LITMIR.BIZ

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on their ability to be observant of their surroundings, every nuance of detail, every vehicle, every person, every obstacle.

      Rory stepped around her, and headed right toward where the ramshackle horse trailer was. It was painted a shade of copper that almost hid the rust eating away at it around the wheel wells.

      On the side, in fading circus letters, three feet high, it said, Serenity’s Wild Ride.

      He looked over his shoulder at Grace, his eyes narrow. “What’s she doing here?”

      He recognized the trailer. He knew Serenity. Was it what Grace feared? Or what she hoped?

      CHAPTER TWO

      “YOU know her,” Grace said, scrambling to keep up with him on her one shoe. “You know Serenity.”

      She stopped and picked up the other on her way. Since one had a heel and the other didn’t, she took them both off and dangled them from her fingertips.

      “A chance encounter a long, long time ago.” Rory glanced back at her, hesitated, and then waited. “Watch for pony poo.”

      “Oh!” Life was so unfair. Well, that was hardly a newsflash. But, if Grace had to see Rory Adams, wouldn’t it have been nice if she had been sipping a glass of white wine and looking entirely unflappable, rather than chasing after him in bare feet, avoiding poo?

      “What’s she doing here, Gracie?”

      She wanted to remind him she didn’t want to be called Gracie, but something about the way Rory had stopped and was looking down at her made her feel very flustered.

      The weak compulsion to share the burden won.

      “She came by the office a week ago.”

      “She knew where your office was,” he said flatly.

      “I’m in the phone book. She said she knew Graham.”

      Grace did not miss how his eyes narrowed at that.

      “She knew I had an event company.”

      “So, she’s done some homework.”

      “You don’t need to make it sound like she’s running a sting, and she found an easy mark.”

      He raised an eyebrow. It said exactly.

      “She just wondered if I could give her some work. She had ponies, I had an upcoming birthday party. It seemed like it might be win-win.”

      “What aren’t you telling me?”

      Hell’s bells. She did not like it that he could see through her that easily. It meant she had to avoid looking at his lips.

      Naturally, as soon as she told herself not to look at his lips, she did just that. Why did men like him have this kind of seductive power over people? Female people anyway!

      “What makes you think I’m not telling you something?” she hedged.

      “I was Graham’s best friend for ten years and you refused to see me, but a complete stranger shows up who claims a passing acquaintance to your brother and you’re forming a business partnership with her?”

      “I rented her ponies for an afternoon. That’s hardly a business partnership.”

      “It’s not ‘I can’t see why we need to talk,’ either.”

      Something crossed his face.

      “I hurt your feelings,” Grace said, stunned.

      For a moment, he looked stunned, too. Then a shield came down over his eyes, making them seem a darker shade of emerald than they had before. A little smile tickled the sinfully sensuous curve of his mouth. His expression was not exactly amusement, and not exactly scorn. More a kind of deprecating self-knowledge.

      “Gracie, honey—”

      Gracie wasn’t bad enough? Now he had to add honey to it?

      “I don’t have feelings for you to hurt.”

      That was what he wanted for her to believe. And she saw it was entirely possible that he believed that himself. But she didn’t.

      And suddenly Rory Adams was more dangerous to her than ever. Because he wasn’t just handsome. He wasn’t just the first man she’d ever had a crush on. He wasn’t just her brother’s best friend and fellow adventurer.

      Because just before that shield had come down in his eyes, Grace was sure she had caught a glimpse of someone who had lost their way, someone who relied totally on himself, someone lonely beyond what she had ever known that word to mean.

      “There was a complication,” she admitted slowly. “That’s why I agreed to have her provide ponies for the party.”

      “The thing about a woman like Serenity?”

      She hated the way he said that, as if he knew way too much about women in general and women like Serenity in particular.

      “What kind of woman is Serenity?” Grace demanded sweetly, though the kind of woman Serenity was was terribly obvious, even to Grace. Serenity was one of those women who had lived hard and lived wild, and it was all catching up with her.

      The line around Rory’s lip tightened as he decided what to say. “She’s the kind who used to own the party,” he said. “And then the party owned her.”

      Grace suspected that he had sugarcoated what he really wanted to say, but what he had said was harsh enough, and it was said with such a lack of sympathy that the moment of unwanted—and weakening sympathy she had felt for him—evaporated.

      Thank God.

      “And what about women like Serenity?” she said, yanking her strap up one more time.

      “There’s always a complication.”

      Then he strode over to the horse trailer, and Gracie could not help but notice he was all soldier now, totally focused, totally take-charge and totally no-nonsense.

      It felt like a terrible weakness on her part that she was somewhat relieved both by the fact his armor was back up and by the fact he was taking charge.

      So she had to say, “I can handle this.”

      He snorted, glanced meaningfully at the pony in the wading pool, trampling what was left of the soggy Happy Birthday banner, and said, “Sure you can, Gracie.”

      I hurt your feelings. Really, Gracie Day couldn’t have picked a more annoying thing to say to him.

      Feelings? Weren’t those the pesky things that he’d managed to outrun his whole life? Starting with a less than stellar childhood—no ponies at birthday parties, for sure—and ending up in a profession where to feel anything too long or too intensely would have meant he couldn’t do his job.

      No, Rory Adams was a man ideally suited for soldiering. His early life had prepared him for hardship. The little bit of idealism that he had managed to escape his childhood with had soon departed, too.

      So, Rory Adams had hated the look in Gracie’s eyes, just now, doe-soft, as if she could see right through him.

      To some secret longing.

      To have what she and Graham had had. Their house the one on the block that everyone flocked to, and not just because there were always freshly baked chocolate chip cookies, either. There was something there. That house was full of laughter. And love. Parents who actually made rules and had dinner on the table at a certain time.

      Rory remembered calling Graham once about a party. And Graham saying, “Nah, I’m going fishing with my dad.”

      A family that enjoyed being together. That had been a novelty in Rory Adam’s world.

      Is that what he’d wanted when he’d called her? Had it been about him and not about her—or his obligation to Graham—at

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