“You’re hopelessly distrustful.”

Suddenly the defiance left her expression. Rory wished he would have had time to get ready for what she did next. Grace laid her hand on his wrist.

Everything she was was in that touch. The way she was dressed tried to say one thing about her: that she was a polished and successful businesswoman. But her touch said something entirely different. That she was gentle, a little naïve, hopeful about life. She was too soft and too gullible. He was not sure how she had managed to remain that way through life’s tragedies—the death of her brother, the break-up of her engagement. There was a kind of courage in it that he reluctantly admired even while he felt honor-bound to discourage it.

He both admired her hope and wanted to kill it before it did some serious damage.

Grace turned and looked at Rory, those amazing eyes dancing with the most beautiful light. And the light in her eyes was doing the strangest thing to him. Grace’s light was piercing the darkness in him, bringing brightness to a place that had not seen it for a long, long time.

He did not allow himself to marvel at it. He thrust the feeling of warmth away. His darkness could put out her light in a millisecond. And he’d better remember that when he was thinking about how beautiful Graham’s kid sister had become.

Dear Reader,

I’ve just had another perfect summer. I had the opportunity to do plenty of swimming in two of the world’s most wonderful lakes: Lake Pend O’reille in Idaho, and Kootenay Lake in BC, in Canada. I also had lots of company this summer, ate ice cream, drank iced cappuccinos and sat in the shade just contemplating life.

And while I was having this fantastic, carefree summer so many young men and women who have answered the call to protect their nations were so far from home.

I write about soldiers because I have always thought it takes a special kind of courage to leave all the comforts (that I generally take for granted) behind. I am aware that the peace and prosperity I enjoy are ultimately linked to a young stranger’s willingness to serve and to sacrifice.

So this one is dedicated to them, with heartfelt gratitude.

Cara Colter

About the Author

CARA COLTER lives on an acreage in British Columbia with her partner Rob and eleven horses. She has three grown children and a grandson. She is a recent recipient of the RT Book Reviews Career Achievement Award in the Love and Laughter category. Cara loves to hear from readers, and you can contact her or learn more about her through her website, www.cara-colter.com

Battle for the
Soldier’s Heart
Cara Colter

www.millsandboon.co.uk

To all the men and women who serve,

with deepest gratitude.

CHAPTER ONE

THERE were Shetland ponies everywhere.

They were gobbling the long strands of grass that sprouted around the brightly painted legs of the children’s playground equipment. They were chowing down on the weeping-willow fronds at the edge of the duck pond.

Three had found their way through the chain-link fence and were grazing with voracious appetite on the green temptations of the Mason Memorial Soccer Field.

One had its face buried in the remnants of a birthday cake, and another, wandering toward the wading pool, was trailing a banner that said Happy Birthday, Wilson Schmelski.

From where he stood at the pedestrian bridge that crossed into the city of Mason’s most favored civic park, Pondview, Rory Adams counted eight ponies on the loose.

And only one person trying to catch them.

“You little monster! You beady-eyed ingrate!”

The woman lunged right, the pony left.

If it had been anyone else, he might have allowed himself to see the humor in her predicament.

Instead, he frowned. When he thought of Gracie Day, somehow, even after speaking to her on the phone, he hadn’t factored in the passage of time. She was frozen in his mind at fourteen or fifteen. All glittering braces and freckles, skinned knees, smart-alecky and annoying.

To him, six years her senior, Gracie, his best friend’s little sister, had not even been a blip on his radar. He had not considered her a girl in the sense that he considered girls. And at that age? Had he ever considered anything but girls?

He’d been twenty-one when he saw her last. He and Graham mustering out, on their first tour of Afghanistan, and her looking at him with fury glittering in her tear-filled eyes. I hate you. How could you talk him into this?

Graham had started to argue—the whole let’s-go-play-soldier thing had been his idea, after all—but Rory had nudged him, and Graham had understood instantly.

Let me take it, let me be the bad guy in your kid sister’s eyes.

The memory made him wince. They had looked out for each other. They’d had each other’s backs. Probably thousands of times since they had said good-bye to Gracie that day. But the one time it had really counted…

Rory shook off the thoughts, and focused on the woman chasing ponies.

That kid sister.

Gracie Day was small and slender, deliciously curved in all the right places. Auburn hair that had probably started the day perfectly controlled and prettily coiffed, had long since surrendered to humidity and the pitfalls of pony-chasing. Her hair was practically hissing with bad temper and fell in a wild wave to her bare sun-kissed shoulders.

She was daintily dressed in a wide-skirted cream sundress and matching heels that had probably been perfect for the children’s birthday party her event-planning company had just hosted.

But if Gracie had worked at it, she couldn’t have chosen a worse outfit for chasing ponies.

The dress was looking rumpled, one slender strap kept sliding off her shoulder, and not only couldn’t she get up any speed in those shoes, but the heels kept turning in the grass. At first glance, the smudge on the delectable rise of her bosom might have been mistaken for part of the pattern on the dress. But a closer look—that was not the bosom she’d had at fourteen—and he was pretty sure the bright-green splotch was horse slobber.

“Do you have any idea what glue is made from? Do you?”

Something still in her, then, of that fourteen-year-old girl she had once been. That girl was closer to the surface than the cool, calm and collected Gracie Day she had managed to convince him she was when he had spoken to her on the phone.

“I need to talk to you,” he’d said, when he’d finally made it home. By then Graham had already been gone for six months. He’d wanted to tell her the truth.

I failed.

“I can’t see why we would need to talk,” she’d responded, and the fact was, he’d been relieved.

Talking about what had happened to Graham—and his part in it—was not going to be easy. And while he was not a man who shirked hard things, he had been thankful for the reprieve.

Rory felt a shiver along his spine. They said it was survivor’s guilt, but in his heart he felt it was his fault her brother hadn’t come home.

Somehow, instead of being a temporary diversion, playing soldier had turned into a career for both of them. Graham, on their third deployment, Afghanistan again, had taken a bullet.

Rory still woke almost every night, sweating, his heart pounding.

Two teenage boys. Something about them. He’d hesitated because they were so young. And then bullets everywhere. Ducking, taking cover. Where was Graham? Out there. Crawling out, pulling him back, cradling him in his arms.

Blood, so much blood.

But the dream woke him before it was done. There was a piece missing from it, words he could not remember though he chased after them once he was awake.

The dream never told him what he needed to know. Had it been those boys? Were they the ones who had fired those shots? What could he have done differently? Could he have shoved Graham behind him, taken it instead?

Check up on Gracie. Those words whispered, a plea.

You didn’t take a dying request lightly. And especially not the dying request of the man who’d been his best friend for more than ten years.

So, back home for six months now, Rory had tried. He called Gracie twice, and admittedly had been somewhat relieved to have been coolly rejected each time. The dreams were bad enough without the reality of having to tell her what had happened, while at the same time sparing her what had happened.

And so, he had followed the letter of Graham’s instruction and checked up on her. While he had been away, the company he and his own brother had started—they had begun with race-car graphics and were now taking on the world—had succeeded beyond his wildest dreams. Once home, done with the military for good, Rory Adams was amazed to find himself a man with considerable resources.

One of whom was named Bridey O’Mitchell. Officially, she was his personal assistant. Unofficially, he considered her his secret weapon.

Bridey, middle-age, British, unflappable, could accomplish anything. Some days, Rory entertained himself by finding impossible challenges for her.

Can you get ice cream delivered to that crew working on the graphics for those Saudi airplanes? I know it’s short notice, but do you think you could find half a dozen tickets to the sold-out hockey game? I’d like a koala bear and two kangaroos at the opening of that Aussie tour company we did the buses for.

Checking up on Gracie Day? That had been child’s play for Bridey.

And the ensuing report about Gracie Day had been soothingly dull. Gracie was no longer engaged to the fiancé Graham had disliked intensely, and she ran a successful event-planning company, Day of Your Life, here in Mason, in the Okanagan Valley of British Columbia. Hers was the “it” company for weddings and anniversaries and special events.

The company had just been chosen to do the major annual fundraiser for Warrior Down, the organization that helped wounded vets and their families.

But Gracie’s bread and butter was birthday parties for the children of the well-heeled, politicians and doctors and lawyers and CEOs. She put together the kind of parties that had clowns in them. And bouncy tents. Maybe a magician. And fireworks. The ponies must be an added touch since Rory had received Bridey’s very thorough report.

Gracie Day organized the kind of parties that he had never had. In fact, he didn’t recall his birthday ever being celebrated, except on one memorable occasion when his mother had ended up face-first in the cake. How old had he been? Six? After that, he’d said no thanks to efforts at celebration.

There. He’d “checked up” on her. Even that little bit of checking had triggered a bad memory, so he wanted to let it go there. Grace Day was doing well.

Still, even as he tried to tell himself he’d obeyed the letter of Graham’s last instruction to him, it ate at the honor he had left. Rory had needed to see for himself that Gracie was doing all right. His last call had been a week ago.

And there had been something in her voice.

Even though she had said she was doing fabulously.

He couldn’t pinpoint what exactly he had heard in her voice. A certain forced note to the breezy tone? Something guarded, as if she had a secret that she was not planning on revealing to him?

Whatever it was, it wouldn’t let him go. Over the past week, the need to see her had grown in urgency. Instinct had become such a big part of his life when he was a soldier, that he found he couldn’t ignore that niggling little voice. When he tried, it was just one more thing that woke him in the night, that haunted his dreams.

A little lie to her secretary had sent him to Pondview. “My company is one of the sponsors of Warrior Down. I need to talk to her urgently. And in person.”

Just as he’d suspected, the mention of Gracie’s pet project got him all the information he needed. Did he feel guilty for lying?

No. Guilt was for guys of a sensitive nature, and he definitely did not qualify. In his house, growing up, later on the battlefield, that was how you stayed alive. You didn’t let things touch you.

But Graham dying… Rory shook it off, chose to focus with unnecessary intensity on Gracie. She was sneaking up on a fat black-and-white pony, who, while seeming oblivious, was clearly watching her out of the corner of his eye. She was right on one count: the pony was beady-eyed.

And a whole lot smarter than he looked. Because when she made her move, the pony sidled sideways, out of her grasp. He turned and looked at her balefully, chewing a clump of grass.

Rory winced when her heel embedded itself in the grassy ground, spongy from a recent watering and Gracie pitched forward. The heel snapped off her shoe with a click so audible Rory could hear it from where he was standing.

What was left of her cool reserve—and that wasn’t much—abandoned her. Rory found himself smiling when she pried her foot free, took off a shoe and hurled it at the pony, who kicked up its heels at her and farted as it dodged the shoe.

“Bad horses become glue,” she shouted. “And dog food. How would you like to be breakfast for a Great Dane?”

“Tut-tut,” Rory muttered to himself. “Your decorum doesn’t match your dress, Miss Day.”

The truth? He liked the Miss Day who would throw a shoe at a pony much more than the one who answered her phone with such cool reserve, or the one who ran perfect birthday parties in her designer duds.

But then, he knew enough about the real Miss Day that she would be appalled. That’s how bored guys whiled away their time. Played poker. Smoked. Slept. Talked.

About girlfriends and family.

Graham had never been that successful in the girlfriend department, so Rory knew an awful lot about his sister.

Like: Gracie just never lets loose. You know, ever since she was a little girl she’s carried a picture of a candy-apple red Ferrari. How did she become such a stick-in-the-mud? And how is it she’s going to marry a stick-in-the-mud accountant, least likely ever to own a sports car? He drives a car that would barely make the economy class at a car-rental agency!

Then, as if to prove her brother had her all wrong, that there was nothing stick-in-the-mud about her, Graham Day’s straitlaced sister, who didn’t know how to let loose, took off the other shoe and hurled it after the departing pony. She said a word—loudly—that soldiers used with fast and furious frequency but that would have raised a few eyebrows at her perfectly executed rich kids’ birthday party.

Rory felt a smile tickle at his lips. A long, long time since he had found much to smile about.

Still, it was more than evident it was a bad time to talk to her. Of course, the chivalrous thing to do would be to rescue her, to save the day, but he had given up any illusions of being a hero long, long ago. And more, Gracie would hate his catching her like this.

In a bad spot.

Vulnerable.

Out of control.

Needing his help.

Besides, he didn’t know anything about horses of the large variety, and less about the tiny ones.

Still, just leaving her to deal with it seemed too hard-hearted, even for him, the man generally untroubled by guilt.

But there it was: the memory of Graham required Rory to be a better man. Even if she was not his sister, Graham wouldn’t have approved of abandoning the damsel in her distress.

Rory remembered he had a step up on the other heroes out there. A secret weapon. He pulled his cell phone from his pocket and tried not to wince when Bridey answered, halfway through the first ring, with her chipper, “Mr. Adams, sir.”

He had tried to tell her his preference was for a more casual form of address, but on that topic she would not hear him.

Her tone reproachful, she was fond of reminding him, “Mr. Adams, you are the CEO of a very successful company.”

“Bridey, I need you to find me someone who can round up some escaped ponies.”

If the request took her by surprise, she certainly didn’t let on. She took all the details and assured him she was on it.

Rory made a decision to help Gracie Day save whatever pride she had left by sinking further back into the shadows of the park, to be an interested spectator, nothing more.

But just as he made that decision, Gracie froze. It reminded him of a deer sniffing the air, some sense alerting it that it no longer was alone, that it was being observed. Then Gracie turned her head slowly and looked directly at him.

He saw recognition dawn in her eyes, and then in the set of her mouth.

She folded her arms over the green smudge on her chest and lifted her chin, trying for composure, distancing herself from that woman who had been hurling shoes and shouting invective at horses.

Taking a deep breath, feeling a sensation in his chest that was similar to what he felt just before starting the mission, just before stepping into the heat of battle, Rory Adams moved toward Gracie.

And stopped right in front of her.

Had he ever known her eyes were that color? He thought it was called hazel, a plain word for such a rich mix of golds and greens and browns worthy of an exotic tapestry.

Had he ever known that her lips were lush and wide? The kind of lips that a man imagined crushing under his own?

Of course he hadn’t.

She had been a kid. His friend’s sister.

Now she was a woman. A beautiful woman, if not a very happy one!

He hesitated, picked up her shoe—who said he couldn’t be chivalrous?—and handed it to her.

“Hello, Gracie.”

Grace Day blinked at the way her nickname sounded coming off his lips. So right.

As if part of her had ached to be called that again.

And, of course, part of her did. But by her brother. Not by Rory Adams.

She grabbed her shoe from his hand, and accidentally brushed his fingertips. The shock was electrical, and to hide its shiver from him, she shoved the shoe on her foot, buying a moment to breathe.

It had been eight years. Couldn’t he be bald? Or fat? Couldn’t life give her one little break?

She straightened, trying for dignity even though she was distinctly lopsided, and the narrow strap of her sundress chose that moment to slide down her shoulder.

Grace could clearly see that Rory Adams was better than he had been before. Twenty-one-year-old lankiness was gone, replaced with a male physique in its absolute prime. He was tall—well, he’d always been that, standing head and shoulders above his peers—but now he was also broad-shouldered and deep-chested.

He was wearing a sports shirt—short-sleeved—that showed off rock-hard biceps, the ripple of toned forearms. Khaki shorts hugged lean hips and powerful thighs, showed the naked length of his long, tanned legs.

His face had matured, too. She was not sure she would say it was better. Changed. The mischievousness of a young man was gone. So was the devil-may-care light that had always burned like fire in the depths of those green, green eyes.

Around his eyes, now, were the creases of a man who had squinted into the sun a great deal. There was a set to his jaw, a firmness around his mouth that had not been there before.

There was something in his expression that was closed and hard. It was the look of a warrior, a man who had accepted the mantle of serving his country, but at a price to himself. There were new shadows in eyes that had once been clear.

Rory Adams had seen things—and done things—that made the tatters of the birthday party behind her seem frivolous and superficial.

Her eyes wandered to his hair. It was brown, glossy and rich as a vat of melted dark chocolate, shining with the highlights of the Okanagan early summer sun.

The last time she had seen him, that dark hair had been very short, buzzed off to a mere shadow, vanity-and maintenance-free in preparation for hard, hot work in inhospitable climates.

Now, Rory had returned to a style closer to that she remembered from when he was coming in and out of their house with Graham.

Rory’s family had moved onto their block and into their school district in the latter half of Graham’s senior year. And then in those carefree days after they had finished high school, they had both worked for the same landscaping company.

That was before they had decided it was imperative that they go save the world.

Rory’s hair was longer than it had been even then, longer than she had ever seen it, thick, rich, straight until it touched his collar, and then it curled slightly.

She supposed that’s what everyone who got out of the military did—exercised the release from discipline, celebrated the freedom to grow their hair.

And yet the long hair did not make him look less a warrior, just a warrior from a different age.

Too easy to picture him with the long hair catching in the wind, that fierce expression on his face, a sword in his hand, ready.

He was the kind of man who made a woman feel the worst kind of weakness: a desire to feel his strength against her own softness, to feel the rasp of rough whiskers against delicate skin, to feel the hard line of those lips soften against her mouth.

But Rory Adams had always been that. Even now Grace could feel the ghost of the girl she had once been. She could feel the helpless humiliation she had felt at fourteen because she loved him so desperately.

And pathetically.

She’d been as invisible to him as a ghost. No, more like a mosquito, an annoyance he swatted at every now and then. His best friend’s aggravating kid sister.

She’d known from the moment he had first called her six months ago, that nothing good could come from seeing him.

There had been something in his voice, grim and determined, that had made her think he had things to tell her that she was not ready to hear, that she would probably never be ready to hear.

Besides, seeing Rory? It could only make her yearn for things that could never be. She had never seen Rory without her brother, Graham.

The brother who was not coming home. Hadn’t she thought seeing her brother’s friend would intensify the sense of loss that was finally dulling to a throbbing ache instead of a screaming pain?

Once she had blamed this man who stood before her for Graham’s choices, but a long time ago she had realized her brother had been born to do what he was doing. It was a choice that he had been willing to give his life for.

And he had.

But if Rory wanted to think she still held him responsible, and if it kept up some kind of barrier between them, that was okay.

Because what shocked Gracie right now was that what she felt looking at Rory was not an intensified sense of loss. Rather, she was unprepared for how the yearning of her younger self—to be noticed by him, to be cared about him—had not disappeared with her braces and her first bra.

Not even close.

She blinked. And then again, hard. “No one calls me that,” she said. “No one calls me Gracie.”

She thought she sounded childish and defensive. She didn’t want him to know he’d had any kind of effect on her.

Why couldn’t she just have said, “Hello, Rory. Nice to see you”? Why couldn’t she have just said that, all her years of hard-won polish and sophistication wrapped around her like a protective cloak?

Because he had caught her in a terrible moment. Running after renegade ponies, her shoe broken, her hair clasp lost, her strap sliding around and her dress stained beyond repair.

If she’d known he wasn’t going to take no for an answer, she would have invited him to the office she was so proud of on the main street of downtown Mason.

Where she could have been in complete control of this reunion!

“What do they call you?”

His voice was deep and sure and sent unwanted shivers down her spine.

Miss Day would have sounded way too churlish, plus she was wobbling on one shoe, and feeling damp and disheveled and not at all like the cool professional woman she wanted him to believe she was.

“Grace.”

“Ah.”

She didn’t like the way he was looking at her, his gaze probing, those deep green eyes feeling as though they were stripping away her maturity and success and exposing the vulnerable and gauche girl she was so startled to find was alive and well within her.

“Graham’s the only one who called me that. Everyone else called me Grace. Even my parents.”

“Graham and me,” he reminded her.

Gracie-Facie, pudding and pie, kissed the boys and made them cry …

On those rare occasions when Rory Adams had noticed her, it had been to tease her mercilessly.

But that boy who had teased—the one with the careless grin, and the wild way—seemed to be gone. Completely.

Why couldn’t her inner child be so cooperative?

“So, how’s life?” he said.

As if he’d just been walking by, and happened upon her. Which she doubted. When she’d talked to him a week ago, she’d told him she didn’t want to see him.

She should have guessed that would not have changed about him. He was not a man who had had to accept no for an answer very often. Especially not from those of the female persuasion. She should have guessed he would not accept it from her.

“The same as when I talked to you a week ago,” Grace said stubbornly. “Fabulous.”

This was not true. In fact, nothing could be further from the truth.

“Except for the ponies,” he commented dryly, but he she had a feeling he wasn’t buying it, and not just because of the ponies. Not for a second.

Couldn’t he see that her dress was perfectly cut fine linen? That the shoe he had handed her was an expensive designer shoe? Couldn’t he see that she was all grown up and that she didn’t need any help from big, strong him to get her through life’s hurdles?

Of which, at the moment, she had more than her fair share.

“Fabulous,” she repeated, tightly.

“You look worried,” he said after a moment.

And then he did the darndest thing. He took his thumb, and ever so gently pressed it into her forehead.

Where she knew the worry lines had been building like storm clouds for a whole week!

Ever since Serenity had arrived with her entourage. Ponies. Tucker.

There was a momentary sensation of bliss: a momentary desire to lean into that thumb and all it offered. Someone to lean on. Someone to talk to. Someone to trust.

Hopeless illusions that she, of all people, should have left far behind her. The end of her engagement really should have been the last straw.

Had been the last straw, Grace told herself firmly. Her business was everything now. Everything. She had laid herself out on the altar of romantic love—and had been run through by love’s caprice—for the last time.

She was not leaving herself open to hurt anymore. She had made that vow when her fiancé of two years, Harold, had bade her adieu. Vowed it.

And then, as if to test that vow, Serenity had come.

And now Rory was here. This man appearing in her life, her entertaining the notion it would be nice to hear his opinion about Serenity—or feel his whiskers scrape her face—those were tests of her resolve.

When he had phoned, she had contemplated asking him a few questions, but in the end she had decided not to.

And the deep cynicism that permeated his expression should only confirm how right she had been in that decision.

Because he could lay her hope to rest. Dash it completely before it was even fully formed.

Hope was such a fragile thing for her.

Hope was probably even more dangerous to her than love. But still, not to hope for anything at all would be a form of death, wouldn’t it?

She was not about to trust her hope to someone like him. And yet, there it was—the temptation just to tell him, to see what he thought.

Not to be so damned alone.

Recognizing the utter folly of these thoughts, Grace slapped his thumb down from her forehead. “I’m not worried.”

No sense giving in to the temptation to share confidences, to tell him she’d spent years building up her business. One incident like this, and it could all crumble, word spreading like wildfire that she was unprofessional, that she’d had a disaster.

Thank goodness the party had been over, the last of the pint-size revelers being packed into their upscale minivans and SUVs when the ponies had made their break for it. Hopefully the park people—or the press—wouldn’t come along before she got this cleared up.

But that was only the immediate problem, anyway, although all her problems were related at the moment.

“Didn’t the ponies come with a pony person?” he asked.

Ah, that was the other problem. The pony person was exactly the secret she wanted to keep.

“The pony person is, um, incapacitated. Not your problem,” she said, flashing him a smile that made him frown. She had been aiming for a smile that said, This? Just a temporary glitch. Nothing I can’t handle.

And she had obviously missed that smile by a long shot. Grace hoped he didn’t catch her anxious glance toward the parking lot.

Thankfully, she’d had the trailer the ponies had arrived in moved way across the parking lot into the deep shade of the cottonwoods on the other side. She had not wanted the partygoers to bump right into it in its decrepit condition.

“Maybe we’ll meet again under different circumstances,” she said, hoping he would take the hint and leave.

But he did not have the look of a man who responded to subtlety, and he had caught her glance toward the parking lot. Now he was looking past her. She moved in front of him, trying to block his view, but it was no use. He looked over her head, easily.

Not a single person at the party had mentioned the trailer. It was as if they hadn’t seen it at all.

But then, most people weren’t like him.

And Rory Adams had become a man who saw everything, who missed absolutely nothing.

Of course, she knew from the few things Graham had said when he came home on leave that these men led lives that depended on their ability to be observant of their surroundings, every nuance of detail, every vehicle, every person, every obstacle.

Rory stepped around her, and headed right toward where the ramshackle horse trailer was. It was painted a shade of copper that almost hid the rust eating away at it around the wheel wells.

On the side, in fading circus letters, three feet high, it said, Serenity’s Wild Ride.

He looked over his shoulder at Grace, his eyes narrow. “What’s she doing here?”

He recognized the trailer. He knew Serenity. Was it what Grace feared? Or what she hoped?

CHAPTER TWO

“YOU know her,” Grace said, scrambling to keep up with him on her one shoe. “You know Serenity.”

She stopped and picked up the other on her way. Since one had a heel and the other didn’t, she took them both off and dangled them from her fingertips.

“A chance encounter a long, long time ago.” Rory glanced back at her, hesitated, and then waited. “Watch for pony poo.”

“Oh!” Life was so unfair. Well, that was hardly a newsflash. But, if Grace had to see Rory Adams, wouldn’t it have been nice if she had been sipping a glass of white wine and looking entirely unflappable, rather than chasing after him in bare feet, avoiding poo?

“What’s she doing here, Gracie?”

She wanted to remind him she didn’t want to be called Gracie, but something about the way Rory had stopped and was looking down at her made her feel very flustered.

The weak compulsion to share the burden won.

“She came by the office a week ago.”

“She knew where your office was,” he said flatly.

“I’m in the phone book. She said she knew Graham.”

Grace did not miss how his eyes narrowed at that.

“She knew I had an event company.”

“So, she’s done some homework.”

“You don’t need to make it sound like she’s running a sting, and she found an easy mark.”

He raised an eyebrow. It said exactly.

“She just wondered if I could give her some work. She had ponies, I had an upcoming birthday party. It seemed like it might be win-win.”

“What aren’t you telling me?”

Hell’s bells. She did not like it that he could see through her that easily. It meant she had to avoid looking at his lips.

Naturally, as soon as she told herself not to look at his lips, she did just that. Why did men like him have this kind of seductive power over people? Female people anyway!

“What makes you think I’m not telling you something?” she hedged.

“I was Graham’s best friend for ten years and you refused to see me, but a complete stranger shows up who claims a passing acquaintance to your brother and you’re forming a business partnership with her?”

“I rented her ponies for an afternoon. That’s hardly a business partnership.”

“It’s not ‘I can’t see why we need to talk,’ either.”

Something crossed his face.

“I hurt your feelings,” Grace said, stunned.

For a moment, he looked stunned, too. Then a shield came down over his eyes, making them seem a darker shade of emerald than they had before. A little smile tickled the sinfully sensuous curve of his mouth. His expression was not exactly amusement, and not exactly scorn. More a kind of deprecating self-knowledge.

“Gracie, honey—”

Gracie wasn’t bad enough? Now he had to add honey to it?

“I don’t have feelings for you to hurt.”

That was what he wanted for her to believe. And she saw it was entirely possible that he believed that himself. But she didn’t.

And suddenly Rory Adams was more dangerous to her than ever. Because he wasn’t just handsome. He wasn’t just the first man she’d ever had a crush on. He wasn’t just her brother’s best friend and fellow adventurer.

Because just before that shield had come down in his eyes, Grace was sure she had caught a glimpse of someone who had lost their way, someone who relied totally on himself, someone lonely beyond what she had ever known that word to mean.

“There was a complication,” she admitted slowly. “That’s why I agreed to have her provide ponies for the party.”

“The thing about a woman like Serenity?”

She hated the way he said that, as if he knew way too much about women in general and women like Serenity in particular.

“What kind of woman is Serenity?” Grace demanded sweetly, though the kind of woman Serenity was was terribly obvious, even to Grace. Serenity was one of those women who had lived hard and lived wild, and it was all catching up with her.

The line around Rory’s lip tightened as he decided what to say. “She’s the kind who used to own the party,” he said. “And then the party owned her.”

Grace suspected that he had sugarcoated what he really wanted to say, but what he had said was harsh enough, and it was said with such a lack of sympathy that the moment of unwanted—and weakening sympathy she had felt for him—evaporated.

Thank God.

“And what about women like Serenity?” she said, yanking her strap up one more time.

“There’s always a complication.”

Then he strode over to the horse trailer, and Gracie could not help but notice he was all soldier now, totally focused, totally take-charge and totally no-nonsense.

It felt like a terrible weakness on her part that she was somewhat relieved both by the fact his armor was back up and by the fact he was taking charge.

So she had to say, “I can handle this.”

He snorted, glanced meaningfully at the pony in the wading pool, trampling what was left of the soggy Happy Birthday banner, and said, “Sure you can, Gracie.”

I hurt your feelings. Really, Gracie Day couldn’t have picked a more annoying thing to say to him.

Feelings? Weren’t those the pesky things that he’d managed to outrun his whole life? Starting with a less than stellar childhood—no ponies at birthday parties, for sure—and ending up in a profession where to feel anything too long or too intensely would have meant he couldn’t do his job.

No, Rory Adams was a man ideally suited for soldiering. His early life had prepared him for hardship. The little bit of idealism that he had managed to escape his childhood with had soon departed, too.

So, Rory Adams had hated the look in Gracie’s eyes, just now, doe-soft, as if she could see right through him.

To some secret longing.

To have what she and Graham had had. Their house the one on the block that everyone flocked to, and not just because there were always freshly baked chocolate chip cookies, either. There was something there. That house was full of laughter. And love. Parents who actually made rules and had dinner on the table at a certain time.

Rory remembered calling Graham once about a party. And Graham saying, “Nah, I’m going fishing with my dad.”

A family that enjoyed being together. That had been a novelty in Rory Adam’s world.

Is that what he’d wanted when he’d called her? Had it been about him and not about her—or his obligation to Graham—at all?

No, he reminded himself. He’d been relieved by her rejection.

Rory shrugged off the thoughts, annoyed with himself. He was not accustomed to questioning himself or his motives. Except for the event that haunted his dreams, he moved through life with the supreme confidence of the warrior he was. The qualities that had made him an exceptional warrior also made him good at business.

So it flustered him beyond reason that a single glance from her had shaken something deep, deep within him.

He drew in a long breath, steadying himself, clearing away distractions, focusing on what needed to be done.

Poking out from underneath the horse trailer, near the back bumper, was one very tiny, suede, purple cowboy boot, with a fake spur attached.

He nudged at the boot with his shoe and then a little harder when there was no response. The boot moved away.

Sighing, he bent down and tugged. And this time he met some real resistance.

He felt under the trailer, found the other boot and pulled. Out came long, naked legs, and then short denim shorts, frayed at the cuffs, and then a bare belly, and then a sequined pop top with fringes. And then the face of an angel—if it weren’t for the circles of black mascara under her eyes—and blond curls topped with a pink cowboy hat.

He studied her for a moment. Despite her prettiness, she was aging badly. He and Graham had partied—hard—with her and her rodeo crowd. They’d been a rowdy, rough bunch. It had been a brief interlude—a few crazy days before their unit had mustered out the very first time.

That made it eight years ago, about the same amount of time since he had seen Gracie in her braces.

But whereas Grace had come into herself, Serenity had deteriorated badly. She must have been in her twenties at that first encounter, which meant she was way too old now to be wearing short shorts and a pink cowboy hat. She was on the scary side of skinny, her hair had been bleached once too often, and she was definitely drunk.

Well, that part was the same.

“Leave me alone,” the black-eyed angel mumbled, swinging at air.

“Yes, leave her alone,” Gracie said. “Really, there’s nothing here I can’t handle.”

He ignored them both.

“Look, Rory, you just don’t understand the delicate nuances of this situation.”

“Uh-huh,” he said, but he was pretty sure he got the “delicate nuances” just fine. Serenity had probably come across the obituary for Graham somewhere, and zeroed in on the grieving sister.

It made him mad, but one thing that the military had been really good at was training him to channel aggression, control it, unleash it only as a last resort.

So he satisfied himself with giving Gracie a sour look that let her know he was not impressed with how she had handled this so far.

And he was rewarded with a look that had nothing doe-soft about it.

“There’s nothing here I can’t handle,” she said, again.

“Given that this woman is bad, bad news and her ponies are devouring Mason’s most prime real estate, you might want to consider the possibility you are in over your head.”

Her mouth worked, but she didn’t say anything. He could tell that Gracie had suspected Serenity was exactly what he said. Bad news.

And she had suspected that she was in over her head.

But there was something else, too, something glittering at the back of her eyes that gave him pause.

For some reason she wanted Serenity here.

What did Serenity have to offer that Grace had rejected from him?

Sheesh. His damn feelings were hurt. That was a stunner. A weakness about himself that he could have lived quite happily not knowing he had!

“Hey,” he reached down and took Serenity’s shoulder. “Wake up, get your ponies and clear out.”

The attack came from the side. At first, confused, Rory thought it was Grace who had hurled herself at him, nearly pushed him over.

He stumbled a step sideways, straightened and felt a warrior’s embarrassment at not even having seen the attacker coming, at having been caught off guard.

It made it worse, not better, that his attacker was pint-size.

The attacker aimed a hard kick with cowboy-boot-clad feet at Rory’s shin. Still slightly off guard, Rory shot out his arm and held the child at arm’s length. The kick missed but, undeterred, the kid tried again.

A boy. Rory had not been around children much, so he didn’t know how old. Seven? Eight? Maybe nine?

Despite his size, the boy had the slouch and confidence of a professional wrangler. And he was dressed like one, too. His jeans had holes in both knees, his denim shirt had been washed white. A stained cowboy hat was pulled low over his brow. It was more than obvious this child had not been at the upscale birthday party that had just ended.

“Don’t you ever touch my mama,” he said, glaring up at Rory, not the least intimidated by the fact his opponent was taller than him by a good three feet and outweighed him by about a hundred and fifty pounds.

He was the kind of kid—spunky, undernourished, defiant—that you could care about.

If you hadn’t successfully killed the part of yourself that cared about such things. Rory had seen lots of kids like this: chocolate-brown eyes, white, white smiles, spunk, and he’d learned quickly you couldn’t allow yourself to care. The world was too full of tragedy. It could overwhelm you if you let it.

Rory let go of the boy, backed away, hands held up in surrender. “Hey, I was just trying to rouse her so she could catch her ponies.”

“I’ll look after the ponies,” the boy said fiercely.

“It’s okay, Tucker,” Gracie said, and put a hand on the boy’s narrow shoulders. “Nobody’s going to hurt your mother.”

The boy flinched out from her touch and glared out at her from under the battered rim of his straw cowboy hat with such naked dislike that Rory saw Gracie suck in her breath.

Rory looked at the boy more closely.

And then Rory looked at Gracie’s face.

She was clearly struggling to hide everything from him, and she was just as clearly a person who had never learned to keep her distance from caring. Her tenderness toward that boy was bald in her face. And so was the hope.

But she hid nothing at all.

Rory Adams was a man who had lived by his instincts, by his ability to distance himself from emotion. He had survived because of his ability to be observant, to see what others might overlook.

Rory looked back and forth between the boy and Grace, and he saw immediately what the complication was.

He studied the boy—Tucker—hard.

“How old are you?”

Grace gasped, seeing how quickly he had seen the possibility.

The boy did not look like Graham. But he certainly looked like Grace had looked just a few years older than this: freckle-faced and auburn hair.

A million kids looked like that.

For a moment, Rory thought the boy wasn’t going to answer him at all.

From Serenity, a moan, and then, “Come on, Tuck, tell the man how old you are.”

“I’m seven,” he said, reluctance and belligerence mixed in equal parts.

So, there it was. A little quick math and the complication became a little more complicated, a little more loaded with possibility. And Grace was clinging to that possibility like a sailor to a raft in shark-infested waters.

Serenity crawled back under the truck.

“I need to talk to you,” he said, grimly, to Grace. He pointed at the boy. “And you need to go catch those ponies.”

“You’re not the boss over me,” Tucker said.

The flash in his eyes and the tilt of his chin were identical to those of the woman beside him.

And the defiance was likable, if you were open to that kind of thing. Which, Rory reminded himself, he wasn’t.

“You’re the one who said you’d look after the ponies,” Rory reminded him. Tucker left, making it clear with one black backward glance it was his choice to go.

When he was gone, Rory turned his full attention to Gracie, whose expression clearly said he was not the boss over her, either.

“Did Serenity tell you that kid was Graham’s?”

“Don’t call him that kid! His name is Tucker.”

“Okay,” he said, feeling how forced his patience was, “did she tell you Tucker was Graham’s?”

“No.” That very recognizable tilt of chin.

“Did she insinuate it?”

“No. I had them over for dinner the other night. She never said a word about Graham and Tucker. Not one word.”

“You had them over for dinner? At your house?”

The you’re-not-the-boss-over-me expression deepened. Rory had to fight an urge to shake her. All those years of discipline being tried by a hundred-and-ten-pound woman!

“Why wouldn’t I have them over for dinner?”

Because it’s akin to throwing a bucket of fish guts to seagulls. They’ll be back. He said nothing.

“I actually enjoyed it. She’s had a very tough life, but she’s very interesting.”

“You don’t know anything about her!”

Her chin was tilting stubbornly.

“You can’t save the whole world, Gracie.”

“No? Isn’t that what you and Graham were so fired up to do?”

He let that bounce off him, like a fighter who had only been nudged by a blow that could have killed had it landed.

His voice cold, he said, “That’s precisely why I know it can’t be done.”

Instead of having the good sense to see what he was trying to tell her—that he was hard and cold and mean—that soft look was in her eyes again.

It made him wonder if maybe, just maybe, if she couldn’t save the whole world, if she could save one person.

And if that person was him.

The thought stunned him. It had never occurred to him he needed to be saved. From what?

“You want desperately for that boy to be Graham’s,” he said softly.

“Don’t you? Don’t you want some part of Graham to go on?”

He heard the desperation, the pure emotion, and knew he could not rely on her to make any rational decisions.

“Look, the things that made Graham who he was are not exactly purely genetic. Those things are the result of how the two of you were raised.”

He remembered her family. Off to church on Sunday mornings. Going to their cabin on the lake together. Playing board games on winter nights. Lots of hugs and hair-ruffling. Their parents had given them so much love and affection.

He was trying to tell her that the way that Tucker was being raised he didn’t have a hope of turning out anything like Graham. Even if he was Graham’s, which was a pretty big if.

“It’s easy enough to find out,” he said. “Whether he’s Graham’s or not.”

She said nothing.

“A cotton swab, the inside of his cheek, an envelope, a result.”

“Good grief, how often have you done that?” she said with scorn, but he knew it was to hide the fact it frightened her that it was that easy.

He didn’t say anything. Let her believe what she wanted. Especially if it killed the soft look in her eyes, which it did.

“Don’t you want to know the truth about Tucker?” he asked.

“Yes! But I want Serenity to tell me the truth!”

“You want Serenity to tell you the truth?” he asked, incredulous. Was it possible to be this hopelessly naive?

Grace nodded, stubborn.

“You know how you can tell Serenity is lying?”

“How?”

“Her lips are moving.”

“That’s unnecessarily cynical.”

“There is no such thing as being unnecessarily cynical.”

She glared at him then changed tack. “How well did you and Graham know her?”

“Well enough to know she’ll tell you whatever you want to hear if there’s money involved.”

“You’re hopelessly distrustful.”

“Yeah. And alive. And those two things are not mutually exclusive. Grace, there’s a woman lying under a trailer, presumably drunk. Her ponies are all over the park. If ever there was a call to cynicism, this is it.”

Suddenly, the defiance left her expression. He wished he’d had time to get ready for what she did next. Grace laid her hand on his wrist.

Everything she was was in that touch. The way she was dressed tried to say one thing about her: that she was a polished and successful businesswoman.

At least before her pony encounter.

But her touch said something entirely different. She probably would have been shocked by how her touch told her truth.

That she was gentle, a little naive, hopeful about life. She was too soft and too gullible. He was not sure how she had managed that. To remain that through life’s tragedies, the death of her brother, the breakup of her engagement.

There was a kind of courage in it that he reluctantly admired even while he felt honor-bound to discourage it.

She looked at him, and there was pleading in her eyes. “I know you’re just trying to protect me. But please, Rory, let me do this my way. Is it so terrible to want a miracle?”

Miracles. He’d never been a man with any kind of faith, and spending all his adult life in war zones had not improved his outlook in that department. He—from a family who had never set foot in a church—had said his share of desperate prayers.

His last one had been Don’t let this man, my friend, die.

He both admired her hope, and wanted to kill it before it got away on her and did some serious damage.

Trying for a gentle note, which was as foreign to him as speaking Chinese, Rory said, “Gracie, come on. No one walks on water.”

At that moment, a pickup truck shot into the parking lot, and pulled up beside the horse trailer. It had a decal on the side for the Mountain Retreat Guest Ranch. A cowboy got out of the driver’s side.

He looked as though he was straight off a movie set. Booted feet, plaid shirt, Stetson, fresh-faced and clean-scrubbed. Three other cowboys spilled out the open doors.

“Slim McKenzie,” the first one said. “I hear you’re having a pony problem.”

Gracie turned and looked at Rory, those amazing eyes dancing with the most beautiful light.

“Maybe no one walks on water,” she said, quietly, “But garden-variety miracles happen all the time.”

He wanted to ask her where the damned miracle had been for her brother. But he found, to his dismay, he was not quite hard-hearted enough to be the one to snuff out that light in her eyes.

And the light in her eyes was doing the strangest thing to him. He knew the arrival of the cowboys was no miracle, not of the garden variety or any other. It was the Bridey variety miracle, pure and simple.

But something was happening nonetheless. Unless he was mistaken, Gracie’s light was piercing the darkness in him, bringing brightness to a place that had not seen it for a long, long time.

He did not allow himself to marvel at it. He thrust the feeling of warmth away. His darkness could put out her light in a millisecond.

And he’d better remember that when he was thinking about how beautiful Graham’s kid sister had become.

CHAPTER THREE

GRACE watched with absolute delight as the angels who had arrived dressed as cowboys rounded up the ponies. How could Rory not believe in miracles?

In less than an hour the whole disaster was not just repaired, it was practically erased.

It also took less than an hour to become very evident to her that Rory Adams might not know a thing about ponies, but leadership came as naturally to him as breathing.

“How about if you just sit this one out?” Rory had suggested with a meaningful look at her damaged footwear.

She could have resented how he took over from her, but frankly she was sick to death of ponies, and though it was probably a crime in the career woman’s manual, she reluctantly admitted it was somewhat of a relief to have someone take over. But not out loud.

Rory set up an impromptu command center, and she found, in her softened frame of mind, with him unaware of her scrutiny, it was nice to watch him.

Rory Adams was a force unto himself, pure masculine energy practically sizzled in the air around him. He came up with a plan, quickly, delegated, and then he pitched in. He was afraid of nothing: not ponies racing straight at him, not being dragged on the other end of a rope by a tiny pony that was much stronger than seemed possible.

From a purely feminine point of view, watching Rory was enough to make her mouth go dry. He was agile, energetic and strong. It seemed every muscle he possessed was being tested to its rather magnificent limits. Every now and then his shout of command—or laughter—would ring out across the field.

When a pony charged in her direction, he threw himself at it, glancing off its shoulder, but managing to change its direction.

And then he rolled easily to his feet—as if he had not just risked life and limb to save her—and kept moving.

It occurred to her that he protected in the same way he led. It came to him as naturally as breathing.

And it felt like the most terrible of weaknesses that it made her insides turn to jelly.

Within an hour the last of the ponies was loaded into the ramshackle trailer. The poop was scooped. The birthday banner was fished out of the pool. Serenity was installed in the backseat of her crew-cab truck, and Tucker, looking at home for the first time since she had met him, was sandwiched in between two large cowboys on the front seat.

“Clayton and Sam will drive their truck to wherever they want to go,” Slim said, addressing Rory. “I’ll follow in my truck.”

There was something in the way he was addressing Rory, with a respectful kind of deference, that gave her pause. A suspicion whispered to life inside her, and Grace could feel the pink cloud she had been floating on since the timely arrival of the cowboys evaporating beneath her.

“Anything else you need done, Mr. Adams?”

Mr. Adams? Grace tried to think whether there had been an exchange of names in the flurry of activity that had begun since those cowboys first rolled up. Certainly, she had not given her name.

She felt as if she was on red alert now, watching Rory even more intently than she had been when he was commanding the field. Maybe she didn’t know him that well, and maybe many years had gone by since she had seen him, but he simply was not the kind of man who would introduce himself as Mr. Adams.

It was the kind of thing Harold might have done: trying to one-up himself over simple, working men, but Rory would never do that.

She told herself it was impossible to know that given the shortness and circumstances of their reacquaintance, but it didn’t matter. Her heart said it knew.

Still, instead of feeling a soft spot for him, she reminded herself something was up, there was more going on here than met the eye.

Rory, catching her sudden intense focus on him, clapped the cowboy on the shoulder and moved off into the distance, where she couldn’t hear what they said.

But she was pretty sure that was a wallet coming out of Rory’s back pocket!

By the time he came back, any admiration she had felt about his camaraderie with the working man was gone. So was her pink cloud.

In fact, Grace felt as if she had landed back on earth with a rather painful thump. She should have never let her barriers down by admiring him, not even discreetly! Now she had to build them back up. Why was that always harder than taking them down?

The trucks pulled out of the park, the horse trailer swaying along behind them, with great clinking and clanking and whinnying of ponies.

And then there was silence. And Rory standing beside her, surveying the park and looking way too pleased with himself.

“That wasn’t a miracle, was it?” she demanded.

“I don’t know. Eight ponies successfully captured in—” he glanced at his watch “—under eight minutes per pony. Might qualify. Did I mention I’m no expert on miracles?”

He was looking at her, his expression boyishly charming, though there was something in his eyes that was guarded.

“I meant the arrival of Slim and the gang.”

He was very silent. And now he looked away from her, off into the distance. He wouldn’t look at her.

“It wasn’t even the garden-variety kind, was it?”

Silence.

“Why didn’t you say something instead of letting me prattle on?” Instead of letting me believe.

“Aw, Gracie,” he said, finally looking back at her, “you’re too old to believe in stuff like that, anyway.”

She blinked. “I’m old?”

“Not old as in decrepit.” His look was intense, and then he said softly, “Not at all.”

Grace recognized how easy it would to be charmed by him. And she recognized he was a man who had been charming his way past the ruffled feathers of the female species since he’d been old enough to blink that dark tangle of lashes over those sinfully green eyes.

And that after he’d been the one to ruffle the feathers!

“I just meant the last time I saw you, you were a little girl. You probably still believed in Santa Claus.”

“I was fourteen! I certainly did not believe in Santa Claus.” Though she had been hopelessly in love with the man who stood before her, imagining endless scenarios where he finally saw her. And that was probably exactly the kind of magical thinking he thought she was too old for now.

And he was right.

Somehow the hurt of being invisible to him all those years ago, and this moment of his debunking her desire to believe in miracles were fusing together, and she could feel her temper rising.

“What did you have to do with those men arriving?” she demanded.

“I saw you were having trouble. I made a phone call.”

“What kind of man can make a phone call and have a truckload of cowboys delivered?”

“You needn’t say it as if it were a truckload of bootleg liquor during prohibition and you were leading the group of biddies waving a sign saying liquor is of the devil.”

“Old and prim,” she said dangerously.

“You do have a little pinched look around your mouth that reminds me of a schoolteacher who has found a frog in her drawers.”

She sputtered with outrage.

“Hey. Desk drawers!”

“Stop it! You’re trying to distract me.”

“Is it working?” he said silkily.

Yes. “No!”

“Because I have another way to take that pinched look off your lips. Not to mention distract you.”

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