Boots on the Ground: Homefront, Book 1 by Rebecca Crowley Page B

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 dreams 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
    Grady pushed his shovel into the gravel and leaned on the end of it, taking a second’s break to wipe the sweat from his eyes. In the week since that wrenching conversation with Laurel on Main Street, the balmy spring temperatures had rocketed straight into high summer heat, and the mercury had hovered around ninety for days.
    It was funny how quickly things could change. One night a guy goes to sleep under a quilt to combat the evening chill, the next morning he’s sweating over his coffee as hot sun pours in through the windows.
    One day