Heroes In Uniform (139 page)

—The End—

About the Author

Caridad Pineiro

NY Times
and
USA Today
Bestseller Caridad Pineiro is a Jersey Girl who just wants to write, travel, and spend more time with family and friends. Caridad is the author of nearly 50 novels/novellas and loves romance novels, super heroes, TV and cooking. Caridad writes dark and sexy romantic suspense and paranormal romances for those who live to love on the edge. Her sweet, but still naughty side, Charity Pineiro, writes contemporary romances packed with emotion and humor. For more information on Caridad/Charity, please visit
www.caridad.com
or
www.rebornvampirenovels.com
. You can also find Caridad/Charity on:

Twitter at
@caridadpineiro

Facebook at
www.facebook.com/Caridad.Author

Pinterest at
pinterest.com/caridadpineiro

Goodreads at
www.goodreads.com/Caridad_Pineiro

Caridad also sends out a newsletter to her friends! To subscribe, please visit
CaridadNews
.

Additional Books by Caridad Pineiro

STRONGER THAN SIN

TAKE A CHANCE
Military Romance Box Set

JERSEY GIRLS
Contemporary Romance Box Set

AT THE HEART’S COMMAND

A Place Called Home, Book 2

by Patricia McLinn

At The Heart’s Command: Chapter One

“What the hell is this, Grif?”

Colonel John Griffin Junior looked up just in time to see the bear-like figure of Brigadier General William Pulaski slap a sheaf of papers on the desk of his Pentagon office.

“That appears to be my request to take my accumulated leave, starting as soon as possible, sir.”

“You’re damned right that’s what it is! What I want to know is
why
? Why in Sam Hill would an officer who’s pegged to join the White House liaison team next month request this leave?”

A rumbling bass would have fit Pulaski’s build. Instead nature had doled out a high, light voice. He made up for the lack of lower notes with volume. Plenty of volume.

“And not just a regular leave – an
extended
leave since we both know you’ve been storing up time like a squirrel expectin’ winter!”

Grif could try to tell the general his reasons, but he hadn’t reached the rank of colonel by being suicidal.

“I have the time, sir,” he said without emotion. “I’d like to take it now.”

General Pulaski gave him a long look that Grif returned. The older man broke the stare, sighed, then dragged the visitor’s chair close, so the desk seemed as much his as Grif’s, and spoke in – for him – a softer voice.

“As long as I’ve known you, Grif, you’ve taken tough assignments, but
smart
tough assignments. Always advancing. No ties, no entanglements. Just like your father.”

Grif’s hold tightened on the pen he’d been using to sign letters. He said nothing.

“You have a promising future – hell, more than promising.” The general rubbed both hands across his bald skull. “But with this leave... What about after you’ve used up this time? White House liaison isn’t going to stay open waiting for you, you know.”

Grif met the dark eyes boring into him. “Then I’ll take the next tough assignment available.”

“If time to think this over might make you change your mind...”

“I’m not going to change my mind, sir.” Grif accepted that this might not be the right decision – certainly it wasn’t for his Army career, and it also might not be right for reasons that had nothing to do with the army – but he was sticking to it.

Pulaski glared. “Take your damned leave, then. I hope there’s plenty of wine, women and song every damned night, because you might as well have a good time before you put your career in the – ”

“Thank you, sir.”

The general abruptly rose and strode out, followed by a fading trail of profanities.

Grif wondered idly how many degrees hotter those profanities would have turned if the general had known that instead of wine, women and song, there would be an eight-year-old boy, a ten-year-old girl and one woman.

None of whom could ever be his.

“Lieutenant Shaw,” Grif called out the door Pulaski hadn’t bothered to close. “The general forgot some papers on my desk. Take them to him. And be sure they don’t go astray.”

* * *

Ellyn Sinclair straightened the final pillowcase, took a clothespin out of her mouth, clipped it over fabric and line, then bent for the emptied basket. The Wyoming breeze would dry this laundry fast and for free. Up here behind Ridge House the breeze didn’t stir dust, which made the climb worthwhile. She scanned the sheets flapping peacefully.

Even if her dryer fund wasn’t needed to fix the car, she wouldn’t have used a dryer on such a perfect day, an oasis of warmth in Wyoming’s unpredictable April. Although it
would
be nice to have the option. Of course it would be nice to have a number of other things, too.

Ellyn raised her free hand and let the breeze float clean, crisp cloth against her palm. There was one worry she didn’t have – that she’d overcompensate for her children losing their father by spoiling them with material things. Although she
would
make it up to them. With the most secure, loving home she could fashion. Standing on her own two feet.

Sometimes in the gray hours before dawn, she would admit she hadn’t totally banished worries about such matters as Meg and Ben bearing permanent emotional scars. But more often she reminded herself of one particularly pithy lecture from Kendra, who as both neighbor and friend, had pointed out the danger of self-fulfilling prophecies, expounded on the resilience of the human spirit in general and of Ellyn’s children in particular, and wrapped up by extolling the effective double-whammy of love and common sense.

That prescription had certainly made these past six months much better than the previous six. Although...
Had
Ben been subdued? That question had popped into her mind after the kids went to bed last night and had intruded several times this morning at work, while laying out ads for
The Far Hills Banner
. She’d watch him more closely for that tonight.

Ellyn pivoted to start down from the height that gave Ridge House its name. But she paused at the sight below of an unfamiliar sedan in the turnaround area beside the house. Now and then strangers left the highway thinking the ranch entrance was a county road. But they usually stopped at Kendra and Daniel’s place, rarely getting this deep into Far Hills land before realizing their mistake.

She shaded her eyes, watching a man’s erect figure emerge from the car, straighten and turn. The dark-haired man looked up toward her. She could almost imagine ...

Her heart lurched against her ribs, hard enough, it seemed, to leave a bruise. At least on the inside.

“Grif?” It came out a whisper. She swallowed and stared, letting her eyes be sure of what some other sense already knew, before calling, “Grif!”

He smiled and raised his hand.

She started straight down the hillside, not bothering with the deteriorating path, and letting the slope hurry her steps.

A scene from the library DVD of
Gone With the Wind
she and the kids watched recently sprang into her mind. The moment when Melanie spots a tattered, injured soldier returning from war –
her
soldier – and, half stumbling, runs to him. Laughing and crying, she runs to meet her man.

The straight-backed figure before Ellyn was definitely a soldier – even in jeans and deep green knit shirt instead of a uniform, that was obvious in the way he held himself as he climbed toward her. But she wasn’t Melanie, and Grif wasn’t her man.

Because you have never known how to make a man yours. Not even your husband.

Before the familiar voice in her head echoed to silence Ellyn leaned back, slowing her descent, although her heart still stumbled. Halfway down, she stopped as Grif closed the gap to arm’s length.

“Hello, Ellyn.”

“Grif. I can’t – this is unbelievable. What are you –? Marti and Kendra must be ecstatic. I just – ”

Words weren’t working. She reached out to hug him the way she had a thousand times in the years he’d been such an important part of their family, when she and Meg and Ben and Dale had
been
a family. Only at the last second did she remember that the laundry basket, empty except for a bag of clothespins, was still tucked on her hip. That must have been why their hug felt so awkward.

Or maybe what intruded on their friendly embrace was the separation of the past fifteen months after years of almost daily contact.

She stepped back. He gave her space, but his arms lingered around her. She gained a few more inches of height as she backed up the hill, and his arms dropped to his side.

“You look great, Ellyn.”

She didn’t look anywhere close to great. She wore a T-shirt that had shrunk, topped by one of Dale’s old flannel shirts, which was big enough for the tail to flap around thighs covered in leggings bearing proof of painting Meg’s room yellow. She had no makeup on and her hair was a curling mess, as usual. But she’d learned long ago not to dispute polite compliments – acknowledging them with a quick smile, then plowing ahead was her strategy.

“You, too. A bit of gray, I see. Very distinguished.” With teasing fingertips already touching the silver strands filtering into the thick, dark hair at his temple, she saw the lines around his eyes deepen, as if he’d tensed. She dropped her hand. “It’s longer than you used to let it get. Relaxing military discipline these days?”

“Missed a trim getting things squared away to leave.”

She nodded, as if any of this mattered.

In the past fifteen months, she’d wondered many times why Grif had disappeared from their lives, and she’d wondered when she would see him again. She had never let herself think about what the reunion would be like. If she had, it would not have been anything like this. Where was their old, easy camaraderie? Could a year’s absence kill a friendship that had survived decades?

She pushed out more words, hoping she would stumble across the right ones. “Grif, I can’t believe this. After all the times Marti’s asked you to come visit, you’re really here. What persuaded you to finally come back to Far Hills?”

“You.”

She blinked. Her mind repeated the single word, trying to grasp what he meant. Before she could form a response, he was continuing.

“You and the kids. I have some leave...” His voice, which nature had roughened with a slight raspiness, dropped to that register that said he was worried. His direct eyes searched her face. “I wish I could have been here for the funeral last year.”

He might be ready to jump into those deep and murky waters, but she wasn’t. She kept her answer as light as possible, considering the topic. “We understood, with you in the Middle East and all.”

He’d frequently been assigned to places where no one could reach him and that he couldn’t talk about when he returned.

“I didn’t get word of the accident until six hours before the funeral.”

Single-car accident, one fatality
. That was the official description of Dale’s death. To Ellyn it remained a blur – from the moment Dale had driven away from the house that night, to the early-morning arrival of the state troopers at her door, and through the funeral – a surreal blur of alternating waves of pain and numbness.

“Even if I’d been able to leave,” Grif continued, “I couldn’t have made it back in time.”

“You wrote all that.” In a letter that said all the right things except when he would come to see them, delivered in an envelope absent a return address. “I know – we all know you would have been here for Dale if you could have.”

“Are you okay – the three of you?”

“We’re fine.”
Now.

“Marti wrote that you’ve decided to stay on here for good.”

He surveyed the unimposing two-story frame house with no visible neighbors, so different from the Sinclairs’ brick Cape Cod in a neat Washington suburb teeming with kids and bicycles and carpools. That’s where Grif had been practically part of the family. Before...

She forced herself to finish the thought. Before the problems between her and Dale. Before Grif disappeared from their lives. Before Dale moved them all back here to Wyoming. Before Dale died.

“I considered returning to Washington, but uprooting the kids again in such a short time didn’t seem fair.”

There’d been a third option. “Under the circumstances,” her mother had said, she and Ellyn’s stepfather, although retired to Arizona, would “take you and the children into our home, until we can get you back on your feet. So you can meet a man who can take care of you and your children.” Even as low as Ellyn had been then, she’d had the strength to know refuse that option. She’d had a lifetime of her mother’s ways. She wasn’t about to accept that future for her children.

“Meg and Ben love it here. They’d settled in,” she continued. “They had friends, and so did I. We needed friends.”

Only a flicker of his eyes gave away how he took that, but it was enough.

“Oh, Grif, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean – ”

She broke off because maybe she
had
meant to reproach him. That would be quite unlike the old Ellyn, but not out of the question for the new Ellyn forming from the ashes of her old life.

Grif shook his head, then said, “
I’m
sorry.” She didn’t know if he meant for his disappearing act or about Dale’s death.

She could keep apologizing. She could ask what he was sorry for. Those were things the old Ellyn would do. She could demand to know why he’d disappeared. Or why he’d shown up now. She could throw him off her property...except she was renting it, and come to think of it, he was part-owner of Far Hills Ranch, so she couldn’t very well throw him off
his
property.