Free Battle for the Soldier's Heart by Cara Colter

thought outside the box? Something like ‘A Perfect Day.’ A helicopter ride to the top of a mountain for a champagne lunch, something like that? Or maybe a ride in Saul’s car, a turn or two around the track. Or maybe both.”
    “That’s fantastic.”
    It was wrong to be so darned pleased that she was so darned pleased. It was wrong to want to bask in her admiration all afternoon. Still, a man was allowed a few weaknesses, wasn’t he?
    “What’s your perfect day?” he asked her. “Because we could do anything—an elephant ride in Thailand, bungee-jumping… Literally if you can think of it, we can do it.”
    Now he was just showing off, plain and simple. He thought he’d better buy Bridey some flowers tomorrow, since she’d be the one executing whatever scheme they came up with.
    “Oh.” Grace looked flustered. “I thought I was a bit of an expert on perfect days, but my mind doesn’t even begin to work like that. Elephants in Thailand?”
    “Just close your eyes, then, and tell me what comes. Your perfect day.”
    And suddenly he wanted to know very, very badly, because it seemed like it would tell him secret things about her.
    “Nothing so grand as elephants or helicopters,” she said tentatively, not closing her eyes, but taking a fortifying sip of her wine before she bared her soul to him. She gazed out at the water, and then said, “You see those kids playing over there? Swimming out to the float and jumping in the water? That looks darn near perfect to me.”
    It had become quite hot in the last hour. Her blouse was sticking to her in the nicest places, and the skirt, which was about the most flattering straitlaced outfit he had ever seen, seemed to be causing her grief. He probably should not have suggested lunch outside.
    He’d given her a chance to choose anything, and she had chosen that? It did tell him just about everything about her.
    Except for her one Ferrari fantasy, she was just as she seemed. Wholesome. Without airs. Why did that seem kind of refreshing instead of just boring?
    “That’s too easy for a perfect day,” he chided her. “We could have that today.”
    “I’ve already had days like that,” she said, a little wistfully. “We used to have the cottage on Mara Lake. Not the multimillion-dollar kind you see today. A real cottage—ramshackle, falling down, no power, an outhouse. And all I remember there are perfect endless summer days.”
    “I remember your family heading out to that cottage, your station wagon packed to the roof.” He did not say anything about that funny little twist of envy he would feel when he watched them depart, the longing to be part of something like that.
    And, oddly, at the same time he had longed for it, he had refused every invitation Graham had offered him to join them there.
    He’d felt as if he had to resist ever tasting something he knew he could not have.
    People from perfect families matched up with other people from perfect families. He had known that before he’d gone away to war and become even more hard and more cynical than he had been back then, and that had been plenty hard and cynical for a kid.
    It suddenly seemed that this was a demon he needed to face: punch a hole in that illusion of a perfect life or a perfect day.
    “Let’s have it today,” he said. “We’ll put on some swimsuits and jump in the lake before we go home.”
    And he would find the wholesomeness of it hokey and boring, and somehow break free of the spell she was weaving around him.
    “No. It’s perfectly all right. I’ve already had a perfect day. Thank you for the car. It really was an incredibly sweet thing to do.”
    “Ah, I’m a sweet guy,” he said, and wagged his eyebrows at her fiendishly.
    But she didn’t buy it. “What do you think you are?”
    He could distract her with charm. Why ruin a light moment? But something overtook him, had been overtaking him ever since he remembered the perfect Day family leaving for their cottage, had been