Lonestar Homecoming (19 page)

The flush came to Gracie's cheeks. “I love it.”

So did Michael.
Eyes front and center, soldier.
He averted his gaze and tried not to listen to their conversation. It wasn't difficult, since Rick and Allie came up to talk too. Both couples invited them for dinner, but he begged off and promised to accept another day.With his knee finally stronger, he wanted to have the family day he'd promised Gracie.

And that promised honeymoon kept drifting through his thoughts.

When they finally escaped the building, he took her hand and tucked it into the crook of his elbow. “Let's walk.The café is just down the street, and it's a beautiful day. After lunch, we'll run by the house to change, then go to the park.”

She clung to his arm, and as they went down the street, he realized she was struggling in the heels on the brick sidewalk. “Take them off,” he said, gesturing to her shoes.

“What? No!” She tried to walk faster but tripped over a rise in the sidewalk.

“I can carry you,” he offered.

“Absolutely not!”

“Carry her, Daddy,” Hope said. Dancing around them, she began to chant, “Carry her, carry her.”

Daddy.
He loved to hear Hope call him that. He exchanged an amused glance with Gracie. “I've got my marching orders from my newest daughter.”

A tide of red moved up her face. “You're still injured.”

He swept her into his arms. “You're lighter than a kitten,” he said.

“Put me down!” she ordered. She squirmed. “You'll hurt your knee again.”

“I'm all well. Put your arms around my neck, or I'll hold you responsible if I get hurt.” He acted as though he were losing his grip, and she shrieked, then threw her arms around his neck.With his nose pressed into her fruity-smelling hair, he could have carried her like this all day.

Then his children caught his attention. They both stomped along the sidewalk with identical scowls.Maybe this wasn't a good idea. He'd hoped this would be a bonding time for them to appreciate all Gracie was doing for them.

The café was just ahead, so he set Gracie's feet back on the concrete, then scooped up his kids, one in each arm. He swung them around to their delighted shrieks.

“I want on your shoulders,” Jordan said.

“No, me!” Evan clawed up his arm.

“You can't both be there. Jordan asked first.”

“It's my turn!” Evan said, his face crumbling.

Michael exchanged a helpless glance with Gracie. She smiled, and the adorable dimple in her left cheek flashed.

“You're a big, strong guy. Put one on each shoulder,” she said. “But don't blame me if you have to ice your knee tonight.”

“You're killing me.” But he hefted the kids onto his shoulders. They both clung to his hair, and he expected to be bald the next time he looked in the mirror. His arms ached with the effort of keeping them from sliding down.

Gracie darted ahead and held open the door for him. With a groan, he put the kids down. “Now that you've maimed me, we'll have lunch.Then we'll go to the park and see the ranger exhibits.”

“Yay! I want to see the snakes,” Jordan said. “The rattlers!”

“You would,” Michael said, following the server to a table in the corner. The red and white–checked tablecloth made him remember the last time he was here.With Kate. Evan had barely started walking, and Jordan was hard to corral in her seat. Poor Kate. He was beginning to see she might have been lonely.

He studied the menu, then ordered a hamburger and fries. The kids wanted the same, but Gracie ordered grilled fish. “A health nut,” he said. “You can go wild today and have something special.”

“Maybe I'll have a turtle sundae for dessert,” she said. “Be all wild and crazy.”

“Hey kids, want to pick out some music on the jukebox?” He dug out some quarters for them.

Squealing, they ran off. “I'll have to read the list for you,” Jordan said in a self-important voice.

Gracie steepled her fingers together and rested her chin on them. “You look different today,” she said. “More carefree. It's been good for you to be off work a few days.”

He sobered. “It's all waiting for me tomorrow.”

“I wish you'd give it up,Michael. Do something else.What's your dream job?”

“Doing what I do now. I like being useful,” he said. “Serving my country is all I know.”

“What's the favorite part of the job you had in the army? You said you were a pararescueman before you got out.What is that exactly?”

“The plane would get us as close to an extraction as possible, and we'd go in and free prisoners.”

“What does the
para
part of the word mean?”

“I was trained like a top-notch paramedic, since I would often have to treat the soldiers before the extraction. Sometimes they'd be in rough shape, and it would take all our expertise to save them.”

She toyed with her napkin. “Important work. I can see why you loved it.”

He leaned forward and stared into her eyes. “What I did really mattered then. Life-and-death stuff.”

Her gaze never left his face. “What about doing paramedic work here? There's a real need in Big Bend for a medical chopper with paramedics.”

“They probably have one already.”

She shook her head. “I heard in church that a guy died on the way to the Alpine hospital, an hour and a half away. Guys like him would have a chance with a chopper.”

He wasn't about to admit her idea made his pulse kick. “Where am I going to get the money to start an operation like that?”

“Grant money? There has to be a way if it's something you want to do.”

He reached across the table and took her hand. “What about you? What's your dream?” Her fingers tightened on his, then she started to pull away, but he hung on. “Come on, turnabout's fair play. Give.”

Her face shuttered, and she yanked her hand away. “Here come our drinks.”

He eyed her haunted expression.What dream could cause her to look so bleak?

16

T
HEY'D SPENT THE DAY SPLASHING WITH THE KIDS IN THE HOT SPRINGS,
and Gracie was gloriously relaxed. She kicked off her flip-flops and wiggled her toes against the carpet in the truck's cab. She'd loved spending the day as a family, once she got Michael to stop questioning her.

The sun slid down the sky in a brilliant display that set the desert on fire.The eroded rocks looked on like sentries guarding the ribbon of road that was empty except for Michael's big truck.The kids slept in the backseat. Caesar curled on the floor.They were just like any other family on an outing.

Except they weren't.

She stole a glance at Michael's firm jawline, mentally tracing his strong nose and lips, the solid column of his neck, and the muscles in this arms as he maneuvered the truck along the narrow highway. “Thanks for the fun day,” she said. “The kids enjoyed it too.”

He smiled, glancing in the rearview mirror. “They're sacked out.” He didn't sound displeased at the thought. “What do you want out of life, Gracie? You never said.”

She looked away quickly. “I haven't thought about it.” What would he think if she told him her dream was always to be a wife and mother? To have that perfect home with a picket fence and a man who rushed home to her at night? Such an old-fashioned dream to admit to.

Her cell phone rang, and she exchanged a glance with him. “I wonder if that's Sam.” She dug it out of her purse. “It is.” She flipped it open. “Hello, Sam, this is Gracie.”

“Gracie, finally,” his voice boomed. “I wasn't sure you got the message I left.”

His voice looked like a red sun surrounded by orange light. For some reason, it made her sit straighter. “Sam?”

“If he doesn't already know, don't tell him about Hope,” Michael whispered.

She nodded and concentrated on her answer to Sam. “I got your message, but I haven't had a chance to call you back. I'm so sorry about Jason. I hadn't heard he died.”

“Thank you. It's been hard. Now Tyler is sick.” His voice choked. “Looks like I might outlive my boys.”

She struggled to remember Tyler. It had been nearly six years since she'd seen any of the Wheelers.When she was dating Jason, his younger brother had been fifteen or so. Tyler would be twenty-one now. “What's wrong with Tyler?”

“Same thing as Jason. Polycystic kidney disease.They won't even let him have a transplant because they say the disease will just destroy the new kidney. He's on dialysis now.”

“I'm so sorry, Sam.” She wanted to ask why he was calling after all this time, but she didn't want to be rude.What was his wife's name? She couldn't remember the quiet woman who mostly stayed in the kitchen.

“Jason said something before he died.At first I thought he was out of his head and rambling.Then I got to wondering if it might be true. He said you had a baby. His baby. Is that true?”

She could lie. Or maybe hang up and not answer when he called back.Without stopping to consider the consequences, she closed the phone. After a few seconds, she opened it again and turned it off.

“What?” Michael asked.

She wrapped her arms around herself. “He knows. Jason told him. I hung up rather than answer him when he asked if I'd had a baby.”

“Maybe you should tell him. He deserves to know he has a granddaughter.”

“Why? Neither he nor Jason ever so much as called to see if I needed anything. I owe them nothing.”

“You can't run from unpleasant things all the time, Gracie. It's always better to face trouble head-on.”

She swiveled her head to stare at him. “Oh? Is that why you told me not to tell him about Hope when he first called?”

“I meant if he didn't know, don't tell him. He knows, so it's time to face the music.”

“Well, this is one dance I'm going to sit out. He doesn't know where I am, and that's the way I want to keep it. Hope has enough to get adjusted to without throwing a new grandfather into the pot.”

“Maybe she'd like a grandfather. Kids need grandparents. I wish mine had them.”

The bleakness in his voice made her take a deep breath to try to come down off the ledge of her outrage. “I know you're trying to help, Michael, but let me handle my own life.”

Caesar whined and pressed his cold nose against her cheek. She pushed him away. Not even the dog was going to keep her anger from spilling over.

“I thought it was
our
life now,” he said.

“On paper.You know as well as I do that our marriage is in name only. It's for the kids, and that's
all
.”

“Is it?” He slowed the truck to a crawl, then turned into their driveway and killed the engine in front of the house. “What were those kisses the other night? For the kids? Let's not deceive ourselves. I can't keep my eyes off you, and you're just as attracted to me.”

She could tell him he was a conceited jerk. Or she could say she was just lonely, and he was better than no man at all. But she couldn't force from her tongue the lies that would make him back off. She laced her fingers together in her lap and stared at them.

“Gracie, look at me,” he said, his voice softening.

“No.”

“Please.”

The coaxing smile in his voice was her undoing. She raised her eyes from her lap and peeked in his direction.Wrong move.The glow of the lights in the dash was enough to let her see the humor in his firm mouth, and the gentleness in his eyes. “Okay, so I like looking at you,” she said. “And you're a very good kisser. That's not enough to build a real marriage on.”

“Isn't it?” he whispered. “I think it's a good start. Every relationship has to start somewhere. I like you, Gracie.Your soft heart would be hard to resist, even if I wanted to. But I don't want to.”

“You. . . you don't?” She tried to look away and couldn't. She was hypnotized. . . mesmerized . . .

He slid across the seat until he was close enough to slip his arm around her. His fingers touched her chin and tipped her lips up to meet his. “I don't think you want to resist either.”

Run! Open the door and run.
But as his lips claimed hers, all will to escape evaporated, and she let down her guard enough to pretend for a few minutes that this relationship might really last.

“M
OMMY
?” H
OPE'S SLEEPY VOICE MADE
G
RACIE PULL AWAY FROM HIS
embrace and reach for her door handle. Michael said nothing as she got the children out of the backseat.

He knew she would gather her reserve around her as soon as they were out of the truck, and she did.

As the kids raced for the house, she turned a shuttered gaze his way. “I'm going to check on King.”

He watched her walk toward the barn. Even the grace in her movements intrigued him.The sunset lit her hair with a red halo, and he wished he had a camera. He followed her to the corral, where their sorry acquisition of a horse stood on spindly legs.

“He still looks like a candidate for the glue factory,” he said when he stopped beside her.

She turned a fierce glance his way.“Don't say that! It's not his fault.”

He held up his hands. “Sorry.” He leaned on the top fence rail. “Have you touched him yet?”

“No, he's still afraid.”

“You mean you are.”

Her dimple flashed. “A gentleman wouldn't remind me.”

“I'm a soldier, not a gentleman.You need to let him know you're in control. Get a lead on him and work him out.”

“He needs to know he's loved first.When he's ready, he'll let me know.”

“Animals respond to a firm hand.”

She turned her head and their eyes locked. “Just like kids?”

Her tone reminded him of their previous conversation about raising the kids, and the way she'd worked with him to find middle ground. “I get your point.”