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“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 not ‘I can’t see why we need to talk,’ either.”
Something crossed his face.
“I hurt your feelings,” Grace said, stunned.
For a moment, he looked stunned, too. Then a shield came down over his eyes, making them seem a darker shade of emerald than they had before. A little smile tickled the sinfully sensuous curve of his mouth. His expression was not exactly amusement, and not exactly scorn. More a kind of deprecating self-knowledge.
“Gracie, honey—”
Gracie wasn’t bad enough? Now he had to add honey to it?
“I don’t have feelings for you to hurt.”
That was what he wanted for her to believe. And she saw it was entirely possible that he believed that himself. But she didn’t.
And suddenly Rory Adams was more dangerous to her than ever. Because he wasn’t just handsome. He wasn’t just the first man she’d ever had a crush on. He wasn’t just her brother’s best friend and fellow adventurer.
Because just before that shield had come down in his eyes, Grace was sure she had caught a glimpse of someone who had lost their way, someone who relied totally on himself, someone lonely beyond what she had ever known that word to mean.
“There was a complication,” she admitted slowly. “That’s why I agreed to have her provide ponies for the party.”
“The thing about a woman like Serenity?”
She hated the way he said that, as if he knew way too much about women in general and women like Serenity in particular.
“What kind of woman is Serenity?” Grace demanded sweetly, though the kind of woman Serenity was was terribly obvious, even to Grace. Serenity was one of those women who had lived hard and lived wild, and it was all catching up with her.
The line around Rory’s lip tightened as he decided what to say. “She’s the kind who used to own the party,” he said. “And then the party owned her.”
Grace suspected that he had sugarcoated what he really wanted to say, but what he had said was harsh enough, and it was said with such a lack of sympathy that the moment of unwanted—and weakening sympathy she had felt for him—evaporated.
Thank God.
“And what about women like Serenity?” she said, yanking her strap up one more time.
“There’s always a complication.”
Then he strode over to the horse trailer, and Gracie could not help but notice he was all soldier now, totally focused, totally take-charge and totally no-nonsense.
It felt like a terrible weakness on her part that she was somewhat relieved both by the fact his armor was back up and by the fact he was taking charge.
So she had to say, “I can handle this.”
He snorted, glanced meaningfully at the pony in the wading pool, trampling what was left of the soggy Happy Birthday banner, and said, “Sure you can, Gracie.”
I hurt your feelings. Really, Gracie Day couldn’t have picked a more annoying thing to say to him.
Feelings? Weren’t those the pesky things that he’d managed to outrun his whole life? Starting with a less than stellar childhood—no ponies at birthday parties, for sure—and ending up in a profession where to feel anything too long or too intensely would have meant he couldn’t do his job.
No, Rory Adams was a man ideally suited for soldiering. His early life had prepared him for hardship. The little bit of idealism that he had managed to escape his childhood with had soon departed, too.
So, Rory Adams had hated the look in Gracie’s eyes, just now, doe-soft, as if she could see right through him.
To some secret longing.
To have what she and Graham had had. Their house the one on the block that everyone flocked to, and not just because there were always freshly baked chocolate chip cookies, either. There was something there. That house was full of laughter. And love. Parents who actually made rules and had dinner on the table at a certain time.
Rory remembered calling Graham once about a party. And Graham saying, “Nah, I’m going fishing with my dad.”
A family that enjoyed being together. That had been a novelty in Rory Adam’s world.
Is that what he’d wanted when he’d called her? Had it been about him and not about her—or his obligation to Graham—at all?
No, he reminded himself. He’d been relieved by her rejection.
Rory shrugged off the thoughts, annoyed with himself. He was not accustomed to questioning himself or his motives. Except for the event that haunted his dreams, he moved through life with the supreme confidence of the warrior he was. The qualities that had made him an exceptional warrior also made him good at business.
So it flustered him beyond reason that a single glance from her had shaken something deep, deep within him.
He drew in a long breath, steadying himself, clearing away distractions, focusing on what needed to be done.
Poking out from underneath the horse trailer, near the back bumper, was one very tiny, suede, purple cowboy boot, with a fake spur attached.
He nudged at the boot with his shoe and then a little harder when there was no response. The boot moved away.
Sighing, he bent down and tugged. And this time he met some real resistance.
He felt under the trailer, found the other boot and pulled. Out came long, naked legs, and then short denim shorts, frayed at the cuffs, and then a bare belly, and then a sequined pop top with fringes. And then the face of an angel—if it weren’t for the circles of black mascara under her eyes—and blond curls topped with a pink cowboy hat.
He studied her for a moment. Despite her prettiness, she was aging badly. He and Graham had partied—hard—with her and her rodeo crowd. They’d been a rowdy, rough bunch. It had been a brief interlude—a few crazy days before their unit had mustered out the very first time.
That made it eight years ago, about the same amount of time since he had seen Gracie in her braces.
But whereas Grace had come into herself, Serenity had deteriorated badly. She must have been in her twenties at that first encounter, which meant she was way too old now to be wearing short shorts and a pink cowboy hat. She was on the scary side of skinny, her hair had been bleached once too often, and she was definitely drunk.
Well, that part was the same.
“Leave me alone,” the black-eyed angel mumbled, swinging at air.
“Yes, leave her alone,” Gracie said. “Really, there’s nothing here I can’t handle.”
He ignored them both.
“Look, Rory, you just don’t understand the delicate nuances of this situation.”
“Uh-huh,” he said, but he was pretty sure he got the “delicate nuances” just fine. Serenity had probably come across the obituary for Graham somewhere, and zeroed in on the grieving sister.
It made him mad, but one thing that the military had been really good at was training him to channel aggression, control it, unleash it only as a last resort.
So he satisfied himself with giving Gracie a sour look that let her know he was not impressed with how she had handled this so far.
And he was rewarded with a look that had nothing doe-soft about it.
“There’s nothing here I can’t handle,” she said, again.
“Given that this woman is bad, bad news and her ponies are devouring Mason’s most prime real estate, you might want to consider the possibility you are in over your head.”
Her mouth worked, but she didn’t say anything. He could tell that Gracie had suspected Serenity was exactly what he said. Bad news.
And she had suspected that she was in over her head.
But there was something else, too, something glittering at the back of her eyes that gave him pause.
For some reason she wanted Serenity here.
What did Serenity have to offer that Grace had rejected from him?
Sheesh. His damn feelings were hurt. That was a stunner. A weakness about himself that he could have lived quite happily not knowing he had!
“Hey,” he reached down and took Serenity’s shoulder. “Wake up, get your ponies and clear out.”
The attack came from the side. At first, confused, Rory thought it was Grace who had hurled herself at him, nearly pushed him over.
He stumbled a step sideways, straightened and felt a warrior’s embarrassment at not even having seen the attacker coming, at having been caught off guard.
It made it worse, not better, that his attacker was pint-size.
