nothing so grand as elephants or helicopters,” she said tentatively, not closing her eyes, but taking a fortifying sip of her wine before she bared her soul to him. She gazed out at the water, and then said, “You see those kids playing over there? Swimming out to the float and jumping in the water? That looks darn near perfect to me.”

It had become quite hot in the last hour. Her blouse was sticking to her in the nicest places, and the skirt, which was about the most flattering straitlaced outfit he had ever seen, seemed to be causing her grief. He probably should not have suggested lunch outside.

He’d given her a chance to choose anything, and she had chosen that? It did tell him just about everything about her.

Except for her one Ferrari fantasy, she was just as she seemed. Wholesome. Without airs. Why did that seem kind of refreshing instead of just boring?

“That’s too easy for a perfect day,” he chided her. “We could have that today.”

“I’ve already had days like that,” she said, a little wistfully. “We used to have the cottage on Mara Lake. Not the multimillion-dollar kind you see today. A real cottage—ramshackle, falling down, no power, an outhouse. And all I remember there are perfect endless summer days.”

“I remember your family heading out to that cottage, your station wagon packed to the roof.” He did not say anything about that funny little twist of envy he would feel when he watched them depart, the longing to be part of something like that.

And, oddly, at the same time he had longed for it, he had refused every invitation Graham had offered him to join them there.

He’d felt as if he had to resist ever tasting something he knew he could not have.

People from perfect families matched up with other people from perfect families. He had known that before he’d gone away to war and become even more hard and more cynical than he had been back then, and that had been plenty hard and cynical for a kid.

It suddenly seemed that this was a demon he needed to face: punch a hole in that illusion of a perfect life or a perfect day.

“Let’s have it today,” he said. “We’ll put on some swimsuits and jump in the lake before we go home.”

And he would find the wholesomeness of it hokey and boring, and somehow break free of the spell she was weaving around him.

“No. It’s perfectly all right. I’ve already had a perfect day. Thank you for the car. It really was an incredibly sweet thing to do.”

“Ah, I’m a sweet guy,” he said, and wagged his eyebrows at her fiendishly.

But she didn’t buy it. “What
do
you think you are?”

He could distract her with charm. Why ruin a light moment? But something overtook him, had been overtaking him ever since he remembered the perfect Day family leaving for their cottage, had been overtaking him ever since he had seen her again herding the damn ponies.

It was as though he was driven to show her what was real about him, driven to see if she could handle it.

It was the perfect time to tell her how he had failed her brother, but somehow he was not ready for that.

“Who I really am? Cynical. Dark. Aggressive when the situation calls for it.”

He hated that he had said that. It made him feel as vulnerable as if he had told her the whole truth about her brother. He had exposed a wound to her that he had succeeded in hiding from the whole world. And so he finished with just a touch of sarcasm, “In other words, Gracie, not your type. At all.”

As he had hoped, she was insulted. “Whoever said you were my type?” she said with a bit of heat.

“No one. Just to keep you from getting ideas.”

“I would not ever get an idea about you!”

“Great. Let’s go swimming before you sweat to death in the skirt you didn’t put on for me.”

“I don’t have a bathing suit.” Her voice was stiff with indignation. So, she
had
picked out that delectable, sexy and too warm suit just for him.

“Is that wool?” he said leaning over the table to get a better look. It was sticking to her, and she tugged it away.

“Very lightweight wool,” she said, annoyed. “We should leave now.”

“We should go swimming. What are you afraid of?”

“I’m not afraid of anything! I just don’t happen to carry a bathing suit in my purse. Though I’m sure
your type
would.”

“And what is my type, Gracie?”

“Bimbo,” she said, without any hesitation at all.

He lifted his water glass to her. “Touché.”

She gulped back the rest of her wine. Her cheeks had pretty red spots on them. He was right. One glass and she was practically soused.

She tossed the glossy wave of auburn hair that he had been dumb enough to set free, looked him straight in the face and said, “There are all kinds of stores here at the resort. I guess I could find a bathing suit.”

He could tell it was not in her plan for the day, and that it did not come naturally to her to be spontaneous.

And maybe spontaneity between them had some dangerous overtones, given the startling intensity that had unfolded between them.

She wanted to move away from it.

And so did he.

And at the same time, he wanted to see if he could be immune to her. If he could burst the myth that he had always had surrounding her family.

He supposed she’d buy a one-piece suit, about as sexy as the uniforms of the East German girls’ swim team, pre-Wall collapse.

And even though that was exactly what he wanted, he goaded her.

“When you buy that bathing suit? Be the girl in the red Ferrari,” he suggested, “not an old stick-in-the mud.”

Instead of looking offended, she looked suddenly sad. “Graham used to accuse me of that.”

“I know,” he said softly. “Break loose, Gracie.”

And then he wondered what the hell he was playing with, and why. He looked after the check, and they separated in search of swimwear. He purchased a pair of trunks from one of the hotel stores in about two seconds, left them on, and went and sat on a bench where she would see him when she came out of the store she was in.

He had turned off his phone just before picking Grace up this morning, and now he turned it back on and sorted through his incoming messages.

Only one interested him. From Slim McKenzie, the cowboy who had accompanied Serenity home.

Rory glanced toward the store. Through a plate-glass window he could see Gracie holding up a very Gracie bathing suit. It probably had a matching bathing cap with a flower over one ear.

He listened to Slim’s message and taking one more glance at the window to make sure Gracie would not materialize while he was in the middle of the call, he called back.

“Sorry, Mr. Adams. The kid tossed the soda can out the window before I could grab it.”

“Never heard of littering?” Rory asked.

There was a pause. “Littering? I think that kid would laugh at the concept that that was a bad thing to do. He’s pretty streetwise. Anyway, they were camped in an area off Bixby Road about six kilometers this side of
Grumbly. The property was clearly marked No Trespassing. I don’t think they had permission to be there. There was a creek to water the horses, but I didn’t see much in the way of grass, and I didn’t see any hay.”