Cara Colter - Battle for the Soldier's Heart

“You’re hopelessly distrustful.”

Suddenly the defiance left her expression. Rory wished he would have 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. But her touch said something entirely different. That she was gentle, a little naïve, hopeful about life. She was too soft and too gullible. He was not sure how she had managed to remain that way through life’s tragedies—the death of her brother, the break-up of her engagement. There was a kind of courage in it that he reluctantly admired even while he felt honor-bound to discourage it.

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

Grace turned and looked at Rory, those amazing eyes dancing with the most beautiful light. And the light in her eyes was doing the strangest thing to him. Grace’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.

Dear Reader,

I’ve just had another perfect summer. I had the opportunity to do plenty of swimming in two of the world’s most wonderful lakes: Lake Pend O’reille in Idaho, and Kootenay Lake in BC, in Canada. I also had lots of company this summer, ate ice cream, drank iced cappuccinos and sat in the shade just contemplating life.

And while I was having this fantastic, carefree summer so many young men and women who have answered the call to protect their nations were so far from home.

I write about soldiers because I have always thought it takes a special kind of courage to leave all the comforts (that I generally take for granted) behind. I am aware that the peace and prosperity I enjoy are ultimately linked to a young stranger’s willingness to serve and to sacrifice.

So this one is dedicated to them, with heartfelt gratitude.

Cara Colter

CARA COLTERlives on an acreage in British Columbia with her partner Rob and eleven horses. She has three grown children and a grandson. She is a recent recipient of the RT Book Reviews Career Achievement Award in the Love and Laughter category. Cara loves to hear from readers, and you can contact her or learn more about her through her website, www.cara-colter.com

www.millsandboon.co.uk

To all the men and women who serve,

with deepest gratitude.

THERE were Shetland ponies everywhere.

They were gobbling the long strands of grass that sprouted around the brightly painted legs of the children’s playground equipment. They were chowing down on the weeping-willow fronds at the edge of the duck pond.

Three had found their way through the chain-link fence and were grazing with voracious appetite on the green temptations of the Mason Memorial Soccer Field.

One had its face buried in the remnants of a birthday cake, and another, wandering toward the wading pool, was trailing a banner that said Happy Birthday, Wilson Schmelski.

From where he stood at the pedestrian bridge that crossed into the city of Mason’s most favored civic park, Pondview, Rory Adams counted eight ponies on the loose.

And only one person trying to catch them.

“You little monster! You beady-eyed ingrate!”

The woman lunged right, the pony left.

If it had been anyone else, he might have allowed himself to see the humor in her predicament.

Instead, he frowned. When he thought of Gracie Day, somehow, even after speaking to her on the phone, he hadn’t factored in the passage of time. She was frozen in his mind at fourteen or fifteen. All glittering braces and freckles, skinned knees, smart-alecky and annoying.

To him, six years her senior, Gracie, his best friend’s little sister, had not even been a blip on his radar. He had not considered her a girl in the sense that he considered girls. And at that age? Had he ever considered anything but girls?

He’d been twenty-one when he saw her last. He and Graham mustering out, on their first tour of Afghanistan, and her looking at him with fury glittering in her tear-filled eyes. I hate you. How could you talk him into this?

Graham had started to argue—the whole let’s-go-play-soldier thing had been his idea, after all—but Rory had nudged him, and Graham had understood instantly.

Let me take it, let me be the bad guy in your kid sister’s eyes .

The memory made him wince. They had looked out for each other. They’d had each other’s backs. Probably thousands of times since they had said good-bye to Gracie that day. But the one time it had really counted…

Rory shook off the thoughts, and focused on the woman chasing ponies.

That kid sister.

Gracie Day was small and slender, deliciously curved in all the right places. Auburn hair that had probably started the day perfectly controlled and prettily coiffed, had long since surrendered to humidity and the pitfalls of pony-chasing. Her hair was practically hissing with bad temper and fell in a wild wave to her bare sun-kissed shoulders.

She was daintily dressed in a wide-skirted cream sundress and matching heels that had probably been perfect for the children’s birthday party her event-planning company had just hosted.

But if Gracie had worked at it, she couldn’t have chosen a worse outfit for chasing ponies.

The dress was looking rumpled, one slender strap kept sliding off her shoulder, and not only couldn’t she get up any speed in those shoes, but the heels kept turning in the grass. At first glance, the smudge on the delectable rise of her bosom might have been mistaken for part of the pattern on the dress. But a closer look—that was not the bosom she’d had at fourteen—and he was pretty sure the bright-green splotch was horse slobber.

“Do you have any idea what glue is made from? Do you?”

Something still in her, then, of that fourteen-year-old girl she had once been. That girl was closer to the surface than the cool, calm and collected Gracie Day she had managed to convince him she was when he had spoken to her on the phone.

“I need to talk to you,” he’d said, when he’d finally made it home. By then Graham had already been gone for six months. He’d wanted to tell her the truth.

I failed .

“I can’t see why we would need to talk,” she’d responded, and the fact was, he’d been relieved.

Talking about what had happened to Graham—and his part in it—was not going to be easy. And while he was not a man who shirked hard things, he had been thankful for the reprieve.

Rory felt a shiver along his spine. They said it was survivor’s guilt, but in his heart he felt it was his fault her brother hadn’t come home.

Somehow, instead of being a temporary diversion, playing soldier had turned into a career for both of them. Graham, on their third deployment, Afghanistan again, had taken a bullet.

Rory still woke almost every night, sweating, his heart pounding.