She was not leaving herself open to hurt anymore. She had made that vow when her fiancé of two years, Harold, had bade her adieu. Vowed it.
And then, as if to test that vow, Serenity had come.
And now Rory was here. This man appearing in her life, her entertaining the notion it would be nice to hear his opinion about Serenity—or feel his whiskers scrape her face—those were tests of her resolve.
When he had phoned, she had contemplated asking him a few questions, but in the end she had decided not to.
And the deep cynicism that permeated his expression should only confirm how right she had been in that decision.
Because he could lay her hope to rest. Dash it completely before it was even fully formed.
Hope was such a fragile thing for her.
Hope was probably even more dangerous to her than love. But still, not to hope for anything at all would be a form of death, wouldn’t it?
She was not about to trust her hope to someone like him. And yet, there it was—the temptation just to tell him, to see what he thought.
Not to be so damned alone.
Recognizing the utter folly of these thoughts, Grace slapped his thumb down from her forehead. “I’m not worried.”
No sense giving in to the temptation to share confidences, to tell him she’d spent years building up her business. One incident like this, and it could all crumble, word spreading like wildfire that she was unprofessional, that she’d had a disaster.
Thank goodness the party had been over, the last of the pint-size revelers being packed into their upscale minivans and SUVs when the ponies had made their break for it. Hopefully the park people—or the press—wouldn’t come along before she got this cleared up.
But that was only the immediate problem, anyway, although all her problems were related at the moment.
“Didn’t the ponies come with a pony person?” he asked.
Ah, that was the other problem. The pony person was exactly the secret she wanted to keep.
“The pony person is, um, incapacitated. Not your problem,” she said, flashing him a smile that made him frown. She had been aiming for a smile that said, This? Just a temporary glitch. Nothing I can’t handle.
And she had obviously missed that smile by a long shot. Grace hoped he didn’t catch her anxious glance toward the parking lot.
Thankfully, she’d had the trailer the ponies had arrived in moved way across the parking lot into the deep shade of the cottonwoods on the other side. She had not wanted the partygoers to bump right into it in its decrepit condition.
“Maybe we’ll meet again under different circumstances,” she said, hoping he would take the hint and leave.
But he did not have the look of a man who responded to subtlety, and he had caught her glance toward the parking lot. Now he was looking past her. She moved in front of him, trying to block his view, but it was no use. He looked over her head, easily.
Not a single person at the party had mentioned the trailer. It was as if they hadn’t seen it at all.
But then, most people weren’t like him.
And Rory Adams had become a man who saw everything, who missed absolutely nothing.
Of course, she knew from the few things Graham had said when he came home on leave that these men led lives that depended on their ability to be observant of their surroundings, every nuance of detail, every vehicle, every person, every obstacle.
Rory stepped around her, and headed right toward where the ramshackle horse trailer was. It was painted a shade of copper that almost hid the rust eating away at it around the wheel wells.
On the side, in fading circus letters, three feet high, it said, Serenity’s Wild Ride.
He looked over his shoulder at Grace, his eyes narrow. “What’s she doing here?”
He recognized the trailer. He knew Serenity. Was it what Grace feared? Or what she hoped?
CHAPTER TWO
“YOU know her,” Grace said, scrambling to keep up with him on her one shoe. “You know Serenity.”
She stopped and picked up the other on her way. Since one had a heel and the other didn’t, she took them both off and dangled them from her fingertips.
“A chance encounter a long, long time ago.” Rory glanced back at her, hesitated, and then waited. “Watch for pony poo.”
“Oh!” Life was so unfair. Well, that was hardly a newsflash. But, if Grace had to see Rory Adams, wouldn’t it have been nice if she had been sipping a glass of white wine and looking entirely unflappable, rather than chasing after him in bare feet, avoiding poo?
“What’s she doing here, Gracie?”
She wanted to remind him she didn’t want to be called Gracie, but something about the way Rory had stopped and was looking down at her made her feel very flustered.
The weak compulsion to share the burden won.
“She came by the office a week ago.”
“She knew where your office was,” he said flatly.
“I’m in the phone book. She said she knew Graham.”
Grace did not miss how his eyes narrowed at that.
“She knew I had an event company.”
“So, she’s done some homework.”
“You don’t need to make it sound like she’s running a sting, and she found an easy mark.”
He raised an eyebrow. It said exactly.
“She just wondered if I could give her some work. She had ponies, I had an upcoming birthday party. It seemed like it might be win-win.”
“What aren’t you telling me?”
Hell’s bells. She did not like it that he could see through her that easily. It meant she had to avoid looking at his lips.
Naturally, as soon as she told herself not to look at his lips, she did just that. Why did men like him have this kind of seductive power over people? Female people anyway!
“What makes you think I’m not telling you something?” she hedged.
“I was Graham’s best friend for ten years and you refused to see me, but a complete stranger shows up who claims a passing acquaintance to your brother and you’re forming a business partnership with her?”
“I rented her ponies for an afternoon. That’s hardly a business partnership.”
“It’s
