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.
The attacker aimed a hard kick with cowboy-boot-clad feet at Rory’s shin. Still slightly off guard, Rory shot out his arm and held the child at arm’s length. The kick missed but, undeterred, the kid tried again.
A boy. Rory had not been around children much, so he didn’t know how old. Seven? Eight? Maybe nine?
Despite his size, the boy had the slouch and confidence of a professional wrangler. And he was dressed like one, too. His jeans had holes in both knees, his denim shirt had been washed white. A stained cowboy hat was pulled low over his brow. It was more than obvious this child had not been at the upscale birthday party that had just ended.
“Don’t you ever touch my mama,” he said, glaring up at Rory, not the least intimidated by the fact his opponent was taller than him by a good three feet and outweighed him by about a hundred and fifty pounds.
He was the kind of kid—spunky, undernourished, defiant—that you could care about.
If you hadn’t successfully killed the part of yourself that cared about such things. Rory had seen lots of kids like this: chocolate-brown eyes, white, white smiles, spunk, and he’d learned quickly you couldn’t allow yourself to care. The world was too full of tragedy. It could overwhelm you if you let it.
Rory let go of the boy, backed away, hands held up in surrender. “Hey, I was just trying to rouse her so she could catch her ponies.”
“I’ll look after the ponies,” the boy said fiercely.
“It’s okay, Tucker,” Gracie said, and put a hand on the boy’s narrow shoulders. “Nobody’s going to hurt your mother.”
The boy flinched out from her touch and glared out at her from under the battered rim of his straw cowboy hat with such naked dislike that Rory saw Gracie suck in her breath.
Rory looked at the boy more closely.
And then Rory looked at Gracie’s face.
She was clearly struggling to hide everything from him, and she was just as clearly a person who had never learned to keep her distance from caring. Her tenderness toward that boy was bald in her face. And so was the hope.
But she hid nothing at all.
Rory Adams was a man who had lived by his instincts, by his ability to distance himself from emotion. He had survived because of his ability to be observant, to see what others might overlook.
Rory looked back and forth between the boy and Grace, and he saw immediately what the complication was.
He studied the boy—Tucker—hard.
“How old are you?”
Grace gasped, seeing how quickly he had seen the possibility.
The boy did not look like Graham. But he certainly looked like Grace had looked just a few years older than this: freckle-faced and auburn hair.
A million kids looked like that.
For a moment, Rory thought the boy wasn’t going to answer him at all.
From Serenity, a moan, and then, “Come on, Tuck, tell the man how old you are.”
“I’m seven,” he said, reluctance and belligerence mixed in equal parts.
So, there it was. A little quick math and the complication became a little more complicated, a little more loaded with possibility. And Grace was clinging to that possibility like a sailor to a raft in shark-infested waters.
Serenity