Boots on the Ground: Homefront, Book 1

by Rebecca Crowley

  Arriving home earlier that week to find him painting her spare bedroom had been as much of a shock for her as she was sure it was for him. And if she was brutally honest with herself, she’d spent a not-insignificant amount of time that evening and the following day wondering if she was being realistic in her pursuit.

  Of course she was attracted to Grady’s striking good looks, rock-hard body and rugged, salt-of-the-earth masculinity that was in such sharp contrast to the suit-and-tie types she normally found herself seated across from in restaurants.

  But could she really have a long-term, serious relationship with someone she suspected hadn’t gone to college? Who probably didn’t tune in to the Metropolitan Opera radio broadcasts every Saturday? Who might not be able to keep up in a vigorous dinner-party debate about international politics?

  She’d cringed as she imagined her mother’s brittle politeness and her father’s skeptical questions when she showed up to Sunday lunch with Grady in tow. The thought of her best friend Christina’s wide-eyed disbelief and her husband’s poorly hidden snickering as they took in Grady’s Wranglers and boots had her squeezing her lids shut in dismay. And her perpetually snobby older brother—well, it didn’t even bear considering.

  Then, in the middle of answering a work e-mail, it hit her so hard she sat bolt upright in her chair.

  Who cared?

  She liked Grady. As in, like-liked him. Liked him so much she found herself thinking about him in the most random moments, recalling the flex of his biceps as she shampooed her hair, the fine grooves at the corners of his eyes as she parked her car. She wanted to see one of the smiles big enough to have created those laugh lines bracketing his lips. She wanted to hear stories told in his gravelly drawl, to taste the inside of his mouth, to feel his big body on hers.

  Everyone else could take their judgments and shove them. And anyway, who said they wouldn’t find Grady as charming and intriguing as she did? Assuming their negative responses made her just as bad as these snooty caricatures she was imagining.

  She resolved then and there to follow this trail wherever it led, and the only opinion she would worry about was her own.

  Laurel picked up her fork with a sigh. It never occurred to her that Grady might not share her self-assured zeal for their star-crossed union, but it was clear from his shadowed expression that he hadn’t found the painting incident quite so easy to move beyond.

  For their date, she’d deliberately chosen a low-key steak place with a sports-bar atmosphere to put Grady at ease and show him that she didn’t expect five-star luxury, but if anything the increasingly rowdy crowd seemed to put him even more on edge. Someone slammed a glass down on the bar, and a muscle in his jaw twitched.

  “I’m sorry. I didn’t realize it would be so loud in here. I forgot the Royals were playing.”

  He shook his head to dismiss her apology. “It’s a combat thing. Noisy places make me nervous.” He exhaled irritably. “I need to get the hell over it.”

  Her hand stilled over the plate—it was the most revealing thing he’d said all night. She forced calm into her tone, not wanting to betray her excitement. “What prompted you to join the army?”

  “I didn’t have much choice. I’d finally landed with some good foster parents, out on their big cattle operation in West Texas, and that got me through the last couple years of high school. But I was aging out of the system, which meant they’d lose their subsidy if I stayed and it’d start costing ’em to keep me. They offered, but after all they’d done for me I couldn’t take that spot away from someone younger who still needed the stability. I scraped my diploma by the skin of my teeth, so no college was going to give me a scholarship, and my twenty hours a week at the body shop wasn’t going to cover car payments, an apartment and tuition.” He shrugged. “I walked past an army recruitment office near the DMV, thought I’d stop in to get a brochure, and the next thing I know I’m signing papers and shipping out to basic training.”

  Laurel thought of her fierce argument with her parents about where she went to college. She wanted to go a thousand miles away to Duke—they thought she should attend the University of Kansas, a two-hour drive down the highway. They won.

  “What did your foster parents say when you enlisted?”

  “Karen cried.” He quirked a smile. “Andy was resigned. At that point it was pretty much guaranteed that anyone enlisting would see combat. I’m not sure any of us would’ve predicted I’d still be seeing it thirteen years later.”

  “Are you still in touch with them?”

  “Occasionally. They take in a lot of high-school-age boys, so it’s not like I’m someone special.”

  She doubted that very much but kept her opinion to herself. Grady was finally opening up and talking to her, and although she was dying to ask him more about his background—like what had happened to his biological parents?—she didn’t want to say anything that might startle him back into silence.

  When he changed the subject in the next sentence, she knew she was right not to push too hard.

  “Tell me more about that thing you were saying earlier, about going overseas. Is it the Peace Corps?”

  “No, it’s an independent charity that trains doctors to work in unstable places and then dispatches them. Sometimes it’s disaster relief, sometimes it’s in response to famine, sometimes it’s just a developing country with a particularly desperate need for medical services.” She wrinkled her nose. “Unfortunately they want people with a little more field experience than I have. I tried to make the case that my work at Fort Preston exposes me to relevant traumatic injuries, so I’m waiting to see what they decide.”

  “How long are the postings?”

  “Three months minimum. I’d have to take a leave of absence from my practice and get all my patients reassigned, but it’d be worth it.”

  His smile reached his eyes, at last. “You’d trade your nice house, good job, big group of friends and close-knit family for a mud-soaked mattress, sleep deprivation and the constant threat of rioting or guerrilla violence?”

  “Sound familiar?”

  “The latter part, yeah. Except I assume you wouldn’t be expected to shoot anyone.”

  “I swore an oath.” She raised her right hand. “I will maintain the utmost respect for human life.”

  “That’s a good philosophy. I know a couple people who could use a lesson on that.”

  His expression softened as he leaned forward, and Laurel’s heart somersaulted with joy.

  There it was—that clever glint in his dark eyes, that wry curve to his mouth, that enigmatic cast to his features that made him sexier and more fascinating than any man she’d ever met.

  He put his palm flat on the table, his fingertips a mere fraction of an inch from hers. Their eyes met, and her body began to thrum with anticipation. This was what she wanted from tonight—a chance to step outside the societal boxes keeping them apart and chase the connection between them that was so obvious at times she was surprised it didn’t shimmer through the air.

  The thick lashes framing his eyes betrayed the momentary dart of his gaze to her lips and back. He opened his mouth to speak, Laurel’s breath caught in her throat—

  The instant the waitress’s tray hit the floor, Grady was on his feet, his back against the wall of the booth, one hand closed so firmly on her wrist that Laurel had to half-stand along with him. The diners nearest the waitress gave her a sarcastic round of applause. She bent to clean up the broken glass, and Grady was back in his seat as quickly as he’d leaped out of it, releasing her wrist to cradle his head in his hands.

  “I’m sorry, Laurel. I’m so sorry,” he muttered through his fingers.

  “It’s fine,” she soothed, although her heart was pounding wildly. “No one even noticed.”

  She reached for him, desperate not to have that quick grip on her wrist be their only contact on this apparently ill-fated date, but before she could touch him, he abruptly dropped his hands to the table and fixed her wi
th a pained expression.

  “I think we’d better call it a night.”

  They didn’t speak on the drive back to her house. Laurel stared out the window numbly, still unable to fully process how and why this night had gone so wrong. She’d spent so long choosing her outfit and fixing her hair, mentally prioritizing where they might go for a nightcap, even putting fresh sheets on her bed should things head in that direction—a step she wasn’t afraid to take.

  She checked the time on the dashboard as he pulled into her driveway. It wasn’t even ten o’clock.

  She let him open her door and give her a hand down from the cab. She let him walk her up the front path, and she let him wait while she fished out her keys. But as she put her hand on the doorknob, she decided she wasn’t going to let him go.

  When she turned to face him, she was full of new determination. “Listen, Grady, I don’t—”

  “I know.” He stopped her with an upheld palm. “I think we both know. I’m punching above my weight with you.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “It means it might be a while before I’m back in the world—back in your world.” He gestured to indicate her house, which she took to symbolize civilian life. “You shouldn’t have to wait. You deserve better.”

  She swallowed against the sadness welling in her throat. “Who said anything about what I deserve? Which, by the way, I’m not sure you know me well enough to decide. It’s a question of what I want, and what I want is—”

  “A burned-out grunt with a jacked-up shoulder who digs asphalt all day and can’t sit in a restaurant without constantly checking the exits? I don’t think so, pretty girl.”

  Laurel could do nothing but stare up at him, the endearment squeezing her heart at the same time disappointment and rejection stabbed at her stomach.

  “Go on and find yourself a nice guy who buys you diamonds and takes you to the Caribbean. The guy who has extra bedrooms, not the guy who paints ’em.” He leaned in to give her a chaste kiss on the cheek, and as the heady scent of him collided with the agonizingly soft brush of his lips, a shudder ran through her body that seemed to penetrate right to the marrow of her bones.

  Without another word he walked back to his truck, started the engine and drove off down the street. It only took a minute for him to disappear from sight, but Laurel remained on the doorstep for nearly an hour, becoming more aware with each passing moment that although their interaction had been brief, it was going to take her a good long time to get over John Grady Reid.

  Chapter Five

  Laurel stifled a yawn as Christina’s husband, Kenny, launched into another impassioned point about the number of local jobs that would be created by the planned development of a supersize grocery store on the east side of town. Peter—whom Laurel had invited against her better judgment, needing to find someone at the last minute after she forgot about this dinner—shook his head and reiterated his earlier argument about the threat to small businesses and the chain’s reputation for low wages and poor benefits. Christina’s gaze darted between the two of them, punctuated by an occasional agreeing nod.

  Laurel drained the wine in her glass and reached for the bottle in the center of the table but put it back down when she found it was empty. The clock on the restaurant wall said it was twenty minutes past eleven. The other two couples who’d joined them for Christina’s birthday dinner had left more than an hour ago, but from the pace of Peter and Kenny’s conversation, she suspected her own departure was still a long way off.

  She sat back in her chair and thought—as she had so often in the two weeks since their disastrous date—about Grady. She hadn’t seen him since they said goodbye on her doorstep, despite staring creepily at every tall, dark-haired man she encountered around town and slowing her car whenever she drove past any sign of construction, in case it was the road crew. One day, back in the office after an especially taxing lunch date with her mother, she opened his file and repeatedly reread the first-time visit form he’d filled out, running her fingers over the ballpoint pen indentations made by his careful, blocky handwriting. She memorized his address, and when she climbed into her car at the end of the day, she told herself she was just going to drive by his house, she just wanted to see where he lived, she wouldn’t bother him, he wouldn’t even know she was there.

  Shortly before she reached the turn down the long, graveled road leading out to his property, Laurel brought the car to an abrupt stop on the shoulder.

  “This is crazy,” she chided aloud. “You are being crazy. He made himself perfectly clear—he’s not interested. Leave the poor man alone.”

  Then she U-turned and gunned the engine toward home, sniffing hard against the rejection that still stung behind her eyes.

  “Laurel? What do you think?”

  “Hm?” Christina’s voice jolted her from her reverie to find three sets of eyes staring at her expectantly. “Sorry, I missed that—what did you say?”

  “The restaurant is closing, but we thought we might walk down to Rock’s and see what’s going on. Peter thinks they have live music on Saturday nights.”

  Laurel not only doubted Peter had ever been to the shabby bar at the other end of the strip mall, she suspected his interpretation of live music was vastly different from whoever booked the talent at Rock’s. “I don’t know,” she balked, “it’s getting late.”

  “Come on,” Christina cajoled. “It’ll be fun. It’ll be like back in college.”

  “You mean I’ll find you passed out in a hedge at the end of a frat party?”

  Christina rolled her eyes and Laurel sighed her resignation. Her best friend’s two small children were with their grandparents overnight, and she knew Christina and Kenny wanted to take full advantage of their rare respite.

  “All right, let’s go.”

  The jangle and thump of a country-music band drifted through the cool evening as they made their way past darkened storefronts to the neon-lit door of Rock’s. Christina practically skipped along at her husband’s side, the two of them clearly elated at the chance to shirk parental responsibility for a night. Part of her envied their easy companionship and familial bliss, yet it felt so impossibly distant at this point in her life that it didn’t seem worth the energy to be jealous. Deciding to become a surgeon meant that hers would be a less conventional path through adulthood, and she was at peace with that. Maybe she’d meet a handsome French—no, Spanish, she knew more of the language—scratch that, she’d always wanted to go to Australia—Australian emergency medicine doctor when she went overseas, they’d work tirelessly together to save lives, their gazes would meet beneath a bare bulb in a makeshift operating room, they’d adopt a child orphaned by a tsunami, they’d travel endlessly until—

  Peter slung his arm over her shoulder as they pushed into the clamorous dark of the bar, popping her fantasy like an overfilled balloon. His arm was stiff and heavy and his cologne was so cloying she was absurdly grateful for the scent of stale beer that nearly overpowered it. Her shoes stuck to the floor as they pushed into the crowd, where oversize belt buckles and cowboy hats were the dominant motifs. The country band of pot-bellied, bearded, middle-aged men was better heard than seen, but Laurel was soon instinctively tapping her foot to the upbeat tune as they assembled around a tall table.

  Peter’s face was pinched. “Maybe this wasn’t such—”

  “What’s everyone having? This round’s on me,” Kenny called over the music, his wallet already in his hand.

  “I’ll help you carry,” Laurel volunteered after Christina and Peter gave their drink orders. She followed Kenny’s back as he wove toward the bar, skirting around the people dancing in front of the low stage. He reached the row of taps first, but just as she saw him turn to make sure she was behind him, one of the more inebriated dancers staggered backward and hit hard against her side. As she teetered on her high heels, one ankle twisting painfully beneath her, a firm, warm hand closed on her arm and dragged her upright.

  She
didn’t need to look up to know whose touch it was.

  “Why is it every time I go out for a drink, I end up rescuing you? I’m starting to think this is all some sort of elaborate plan.”

  Grady released his hold and stepped back, transferring two of the six beer bottles he held by the neck into his free hand. She guiltily dragged her gaze up to meet his, and sighed in relief when she found amusement tugging at the corners of his mouth.

  “Laurel, are you okay?” Kenny rushed to her side, concern drawing his brows together.

  “I’m fine. I’ll see you guys back at the table, okay? I’m just going to catch up with my friend Grady for a few minutes.”

  Kenny gave Grady a skeptical once-over, and she knew exactly what he was thinking—he’d known her for years and never heard of this friend. But he nodded, shot her a look that was a clear reminder to be careful, and made his way back to the bar.

  She indicated the bottles he carried. “Thirsty?”

  “Saturday night special—three for five dollars.”

  “It’s packed in here.”

  His smile was tight. “I’m trying to be okay with that.”

  “Want to get some air?”

  She was afraid he would hesitate, that he’d give her the pitying look that precedes a letting-her-down-gently statement, that he’d shift awkwardly and explain he was here with someone else. But to her thrilled surprise, he took a deep breath. “Yeah. I do.”

  She trailed him away from the crowd and around a pool table, averting her gaze as they crossed near where Peter and Christina sat. He led her to a back corner, where she recognized his two friends from the bar near the highway. Chance was leaning forward and speaking earnestly, not even noticing as Grady clunked the full bottles down amid the empties. Ethan sat across from him, his face in his hands.

  She didn’t have time to say hello before Grady was edging past them to the back door, and she had to hurry to keep up with his long strides. The door shut behind them with a slam, and then everything was quiet. They were alone.