less about the tiny ones.
Still, just leaving her to deal with it seemed too hard-hearted, even for him, the man generally untroubled by guilt.
But there it was: the memory of Graham required Rory to be a better man. Even if she was not his sister, Graham wouldn’t have approved of abandoning the damsel in her distress.
Rory remembered he had a step up on the other heroes out there. A secret weapon. He pulled his cell phone from his pocket and tried not to wince when Bridey answered, halfway through the first ring, with her chipper, “Mr. Adams, sir.”
He had tried to tell her his preference was for a more casual form of address, but on that topic she would not hear him.
Her tone reproachful, she was fond of reminding him, “Mr. Adams, you are the CEO of a very successful company.”
“Bridey, I need you to find me someone who can round up some escaped ponies.”
If the request took her by surprise, she certainly didn’t let on. She took all the details and assured him she was on it.
Rory made a decision to help Gracie Day save whatever pride she had left by sinking further back into the shadows of the park, to be an interested spectator, nothing more.
But just as he made that decision, Gracie froze. It reminded him of a deer sniffing the air, some sense alerting it that it no longer was alone, that it was being observed. Then Gracie turned her head slowly and looked directly at him.
He saw recognition dawn in her eyes, and then in the set of her mouth.
She folded her arms over the green smudge on her chest and lifted her chin, trying for composure, distancing herself from that woman who had been hurling shoes and shouting invective at horses.
Taking a deep breath, feeling a sensation in his chest that was similar to what he felt just before starting the mission, just before stepping into the heat of battle, Rory Adams moved toward Gracie.
And stopped right in front of her.
Had he ever known her eyes were that color? He thought it was called hazel, a plain word for such a rich mix of golds and greens and browns worthy of an exotic tapestry.
Had he ever known that her lips were lush and wide? The kind of lips that a man imagined crushing under his own?
Of course he hadn’t.
She had been a kid. His friend’s sister.
Now she was a woman. A beautiful woman, if not a very happy one!
He hesitated, picked up her shoe—who said he couldn’t be chivalrous?—and handed it to her.
“Hello, Gracie.”
Grace Day blinked at the way her nickname sounded coming off his lips. So right.
As if part of her had ached to be called that again.
And, of course, part of her did. But by her brother. Not by Rory Adams.
She grabbed her shoe from his hand, and accidentally brushed his fingertips. The shock was electrical, and to hide its shiver from him, she shoved the shoe on her foot, buying a moment to breathe.
It had been eight years. Couldn’t he be bald? Or fat? Couldn’t life give her one little break?
She straightened, trying for dignity even though she was distinctly lopsided, and the narrow strap of her sundress chose that moment to slide down her shoulder.
Grace could clearly see that Rory Adams was better than he had been before. Twenty-one-year-old lankiness was gone, replaced with a male physique in its absolute prime. He was tall—well, he’d always been that, standing head and shoulders above his peers—but now he was also broad-shouldered and deep-chested.
He was wearing a sports shirt—short-sleeved—that showed off rock-hard biceps, the ripple of toned forearms. Khaki shorts hugged lean hips and powerful thighs, showed the naked length of his long, tanned legs.
His face had matured, too. She was not sure she would say it was better. Changed. The mischievousness of a young man was gone. So was the devil-may-care light that had always burned like fire in the depths of those green, green eyes.
Around his eyes, now, were the creases of a man who had squinted into the sun a great deal. There was a set to his jaw, a firmness around his mouth that had not been there before.
There was something in his expression that was closed and hard. It was the look of a warrior, a man who had accepted the mantle of serving his country, but at a price to himself. There were new shadows in eyes that had once been clear.
Rory Adams had seen things—and done things—that made the tatters of the birthday party behind her seem frivolous and superficial.
Her eyes wandered to his hair. It was brown, glossy and rich as a vat of melted dark chocolate, shining with the highlights of the Okanagan early summer sun.
The last time she had seen him, that dark hair had been very short, buzzed off to a mere shadow, vanity-and maintenance-free in preparation for hard, hot work in inhospitable climates.
Now, Rory had returned to a style closer to that she remembered from when he was coming in and out of their house with Graham.
Rory’s family had moved onto their block and into their school district in the latter half of Graham’s senior year. And then in those carefree days after they had finished high school, they had both worked for the same landscaping company.
That 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