by Lydia Rowan
“Yeah. You’d think having been all over the world, I’d have found something better.”
“Nothing is better than home,” she said.
She meant it too, mostly. This was one of two places in the world where she never felt afraid, knew she could come back to, where she knew she would be safe. The other was with Damien. Her heart tugged as she remembered how badly she’d left things. Again.
“Yeah,” Daniel said.
“What have you been up to?” Lacey asked, glancing over at him.
“You know. The usual,” Daniel said.
Lacey laughed. “Yeah. The usual,” she said, smiling at him indulgently. For him, the usual meant trotting across the globe, getting into trouble she couldn’t begin to imagine—and breaking plenty of hearts along the way.
He smiled at her. “I should be asking you that question. I wouldn’t think a blog about sustainable living would get the attention of the kind of folks you have. Want to explain what’s going on, Lacey?”
Lacey sighed. “I wish I knew,” she said.
Daniel kept his easy expression, still swaying on the swing, but Lacey wasn’t fooled. He wouldn’t let this go. “Do better than that,” he said.
“God, you sound like him,” Lacey said, recalling how Damien had pressed her in much the same way, and how she hadn’t had any answers for Damien either.
“Him?” Daniel replied, though he knew full well who she was talking about.
“Damien,” Lacey said flatly.
“Damien Silver?”
“Yes. Damien Silver,” she said, not bothering to look at him, knowing she’d see the smirk on his face.
“Huh. I thought Damien was out of the picture,” he said.
“He put himself back in,” Lacey said, keeping the emotion out of her voice, though she knew Daniel had all of the gory details of what had happened between her and Damien.
“Seems like a pretty sudden change of heart,” Daniel said. “Wonder why?”
Lacey looked at him and couldn’t stop herself from smiling at his easygoing expression, one that could lull the unwary into thinking he wasn’t as sharp as Lacey knew he was.
“You know I’m not buying this act, right?” she said.
“What act?” he said, blinking innocently.
“That one,” she replied, laughing. “Cade probably had you on the phone less than ten seconds after I called him.”
Daniel shrugged. “We may have talked. I wanted to hear from you, though.”
“I had some…visitors at my house. Damien showed up and got me out before I had to deal with them,” she said.
“And why did you have those visitors?” Daniel asked.
Lacey looked at him, searching his face. “I have no idea. Damien says it’s Admiral Tremaine, so I’ll take his word for it,” she said.
“You don’t think it could be anything else?” he said.
Lacey exhaled hard, having racked her own brain with the question. “No. You know I wouldn’t do anything that might put me in danger.”
His expression softened. “I know,” he said.
“Cade didn’t tell you any of this?” she asked.
Daniel shrugged. “He told me the basics. That’s why I’m here. Tremaine will have to go through me to get to you or anyone else on this ranch,” he said.
Lacey believed him, knew that her brothers would do anything for her as she would them. She just didn’t want it to come to that.
“So you saw Silver, huh?” he said.
She nodded, but didn’t say anything else, not sure what to, her mind too wrung out to say more.
“How was it?” he asked.
She shrugged. “Interesting,” she finally settled on. It was the truth, even if it didn’t begin to get at the complexity of those hours with Damien.
“I guess. What did you discuss?” he asked.
Warning bells went off in Lacey’s head, and she narrowed her eyes at Daniel. This wasn’t some casual conversation. He was seeking something, and Lacey knew exactly what.
“You too?” she said.
“Me too what?” he asked innocently.
If she wasn’t so damn frustrated, she would laugh. Even as he tried to get at her secrets, Daniel maintained his easy, casual facade, and were this an ordinary day, he’d circle the topic he wanted to discuss until Lacey finally caved and talked about whatever he wanted to.
She didn’t have the energy today.
“Look, I’m very tired. It’s been a long couple of days, so if you have something on your mind, then you need to tell me,” Lacey said.
Daniel put down his beer bottle and stopped swinging.
This was serious.
“I’m just saying,” he said, eyes directly on hers, “maybe Cade has a point.”
“So he got to you,” she said, not surprised but her mood darkening. She’d known Cade would talk to Daniel, but she hadn’t prepared herself for Daniel to take Cade’s side or push the issue.
Daniel’s eyes flashed. “You know I’m not a follower. I make my own path, but Cade’s right. Damien deserves—”
Lacey lifted her hand to cut him off. “I know. But the situation is—”
“Not going to change,” he said sternly.
“You think I wanted it to turn out this way?” she said, voice rising a pitch with her rising emotion. And with the guilt that, at this moment, she chose to ignore.
“Whether you wanted it or not, the situation is what it is. The question is, what are you going to do about it?” he asked, as animated as Daniel got.
She didn’t know the answer, but she did know she had a lot of things to make right.
“I’ll tell you what I told Cade.”
He nodded.
“I will make this right,” she said. That was one thing she knew for sure. She’d mend fences with Damien, try her hardest to, something she knew would take everything she had. Damien wasn’t the same as he’d been before, so she knew doing so would not be easy.
“I have no doubt,” Daniel said, and she believed him.
If nothing else, she always had the faith of her family, even when she didn’t deserve it, especially when she didn’t deserve it.
She looked around at the quiet porch, the usual laughter less because Roy and LaTonya had gone out for dinner.
“Where’s Cade?”
Daniel looked away.
“Daniel…” she said, her suspicion rising.
He reached for his beer bottle and took another swig, and Lacey stood.
Something was awry here.
“Where?” she asked.
Daniel took yet another swig, and Lacey did everything she could to keep from knocking the bottle out of his hand.
Her attention was pulled from him when she saw the speck of headlights on the horizon. Her stomach sank; she thought it would fall all the way through the ground, right to the center of the earth.
She looked at Daniel. “Please tell me…”
He said nothing.
Not a minute later, the driver pulled to a stop in front of the front porch, where Lacey still stood. She hadn’t moved an inch since she spied the headlights. After the vehicle came was turned off, the driver’s-side door opened, and as she expected, her brother Cade got out.
When the passenger-side door opened, as she expected, Damien Silver got out.
In that moment, Lacey knew with shattering certainty her entire life was about to change forever.
12
Damien hadn’t known what kind of welcome to expect. In fact, he hadn’t known what to expect at all.
When Lucian had told him that Cade McManus had reached out, Damien had been confused, leery, but more than a little excited.
Lacey had told him about Cade and Daniel, talked about how they had grown up in the same foster home with some others, but she’d never really opened up about her past or the people in her life.
Which is why he had been in such a bad position.
He loved Lacey with all his heart, but it was only now, when
she needed his help and wouldn’t take it, that he realized how little he actually knew about her.
Which made her brother reaching out to Lucian that much stranger.
The military community was small, the mercenary community smaller still, so Lucian hadn’t been hard to find. But when Cade had called and told Damien to meet him at a Nevada airport, Damien had been on edge.
Lucian too.
His brother had offered to drop everything and fly with him, but Damien had turned him down.
Pride, but Damien had to do this alone.
Lacey was his to take care of, and he needed to prove to himself he could.
He was somewhat comforted by the fact that she was with family.
Lucian had done a search on Cade, found that he had been an Army Ranger, as were the other man that Lacey claimed as her brother. So she was, at the very least, in good hands.
The flight on the Silver Industries jet from Seattle to Nevada had been quick, but Damien had wished for it to be longer.
Of all the things he’d never been able to reconcile or accept, one of the greatest losses of all had been knowing that Lacey didn’t trust him. It still gutted him.
If he knew his stubborn woman, she wouldn’t hesitate to do so again.
But Damien wouldn’t hide, couldn’t. Not anymore.
He was going to make Lacey look him in the face, make her send him away, and maybe when she finally finished stomping the heart she had already broken to pieces, he could forget about her and get back to the business of dying.
Now, though, as he stood in front of the SUV, bright headlights illuminating the large front porch, he didn’t know what he would encounter.
The homestead was large but still modest, the desert landscape foreboding and beautiful.
Damien had had a chance to take Cade’s measure during the ride over, so he paid the man no mind and instead dissected the other, who sat on the porch where Lacey stood.
He seemed peaceful enough, and if Cade wasn’t overreacting, then Damien assumed that he was a friendly, if not to him personally, then definitely to Lacey.
All those observations were simply Damien processing the environment. Almost all of his attention was on Lacey.
She stood on the top step of the porch, staring down at him and Cade, the glow from the headlights giving her an almost eerie look.
The eeriness of the lights was nothing when compared to the look in Lacey’s eyes.
He considered himself an expert on her, had spent countless hours studying her. He’d seen everything, or at least he thought he had.
Stubbornness, passion, anger, resignation, hurt when she had told him about her family.
But he’d never seen this look. The deep, undeniable fear he saw now.
For the briefest of moments, Lacey locked eyes with him, and in her golden-brown orbs, Damien saw fear that went deep.
She broke the gaze quickly, stared at Cade, but Damien knew what he had seen.
He didn’t know what it meant for sure, but he knew it was nothing good. Predictable. When was the last time anything good had happened to him? Why would this be any different?
Lacey, his fearless Lacey, was afraid, so Damien knew there was going to be hell to contend with. Not even when Tremaine’s men had invaded her home had Lacey looked like this. So whatever had her afraid now must be formidable.
“Don’t look at me like that, Lace,” Cade said.
Cade began to walk and Damien followed him step for step, looking at Lacey as her eyes widened, then seeing her quickly recover.
She crossed her arms under her ample breasts and glared at Cade. “You just couldn’t leave it alone,” she said, her voice trembling with her anger, the fear Damien had seen in her face.
“You know I’m right,” Cade said.
Lacey glared at him, and Damien thought she might lose her shit.
“You get to decide that? You get to decide what’s right, Cade?” she asked in a tight voice.
“I stayed out of it as long as I could, but the man has a right to know,” Cade said.
“Cade, I can’t believe you would—”
“Right to know what?” Damien asked, certain he was the man in question.
At the sound of his voice, Lacey went completely silent, looked at him, but then quickly returned her gaze to Cade.
“I can’t believe you did this to me,” she said, her voice a whisper now.
Cade, who’d stopped at the bottom of the porch, held Lacey’s gaze, but Damien paid them no mind. Instead, he stepped up the porch stairs, the hardy wood robust enough to support him without creaking. He kept his eyes glued to Lacey, the moment eerily still as Damien tried to contend with the unshakable certainty that something earth-shattering was about to occur.
As he stepped forward, Lacey took one, then a second step back, leaving him alone on the top step.
She kept her gaze on Cade, but when Damien stepped off the top step, she was forced to look at him.
She kept her gaze off his face, centered somewhere around his collarbones, his neck, but she wouldn’t look at him.
Something else he had never encountered.
He could remember the first day he had met her, how she had looked at him with open, curious eyes, eyes that sought and dared, not ones that were heavy-lidded, hidden behind lashes as they were now.
“Right to know what?” he repeated.
She blinked, swallowed, tightened her arms almost as if she were trying to hug them herself, but she didn’t respond.
She didn’t look at him either.
Damien reached up, grabbed her chin, and lifted until she locked eyes with him.
He heard the swing move and bang against the porch but didn’t look over at it, instead keeping his eyes on Lacey’s, seeing her calculate something in her head.
From the corner of his eye, he watched her wave a stilling hand, and the brother who had just recently stood stayed where he was planted.
She looked at him again, and the fear was there still, but also resignation.
Then she broke his gaze, dropped her arms.
She turned, walked toward the front door. “Follow me.”
13
Lacey’s mind whirled, but was also oddly still.
Damien’s question had cut through everything, her anger at Cade, her attempts to figure a way out of this, all of it. Because, when she had looked into his eyes, she had known that there was nothing she could do, there was no easy way out.
That didn’t stop the tight tremor of fear in her belly, her worry about what would happen.
Her lungs felt tight in her chest, her hands slick and sweaty, but she also felt a sense of calm.
Cade had been right, though she still planned on having a conversation with him about his interference. He’d never learned the lesson that he didn’t always know best, and it would take a long time for her to get over his meddling.
Aside from that, Damien did have a right to know, and it was her responsibility to deal with the consequences. Consequences that would be almost unfathomable.
The trek down the familiar hallway seemed to take forever, but it wasn’t like Lacey was in a hurry. Her heart thundered in her ears, each step simultaneously loud and muffled.
But what was constant was Damien’s presence behind her, his body close, but not touching, but more importantly, the intensity of him, his complete and total focus on her, were impossible to ignore.
She reached the door and turned the knob, and when she stepped into the room, a sense of peace, comfort came over her.
That feeling only intensified when she looked over at the race car bed to the small form inside.
She had told Roy and LaTonya that they shouldn’t buy such extravagances, that he didn’t need to have a dedicated room since he only visited every once in a while and only for a few days, but they had insisted.
He was their first grandson after all, they’d said.
Lacey went over to him, smiling despite herself when she looked at
his face. His little eyes were slammed shut, pantomiming sleep, but not nearly convincing. Lacey, as she always did, played along.
“Is my Donovan sleeping? How will I ever get him to wake up?”
Lacey kneeled beside the bed and then reached toward the boy.
He stiffened, and she could hear him trying to choke back a laugh and stay as still as he possibly could.
“I think I’ll tickle him!”
Then she grabbed at the boy, tickled him until he had no choice but to laugh.
His eyes popped open, and he looked at her, eyes sparkling.
“I was sleeping, Mommy!” he said.
“Uh-huh,” she said.
Then she pulled him close, his sweet little-boy smell filling her heart and soul.
She pulled back and looked down at him. “Donovan, would you like to meet your daddy?” she asked, her heart squeezing as she pushed out the words, though her soul felt calm. This was the right thing to do.
Donovan, who had his arms around her neck, frowned and then nodded.
Lacey lifted him and then stood, her son in her arms as he looked at his father for the very first time.
••••
The walk down the hall had been tense, and Damien had gotten impatient, but as soon as Lacey had opened the door, time seemed to stop.
Immediately, his eyes had been drawn to the small boy in the room only lit by a night-light.
And he’d known.
A single look, barely a glimpse, and he knew he was looking at his son.
He’d thought he would throw up, faint, and wail with joy, pain all at the same time.
Instead he’d stood, frozen, watched as Lacey had gone to him.
He hadn’t heard what they’d said, not really. He just stared at the child, watching, looking at the smile on his face, hearing his high-pitched child’s laugh, searching for signs, similarities, not that he needed any additional proof.
The boy was a combination of him and Lacey, more like her than Damien to his eyes, but he saw the resemblances, that Silver cowlick that plagued both him and his brother, the shape of his jaw that would one day mirror Damien’s own.
A son.
When Lacey had lifted him up and asked him if he wanted to meet his daddy, Damien had been drawn to action.