Heroes In Uniform (162 page)

“The hell they are.”

Her head snapped up, and she stared at him. The bones of his face showed hard under sudden tension. “Are you saying – ?”

“That I wanted you all the time you were married to my best friend? Yeah, that’s what I’m saying. How’s that for honorable?” Derision embittered his chuckle. “That’s why I left, Ellyn. That’s why I stayed away for a year. When Dale told me he thought your marriage was over, that he was going to leave you, I couldn’t believe it. He had everything –
everything
– and he was going to throw it away? It caught me off-guard. I didn’t have a chance to stop – ” He met her eyes, and she put a hand to her throat, as if that would ease a sensation like her lungs had been singed from breathing super-heated air. “I let myself think about you being free. After that I couldn’t stick around. I couldn’t stand to watch you and Dale together. Worse, I couldn’t be sure I wouldn’t try to make sure you ended up apart.”

More questions pounded in her head, but one was answered. And the certainty of that moved through her like a warm, sweet balm.

Only with that release did she realize part of her had held back from Grif. Only with the end of fear did she realize how afraid she’d been. Afraid of seeing that she’d been disloyal in her heart to Dale long before he was unfaithful in action.

But now she
knew
.

She placed her palms to either side of Grif’s face so he met her eyes. “Grif, I swear to you that you never showed that once in the time Dale and I were married. Nothing you ever did or said or felt hurt my marriage. And I can swear to myself the same thing.”

His eyes bore into hers, searching. “Ellyn, are you ...?”

“Yes, I am sure.”

He dropped his head forward, resting his forehead against hers. “I’ve tried so damned hard not to want you.”

She looked at him in wonder, remembering Kendra’s theory about his facade of friendship. Except it hadn’t been wholly a facade, because the friendship was true and enduring. It had been like a handsome brick gatehouse that she would have enjoyed living in for the rest of her life, until the gates creaked open and revealed the magnificent estate beyond as her potential home.

“You know, Grif, there’s one thing about you that bothers me – sometimes you try too damn hard.”

He glanced up, and with a flash as fast as gunpowder, the uncertainty in his eyes ignited to heat.

She stood, extended a hand to him. He took it, and she led him down the hall.

”My mother – ”

“Your mother doesn’t know a damned thing about you.”

Still holding his hand, she stopped and faced him in the doorway to her bedroom, smiling. Not only at his Grif-the-Protector defense of her, but because his interruption had allowed the full, wide impact of what she’d been about to say to spread its wings in her mind. In fact, a smile hardly seemed enough. She wanted to laugh, maybe sing.

“Ellyn?”

“You’re right. I was going to say that my mother doesn’t say what she thinks, but I do. My mother has been scared all her life. She doesn’t think she can stand on her own, so she needs a man to hold her up. And she doesn’t think she’ll keep a man unless she uses her
womanly wiles
.”

At that phrase, she looked at him through her lashes, hooked her fingers over his belt buckle and tugged him toward the bed. His grin flickered, and the silver fire in his eyes blazed.

“So she lies and manipulates. She tried to teach me to do the same, but even as a child I knew somewhere inside that being that way hadn’t made my mother happy. So I didn’t use my womanly wiles. And because of that, she considers me a fool and a failure.”

“You – ” He stroked her cheek, then dropped his hand to her shoulder, let it brush the side of her breast, before settling at her waist. “ – are no fool and no failure. Dale was an idiot and – ”

Her fingers on his lips hushed him. “I know.” She smiled as she saw that trailing those fingers down his throat, over his shirt placket, his belt buckle and tooth by tooth on his zipper produced an entirely different result. She pushed at his shoulders so he sat on the bed. Still standing, she straddled his legs, leaning her knees against the side of the bed, holding his face between her palms. “I didn’t know that, but you helped me see it. And you helped me see that I’m not scared. I don’t lie, and I don’t manipulate.”

She dipped her hips to rest against his straining lap, brushing her breasts across his chest in the process. He groaned, and gripped her bottom, and rose up to meet her as she repeated the motion.

“But I do have some womanly wiles, don’t I?”

“If you had any more – ” He put his mouth over the tip of her breast, and she felt every nuance of his tongue through the cloth. They rocked against each other, finding their rhythm “ – I’d be dead. Happy, but dead.”

He dropped back to the bed, and she went with him.

“Are you ready for more happy now?”

He raised his hips against her, and she had her answer. “Just pretend I’m too sick to do much – not as sick as I was but just so ... you do most of the work.”

But it was nothing like work, and she certainly didn’t do most of it. Not with his hands and mouth on her. Not with him inside her.

* * *

“What is it, Grif?”

She’d been awake for a while, watching him through nearly closed eyes as he moved silently around the room, getting dressed, looking at photographs on her dresser, pulling some sort of armor around himself.

He looked at her, then away, picking up his shoes and socks and sitting on the bed by her knees before he answered.

“I have something to tell you. I shouldn’t. But I’m going to. And then I’m going to tell you that you have to do what I’m not doing – you can tell no one. I know it’s not fair, but...”

She sat up, using the covers as her shield against a sudden chill. Not so much from his words but his crisp, distant manner.

“Okay. I won’t tell anyone whatever it is you’re going to tell me.”

He finished tying one shoe and put his ankle across the other knee to draw on his second sock.

“Fort Piney is closing.”

“What? Why? But you’ve just gotten there! Can’t they give you a chance to make it worth keeping? Or – ”

“There’s no question of making it worth keeping. It’s on a list that will be announced any day now. I’m there to close it. I knew that was the job when I took it.”

“But if you knew, why would you take a job like ...” Her heart thundered with the hope before her head found words for it. “You did it to stay here with us.”

“No.” His harsh tone drove the hard word home. “I took the job because there’s a chance that with me in command, the transition won’t wipe out the economy of Far Hills and everyone here.”

He finished putting on and tying his second shoe. His foot met the floor with a thump that brought her back to life.

“But that still means you care, about Far Hills, about – ”

“Don’t.”

“Don’t what?”

“Don’t hope.” He took her hand, the one not holding the covers to her, and laid it across his other palm, then stroked it, as his voice changed completely, yet lost none of the iron beneath it. “I have always, will always care about you, Ellyn. Every day of my life. It’s you...”

“It’s me? What does that mean,
it’s me
?”

“It’s not right for you to care about me.”

She tried to hold back the pain that threatened to flood her, trying to operate by the lesson he’d taught her. To not interpret every word as criticism. “Why?”

“Because of who I am.”

“Who you are is the reason I
do
care, the reason I care so much! You’re Grif. You’re – ”

“John Griffin
Junior
. United States Army officer. Devoted to his career. Just like the old man. A chip off the old block.”

Still holding the covers to her, she came up on her knees, to bring her face closer to his.

“You’re not your father, Grif.” She’d known him so long and thought she’d known him so well, yet she’d never seen any of this. “I never met your father, but from everything I’ve heard, from the little you’ve told me about him, you’re nothing like him. Not in the way you are with people. Not in personality. Nothing.”

“Don’t fool yourself, Ellyn, I’m just like him.” His smile was grimmer than a frown. “What were the chances I could be anything else? When it comes to nature and nurture, I’ve pretty much covered the bases. I look just like him. I was brought up just like him. And I’ve lived just like him.”

“But ... but you
chose
the army.”

“What else was I suited for? Except for the summers here, I’d spent my whole life on bases. The army was what I knew. It didn’t ask things of me I don’t have to give.”

Oh, God. All this time she’d blamed the army for making him feel that he wasn’t meant to have a family or a home. But he’d gone into the army
because
he felt that way

She sat back on her heels, dismayed, but with a strange sort of excitement running through her, too. If she could make him see –

“Ellyn ...” He smoothed her wild hair back from her cheek with a slow, gentle stroke of his palm. “You are... You are the best part of my life, the best part of me. I won’t let you and the kids suffer for that.”

“Suffer? How could we possibly suffer from having you in – ?”

“I saw my mother miserable for years because of my father, and God knows the man wasn’t much of a father to me. You and Meg and Ben deserve a hell of a lot more than that. A hell of a lot more than a man who couldn’t even make himself go into the hospital room where his wife was dying. But night after night sent his young son in there alone to fill visiting hours. That’s when I learned the real truth of what she’d said.”

He fell into a silence, his eyes unfocused. “What she said?” Ellyn prompted gently.

“It was before she got sick. Maybe a year or two. I heard them arguing. I got out of bed and went down the hall. I don’t know which base we were at, I only remember the dry smell of that dark, narrow hall, and the lights on in the living room. My mother crying, and my father looking totally blank, like his mind was a thousand miles away. Then Mom got real calm, each word so clear ...
Some men never should get married, never should have children. They don’t have the heart for it. You’re one of those men, John Griffin. Like father, like son
.”

Through the man before her, Ellyn felt the pain of that boy. How could a mother say that, even not knowing her son was listening? How could she even think that?

“Grif...”

She reached to him, but he was already standing and heading toward the door.

“I have to go.”

He didn’t look back.

* * *

Her timing sucked.

A fine time to realize she was in love with John Griffin Junior, when he’d just declared himself unworthy of being in her life or her kids’ lives, and walked out, determined to
protect
them.

She’d loved him most of her life. She’d fallen in love with him ... when? When they’d kissed by the school? When she’d seen him walk in the classroom, coming to her son’s rescue? When she’d kissed him on the cheek in the kitchen for being so wise and patient with Meg? Or a little at each of those moments and a thousand others in these weeks since he’d come home.

Home
...

She’d been sure for so long that he considered the army his home, but now... She wasn’t sure of anything.

He was here, but he held himself apart from her.

He was staying, but only to close down their fort.

He confided in her, but he thought that knowing he was going to close Fort Piney would make her turn away from him.

That last thought finally lifted a corner of her gloom. Grif wouldn’t bother with trying to make her turn away from him if he wasn’t running out of strength to turn away from her.

* * *

He’d stayed away more than a year, why had these past ten days been so damned hard? And why did coming back to Ridge House now make his heart hammer like a carpenter on fast-forward?

The closings list had come out this morning, which should have made Ridge House his one refuge, since Ellyn was the only person the announcement hadn’t caught unaware. He’d spent the morning making and answering tough phone calls.

That had delayed him and Luke on their way to Sheridan, so they’d returned to the ranch nearly two hours later than they’d planned. Which was the reason Ellyn’s beat up Suburban was in the drive instead of still parked by the
Banner
as he’d wanted it to be when he and Luke wrestled this new dryer into the house.

They’d bumped the thing up the back steps on the dolly Luke brought, and were crossing the threshold when Ellyn came running from the far side of the house.

“What on earth – Luke? What are you – ?”

Her words stopped abruptly. Grif didn’t know if it was because she’d spotted the dryer that answered her questions or because her eyes had met his and she’d felt a similar jolt of joy, lust, regret and longing.

“Back up, Ellyn,” Luke ordered.

She obeyed automatically, and he rolled the new dryer into position to block the doorway between the kitchen and the back hall, the way they’d planned when they realized Ellyn was home. Grif helped tip the dryer so Luke could free the dolly, then Luke passed it over the top of their temporary roadblock.

Grif got the dolly into place under the old dryer Luke had already disconnected and started easing it out of place.

“Wait a minute! What are you doing, Grif?” From her voice, Ellyn was trying to peer around the new dryer to where he was working. “You can’t do this. Luke, listen to me – ”

“He’s the boss,” Luke interrupted. “Part owner of Far Hills Ranch, so that makes him part-payer of my wages.”

Grif didn’t hear the rest, because he was wheeling the useless old dryer out. He brought the dolly back and handed it over the new dryer to Luke.

As Luke passed Grif’s spot pressed against the back door to give man and machine room to pass, he said in a low tone, “Keep her occupied.”

This, too, was part of the plan they’d put together out in the truck. Luke had read the manufacturer’s instructions, then they’d removed the packing material so installing would be as quick as possible, but he’d still need some time. Preferably without Ellyn standing over his shoulder ordering him to take it out and protesting his every move.