Sinful (12 page)

Connor flushed as he took the few steps to join Eve and slid his arm protectively around her waist. “Eve has agreed to marry me.”

“And make you the happiest of men? I didn’t
think that was possible, when you so recently lost your wife.”

Angus’s eyes bored into Connor’s during the silence that fell between them.

He should have known better than to think Angus would accept his decision to wed, let alone his choice of wife. He was tempted to turn and walk from the room without defending either choice. If it were only him, he’d gladly close the door between himself and his father. But his children loved their grandfather.

“We aren’t asking for your permission or your approval. We only came to let you know we intend to marry.”

“What does your father have to say about this?” Angus asked Eve.

“He wasn’t any happier than you appear to be,” Eve admitted.

Angus snorted. “I want to see his face when the son of a bitch realizes he’s going to have
Flynn
grandkids.”

“Please don’t refer to my father that way,” Eve said. “Otherwise, the son of a bitch will end up having Grayhawk
hyphen
Flynn grandkids.”

His father laughed. “The girl has moxie, my boy. Go and let me get back to work,” he said, waving them out of the room.

“That’s it?” Connor said, stunned by the dismissal.
You don’t have anything else to say? Or any blessing to give?

His father looked him in the eye. “I think you’re making a big mistake. But it’s your life. And your mistake.”

Connor didn’t waste his breath arguing. He turned
and ushered Eve from the room. There were no hugs for him or his future wife as there had been with Molly. There were no good wishes. But none of that mattered. He was doing the right thing, whether his father thought so or not. Having a wife would make his life and his children’s lives better.

Once they were out of his father’s study with the door closed behind them, he muttered, “Thank God that’s over.”

Eve stared at him, her eyes swimming in tears. “You don’t get it, do you?”

“Get what?”

“Nothing’s
over
. All the digs, all the slights, all the words of hate uttered by my father toward you, and your father toward me, and ultimately by both of them toward our children, it’s all just
beginning
.”

“You’re wrong, Eve. None of that has to be a part of our lives.”

“How can it not?” she cried. “I’m a Grayhawk, and you’re a Flynn. Your father just admitted he’s been plotting revenge against my father for years—and maybe, at last, has managed to ruin him.” She threw her hands up in frustration. “I can’t do this, Connor. I can’t! It just won’t work.”

Long after she’d disappeared from view he was still standing there, wondering where he was supposed to go from here.

E
VE STOPPED BEFORE
she reached the kitchen to choke back her sobs and compose herself so she wouldn’t upset the children or give Aiden Flynn any hint of how devastated she felt. She ignored Aiden’s perusal of her reddened eyes and put an arm around each of the children, who were sitting on bar stools at the kitchen counter. “Are you ready to go home?”

“Uh-huh,” Brooke said.

“Where’s Daddy?” Sawyer asked.

“He’ll be here in a minute.”

“Are you going to live with us forever and always?” Brooke asked.

Eve’s heart jumped to her throat. “Who told you that?”

“Mrs. Stack said you and Daddy are getting married and that you’re going to be our new mother.”

“When did she tell you that?” Eve asked, appalled. How was she going to back out of this marriage when the children already knew about it?

“This morning. When she talked to us in my bedroom.”

Eve had completely forgotten about the social worker. Forgotten about the very real possibility that
Connor could lose his children if he didn’t provide them with a safe, loving home. Completely forgotten that they’d already announced their engagement to Mrs. Stack. What would it say about Connor if he was abandoned by a woman who’d already agreed to marry him, even if it was a marriage of convenience? She couldn’t do that to him, even if it meant putting up with a thousand nasty comments from both their fathers.

“Would you like me to be your new mother?” she asked Brooke tentatively. She loved Brooke, and she thought Brooke loved her. But would the little girl be willing to accept her as a replacement for her mother?

“What if you die, too?”

That response told Eve a great deal. Brooke wanted a mother she could love, but was afraid to love someone who might leave her again. Eve hugged the little girl. And made up her mind. “Oh, baby, I’m not going anywhere.”

“I’m not a baby. Sawyer’s a baby.”

Eve laughed. “If you say so.” She realized that while Sawyer had been listening to their conversation, he hadn’t weighed in. He’d only been a year old when Molly died. He would never have any memory of his mother that he didn’t get from pictures or stories that Eve and Connor told him about her. Likely, he had no idea what role a mother was supposed to play in his life. It would be up to her to teach him.

“Eve’s going to be our new mother,” Brooke said when her father appeared in the kitchen doorway.

Eve saw that Connor was shocked by this announcement, especially after what she’d said outside his father’s study. She met his troubled gaze and explained,
“Mrs. Stack told the children that we’re getting married, and that I’m going to be living with them from now on.”

“She did?”

Eve nodded along with Brooke.

“Um. That’s nice,” Connor said.

Eve felt like laughing and crying at the same time. She’d gotten herself into—and out of—a lot of messes in the past. But there was no escaping this one, so she might as well make the best of it. She sobered, wondering if she should tell her father what Angus had revealed. Leah’s words came back to her:
He doesn’t have the money
. It was entirely likely King was aware of the trap Angus had set for him. But had it already snapped shut? Or was there still a way for her father to escape?

Eve suddenly wondered if Angus’s financial manipulation was going to affect Matt’s possession of the ranch. Maybe Matt wasn’t going to own everything a year from now after all. Maybe it was all going to belong to Angus Flynn.

She eyed Aiden, who was pouring himself a cup of coffee on the other side of the kitchen, then said quietly to Connor, “I have to call my father. I need to tell him what your father said, in case there’s a way he can fix things.”

“You still want to go through with this marriage, after all the discouraging things my family said?”

“I wish your family felt differently, but none of my reasons for marrying you have changed. In fact, if my father’s ruined, I need this marriage more than ever.”

“Then we’d better get moving,” Connor said. “We have errands to run in town.” He exchanged a
significant look with Eve, reminding her that they still needed to get their marriage license.

Eve felt a welling of sadness. It was one thing to imagine Matt living at Kingdom Come. It was another thing entirely to imagine it lost forever to Angus Flynn. But it seemed whatever financial Armageddon was going to occur had already happened. And in that case, it made sense to marry quickly and quietly.

Connor crossed to Aiden and said, “Thanks for taking care of the kids today.”

“My pleasure. Everything okay with you?”

“I’m hanging in there.”

At Aiden’s question, Eve took a closer look at Connor, and saw that his face looked drawn and his eyes looked wounded. He appeared to be a man on the edge of exhaustion. She wondered just how much sleep he’d been getting in the days before he’d gotten his children back. Clearly, he needed the help she’d offered and then snatched away. Clearly, he was relieved to have it offered again.

Eve picked up Brooke while Connor retrieved Sawyer, and the kids waved at their uncle as they headed out the back door. She helped Connor buckle the kids into their car seats and watched them fall asleep as soon as they got on the road.

“The kids must have worn themselves out playing with Aiden and Brian,” Connor said, eyeing the sleeping children in the rearview mirror.

“They were up in the middle of the night and then missed their naps,” Eve replied.

He glanced at her and asked, “What changed your mind, Eve?”

She sighed. “Mrs. Stack put me on the spot when
she told the kids we were getting married. I realized I’d regret it if I let you down. And I didn’t want to disappoint Brooke, who seems to want another mother but who’s worried I might die. Sawyer, bless his heart, doesn’t seem to know what a mother is.”

“If you don’t want to do this, don’t do it.”

Eve’s heart skipped a beat. She glanced at Connor, whose hands had tightened on the steering wheel until his knuckles were white. “Are
you
having second thoughts?”

“Second, third, and fourth thoughts. I haven’t changed my mind, but I don’t want to force you into anything.”

“I want to marry you,” she said, realizing that if she wasn’t careful, she would lose the man she loved to his sense of chivalry. “I want to be a mother to Brooke and Sawyer. And I want to have more children with you. It’s just that—”

“Our families are a problem,” he finished for her. “We don’t have to let them interfere in our lives. We can set boundaries and refuse to listen when one bad-mouths the other.”

“You’re dreaming if you think you can draw a line in the sand that our families won’t cross.”

“They can’t hurt us if we stick together,” Connor insisted. “So. Do you still want to do this tomorrow? Or not?”

She felt her heart squeeze. It seemed it was up to her whether this wedding was going to happen. She swallowed to relieve the sudden constriction in her throat and said, “Could we have the kids with us when we marry? I think Brooke might like to be part of the ceremony, and it might help Sawyer to understand
a little better that you and I are going to be partners from now on.”

“Partners sounds good.”

Eve didn’t reply. As far as she was concerned,
partners
was just a place to start.

A half hour later she was questioning her ability to step into Molly’s shoes—at least as far as parenting was concerned. Both kids were whiny and tired and didn’t want the mac and cheese Connor had fixed them for supper, despite the fact that it was their favorite meal. Brooke fought with Sawyer over the toys in the tub and didn’t like the SpongeBob pajamas Eve picked out for her. Sawyer wanted to sleep in Eve’s bedroom and cried when she made him stay in his own bed.

Connor was beside himself, because he’d never dealt with the kids without Molly’s help when they were this contrary. “Are they like this often?”

“Often enough,” Eve replied. “It’ll help if we keep them on a schedule like Molly did, so they get naps and have a regular bedtime.”

“You promised me a story tonight,” Brooke reminded her father.

Connor found a Dr. Seuss book and started reading it, but Brooke said, “Not that one. I want
Are You My Mother?
”

Eve and Connor both searched for the book, but neither of them could locate it.

“I’m sorry, Brooke, it isn’t here,” Connor said.

Brooke started crying and wouldn’t stop. What she moaned wasn’t “I want my book.” It was “I want my mommy.”

“What do I say to her?” Connor said, his voice raw with pain. “What will make it better?”

Eve slipped off her shoes, lay down beside Brooke, and pulled the little girl into her arms. “I’m here, sweetheart.”

Brooke slung her arms around Eve’s neck and cried, “Mommy, Mommy, Mommy.”

Eve met Connor’s agonized gaze and said, “Why don’t you go check on Sawyer?”

Eve just about had Brooke calmed down when Connor returned with a weeping Sawyer in his arms. He didn’t say a word, just slid Sawyer under the covers in the middle of the bed, kicked off his boots, and crowded under the covers with the rest of them.

Eve was facing the center of the bed, so she could see Connor’s eyes above the children’s heads. He looked both desperate and disappointed that his children weren’t comfortable sleeping in their own rooms. He reached over, turned off the light, and said, “Time for bed, everybody.”

A very short while later the sniffles stopped. A little while after that both children could be heard breathing slowly and steadily, signaling they were asleep.

“Do we dare leave them?” Eve whispered to Connor in the dark.

“I’m not willing to take the chance. You’re welcome to go.”

“If it’s all the same to you, I’ll stay, too. Good night, Connor.”

“Good night, Eve.”

She was just drifting off to sleep when she heard him mutter, “Somehow, this isn’t how I imagined our first night in bed together.”

E
VE WAS STARTLED
awake and found Connor tossing and making fretful noises in his sleep, clearly in the throes of some sort of nightmare. She debated whether to wake him, but realized if she didn’t, he might disturb the children. She slipped out of bed and crouched beside him.

“Connor,” she whispered.

He made a guttural sound and struggled beneath the sheets. She put a hand on his shoulder, and he sat bolt upright. To her surprise, he didn’t make a sound, just grabbed for something—which wasn’t there. A weapon?

Eve held her breath as Sawyer, who was closest to Connor, rolled over, but the little boy settled again without waking.

“Connor,” she said quietly. “You were having a nightmare.”

His eyes finally found her face in the moonlight, and she saw a look of agony that made her stomach churn.

“I need to get out of here,” he muttered.

He rose as silently as a wraith, and Eve followed him down the hall all the way to his bedroom. He sat
on his bed without turning on a light, then palmed his eyes as he dropped back on it. “God. That was awful.”

Eve didn’t think, she just acted. She crossed the moonlit room and crawled onto the bed beside him. She lay close and put an arm across his chest, offering comfort. A moment later he turned on his side and pulled her into his embrace, their legs tangling as he pressed his nose against her throat.

She could feel him trembling and held him tighter. She waited for him to speak, to share whatever it was that had shaken him so badly, wanting to help.

She ran her hand through his hair and rested it on his cheek. “I’m here, Connor. Are you all right?”

He swallowed hard. “Molly used to ask me what was wrong.” His next words seemed to be wrenched from him. “I never told her.”

Eve remained silent. If he hadn’t told Molly what was troubling him, he wasn’t likely to share it with her. She ran a soothing hand over his shoulder, holding him close.

“I should have told her what caused the nightmares,” he said. “I promised myself I would tell you. I just didn’t plan on doing it this soon.” He rolled over onto his back again, separating them, and threw an arm across his eyes.

Eve stayed on her side facing him. “You don’t have to explain if you’d rather not.”

He sat up, keeping the distance between them, his eyes glittering in the moonlight. “I figure I owe it to you to let you know just who you’re marrying. In case you want to back out.”

Eve sat up, too, her heart thumping hard in her
chest, and stared at him. “I don’t think I want to hear this.”

“I got my best friend killed.”

Eve held herself still. That was a very different statement from
I killed my best friend
, but all the same, Connor obviously blamed himself for his friend’s death.

“I sent Paddy out on a patrol I should have taken myself. I told him I was exhausted, and he volunteered to go in my stead.” He sighed and shoved an agitated hand through his hair. “I wasn’t tired. I’d had a couple of really close calls—got grazed by a bullet, caught a little shrapnel from an IED—and I figured my luck couldn’t last. I was just plain scared.”

“Was it anything in particular that scared you?”

“Coming home without arms or legs. Coming home with a traumatic brain injury. Coming home burned beyond recognition. Not coming home at all.”

“That would do it,” Eve said, seeing the grisly humor in his recitation of the dangers he and every other soldier faced.

“The risk of getting wounded or killed is part of the deal,” Connor said in a harsh voice. “You fight anyway. You do your duty for the sake of your buddies.” He rubbed both hands over his face. “That day, I didn’t. And Paddy died. I heard his radio calls for help. I heard him scream when he got hit. I heard him dying.”

Eve didn’t know what to say. Was Connor to blame? Had he done something cowardly? Or had a soldier who’d seen too much war simply reached his limit? “You kept on fighting,” she pointed out. “You didn’t quit.”

“I felt too guilty to quit,” he said flatly. “I was alive and Paddy was dead.”

“You can’t blame yourself. He was a soldier. Things happen in war.”

“It should have been me!” Connor said in a tormented voice. “There’s no going back. There’s no undoing what’s done. My weakness—”

Before he could finish Eve was in Connor’s lap, her legs around his hips, her arms around his neck. She pressed her cheek against his and said, “You’re not weak! You were a good soldier. You have the medals to prove it.” She leaned back and looked into his eyes. “Have you ever thought that your friend must have seen what you were feeling, that he
wanted
to go in your stead? That Paddy went because he cared about you, and it was the best way—maybe the only way—he could help?”

She wasn’t expecting the kiss. It came along with a murmured “Thank you, Eve.”

Eve tried to speak again, but their lips caught and the kiss lingered. They were sitting in a pose so intimate she couldn’t help feeling his arousal, warm and hard, pulsing against the heart of her.

“Let me love you,” he whispered. She shivered as he moved her T-shirt aside and kissed her naked shoulder. His other hand slid up under the cloth to close possessively around her breast.

Eve’s whole body tingled with anticipation. All her high-minded vows to wait for true love flew out the window. Connor’s tongue slid into her mouth, tasting and teasing, and she returned the favor. All of her dreams were finally coming true and the reality was even better than the fantasy.

She could feel the muscle and sinew in his back and arms as she caressed him. Her hand brushed across a scar on his side, and she paused and traced it again.

He froze, then dropped his head against her shoulder. His hand let go of her breast and fell away to the bed.

Eve realized that the demons that plagued him had taken hold again. She held him closer, wanting to comfort, wanting to ease his pain.

“Was this where the bullet grazed you?” she asked as she traced a wound under his arm.

He shook his head. “That was shrapnel.” He took her hand and placed it on an indentation at his waist where flesh was missing. “The bullet tore a chunk out of me.”

She ran her hand over the spot and felt him flinch. “Does it still hurt?”

He smiled wryly. “You tickled me.”

“Oh. Where did the shrapnel hit?” She’d seen the wounds on his chest, but she wanted to feel them with her hands. It was the only way she could think of to share his pain and to ease it.

He unbuttoned a couple of buttons on his shirt, then pulled it off over his head. He sat unmoving, allowing her to examine the scars slanting across his chest, which gleamed white in the moonlight.

Eve traced several of them in turn, then reached for the one over his heart. “This one was close.”

“A quarter inch deeper and I’d be dead.”

“I’m glad you were spared. I’m so glad you came home to…” She was about to say “me” and substituted “us.” She leaned forward to kiss the scar and
felt him quiver when her lips touched his flesh. Eve draped her arms around Connor’s neck and leaned her head against his shoulder, loving the feeling of closeness to him that was more than physical. “Did you start Safe Haven in memory of your friend?”

Connor shook his head. “I started it for guys like me, who have to go back again and again to fight. Guys who need a respite from killing and death. Guys who need a break from the constant wariness of watching for the bullet or bomb that’s going to get you. Paddy’s sacrifice forced me to acknowledge that even a man like me, with medals for valor, has limits. That soldiers sometimes desperately need a place to rest, so they can fight again.”

Eve kissed his throat. “You’re doing a good thing, Connor.”

“I think what you’re doing for those mustangs is pretty special, too,” he replied. “What got you started?”

Eve took advantage of the opportunity to touch Connor, and brushed the stubborn lock of hair off his forehead. “A friend asked me to take photos of a herd of wild mustangs a week before they were scheduled to be removed from land where they’d been running wild all their lives. They were going to be rounded up and placed in corrals.”

“Why?” Connor asked.

Her body quivered with anger. “According to the Bureau of Land Management the grassland where the mustangs lived was ‘overpopulated’ for the available food and water.”

“And it wasn’t?”

“It wouldn’t have been if the wild mustangs weren’t sharing it with a herd of cattle.”

“Whose cattle?”

“Whoever leased the land from the government at rock-bottom prices.” She leaned back to look into his eyes. “Oh, Connor, they were so beautiful in the wild! So playful. So utterly fascinating to watch. The week I spent with that herd I took some of the best photographs I’ve ever taken in my life.

“My friend invited me back a month later to see the same herd—or rather, what was left of it—in pens waiting to be adopted and turned into saddle horses.” Eve sighed heavily. “They stood canted on three legs, uninterested in their surroundings—no need to graze, no need to be wary of predators—in a dirt corral with no available shade. The life had gone out of their eyes. I stayed for the sale of the mustangs that hadn’t been adopted the third time around, the ones sold to ‘kill buyers.’ The ones headed to slaughter.”

She shuddered and felt Connor’s arms tighten around her. “Then I made the mistake of following the kill buyer’s truck as it left. When I passed it on the highway, I saw a wild horse that was clearly in distress, the whites of his eyes showing, his mouth open wide to reveal bared teeth as he shrieked—that’s the word that comes to mind—shrieked in terror. Did he know what was coming? I don’t know. I raced to get in front of the truck, then slammed on my brakes so the driver had to screech to a halt to keep from hitting me. I bought every animal in that truck. Twenty-two mustangs.”

“Your herd.”

She nodded, her head moving against his chest. “It took every penny I had in savings, but it was
worth it. You’ve seen them running free, how proud they are, how majestic.”

“I’m surprised you’re letting the vets break them to saddle,” Connor said.

“If I were wealthy, if I had the land, I’d keep them free. But they won’t be unhappy as saddle horses, not if they get good homes. Horses and men have been partners for eons. Besides, there are a lot more mustangs out there that need to be rescued.”

“I guess you and I have at least one thing in common,” Connor said.

“What’s that?”

“We want to save the world.”

Eve laughed. “Not the world. Just a few wild horses.”

“And a few good men.”

Eve had never felt closer to another human being than she felt to Connor right then. The amazing thing was that there was nothing sexual about their closeness. Was this what marriage was like? Was this what their life would be like in the years to come?

Eve realized that although Connor had said “Let me love you,” it had been a request for the physical act. What they’d shared had been far more profound. He’d told her something he’d never shared with Molly. What did it mean?

“I’m sorry my nightmare woke you,” Connor said. “You must be whipped. Do you want to sleep here with me or go join the kids?”

Eve wanted very much to stay with Connor, but she was afraid they’d end up making love after all. They were going to be married tomorrow, and even if
she wasn’t going to have a fancy wedding, it was still possible to have a wedding night.

“I need to go back to my own bed,” she said. “I don’t want the kids to wake up and find me gone.”

Connor kissed her quickly on the lips and stood as he eased her out of his lap and onto her feet. Eve realized he wanted her out of the bedroom before he gave in to temptation. There was a certain look to his features, a heaviness of lids, a fullness of lips, that told her he was ready and willing to make love to her right then, right there.

Eve glanced at Connor once over her shoulder before she turned and ran down the hall. She was careful not to wake the kids when she slipped under the covers. But if she thought she could fall asleep, she was very much mistaken. Thoughts of her wedding night, and hopes and expectations for the future, kept her awake long past when she should have been soundly sleeping.