Still she yearned to go with him, to be with him. "I can't go."
"Because of your job."
"Because of Magda. I'm going to keep her, no matter how many courts and piles of paperwork I have to plow through. She's my daughter." Her words rolled free in an out-of-control tumble, not too different from her life at the moment. "Even if I could settle for your offer, I can't live with you. The courts will never go for that."
Gray eased off his elbow onto a pillow. His chest rose and fell deeply, twice. "Okay. Good point." Another deep breath later he continued, "So let's do it."
"Do what?"
"Get … you know." He shrugged. "Let's do it."
Lori sat up, scooting as far away from him and temptation as she could without falling off the bed. "Geez, Gray! You can't even say the word and you expect me to marry you? What about love? You know, some women expect that when a guy proposes. Silly me, I happen to be one of them."
Even though he didn't answer, Lori decided to take the biggest risk of her life. Relinquishing control didn't come easily for her, but she couldn't spend the rest of her life wondering what would have happened if she'd tried. She placed her hand on his heart as she offered him hers. "I love you, Gray. But I need for you to love me, too, or it will never work."
He blinked. Nothing more. The jerk simply blinked.
Lori yanked the covers off him. "Get out."
"No." He whipped the blanket off her and threw it on the floor. "I'm not going until we talk about this."
The stubborn look in his eyes told her well enough he wasn't budging his gorgeous butt from her bed until he got his way. Never in a million years would she have imagined she would run away from marrying Gray.
Lori swung her feet to the floor. She yanked her clothes on with vicious tugs before whipping her hair into a simple ponytail. "Fine, I'll go. I'm already late picking up Magda."
"Wait." Gray left the bed, stepping over the comforter pooled in the middle of the floor. "Give me three minutes to get dressed and I'll go with you."
"You're not invited." She spun for the door.
He grabbed her arm. "Okay, Lori. You want to hear the words? Fine. I have feelings for you. Feelings for you that won't turn me loose. And believe me I've tried." He drew in another one of those deep breaths as if bracing for combat. "I guess maybe you call that love."
She jerked her arm free. Did he have to trample all her dreams? Why not bomb her Barbie house while he was at it? Pain made her lash out. "Oh, wow! You're on a roll tonight, Major." She hitched her hand on her hip in her best aviator stud stance. "'Let's get … you know,' followed by 'I guess maybe I love you.'"
"Lori, damn it, will you just listen?"
Her hands slid off her hips, her anger sliding away, as well, to be replaced by a bittersweet ache. "You just don't get it, do you Gray? This is forever we're talking about. Everything. No guesses or maybes or temporary live-ins. You have to be sure."
At least he didn't blink this time, just stared back at her with solemn eyes. She had to hand it to him. For a man who made a habit of managing life with his charm and a smile, he was laying it on the line for her. His offering touched her, even tempted her, but it would never be enough to satisfy the longing in her heart.
Lori kissed him gently, then ducked out the door into the hall, a much safer place to be than in the same room with naked Gray and his "maybe love."
She made it all the way to the front door before he caught her. She would have likely made it outside if she hadn't paused to grab her purse hanging off the coat tree. But a woman needed her keys, right? It wasn't that she was delaying to give him a chance to catch her.
And then he was there. Beside her. Naked and unrelenting. His hand fell to rest against the door.
"I'm leaving, Gray."
"Go ahead." His hand, pressed against the solid oak, defied her threat. He could keep her trapped inside, and they both knew it.
She'd run a year ago fully expecting him to follow, had even known she would likely cave to his conditional offerings in the end. But the past weeks had changed her, and she couldn't settle for less than all of him this time. She'd flat-out exhausted her ideas on how to win his unconditional love.
She couldn't spend the rest of her life cringing every time that caged look crept back into his eyes. Her love for him deserved a better end than that. She tried to tell herself remembering Grayson gloriously nude and smelling of peaches wasn't too shabby a swan song for their relationship.
"Let me go." Her eyes stung in spite of her best effort to make a dignified exit. "Please, Gray, just let me go."
He brushed away her tear and caressed it between two fingers.
His hand dropped from the door.
She stole one last look at him as he towered over her, moving neither toward or away. The message in his eyes was clear. Stay.
And the choice was hers. No choice really. "Please don't be here when I get back."
The door snapped shut behind her.
Gray stood in her entryway, the echo of the door mingling in his mind with a single word.
Stay.
Had he said it aloud? He'd meant to. The fact that he couldn't even speak the word said enough about why Lori needed to walk away.
His every instinct screamed, Bail out! Bail out! Bail out!
She didn't want him. He'd even offered her the ring she expected, and still she'd walked. He'd given her all he could. Just like when he'd been growing up trying to piece his family back together, it wasn't enough.
They should be in the car together on their way to pick up Magda. Instead he stood barebutt naked, smelling like some fruit farm.
Gray padded down the hall back to Lori's room, kicked aside the comforter and scooped up his clothes. What did he intend to do about the mess he'd made of their lives? Inaction wasn't even an option for him.
The way he saw it, he had two choices. Leave for Washington now. Tear up that house listing. Forget about her once and for all so she could find the love she needed.
That answer soured in his mouth.
Or he could track down Lori. He could fall on his sword and beg her to accept whatever he could give her. Even though he knew he would eventually break her beautiful heart.
Neither answer offered him much hope.
* * *
The next day Gray strode across the parking lot at his parents' condo. He wasn't sure what had drawn him there. He scratched his chest, freeing a fresh drift of peaches two showers hadn't been able to wash away. His room on base had been damned quiet, giving him too much time to think and offering up not even a single answer.
Nearing the front door, he saw his mom's car wasn't in its spot.
His father's car was parked in clear sight.
Gray turned to leave … then remembered all the nights his dad had taught him about the stars. Gray's feet slowed as he thought of his night with Lori under those same stars. For the first time in too long, he'd enjoyed the memories of learning to navigate from his dad—without the bitter sting that followed.
He pivoted on his heel. He might as well stop in and say hi before he left. Things couldn't get much worse.
After three unanswered rings, Gray swept around to the back of the condo. He almost gave up, deciding his dad must be off on a walk, when he happened to look through the mesh webbing on the screened-in porch.
He found his father, sitting, staring out over the water. Gray loped up the three steps and shoved open the screen door. "Hey, old man."
His father straightened. "Hi, son. I thought you left for Washington."
"I did." Gray sprawled in the porch swing. "I came back to tie up business here."
"Something to do with Lori?"
Regret stabbed him, followed by a blanketing sense of failure. Damn it, he'd met his every goal in life. Except one. Lori. "That's over, Dad."
His father nodded slowly, his gaze staying fixed on the water. "Hmm."
A grunt from his dad. The usual response.
Gray hooked his arms along the back of the swing. His dad's chattiness at the family picnic must have been a fluke, or maybe he'd made an extra effort because Lori had been there. Whatever the reason, Gray was disappointed—for his mother's sake.
The older man folded his hands over his barrel chest. "I've been seeing this doctor out at the VA Hospital."
Slowing the swing, Gray recalled all the times his mother had asked him to visit recently. Had she needed his professional advice, and he'd blown her off, too preoccupied by the mess he'd made with Lori? Guilt was becoming a familiar companion these days. "Have you been sick?"
"Not the way you mean. Not that kind of doctor."
Gray planted both feet on the ground and stopped the swing. After all these years, his father was finally seeking help? Hell, acknowledging there was even a problem? Gray scrambled for something to say and came up dry. Instead he waited, opting to take his cue from his dad.
His father scratched a hand along his salt-and-pepper hair, still trimmed to military regulation even ten years after retirement. "We've been talking about those days in the camp. Getting some things straight in my head. If it were up to me, I'd just let it all lie. But your mother needs this. So I go. Sometimes we go together."
Those were more words than his father had strung together in as long as Gray could remember. The talkative bent at the family party hadn't been a fluke. "That's good, Dad. Real good."
"So your mother says. And I have to admit … it helps." He stared out over the water, silent for one of those long stretches habitual since his POW days. Without looking away, he cleared his throat. "Back in 'Nam, there was this box they put us in."
Gray winced at the conversational leap, his mind catching up even though his stomach still lurched as if he'd pitched off the swing.
His father's brows knit together. "In some ways the box was good, because they left you alone as long as you were in there. Then it got hot. And you needed some distraction. I came home in my mind."
Gray tried to relax his fists. He knew all about the box, a crate about the size of a dog carrier, but without a window.
His time in survival training had included a stint in a mock POW camp. How many days he'd spent there, he'd never known. He'd had no watch, and most of the time was spent with loudspeakers blaring away any hope of sleep. He'd been marched through a hellish regimen meant to prepare flyers for possible capture.
Definitely hell, and he'd had the reassurance that he would be leaving soon. Hours spent in the box had given him too much time to think about what his father had been through, a torture beyond any the instructors could have doled out.
Gray studied his father. What could he say, though, Hey, Dad, I pulled a weekend stint in one of those, so I understand your pain? He let his father talk.
"When I came home in my head, you and I sat out under that tree, and I taught you about the stars. Sometimes we pitched a ball around." His eyes fogged with a distant look, as if seeing long-ago days. "Other times I told you things you needed to know, things a father should tell his son. I may have been in that box, but I couldn't stop being your dad."
The words slammed on top of so many memories of waiting for his father to come home, the years after when he'd felt he lost his dad altogether. How strange to get his old man back right before a move cross country. "Dad, it means a—"
His father held up a hand. "Funny thing was, once I got home, I didn't do all those things with you like I'd planned. I was still stuck in that box, more so than when I was back over there." He turned to face Gray. "Son, you've put yourself in a box."
"What?" When had this become about him? Not three seconds ago they were discussing his father.