The Marine's Family Mission

“It can’t happen the way Topher and Mandy planned now,” he said, hearing the ragged edge that came into his own voice as guilt weighed him down. “The kids aren’t going to grow up on the farm—Mandy made her sister their guardian—”

“Emmy—that’s her name, right? Mandy’s sister? You rescued her in Afghanistan?”

“I dug her out of some rubble when a bomb hit a school she was in taking pictures of kids for the Red Cross,” he confirmed.

“You say that like it was no big deal, but you saved her life.”

He shrugged that off. “I was just doing my job,” he said as if he hadn’t been frantic to get her out from under that debris. Because even though it hadn’t been the same love at first sight for them as it had been for Topher and Mandy, before that school had been hit, he’d had a few laughs with Emmy, he’d liked her.

But that was water far, far under the bridge now.

“Anyway,” he continued, “she doesn’t know squat about farming. She lives and works in Denver, and her mother says that’s where she plans to take Trinity and Kit. But she wants to keep the farm in the family so the kids have the option of running it when they grow up, which means she’s figuring on leasing it. Only nobody’s going to take it on until she gets it cleaned up. And she needs an extra pair of hands and someone who knows their way around a farm to do that.”

“Are you well enough for farm work?” Kinsey was a nurse and very protective of his health right now.

“I’m fine. The knee is a little stiff, but I’m keeping up on the physical therapy exercises for it. The farm work will just help get me the rest of the way back in shape. I have to wait for my review with the Medical Evaluation Board anyway before I can get the go-ahead to get back to my unit. Might as well be productive in the meantime.”

His sister didn’t look convinced, but he knew his body. He knew how hard he’d worked in rehab not just on regaining the use and strength of his leg, but with weight training on the rest of his body so he’d be ready and able to return to duty.

“Plus there’s the kids,” he said then. “Mandy’s mom has been staying at the farm, but she told me she’s leaving today. Mandy’s dad has been holding down the fort at their travel agency, but her mom really needs to get back. The timing is rough. Before the hail hit, there was someone serious about leasing the farm—he was set to take over so Emmy could take the kids to Denver with her mother this weekend. But he backed out once he saw the hail damage.”

“So now they have to start all over trying to find someone else?”

“That’s what Karen said. She also said that Emmy is good with the kids but she was in over her head with the farm even before the storm, when other farmers were lending her a hand here and there—”

“But now other farmers have to regroup from the hail themselves,” Kinsey said.

“Right. So she has to clear the damage, replant the fields, take care of the animals and, with her mother leaving, do all the household stuff and take care of Trinity and Kit, too. Plus Karen said Kit is colicky—whatever that is—and he cries a lot at night... There’ll be some help from babysitters coming in during the day, but Emmy will be on her own for one sleepless night after another and—”

Declan sighed. “Bottom line—there’s a big need for help over there, for more than two hands. So I’m going to work with Emmy to do what I can.”

As long as he didn’t go over there today and find her standing on the front porch with a shotgun to run him off the property.

It had been her mother—not Emmy—who had told him what was going on. In fact, Emmy had looked like she wanted to strangle her mother when she’d come downstairs after her shower to discover just how candid Karen had been.

And when he’d offered his services, Emmy couldn’t have been more against it. She’d flatly and fervently refused his help.

The two women had gone back and forth for a while. But Karen had held her ground and eventually Emmy had conceded, even to the idea of him moving into the basement so they could trade off nights being up with Kit.

But the whole concession had been so obviously against Emmy’s will that he thought she might have only pretended to go along with the plan in order to end the argument, always intending to keep him away once her mother was out of the picture.

It was what Declan was half expecting.

More than half, really. He already knew how changeable she could be.

She’d been friendly when they’d first met in Afghanistan. But after digging her out of that bombed school, she wouldn’t even let him visit her in the hospital. Instead she’d sent a thank-you note with her sister. Her sister, who hadn’t been inside the school when it was blown up and had escaped injury.

After leaving the hospital, when Mandy and Topher were still keeping as constant company as they could, Emmy had had her sister tell him that she still wasn’t up for any visits.

And during Mandy and Topher’s lengthy parting at the airport? Emmy had hidden aboard the plane and Declan had been left hanging on the tarmac, not even allotted a goodbye.

Message received—that was what he’d thought. Apparently sharing a couple of laughs had meant more to him than it had to her and she didn’t want anything to do with him. Okay, fine.

But then there was the wedding.

She’d been weird toward him initially. She hadn’t done anything but raise her chin to say hello before taking off as if her tail was on fire. And she’d kept her distance from him through the rehearsal and rehearsal dinner, through the pre-wedding pictures.

Then at the reception she’d approached him. She’d said she wanted to thank him again for unburying her from the school debris. She’d even stuck around to chat and that friendly, fun side of her had come out again. To the extent that he’d started to think they might hit it off after all.

They’d spent almost the entire reception together, doing a lot of drinking, dancing, laughing. He’d had a great time with her. But she’d been pretty drunk by the end of it, so he’d walked her to her room. He hadn’t so much as kissed her because he hadn’t wanted it to seem as if he was taking any kind of advantage.

What he had done was make a date for breakfast the next morning.

But by breakfast she’d turned on him again—she’d stood him up, and when he’d happened to run into her in the hotel lobby and asked if she’d forgotten about it, she’d said, “Are you kidding? You really thought I’d have breakfast with you after last night?”

Then she’d turned her back on him, stormed off and not spoken to him the two other times their paths had crossed post-wedding.

So yeah, he wasn’t putting much stock in her agreement to his help now. She was a Jekyll and Hyde if ever he’d seen one.

But despite that, he did hope that she accepted his help.

Not because he had any desire at all to deal with her but because helping with the farm and the kids until a leaser could step in or until he passed his medical review and was deployed again was something he could do for Topher.

For Topher he would do anything. For Topher nothing would ever be enough...

“You don’t say her name like you like her,” Kinsey observed, bringing him out of his reverie.

“I don’t dislike her,” he said, though it didn’t sound altogether believable even to him. “I don’t know... For some reason things just don’t gel between us.”

“I’ve heard that she’s really pretty, though. I met Greg Kravitz in town and he asked if I knew her—he sounded interested.”

“Kravitz? He’s still here?” Declan said through nearly clenched teeth.

“Yeah, he has a landscaping business—mostly I think he mows lawns, shovels snow in the winter... I forgot, you guys really hated each other, didn’t you? You were like archenemies.”

Kinsey had no idea...

“He’s a jerk” was all Declan said. He’d always kept things to himself when it had come to Kravitz. And maybe his own long and ugly history with him was the reason that it rubbed him so wrong to think of Kravitz being interested in Emmy Tate. But it did. It rubbed him really, really wrong...

“I wouldn’t wish Kravitz on anyone,” he grumbled.

“But especially not on Emmy Tate?” his sister probed.

Declan sighed and shook his head. “You know what happens when everybody in your family finds someone and you’re single? They all think they have to pair you up with someone. But let’s just put any idea of me and Emmy Tate to rest once and for all, huh? I don’t know what makes her tick, but I do know that it doesn’t work for me.”

Sure, she was great-looking, there was no doubt about that—even when she was as dirty as a farmhand after a day’s hard work yesterday he’d still seen that. And then she’d cleaned up and...

Okay, yeah, great-looking.

She had the creamiest skin he’d ever seen and a face like some kind of enticing girl next door, with gorgeous, big, doe-brown eyes, a straight little nose, kissably full lips that he’d never had the chance to kiss and dimples—she had the damn sexiest dimples...

Plus she had smooth, shiny reddish-brown hair that turned toward her chin on the bottom, with a long wisp of bangs that sometimes fell like a see-through silk scarf over one eye in a way that was shy and coy and seductive all at once.

And her body?

Yeah, that was great, too. Trim and tight with just enough oomph in all the right places.

So sure, he’d been interested when he’d come across what had seemed like a little breath of fresh air from home in Afghanistan.

And yeah, she’d been intriguing enough for him to drop his guard again with her when she’d warmed up at the wedding reception.

But those cold shoulders she’d thrown his way the rest of the time—including yesterday? That definitely didn’t work for him.

“I’m here because we lost Topher and there are things that have to be taken care of on his behalf,” he said firmly then. “And from here the only place I’m headed for is where I belong—back to the marines and my unit. So don’t go hoping for some kind of romance with anyone while I’m here.”

“It might do you some good,” his sister suggested with a different tone that he also recognized—the worried-about-him-and-his-state-of-mind-since-Topher’s-death look and sound that he’d met from Kinsey and Conor and Liam.

“I’m good enough,” he proclaimed, even if he was finding it hard to be the old Declan. “So all you happy lovebirds can roost here and I’ll go down the road and hope I can do some good there. But don’t be putting some other kind of spin on it because it isn’t gonna happen.”

“Declan...” his sister said, sounding more worried still.

“I’m good, Kinsey,” he cut her off, his tone more reprimand than anything. He knew that wasn’t going to reassure her, but it was still the best he could manage.

And feeling the weight of his sister’s concern heaped on top of what he’d been carrying around since Topher’s death—over Topher’s death—had him thinking that weathering the ups and downs of Topher’s sister-in-law was preferable to hanging around here and weathering concern from all three siblings.

At least he hoped it would be.

But with Emmy Tate?

He couldn’t be sure of anything.

* * *

“The guy whose gorgeous face gave you nightmares, the guy who turned out to be a player, will be moving in with you?” Carla Figarello demanded.

“I don’t know...” Emmy said uncertainly. “It’s my mother’s idea... A really bad one...”

Saturday had been a loss in terms of getting anything done beyond the usual morning chores—water and feed the animals, collect the eggs, milk the cow and the cantankerous goats that gave her fits. Then a babysitter had come in to stay with Trinity and Kit so she could drive her mother to the Billings airport.

The babysitter had had to leave when she got back, so she’d given Trinity lunch, fed the baby and put them both down for naps. And now, while the kids slept and she couldn’t be out of earshot, she was indulging herself with a much-needed phone call to Carla—her best friend since kindergarten, her confidante, the only person she’d talked to about what had begun to happen to her in the aftermath of Afghanistan.

“It’s not a bad idea when you desperately need help and he’s someone who can give it,” Carla hedged. “But it sounds like your mother steamrolled you into agreeing to let the guy move into the basement, and what I want to know is if you’re going to be able to handle being with him.”

Emmy didn’t know.

Since the wedding—and until the hailstorm—she’d been sure she was in control of the emotional backlash from the school collapse. Yes, some things had changed for her, but she’d found ways to manage her anxiety pretty well. A lot of people didn’t like small spaces, so she wasn’t the only one to avoid them, and who wouldn’t be afraid of the idea of being underneath something that might fall on them—like the broken tree limbs in the orchard?

For the most part, though, she’d considered herself perfectly fine until seeing the devastation of the hail damage had brought the fear back. Not a lot of it—she took heart in that. But now seeing Declan Madison again did make her worry that more might break through.

“I didn’t have a panic attack at the first sight of him,” she said, putting as much optimism into her voice as she could.

Panic attacks when she saw him didn’t make any sense to her, but soon after her rescue from the rubble, her reaction to Declan Madison had morphed from deep gratitude into the first of that emotional turmoil.

When the bomb had hit the school in Afghanistan, she’d been alone in a supply closet, packing her cameras and equipment. The explosion had flung her, knocking her unconscious.

When she’d come to—before she had any conception of what had happened or where she was—all she’d known was that both of her feet were trapped under a lot of weight. She’d worked to get them out, and when she had, bricks and mortar had crumbled with the movement, enclosing her even more.

She’d been left with her knees to her chest, in a space about the size of a barrel. There was no room to move—when she tried, more debris fell on her.

It had been pitch-black except for a speck of light that she’d been able to see above her, and that had given her hope that she’d somehow ended up near to the outside.

She’d shouted for help, not knowing if there was aid available or if she’d be rescued by friend or foe.

For four hours she’d been entombed, and all she’d known was that periodically her surroundings would shift, crumble and fall in, closing the space around her even more. She’d been terrified that at any moment the whole thing would collapse on top of her.

Then her shouts brought a voice from outside and the sounds of digging in to reach her.

When that dot of light had finally grown bigger, the first thing she’d seen had been Declan Madison’s face.

Relief had flooded her, followed by more stress as he tried not to cause a cave-in while working at opening a space to pull her through.

He’d been diligent, assuring her that everything was going to be okay, that he’d get her out.

He’d barely made a two-foot gap in the wreckage when something overhead shifted more drastically. Acting quickly, he’d shoved his upper half in to grab her under the arms and had yanked her free just as a collapse did occur, dragging her out of harm’s way a split second before she would have been crushed.

As he’d helped load her onto a gurney, then into an ambulance, she remembered thanking him—again and again and again—before she was rushed to a hospital. It was only later, after she’d been treated, after she’d been diagnosed with a concussion and had been given a bed so she could be watched overnight, that her appreciation had been eclipsed by something new and terrifying.

Declan had shown up at the hospital, and at first she’d only heard his voice asking where she was. That alone had caused uneasiness in her, but when she’d glanced in his direction and had actually seen him, the simple sight of that face had mentally thrown her back into the dark, dusty cranny amid the crumbling rubble.

And rather than associating Declan Madison with the relief of being freed, instead, in her mind, he instantly became a fast ride right back into the heart of her terror.

Mandy—who had been outside the school with Topher and Declan and hadn’t been hurt—had been with her in the hospital, at her bedside. Emmy hadn’t wanted her sister to know what she was feeling. In fact, she’d been ashamed of it—children and teachers had died in the attack, others had been scarred or maimed for life, there were little kids in beds around her stoically accepting their irreversibly changed lives, while she’d suffered nothing but a headache and a few cuts and bruises. Yet she was ready to crawl out of her skin with one look at the very person who had saved her. Thankfulness should have been the only thing she’d felt, and instead she was fighting terror.

Hiding it, she’d told her sister that she was tired and needed to rest. She’d asked Mandy to leave and take Declan with her.

So Mandy had left without knowing about that first distress, and Emmy had kept every other incident of it to herself ever since—except for telling Carla.

“So that’s stuck—no panic attacks when you saw him at the wedding and none yesterday either,” her friend said.

The wedding had been six months after the bombing. By then Emmy had reset her career. She’d talked poor Carla’s ear off about her nightmares, her problem with small spaces, the flashbacks and anxiety, and she’d been doing much better. But she hadn’t been sure what would happen if she had to see Declan Madison’s face again.

Then she had. And while it had raised some memories, it hadn’t made her hyperventilate, it hadn’t caused all-out panic. In fact, worrying about it had been worse than anything that had happened when she had actually seen him.

Partly in order to celebrate that, and partly to control the worry that the panic still might hit, she’d had a whole lot to drink—beginning with champagne while the wedding party dressed and continuing at the reception. The more she’d had to drink, the calmer she’d felt, until she’d found the courage to approach Declan, to thank him again the way she knew she should have before leaving Afghanistan.

“No, no panic attacks yesterday either,” Emmy confirmed.

“No symptoms of the PTSD at all?”

“I hate when you call it that. That isn’t what it is. I’ve taken pictures of the kinds of things that cause PTSD—they’re big and devastating and life changing, they aren’t just a few hours being scared until somebody finds them and everything is okay again.”

“I know that’s how you see it, but—”

“That’s how it is,” she insisted, refusing to accept her friend’s opinion. “What I have is just fallout from a bad experience, and it hardly ever even happens anymore.”

“Okay—it hardly ever happens anymore, you’re over the Afghanistan thing and seeing Declan Madison at the wedding and again yesterday didn’t cause anything bad,” Carla repeated as if she was temporarily conceding to Emmy’s arguments. “But what about what did happen at the wedding? Do you want to be under the same roof with a guy who seemed interested in you and then spent the night with somebody else right next door to you?”

“That’s definitely the other half of why I was hoping I might not ever have to see him again. But I guess going into this knowing I’m not his type is something,” she said facetiously.

“So spending time with him now won’t send you out into the arms of another Bryce?” Carla pressed.

Emmy laughed humorlessly. “There definitely won’t be another Bryce. Ever. And as for this guy? I’m a whole lot tougher and smarter than I was four years ago at the wedding. He will not get to me.”

Not even with those incredibly blue eyes or that face that could have been carved by the gods or that hella-hot body.

Besides, this wasn’t a Las Vegas wedding, with wine flowing and inhibitions discarded. Now there was Topher’s death. Mandy’s death. Now there was the farm and hail damage. Now there were two kids she was suddenly a single parent to, and she had so much to wade through, to get used to. She was in no mood for anything but getting some control and order back into her life.

And unless she was mistaken, the changes she’d seen in Declan Madison made her think that he wasn’t in any mood for anything either.

They’d just do what needed to be done and then move on in separate directions.

“I know we have some weird history—” she said then.

“I’d say,” Carla agreed. “All good and cheery in Afghanistan at first, then really, really not good. Then sort of good again for a while at the wedding, until you were thinking one thing was going on between the two of you and—”

“It wasn’t. Like with Bryce...” she added derisively. “But it’s all in the past and this is now,” Emmy concluded.

“And you think you can just do the now without any of the past poking in?”

Emmy sighed and wished she was in any other position. But she wasn’t. “I hope so,” she answered her friend honestly. “I know I can’t do everything here on my own.”

“Then I guess you kind of have to take him up on his offer of help,” Carla said. “At least the faster you can get the hail damage cleaned up, the faster I can hopefully find you a new leaser and the faster you can come home.”

“Oh, that would be good...” Emmy said earnestly.

“So that settles it.”

“Yeah,” Emmy agreed.

But for some reason she still didn’t feel at all settled when she thought about letting Declan Madison anywhere near her.

And not only because there was a bit of nervousness that being anywhere near him might bring to the surface more of that bombing backlash.

There was also no denying that his looks were potent.

Or that, when he tried, he could disarm her with his heady charm.

Or that, at the wedding, he’d somehow managed to get her to let down her defenses when she shouldn’t have.

Only for her to end up feeling like a fool...

* * *

“Tell Declan good-night,” Emmy encouraged her niece as she tucked the three-year-old into bed.

Emmy had suggested that Trinity let Declan read the bedtime books she’d chosen. But Trinity had denied him that privilege. She’d granted him only permission to listen to Emmy read them.

Dressed in combat boots, a camouflage-print shirt and pants today, he’d stood in the doorway of Trinity’s room to do that and was still leaning against the jamb.

“Night, Decan,” the little girl said in answer to her aunt’s prompting.

“Night, Trinity. Sleep tight. I’ll see you tomorrow,” he responded.

“Decan’ll be here too-morrow?” Trinity asked Emmy.

“He will. He’s staying with us. In the basement,” she explained, trying not to sound negative despite her own lack of enthusiasm for it.

“Okay,” Trinity said, accepting it far more easily than her aunt.

Trinity’s honey-colored hair was cut into an easy-to-care-for bob just long enough to cover her ears, with bangs that came to her eyebrows. Emmy smoothed them away from the child’s forehead so she could kiss it.

“Goodnight, my sweet-thing,” she whispered.

“Night, my Em,” Trinity said in a sleepy voice before tugging her stuffed monkey to her side and closing her big brown eyes.

Emmy gave her a second kiss, then turned off the bedside lamp and headed for the doorway.

Since Declan had arrived just after dinner tonight, they’d had the kids as a buffer between them. Trinity had been standoffish toward him the day before—she hadn’t seen him for over a year and didn’t remember him despite her grandmother pointing him out in the photograph.

It had taken some time for the little girl to warm up to him tonight, but eventually she’d stopped hugging Emmy’s leg and glaring at him, tentatively letting him in.