Battle for the Soldier's Heart (9 page)

CHAPTER SIX

“M
R
.
Adams, are you all right?”

“Huh?” Rory had been staring aimlessly out his office window.
He’d had the dream last night. Worse than normal. The two teenage boys, the
bullets. This time, he had ducked, as if he could see the bullet coming, as if
he had deliberately let Graham get it instead of him.

And still, there was a sense of having awoken too soon. There
was still a piece missing, something important. Words.

Not that it mattered. There were no words that could make him
feel better, that could take away this feeling of tremendous guilt. There were
no words that could make the realization of a man’s powerlessness over life and
death any easier.

Sometimes, you couldn’t protect the people you cared about. His
mother. Graham. Was the dream more intense because he had spent time with
Gracie? Because he was seeing how his inability to stop bad things from
happening had gone out like a wave and swamped other lives?

If he could protect Grace from Serenity would it make up for
all his past failings?

“I’m fine,” he said gruffly to Bridey. “I’ve been invited out
for dinner tonight. Could you get me something to bring?”

“The regular?”

“Yeah, whatever.” What was the regular? A bottle of good wine,
exquisitely expensive, roses in the same price range. “No, wait.”

He didn’t want to bring wine if Serenity was there. She’d
probably swig it all back and then try to drive herself and the kid
somewhere.

And he actually didn’t want wine with Grace again, either.
Because after one glass at lunch, she’d lost her inhibitions enough to put on a
bikini.

And kiss him.

A kiss powerful enough to send a man packing to Australia!

“Uh, no wine,” he said. “And not roses for the flowers,
either.” Somehow, Grace wasn’t a rose kind of girl in his mind. “Something less,
uh, formal. Less, uh, ostentatious.”

“Got it,” Bridey said.

He arrived at Grace’s feeling foolishly like a boy on his first
date. He wished he hadn’t brought the flowers at all, because the bouquet was
quite large, a colorful explosion of daisies and daffodils, mums and lilies.

There was no sign of Serenity’s decrepit old truck yet.

He looked at the house—Graham’s house, really—and waited for
the sadness of the memories of them together here to hit. They didn’t and he
felt thankful for all that Grace had done to it. She had made the house her own,
painted, changed the facade, added colorful plantings beneath the windows and up
the walkway.

She came to the door, and he found himself steeling himself—not
against memories of him and Graham, but against memories of him and her.

And the way her lips had tasted: the hint of passion in them,
the faint eagerness. And the way she had made him feel.

As if he could trust her. As if he could trust her with things
he had told no one.

She opened the door and looked over his shoulder. “No Ferrari
today,” she said. “Hello, Rory.”

“I traded it in on something a little more me.”

“The Ferrari was you.” She studied the 1965 Chev truck parked
at the curb, and said, “That’s you, too. Ah, a man of many faces.”

She meant it lightly, but he didn’t take it that way. He
was
a man of many faces, and some of them would
probably terrify her. That would be a good thing for her to remember. That he
was not always what he seemed.

She took the flowers with such genuine delight that he was glad
he’d brought them after all.

“Daffodils in July!” she said. “Imagine that! Come in.”

The house, too, was completely changed and he felt some stress
he had been holding leave him.

“You’ve fixed this up,” he said.

“I love my house. I’m afraid my idea of a good time is hanging
out at the hardware store mooning over engineered flooring and cabinet
pulls.”

So, it was exactly as he had guessed. She wanted to pass
herself off as a career woman, but she was pretty solidly invested in the whole
concept of home.

And she had it so right. The living room he was looking at was
a relaxed space, but everything from the furniture choices to the paint colors
invited you to feel at home, to relax, to sit and maybe to stay for a long, long
time. There was even a teddy bear nestled among the couch cushions that didn’t
look the least ridiculous. It added to the cozy feeling of just coming home.

There was a feeling here of safety.

He frowned at that. He felt safe. Why wouldn’t he feel safe? He
wasn’t in the land of blood and sand and tears anymore. And he was never going
back there.

Though, standing in her living room, he was acutely aware maybe
he had not totally ever left that land.

Because a place like this—cozy, inviting—was foreign to him.
The whole concept of home was foreign to him. His own houses growing up had
always been temporary. Sooner than later, his family would be moving all their
broken furniture and chipped dishes. No nice touches like those yellow-shaded
lamps or the Finnish rug on the floor.

And his place now?

A showpiece of modern design. All black leather, steel, shiny
surfaces, hard angles. It had a temporary feel to it. And it
was
temporary. He bought real estate as an investment.
He did not attach to it.

He had not known he wanted “homey” until he saw this.

“Come through to the kitchen,” she said. “I’m peeling spuds. I
thought Tucker might like homemade fries. I hope you don’t mind. The menu is
pretty kid-friendly tonight. Burgers. Fries. Milkshakes.”

“Mind? That’s a menu out of every man’s dream.”

That earned a smile, and then she led him to the kitchen, which
also reflected more changes to the footprint of the old house. A wall had been
dispensed with, the kitchen, dining room and living room were all seamless, one
harmonious space.

She set him down on a stool at a granite countertop island that
gave a hint of separation between the kitchen and the other spaces.

He picked up a knife and tackled a heap of potatoes while she
ripped lettuce into bite-size portions for a salad.

He was aware of feeling at home here. Not just the setting. But
with her.

He pursued that sense of safety. Music was playing softly in
the background. A cat wound around the leg of his chair. Everything was in
order, but not in an uptight way. This was a space where a person could relax.
Where there would rarely be a raised voice. Or the sound of dishes breaking in
anger. And maybe that, alone, made it one of the most dangerous places he had
ever been.

* * *

Rory Adams was in her space. He put down the knife after
cutting the potatoes into fries. He was looking as at home here as if he had
been born to this space.

She glanced at the clock.

“They’re late,” she said.

“The thing about a girl like Serenity?”

Grace truly hated it that he was such a self-proclaimed expert
on girls like Serenity, but she managed to bite her tongue. “Yes?”

“They’re always late.”

“How do you know so much about girls like
Serenity?” She
tried for a teasing note, but was pretty sure she failed. She was scared about
his answer, but when he was silent for a long, long time, she wasn’t sure he
would answer.

“She’s like my mother.”

And she remembered him again, out on the street that night long
ago, taking his mother’s elbow.

He was concentrating fiercely on the potato, as if what he had
just said didn’t matter.

But she knew it did. She knew it mattered that he told her
things like that.

“Tell me how you and Graham came to know
Serenity.”

“
Know
is stretching it a touch,” he
said. “We had ten days leave before we were shipping out. I think it was that
first time, Afghanistan. We were shipping out from Edmonton, and the Calgary
Stampede was on. None of us had ever been to it, so we decided to go. Calgary is
only a couple of hours drive from Edmonton.

“Guys being guys, we had to make a few pit stops along the way.
Quite a few, actually. Finally, we stopped in this rinky-dink little town not
far from Calgary, and they were having their own little second-rate
Stampede and rodeo.

“Serenity was running her ponies as part of the midway, plus
riding a horse in the barrel-racing competition. Somehow, we got partying with
all those rodeo and fairground people, and we never quite made the Calgary
Stampede. And never had any regrets about it, either.”

She read his face. “Until now.”

“You know, when you’re shipping out and facing the very real
possibility you might not be coming back, life has this intensity to it. It’s a
kind of a high. But it does not involve consequences. Not one of us—including
Graham—ever glanced back at those few crazy days before we left.”

“So, there is a very real possibility that Tucker is
Graham’s?”

“Well, it’s one possibility. But it doesn’t add up, Grace. Why
would she wait until now to let you know?”

“I’m going to ask her, point-blank, tonight if Tucker is
Graham’s. And if he is, why she didn’t let Graham know that.”

“I think that’s a good plan.”

She recognized it as a weakness that she liked having his
approval. But like many good plans it had a flaw: it relied on Serenity showing
up, and by six, Grace was beginning to acknowledge maybe she wasn’t going to.
And also acknowledging how eagerly she had wanted to see Tucker again, searching
his face and his mannerisms for traces of Graham.

And the part she hadn’t admitted to Rory? That she was finding
more evidence all the time. The crooked way he smiled, the way his hair grew in
a little swirl at the crown of his head, the stubborn set of his mouth, the way
he walked.

“Are you starving?” she asked.

“I don’t mind waiting.”

But by six-thirty, she knew they had waited long enough. “I’ll
cook some for us, and leave some, just in case…”

Cooking with him almost took away the pang that Tucker and
Serenity had not arrived.

It was fun having a man who knew what he was doing at the
grill. It was a cozy little scene: one she had imagined a million times when she
was laboring over this little space.

Imagined it with Harold. Cozy evenings of cooking together, an
easy companionship, a sense of home that she had never one-hundred-percent
achieved by herself, much as she had tried.

And now this. Rory Adams in her kitchen, peeling potatoes,
taking charge of the hamburgers, laughing at her concern that the flames were
leaping too high in the grill. The problem with having a man like this in your
space?

Would it ever feel totally like your space again, or would it
always seem slightly lacking, no matter what you did?

There was no way a cat, a career and a penchant for decorating
magazines was ever going to make her feel like this: zingy with an electrical
energy, suffused with laughter,
so aware.
Certainly
she had seen a man standing at a grill before, but had she ever noticed the
small details of that experience? The smell in the air, the way he did little
things with such a supreme confidence in himself?

She had imagined an evening like this with Harold,
and
they had even had evenings similar to this. So why had it never felt like this?
Always a faint discontent between them, something that stifled instead of
invigorated.

For the first time since her engagement had ended, Grace could
truly see it as a blessing, and not just pay lip service to the whole concept of
“if it was meant to be, it would be.”

It was seven-fifteen by the time they had finished eating and
cleaning up. He had cheerfully buried himself up to his elbows in suds, cleaning
her difficult grill, flicking soap with playful threat in her direction when she
tried to help.

Without warning, the elation left her. It felt as if it hissed
out of her like air out of a punctured balloon. And in its place was
disappointment.

It was disappointment that Tucker and Serenity had failed to
show up.

Disappointment that this was not really her life. Rory Adams
wasn’t here because he wanted to be with her. Because he’d found her kiss
impossible to back away from. No, he was here to protect her.

And the thing he thought she needed protecting from wasn’t
coming. The dishes were done. They had eaten. There was absolutely no reason for
him to stay here—or for her to want him to.

“Well,” she said, trying to inject a note of cheer into her
voice, “I guess they aren’t coming. I took out my favorite board game for
nothing.”

“You have a favorite board game?”

“I do. And everyone should. Tucker looks like he’s never played
a board game in his life. Can you imagine?”

“Actually, I can.”

“You’ve never played a board game?” She was incredulous. At
first she thought he must be pulling her leg. Then she read in his face, that he
was not.

Girlfriend,
she told herself
sternly,
send him home. Something is happening here. You
are getting in way too deep.

But a person who had never played board games? It was
practically like saying you had never had a childhood.

She thought of his house, that night he had walked out to
rescue his mother. Not very old then, already a man.

Rory Adams was the man least likely to need rescuing. He was
all easy confidence and male grace. He was all sensual appeal. No doubt women
had been throwing themselves at him since he had learned to blink.

She had not been a blip on his radar eight years ago, and she
was only a little more than that now. He was the CEO of a big company. He could
conjure cowboys and cars out of thin air.

What about that would make her think he would enjoy a silly
board game?

“Would you like to try it?” She tried for careless aplomb, she
sounded shy and faintly strangled.