Heroes in Uniform: Soldiers, SEALs, Spies, Rangers and Cops: Sexy Hot Contemporary Alpha Heroes From NY Times and USA Today Bestselling Authors

by Sharon Hamilton

  Oh, she knew he would leave. That had been clear from the start. After all, the Iron Warrior’s true love was the army. And it could beckon any time now.

  But dammit, she wasn’t going to passively wait for him to announce his departure date.

  “So, Grif, when is your leave up?” Not subtle, but it did the job.

  For a moment she thought he didn’t hear her, or was going to pretend he didn’t. Then he slowly turned his head. When he still didn’t answer, she pushed a little harder. “When do you leave?”

  “I don’t.”

  She gaped at him. “You ... you don’t?”

  “I’m staying when my leave’s up.”

  “But ... how?”

  “I’m taking over command at Fort Piney.”

  “Piney?”

  “Not so loud. They made it official this week, but I’d rather the army makes the announcement,” he said with a touch of wry humor.

  “I don’t understand. It’s such a small post.” His brow started to rise, and she amended that. “It’s not small to us – Piney’s the center for a lot of activity around here, After ranching, it’s a big part of our economy. So a new commander’s a big deal to us, but it is a small post. I wouldn’t think there’ll be potential for a man with your ambitions at a place like Piney.”

  Grif seemed suddenly intent on the field, even though the only action was a player clad in multi-layers moving toward the plate.

  “Depends on what those ambitions are.”

  The man made no sense. He didn’t believe in a future for them, but he was going to tie himself to a go-nowhere job? Before she could digest that, he was adding words that she had no trouble understanding.

  “Small post or not, it’s going to keep me busy. Very busy. Once I report, it won’t be the sort of regular hours I had most of the time you knew me in Washington. There’ll be a lot of demands on my time.”

  “Okay, Grif. You’ve always made it clear that the Army comes first. That you want – ”

  “Want? What I want has nothing to do with it.”

  Stunned at the vehemence of words spoken so low she barely heard them, it took her an extra beat to recognize them for what they were – a crack in his wall. “What does it have to do with, then?”

  “Reality. The way things are. I’ve seen ...”

  She prompted, “You’ve seen what, Grif?”

  He shook his head. “None of this makes any diff – ”

  “You’ve seen what, Grif? I think I deserve at least that much, don’t you?”

  She saw that landed a blow. One he didn’t try to shake off. “I’ve seen what happens when a man like me tries to mix with a woman like you.”

  She froze, Dale’s voice overlapping Grif’s.

  A woman like you just doesn’t understand that a man needs more in his life than this. He needs excitement, variety!

  “A woman like me,” she echoed.

  “Yeah, a woman like you.” Something had stripped Grif’s voice of its usual patience. “A woman who should have the kind of life we all dream about – not worrying about having enough for your kids, not trying to make a rattletrap last another five years, not making do in a house that isn’t your home – ”

  “You don’t consider Ridge House a home?”

  “You could make a home out of a shoebox. But you deserve better. You deserve a place that’s yours for good. A place where you and the kids can put down roots and never worry about leaving.” His voice dropped again. “You deserve the best.”

  Ellyn scrambled to try to sort this all out. Remembering. Putting together phrases, impressions. Coming back to the same conclusion. He considered a woman like her a compliment, not a jibe.

  I’ve seen what happens when a man like me tries to mix with a woman like you. That’s what he’d said, so if he considered a woman like her to be a compliment, what could the rest of it mean?

  “Grif.” She took hold of his arm with both her gloved hands, only then realizing that he’d stood, as had everyone else in the bleachers. The game was over. Blankets were being folded, stiff limbs shaken out. “What did you mean, a man like you?”

  Faint surprise crossed his eyes for a flash before their gray turned an impenetrable leaden shade. His voice crisp and distant, he answered as if her question didn’t interest him. “Ellyn, you know what kind of man I am.”

  She thought she did, but did he?

  * * *

  “I thought it went well,” Kendra volunteered as they left the school after a program on journalism for Meg’s class.

  Ellyn looked at her from the corner of her eye. “You were nervous. I can’t believe it – a former network TV reporter, and you were nervous talking to a class of fourth-graders!”

  “Hey, I didn’t want to embarrass Meg.”

  “No, that’s a mother’s job,” Ellyn said, getting into the passenger seat of Kendra’s car for the return to the Banner.

  “You must not have done so bad, I saw her give you a hug – in public no less.”

  “I know. It’s so nice to have a break from the world-weary twenty-seven-year-old who’d been living in my house. If this recent bout was a preview of her as a teenager, I think a convent might be the only answer.”

  “For her or you?”

  “Me!” They both laughed, then Ellyn turned serious. “At the start I thought Ben missed Dale more. But his sadness seems to be easing – Grif’s helped. But Meg ... Meg still has a lot of anger about losing her father. I suppose I should be glad she’s letting some of it out instead of holding it all in. I know how bad that can be for a kid.”

  “Is that what you did?”

  Ellyn looked at her friend, surprised. So much of this past year-plus of living close had been sharing the daily travails of kids, work and house. That had started to change when Daniel arrived, and Kendra began opening up more, including to her friends. But sometimes this new aspect to their friendship caught Ellyn unprepared.

  “Yes, it is. That’s why I hope letting it out helps Meg.”

  “And now? How about holding in what’s going on with you and Grif?”

  “Grif? What makes you think something’s going on?”

  “Maybe,” she suggested, “because your voice just visited both ends of an octave. Maybe because you and Grif spend so much energy trying to convince yourselves and the world that nothing’s changed between the two of you that I’m amazed you don’t both fall over in a heap like people at the end of a marathon. Maybe because I saw you two kissing, Ellyn.”

  “That must have been some time ago. Grif hasn’t kissed me in weeks,” she said with remarkable calm.

  “So that’s why he’s so cranky.”

  To her own amazement, Ellyn laughed a little.

  “What’s wrong with him?” Kendra asked.

  “Why does it have to be with him?”

  “Because I know my cousin. And because he clearly has been nuts about you ever since we were kids. Maybe the amazing thing is that he let down his guard to act on it at all, after he’d spent so long pretending it didn’t exist. Unless... Of course!” Kendra’s face, always beautiful, became almost beatific with the beaming smile spread across it.

  “Of course what?”

  “He had his defense against what he feels for you all nicely fortified during those years in Washington. But then you two were apart for more than a year, and the old friendship facade got a little porous. It couldn’t hold up against the assault of seeing you so suddenly and so often. Now he’s back there trying to shore the thing up, Trembling in his boots,” Kendra concluded happily. “So, what do you think?”

  “You mean other than the fact that you make me sound like a cross between a virus and an invading army? I think this was the result of a complicated set of circumstances, not because Grif really wanted – ”

  “You know, one thing I’ve learned from getting together with Daniel is that sometimes the simplest explanation is the right one.” Kendra planted her zinger as they walked into the building where
Ellyn would have no chance to respond, “Sometimes we do things not for all the complex reasons we tell ourselves we did it, but because, in the end, it’s what we wanted.”

  * * *

  Ellyn got two surprises at work the next day. She could have done without both.

  The first was literally running into Grif as he and Kendra headed toward the main door to go out to lunch.

  She hadn’t known that’s where they were headed. She hadn’t even known he was in the building when she walked out of her office door and collided with the hard, male body. It was frightening how quickly her body recognized it as Grif’s hard, male body. Their tangle was a near duplicate of when they’d been doing dishes at her house. Except now, they both knew what it felt like when such an alignment of hips and chest, such an interlocking of arms and legs, was anything but an accident. And the knowing was like a crackle of electrical charging through her nerve-endings.

  The second was when Larry came bustling up, with her and Grif no longer touching and looking anywhere but at each other, while Kendra barely stifled laughter.

  “Hey, Grif! Great news about you being named CO at Fort Piney! What a story! I’ll go through channels, but I’m going to want a nice long interview.” Larry looked around, apparently reading some of the sudden tension. “It’s not a secret, is it?”

  Grif gave her a hard look, and Ellyn returned it. Don’t look at me. I didn’t tell a soul. Even now she wasn’t saying anything, leaving Grif room to deny it if he chose.

  “Not anymore,” he said sourly.

  “Grif’s been away so long,” Kendra interposed, “he’s forgotten how anyone’s business is everyone’s business in Far Hills.”

  “Especially when you work for the newspaper,” Larry added.

  “Or when the army has an inveterate gossip like Helen Solsong working in its commissary.” Kendra frowned significantly at Grif.

  “I’ve got to say,” Larry was going on, “I won’t be sorry to see Lieutenant Colonel Reardon going, especially being replaced by somebody like you. Somebody who did a lot of his growing up around here – a native!”

  “Having family and ties around here won’t change any orders I get,” Grif said bluntly. “Orders are orders in the Army.”

  Ellyn turned toward him. He shifted so Larry Orrin blocked her line of sight, as Larry concluded, “I don’t mind the orders – I just want to know about ‘em.”

  * * *

  Ellyn answered the knock at the back door at ten o’clock Friday night already knowing it was Grif.

  She’d had no reason to expect him to come. She’d only had hope.

  The kids were at separate overnights, and he reported to duty Monday as CO at Fort Piney. If they were going to sort out what had been happening – and not happening these past weeks – this seemed a good time to try.

  When she opened the door, the first thing he said was, “I shouldn’t have come.”

  The urge to soothe and the urge to rant hit her simultaneously. She compromised. She didn’t slam the door on him. “Then why did you?”

  “Because I owe you an apology.”

  “Fine. Apologize.”

  For the first time, he seemed to take in her mood. And then he gave a half smile. “Don’t rush me. I’m new at this.”

  She fought down her responding smile. “Maybe we should sit down.”

  She led him into the living room, where he sat beside her on the couch.

  “I shouldn’t have doubted that you’d keep your word about not telling anyone about my assignment to Fort Piney, Ellyn. I know you better than that.”

  She looked up as he finished. His direct gray eyes were on her. He did know her. All of her. In ways no one else did or could. The strengths and the weaknesses. The successes and failures. And he accepted all that in her. A strangely fierce satisfaction swept across her like a fine mist of heat. It took another instant to realize it was the recognition that she accepted all that in herself.

  She supposed the new Ellyn was largely a product of that acceptance. But it had taken the mirror of Grif’s eyes to see it.

  “Yes,” she said with deliberation. “You know me better than anyone else.”

  “So you have a right to wonder why I was such an ass.” He grimaced. “Oh, hell. I think I just wanted to take it out on you after running into you, holding you like that and feeling ...”

  “I suppose we’re both still feeling our way with this ... this.” She spread her hands to encompass both of them. “These are new feelings for us – ”

  “The hell they are.”

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

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

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

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

  But now she knew.

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

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

  “Yes, I am sure.”

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

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

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

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

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

  ”My mother – ”

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

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

  “Ellyn?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  “Are you ready for more happy now?”

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

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

  * * *

  “What is it, Grif?”

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