Heroes In Uniform (142 page)

“Where’re you taking us?”

“Ben...” Ellyn appealed without much hope.

Grif grinned. Sure, he could be amused. To her it wasn’t so funny. She’d once confided to Grif that she wondered if Ben’s unabashed pursuit of feeding his appetite left people thinking she didn’t feed her son. He’d joshed her out of that concern then. Now, he didn’t even try.

“Anywhere you want, Ben. What do you want to eat?”

“Steak!”

“Ben – ” Ellyn used her most quelling voice.

“Steak it is. And whatever Meg and your mom want, too. We’ll find someplace that serves a variety, okay?”

“Sure, as long as they have steak.”

“Ben! that’s – ”

The blaring ring of the phone overrode Ellyn’s remonstrations. She’d forgotten she’d turned it up loud enough to hear outdoors while she was hanging laundry, and there was no ignoring it now.

With a look at Ben and Grif meant to warn them this discussion was not over, she picked up the receiver. “Ridge House.”

“Ellyn? It’s Fran. Have you heard Grif’s in town?”

Fran Sinclair had become Dale’s stepmother when he was seven years old. Fran and Dale hadn’t always gotten along, but Fran had been a terrific stepmother-in-law to Ellyn and, in her practical, no-nonsense way, she adored the kids. She also had the best connections to the area grapevine of anyone around.

“Yes. But this isn’t a good time, Fran. I’ll have to – ”

Grif took advantage of the interruption to start backing toward the door, with an assumption that he’d be taking them all out to dinner in his pocket.

“So you two get going on that homework,” he was saying to her kids. “And I’m going to the home ranch to see Marti.”

Ellyn covered the mouthpiece. “Grif, we haven’t – ”

“No, no, don’t interrupt your call. I’ll see you at six.”

And he was gone, leaving her to answer Fran’s good-hearted questions. At least the ones she
could
answer.

“I don’t understand you, Ellyn,” said Fran after she’d been filled in. “Why aren’t you jumping at the chance to go out for a nice dinner?”

“I don’t want to impose on his generosity.” Ellyn looked around, but both kids had disappeared toward their rooms as soon as Grif left.

Fran snorted. “You’re telling me Grif made you feel that way.”

“No,” she admitted. “But doesn’t it seem odd, his showing up out of the blue and – ”

“Is it his showing up out of the blue that’s bothering you or that you’re scared he’s going to disappear again?”

Count on Fran to hit a nail firmly on its head with a sledgehammer.

Grif had been such a part of their lives in Washington that his disappearance had left a huge hole, especially with all the upsets in their once-staid life, including a move three-quarters of the way across the continent and from one world to another. When Dale’s death followed quickly, the three of them could have crumbled completely. But they hadn’t. They’d rebuilt. At least they’d started. Was she paranoid to feel Grif might pose a risk to that progress?

“The kids and I – ”

“Oh, now don’t go fretting about the kids. They’re doing fine. And the three of you will be all the better for being taken out to dinner. And have dessert!” With that final order, Fran said goodbye and ended the call.

Ellyn could either disappoint her kids and be ungrateful at best and rude at worst by refusing to go out when Grif returned, or she could follow Fran’s advice.

Really, she thought, as she headed back up the ridge with the final basket of laundry, how big a deal is one dinner?

She reached the top of the path and saw that even more of the line was filled.

Grif had obviously made the time and hung up the hand-washed items she’d left wrapped in the towels. Including her underwear.

She stared at the bras, panties and one slip, none new, all in utilitarian beige so they could be worn under any color, but all also embellished with a self-indulgent flourish of lace, and she felt heat rising up her neck.

Worse than that, though, was the knowledge that the heat originated much, much lower than her neck, as her imagination lingered on an image of Grif’s big, competent hands on her underwear. Holding them up, securing them with pins, and reaching down for more with that same twisting motion that had riveted her not so many minutes ago.

Good heavens, what had gotten into her? This was Grif for heaven’s sake. Her friend from childhood. Dale’s best man at their wedding. The godfather of her children.

And an enigma who had evaporated from her life at the moment she had most wished she could lean on him.

* * *

“Grif! Welcome home!”

He hugged his aunt, her graying curls tickling across his wry grimace.
Home?
Closest thing he’d had to a home was using the same suitcase for a dozen years. Even at the house outside Washington where Ellyn, Meg, Ben and Dale had treated him like a member of the family, he’d known he was just visiting.

“This
is
your home you know,” Marti added, as if she’d seen his expression. She stepped back from the embrace, gripping his forearms as if he were still a boy and she could give him a shake if she felt the need. “Far Hills Ranch always has been and always will be your home.”

“Marti, I – ”

“Even if you don’t come back near often enough. I wish you’d take some more interest in running the ranch. It’s your legacy, too, after all. At least now I can drag Kendra to business meetings and such. But sometimes, I swear, if it weren’t for Luke, I’d despair of anyone in the next generation caring about running this ranch.”

Grif grinned. “That’s right – Luke’s still here. Foreman now, isn’t he? Does he talk any more than he used to?”

“He’s no chatterbox. But as for still here – it’s not
still
. All you kids left Far Hills – for a while.” She gave the final three words an emphasis as if their returns had been preordained. “Luke’s family moved to Colorado not long after you stopped coming for summers. But a few years back he showed up looking for a job as a hand. Didn’t take long to see he was suited to a whole lot more. He ought to have a ranch of his own.”

“Why doesn’t he?”

“Says he can’t afford it. I could help him, but he won’t hear of that. I think he’s got a fool notion that he can’t leave me on my own – as if I hadn’t run this ranch since I was twenty years old. Besides, he loves Far Hills Ranch, just like...” she hesitated, then added briskly, “Just like he was a Susland. So, now that you’re here, how long can you stay?”

“I’ve got a few weeks leave.”

“Wonderful! Get your gear and put it in the – ”

“No, no, Marti. There’s no need. I have a room at the – ”

“ – room behind the kitchen. Of course there’s need – this is your home. You are
not
staying at the motel. Besides, room’s all ready. You’ll have your own door to outside, in case you’re worried about having your old aunt knowing about your comings and goings – ”

“Old aunt?” he protested, but she paid no heed.

“And you’ll have your own bathroom. Bed’s made up. I’ll get towels, and you’ll be all set.”

“Marti, those are the foreman’s quarters. I wouldn’t put Luke out, even if –

“You’re not putting anyone out. Foreman’s house is separate nowadays. Men don’t want to be living in the main house, especially not young, single men like you and Luke.”

“Marti, I’m staying at Fort Piney – Bachelor Officer Quarters.”

His aunt harrumphed, but didn’t argue more. At least not about that. “Bachelor Officer Quarters. What kind of a place is that for you to live? I never have understood why you aren’t married, Grif.”

“It’s hard on a woman being married to an Army man.”

“That didn’t stop your father.”

“No. It didn’t.”

Her eyes narrowed. “And it doesn’t keep I don’t know how many thousands of people from having families while the husband or wife – sometimes both – is in the Army.”

“I suppose not,” he acknowledged, knowing that what some people did, didn’t necessarily apply to others.

“Well, you must be thirsty as all get-out. I swear flying on an airplane makes me drier than a three-day drought. ‘Cept that little plane of Daniel’s – that’s Kendra’s new husband, you know.” She opened the refrigerator, and began moving containers. “I don’t suppose you want milk, and you never did like apple juice. Here we go – lemonade.”

“No, thanks, I just had some. I stopped at Ridge House.”

“Did you now?”

Her voice was even, so it must have been something in the way she looked at him that made him feel obliged to add, “You know I spent time with them in Washington. All of them.”

“Of course I know. Grif this and Grif that – that was practically all those two kids could talk about when they first moved here, wanting to know what you did when you were here as a kid growing up with their mom and dad – wanting to do exactly the same thing.”

“I hope you didn’t let them,” he said with grin.

“I tried my best, but I was about as successful as I used to be stopping you from doing harebrained stunts. Like using the top of the pole fence as a tightrope. You should have broken more than your arm.” She shook her head. “ ‘Course, that hero worship of Meg and Ben’s wore off, what with not hearing from you.”

His smile dried up. Too late he recognized how closely she was watching him, and guessed her comment had been a deliberate attempt to gauge his reaction.

“So,” she said, “are you passing through to give those kids ideas for more mischief to get into or are you – ?”

The ringing of the phone interrupted.

“Far Hills Ranch... Fran, you’ll never guess who I’ve got right here... Oh, you did... Yes, I knew that... Uh-huh... Uh-huh... What? A colonel? No, he hadn’t told me that!”

Marti managed to frown and smile at him at the same time.

Grif decided he needed a good, long look out the window at the once familiar sweep of land that bubbled briefly into sage-covered foothills before rising abruptly into the Big Horn Mountains.

Once, coming here and seeing this land and those mountains
had
been like a homecoming for him. Once, the big, open sky above him had made him feel like any weight pressing on his shoulders had scattered and dissipated into all that blue space.

Maybe Ellyn had felt some of that same relief coming back here. He hoped so.

He hadn’t missed her faint tensing when she’d talked about weighing returning to Washington or staying here, and he’d known there’d been another choice. Her mother.

He remembered the woman’s solitary visit from town to the ranch when he and Ellyn were kids, an excursion frequently punctuated by Rose Brindford’s exasperated sighs over nearly everything Ellyn did and how she did it. That changed to a twittering coo whenever an adult male came within range. Grif could have happily throttled the woman. For the first time he’d recognized an upside to his father’s complete lack of interest in him.

Some instinct – or maybe a desire to get away from the past – made him tune into the one-sided phone conversation continuing behind him.

“Uh-huh... He did...? Interesting...”

Knowing that the string of “uh-huhs...” and “isn’t that interestings...” being murmured into the phone had to do with him brought an unfamiliar sensation into his chest. He turned his back to the window and faced his aunt, making it clear he was listening.

He should have known better than to think that would intimidate her.

“Uh-huh, I agree. That is very interesting,” she said into the mouthpiece in a decidedly provocative tone, eyes leveled on him. “You’re right, it
does
bear watching.”

A moment later, she said goodbye to Fran Sinclair.

“I hear you’ve got some time before your dinner date, so – ”

“It’s not a date.”

“ – let’s sit down and have a nice talk. I know you’re not thirsty, but I have cookies in the freezer – ”

“You don’t have to – ”

“Almond cookies. You always did like my almond cookies. And they’ll defrost fast enough.”

“Almond cookies?”

She chuckled and waved him to the table by the big window as she put a plate piled with cookies into the microwave. “So, how did you find Ellyn?”

He’d expected that. “She and the kids look great. Ben seems his old self. Meg...it’s hard to tell. Maybe at dinner... And Ellyn...”

Marti brought the plate to the table, and he reached for a cookie, fully aware the movement masked his face from Marti.

“What about Ellyn?”

The back door opened to a mismatched pair, and saved Grif from answering.

The man was above medium height, with the kind of understated, wiry toughness that Grif had observed during his years in the Army often matched an equally understated toughness inside.

His companion was a girl of about four years old, with shining dark hair and sparkling brown eyes. She wore a pink jacket with a denim skirt and white tights.

“Mama!” she called as she hurtled into the room. The girl threw her arms around Marti’s neck.

Grif had never doubted that his aunt had an abundance of love to give to the orphan she’d adopted three years earlier from a storm-devastated island off South America, but seeing the child’s expression as she hugged Marti eased a doubt he’d harbored about whether that love would be returned.

“Grif, this is my Emily,” Marti said unnecessarily.

Grif met the little girl’s eyes. “Hi, Emily.”

Then he stood and extended. “It’s good to see you, Luke.”

Luke Chandler took off a work glove and shook hands firmly. “Hello, Grif. Or should I call you Major?”

“It’s Colonel,” interposed Marti. “He got a promotion he didn’t tell us about.”

“Grif will do,” he said mildly, earning a glance from Luke that blended amusement and empathy. Obviously Marti continued to treat Luke as a member of the family, as she always had, so the other man understood exactly what Grif was being subjected to.

“Emily, dear, you should say hello. Grif’s family. He’s your cousin,” Marti prompted.

Emily shook her head decisively. “Matthew’s my cousin.”

“That’s true. But so is Matthew’s mommy, and so is Grif.”

“It’s okay, Marti. All those family relationships still confuse me,” Grif offered.