Boots on the Ground: Homefront, Book 1 Read online

  When they finally came together, when Laurel parted her thighs to welcome him, only to clamp them around his hips as soon as he pushed into her slick core, Grady knew he was in trouble. There was none of the usual impatience for completion, the self-conscious pressure of pleasing someone he barely knew, the impulse to close his eyes and imagine he was with a woman who loved him, who understood him, who never wanted to leave him. Instead he watched Laurel like she might vanish if he blinked, savoring every tiny change in her expression, stroking in and out of her with a selfless rhythm, praying he wasn’t imagining the possessiveness in the way she gripped his body.

  He could feel her trying to delay her release, fighting against the rising tide until she was shaking with the effort, her deep moans of pleasure choking into mewling pleas for this moment to last forever. He knew exactly how she felt, but if he had his way, there would be plenty of time for this and much, much more.

  He brought his lips to her temple at the same time he slid one hand between them. “I want to see you come, pretty girl,” he whispered, pressing the pad of his thumb to her taut nub.

  She shattered. Her back arched, her toes curled, and he’d barely gotten a glimpse of those outstanding breasts thrust up in ecstasy when her tremors ignited his own. He drove into her convulsing form, her name ripping from his throat like a cry for help, and in the last second before his brain gave over completely to the heady fog of lust fulfilled, he noted how seamlessly their bodies fit together, how in that moment he wasn’t sure where he ended and she began.

  And he knew, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that this was where he belonged.

  Sometime later, when they were both sated and drifting in and out of sleep, Laurel rolled over to look at him with eyes shining like bright blue gems in the darkened room.

  “Thank you for talking to me tonight.”

  “Thank you for listening.” He rubbed a lock of her hair between his fingers before tucking it behind her ear. It was as soft as flower petals and just as pretty. “I don’t usually go in for the touchy-feely stuff. In fact, I’m not sure I’ve ever told anyone some of the things I told you.”

  “I’m honored.”

  “To be told a bunch of war stories? You are a funny one.” He brought her hand to his lips to show her he was kidding. “I don’t know what made me want to spill so much to you, but I’m glad I did. I guess I thought if I could lay a good, solid foundation, you and I might be able to build something real sturdy.”

  Her smile glowed in the darkness. “I’d like that.”

  With a satisfied, comforted sigh he pulled her against his chest, wrapped his arms around her and fell into the most peaceful sleep he’d had since he’d set foot back on American soil.

  Chapter Nine

  Laurel’s stomach lurched as she gave the menu at her favorite café a fourth and final perusal.

  “Just an Americano with a little milk, please. To go.”

  It would be her fifth coffee of the day, and although she felt shaky and anxious from all the caffeine, the thought of anything involving chewing had her checking the room for places to throw up.

  She’d been like this ever since four o’clock that morning when she’d startled awake in Grady’s bed with her heart pounding. She didn’t know what had woken her—if she’d had a nightmare she couldn’t remember it—but there was so much adrenaline pouring through her veins she couldn’t stay still. Grady was stretched out on his side, his breathing deep and even, and he didn’t stir as she drew the sheet up over his shoulder, snagged his T-shirt off the floor and slipped out of the bedroom.

  She inhaled his woodsy, masculine scent as she pulled the shirt over her head and crept down the hallway to the stairs. Back in the kitchen she filled a glass with water and leaned against the counter, glancing down at the papers piled at her elbow. Building permits, roofers’ estimates, property insurance quotes, printed-out instructions on hanging drywall—the messy stack of pages was a testament to Grady’s determined pursuit of the permanence and stability he’d never known.

  Suddenly her heart rate picked up again, accompanied by panic welling in her throat.

  A tempting, seductive ember had begun to glow in her chest as she’d given over to the pull of sleep with Grady’s arm draped heavy and reassuring on her waist. It was still there—she could feel it now—and it was stronger, brighter and more dangerous than ever.

  It was contentment.

  Her breath came in shallow gasps as she clutched the edge of the counter. This wasn’t how it was supposed to go. She was supposed to indulge her deep-seated savior complex, help to heal this complicated and remarkable man, and after a period sufficient to satisfy both their needs, the relationship would come to a natural, affable, mutual conclusion. Then they were supposed to remain close but platonic friends as he continued to build his life in Meridian and she skipped around the globe, resetting shoulders dislocated by earthquakes and saving legs broken by shrapnel from suicide bombs.

  She wasn’t supposed to fall in love with him, for God’s sake.

  With her legs threatening to buckle beneath her, she dropped into one of the folding chairs shoved up to the card table. Surely this wasn’t how her life was meant to go, was it? All those years of school, of training, of doing what everyone expected of her while she plotted her great escape—it couldn’t end here. Not on a start-up cattle ranch at the edge of her hometown, not in this ramshackle farmhouse, not in the arms of the most honorable, captivating, gorgeous man she’d ever—

  “No,” she commanded aloud. No, no, no. This was not the plan. She’d worked too long and too hard for what she was on the brink of reaching, and she would not be derailed by dark eyes and skillful hands.

  She couldn’t go back to bed, but her car was back at her house, so she quietly tugged on her dress and called one of Meridian’s few taxi companies—if you could call a man with a cell phone and a ten-year-old Pontiac sedan a company. She scribbled a vague note about needing to be at work early the next morning and then sat on the front porch, trying not to think about how perfect it would be, once the house was restored and repainted, to rock a baby to sleep on a summer night right there in that spot, with the view of the unending prairie ahead of her and the solid presence of a good man at her back.

  By the time the cab arrived, the sun was peeking over the horizon, spilling light over a brand-new day. But as she shut the car door behind her and the sedan started back down the long gravel driveway, she had the unshakeable sense that no matter what that golden dawn promised, this was an ending.

  She didn’t actually have to be at work early, but she went in anyway in case Grady stopped by on his way to the road crew. He didn’t, but he did call during what she presumed was his lunch hour. She stared at the phone as it buzzed on her desk, her stomach in knots, hating herself a little more with each silenced ring. She didn’t answer, and he didn’t leave a message.

  The barista passed over her coffee, and she dropped a dollar’s worth of change in the tip jar, figuring she needed all the good karma she could get after last night. She was well aware that repaying Grady’s unparalleled trust and selfless intimacy by disappearing while he slept was in the top five lowest things she’d ever done—or did that make it the bottom five?

  Shaking her head at her own rambling thoughts, she plunked down onto one of the green benches lining Main Street. What did she do now? Call Grady and say Thanks for the painful disclosures, but I like you too much to see you again? Carry on the pretense of the relationship, knowing all the while that she had no intention of staying with him? No, that wasn’t an option—given the speed at which she was falling for him, it soon wouldn’t be a pretense. It would be a sincere, deep-rooted attachment that would hurt like hell to rip out.

  So she was back to square one—whatever that meant. After all, what was square two? And where were these squares anyway?

  She set the coffee cup down on the arm of the bench—the caffeine was making her delirious. She had to focus on the task ahead
. She had to find a way to let Grady down.

  Laurel was so absorbed in her circular thinking that she didn’t notice Peter’s approach, and startled when he sat down beside her.

  “Sorry.” He raised a hand. “I heard you and Grady had a falling out at the College Heights block party, so when I saw you sitting here looking upset I thought maybe you needed a sympathetic ear.”

  She stared at Peter for several moments, but it wasn’t with annoyance at the wildfire way gossip spread in this town, or exasperation at his blatant attempt to catch her on the rebound. Instead she took in his neatly combed hair, his furtively sanguine eyes and his perfectly pressed sleeves and wished with all her heart that she could fall in love with someone like him—that she was the kind of woman whose most fervent desires were a big house, a tolerable husband and a seat on the fundraising committee at the PTA. Life would be so much easier and less complicated if she could just bring herself to want what everyone else wanted for her.

  “I appreciate it,” she replied honestly. “But I’m fine. Just taking a coffee break.”

  Peter flattened his palms on his thighs. “Look, Laurel, you know I’m crazy about you, and I’m not going to pretend I’m disappointed that things haven’t worked out between you and Grady. I can see that you have an adventurous spirit—that’s why you want to do this overseas stuff, and that’s why someone like Grady appealed, especially with all the action at the bar that night.” He pivoted on the bench and took one of her hands in both of his. “But he’s a loose cannon. Not only was his friend so drunk he could barely stand, Grady took his gun and shot a car for no reason. Maybe it seems like harmless, boys-will-be-boys fun to you, but you can’t seriously consider a relationship with a man who—”

  “Hello, Peter.”

  They jerked apart as Grady drew up in front of them. He crossed his arms, his expression locked up tight.

  “It is Peter, isn’t it? I don’t think we’ve been introduced.”

  “We were just talking,” Peter insisted, shooting up from the bench with his palms held out in a gesture so needlessly self-defensive that Laurel rolled her eyes.

  “I know.”

  “I’ve known Laurel a long time and I want to be a friend to her. I’m not trying to muscle in on—”

  “I know,” Grady repeated more firmly.

  “I should get back to the office.” Then, with as much subtlety as an Apache helicopter, he leaned in to murmur, “Think about what I said,” before retreating down the sidewalk.

  Grady took Peter’s place on the bench and her heartbeat went into overdrive. The nearness of his body, his scent, his heat, set memories of the night before loose from their moorings and floating up into her mind. She clenched her hands together in her lap, swallowing hard against an urgent need to touch him.

  “What’re you doing downtown?” she asked by way of greeting.

  “I had a meeting with your brother about the sentencing hearing.” He glanced in the direction of Peter’s departure. “I underestimated how quickly word traveled in this town. I figured having a huge military installation on your doorstep would give y’all more to talk about than a shot-up tire. Apparently not.”

  “Slow news day.”

  “I guess.” He sighed. “Everyone thinks I’m crazy. Even the guys on the road crew look at me like I’m about to hit ’em. Ethan’s career was the only thing on my mind when I took that gun off him. It never occurred to me that I’d be starting off my new civilian life with a reputation for being a trigger-happy lunatic.”

  “Do you regret it?”

  He shook his head. “It was the right thing to do. My back’s a lot straighter than Ethan’s these days. I can carry this weight for him.”

  They sat in reflective silence. A car crept down the street and pulled in to a space in front of the bridal shop. A wind chime tinkled and swung in its spot outside the dry cleaner’s. A woman pushed a stroller up to the crosswalk, checking her phone while she waited for the light to change. It was a warm, peaceful, late-spring afternoon, but the storm raging inside Laurel’s stomach could’ve blackened the skies in an instant.

  When Grady spoke again, his voice was soft and unsure. “Where’d you run off to this morning?”

  “Work,” she replied instantly, then cringed at how lame that sounded. He deserved better—he deserved the truth. “I couldn’t sleep, and I didn’t want to wake you.”

  “What kept you up?”

  “Thinking. About us.”

  He stilled beside her. “Did I push you too far? I know I sort of unloaded on you with all the war talk.”

  “No, nothing like that, I just—”

  “Last night was something special for me.” His tone was urgent, like he might lose these words if he didn’t get them out. “You’re special to me. I want you to know that.”

  “Oh, Grady.” Regret squeezed her heart like a vise—regret that she let things get so far so quickly, and regret that she couldn’t be the woman he needed. In that moment she’d never wanted anything more than she wanted to be his, but she gritted her teeth against that longing, achingly aware that the longer she let this go on, the harder it would be for both of them.

  “We want different futures,” she told him gently. “You need to find your place in this town, and I need to find my way out of it. If I didn’t care about you, I’d suggest we keep on having a good time together until I get my overseas posting, but even one more night like last night and I—”

  She pulled in a trembling breath, swallowing hard against the lump that had suddenly risen in her throat.

  “Another night like that and I don’t think I could leave you,” she finished weakly.

  She clamped her eyes shut, shielding herself from his reaction as she sent up a quick prayer that she was doing the right thing. When she opened them again, Grady hadn’t moved. His body was motionless, his expression blank. The only evidence that he felt anything at all was the whiteness of his knuckles where his fingers dug into his thighs.

  “So don’t leave me.”

  His voice was rough and gravelly, but the emotion behind it was wide open, like he was offering her his heart in outstretched hands. That flash of vulnerability was in such poignant contrast to his big, strong frame that for several seconds Laurel could barely breathe, let alone formulate her response.

  “I have to,” she managed when she could find her voice. “I have to get out of Meridian. I can’t be happy here, going through the motions, doing what everyone wants, suffocating underneath my parents’ expectations—”

  “Bullshit,” he declared with such sharp, sudden volume that an elderly couple on the other side of the street looked over in surprise. In the next second Grady was on his feet, staring her down with so much ferocity that his dark eyes glittered.

  “I met your parents, and your brother—remember? And I’m pretty sure the only thing they want is for you to be happy.”

  She shook her head. “You don’t know them.”

  “I don’t need to—I know that you’re lucky as all hell to have them. So they want you to stay close to home—so what? It’s not like they’re going to disown you if you don’t. Considering they barely blinked when you brought around a fresh-out-of-jail war vet, I’m not sure I believe they’re all that opposed to you doing charity work overseas. In fact, I’m starting to think the biggest thing standing in your way is you.”

  “That’s ridiculous,” she scoffed, but a tiny bud of unease took root in the pit of her stomach. “What does that even mean?”

  “It means you’re a coward,” he retorted hotly. “It means you’re afraid to take risks and go after what you want, but you make excuses so it’s never your fault. You say your parents hold you back, but I think you’re scared to leave the safety of your hometown and go abroad. And you say we can’t be together because our lives are going in different directions, when really you don’t want to jump into something that might be difficult and complicated and exactly what you want. This thing between us and your dr
eams of practicing medicine overseas aren’t mutually exclusive. You’re just afraid to fall in love with me.”

  Her eyes widened as she stared up at him, her heart fluttering into a panicked rhythm in her chest. He didn’t know what he was talking about. She wasn’t afraid—was she? And what he said about their relationship, about it being exactly what she wanted—what did he know about what she wanted? Just because he charmed her more than any man she’d ever dated, and awakened some deep, dormant part of her with his gruff tenderness, and made her feel more whole than she thought possible when he pushed inside her, her moans swelling with fulfillment that went so much further than physical satisfaction…

  His last sentence echoed in her mind with the crisp, clear resonance of a brass bell. When she pulled herself together enough to speak, her throat was so dry the words weren’t much above a whisper.

  “Do you think you could fall in love with me?”

  The gaze that had held hers so unrelentingly suddenly softened, then dropped away. Grady’s brow furrowed and his expression darkened as he shoved his hands in the pockets of his jeans, his eyes fixed on the pavement at his feet.

  “I have to get back to work,” he muttered without looking at her. “You do what you want. I’m done.”

  Laurel couldn’t move, couldn’t speak as he circled back around the bench and turned the corner, vanishing as suddenly as he’d appeared not fifteen minutes earlier. She stared ahead blankly, her exchange with Grady ricocheting around her mind but making less and less sense the more she replayed it.

  He was wrong. He had to be. She wasn’t scared—she was sensible. That’s why she was cutting Grady loose now. They’d both be better off.

  Wouldn’t they?

  That seed of unease stirred in her stomach, shuddering as it grew. She had to get back to the office. She had a lot to think about.

  She reached for her cardboard coffee cup. It was stone cold.

  Chapter Ten