Heroes In Uniform (160 page)

When she cried out, piercing and sharp, then melted so completely that her hold on him had no strength, his arms tightened powerfully around her as he raised a face triumphant with her pleasure.

He carried her boneless body down to the bed beside him, removing the last of her clothes, which had after all provided no barrier to her desire as she’d intended. She drew him, so hot and hard, to her and into her, until they found triumph together.

* * *

She woke up slowly, in the luxury of feeling him behind her, around her, and in the reluctance to do what she knew she had to do.

She couldn’t believe they’d spent the entire day yesterday in bed. Well, she could believe Grif had, considering how sick he’d been. Not that he’d shown any signs of it. Except for an insatiable appetite ... and all he ate seemed to feed another insatiable appetite.

She had never experienced a time like this. Had never felt that her look could ignite a fire in a man. Yet, each time she had disbelieved it in these past thirty-six hours, Grif had disproved her disbelief.

But none of that changed the end result.

If this went on much longer, she’d start dreaming of just the sort of future he’d made clear couldn’t exist. His leave would end, he’d return to his life in the army, and she’d be left to pick up the pieces. At least if she ended this now, the pieces might not be quite so small. And maybe they could preserve the future he
could
provide.

She shifted quietly, turning in his arms, making sure no sudden moves would wake him. She wanted just once more to see him asleep. To see the long straight lashes casting lush shadow along the top of his cheekbone. To watch the rhythmic rise and fall of his chest. To enjoy the faint easing of his discipline.

Anticipating all that, she didn’t wait until she had turned all the way to her other side, but looked over her shoulder and encountered a pair of watchful gray eyes.

“Oh. You’re awake.”

“I’m awake.” How could a voice so even sound grim?

It doesn’t matter how. It doesn’t matter if he sounds grim. I have to do this. Now.

Now while she had the strength.

No longer bothering with stealth, she turned onto her side to face him, drawing a fistful of covers to her neck and draping the excess into the valley carved out between their bodies.

“I ... have something to say, Grif.”

“Okay.”

She had his complete attention. She had all the words and reasons and logic. She just didn’t have a voice.

She cleared her throat once, then again. If he’d said something it might have been easier, but he held his silence.

“I, uh, I’ve been thinking, Grif. I don’t ...”

She stopped herself, took a slow, deep breath. His eyes flickered as they followed the movement of her breasts under the covers she still held tight. A warmth bloomed in her, in the vicinity of his gaze, and lower, both at once. And that finally unstuck her tongue. She had to get this said. Now. Fast. Before ...

“Grif, we’ve made a mistake. It’s my fault, not yours. We have a connection, a tie that goes so far back, nearly our whole lives. And at one point, I wanted that connection to be something other than it was.”
I wanted you to love me
. “But it isn’t. I mean, it has been because of this – ” Without releasing the fabric, she spread her fingers to indicate the two of them in bed. “ – but it shouldn’t be. Not really. Because what we really are, what we’ve always been, what we always should be, is friends.”

She saw something brewing in his eyes, like clouds boiling up across the horizon. But clouds could be almost anything – a punctuation on fair weather, the bringers of gentle, sustaining rain or the creators of punishing, cruel hail. She hurried on.

“I think we both know how this happened. I’ve been lonely. For a long time. And you’ve been the one I turned to for so long – as a friend, I mean. And you’re such a good friend, that you’ve always come through for me. Even now, even when I never should have ... I’m sorry, Grif. That’s all I can say. I’m truly, truly sorry. And I hope our friendship can survive this in some form.”

His silence was ominous. His tone was worse. “So you’re saying you led me on?”

Led you on? I don’t – ”

“You said you’re
sorry
, didn’t you? You said you made a
mistake
, didn’t you? You said it was your
fault
, didn’t you?”

“Yes, but – ”

“Ellyn, you keep telling me my motives. Generosity. Pity.” He practically spit out that one. “Friendship. No. This is exactly what it feels like. It’s desire. Wanting. Lust.”

“Yes, but – ”

“The kids will be here this afternoon, but there’s
now
. Do you want me, Ellyn? Right now. Inside you. Making love with you.”

“Grif – ”

“Answer me. Do you want me? Right now.”

“Yes.”

His lips on hers stopped any hope of a
but
. Stopped anything but
now
.

* * *

Grif dropped his duffel bag on the floor of his quarters and grimaced.

He’d gotten spoiled, and he’d better get over it fast. This was his life. This was where he lived. This was who he was.

He also better get used to not kissing Ellyn very often or learn to be sneakier about it.

He had a strong suspicion Kendra had spotted him kiss Ellyn this morning on the landing to the basement stairs as everybody got ready to head their different directions. At least she’d seen enough to draw conclusions.

Conclusions that were right for now, but not for the long-run. He had to remember that, and take care.

Twice he’d kept Ellyn from calling a halt to this interlude. Twice he’d delayed the inevitable. That wasn’t very smart.

He was showing Ellyn how he felt because she needed that, to counteract the corrosive influence of her mother and the pain Dale had left behind. When he succeeded at that, it wouldn’t matter how he felt. He’d have to step back from her, leave her free to find what she deserved.

She’d given him the words he’d been searching for. Why hadn’t he taken them?

Taken them? Hell he’d fought like a demon to escape them.

Because of how she’d said it. She’d still needed him. Eventually she wouldn’t. Eventually ...

But he’d taken every drop he was spared until eventually came.

* * *

Ellyn was working Saturday to make up one of the days she’d lost caring for him, so Grif volunteered to take the kids riding.

He was inordinately pleased to find he remembered the subtle trails through the wide land. They took a picnic and he let them choose the trails to follow.

He was even more pleased that both Meg and Ben seemed comfortable and relaxed in his company. Ellyn had confided some of her concerns about them missing a man’s companionship, and it pleased him to meet that need, at least for a while.

In the afternoon, they followed the trail to Leaping Star’s overlook. He let them tell him the story he already knew so well.

“He left his kids. Just like ...” Ben didn’t finish the sentence, staring down at the ground.

“Dad died,” Meg said harshly, seeming to warn him. “It’s not the same.”

But then, belying her tough stance, she eased closer to her younger brother and put her arm around his shoulders. The two stood like that for a moment, both looking down. Two small figures, with the mountain dropping away at their feet and the land spread out to an endless horizon.

“My father, too.”

Grif’s own voice surprised him, sounding raw with a pain he’d sworn he’d discarded long ago.

Ben and Meg turned to him in unison. “Yours?” Ben voiced the question in both sets of eyes.

“Yeah.”

“But ... did your Dad ... die?”

A better question was if the man had ever been anything but dead to him. But Grif was telling this now to help these two kids feel less alone, not to vent his own grievances.

“Not until a few years ago. But when I was about your age, my Mom got real sick.” He weighed his next choice – cushion the reality or tell them the unvarnished truth? “She died when I was eleven.”

Meg’s eyes widened, and Grif felt as if he could hear her thought:
A year older than me
. What had Ellyn said about the two of them and there being a connection, a tie? Now a new connection, a tie stretched tenuously between the girl and him, born of his honesty and her sympathy.

“And then your father left you, too?” Ben’s stricken voice pulled Grif back to the matter at hand.

“Not the way you’re thinking, I lived with him, but ... He was away a lot.”

“Who took care of you then?”

“He hired different people at first. After a couple of years, I’d stay by myself for short stretches. We lived on Army bases, so there were neighbors around.”

“Didn’t you get lonely?” Meg asked

“Yeah, I got lonely.”

“But then he’d come back,” insisted Ben. “He always came back.”

“He came back. But it wasn’t much different when he was there. He wasn’t like other Dads. He didn’t talk to me much. He’d give me some money, and I’d buy food and stuff like that.”

“You cooked your own food?” Ben was amazed or appalled, or both.

Grif nodded, fighting down the first urge to smile he’d felt during this conversation. “Not very successfully to start with.”

“Do men always leave?” Meg demanded

Something in the stance of the two youngsters examining his face as they waited for his answer made Grif believe that Ellyn was wrong in thinking she’d been the only one to know Dale was leaving his family the night he died. He knew from first-hand experience how easily kids could overhear conversations – especially arguments – the adults meant them not to hear.

He looked out across the land where he’d done some of his most important growing up, a lot of it next to the boy Dale Sinclair had been. And he considered the man he’d come to know during the years of being the Sinclairs’ family friend.

Then he met Meg’s eyes.

“Not all men, Meg. But some do – too many.”

“Will you?” The small voice asking the huge question came from Ben.

“I won’t always be here like this in Far Hills. You know that. Like I told you when I first came, I’m here on leave. When that’s over I have to go back to my job. But – ” He held the word until Meg’s eyes, which had slid away with his first sentence, came back to his face. “I will always be part of your lives. I won’t ever let a year go by without seeing you like I did before this visit. And if you ever have a problem, any kind of problem, I promise you I’ll do my best to help you solve it.”

He saw that they were torn between their pride at being spoken to as an equal and the pain of the unvarnished truth. More slowly he recognized their belief in his pledge. The knowledge of their trust swelled in his heart until he thought it might burst – and he wouldn’t have minded at all.

* * *

Brigadier General Pulaski didn’t care for small talk, so Grif simply outlined his proposal. After he finished. Grif told himself silence was better than cursing.

“I suppose I should have expected something this insane after you took that lunatic leave, but I didn’t. I’m disappointed in you Colonel Griffin.”

“I’m sorry you’re disappointed, sir.”

“But not sorry enough to change your mind?”

“No sir, not that sorry.”

“Your career won’t recover, Grif.”

“I know.”

And didn’t care. This interlude with Ellyn, loving her the way he’d tried to not even allow himself to dream about, and sharing this time with Meg and Ben, was worth more than a career. Oh, he’d stick in the army. It gave him something to belong to even if he didn’t have somewhere or someone. The fact that he’d never resume the climb up the promotion ladder didn’t matter.

“You’d be at Piney for one thing – to close it. There’s no way to make more enemies than to be in command of a base-closing. And you know it.”

“Yes, sir.”

This interlude would end. But Ellyn and the kids would still have needs. Needs he knew Ellyn wouldn’t let him fulfill. One way to safeguard them was to make sure Ellyn didn’t lose her job. That meant making sure the
Banner
didn’t lose so much revenue when the army base closed that Larry Orrin couldn’t afford to keep her on. If Grif was in command of closing the base, he could implement ideas he had to ease the transition and help the community’s economy as a whole and Ellyn in particular.

“You can’t let anyone know Fort Piney’s on the list for closing until it’s cleared through the politicians.”

For the first time, Grif hesitated. But before the general could exploit the pause, Grif said, “I understand, sir.”

The general heaved a sigh. “All right, dammit. You’re a fool, but I’ve known you too long not to know you’re a stubborn fool. I’ll put it through.” There was a pause, then the general’s tone shifted. “Are you going to tell me what this is about?”

Grif hesitated before telling some of it.

“I spent a lot of time around here as a kid. It’s where my mother grew up. I have a part share in a family ranch not far from Fort Piney. I feel a ... responsibility to these people.”

“I can’t do anything about Piney being on the list – wouldn’t even if I could – ”

“I know that, sir.”

“Quit interrupting, Griffin. I might be able to do a thing or two to help the transition go better for the civilians. Business development and such.”

This was no idle offer. Pulaski’s high voice had caused some under his first command to nickname him Squeaky. They’d lived to regret it. They’d lived because Pulaski had gotten them out of a fix. They’d regretted it because he’d held a grudge, even against men long returned to civilian life, including one now a U.S. senator and another running a Fortune 500 company. And he exacted compensation for that dismissive teasing by calling on these powerful debtors now and then for favors.

“That would be extremely helpful, sir.”

“You put some ideas together – but not for release until this is official – and I’ll see if there are people you can talk to.”

“Thank you, sir.”

To Grif’s mind the conversation had ended, but Pulaski didn’t cut the connection. After a noticeable pause, he said, “So that’s where your mother grew up? She was a good woman. Nancy Griffin was real good to my wife and son.”