Cara Colter - Battle for the Soldier's Heart

Her chin was tilting stubbornly.

“You can’t save the whole world, Gracie.”

“No? Isn’t that what you and Graham were so fired up to do?”

He let that bounce off him, like a fighter who had only been nudged by a blow that could have killed had it landed.

His voice cold, he said, “That’s precisely why I know it can’t be done.”

Instead of having the good sense to see what he was trying to tell her—that he was hard and cold and mean—that soft look was in her eyes again.

It made him wonder if maybe, just maybe, if she couldn’t save the whole world, if she could save one person.

And if that person was him.

The thought stunned him. It had never occurred to him he needed to be saved. From what?

“You want desperately for that boy to be Graham’s,” he said softly.

“Don’t you? Don’t you want some part of Graham to go on?”

He heard the desperation, the pure emotion, and knew he could not rely on her to make any rational decisions.

“Look, the things that made Graham who he was are not exactly purely genetic. Those things are the result of how the two of you were raised.”

He remembered her family. Off to church on Sunday mornings. Going to their cabin on the lake together. Playing board games on winter nights. Lots of hugs and hair-ruffling. Their parents had given them so much love and affection.

He was trying to tell her that the way that Tucker was being raised he didn’t have a hope of turning out anything like Graham. Even if he was Graham’s, which was a pretty big if.

“It’s easy enough to find out,” he said. “Whether he’s Graham’s or not.”

She said nothing.

“A cotton swab, the inside of his cheek, an envelope, a result.”

“Good grief, how often have you done that?” she said with scorn, but he knew it was to hide the fact it frightened her that it was that easy.

He didn’t say anything. Let her believe what she wanted. Especially if it killed the soft look in her eyes, which it did.

“Don’t you want to know the truth about Tucker?” he asked.

“Yes! But I want Serenity to tell me the truth!”

“You want Serenity to tell you the truth?” he asked, incredulous. Was it possible to be this hopelessly naive?

Grace nodded, stubborn.

“You know how you can tell Serenity is lying?”

“How?”

“Her lips are moving.”

“That’s unnecessarily cynical.”

“There is no such thing as being unnecessarily cynical.”

She glared at him then changed tack. “How well did you and Graham know her?”

“Well enough to know she’ll tell you whatever you want to hear if there’s money involved.”

“You’re hopelessly distrustful.”

“Yeah. And alive. And those two things are not mutually exclusive. Grace, there’s a woman lying under a trailer, presumably drunk. Her ponies are all over the park. If ever there was a call to cynicism, this is it.”

Suddenly, the defiance left her expression. He wished he’d had time to get ready for what she did next. Grace laid her hand on his wrist.

Everything she was was in that touch. The way she was dressed tried to say one thing about her: that she was a polished and successful businesswoman.

At least before her pony encounter.

But her touch said something entirely different. She probably would have been shocked by how her touch told her truth.

That she was gentle, a little naive, hopeful about life. She was too soft and too gullible. He was not sure how she had managed that. To remain that through life’s tragedies, the death of her brother, the breakup of her engagement.

There was a kind of courage in it that he reluctantly admired even while he felt honor-bound to discourage it.

She looked at him, and there was pleading in her eyes. “I know you’re just trying to protect me. But please, Rory, let me do this my way. Is it so terrible to want a miracle?”

Miracles. He’d never been a man with any kind of faith, and spending all his adult life in war zones had not improved his outlook in that department. He—from a family who had never set foot in a church—had said his share of desperate prayers.

His last one had been Don’t let this man, my friend, die .

He both admired her hope, and wanted to kill it before it got away on her and did some serious damage.

Trying for a gentle note, which was as foreign to him as speaking Chinese, Rory said, “Gracie, come on. No one walks on water.”

At that moment, a pickup truck shot into the parking lot, and pulled up beside the horse trailer. It had a decal on the side for the Mountain Retreat Guest Ranch. A cowboy got out of the driver’s side.

He looked as though he was straight off a movie set. Booted feet, plaid shirt, Stetson, fresh-faced and clean-scrubbed. Three other cowboys spilled out the open doors.

“Slim McKenzie,” the first one said. “I hear you’re having a pony problem.”

Gracie turned and looked at Rory, those amazing eyes dancing with the most beautiful light.

“Maybe no one walks on water,” she said, quietly, “But garden-variety miracles happen all the time.”

He wanted to ask her where the damned miracle had been for her brother. But he found, to his dismay, he was not quite hard-hearted enough to be the one to snuff out that light in her eyes.

And the light in her eyes was doing the strangest thing to him. He knew the arrival of the cowboys was no miracle, not of the garden variety or any other. It was the Bridey variety miracle, pure and simple.

But something was happening nonetheless. Unless he was mistaken, Gracie’s light was piercing the darkness in him, bringing brightness to a place that had not seen it for a long, long time.

He did not allow himself to marvel at it. He thrust the feeling of warmth away. His darkness could put out her light in a millisecond.

And he’d better remember that when he was thinking about how beautiful Graham’s kid sister had become.

GRACE watched with absolute delight as the angels who had arrived dressed as cowboys rounded up the ponies. How could Rory not believe in miracles?

In less than an hour the whole disaster was not just repaired, it was practically erased.

It also took less than an hour to become very evident to her that Rory Adams might not know a thing about ponies, but leadership came as naturally to him as breathing.

“How about if you just sit this one out?” Rory had suggested with a meaningful look at her damaged footwear.

She could have resented how he took over from her, but frankly she was sick to death of ponies, and though it was probably a crime in the career woman’s manual, she reluctantly admitted it was somewhat of a relief to have someone take over. But not out loud.

Rory set up an impromptu command center, and she found, in her softened frame of mind, with him unaware of her scrutiny, it was nice to watch him.

Rory Adams was a force unto himself, pure masculine energy practically sizzled in the air around him. He came up with a plan, quickly, delegated, and then he pitched in. He was afraid of nothing: not ponies racing straight at him, not being dragged on the other end of a rope by a tiny pony that was much stronger than seemed possible.

From a purely feminine point of view, watching Rory was enough to make her mouth go dry. He was agile, energetic and strong. It seemed every muscle he possessed was being tested to its rather magnificent limits. Every now and then his shout of command—or laughter—would ring out across the field.

When a pony charged in her direction, he threw himself at it, glancing off its shoulder, but managing to change its direction.

And then he rolled easily to his feet—as if he had not just risked life and limb to save her—and kept moving.