Battle for the Soldier's Heart

by Cara Colter

  Now she knew.

  The car represented the contradiction that was her: she loved home. She loved family. She loved playing games and canning peaches.

  But with Rory, she was becoming more whole, more herself, embracing another side, the side that she had always repressed.

  The side that was willing to take the lead. The side that was bold. The side that loved adventure.

  The side that made her his equal.

  The side of her that made her brave enough to say yes to the greatest risk and the greatest adventure of all.

  Falling in love with another person. Deeply and truly. Wanting, always, what was best for them.

  Even if that meant consequences to herself.

  Even if there was the potential there for pain.

  Telling Rory Adams she loved him was going to take more courage than anything she had ever done.

  And she felt ready.

  And somehow it was love that had made her this courageous and this ready.

  And wasn’t that exactly what love did? Made you better than what you had been before? Made you better than you had ever imagined you could be.

  Was he feeling the same way? The very thought made her insides quake, made her tremble with anxiety.

  No, she would not let fear into it. She wouldn’t. She would be the girl who had dreamed Ferrari dreams.

  She kicked off from the top of the hill, took her hand off the brake and kicked free of the bicycle pedals. She had not a single thought of falling.

  CHAPTER NINE

  RORY stared down at the envelope in his hands. Grace and Tucker were both fast asleep in his guest bedrooms. It was the last night they would be here together like this, the little makeshift family that he had taken such unexpected and fierce pleasure in.

  Once they were gone—Serenity was being released from the hospital in the morning—and things got back to normal, how was he going to be able to stand this apartment? It would be as if the light had gone out of it. Even now, glancing around, he realized the place had become a home.

  There was a beach towel tossed over the couch, and a remote-control car wedged underneath the coffee table. There were two pairs of tiny sneakers at the front door, Grace’s and Tucker’s. There was a bowl of potato chips left out on the counter and a tin of hot chocolate and three mugs in the sink.

  There was a clumsily wrapped gift on the table, a new blouse that Tucker had picked out for his mother’s homecoming.

  It felt as if a family lived here.

  And over the past week, isn’t that what they’d become? A family.

  It was what Rory had longed for his entire life. And avoided at the very same time. Now, it had been thrust upon him.

  Rory was aware he should not have let his guard down. He should not have been sucked in so completely.

  But that’s what love did. It impaired a man’s judgment as surely as wine. As he thought back over the last week, it occurred to him, maybe even more than wine.

  He thought of everything they had done: driving minicars and having picnics, riding bikes, teaching Tucker to swim. He thought of overcoming his deep suspicion of Serenity to honor Tucker’s love and devotion for her.

  He thought of the evenings in the apartment playing video games, eating chips, sipping hot chocolate.

  And he thought of the best moments of all: when Tucker had gone to bed and he and Grace sat out on the deck, sipping hot chocolate and watching the sun set over the lake.

  He thought of last night when he had kissed her so thoroughly it felt as if they had exchanged souls.

  He let the shock of that ripple along his spine.

  He loved her. He loved Grace Day as much as he had ever loved anyone in his whole life.

  And love filled a hole in him that he had tried to outrun his whole life.

  The envelope had been delivered earlier, and he had put it aside, not wanting to know what was in there, stealing as many moments of this sense of family as he could. He had wanted to have this last night. Of what?

  Being a family.

  But he had not gone out on the balcony tonight, and had not kissed her. He had steeled himself against the longing he saw in her face, and his own.

  Taking a deep breath, Rory slid the papers from the envelope.

  A few minutes later, he set them down, leaned forward and put his elbows on his knees, covered his eyes with his hands.

  That’s what hope did. Left you open to being broken like this, like a shattered piece of glass.

  He hadn’t been part of a family. He’d been part of an elaborate pretense, and he of all people should have known better.

  He heard her before he saw her, opened his eyes and gazed at Grace. She was in one of his shirts, her hair tousled, her long legs naked.

  He had never seen a woman look so sexy.

  So beautiful.

  “Rory, what’s wrong?” she said. “What time is it?”

  “It’s late.”

  “You couldn’t sleep? Are you having the dreams again?”

  He had not had the dreams all week. He had slept soundly. Now, he realized he had failed all the way around.

  He had failed to protect his mother.

  He had failed to protect Graham.

  And he had failed to protect Gracie, too.

  When it should have been him being pragmatic, what had he been doing? Throwing himself into the fantasy she had been creating.

  “Grace, he’s not Graham’s.”

  “What?”

  “Tucker isn’t Graham’s.”

  She stood there, sleepy and vulnerable, and looked stunned. “What do you mean? How do you know?”

  “He’s actually not seven. He’s nine.” Rory thought of that first meeting with Tucker, asking how old he was, Tucker’s hesitation, Serenity’s voice coming from under the truck.

  Tell the man how old you are.

  Tucker was small for his age. They’d accepted without question he was seven.

  “Given his age,” Rory said, “it goes without saying that the DNA was not a match.”

  “What DNA?” she asked.

  “I collected a sample,” he said, and then found he could not fudge the truth. Hadn’t he been doing that all week? Pretending? Pretending it could all be true. It was enough now. “I collected a sample from each of you.”

  “Without telling me?” she whispered.

  “Grace, you never wanted to know the truth. That’s why you didn’t want a DNA test from the very beginning. Part of you knew it could end like this and you wanted it all to match your little fantasy.”

  “I wanted Graham to go on,” she said, shrilly.

  “Well, he doesn’t,” Rory said harshly. “Life doesn’t always go the way you dream. In fact, it rarely does.”

  She began to cry.

  He got up. He wanted to close his arms around her. He wanted to protect her from the world and from any kind of pain.

  But when he began to move toward her, she stepped back from him.

  “How could you do this to me? Eventually, I would have been ready to do a DNA test. How could you collect a sample without telling me? It’s a betrayal!”

  “I tried to warn you I could put out your light, Grace. I tried to warn you.”

  She stared at him, then turned on her heel, ran into her room and shut the door firmly.

  He stared at the closed door for a moment, and then went to bed. The dreams came back with a vengeance.

  At dawn he admitted there would be no more sleep. He got up, a man who had been assigned an unpleasant mission, a man with a job to do.

  He went to the hospital.

  Serenity was sitting on the edge of h
er bed, already dressed, ready to go. It would be hours before they released her, but she already was ready. He stood in the doorway for a moment, watching her. He waited for the anger to come at the deceit she had visited on them, on how she had deliberately hurt Grace.

  But what he saw in her face in the early morning light was not deceit. It was weariness and fear.

  She glanced up and saw him, scanned his face, seemed to sag.

  “You know,” she said tiredly.

  He came and sat beside her. “I took a DNA sample. I put a private detective on it.”

  “Ah.”

  “Why would you do this?” he asked. “Why would you cause such a good woman so much pain?”

  “In case you haven’t figured it out, Sherlock, I’m really sick,” she said. She tried for defiance and somehow failed. “I knew before I came in here. I’ve got Hepatitis C. I’m going to die from it.”

  He searched her face for the con, and found none.

  “I’m sorry,” he said. And he was. He was sorry for her, heartbroken for Tucker. But he had to know. “But why visit your troubles on Grace?”

  The tears came then.

  “In my whole life, one man was decent to me. One. What does that tell you about a life?”

  “Graham,” he guessed.

  “Those few days we were all together. It was a crazy party. He could have done anything, but he never even tried. He never treated me like a whore. He never showed me anything but kindness and respect I didn’t deserve.”

  Rory felt a pang for his friend.

  He’d always been like that. Even over there. Keeping his pockets full of candy for the kids. Everyone treated with love and respect. Everyone.

  Suddenly, the missing words, the missing part of his dream when he always woke up slipped into his consciousness, but it was gone before he could capture it.

  “I saw his picture in the newspaper,” Serenity said. “I hadn’t seen him for what, eight years? But there was a whole bunch of pictures of Canadian soldiers who had been killed over there. I’m a tough girl,” she said, “but when I saw that picture I cried like a baby.

  “I guess I started thinking about it right then. What’s going to happen to Tucker when I die? I’ve been in foster care. I didn’t want that for Tucker. I thought what if that decent, decent man had a family?”

  “What about Tucker’s real father?” Rory asked.

  “He wasn’t a good person. I was never with him, except for a night or two. He died. He never even knew about Tucker. I don’t think he would have even cared.”

  “So, you were looking for a home for Tucker?”

  “He doesn’t know how sick I am. I mean, I guess he does, ’cause he’s seen me not feeling well lots and lots, but he doesn’t know I’m going to die.

  “Though he must have suspected something was up, because he didn’t take to Grace. Almost like he sensed I was choosing who to leave him with and hated her for it. Instead of me.

  “But then that first day you guys had him, and he drove the race car, he came in here and he was shining.

  “I’ve never given him that. I want him to have a shot at life. I want him to have what I never had.”

  Rory felt his own want for those very things claw up his throat. Wasn’t this what it was to be human? Wanting a family, a place to belong, a place where you felt safe and loved, as basic a need as eating or having a roof over your head? He felt something in him softening toward Serenity.

  “There’s no hope on the diagnosis?”

  “There’s an experimental treatment for it. It’s the same way they treat cancer. If the treatment doesn’t kill you, it can actually get rid of the Hep C permanently.”

  “And you aren’t a candidate?”

  She snorted. “I don’t even have health insurance.”

  “If you had health insurance?”

  “It wouldn’t matter. I still wouldn’t have a place to live. Who would look after Tucker on those days I couldn’t move away from the toilet I was so sick?”

  “What if those weren’t issues, either?”

  Something flickered in her face—a moment of hope—and then she tried to kill it. “You won’t get this, ’cause you got pure courage coming out your pores. But, Rory, I ain’t got no kind of courage. I can’t suffer like that.”

  “Here’s the thing, Serenity. It’s not really about you. It’s about that little boy. And you can’t give up without a fight. You can’t. Love won’t let you. Love is going to ask you to be stronger than you have ever been, and braver than you have ever been. Not for yourself. If it was for yourself, you couldn’t do it. But for him, you can. For Tucker you can.”

  Serenity eyed him, and then the hope flickered back to life in her eyes. And there was something else there too, a startling kind of knowing.

  “Well, look at you,” she said. “An expert on love. Who would have ever thunk that?”

  “Yeah,” he said, “Who would have?”

  He left the hospital.

  Who would have thought he’d be an expert on love? He remembered the look on Grace’s face.

  How could you?

  He’d known all along he had to protect her. He’d known all along what she would need protecting from most was his cynicism, his darkness, his ability to snuff out her light.

  He left the hospital. He felt as if cinder blocks were attached to all his limbs. He fished his cell phone out of his pocket.

  “Bridey? I need you to find out everything you can about Hepatitis C treatment programs. I need you to find a place for a woman, a nine-year-old boy and eight ponies to live.”

  “Is that all, sir?”

  “No, then I need you to book me a flight to Australia.”

  Grace was furious at Rory for three days. She could not think of him without feeling that surge of anger. How dare he go behind her back? How dare he take control like that?

  And underneath that: How dare he expose the truth? That she was so vulnerable to her dreams?

  In a way, those three days of fury helped her cope with the fact that Tucker was gone, too. And that he was not Graham’s.

  When Serenity had confessed to her how she had been looking for a home for her son because she was ill, Grace had realized she did not need Tucker to be Graham’s to love him.

  Serenity had gone to live in one of the little guest houses at Slim McKenzie’s ranch. Grace had helped them get settled, and between that and getting caught up at work, especially on planning for Warrior Down, she had been grateful to be so busy.

  Still, through all the busyness of her days, a part of her waited. She had thought Rory would call. They had been so close. Their lives had become so interlinked.

  She missed him so dreadfully. It felt like a physical ache.

  How could he not be missing her in the same way?

  When she saw his office number on her caller ID, her heart went into triple-time. But it was not Rory.

  It was a woman named Bridey. She needed to start putting together The Perfect Day package for the silent auction at Warrior Down. Mr. Adams had suggested a helicopter ride to the top of Silver Lining Mountain, a table set for two, white linen, a chef.

  Grace had had perfect days. Seven of them in a row! That was so far from what she’d had!

  But she heard herself saying, “Yes, that’s fine.”

  And then, “Is Rory there? Could I talk to him?”

  “Oh. I’m sorry. I thought you must know. Mr. Adams is in Australia supervising a job.”

  She could ask for a number to reach him at. She could leave a message for him. But somehow, she didn’t.

  He was pulling away from her.

  And if she listened closely, she was pretty sure she could hear the sound of her own heart breaking.

  But then, she r
emembered that night long, long ago, when she had seen Rory standing over his mother, fiercely protective.

  And in a flash of light she got it.

  He saw himself as a protector. The go-to guy. The one who called the shots. The one who maintained control.

  He had told her he carried the burden of feeling he had failed to protect her brother.

  And he was probably also feeling as if he had failed to protect her, Grace, from Serenity’s lie.

  All along, he had tried to warn her that he was dark to her light.

  Was he trying to protect her from himself?

  And who protected him? Where did he rest? Who was his equal?

  I am, she thought.

  His time with her had made her more than she had ever been before: stronger, more confident, more able to cut loose. She had become more herself than she had ever been before.

  And if she could not use those things: if she could not take the biggest risk of all to rescue Rory from himself, then were all the lessons lost?

  Wasn’t what he needed to know most—and what she needed to know most—that love triumphed?

  That love triumphed over deceit? That love triumphed over weakness? That love triumphed over darkness?

  That love triumphed, yes, even over death.

  Because, somehow, it was her brother who had brought all these events together. Even though he wasn’t here, the bigness of his heart had gone on.

  Not to live up to the bigness of her brother’s heart would be a disgrace to his legacy. To say no to love would be to scorn everything Graham had stood for.

  She was going after Rory. And not as Gracie-Facie, either.

  No, it was the girl who dreamed of red Ferraris who would find the boldness needed to rescue Rory Adams.

  From the terrifying loneliness of the world he had made for himself. Where he had to be in charge of everything and everybody.

  And where, because of the hugeness of the task he had set for himself, he was doomed to failure.

  The music swirled around Rory. Lights reflected off the lake, and the laughter filled the soft evening air.

  He did not want to be here, even if it was for

  Warrior Down, and he tugged uncomfortably at the bow tie that seemed too tight. He felt alone in the crowd, disconnected. Of course, he had felt disconnected from the moment he had made the decision to leave Gracie and go to Australia.