Boots on the Ground: Homefront, Book 1

by Rebecca Crowley

  Laurel smiled inwardly as her dad threw back his head with laughter at Grady’s wry, deadpan crack about a recent scandal in the state senate. Despite a shy start, he’d become more and more relaxed as the afternoon wore on, and soon he was charming everyone they met with witty, funny remarks delivered in his slow Texas drawl.

  “That deserves another beer.” Her father chuckled, indicating the bottle in Grady’s hand. “More of the same?”

  Grady held up his palm. “I’m driving.”

  “I’m fine too, but I think Mom could use a refill,” Laurel piped up, pointing to where her mother stood under a tree. Her dad nodded and started toward the cooler, still shaking his head at Grady’s joke.

  Alone with him for the first time in over an hour, she smiled conspiratorially. “Having fun?”

  “Yeah,” he replied, sounding a little surprised. “Your parents are great, and everyone’s been real nice. I guess they decided to go easy on me.”

  “Never—you’re just holding your own, like I knew you would.”

  “Is this your standard operating procedure? Getting guys to run the social-circle gauntlet on the third date?”

  “Most of them were part of the social circle to begin with.” She gripped the thick biceps emerging from the short sleeves of his shirt. “You’re so stuck on this idea that you’re an outsider, I thought we might as well put it to the test. What do you think?”

  He glanced over her head at the gathered friends and neighbors, then brought his hands to her waist as their gazes met. “I think this is exactly the kind of life I’ve always wanted but never dared to imagine I could have.”

  She breathed his name as she raised her fingers to his cheek, her heart seizing as she imagined the circumstances that would make such a simple desire seem so out of reach.

  “Thank you for bringing me today,” he murmured, tugging her closer. “I’m still not sure why you’ve decided to take a chance on me, but I’m going to try my damndest to live up to your expectations.”

  She shook her head. “All I expect is for you to be yourself. And to cook me dinner occasionally. Or more than occasionally.”

  “I can handle that.” He grinned one of his rare face-lighting, eye-crinkling, teeth-flashing big smiles and slid his hand to her nape, tilting his face toward hers. She let her eyes fall shut in heady anticipation, already tasting his kiss, savoring the sweet pressure—

  Her eyes snapped open as Grady lurched against her, then said, “Hey, buddy.”

  Christina’s two-year-old son had wrapped himself around Grady’s leg and was staring up at him with a mischievous smile. Christina jogged up behind him, her precocious six-year-old daughter Jessa skipping along at her side.

  “Sorry.” She pried the little boy away and took him firmly by the hand. “We’re so busy with potty training it seems the etiquette lessons have fallen by the wayside.”

  Laurel made the appropriate introductions, noting Christina’s approving glance as she shook Grady’s hand. “Nice to meet you. We were at the bar with Laurel on Saturday night, but evidently we didn’t get a chance to say hello before you had to leave.”

  Christina’s careful choice of words had Grady shifting his weight at her side, and Laurel raised a reassuring hand to the small of his back. Blake had thought it was better to keep the true details of the incident secret from everyone but their parents until after the verdict was issued, and while Laurel appreciated the importance of that discretion in a town as gossipy as this one, at the moment she chafed against the longing to inform Christina that Grady was about as far from a tire-shooting loose cannon as could be.

  “Are you the army man?” Jessa chirped.

  He nodded. “I guess so.”

  “Are you Aunt Laurel’s boyfriend?”

  A hot flush burned in her cheeks, but Grady smiled and put his arm around her shoulders. “Sure, if she’ll have me.”

  Christina arched a brow that promised a thorough interrogation when they had a minute alone, while Jessa decided to hold hers right there and then.

  “Where do you live?”

  “I live here, in Meridian. On a ranch.”

  “Do you have horses?”

  “Not yet.”

  “You should buy some. Aunt Laurel likes horses. She took me horseback riding when I was five.”

  He squeezed her against his side. “Thanks for the heads-up.”

  “She’s a doctor.”

  He nodded.

  “And you’re a soldier.”

  “I was.”

  “Did you kill people?”

  Grady stiffened under Laurel’s hand. Christina’s eyes widened, but she said nothing. Laurel suspected she wanted to hear his answer as much as her daughter did.

  “Hey, Jess,” she intervened. “You must be done with school for the summer, right? Are you—”

  “My uncle says soldiers are murderers. He says it’s not true that they kill bad guys. He says they kill children and babies.” She squinted up at him. “Did you ever—”

  “Jessa, that’s enough,” Christina hissed, taking her daughter by the arm and pulling her away. “I’m so sorry about this,” she called over her shoulder as she ushered her children away. “It was nice to see you both. Maybe we can meet for dinner?”

  “I’ll call you,” Laurel promised and Christina turned away, muttering angrily as she led Jessa across the lawn.

  “Christina’s brother was kicked out of basic training for failing a drug test about ten years ago,” she rushed to tell Grady, flattening her palms on his chest to yank him back from wherever it was she could feel him withdrawing to. “Jessa idolizes him because he buys her ice cream and doesn’t make her go to bed on time, but in reality he’s a thirty-five-year-old loser who plays video games and smokes pot all day. Jessa’s just parroting him—she doesn’t understand what she’s saying.”

  But it was too late—the eyes he turned on her were haunted and distant.

  “I need to get out of here. I’m sorry. Can you get a ride with someone else?”

  Disappointment settled like a lead weight in her stomach. She couldn’t blame him, but she hated that a couple of mimicked remarks from a six-year-old could bring the whole day’s happy progress to a screeching halt. “Where are you going?”

  “I don’t know. Home.” He winced. “I thought I could do this. I was wrong.”

  “Do what? You were having a great time until five minutes ago.” There was a plaintive whine in her voice that she immediately scolded herself to get in check. The last thing he needed was her impatience.

  He took a step backward, then another. “We’ll talk later.”

  The way he said later made her pretty sure he meant never. “At least say goodbye to everyone first?”

  “Make an excuse for me—or don’t. Tell them the truth.”

  “Which is?”

  He shrugged. “That I walked out.”

  He jerked out from under her hands, and Laurel watched in disbelief as he loped back toward his truck, his long strides making quick work of the distance. With his head bowed and his hands shoved into the pockets of his jeans, he was like a completely different man from the one who’d circulated through the party with an easy posture and a warm smile.

  She glanced over her shoulder. Her parents stared at her in concern, her mother’s lips pursed and her father’s forehead creased. Christina stood slightly behind them, not looking nearly as apologetic as Laurel thought she should. On the contrary, her friend’s brow had a distinctly well-what-did-you-expect arch.

  She turned again to Grady’s retreating figure with a frustrated sigh. She’d shown him he wasn’t an outsider, proved he could fit in wherever he pleased, yet it only took a child’s comment to slam his defenses back into place. The truth was she had no understanding of what he’d been through or how to reach him, and she was running out of ideas. She’d pushed him far enough—she should let him go. Maybe it would be easier for both of them.

  He was halfway down the street now. I
n another minute or two he’d be in the truck and gone, as unseen as he was unreachable.

  She heard the telltale slap of her mother’s clogs starting toward her. Sending her mother as envoy meant her parents had decided now was the time for gentle consolation—righteous indignation was more her father’s forte.

  “Dammit,” she muttered, reaching down to pull off her braided sandals. She never had been one to do things the easy way.

  She gathered the sandals in one hand, hiked her purse higher on her shoulder and broke into a run.

  She heard her mom call her name, but it was too late—she was sprinting across the soft, springy grass, tearing across front yards, weaving around ornamental bushes and walkway lights and discarded children’s toys, her heart pounding and her skirt flapping. She reached the truck just as Grady slammed the driver’s-side door shut, and when she caught the edge of the open window, she could see the key already in the ignition.

  “Wait,” she panted. “I’m coming with you.”

  She rounded the front end before he could respond, hauling open the door and clambering into the seat. His eyes were round with surprise, his lips parted as if about to protest, and she pressed a finger to his mouth to silence him.

  “You listen to me, Grady Reid,” she commanded. “I know today has to be about more than barbecues and block parties for you. I saw it this morning at the fort and I saw it just now with Jessa. I wouldn’t presume to know what’s going on inside you, but I am more than audacious enough to ask you to tell me. I’ve been as open and honest with you as possible, and it’s your turn.” She huffed a breath and crossed her arms. “Now you are going to put this truck in gear, drive to your house, make a pot of coffee and talk me through everything happening in that sexy head of yours. Understood?”

  For a full minute he simply stared at her, his expression blank and his eyes unreadable. Then one corner of his mouth lifted in a lopsided grin.

  “Sexy?”

  “You heard me.”

  “After thirteen years of military service I know not to question the orders issued by my betters.” He started the truck. “We’re Oscar Mike.”

  Chapter Eight

  “Sorry.” Grady’s smile was sheepish. “Am I saying too much?”

  Laurel tightened her grip on the chipped porcelain mug. Her coffee had long since gone cold, but she took a small sip anyway to buy a few extra seconds.

  The stories Grady had relayed over the rickety card table in his half-finished kitchen—of years spent bouncing between his mother’s drug-addled care and short-term foster placements, of watching powerlessly as his superiors’ incompetence repeatedly put soldiers’ lives in danger, of realizing on his last tour that his indifference to atrocity had grown so impenetrable that he feared for his soul—were harrowing and painful and penetrated right to her core. Part of her wanted to scream at him to stop, that she couldn’t listen to another word—but the rest of her realized that his disclosure was a privilege not to be taken lightly, and that now this door was open she had no choice but to walk straight through.

  She shook her head. “Of course not. Keep going.”

  “So, the army shrink said it was because I had abandonment issues stemming from foster care, and that’s why I struggled so much every time we lost someone in the field.” He rolled his eyes. “Only in the army do they think there’s something wrong with you for being sad when someone dies. If anything, I think my childhood prepared me for the military better than any happy nuclear family could have. It taught me never to get too attached, because all relationships are temporary, and in the end you can only rely on yourself.”

  “That’s a lonely way to go through life.”

  “Or a safe one.”

  “People who like to play it safe don’t usually join the army.”

  “There you’re wrong.” His lips quirked into the first genuinely playful smile she’d seen for hours. “There’s nothing safer than the military. There’s no offshoring, no dwindling shift hours—that paycheck comes every month as long as your contract is valid. You get clothed, fed, housed, trained, told how to fill the hours in your day and paid to hang out with your best friends in the world. It was R&R that was tough—that’s when I had to occupy myself while everyone else was home with their families. Deployments were a cakewalk in comparison.”

  “Except for the whole potential-to-be-killed thing, right?”

  He lifted a shoulder. “We all die. I figured a valley in Afghanistan was better than a drunk driver in Texas.” He exhaled heavily. “Guess I’m not destined for such a heroic end after all.”

  She stiffened. “You sound disappointed.”

  “Surprised.” He reached across the table to take her hand. “Maybe a little relieved. Battlefield deaths are a lot more glorious in Hollywood blockbusters than in actual wars.”

  She swallowed against a throat suddenly thick with emotion, and when she spoke her voice was little more than a whisper. “I’m glad you came back safe. I’m glad I met you.”

  “So am I.”

  She closed her eyes against the prickling threat of tears, then snapped them open again as Grady dragged her into his lap, tugging her into place so she straddled him, her legs dangling down either side of the chair.

  “Don’t you dare cry on me,” he murmured, his hands at her waist. “All those miles of rough road brought me here to you, and I still can’t believe my luck.”

  “I still can’t believe you made me change my own tire,” she managed with a weak smile, and then his mouth was on hers.

  Grady kissed like a man. That was the only way she could define it. He had none of the hesitance or frenzy or contrivance of her past suitors—he took her mouth, he sought her tongue, and there wasn’t so much as a glimmer of timidity in his movements. He was forthright, authentic, unafraid.

  She wondered what else he did like a man.

  His fingers tangled in the hair at her nape as she explored the inside of his mouth, savoring the strong, bold, addictive taste of the black coffee he’d brewed in a dented pot. He shifted beneath her, and in the next second the hard core of him was palpable between her legs, the rough, strained denim of his fly digging through the thin cotton of her underwear.

  As soon as her brain processed the size of the erection threatening to bust the zipper out of his jeans, she produced a moan so guttural she could scarcely believe it came from her own throat.

  Grady thrust her away and held her at arm’s length, his hair spiked where she’d run her hand through it, his eyes big, impenetrably dark pools. He stared at her for a few tantalizing seconds before his gaze fell to her shoulder. Slowly, gently, he pushed down the cloth of her sleeveless dress and slid aside the strap of her bra. Then he put his lips on the bony notch of her shoulder, and her moan made its predecessor seem like the barest of sighs.

  She put bracing hands on his wide shoulders as he worked his mouth over her collarbone to the tops of her breasts, his perennial five o’clock shadow tickling her sensitive skin. As a tall woman with a robust figure, she’d never fit into the waiflike, maidenly mold, but with Grady’s arms heavy around her waist and his broad chest heaving beneath her palms, she felt delicate, supple and indescribably feminine.

  At least until he urged her breast out of her dress and closed his mouth over her nipple. Then she was so consumed by ecstatic sensation that she wasn’t sure she was still human.

  Grady released her flesh and sat back to look up at her, licking his lips. “You taste like coconut.”

  “Must be the body lotion I use.”

  “It’s delicious.”

  “Glad you like it.”

  “You put that stuff on everywhere?”

  She smiled. “Only one way to find out.”

  Then he ducked forward, and in one smooth motion he had her over his shoulders in a fireman’s carry. He flowed to his feet and was at the bottom of the stairs before she could gather her senses enough to speak.

  “It won’t ruin the mood if you let me walk,
I promise,” she insisted, eyeing the rickety-looking staircase.

  “Not a chance. Compared to an unconscious infantryman you’re like carrying a feather.” And to prove his point he sprinted up the stairs, ignoring her giggling, squealing protests as he traversed creaky hallway floorboards to swing open a door and fling her onto the king-size bed on the other side.

  “This is a big bed,” she remarked, looking around what was the first fully renovated room she’d seen in the house.

  “I’m a big guy.”

  “Promises, promises.”

  Grady’s grin was wolfish as he pulled off his shirt. All of the mirth drained from Laurel’s body and was replaced by insistent, pulsating desire as she gazed up at his magnificent torso. She raised her hand to touch him as he clambered on top of her, trailing her fingertips through the crisp hair, tracing the ridges of muscle. He slid his hand between her back and the mattress to tug on the zipper of her dress, then peeled it down and off.

  His eyes heated and flashed as he looked her up and down, and she preened under his gaze. She pushed up on her elbows and gripped his belt, slowly sliding the worn leather through the buckle.

  “I’ll show you mine if you show me—”

  With a throaty, animal growl he was on her, his mouth scalding her stomach, her neck, the space between her breasts as his hands worked impatiently to shuck off his jeans. She gripped the narrow, tight contours of his hips through his boxers, his hand trembled against her back where he fought with the clasp on her bra, and then everything sped up into a semi-coherent whirlwind of sensation.

  Something ripped, that grating sound of seams being wrenched apart, and then she was bare before him, her nipples peaking under his attention. His big, callused fingers were on her naked breasts, dipping low on her abdomen. She thought for a moment that these same hands had fired machine guns, tied tourniquets around bleeding limbs, held steady through the chaos and mayhem of countless battles, and yet his touch was so tender that her heart squeezed and her stomach tightened and then he slipped that trigger finger inside her and she stopped thinking altogether.