Battle for the Soldier's Heart

by Cara Colter

  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.

  Was she desperately holding on to this, her perfect evening? A matched set. Her perfect day yesterday, her perfect evening tonight.

  The thing about having achieved perfection? Did you ever want to go back to just normal again? Ordinary? Could you? Or did you crave it now? A person who had slept in silk sheets did not want to go back to burlap sacking after all!

  He studied her, and she had the horrible feeling he knew what it had cost her to ask him, that a frightened fourteen-year-old waited for rejection, a sneering laugh.

  “Sure, I’ll play with you. Don’t give up yet, in

  Serenity’s world, fashionably late could mean midnight.”

  Suddenly playing a silly game, intended for children, seemed ridiculous. He’d told her about his company. He wasn’t playing for entertainment. He was rubbing shoulders with race-car drivers and the jet set. He probably couldn’t wait to get out of here, was being held here by some sense of obligation.

  “You don’t have to stay, you can go.”

  “Nah. I’ll stay.”

  “Because you don’t want me to deal with Serenity by myself if she does turn up?”

  “Well, if she turns up at this time of night, you might want someone around who can wrestle her truck keys from her.”

  “That poor kid. Poor Tucker.”

  “That’s why I’ll stay. Because you seem sad. It’s no fun being sad by yourself.”

  “No, really.”

  “No, really. Haul out the game.”

  Don’t, she told herself. But she did.

  “I think you can play with two,” she said, getting her game off the sideboard, and putting it on the kitchen island. The box was faded with age, and all the corners were held together with tape that had turned dark yellow. “But it’s more fun with four.”

  “We’ll be two people each then. I’ll be Nasty Ned and Roaring Rory and you be Goodie Two Shoes Grace and Sideswipe Sally.”

  “I am not going to be Goodie Two Shoes!”

  “Okay. You pick who you’re going to be.” He had already retrieved the instructions and, after a quick skim, began setting up pieces.

  “I’ll be Racy Gracie!”

  “Good one. No stealing kisses from me, though.”

  “That wasn’t really a kiss,” she said, flustered.

  “It wasn’t? You could have fooled me. And I would have thought I kind of knew a kiss when one was planted on my lips, but if you say it wasn’t…”

  She could feel the heat move up her face. “It was just a thank you, for such a nice day.”

  “Uh-huh. You be careful about thanking all the boys that way, or you really will be Racy Gracie.”

  “Oh!”

  “What are we playing for, by the way?”

  “You don’t play a game like this for anything. You just play it for fun.”

  And this was fun for her, damn him. The light teasing, the familiarity, his willingness to do something dumb.

  “For fun?” He snorted. “Soldiers don’t play anything for fun. They’ll bet a week’s wages on which spider is going to cross the room first. There has to be something at stake.”

  “What would you like to play for?”

  “How about that teddy bear on the couch?”

  “I got that out for Tucker. I don’t still have a teddy bear.”

  “Gracie, that kid is not a teddy-bear kind of kid. Or a board-game kind of kid, either.”

  “Well, you didn’t strike me as either of those things, either, but here we are, playing a board game for my teddy bear.”

  “I knew it was yours,” he said triumphantly.

  “Well, maybe you’re not quite the tough guy you seem, either, since you want to take him home.”

  “It’s not really about the teddy bear. He must mean something to you. So it would be fun to take it away.”

  “That’s awful!”

  “I know,” he said happily.

  “So, what’s at stake for you? What am I going to take from you when I win?”

  He eyed her lips for a moment. “You choose.”

  She eyed his lips for a moment. No, too dangerous. Akin to playing strip poker. Over a board game. That would be degenerate!

  She snapped her fingers. “The CD we listened to going up the lake.”

  “Ouch.”

  “Perfect,” she purred happily.

  “This has become a high-stakes game, Miss Day.”

  “My favorite kind,” she said, and then they were both laughing at the absurdity of her ever having played high-stakes anything.

  She won three games in a row. With great grumbling he went and retrieved his CD. It was now closing in on nine.

  Time to send him home. Because something was happening to her heart. She was realizing she could fall for this man so fast and so hard it would make anything she had ever experienced before seem as lackluster as porridge congealing in a pot.

  “Can I listen to it one more time before I surrender it?” he asked.

  He couldn’t possibly think Serenity was still going to show, but part of her was so hungry for more time with him that she didn’t care, she threw caution to the wind.

  She knew, after all, she had to walk away from this. For her own self-preservation. Only yesterday he had told her in no uncertain terms what he thought of relationships.

  And she had agreed with him. But she might have been lying. Even to herself. So, after tonight, sh
e would keep her distance. She would.

  But she felt like someone who loved chocolate being told they could never have it again. Except for one last taste.

  Who could resist that?

  And so Grace made them milkshakes and they sat on the sofa, side by side, listening to the CD.

  He was so relaxed, sprawled out on her sofa. She had not been aware of some finely held tension that was intrinsic to him until now that it was gone.

  It seemed to her the whole evening had been so filled with simple things, and yet it had felt suffused with light.

  She wanted to kiss him again.

  She was pretty sure he wanted to kiss her, too.

  She leaned toward him, and the tension was back in him.

  “Don’t, Gracie. There’s things you need to know. About me.”

  But she didn’t want to know those things if they would stop her from wanting to kiss him, and she had the sense that that was why he wanted to tell her. She wanted the barriers ripped down, he wanted them up.

  “I need to tell you about Graham. When I’m done you’ll know who I really am.”

  Unspoken, she heard, And you won’t like it.

  Strangely, when Rory had first contacted her, Grace had heard this very moment coming.

  She had thought she was not ready to hear what he had to say. She had thought she would never be ready. That was why she had said, I can’t see why we need to talk.

  But suddenly she could see exactly why they needed to talk. Suddenly, she was ready.

  Somewhere, somehow, she had become less interested in protecting herself. Somehow, more was being required of her. She needed to hear what he had to say. To save them both.

  * * *

  Rory was silent for a long time. Finally, working past the lump in his throat, he managed to say, “I was with him when he died.”

  When he had contacted her when he got home, this is precisely the conversation he had been determined to have. He wanted her to know he’d been with her brother when he died. That he had not been alone. That he had not been afraid. That Graham’s last thought had been of her.

  Why was it so hard to do it, then?

  Because he wasn’t expecting that moment—fear and chaos and ultimately death—to be superimposed over this one—laughter, safety, feeling relaxed.

  Happy again.

  And because all that—that Graham had not been alone or afraid—was only part of the truth. The real truth was his failure, and she needed to know that before they traded kisses.

  She needed to know it all before she offered him her lips.

  “I’m ready,” she said, and he saw the bravery in her and saw that she was ready.

  He closed his eyes. He could feel the heat and smell the dust. And other smells. Garbage. Sewage. Death.

  “It was a pretty ordinary day for over there. Too hot. We were on patrol. It was average. You’re always alert, scanning, but none of the signs were there.

  “Then I saw these two teenage boys. I felt like something was wrong, but I didn’t react right away. I’m not sure why. Maybe because it was so hot. Maybe because they just seemed so young. Maybe because they hadn’t done anything. It’s not as if they were reaching under their robes to pull out submachine guns.

  “But I knew something was off, and I didn’t react fast enough. One of them glanced up, touched his nose. I guess it was a signal. And the next thing I knew there were bullets flying everywhere.

  “I ducked behind a wall. And I looked for Graham and was shocked that he wasn’t right with me. He was always right with me. We always had each other’s backs. Always. He was out there in the street. He’d already been hit.

  “I went and got him, dragged him back to cover. He was alive, but it was already too late.”

  He frowned. Just like in the dream, he knew there was a part of this missing, a part his mind refused to remember. Important words.

  But what could be more important to Grace than

  the fact she had been one of the last things on her

  brother’s mind?

  “I just wanted you to know that he wasn’t alone. That I was there. And I wanted you to know that he wasn’t afraid. I wanted you to know his last thoughts were of you. He wanted you to be okay.”

  He glanced at her. She was crying.

  “I’m so sorry, Grace.”

  “No. I’m so glad you told me. I needed to know, even though I was scared to find out. I needed to know that he wasn’t alone. I needed to know he wasn’t afraid. And I know it will bring me great comfort that his last thoughts were of me.”

  She wasn’t getting it. He obviously had not been plain enough. She seemed to be looking at him with a graver sense of connection instead of less of one.

  “Grace, I didn’t have his back. I failed him.”

  It couldn’t be more plain than that.

  The tears came harder. “Oh, Rory,” she whispered. “Don’t do that to yourself. Please.”

  Now, she was right over beside him, her arms were around him, her warm tears were spilling down his chest.

  “No,” she said. “I will not allow you to carry that burden one step further. It was not your fault.”

  “I saw the boys.”

  “And what should you have done when you saw them? What should you have done differently?”

  “I don’t know,” he said, and it was a terrible admission, that he did not know how he could have changed things. Even now, looking back, even visiting it every night in his dreams, he did not know. He suspected he could have done something.

  And that he had failed to do it.

  And that was the part that was missing from his dream and from his memory.

  And he hated that feeling more than any other.

  And himself, for not knowing.

  “I should have pushed Graham out of the way. I should have been the one who took it. Jesus, Gracie, why not me, instead of him? Your whole family torn apart. I don’t have a family to be torn apart.”

  This was going all wrong. All wrong.

  He had planned for this to be his secret weapon. His way to stop the growing attraction between them.

  He was the man responsible for her brother’s death. That should make her pull away and fast.

  But the effect seemed to be the exact opposite.

  She was doing what he had never been able to do. She was forgiving him. She was accepting that he was just a man who had not been able to stop the unfolding of destiny.

  She was scanning his face.

  “You’re not really doing okay, are you?”

  Why was it that she could see that? Everyone else, even his brother, thought he was the successful businessman. They didn’t know he was running.

  And he didn’t want her to know, either. He didn’t want to burden her.

  And yet, he could not stop himself, he could not hold the words back.

  “I have dreams. In every single dream I am responsible.”

  “How often do you have those dreams?” Her voice was so soft, and the tenderness in her eyes was making him want to tell her. Why? What earthly good could come from sharing this terrible burden with her?

  “I have them every night,” he said. “Sometimes half a dozen times a night.”

  “So, what are they telling you that you won’t admit during the day?” she asked.

  He closed his eyes. He recognized the million-dollar question when he heard it. He made one last desperate effort to make h
er understand.

  “I know it’s my fault,” he said, his voice hoarse. “We looked out for each other. I let him down. I let him die.”

  He waited for her to say something patronizing that he could hate her for, that would allow him to rebuild this wall that had tumbled down. He waited for her to say something about survivor’s guilt and it wasn’t his fault at all.

  She didn’t say anything. He dared to look at her, and saw the tears still sliding down her face.

  Only now, they were not for her brother.

  They were for him.

  It felt as if she was reaching inside him and taking the pain. Sharing it. Understanding it. It wasn’t pity.

  It was compassion so pure that it stole his breath and what was left of his strength.

  He reached for her, took her wrists, marveled at their delicacy and pulled her into his chest. She came to him easily, and he rested his chin on the top of her head, and felt her surrender, melting into him like warm putty.

  He breathed in her scent and held her.

  “Do you think we’ll ever be okay again?” she asked after a long, long time.

  “Right now I am,” he said, and was surprised how much he meant it. “Right now I am.”

  She thought about it, changed her position so she could tilt her head up and look at him. “Me, too,” she decided.

  And then she pulled away from him, and scanned his face, saw something there that reassured her and she tucked herself back into him.

  And it just was.

  Her breath rising with his breath.

  Her heart beating with his heart.

  Her warmth melting into his warmth.

  Her softness feeling so good against all in him that was unyielding.

  Rory had just told Grace the worst thing about himself. He knew he’d been saving that confession as his out, as his way of driving her away if things got too complicated between them.

  He could not have predicted that the exact opposite would happen. She seemed to trust him more, not less.

  And he did not feel deserving of that.