Igniting the Flame (Firebrand Series)

by Sandra Robbins

  “I don’t know the particulars. You know all my conversations with Edward are business related. Very rarely does he talk about family matters. But I’ve gathered that they’ve both known her for quite a while.”

  Ash searched his mind for a girl who Richard could have dated in the past, but no one came to mind. “What’s her name, William?”

  “Lainey. She’s a beautiful young woman.”

  Ash nearly dropped the phone. He snatched it before it hit the floor.Surely he’d heard wrong. He slowly pulled it back to his ear. His chest tightened as the room blurred before his eyes.

  He’d heard wrong. There had to be some mistake.

  He swallowed and forced her name from his throat. “Lainey?”

  “Yes. Why?”

  No. It’s not true. This can’t be happening.

  “Ash, are you there?” William’s voice echoed in his ear.

  He swallowed and shook his head. “Did he marry Lainey Simpson?”

  “That sounds right. Do you know her?”

  “I knew her once.” His voice sounded hollow. “And they have a son? What’s his name?”

  “Max.”

  Ash pressed his hand to his head and groaned. Her father’s name.

  “Ash,” William spoke again. “Do you want me to get in touch with Edward and Richard and tell them you’re coming home?”

  Go home? How could he do that? There was nothing left at home. The woman he loved had turned her back on him and married his brother as soon as he was gone. Maybe she’d never loved him at all.

  He hadn’t believed her when she’d said she wouldn’t be there when he got back. But why would she marry his brother? A sudden thought struck him, and he groaned. The money. That’s what she’d wanted all along. All that talk about money not being important had just been her way of reeling him in. But he’d upset her plan when he’d left, and she’d gone after his brother.

  He shook his head in disgust. Richard had been in love with her from the moment he saw her, and she knew it. He’d made an easy mark, even willing to betray his own brother. Hatred for both of them welled up in him. He never wanted to see either one again.

  “Ash,” William’s voice called out. “Did you hear me? Do you want me to let your family know you’re back?”

  Ash exhaled a deep breath. “Don’t bother. My father doesn’t want to see me again, and I doubt if Richard does either. Will you give them a message for me?”

  “I’d be glad to, Ash.”

  “Tell my father and Richard that I will never, ever set foot in their house again.”

  “Now son, you can’t possibly mean that?”

  “And give Mrs. DeHan,”—he all but sneered her name—“a message for me, too. Tell her welcome to the family. I hope she enjoys the lifestyle she sold her soul for..”

  “Ash, I don’t think—”

  “Tell her!” Ash yelled. “Promise me you’ll tell her my exact words.”

  “I think you need to come home and straighten out whatever this is about.”

  “I have a new life now, and I intend to live it to the fullest.”

  He banged the phone back in its cradle and stared at it as a burning fury spread throughout his body. He clenched his fists at his sides and gritted his teeth so hard that he thought the blood vessels in his head might burst. When he could no longer take the pain that rolled through his body, he grabbed the phone and, with an animal scream of rage, ripped the wires from the wall and threw it across the room as hard as he could. It landed against the wall and fell to the floor with a loud clatter.

  He slammed his fist into the wall. Lainey had betrayed him for money. He slammed it again. Richard had been willing to stab his brother in the back to get what he wanted.

  He punched the wall again and again. The two people he’d loved most in the world had cut his heart out and left him with nothing. He would never forgive either one.

  Reese and Colt ran in the room. Reese grabbed his arm just before he slammed his fist into the wall again. Colt grabbed his other arm.

  “Ash!” Reese got in his face. “What happened?”

  Ash struggled against his two friends, but they wouldn’t let go. Finally he slumped into a chair and buried his face in his hands. After a few minutes his body quit shaking, and he took a deep breath.

  He had to get control of himself. The men he’d trained for the past fourteen months didn’t need to see him this way. He was their leader, the one they’d look to when the missions began, and he had to be ready.

  With great effort he willed his legs to support him, and he pushed to his feet. Reese and Colt looked at him as if he’d lost his mind, and maybe he had for a few minutes. But he was back now. He was a soldier. A warrior. He’d fought battles before. He could handle this.

  He took a deep breath. “It looks like I’ll be coming to Hawaii with you two. I just found out that Lainey married my brother, and they have a baby. There’s nothing for me at home. In fact there’s nothing for me now except Firebrand.”

  He picked up his pack, slung it over his shoulder, and walked from the room.

  <><><>

  Lainey held a wailing Max close to her body and murmured soothing words as she paced back and forth in the nursery. He’d been crying non-stop for the past thirty minutes, and nothing she’d tried had calmed him. Richard walked into the room just as she turned and started back across the floor.

  The robe he’d pulled on over his pajamas hung open in the front, and his hair stuck up on top of his head. She stopped and jiggled the baby in her arms. “I’m sorry he woke you, Richard.”

  He smiled, walked over to where she stood, and smiled down at Max. “That’s okay. What’s wrong?”

  Tears filled her eyes, and she tried to swallow the lump that had formed in her throat. “I don’t know. I’ve tried everything. He’s been fed, changed, and bounced until my arms ache, but he won’t quit crying.”

  A frown puckered Richard’s forehead. “Do you think he’s sick?”

  “I don’t know.” A tear trickled from her eye and ran down her cheek. “Maybe I’m just a terrible mother and don’t know what to do.” The last words ended on a sob.

  Richard smiled, wrapped his arms around her, and gathered her and Max close to him. “Don’t say that,” he said. “You’re a wonderful mother. He’s just not ready to go to sleep yet. Let me have him, and you take a break. Go to the kitchen and get a cup of the herbal tea that always calms you down.”

  She shook her head. “No, I can take care of this. You’ve got work tomorrow. You need to get some sleep.”

  He chuckled and pulled Max from her arms. “As if I can sleep with all this crying.” He hugged Max close and kissed the top of his head. “Now go on. Let me see what I can do with him.”

  Reluctantly, Lainey stepped away from Richard as he began bouncing the baby up and down in his arms and pacing across the floor. He hummed a soft song. She watched for a moment before she smiled and walked from the room.

  Twenty minutes later she came back up the stairs to the nursery and stopped outside. She leaned against the door jamb and stared at Richard who was bent over the crib covering a sleeping Max. He smoothed the blankets over the baby, then touched his fingers to his lips, kissed them, and pressed them to Max’s head.

  He turned, and his eyebrows arched when he saw her watching him. “I didn’t hear you come back,” he whispered.

  She tiptoed into the room and stood next to him. “How did you get him to sleep?”

  Richard shrugged before he wrapped his arm around her waist and pulled her close. They stood side by side watching the sleeping baby. “I just told him that it was way past time for little boys to be awake and that his father wanted him to go to sleep.”

  She smiled and laid her head on his shoulder. “You’re so good with him, Richard.”

  He kissed the top of her head, and she could feel the smile on his lips. “I love him, Lainey, just like I do you.”

  “I know,” she said.

 
He gave her another hug before he released her. “He’s going to be fine now. Come to bed.”

  She nodded. “You go on, and I’ll be right there.”

  “He’s okay now. There’s no need to keep watch. Besides you know I can’t sleep without you next to me.”

  “I won’t be long.”

  She watched as he walked from the room, then she stared at her baby again. Every time she looked at him she couldn’t believe that he was hers. She’d always heard how special a mother’s love was for her child, but she hadn’t understood until Richard had laid Max in her arms after his birth. She’d known at that moment that there wasn’t anything she wouldn’t do for her child no matter what it cost her.

  The light from the lamp on the table beside the crib cast a glow on Max’s face, and she thought she’d never seen a more beautiful sight. It almost took her breath away. She dropped down in the rocking chair where she’d spent so much time holding him while he nursed and continued to stare at the peaceful expression on his face.

  She leaned closer, reached between the slats of the crib, and ran her finger down his cheek. “Sleep well, baby boy,” she whispered. “Your mother loves you, and Richard loves us both. He’s going to give us the kind of life I want for you—parents who put your needs first, a place to call home, and a life filled with stability—the things I kept losing when I was growing up but what I’m determined for you to have.”

  Max stirred, and his long, dark eyelashes blinked as if he was dreaming. She’d seen that look before on the face of a sleeping man with dark eyes and hair just like Max had. The two of them were so alike in looks, but she was determined they would be different in the way they lived their lives. Max would grow up knowing where his place in life was and he would be proud to be a DeHan because Richard would show him how.

  “Everything I’ve done, everything I’ve given up, has been for you,” she whispered.

  She stood up, turned off the lamp, and stared into the darkness. The memory of a rainy day on a mountain trail and the dark-haired hiker who shared a shelter with her flashed in her mind. Tears threatened to fill her eyes, but she sniffed and straightened her shoulders. No good could come from living in the past. She and Max had a future with Richard, and she intended for them to live it.

  She leaned over the crib and whispered down at the sleeping baby. “It was all for you, Max. I made the right choice.”

  Then she smiled, walked from the room and with hurried steps, headed toward the bedroom where her husband waited.

  Ash and Lainey’s Story Continues in …

  Targeted: Book 1 in the Firebrand Series

  Read the first chapter starting on the next page …

  Chapter 1

  Sleepless nights had become all too common over the past few months for Lainey DeHan, and tonight was no exception. With a sigh she climbed from her bed, pulled on her robe, and stumbled across the dark bedroom to the window.

  The security lights scattered over the estate cast an eerie glow across the yard in the misty fog, and she shivered at the sight. Overhead, gray clouds obscured the moon, and a sudden wind moaned in the eaves of the house, its lonely song taunting her to remember things better left in the past. She wanted to ignore the dare, but she’d never learned to do that.

  She had given up long ago on trying to keep her memories at bay. Once she’d believed they would dim with time, but time hadn’t been her ally in this fight. They were carved into her mind as surely as if a master craftsman had left their haunting beauty there to remind her of times past. Of happier times. Of sadder times.

  There was no stopping it. She squeezed her eyes shut and tried to block the memory, yet it came anyway. She saw him as he’d looked that first day on the mountain trail, rain dripping from his jacket and a smug smile pulling at his lips.

  Even now it was hard to describe Ash DeHan, the younger son of a wealthy business owner, the high school boy she’d secretly fantasized about, the decorated war veteran, and the man she’d fallen in love with. Words like handsome, athletic, romantic, charming, and possessive hardly did him justice. He could also be arrogant, cocky and conceited. But she usually simply thought of him as breathtaking. It didn’t take her long to succumb to his charm, and she’d fallen hard.

  Her pulse still raced when she recalled how she would tremble when he trailed his index finger down her cheek and gently slid his hand around to the back of her head as he pressed his lips to hers. She’d thought she’d found her happily-ever-after with him, but she’d been wrong. She hadn’t been enough for him, and he’d deserted her for a life of danger and adventure. The question of whether or not she could have made him stay still haunted her, but she’d been too afraid to take the chance.

  Guilt welled up in her, and she shook her head. She shouldn’t be thinking about Ash. She should be remembering Richard, the man who’d saved her life, who’d loved her, and who’d offered his brother’s abandoned child a father. He’d loved her unconditionally, given her everything a woman could want. If at first it had seemed like an act of betrayal to turn to Ash’s brother, she soon came to see you can’t betray someone who walks out on you.

  Richard had been kind, and she’d never seen anyone as happy as he was when Max was born. At last she’d had the perfect family. But as Lainey had learned when her parents were killed, the perfect family was never meant to last.Richard’s cancer had come back, and just like that, it was only her and Max.

  In a burst of anger she raised her fist and pounded it against the wall. Why didn’t anything ever work out for her? She had lost everybody she loved—her parents, the grandmother who’d raised her, Ash, her father-in-law Edward, who’d welcomed her into his home, and now Richard. Everybody but her little boy, Max. He was all she had in the world, and she was all he had. She’d tried to protect him and give him a good life, but sometimes she wondered if she’d isolated the two of them too much. What would happen to Max if she should become disabled or die? With Richard and his father Edward both dead, there was no one left in her family or in the DeHan family to take care of Max if the need arose.

  Nobody but Ash, and he’d never even met his son.

  She supposed anyone looking at her life would think she had everything a woman her age could want. Thanks to Richard’s foresight, she was financially independent. Not many thirty-three-year-old women could boast being the CEO of a business as large as DeHan Enterprises. She lived in a gated community in an upscale section of town. She’d never wanted to run a company, but that had changed with Richard’s death. She had to protect DeHan Enterprises. Edward and Richard had insisted that she take over if anything happened to the two of them so that someday, Max could inherit what Edward had spent his life building.

  She turned away from the window, walked back across the dark bedroom, and sat on the edge of her bed. The digital numbers on the clock on her bedside table pierced the darkness. Two AM.

  Four hours until the alarm would signal for her day to begin, and she needed some sleep. She slid off her robe and draped it over a chair just as another gust of wind rattled the window. As the noise died away, a sound like the creak of a floorboard rose from somewhere in the house. She stilled and listened for another. A few seconds later, the high-pitched squeak of weight on wood echoed through the darkness.

  Suddenly the darkness seemed thicker, more oppressive. A sickening feeling curled in the pit of her stomach, and she shuddered from the icy chill spreading through her body. Should she turn on a light or remain in the dark? Another creak set her heart to pounding in double time. With shaking fingers she flipped on the bedside lamp.

  The news report of a woman killed in her home in a neighboring town flashed in her mind. The reporter had said the assailant entered the house while the woman slept, then raped and killed her. Was someone downstairs right now? An intruder bent on robbing them or assaulting her, or even worse, hurting Max?

  No sooner had the thought flashed into her head than she dismissed it. The house had a state of the art secu
rity system and sat in a walled-in estate. Motion sensors would alert her immediately if anyone attempted to enter the property. At least that’s what she’d been told by the sales representative and the men who’d installed the system.

  She took a deep breath to calm her racing pulse. There had to be another explanation for the strange sounds in the house. Maybe Max had gotten out of bed.

  Ignoring the robe she’d draped over a chair, she hurried from her bedroom to her son’s room at the end of the hallway. At his closed door, she took a deep breath and turned the knob. As she eased the door open, the hinge she’d been intending to oil squeaked a low piercing sound, reminding her of her Irish grandmother’s ghost stories about banshees who wailed when someone was about to die. She bit down on her lip and rolled her eyes. There was no need to add ghost stories to the list of things keeping her awake tonight.

  Shaking her head to rid it of the ridiculous memory, she stepped into Max’s room and looked around. The small night light next to his desk cast a warm glow across the room and lit the sleeping figure of her ten-year-old son. With a sigh of relief she tiptoed to his side and stared down at him. Careful not to wake him, she reached over and smoothed the dark hair, so like his father’s, back from his eyes.

  The troubling thoughts that had robbed her of sleep tonight dissolved in the peaceful nighttime quiet of the now-silent house as she tucked the covers around him, bent, and brushed her lips across his forehead in a tender kiss. There were no banshees about tonight, the wind and fog couldn’t harm them, Max was safe in his bed, and regrets needed to be left in the past where they belonged. She had to quit letting her imagination get the best of her and return to bed. There were challenges to be met at tomorrow’s Board of Directors meeting, and she needed to wear her best game face.

  Leaving open the door to Max’s room, she walked back down the hallway. A chill filled the house, and she hugged her arms around her waist. Perhaps she’d set the thermostat too low before going to bed. A quick check on the panel downstairs might be a good idea.