HER SECRET GUARDIAN

by Sally Tyler Hayes

  "You've been taking my breath away for years," he said.

  "And I want you with me. Every day of my life, and I don't care where we are. As long as we're together. I know how important your work is to you. I have enough time in to take early retirement, so wherever you want to go…"

  "Actually, I was thinking about staying here," she said. "Ever since you and I made national news, I've had people calling and offering me all sorts of things, things to do with my family in one way or another. A former colleague of my father's is an editor in New York. He wants me to write a book about my father and his work. About my family. Not just my recollections, but those of other people who knew him and worked with him, too. I've spent twenty years trying to deny they even existed, and this seems like a way to get to know them all over again. To say to everyone that they did exist, and they were wonderful people. To have other people know them the way I did. I thought I'd give it a try."

  "Right here in the States?" That seemed too good to be true.

  "In Washington most of the time. The IRC wants someone there and at times in New York at the UN. A spokesperson for the group. Someone to make people understand the needs the group's trying to address and maybe to get us some more money. Someone to deal with the public, too. To try to raise money and volunteers. Peter Baxter, my boss, thinks I'd be good at that. Or he thinks James Porter's daughter would be. That the name, coupled with my own experiences in the field, would be particularly effective. Peter says I can do more for him in a job like that than I ever could as one doctor."

  "And that's what you want?"

  "I want to stop denying who my family was. My father inspired people all over the world, and if I could do that with his memory… I don't want to be him. I don't think I have the energy or the courage, not after the last ten years in the field. But the whole organization of the IRC depends on money and volunteers. If I could give them that, it would be important. It would be more than I could do as a single doctor and a volunteer. It would mean some traveling, but—"

  "Whatever you want. I mean that."

  "I was thinking that it would also let me lead a fairly normal life. A plain, old, boring, ordinary life."

  "It won't be boring. I can promise you that. And I meant what I said a year and a half ago. I sleep a whole lot better at night knowing no one's shooting at you, Grace."

  "What about you?" she asked. "Are people going to be shooting at you? What exactly do you do?"

  He grinned. "I work at the Pentagon. As one of the people coordinating special ops for all branches of the military. The Seal teams. The Rangers. Naval intelligence. Those kinds of people. Planning things. Deciding who's going where to take care of what kind of problems."

  "From behind a desk? Because I'm going to worry about you, too."

  "I can count on one hand the number of times I've made it out from behind that desk in the last three years, other than training missions and the times I've gone to get you out of trouble. I promise you, Grace. I'm not going to take any chances," he said. "Not with you. Not with us."

  "Thank you."

  "I want you to be my wife," he said.

  "I want that, too."

  "I want that because I love you and I have to have you in my life, if I'm ever going to have a life."

  "Me, too."

  "And I need you to help me forgive myself. I—"

  "I'll tell you. Every day," she promised.

  It was something no one but her could have ever given him, a gift of understanding and healing he'd never expected to find on this earth.

  "You're an incredibly generous woman," he said.

  "I'm a scared one," she admitted. "Still. I woke up this morning and you were gone, and—"

  "I'm sorry."

  "No, I am. It's just going to take some time. To trust in all of this. To convince myself that it's going to last."

  "We have time," he said. "All you need."

  "I'm afraid I'm going to need a lot. And I want to make you happy, too. I want you to have everything, and when I think about that, I remember you and your nephew. He looks like you," she said. "I just ached, watching him with you and thinking that he made you so happy and that someday you'd have children, that some other woman would give them to you because I was too scared to take the risk. And I'm still scared, Sean. Children are so vulnerable."

  "I'll watch over them," he promised, closing his eyes and seeing Grace in miniature, long tangled curls and the sweetest smile on earth. "As closely as I've watched over you over the years."

  "Oh. Of course," she said, smiling a bit through her tears. "I might need to hear that. Every day of my life."

  He nodded, kissed her. He planned to do that, at least a dozen times. Every day of his life.

  He thought about what she needed, what he had to give her, and he found himself smiling at all the days to come, all the pleasures they would share, all the treasures.

  "You know," he said, "when you were little and all alone, I thought we might bring you into my family, in a totally different way. My father asked. I don't know if you remember that at all, and I guess we weren't the only ones to offer you a home, and you turned us down then. My family's incredibly strong, Grace, incredibly tight. We'd do anything for each other, and I couldn't imagine any better gift we could have given you back then than all of us. I thought if we could pull you inside of that circle, that somehow you'd be okay. But I guess that wasn't meant to be," he said. "This is the way. With you as my wife. You'll do that, Grace? You'll marry me?"

  Grace stared at him, looking so tall and so strong, with the bright sunlight streaming over the mountains and glinting off the new snow.

  He had his face to the sun, light pouring over him, and he was truly dazzling in the sunlight. She couldn't quite get used to the sight of him, every bit as handsome and compelling as she'd ever imagined in those long years they spent alone and in the dark.

  But not anymore. Never again.

  "Yes," she whispered.

  They stood there holding each other for a minute as the whole world seemed to come alive with glorious, pure light. He seemed to bask in it this morning, and she couldn't help but think that they were both through hiding. It was finally their time in the sun, to shine each bright, sparking new day after bright, sparkling new day.

  "I love you," he said. "I have for years. Nothing's ever changed that. Nothing ever will."

  "And I love you," she said.

  For everything he was, everything he'd always done for her.

  Because he'd always been her hero.

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