Heroes In Uniform (153 page)

“Things ... things weren’t very good between me and Dale during those last few months.” She made a sound that didn’t come near qualifying as a chuckle, although that’s what she’d intended. “Even before the last few months, only I didn’t know it then.”

“Was that why you moved back? Trying to make things better?”

Ellyn looked up, surprised. “Yes. How did you – ?”

“Wasn’t hard to figure out.” Kendra gave a wry smile. “And you’ve got to know if I figured it out – the Queen of Not a Clue when it came to romance – that most folks around saw it, too.”

“But no one’s said anything.”

“It’s not the sort of thing you bring up over casual hellos at the Market.”

“No, but ...”

“But you’re wondering about those of us who know you a lot better than casual hellos? Like Marti and Fran and me?”

Ellyn nodded.

“I suppose I didn’t pry because I had my own secrets I wasn’t telling. As for Marti and Fran, I have no idea. Surprised the heck out of me that they kept quiet.”

Ellyn gave a real chuckle this time, and Kendra joined in. Then Kendra’s expression shifted. “Unless ...”

“Unless, what?”

“Well, I think we all were surprised when you ended up with Dale. Everybody thought you and Grif would make a match of it. So maybe that had something to do with it.”

“I don’t see how. We were buddies as kids. No one can be basing some expectation on when we were barely even teenagers.”

“How about basing it on after Grif graduated?”

Ellyn hadn’t known Kendra had been aware of her feelings that summer. But it was silly to feel awkward now about Kendra knowing about the failure of her romantic overture.

“That was foolishness on my part. But what do you expect at eighteen?”

Kendra was shaking her head. “Not you. Grif.”

“Grif what?”

“Grif was the one everybody said was head-over-heels.”

“Head-over-heels? With who?”

Kendra laughed, then took another look at her face, and said firmly, “Grif showed every sign of being crazy about you.”

Now Ellyn shook her head. “Every sign except that when I threw myself at him he politely but oh-so-clearly said thanks but no thanks.”

“He what? You’re kidding? No, I can see you’re not. And it’s even consistent, given the Susland family knack for romance. But let me get this clear, you’re saying you made a pass at him, and he didn’t respond?”

Something in Kendra’s words snagged at the fabric of Ellyn’s subconscious, but she left it there for now.

“Oh, he responded. He made it absolutely clear that there wasn’t anything like that in his feelings for me.”

Kendra whistled. “Boy, my cousin Grif is more mixed up than I’d ever thought. Even for a Susland. Grif looked at you during that visit in a way that not even I could mistake. What in the world was his problem?”

* * *

Kendra’s words echoed in Ellyn’s head long into the night.

The obvious answer was that Kendra had gotten it wrong all those years ago. As she readily admitted, Kendra had not been the least interested in or attuned to matters of the heart at that point in her life.

Grif had looked at her like a man who was interested romantically in a woman?

No, Kendra must have had gotten it wrong.

But what if she hadn’t
?

That answer had to do with timing.

With pillows stack behind her back and her knees drawn up tight to her chest, Ellyn faced that answer.

Maybe Grif had looked at her that way ...
until
her overture. Maybe in those moments when she’d kissed him, and pressed her body against his, the feelings he’d had for her evaporated.

He might have thought he wanted her until faced with the reality. The reality of Ellyn Neal, the least sexy girl in four counties.

She had been sobbing out her pain when her mother returned home unexpectedly early from her date with Paul Brindford.

Rose had been subtly pressuring Paul to marry her for weeks. Now, from the few, vehement words Ellyn had heard them exchange at the doorway, Rose’s tactics had shifted to withholding sex.

Rose had sounded tearful in her farewell, but when she pushed open Ellyn’s door moments later to demand,
What’s this all about? I can hear you all the way down the hall?
she was dry- and clear-eyed.

Nothing, Mom.

Rose had heaved an exasperated sigh.
Must be about a boy. Ellyn, I despair of you, I truly do. When will you learn?

That had started a new spurt of tears, because she was painfully aware she’d been inexperienced to the point of clumsiness.

A woman has to learn how to please a man. She has to show him she can please him. And a woman doesn’t learn how to do all that without making sure she has some discreet experience. If you’d been paying half as much attention to boys as you have to horses, and learning what you need to know, this wouldn’t have happened
.

Vindication of her mother’s creed had come two weeks later when Paul Brindford proposed.

Ellyn had married Dale as a virgin. The wedding night hadn’t reached her dreams nor her fears. But the next several months had made her feel slightly more secure and certainly bolder, as they explored each other and their new lives.

Then she’d gotten pregnant. They’d had a vague plan to have children several years down the road. The reality came much sooner and harder than either had anticipated. But for Ellyn, the reality also blossomed into a full-blown love affair with her baby-to-be.

Halfway through the pregnancy, all sexual contact ended. Dale had claimed he didn’t want to hurt the baby. She had been convinced he found her repugnant. She worked hard at regaining her slenderness after the baby, and they seemed to have regained their zest in bed, when she became pregnant with Ben.

After that, they never regained that zest.

For a long time she blamed it on the physical changes. Then on the drains on her energy of caring for two small children. Eventually, the busyness of their lives seemed the logical explanation.

Only after Dale came to her that night in Washington and said he’d decided to give her a second chance before he asked for a divorce did she recognize that it was something else – her inability to please and hold onto her man.

Just like her mother had warned.

* * *

When Ellyn awoke, a different phrase of Kendra’s circled through her mind. One spoken with wry irony.

The Susland family knack for romance
.

That sort of oblique reference was about as close to acknowledging the Susland curse as skeptic Kendra ever got. Marti, on the other hand, was convinced Daniel’s actions in finding and winning Kendra had set to rest the first element of the curse. Ellyn supposed she fell somewhere in between.

But what had floated to her consciousness during the night was the suspicion that it wasn’t the Susland side of his family that Grif blamed for any inherited flaws. He’d made that clear in his truncated comments about his father.

That rattled around her head during the rush to get the kids off to school, then herself to work,a routine morning of work, a quick brown bag lunch with Kendra at the
Banner
, then a review of the week’s ad layouts before heading home.

She spotted Grif’s rental car before she pulled the Suburban into the drive to Ridge House. But she didn’t see him until she was out of her vehicle.

He was on the crest of the ridge, not far from the empty clothesline. He was outlined against the dramatic gray, black and white clouds of a fast-moving system. A stark, solitary figure.

Lonely.

I know one thing
, Fran had said of Nancy Griffin,
she loved her son more than anything else in the world. She’d hate to see him lonely.

Ellyn was climbing the hill before she even knew she’d made a decision.

“Grif!”

He turned toward her, wariness showing in the set of his shoulders. “It’s ranch property, and I’m going to fix it so don’t give me any grief. Talk to Marti if you don’t like it.”

That stopped her. “Don’t like what?”

His brows dropped. “Me rebuilding the path from the house.”

“Oh.” She took stock then, putting together the sheets of paper on a clipboard where he’d obviously been taking notes and the retracting steel tape measure he held. “Well, I will talk to Marti, because it’s on property that’s my responsibility. But that’s not what I want to talk to you about.”

His brows relaxed. “What did you want to talk to me about?”

“The other day, when we were riding, you said –No, don’t do that.”

“I’m not doing anything.”

“Yes, you are. You’re closing down, like Ben and Meg do when they don’t want to hear what I have to say.”

“It’s not worth discussing, that’s all.”

“How do you know?” She pushed her wind-blown hair out of her face with both hands, as she pointed out with some triumph, “You don’t know what I’m going to say.”

“Nothing I said is worth discussing. That’s how.”

“Grif – ” He’d started to turn away, and she caught him, her hand on his forearm, below where he’d rolled back the cuff of an age-softened khaki shirt. Impulsively she laid her other palm against the line of his jaw. “Please, listen.”

He froze. She took that as acquiescence.

“When I said you’re the most honorable man I know, and you said I didn’t know things ... I’ve been wondering if that had to do with your father. No –don’t say anything yet, let me finish.” She dropped her hands from him, wishing she’d thought out the words a little better. This had all been so clear in her head a moment ago. What was the matter with her? “I know it’s not really my business, but I care about you, Grif. And I know you. You’re a good man. Don’t confuse yourself with failings you saw in your father. I’m a pretty good judge of character and you – ”

“You?” he scoffed. “You’re Pollyanna – a
blind
Pollyanna.”

That left her flat-footed for a second, then she jammed her hands on her hips and demanded, “What do you mean by that? Give me one example where I – ”

“Dale.” The single word was hard, unrelenting. So were the ones that followed. “Dale Sinclair. The man you married. You knew him all your life. But you didn’t see what he was? I don’t call that much of a judge of character.”

“I saw.”

“Then why by all that’s holy did you marry him?”

“Because he wanted me. And he showed me he wanted me. And I needed that.”

He stared at her, his gray eyes hard and desolate. “Yeah? Well, now you know wanting’s not enough. Not nearly enough.” He turned his back to her.

She tipped her head back, drawing in a long, deep breath. “Yes. Now I know.”

After a moment, he shifted so his side was to her, but still didn’t look her way. “Oh, hell, I’m sorry, Ellyn. I shouldn’t have ... I can’t blame you. I knew what Dale was. I kept hoping that with you, he’d become something more, something better.”

“Me, too,” she said quietly.

He nodded. “But I shouldn’t have let you take the chance.”

And that fast her mood crackled, like a charge of lightning had passed through her. “Let me take the chance?
Let
me?”

“You know what I mean.”

“No, I don’t. I have no idea what you mean. You’re letting Grif-the-Protector role go to your head twelve years retroactively.”

“Grif-the-Protector?”

“From when we were kids.” She waved one hand impatiently. “Looking out for all of us. Arranging things the way you thought was best for us. Well, let me tell you, Grif-the-Protector or no Grif-the-Protector, my marriage wasn’t something you arranged. You had nothing to do with my marrying Dale. That was – ”

”Nothing?”

The soft question stopped her dead in her tracks. But it didn’t hurt as much as when he’d first brought up her foolish mistake. The implicit taboo they’d observed against mentioning it had been broken. The surprise element had evaporated.

“I know – we both know – I had a crush on you for years, Grif. A schoolgirl crush that I let get out of hand. If I’d been more mature, I would have read the signals better, and I never would have put you through that embarrassing scene. But I didn’t turn around and marry Dale in a rush the instant you made it clear you didn’t return my feelings. Oh, I’ll admit I was more vulnerable for a while. That’s not easy on any girl’s ego.” She forced a smile that drew no response from him, and hers faded.

His face had gone still as stone, and just as hard. “Dale took advantage of you.”

She shook her head emphatically. “No, he didn’t. He came along at a time when his attention gave me a real boost – ” Like a cool stream of water to a fish left flopping high and dry on a hot riverbank. “But that was three years before we married. I loved Dale when I married him.”

She caught a shadow of something in his face. “You don’t think I was still carrying a torch for you then, do you? Is that why – ?”

“No.” The word stood stark for a moment before he added, “I know you weren’t. I knew for sure ... the week before the wedding.”

Another awkward memory in their path to friendship.

She tried to smile about it now. “I never understood where that came from, Grif. It was so out of character.”

He was silent long enough that she thought he might not answer.

“I don’t know. Maybe I wanted to know for sure that you really loved him before I stood up for him at your wedding.”

“I did,” she said simply. “And I loved him for a long time afterward ... I’m not quite sure when I stopped loving him. But it was after he stopped loving me. ... If I hadn’t let him slip away, I think I’d still love him.”

“Let him slip away? You didn’t let him slip away. It’s not your fault.”

She curved her lips, knowing they didn’t achieve a real smile. “There are things,” she said, echoing his words, “you don’t know.”

Stalemate.

* * *

Jotting an occasional note, Grif automatically absorbed the items Lieutenant Shaw enumerated, while the rest of his mind considered yesterday’s encounter with Ellyn.

It didn’t matter what Ellyn thought he didn’t know. He knew Dale and he knew her. And he knew which of them was responsible for making the last few months of their marriage uncertain and miserable for her. Not to mention the past year.