by Nora Roberts
“Grace, you’re hurt and you’re in shock. An ambulance is on the way.”
“I don’t need an ambulance.”
“Don’t tell me what the hell you need.” Fury swarmed through him, buzzed in his head like a nest of mad hornets. “I said the damn statement can wait. You’re shaking. For God’s sake, sit down.”
When he reached out to take her arm, she jerked back, her chin snapping up, her shoulders hunching. “Don’t touch me. Just…don’t.” If he touched her, she might break. If she broke she would weep. And weeping, she would beg.
The words were a knife in the gut, the deep and desperate blue of her eyes a blow to the face. Because he felt his fingers tremble, he stuffed them into his pockets, took a step back. “All right. Sit down. Please.”
Had he thought she wasn’t fragile? She looked as if she would shatter into pieces with one hard thought. She was sheet pale, her eyes enormous. Blood and bruises marked her face.
And there was nothing he could do. Nothing she would let him do.
He heard the distant wail of sirens, and footsteps from behind him. Cade, his face grim, walked to Grace, tucked a blanket he’d brought from the house over her shoulders.
Seth watched as she turned into him, how her body seemed to go fluid and flow into the arms Cade offered her. He heard the fractured sob even as she muffled it against Cade’s shoulder.
“Get her out of here.” His fingers burned to reach out, stroke her hair, to take something away with him. “Get her the hell out of here.”
He walked back into the house to do what needed to be done.
The birds sang their morning song as Grace stepped out into her garden. The woods were quiet and green. And safe. She’d needed to come here, to her country escape. To come alone. To be alone.
Bailey and M.J. had understood. In a few days, she thought, she would go into town, call, see if they’d like to come up, bring Jack and Cade. She would need to see them soon. But she couldn’t bear to go back yet. Not yet.
She could still hear the shots, the quick jolt of them shuddering through her as Jack had taken her outside. She’d known it was DeVane and not Seth who had met the bullet. She’d simply known.
She hadn’t seen Seth again that night. It had been easy to avoid him in the confusion that followed. She’d answered all the questions the local police had asked, made statements to the government officials. She’d stood up to it, then quietly demanded that Cade or Jack take her to Salvini, take her to Bailey and M.J.
And the Three Stars.
Stepping down onto her blooming terraces, she brought it back into her head, and her heart. The three of them standing in the near dark of a near-empty room, she with her torn and bloody dress.
Each of them had taken a point of the triangle, had felt the sing of power, seen the flicker of impossible light. And had known it was done.
“It’s as if we’ve done this before,” Bailey had murmured. “But it wasn’t enough then. It was lost, and so were we.”
“It’s enough now.” M.J. had looked up, met each of their eyes in turn. “Like a cycle, complete. A chain, with the links forged. It’s weird, but it’s right.”
“A museum instead of a temple this time.” Regret and relief had mixed within Grace as they set the Stars down again. “A promise kept, and, I suppose, destinies fulfilled.”
She’d turned to both of them, embraced them. Another triangle. “I’ve always loved you both, needed you both. Can we go somewhere? The three of us.” The tears had come then, flooding. “I need to talk.”
She’d told them everything, poured out heart and soul, hurt and terror, until she was empty. And she supposed, because it was them, she’d healed a little.
Now she would heal on her own.
She could do it here, Grace knew, and, closing her eyes, she just breathed. Then, because it always soothed, she set down her gardening basket, and began to tend her blooms.
She heard the car coming, the rumble of wheels on gravel, and her brow creased in mild irritation. Her neighbors were few and far between and rarely intruded. She wanted no company but her plants, and she stood, her flowers flowing at her feet, determined to politely and firmly send the visitor away again.
Her heart kicked once, hard, when she saw that the car was Seth’s. She watched in silence as it stopped in the middle of her lane and he got out and started toward her.
She looked like something out of a misty legend herself, he thought. Her hair blowing in the breeze, the long, loose skirt of her dress fluttering, and flowers in a sea around her. His nerves jangled.
And his stomach clutched when he saw the bruise marring her cheek.
“You’re a long way from home, Seth.” She spoke without expression as he stopped two steps beneath her.
“You’re a hard woman to find, Grace.”
“That’s the way I prefer it. I don’t care for company here.”
“Obviously.” Both to give himself time to settle and because he was curious, he scanned the land, the house perched on the hill, the deep secrets of the woods. “It’s a beautiful spot.”
“Yes.”
“Remote.” His gaze shifted back to hers so quickly, so intensely, he nearly made her jolt. “Peaceful. You’ve earned some peace.”
“That’s why I’m here.” She lifted a brow. “And why are you here?”
“I needed to talk to you. Grace—”
“I intended to see you when I came back,” she said quickly. “We didn’t talk much that night. I suppose I was more shaken up than I realized. I never even thanked you.”
It was worse, he realized, that cool, polite voice was worse than a shouted curse. “You don’t have anything to thank me for.”
“You saved my life and, I believe, the lives of the people I love. I know you broke rules, even the law, to find me, to get me away from him. I’m grateful.”
The palms of his hands went clammy. She was making him see it again, feel it again. All that rage and terror. “I’d have done anything to get you away from him.”
“Yes, I think I know that.” She had to look away. It hurt too much to look into his eyes. She’d promised herself, sworn to herself she wouldn’t be hurt again. “And I wonder if any of us had a choice in what happened over that short, intense period of time. Or,” she added with a ghost of a smile, “if you choose to believe what happened, over centuries. I hope you haven’t—that your career won’t suffer because of what you did for me.”
His eyes went dark, flat. “The job’s secure, Grace.”
“I’m glad.” He had to leave, she thought. He had to leave now, before she crumbled. “I still intend to write a letter to your superiors. And you might know I have an uncle in the Senate. I wouldn’t be surprised, when the smoke clears, if you got a promotion out of it.”
His throat was raw. He couldn’t clear it. “Look at me, damn it.” When her gaze shot back to his face, he curled his hands into fists to keep from touching her. “Do you think that matters?”
“Yes, I do. It matters, Seth, certainly to me. But for now, I’m taking a few days, so if you’ll excuse me, I want to get to my gardening before the heat of the day.”
“Do you think this ends it?”
She leaned over, took up her clippers and snipped off wilted blooms. They faded all too quickly, she thought. And that left an ache in the heart. “I think you already ended it.”
“Don’t turn away from me.” He took her arm, hauled her toward him, as panic and fury spiraled through him. “You can’t just turn away. I can’t—” He broke off, his hand lifting to lie on the bruise on her cheek. “Oh, God, Grace. He hurt you.”
“It’s nothing.” She stepped back quickly, nearly flinching, and his hand fell heavily to his side. “Bruises fade. And he’s gone. You saw to that. He’s gone, and it’s over. The Three Stars are where they belong, and everything’s back in its place. Everything’s as it was meant to be.”
“Is it?” He didn’t step to her, couldn’t bear to see her shr
ink back from him again. “I hurt you, and you won’t forgive me for it.”
“Not entirely,” she agreed, fighting to keep it light. “But saving my life goes a long way to—”
“Stop it,” he said in a voice both ragged and quiet. “Just stop it.” Undone, he whirled away, pacing, nearly trampling her bedding plants. He hadn’t known he could suffer like this—the ice in the belly, the heat in the brain.
He spoke, looking out into her woods, into shadows and cool green shade. “Do you know what it did to me, knowing he had you? Knowing it. Hearing your voice on the phone, the fear in it?”
“I don’t want to think about it. I don’t want to think about any of that.”
“I can’t do anything but think of it. And see you—every time I close my eyes, I see you the way you stood there in that hallway, blood on your dress, marks on your skin. Not knowing—not knowing what he’d done to you. And remembering—half remembering some other time when I couldn’t stop him.”
“It’s over,” she said again, because her legs were turning to water. “Leave it alone.”
“You might have gotten away without me,” he continued. “You took out a guard twice your size. You might have pulled it off without any help from me. You might not have needed me at all. And I realized that was part of my problem all along. Believing, being certain, I needed you so much more than you could possibly need me. Being afraid of that. Stupid to be afraid of that,” he said as he came up the steps again. “Once you understand real fear, the fear of knowing you could lose the most important thing in your life in one single heartbeat, nothing else can touch you.”
He gathered her to him, too desperate to heed her resistance. And, with a shuddering gulp of air, buried his face in her hair. “Don’t push me away, don’t send me away.”
“This isn’t any good.” It hurt to be held by him, yet she wished she could go on being held just like this, with the sun warm on her skin and his face pressed into her hair.
“I need you. I need you,” he repeated, and turned his urgent mouth to hers.
The hammer blow of emotion struck and she buckled. It swirled from one of them to the other in an unbridled storm, left her heart shaken and weak. She closed her eyes, slid her arms around him. Need would be enough, she promised herself. She would make it enough for both of them. There was too much inside her that she ached to give for her to turn him away.
“I won’t send you away.” Her hands stroked over his back, soothed the tension. “I’m glad you’re here. I want you here.” She drew back, brought his hand to her cheek. “Come inside, Seth. Come to bed.”
His fingers tightened on hers. Then gently lifted her head up. It made him ache to realize she believed there was only that he wanted from her. That he’d let her think it.
“Grace, I didn’t come here to take you to bed. I didn’t come here to start where we left off.”
Why had he been so resistant to seeing what was in her eyes? he wondered. Why had he refused to believe what was so blatantly real, so generously offered to him.
“I came here to beg. The third Star is generosity,” he said, almost to himself. “You didn’t make me beg. I didn’t come here for sex, Grace. Or for gratitude.”
Confused, she shook her head. “What do you want, Seth? Why did you come?”
He wasn’t sure he’d fully realized why until just now. “To hear you tell me what you want. What you need.”
“Peace.” She gestured. “I have that here. Friendship. I have that, too.”
“And that’s it? That’s enough?”
“It’s been enough all my life.”
He caught her face in his hands before she could step away. “If you could have more? What do you want, Grace?”
“Wanting what you can’t have only makes you unhappy.”
“Tell me.” He kept his eyes focussed on hers. “Straight out, for once. Just say what you want.”
“Family. Children. I want children and a man who loves me—who wants to make that family with me.” Her lips curved slowly, but the smile didn’t reach her eyes. “Surprised I’d want to spoil my figure? Spend a few years of my life changing diapers?”
“No.” He slid his hands down to her shoulders, firming his grip. She was poised to move, he noted. To run. “No, I’m not surprised.”
“Really? Well.” She moved her shoulders as if to shrug off the weight of his touch. “If you’re going to stay, let’s go inside. I’m thirsty.”
“Grace, I love you.” He watched her smile slide away from her face, felt her body go absolutely still.
“What? What did you say to me?”
“I love you.” Saying it, he realized, was power. True power. “I fell in love with you before I’d seen you. Fell in love with an image, a memory, a wish. I can’t be sure which it is, or if it was all of them. I don’t know if it was fate, or choice, or luck. But it was so fast, so hard, so deep, I wouldn’t let myself believe, and I wouldn’t let myself trust. And I turned you away because you let yourself do both. I came here to tell you that.” His hands slid down her arms and clasped hers.
“Grace, I’m asking you to believe in us again, to trust in us again. And to marry me.”
“You—” She had to take a step back, had to press a hand to her heart. “You want to marry me.”
“I’m asking you to come back with me today. I know it’s old-fashioned, but I want you to meet my family.”
The pressure in her chest all but burst her heart. “You want me to meet your family.”
“I want them to meet the woman I love, the woman I want to have a life with. The life I’ve been waiting to start—waiting for her to start.” He brought her hand to his cheek, held it there while his eyes looked deep into hers. “The woman I want to make children with.”
“Oh.” The weight on her chest released in a flood, poured out of her…until her heart was in her swimming eyes.
“Don’t cry.” It seemed he would beg after all. “Grace, please, don’t. Don’t tell me I left it too late.” Awkwardly he brushed at her tears with his thumbs. “Don’t tell me I ruined it.”
“I love you so much.” She closed her fingers around his wrists, watched the emotion leap into his eyes. “I’ve been so unhappy waiting for you. I was so sure I’d missed you. Again. Somehow.”
“Not this time.” He kept his hands on her face, kissed her gently. “Not ever again.”
“No, not ever again,” she murmured against his lips.
“Say yes,” he asked her. “I want to hear you say yes.”
“Yes. To everything.”
She held him close in the flower-scented morning where the stars slept behind the sky. And felt the last link of an endless chain fall into place.
“Seth.”
He kept his eyes shut, his cheek on her hair. And his smile bloomed slow and easy. “Grace.”
“We’re where we’re supposed to be. Can you feel it?” She drew a deep breath. “All of us are where we belong now.”
She lifted her face, found his mouth waiting. “And now,” he said quietly, “it begins.”
Don’t miss the rest of Nora Roberts’s beloved Stars of Mithra trilogy, now available wherever ebooks are sold!
The Stars of Mithra
Hidden Star
Captive Star
Secret Star
And look for The MacKade Brothers series, also now available in ebook!
The Return of Rafe MacKade
The Pride of Jared MacKade
The Heart of Devin MacKade
The Fall of Shane MacKade
ISBN: 978-1-4592-1315-9
Secret Star
Copyright © 1998 by Nora Roberts
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The publisher acknowledges the copyright holders of the individual works as follows:
Captive Star
Copyright © 1997 by Nora Roberts
Hidden Star
Copyright © 1997 by Nora Roberts
Secret Star
Copyright © 1998 by Nora Roberts
All rights reserved. Except for use in any review, the reproduction or utilization of this work in whole or in part in any form by any electronic, mechanical or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including xerography, photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, is forbidden without the written permission of the publisher, Harlequin Enterprises Limited, 225 Duncan Mill Road, Don Mills, Ontario, Canada M3B 3K9.
All characters in this book have no existence outside the imagination of the author and have no relation whatsoever to anyone bearing the same name or names. They are not even distantly inspired by any individual known or unknown to the author, and all incidents are pure invention.