Battle for the Soldier's Heart (7 page)

“The ponies looked fat to me.”

“Yeah. Unfortunately, horses who aren’t on a proper parasite-control program can look fat. That’s called worm belly. Also from eating poor-quality feed. That’s called hay belly.”

“You’re telling me the horses were hungry.” Or full of worms. Way more than he’d ever wanted to know about an equine’s belly.

“I think they were hungry. That’s why they broke loose at the park and were so hard to catch.”

Rory did not want to get involved in this. And yet how could he not be involved? If the horses were hungry, chances were the kid was, too.

He hung up the phone, frowning, and not just because his soda-pop-can plan had failed, either. He glanced at the window. Grace had disappeared from sight.

He could just call the authorities. There were people whose job it was to look after things like this and he was not one of those people. But even though he couldn’t see Gracie, it seemed like just being around her required him to be a better man.

He sighed and called Bridey.

“Mr. Adams,
sir.
”

“I need some good-quality hay delivered to some ponies. And a couple of days’ worth of groceries for a kid and his mom. I need you to track down a landowner and get permission to use his land. Offer him whatever it takes to get that permission. You can use Slim again to deliver the food and the hay. He knows the situation and the location.”

He hung up and glanced again at the window.
Gracie was back in view, wearing a huge white robe, and peering at a rack of bathing suits as if it were the enemy. Her tongue, as she flipped rapidly through hangers, was caught between her teeth in fierce concentration. Obviously she was torn between being a stick-in-the-mud and shocking the hell out of him.

He hoped she would be a stick-in-the-mud and at the same time he didn’t hope that at all. He was not used to being a man divided. He was used to being a man who knew exactly what he wanted.

Rory sighed, aware he did not want Gracie Day to know anything that he had just found out about Tucker and Serenity. If ever there would be a sucker for starving ponies, it would be her. Throw in the kid and that remote possibility that Tucker was Graham’s, and she’d be mortgaging her business to save them.

He had no choice. He had to protect her. And the catch? She could never know he was protecting her.

* * *

Break loose, Gracie.

Those words echoed in Gracie’s head as she studied the bathing-suit rack. How could a girl back down from a challenge like that? How could any woman in the world not rise to the bait? She
needed
to show him he had it all wrong.

That she was no stick-in-the-mud.

She selected a navy-blue tank-style, planning to defy his instruction to break loose. She held it up, studied it, silently declared it perfect. The matching bathing cap, with its huge plastic rose over the ear was a little silly, but the bathing suit would definitely do.

Except that it wouldn’t. As soon as Grace took it to the change room and tried it on, she knew it was all wrong. The bathing suit, on, while definitely practical, made her look about as sexy as a refrigerator box. Just the kind of suit a stick-in-the mud would choose in a pinch!

So, going way out of her comfort zone, she wrapped herself in the robe provided by the shop and peeked out of the change room.

She could see Rory sitting on a bench on the open-air walkway, talking on his cell phone, comfortable in his new swim trunks, looking at the lake.

Life was so unfair sometimes! When a guy needed a bathing suit, he just went and grabbed one off the rack and put it on. There was no twisting and turning and looking at it from this angle and that, no self-doubt, no feelings of not being perfect!

While she watched, he hung up the phone, put it back in his pocket. He gazed out over the lake, and she was taken by his stillness while he waited, a man who had learned to appreciate quiet moments—that lull before the storm—when he could get them.

What he wasn’t expecting was that she—little Gracie-Facie Day—was going to be his storm!

She looked back at the rack of suits, and this time refused even to look at the huge offering of one-piece suits. Taking a deep breath, she picked a half dozen of the skimpiest she could find!

A few moments later, she stared at herself in the change-room mirror.

Somehow, without planning it, maybe even against her will, she had become a totally different woman from the one who had walked into her office this morning.

“Not too late to put on the blue tank,” she whispered to herself.

But she knew she wasn’t going to.

CHAPTER FIVE

“M
Y
,
my,” Rory said, rising to join her as she came out of the shop, “Could you have found a bigger towel?”

He looked wickedly amused and Grace realized the huge towel she had purchased to wrap herself in only confirmed what he had suspected earlier when she had shared her skinny-dipping experience with him.

Goody Two Shoes. She was in a no-win position. If she dropped the towel now, she would feel like an idiot, displaying herself to him. If she didn’t, she would feel like the prude he so clearly thought she was!

“My skin is sensitive to the sun,” she said. “I haven’t been on the beach yet this year.” Shouldering her freshly purchased beach bag with her turquoise suit crumpled up inside it, she moved by him onto the flagstone pathway that wound down to the beach.

“You’re going to have to take it off sometime,” he said. “I wonder what you have on underneath it?”

She wished fervently for the blue suit that she had hung back up with a certain pride in the new her. She was not feeling nearly so bold now. In fact, she was feeling well out of her league.

“I have on the kind of suit a girl who rides in a
Ferrari would wear,” she said with as much sophistication as she could muster.

“Ah, here’s the rub, my Gracie, the girl in the Ferrari wouldn’t have bothered with the towel.”

My Gracie?

“Unless she burned easily,” she retorted stubbornly.

“Tanning beds have a way of eliminating that problem.”

“Hasn’t your fictional Ferrari girl ever heard of melanoma?”

“Mel-a-nom-a. Is that three syllables?”

“Four.”

He laughed. “That would be a no, then.”

“Bimbo.”

“Touché,” he said, and somehow she found herself smiling.

They reached the hotel beach and she shuffled through the hot sand to the water’s edge.

“Not going to lie in the sun and heat up a little first?” he asked smoothly.

She decided not to share with him that the wool suit she had so foolishly worn for precisely the reason he had guessed had heated her up quite enough for one day.

Sending him a little sidelong glance, she unhooked the towel from where it was clamped under her armpits. Unnerved by his frank anticipation of the towel dropping, Grace plunged into the water before the towel was even done slithering to the ground.

She couldn’t help the little shriek at the cold, but still she did not stop until the water was up to her neck.

“Come in,” she said. “It’s beautiful.”

“Liar. Your teeth are chattering.”

“Chicken.”

His eyes narrowed. “No one calls me a chicken and gets away with it, Gracie.”

“Bok-bok-bok-bok-bok.”

He hit the water running, dived cleanly, was nearly at her in one powerful stroke.

But she had grown up swimming and playing in these ice-cold waters, and she turned quickly from him and swam with expert strokes for the float.

She made it to the float a breath ahead of him, and clung to the side, scared if she got out of the water, the bathing suit might not come with her.

“Some suits,” he growled in her ear, “are not exactly designed for swimming are they, Gracie?”

She pulled an errant strap back on her shoulder. This was turning into a repeat of yesterday!

He began to hum
Itsy Bitsy Teeny Weeny Yellow Polka-Dot Bikini.
Deliberately defiant, trying to find a red Ferrari girl in herself somewhere, Gracie hauled herself up, thankful the children who had been there earlier had departed and did not catch a glimpse of all the parts of her slipping from her suit. She quickly adjusted and then turned back to face him.

He was laughing so hard he was having trouble treading water. That was not exactly the effect she had intended.

“I’m coming to get you, Gracie. Nobody calls me a chicken.” He switched from his
Yellow Polka-Dot
Bikini
humming to a much more sinister tune, which she recognized as the theme music from
Jaws.

Then he launched himself at the float. When he tried to pull himself up on the water-grayed wooden planks, she waited until he was precariously balanced on his forearms, placed all her weight on his shoulders and shoved.

He fell back in the water with a splash, and she barely had time to register how lovely his shoulders, skin and muscle had felt under her touch. She bounced on the balls of her feet, waiting for his next attempt.

He trod water for a moment, and she became aware he wasn’t laughing now. She fought the urge to cover herself. With what, after all? Why not just enjoy the gleaming appreciation in his eyes? Why not play with it? Why not be the fun and flirtatious kind of girl who would wear a suit like this and ride in a red Ferrari?

“I’m giving you one chance to surrender,” he told her.

“No. I hold the high ground and I intend to keep it.”

“Ha. You haven’t a hope, Gracie-Facie.”

“Maybe you haven’t a hope.”

He came again, lifted himself up. She placed her foot solidly on the slickness of his wet chest and pushed. He fell back again, but this time he grabbed at her ankle and she slid forward before shaking free.

He came again, and this time she went for his head. She leaned out precariously, shoved and he went under the water easily.

Too easily, because just as she was congratulating herself on repelling another attack, a hand snaked out of the water and locked on her wrist. He tugged and she flew off the float and over his head, landing with an ungracious splash.

Now he clambered up on the float, and repelled her efforts to get up on it. Soon, the air was shimmering with their shouts and their laughter.

She forgot to be self-conscious. She just became immersed in the playful sensuality of the moment: cold water, wet bodies, a perfect summer day and a perfect man to enjoy it with.

She finally managed to get her hands locked around one of his knees and refused to let go, hanging on like a terrier to a bull.

He plunged into the water beside her. Surfaced, shaking droplets of water from his hair, shouting with laughter.

“Okay,” he said, finally, when they were both gasping for air, breathless from laughing, as sodden as half-drowned puppies. “You’ve worn me out. I’ll share the float with you.”

“May I count that as a surrender?”

“You may count it as a truce.”

She pretended to be thinking about it. “All right.”

He pulled himself up on the float, held his arm out and she took it. He yanked her from the water with amazing strength, and they stood there in the bright sun, dripping water and staring at each other, something as sizzling as the sun in the air between them.

Rory Adams was as perfect as God had ever made a man. His features were chiseled, masculine, glorious. His muscles, beaded with water, told a story of easy, self-assured strength. And his eyes were the most intense shade of green she had ever seen.

His gaze moved with frank appreciation to where the water slid from her hair down in between the minute protection of the two tiny scraps of fabric that hid her breasts.

And then they moved to her lips.

And for a moment, while they rested there, she felt the heat of it, wanted what he wanted.

But then he turned, flopped down on the deck and patted the worn boards beside him.

She flopped down and felt the delicious heat of the sun on her cold skin.

“How come you never came home, Rory? Graham came when he could. For Christmas at the very least.”

He was silent, she sensed debating how much of himself to trust her with. And she felt a little thrill when he spoke, knowing intuitively she had passed a test not many had passed.

“I was so glad to get out of my house that, except for my brother, I never looked back. The military was heaven for me. Routines, rules. Meals.”

“You could have come home with Graham. I know he asked you.”

“I tried to spend holidays with my brother. We both liked to pretend it wasn’t Christmas at all. We went skiing, sometimes. California, once. France, another time.”

Despite the fact he tossed that out casually, she hurt for him. “How are your parents, Rory? They moved out of the neighborhood shortly after you left.”

“They’re both gone. My mom first, cirrhosis, my dad a few years later in an accident.”

“I didn’t know,” she said. “Graham never said anything.”

“They lived hard. People who live like that die young.”

She scanned his face. It was closed.

“I’m sorry,” she said. Not for the deaths of his parents, but for him. For growing up like that, for the loneliness of having nowhere to go at Christmas, for being so alone in the world he had not shared his pain with his best friend.

He closed his eyes. For a moment, she thought he had shut down completely.

“How are your parents, Grace?”

He obviously wanted to move on. She could tell he did not like it that he had revealed so much of himself to her.

But she felt deeply honored by his trust. And somehow, despite the fact she was nearly naked beside the most glorious man in the world, it suddenly felt easy to be with him. In so many ways it was as if he was brand-new to her, but there was also a sense of knowing him. He had been in and out of her house with her brother for a couple of years.

She told him about her parents, and then ventured into the territory of old haunts: the park at the end of the street where she’d caught him and Graham smoking cigarettes and threatened to tell.

“You were a sanctimonious little brat.”

The high school and mutual acquaintances, what childhood sweethearts had married and who was now divorced. He closed his eyes and it gave her a chance to study him, to breathe in the just-out-of-the-water purity of his skin, to marvel at the thick ropes of his hair where they touched the broad perfection of his shoulders.

When she had gotten up this morning, could she have predicted a day like this? When was the last time she had allowed herself to be surprised? When had she developed this death grip on life, feeling as if she ever let go of control things would spiral wildly toward chaos and destruction?

The sun dried the water on their skin, and she became aware of how good she felt. Relaxed. Did she dare say happy?

Yes, happy.

“I’m happy,” she said it out loud, with the wonder it deserved.

“I’m glad,” he said, and he opened one eye and looked at her.

“Are you?”

He closed his eye again, seemed to feel the rough boards of the float under the roughening whiskers of his face, seemed to contemplate the question with a deep seriousness.

He opened his eyes and stared at her, and the surprise showed in his eyes and then ran in a grin across the beautiful curve of his mouth.

A real grin, a grin that lit the darkness of his eyes like sun being filtered through a glass pot of steeping tea.

“Yeah,” he said, “I am.”

“It’s been a long time since I felt happy,” she admitted.

He was silent. She was aware of his dark eyes on her, aware that something in him was guarded, was aware of it giving way.

“Me, too,” he said slowly.

And again some delicious tension built between them. He reached out and traced a drop of water that fell from the thickness of her hair, trickled down the curve of her face to her neck.

He’s going to kiss me,
she thought.

* * *

I’m going to kiss her,
Rory thought with amazement.

Being with her was amazing. What was it about her that made him feel powerless over what was going to happen next?

He didn’t talk about his family. And yet he had. And instead of feeling as if he should have kept his mouth shut, he felt unburdened.

Accepted.

And so his sense of amazement increased as his hand traced the droplet of water down her neck, felt how delicate her skin was, possibly the softest thing he had ever felt.

He leaned toward her. He could smell the water on her skin and feel the temperature of her skin changing as it heated under the sun.

Happy.

The thing about happiness for him? It had always felt like a challenge to the gods, something that could be taken away with remarkable swiftness.

He had never gone for Christmas at the Day house because he had known how it would be. Happiness. Closeness.

Him on the outside, looking in, knowing he couldn’t have what they had.

He pulled back from the temptation to taste her, looked into her eyes, saw the light, that miraculous light that seemed able to pierce all his shields, that seemed to be able to reach right inside him and pierce the darkness, too.

Having allowed her to make him happy made him feel vulnerable. Open. If you opened yourself to happiness, what other feelings slipped in? He didn’t want to be open.

He carried too much with him that he didn’t want to let out of the bag. He had lives on his head. From both sides. Brothers who haunted his dreams. Men he called enemy, but that did not make doing what had to be done in any way easier.

He had formed an attitude of survival that involved no attachments.

Except to Graham.

He could not kiss Graham’s sister. Or maybe he could. That’s what happiness did. It was like wine. It impaired a man’s judgment.

A splash broke just off the edge of the float, and there was enough warrior left in him that he was annoyed with himself for not having noticed the approach of the boys.

This was the second time with her that his guard had been broached—yesterday Tucker had caught him off guard.

Today it was young men, teenagers, maybe sixteen or seventeen, three of them.

They hauled themselves up on the float, and began a rambunctious shoving match that was punctuated with some very foul language.

Was he faintly relieved to be exchanging one kind of intensity for a much more familiar kind?

In one move, lithe and silent, Rory found his feet. He crossed his arms over his chest, placed his feet wide,
presence
was second nature to him.

“Enough of the language,” he said quietly. He said nothing else. They could clearly see there was a woman here. He wouldn’t point that out to them.