Boots on the Ground: Homefront, Book 1 by Rebecca Crowley Read Free Book Online

the sadness welling in her throat. “Who said anything about what I deserve? Which, by the way, I’m not sure you know me well enough to decide. It’s a question of what I want, and what I want is—”
    “A burned-out grunt with a jacked-up shoulder who digs asphalt all day and can’t sit in a restaurant without constantly checking the exits? I don’t think so, pretty girl.”
    Laurel could do nothing but stare up at him, the endearment squeezing her heart at the same time disappointment and rejection stabbed at her stomach.
    “Go on and find yourself a nice guy who buys you diamonds and takes you to the Caribbean. The guy who has extra bedrooms, not the guy who paints ’em.” He leaned in to give her a chaste kiss on the cheek, and as the heady scent of him collided with the agonizingly soft brush of his lips, a shudder ran through her body that seemed to penetrate right to the marrow of her bones.
    Without another word he walked back to his truck, started the engine and drove off down the street. It only took a minute for him to disappear from sight, but Laurel remained on the doorstep for nearly an hour, becoming more aware with each passing moment that although their interaction had been brief, it was going to take her a good long time to get over John Grady Reid.

Chapter Five
    Laurel stifled a yawn as Christina’s husband, Kenny, launched into another impassioned point about the number of local jobs that would be created by the planned development of a supersize grocery store on the east side of town. Peter—whom Laurel had invited against her better judgment, needing to find someone at the last minute after she forgot about this dinner—shook his head and reiterated his earlier argument about the threat to small businesses and the chain’s reputation for low wages and poor benefits. Christina’s gaze darted between the two of them, punctuated by an occasional agreeing nod.
    Laurel drained the wine in her glass and reached for the bottle in the center of the table but put it back down when she found it was empty. The clock on the restaurant wall said it was twenty minutes past eleven. The other two couples who’d joined them for Christina’s birthday dinner had left more than an hour ago, but from the pace of Peter and Kenny’s conversation, she suspected her own departure was still a long way off.
    She sat back in her chair and thought—as she had so often in the two weeks since their disastrous date—about Grady. She hadn’t seen him since they said goodbye on her doorstep, despite staring creepily at every tall, dark-haired man she encountered around town and slowing her car whenever she drove past any sign of construction, in case it was the road crew. One day, back in the office after an especially taxing lunch date with her mother, she opened his file and repeatedly reread the first-time visit form he’d filled out, running her fingers over the ballpoint pen indentations made by his careful, blocky handwriting. She memorized his address, and when she climbed into her car at the end of the day, she told herself she was just going to drive by his house, she just wanted to see where he lived, she wouldn’t bother him, he wouldn’t even know she was there.
    Shortly before she reached the turn down the long, graveled road leading out to his property, Laurel brought the car to an abrupt stop on the shoulder.
    “This is crazy,” she chided aloud. “You are being crazy. He made himself perfectly clear—he’s not interested. Leave the poor man alone.”
    Then she U-turned and gunned the engine toward home, sniffing hard against the rejection that still stung behind her eyes.
    “Laurel? What do you think?”
    “Hm?” Christina’s voice jolted her from her reverie to find three sets of eyes staring at her expectantly. “Sorry, I missed that—what did you say?”
    “The restaurant is closing, but we thought we might walk down to Rock’s and see what’s going on. Peter thinks they have live