Now why on earth had she said that? And why did she keep getting an image of that very part of his anatomy as he’d bent over the laundry basket?
“No, but you’re even more frustrating than he is. And don’t you dare tell him I said that, because he’ll do his best to catch up!”
He grinned.
“So?” she prompted.
“So?” he parried.
“Grif!”
“All right, all right. Marti says you put in a garden last year and you’ve ordered seeds for this year. She’s already dug the compost into hers, and so has Kendra.”
“I’ll get to it, too. But I’ve been – ”
“Busy. I know. And I know you’d get to it when you could. But Marti says it’s best to let the ground sit after you’ve put the compost in, so you’d be late planting.”
“Grif, I don’t need your – ”
“Help. Yeah, I know that, too. But it makes sense. You’re short on time. I’ve got time on my hands, and I need to keep in training, so...”
“Somehow I don’t think digging horse manure into a garden is part of the Army’s fitness program.”
“It would be if they thought of it.”
She suppressed a smile, and made her voice as stern as she could. “Grif, I told you that I don’t need your help. I can’t deny Ben is ecstatic to have you around, and I’m glad you’re spending time with us during this visit. But I also expect you to respect me on this. If you can’t do that...”
“Okay,” he said slowly. “I can’t very well load this back into the pickup and return it to Luke. So I guess I’ll put the rest of it here and leave it for when you can get to it.”
A stinking reminder every time she walked out the door of one more chore she hadn’t accomplished. And he was right about the timing. If she hoped to get a good crop of vegetables – last year’s had come in very handy this past winter – it was important to make the most of Wyoming’s brief, intense growing season.
She crossed her arms under her breasts and frowned. “All right, Griffin, you win this one. But don’t think I’m going to accept any more of this sneaky, underhanded maneuvering to do things for me just because you think I’m some pathetic charity case. Do you understand?”
He met her frown with a direct, intense look. “As long as you understand that I don’t think you’re pathetic or a charity case, and never will.”
“Okay.”
“Okay.”
Neither looked away.
“I...” Ellyn felt a tightening in her throat, spreading down to her chest, then lower, and lower, where the tightening curled in on itself in a knot of warmth. She turned her head. “I’ve got to get ready for work.”
“Okay. I’ll see you at dinner.”
She nodded as she started to walk away, then heard the solid sound of the shovel digging into the earth before his voice came from behind her.
“By the way, Ellyn, in the army, sneaky, underhanded maneuvering is called strategy.”
She kept walking so he wouldn’t see her grin.
Getting ready for work required no more than automatic pilot attention. And that left her mind free. Too free.
That summer she was eighteen... That night...
Grif, so tall and straight and serious. So familiar and so foreign. The boy she’d idolized, turned into a man at twenty-one, and her feelings at eighteen too big to contain. Taking every ounce of courage she owned, then going into debt a pound or two for more. The two of them alone in the lingering twilight after a swim. Putting her arms around his neck and her lips against his closed mouth. Telling him with her halting words and her awkward embrace how she felt.
And Grif firmly setting her away from him. His hold on her tight enough to bruise her for several days. The bruise from his words had lasted much, much longer.
“Don’t, Ellyn. I can’t feel that way about you. Do you understand? I can’t – I won’t. I’m never going to marry, and you should have a husband who loves you and a houseful of kids. So don’t feel that way – not about me. Do you understand?”
Responding to the absolute certainty in his voice, she’d nodded numbly, feeling a void hollowing out her heart.
A void Dale had set about trying to fill. And gradually, over the next three years, he had. Until she’d loved him, married him, had Meg, then Ben and built what she’d felt was a good life.
During those same years she had happily received what Grif had offered. She’d let herself believe it was a permanent friendship, despite what her mother always said. A woman’s got to keep working all the time for a man to keep giving her anything.
She met her own eyes in the mirror as she put on lipstick.
Enough of this retrospective. Enough brooding.
She snatched up her purse, and headed out.
“Grif? I left the back door open, in case you want to get something. There are oatmeal raisin cookies in the cookie jar next to the fridge.”
“Thanks.”
“You’re welcome. I’ll see you tonight. And, Grif – thank you.”
“You’re welcome.” She turned and started away, feeling oddly warm. She turned back. “Oh, Grif? One more thing.”
“Yeah?”
“Don’t forget to take a shower before tonight!”
His chuckle followed her into the car and seemed to stay in her head all afternoon.
At The Heart’s Command: Chapter Five
Dinner went together quickly with the kids doing their part – Ben without dragging his feet for once and Meg in absolute silence – and Grif helping.
When they’d all sat down and Ellyn suddenly realized she’d forgotten a serving spoon for the macaroni and cheese, Grif rose before she could get up, laid a restraining hand on her shoulder, and said, “I’ll get it.”
“You don’t know where--.”
“I’ll find it.”
The warmth and weight of his hand through the fabric of the blouse she still wore from work – she simply hadn’t had time to change into her usual disreputable attire – was unexpected enough to draw her breath away. He was back before she’d finished wondering at herself for being so easily…startled.
He set the spoon in front of her. “You’ve organized the drawers the same as the other house.”
She frowned. “I hadn’t realized that.”
“Mom, you remember I got baseball practice Saturday?”
“Yes, Ben. Mrs. Hamil will take you and Tommy, then after practice drop you at the library where I’ll be at the history festival. I’m sorry I’ll miss your practice.”
“That’s okay. It’s pretty boring unless you’re a player – at least until we start games. That’s in two weeks, Grif,” Ben added in a hopeful tone.
“Almost three weeks. And that’s provided it’s decent weather. The first weekend in May can still be pretty co – Oh, no!” Ellyn recovered fast, but not fast enough.
“What?” Ben and Meg chorused.
“Nothing it’s nothing. I remembered something. But talking about May in Wyoming, I remember one year when it snowed almost at the end of the month.”
“What did you remember, Ellyn?” Grif pursued.
“Nothing catastrophic. I realized I forgot to drop those tax forms in the mail. As long as I put them in the box when I’m in town Saturday, they’ll be fine.”
“Give them to me, and I’ll drop them in the box tonight. I go by the post office. It makes sense, Ellyn.”
Maybe, but it felt like a rescue. She didn’t like the feeling. She could stand on her own two feet.
She thanked him. Then, not bothering with subtlety, she turned to her children and asked about their days. Meg shrugged in world-weary disinterest. Ben started prattling about how his teacher, Mrs. Hammerschmidt, had dealt with a classmate of his who apparently had encountered some poison plant during recess.
“Ben, what’s this school project Daniel mentioned at the restaurant the other night?” Ellyn asked, reminded by talk of his teacher.
He pushed a
stalk of broccoli from one side of his plate to the other. “Nothing.”
“Ben, it can’t be nothing. Is it something for school?”
“Yeah, just something for school,” he agreed, before picking up a chicken leg from his plate and biting into it.
“What kind of project is it?” she pursued.
“Aww, Mom, you know – ”
“Eeew, Mom! He’s talking with his mouth full again!” protested Meg.
“Wait until you’ve finished chewing, Ben,” Ellyn instructed. “But then I want to hear about this project.”
But Meg, having broken her silence, apparently decided her brother had held the spotlight long enough, and began talking about a topic covered in her class today – the history of Far Hills and the Suslands.
“Vicki says her mother says her family’s been here nearly as long as the Suslands. And they’ve seen the whole thing, from the start. When the first Susland was so horrible and mean that he got the ranch cursed forever.”
“The Suslands as well as the ranch,” Grif corrected mildly.
Meg gaped. Ellyn supposed her daughter had expected him to object to this account of his family’s perfidy, rather than fleshing it out. But she was not a quitter.
“And Vicki’s mother says the Suslands carry tragedy and bad luck in their back pockets, so it follows them everywhere they go. Her mother told Vicki all about it, and she told me – at least what she could remember. People killed each other and got murdered and got horribly sick until they died – ”
“Meg – ” Ellyn started to protest, remembering that Grif’s mother had suffered a long, painful illness before she died, but Meg had already rolled on.
“ – and some went crazy, and then they got sick and died. And I told Vicki, all the Suslands must be crazy.”
She shot Grif a look of smug triumph.
He met it blandly, then turned to Ellyn, a frown drawing down his brows, but a glint in his gray eyes. “Has my Susland cousin Kendra been foaming at the mouth again?”
“Kendra? Kendra isn’t – ” Meg snapped her mouth shut as she realized Kendra was, and her triumph evaporated.
She pushed back her chair, but before she could do more, Ellyn quietly reminded her, “You need to ask to be excused, and clear your place.”
“May I please be excused,” she enunciated with bitter emphasis.
“Yes, you may. And don’t forget – ”
“I know, I know.”
Meg snatched up her plate and perched her glass at a precarious angle on top. Ellyn bit her lip to keep from issuing a warning. If there was an accident, Meg would have to deal with the consequences, but Ellyn had vowed from the time she knew she was pregnant that she would not be a mother who issued a constant stream of dire warnings and potential failings.
She kept the glass in place despite exaggerated flouncing as she went into the kitchen then returned, passing them without deigning to look at them.
“May I please be excused?”
“Yes, Ben.”
After Ben cleared his place and disappeared toward his room, a silence fell.
Grif looked at her. “Sorry. That was childish with Meg.”
“I can’t blame you. She has been impossible, and you’ve been very patient. Besides, it’s good for her to know she can push you only so far. Otherwise, my dear daughter will keep pushing.”
He insisted on helping her clean up. In companionable silence, she washed and he dried the dishes. When she’d finished at the sink, she gathered the silverware to put away, sorting it into the drawer...in exactly the same place and pattern as in their home near Washington. Just as Grif had observed.
Had she brought other things with her across country without knowing it?
After sliding the drawer closed with her hip, she turned for more items to dry, and ran hard into Grif. Her hands instinctively spread against his solid chest, and one foot shifted forward to help her balance. Except that movement brought her thigh high and snug between his legs, and that did nothing for her balance. He’d automatically caught her, a strong hand behind each of her shoulders, steadying her, keeping her from stumbling or toppling over.
A sudden fire burned in her chest, turning her throat to ashes. The slightest pressure against her back would bring them chest to chest, a drop of his chin and a lifting of hers would bring them mouth to mouth.
Without thought or intent, she raised her face. His legs seemed to tighten on either side of hers.
His eyes were closed. His lips pressed tight against each other. His expression impenetrable.
Then his lips moved, and she watched the motion so carefully that at first she didn’t absorb the meaning of the words they produced.
“Do you ride?”
She cleared her throat trying to brush away the ashes. “What?”
“Since you’ve been back here, do you go riding?”
What path could his thoughts have taken to reach that destination? Not the same path hers had been following, that was for sure.
“No.” She stepped back, careful not to look at him. Gaining oxygen with a near hiccuping sigh. “I...I haven’t had time.”
“That’s a shame. You were so good.”
“No better than any of the rest.”
“Yes, you were. It was like ... like the horses wanted to carry you instead of it being a chore for them.” That surprised a chuckle from her. “Didn’t you notice you were always the first to catch your horse?”
“Not always – ”
He shook his head. “Every time. Because the horse wanted to get caught. They’d all get up there and vie to be the one you were going to ride, and when you picked one the others would deflate.”
She felt oddly flattered and flustered by this ridiculous notion. She laughed. “I didn’t know you could be so fanciful, Grif.”
“It’s not fanciful, it’s the truth. I never said it then because it was part of how things were. And later...riding wasn’t part of later.”
“We had some great rides, didn’t we?”
“Yes, we did.”
His deep voice mellowed, drawing her. She risked a glance, then didn’t look away.
His eyes were focused on her, a faint softening around them not quite qualifying as a smile, a steady, familiar glow in them. A glow that brought such warmth. The comfortable, caring warmth of their past.
Maybe they could rebuild. Maybe the past fifteen months wouldn’t matter.
And then a flare flickered across, around, through the warmth. For an instant. Before Grif blinked, and looked away.
Or perhaps she’d imagined that instant, because there was nothing like that as he said good-night and headed out. Imagining such things about Grif was not good. Definitely not good.
* * *
Ellyn’s heart sank as Meg shuffled into the kitchen in her robe and slippers at 8:05 Saturday morning.
Ellyn had awakened her forty-five minutes ago, plenty of time for her to dress and have breakfast. But as she had that first night when Grif took them to dinner, Meg appeared to be unwilling to act on the assumption that he’d arrive as promised.
“Meg, you better get ready, or you’ll be late for Grif.”
“How do I know he’s really coming?”
Because he told you he would.
If Ellyn gave that answer, her daughter would be justified in pointing out how many times Dale had promised, sworn, pledged – and had failed to follow through. Always with plenty of excuses of how it couldn’t have been avoided and how it most certainly was not his fault.
If Ellyn said Grif was different, she’d be holding him up as a paragon in comparison to Dale. That wouldn’t be fair to Grif. Or to Meg. Maybe not even to Dale.
“I can’t tell you that, honey. Trusting that Grif will come because he said he would is something that has to come from inside you. Only you can decide if you believe he’s coming.”
Meg chewed on her bottom lip. She caught Ellyn watching her, gave her mother a faintly defiant look, then pull
ed an often-folded napkin from the robe pocket. Spreading it out, she lifted the phone receiver and punched in the numbers.
The phone must have rung enough times that Meg had started to believe, because she seemed to relax. That ended abruptly, her expression darkening. After a moment came a flash of relief, then a jumbled mix with uncertainty the dominant note.
Without having said a word, Meg hung up the phone. Ellyn bit her lip to keep from demanding what had happened.
“Grif left a message,” Meg said at last. “For me.” The bemusement of those last two words was fragile. “How’d he know I’d call?”
“I don’t know. I guess you’ll have to ask him.”
Meg looked at her, doubts and hopes swirling in her eyes, then spun around and could be heard clattering up the stairs.
Ellyn stared at the telephone. She withstood temptation for another full minute, then lifted the receiver and hit redial. After four rings, a voice answered at the other end – Grif’s voice, but without a key element of vibrancy, telling her immediately that this was a recording.
“You’ve reached the quarters of Colonel John Griffin Junior. I am not here, Meg, because I left at 7:50 a.m. to keep our appointment. If you – or anyone else – would like to leave a message, please wait for the beep.”
* * *
Whoever said silence was golden had never sat beside a ten-year-old girl who’d once adored you and now looked at you like she suspected you plucked the wings off butterflies for fun – when she bothered to look at you at all.
Not a word, the entire thirty-five-minute drive.
There had been plenty of sidelong staring. The kid was going to get eyestrain trying to study his profile without turning toward him.
He knew he didn’t deserve her adoration – never had. Though it had done strange things to him that from babyhood on, Meg would break into a smile and launch herself into his arms at his every arrival. That was gone, but he wasn’t sure he deserved her distrust, either. Except...
He’d walked into an apparent crisis this morning, with Ben anxiously telling his mother he had to go to practice, even as she said thank you anyway to someone on the telephone, and hung it up with a shake of her head.
Heroes in Uniform: Soldiers, SEALs, Spies, Rangers and Cops: Sexy Hot Contemporary Alpha Heroes From NY Times and USA Today Bestselling Authors Page 115