Cara Colter - Battle for the Soldier's Heart

It occurred to her that he protected in the same way he led. It came to him as naturally as breathing.

And it felt like the most terrible of weaknesses that it made her insides turn to jelly.

Within an hour the last of the ponies was loaded into the ramshackle trailer. The poop was scooped. The birthday banner was fished out of the pool. Serenity was installed in the backseat of her crew-cab truck, and Tucker, looking at home for the first time since she had met him, was sandwiched in between two large cowboys on the front seat.

“Clayton and Sam will drive their truck to wherever they want to go,” Slim said, addressing Rory. “I’ll follow in my truck.”

There was something in the way he was addressing Rory, with a respectful kind of deference, that gave her pause. A suspicion whispered to life inside her, and Grace could feel the pink cloud she had been floating on since the timely arrival of the cowboys evaporating beneath her.

“Anything else you need done, Mr. Adams?”

Mr. Adams? Grace tried to think whether there had been an exchange of names in the flurry of activity that had begun since those cowboys first rolled up. Certainly, she had not given her name.

She felt as if she was on red alert now, watching Rory even more intently than she had been when he was commanding the field. Maybe she didn’t know him that well, and maybe many years had gone by since she had seen him, but he simply was not the kind of man who would introduce himself as Mr. Adams.

It was the kind of thing Harold might have done: trying to one-up himself over simple, working men, but Rory would never do that.

She told herself it was impossible to know that given the shortness and circumstances of their reacquaintance, but it didn’t matter. Her heart said it knew.

Still, instead of feeling a soft spot for him, she reminded herself something was up, there was more going on here than met the eye.

Rory, catching her sudden intense focus on him, clapped the cowboy on the shoulder and moved off into the distance, where she couldn’t hear what they said.

But she was pretty sure that was a wallet coming out of Rory’s back pocket!

By the time he came back, any admiration she had felt about his camaraderie with the working man was gone. So was her pink cloud.

In fact, Grace felt as if she had landed back on earth with a rather painful thump. She should have never let her barriers down by admiring him, not even discreetly! Now she had to build them back up. Why was that always harder than taking them down?

The trucks pulled out of the park, the horse trailer swaying along behind them, with great clinking and clanking and whinnying of ponies.

And then there was silence. And Rory standing beside her, surveying the park and looking way too pleased with himself.

“That wasn’t a miracle, was it?” she demanded.

“I don’t know. Eight ponies successfully captured in—” he glanced at his watch “—under eight minutes per pony. Might qualify. Did I mention I’m no expert on miracles?”

He was looking at her, his expression boyishly charming, though there was something in his eyes that was guarded.

“I meant the arrival of Slim and the gang.”

He was very silent. And now he looked away from her, off into the distance. He wouldn’t look at her.

“It wasn’t even the garden-variety kind, was it?”

Silence.

“Why didn’t you say something instead of letting me prattle on?” Instead of letting me believe .

“Aw, Gracie,” he said, finally looking back at her, “you’re too old to believe in stuff like that, anyway.”

She blinked. “I’m old? ”

“Not old as in decrepit.” His look was intense, and then he said softly, “Not at all.”

Grace recognized how easy it would to be charmed by him. And she recognized he was a man who had been charming his way past the ruffled feathers of the female species since he’d been old enough to blink that dark tangle of lashes over those sinfully green eyes.

And that after he’d been the one to ruffle the feathers!

“I just meant the last time I saw you, you were a little girl. You probably still believed in Santa Claus.”

“I was fourteen! I certainly did not believe in Santa Claus.” Though she had been hopelessly in love with the man who stood before her, imagining endless scenarios where he finally saw her. And that was probably exactly the kind of magical thinking he thought she was too old for now.

And he was right.

Somehow the hurt of being invisible to him all those years ago, and this moment of his debunking her desire to believe in miracles were fusing together, and she could feel her temper rising.

“What did you have to do with those men arriving?” she demanded.

“I saw you were having trouble. I made a phone call.”

“What kind of man can make a phone call and have a truckload of cowboys delivered?”

“You needn’t say it as if it were a truckload of bootleg liquor during prohibition and you were leading the group of biddies waving a sign saying liquor is of the devil.”

“Old and prim,” she said dangerously.

“You do have a little pinched look around your mouth that reminds me of a schoolteacher who has found a frog in her drawers.”

She sputtered with outrage.

“Hey. Desk drawers!”

“Stop it! You’re trying to distract me.”

“Is it working?” he said silkily.

Yes . “No!”

“Because I have another way to take that pinched look off your lips. Not to mention distract you.”

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