Battle for the Soldier's Heart (5 page)

She was not sure how she felt about this secret being exposed to Rory Adams. Her brother must have told him. That link, her brother, connected her to this man in ways she was not at all sure she could handle.

And she liked having a handle on her life!

Instead, Grace felt the terrible loss of control. And she felt an equally terrible temptation just to surrender. She fought it.

“We are going to discuss Warrior Down?” she asked, trying for a stern note, trying to recapture at least an illusion of control.

“Of course,” he said smoothly.

“All right. Beth clear my calendar for—” She looked inquiringly at him.

“A couple of hours?”

Impossible.
But her control seemed to have abandoned her despite her attempt to fight for it. “All right.”

But in one last ditch effort to salvage something of all that time wasted in an effort to manipulate his impressions of her, Grace darted back into her office and grabbed the flowers, hugged them to her chest.

She plunked them down on Beth’s desk. “These need water,” she said, regally, and Beth, bless her heart, did not say
But they just arrived.

She said, “Oh, yes, I noticed that. I’ll look after it right away.”

And before Rory could get a look at the water level in that crystal vase, Grace marched by him, waited for him to open the door for her, and then passed through it, and waited for him to open the door of the car.

The car was red and low and so sexy it took her breath away. It had a hard top that had been retracted.

She hesitated, feeling as if if she did it, if she actually stepped into that car something in her life was going to change irrevocably and forever.

Don’t do it.

Do it.

Don’t.

Do.

Do
was winning. What was so great about her life that it couldn’t stand changing? She worked, she slept, she worked some more. She did an important job. She brought people joy. She made happy memories for them.

That’s what dedicated career women did: they got their sense of fulfillment from their work. That’s what women who didn’t want to be hurt anymore did.

Yesterday it had seemed like a perfectly acceptable life, she wailed a reminder to herself.

No, the day before yesterday. Before the ponies. Before him.

The door of the car whispered open. She could smell the heat of the engine, Italian leather and Rory’s cologne.

They were drugs that stole what was left of her resolve. Grace Day took one more step toward the car.

CHAPTER FOUR

“H
ANG
on,” Rory said as Grace moved by him to get in the car. She tried not to brush against him but the effort was lost when his hand went to her hair. He ran his palm along the side of her face, over her ear, until it rested on the delicate nape of her neck. With a gentle, firm tug he freed the clasp that held her hair up.

Grace felt her hair tumble, whisper against the sensitive skin of her neck where his fingers had just touched.

How dare you
would be the appropriate response. To turn around and march right back into her office, and her perfectly satisfactory life, slam the door and turn the bolt would be the appropriate response.

Instead, she felt the shiver of his touch, of the strange intimacy of him releasing her hair, to the bottom of her toes. Instead, she stood there frozen, captured by the shimmering greenness of his eyes, and by the glint of hard, male appreciation in them.

“You can’t ride with the top down without feeling the wind in your hair,” he said, something in his voice faintly gruff. He held out the hair clasp to her.

And she took it and slid it into her pocket without one single word of protest!

Maybe another woman could be stronger. But the combination of the sexy car and the sensuousness of his touch on her hair and her neck rendered Grace helpless. She could not resist the temptation. Taking a deep breath that she let out with a sigh, she put her leg in the car and then sank into the low seat.

Nothing could live up to a fantasy she’d held for so long, she told herself, trying desperately to regain some semblance of her sensible well-ordered life.

But when Rory Adams came around and took the seat beside her, and the engine started with a deep low purr of pure power, and his scent and the smell of leather both filled her nostrils, she had the awful thought that maybe some things could actually be better than a fantasy.

“Where are we going?” Grace asked him.

“Does it matter?” He shoulder-checked and pulled away from the curb so smoothly it was as if she was riding on air.

Whatever was left in her that wanted to be in control evaporated. She laughed. “No.”

“I thought we’d take the back road around Lake Okanagan. Stop at the Blue Water Resort and have lunch.”

“That resort is where the big fundraiser for
Warrior Down is.”

“I know.”

She pondered that as they surged in and out of traffic, making their way through Mason to the head of the lake road. Did he know everything? Apparently he did. Even about her lifelong dream to ride in a Ferrari.

“Graham must have told you about my secret fascination with this car,” she said.

“Is it everything you expected?” he said with a smile that did not distract her. He didn’t want to admit he and Graham had discussed her.

“So far, it’s more than I expected,” she admitted, but got right back on topic. “I have to admit, it makes me uncomfortable thinking about you two discussing me.”

“It should.” He sent her a sideways look, and waggled his eyebrows, the villain in a movie. Despite the fact he was still trying to distract her, Grace laughed again, and enjoyed the sensation of laughing. Since Graham had died, and then her engagement had blown up in her face, it really seemed like there had not been much to laugh about. She was not unaware of the irony of the fact that she planned joyous, happy occasions for others, but rarely felt those things herself anymore.

“Do tell,” she challenged him.

“Okay. I know just about everything about you. I know your favorite color is yellow. And your favorite book is
Anne of Green Gables.
I know you once punched a boy in your class for stealing a kiss.”

“Something for you to remember,” she said, pretending haughtiness.

“And that you were suspended for it. That’s funny.
You
suspended.”

“Despite the fact you think you know everything about me, I am not the Goody Two Shoes you think I am.”

“Uh-huh.” With utter disbelief. “Tell me something about you that would surprise me.”

They were taking the exit now and she could see the dark blue waters of Lake Okanagan blinking under the sunlight in the distance.

She didn’t just want to surprise him. She found herself wanting to shock him. So, feeling bold, she said, “I’ve skinny-dipped in this lake.”

His laugh was derisive. “Oh, sure. By yourself at midnight.”

“It wasn’t! It was at a coed party.”

“Oh,” he said dryly. “Coed. Boys and girls at the same party. And how many beers did you have to have before you went in? I bet you’re completely soused on two. And I’ll bet it was completely dark and you raced down to the water’s edge wrapped in your towel and didn’t take it off until the last possible moment. And then you stayed in the water freezing, scared to come out and were in bed sick for a week after.”

She stared at him, aghast at how accurate his portrayal of the one racy event of her entire life was. Obviously, he and Graham had talked about her way too much!

“So,” he said, satisfied by her fuming silence, “I know just about everything about you, and you, on the other hand, know nothing about me.”

But that wasn’t exactly true. A memory of his house came to her mind. When he had moved in, the house his family had occupied had been the only rental on their block. Everyone else owned their properties and had been in them for years, forming a family as much as a neighborhood.

And then the Adamses had arrived and moved into a neglected two-story down the street from her own house. The neglect, as she recalled, was not improved by his family’s possession.

Outside, paint peeled and fences sagged, and inside curtains drooped and burnt-out lightbulbs were not replaced. The lawn sprouted weeds, an occasional motorcycle, newspapers tangled in the shrubbery. One old, dilapidated car replaced another in the parking spot in front of that house.

Somehow, even though he had challenged her that she knew nothing about him, Grace could not bring that up. She could not tell him that he was a long, long way from his humble roots.

But he glanced at her face, and she was shocked by what an open book she was to him.

“Oh, wait,” he said, slowly. “You do know a thing or two about me. Boy from the wrong side of the tracks.”

“You lived on the same block as me!”

For a moment something in his face closed, he became intensely focused on driving the car as they entered the first of the twists in the road that ran in a serpentine around this edge of the lake. When he finally glanced at her, a small grin was on his face. “Don’t kid yourself, Gracie-Facie. Same block, different worlds. The Cleavers meet the Osbornes. Only, the poor version.”

The grin was a fake. It said it didn’t matter. It said it didn’t bother him, but there was something guarded in his eyes, daring her to judge him.

She wanted to tell him it didn’t matter, but she remembered all too clearly the police cars arriving on their quiet street, the shouting from inside their house, a rather memorable occasion when his mother had stumbled out onto the street drinking straight from a wine bottle.

And she remembered the dignity with which he had handled that, the pride flashing in his eyes as he had retrieved his mother from in front of all her neighbors, walked her back into the house with straight shoulders, his hand on his mother’s elbow, never glancing back at the assembled neighbors.

“You know something about growing up in a house like that, Gracie?”

She knew he was trusting her with something, and that this was not something he did often. The grin was completely gone.

“When you grow up in a war zone, you never expect anything good from life. That bred-into-the-bone cynicism made me a born soldier. And it always made me feel I had a leg up on those who did expect good things.”

She had to admit, he had something there. Look at her, going through life like Pollyanna, her dreams broken at every turn!

But still, there was something about him not expecting good things that made her sad.

“When you expect the worst,” he said, his voice grim, “you are rarely disappointed.”

“And what happens when the best happens?” she asked. “What happens when the boy from the wrong side of the tracks ends up in the red Ferrari?”

“Don’t forget the part about the girl next door being with him,” he added, and the grin was back, devil-may-care, daring her to see beyond it. The thing was, she
could
see beyond it.

“I’m being serious!”

“Are you ever anything else?”

“Occasionally! But not now. What do you feel when the best happens instead of the worst?”

“Oh, that word again.
Feel.
”

“As uncomfortable as it makes you, could you answer the question?”

“When good things happen, I enjoy every second of them. Without any expectation that it will last.”

He was telling her something, and she was aware she needed to pay attention. He wasn’t the staying kind. He wasn’t the lasting kind.

And what did she care? She would never think of Rory Adams like that.

Only, a secret part of her always had. And she was suddenly aware that secret part probably always would.

He would be such a foolish choice to fall for.

But he was right. She was being way too serious. She reminded herself it wasn’t in her new life agenda to fall for anyone. The exact opposite, in fact.

Besides, Rory hadn’t proposed they spend their lives together. He was giving her a day. And a dream.

And even if he was maintaining his own cynicism, she just needed to enjoy it, for this to be her
occasionally,
for this to be the day when she was not so serious.

When was the last time she had just had fun? A carefree day? A long, long time ago, certainly not since her brother had died.

She was accepting this as the unexpected gift it was. She was not even allowing herself to think that there might be a price to pay later.

“Rory?”

“Um?”

“Could you go a wee bit faster?”

He laughed and complied and she felt the thrill of both things: his laughter and the adrenaline of moving fast, a little closer to the edge. And Grace was aware his laughter brought that as surely as the power of the car did.

“Tell me about the car,” she called over the roar of the engine and the wind in her hair.

“This is a 2011 Ferrari, a 458 Spider with a V8 rear engine.”

“Somehow I don’t think they rent these to just anybody,” she guessed dryly. “In fact, where do you rent a car like this in Mason?”

“It’s not exactly from Mason,” he said, a little uncomfortably. “I had to make special arrangements to get it.”

“First cowboys and now a Ferrari. If I ever need a rabbit pulled out of a hat, I guess you’re my go-to guy, hmm?”

“If you ever need anything, Gracie,” he said quietly, “I’m your go-to guy.”

The simple statement, said so matter-of-factly, made her turn her face away from him so he could not see how deeply it affected her.

He was a man who said what he meant and meant what he said. And those simple words—that promise she could have someone to count on—filled her with unexpected emotion.

Dumb, since after Harold she had been so resolute in her intention not to rely on anyone for anything. Her plan now was to be one of those independent women who scoffed at
need.
She would hang her own pictures and refinish her own floors. When she came across a project she couldn’t do, she would hire someone.

After Harold, she had been resolute in her intention not just to be independent physically but also to be that way emotionally. Not to rely on anyone to make her feel anything anymore, and so the emotion clawing at her throat and stinging at her eyes because of his simple words,
I’m your go-to guy
felt as if it could swamp her whole plan for her life!

But riding in the car was a much-appreciated distraction from the unexpected meeting with her own secret longings, and she made herself focus on that. She might never, after all, experience something like this again!

She took off her jacket and threw it behind her seat.

And, after a while, she allowed herself to appreciate these moments with Rory. She liked the way one of his hands rested, light and confident on the wheel, the other on the gear shift. She liked the look on his face, relaxed but alert. Ready.

And she liked the way he drove. Many men would have gone crazy driving a car like this, but Rory drove without aggression, playing with the power but not unleashing it totally. It was as if he was riding a high-strung horse and he was in perfect control.

He put a CD in and the raspy tones of an old rock-and-roll band that had stood the test of time and could still fill stadiums filled the car.

The choice of music. The way he drove. The house he had come from.
If you ever need anything, Gracie, I’m your go-to guy.
How could he think she did not know anything about him?

She leaned back into her seat, felt the wind play with her hair. And surrendered.

* * *

Rory sat across the white linen tablecloth and watched Grace. The view of the lake from where they sat on the marble outdoor terrace of the Blue Water Resort’s restaurant was amazing. Grace had already told him, her eyes sparking with excitement, the transformations she planned for this space when the Warrior Down fundraiser was to be held here in the last days of August.

He had talked her into a glass of wine from a local winery, while refusing one himself.

“You’re not going to have one?” she asked.

“No. You don’t drive a car that powerful and that sensitive with anything in your system that could impair your judgment.”

He could tell she liked that, that his attention to safety appealed to her.

But there was a deeper truth behind his refusal to join her for a drink—and it wasn’t just that he wanted to prove himself right that she would be soused on two.

He had long ago come to rely on his instincts. There were times his survival and the survival of others had depended on that. Now, he rarely ever did anything that made those instincts fuzzy. He had not had a drink in at least five years.