was before they had decided it was imperative that they go save the world.
Rory’s hair was longer than it had been even then, longer than she had ever seen it, thick, rich, straight until it touched his collar, and then it curled slightly.
She supposed that’s what everyone who got out of the military did—exercised the release from discipline, celebrated the freedom to grow their hair.
And yet the long hair did not make him look less a warrior, just a warrior from a different age.
Too easy to picture him with the long hair catching in the wind, that fierce expression on his face, a sword in his hand, ready.
He was the kind of man who made a woman feel the worst kind of weakness: a desire to feel his strength against her own softness, to feel the rasp of rough whiskers against delicate skin, to feel the hard line of those lips soften against her mouth.
But Rory Adams had always been that. Even now Grace could feel the ghost of the girl she had once been. She could feel the helpless humiliation she had felt at fourteen because she loved him so desperately.
And pathetically.
She’d been as invisible to him as a ghost. No, more like a mosquito, an annoyance he swatted at every now and then. His best friend’s aggravating kid sister.
She’d known from the moment he had first called her six months ago, that nothing good could come from seeing him.
There had been something in his voice, grim and determined, that had made her think he had things to tell her that she was not ready to hear, that she would probably never be ready to hear.
Besides, seeing Rory? It could only make her yearn for things that could never be. She had never seen Rory without her brother, Graham.
The brother who was not coming home. Hadn’t she thought seeing her brother’s friend would intensify the sense of loss that was finally dulling to a throbbing ache instead of a screaming pain?
Once she had blamed this man who stood before her for Graham’s choices, but a long time ago she had realized her brother had been born to do what he was doing. It was a choice that he had been willing to give his life for.
And he had.
But if Rory wanted to think she still held him responsible, and if it kept up some kind of barrier between them, that was okay.
Because what shocked Gracie right now was that what she felt looking at Rory was not an intensified sense of loss. Rather, she was unprepared for how the yearning of her younger self—to be noticed by him, to be cared about him—had not disappeared with her braces and her first bra.
Not even close.
She blinked. And then again, hard. “No one calls me that,” she said. “No one calls me Gracie.”
She thought she sounded childish and defensive. She didn’t want him to know he’d had any kind of effect on her.
Why couldn’t she just have said, “Hello, Rory. Nice to see you”? Why couldn’t she have just said that, all her years of hard-won polish and sophistication wrapped around her like a protective cloak?
Because he had caught her in a terrible moment. Running after renegade ponies, her shoe broken, her hair clasp lost, her strap sliding around and her dress stained beyond repair.
If she’d known he wasn’t going to take no for an answer, she would have invited him to the office she was so proud of on the main street of downtown Mason.
Where she could have been in complete control of this reunion!
“What do they call you?”
His voice was deep and sure and sent unwanted shivers down her spine.
Miss Day would have sounded way too churlish, plus she was wobbling on one shoe, and feeling damp and disheveled and not at all like the cool professional woman she wanted him to believe she was.
“Grace.”
“Ah.”
She didn’t like the way he was looking at her, his gaze probing, those deep green eyes feeling as though they were stripping away her maturity and success and exposing the vulnerable and gauche girl she was so startled to find was alive and well within her.
“Graham’s the only one who called me that. Everyone else called me Grace. Even my parents.”
“Graham and me,” he reminded her.
Gracie-Facie, pudding and pie, kissed the boys and made them cry …
On those rare occasions when Rory Adams had noticed her, it had been to tease her mercilessly.
But that boy who had teased—the one with the careless grin, and the wild way—seemed to be gone. Completely.
Why couldn’t her inner child be so cooperative?
“So, how’s life?” he said.
As if he’d just been walking by, and happened upon her. Which she doubted. When she’d talked to him a week ago, she’d told him she didn’t want to see him.
She should have guessed that would not have changed about him. He was not a man who had had to accept no for an answer very often. Especially not from those of the female persuasion. She should have guessed he would not accept it from her.
“The same as when I talked to you a week ago,” Grace said stubbornly. “Fabulous.”
This was not true. In fact, nothing could be further from the truth.
“Except for the ponies,” he commented dryly, but he she had a feeling he wasn’t buying it, and not just because of the ponies. Not for a second.
Couldn’t he see that her dress was perfectly cut fine linen? That the shoe he had handed her was an expensive designer shoe? Couldn’t he see that she was all grown up and that she didn’t need any help from big, strong him to get her through life’s hurdles?
Of which, at the moment, she had more than her fair share.
“Fabulous,” she repeated, tightly.
“You look worried,” he said after a moment.
And then he did the darndest thing. He took his thumb, and ever so gently pressed it into her forehead.
Where she knew the worry lines had been building like storm clouds for a whole week!
Ever since Serenity had arrived with her entourage. Ponies. Tucker.
There was a momentary sensation of bliss: a momentary desire to lean into that thumb and all it offered. Someone to lean on. Someone to talk to. Someone to trust.
Hopeless illusions that she, of all people, should have left far behind her. The end of her engagement really should have been the last straw.
Had been the last straw, Grace told herself firmly.
