Low Country Hero

by Lee Tobin McClain

  Welcome to Safe Haven, where love—and a second chance—is just around the corner...

  Sunny, carefree days splashing in the ocean—it’s the life Anna George has always wanted for her five-year-old twins. And now that they’ve made it to Safe Haven, South Carolina, she won’t let anyone stand in her way. Not the abusive ex she’s just escaped and not the rugged contractor who caught her setting up house in the shuttered beachfront cabins he’s refurbishing. When he offers Anna and her daughters a place to stay in exchange for her help with renovations, she’s tempted. His gentle way with her girls makes her want to trust him, but she’s been wrong before...

  A family is the last thing contractor and former military man Sean O’Dwyer wants right now. But when he discovers Anna and her girls, he recognizes kindred spirits. They’re survivors who’ve seen the worst of people, just like he has, and he’ll do anything he can to help them. As he and Anna spend their days bringing the cottages back to life and their nights sharing kisses in the warm bayou breezes, Sean must choose between the life he always wanted and the family he can’t live without.

  Lee Tobin McClain

  Low Country Hero

  Acknowledgments

  It truly took a village to bring this book into being. On the professional side, I am enormously grateful to my agent, Karen Solem, and my Love Inspired editor, Shana Asaro, who first saw the potential in Low Country Hero. Thanks are due to everyone at HQN Books, from Susan Swinwood and the editorial staff, who have been so supportive every step of the way, to the art department, who created the cover that makes everyone who sees it want to abandon their responsibilities and visit, to the marketing folks, who’ve given me amazing opportunities to reach readers. Special thanks to Michele Bidelspach, whose insights on character and emotion helped to make Low Country Hero the very best it could be. I’m also thankful to the staff of Waterfront Books in Georgetown, South Carolina, for all their help with local resources, and to my Wednesday-morning critique group, especially Kathy Ayres, for reading and critiquing the project with keen perception and good humor.

  On the personal side: Bill, thank you for being an extroverted, fun-loving, upbeat travel companion and for making such an effort to understand and support your introverted writer-girlfriend. And Grace: thank you for being my inspiration, my motivation and my daily delight.

  Dear Reader,

  Thank you for traveling with me to Safe Haven! I’ve always liked the idea of picking up and moving somewhere entirely new—preferably somewhere warm, with a beach. I adore the South, from North Carolina to Florida, and I have a particular fascination with the Low Country. The salt marshes, the gumbo and hoppin’ John, the gorgeous small towns rich with complicated history...it’s fabulous fuel for a writer’s imagination. Doing the research for the Safe Haven series has been a joy.

  As far as the darker side of the story, centered on the shelter, we’ve all heard the statistics: one in three women suffers violence from an intimate partner in her lifetime, and one in fifteen children witness it. This breaks my heart. Just before I started writing Low Country Hero, I ended a relationship that had become controlling and possessive. I’m thankful I was able to get out before things ever got violent, but that scared, vulnerable feeling caused me some sleepless nights...and during one of them, the idea for this story pushed its way into my mind and wouldn’t leave until I wrote it down.

  Women who face domestic violence often display tremendous courage as they work to rebuild their lives. If you’d like to help, please consider donating to a shelter in your community. Or visit my website, www.leetobinmcclain.com, for ideas about how and where you can help.

  I hope you found the community of Safe Haven to be a warm, welcoming place to spend a few hours. And I hope you’ll come back this summer and again this fall, when Liam’s and then Cash’s stories hit the shelves.

  Be safe,

  Lee

  Contents

  PROLOGUE

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  EPILOGUE

  EXCERPT FROM LOW COUNTRY DREAMS BY LEE TOBIN McCLAIN

  PROLOGUE

  Twenty Years Ago

  WALKING FROM THE small-town grocery store back toward their new home at the Safe Haven Women’s Shelter, Rita O’Dwyer felt her shoulders start to relax. Maybe this was going to be okay. For her boys, and even, maybe, for her.

  They passed a little tourist stand, full of South Carolina beach trinkets and toys.

  “Mom, can we go in?” her middle boy, Cash, pleaded. “Please? I want to see what they’ve got.” He was the most driven of her three sons, and she always joked that he’d become a billionaire, but his strong focus worried her a little. Today, like any other kid, he just wanted to see the toys.

  She paused. Even her oldest, Sean, leaned past his brothers to look in the little shop, and of course her baby, Liam, joined in the begging. “Please, Mommy? There’s swords and stuff!”

  They sounded like normal kids. Normal, wonderfully whiny kids, and she couldn’t resist their request.

  She ached with the desire to give her boys a carefree childhood.

  While the boys looked at the beachy souvenirs, Rita fingered a little five-dollar necklace, with a sea turtle, a shark’s tooth and a palm tree. If she could spare the money, she’d buy it for herself. A symbol of her new life, away from Alabama and Orin.

  She gave her head a little shake and bent down to look at the candy. After the long hours in the car and the strangeness of setting up housekeeping in a women’s shelter, they all needed a treat. And candy was cheap.

  “You don’t want that ordinary stuff, ma’am,” said the tall, stoop-shouldered clerk. “You’ll want some real Carolina pralines for your boys.” As he spoke, he slid three caramel-colored candies into a bag. “And for you...” He plucked the necklace she’d been studying from the stand and held it out to her.

  “Oh no! We can’t afford all that!” What was this guy’s agenda?

  He smiled with an expression of wisdom and sympathy older than his years. “Just consider it a little Southern hospitality. Y’all look like you need a lift.”

  For some reason, she trusted him. Again, hope rose in her. Maybe this was all going to work out. “Thank you. You’re very kind.”

  She’d just taken the bag and turned to locate the boys when she felt something poke into her side. A familiar, sickeningly strong cologne assaulted her.

  Orin.

  Silent terror exploded inside her, making her head spin and her stomach heave with nausea. She looked around frantically. There were Liam and Cash, fingering the crocodile heads on sticks. But where was Sean? He had to get the other boys to safety, now.

  How had Orin found them so quickly? And what new punishment would he inflict on her and, worse, on the boys?

  “You’re not leaving me.” Orin’s voice was a quiet snarl.

  “Everything okay, miss?” the clerk asked from behind her.

  “You tell him it’s fine and come with me,” Orin said into her ear, “or I’ll kill him, a
nd then those worthless boys, and then you.”

  She nodded back to the clerk, forcing a sick smile across her face. “I’m fine.” Her chest seemed to crumple inward, as if all the backbone she’d tried to build in herself, all her bones, turned to jelly.

  Her dreams and plans to save her children faded, then disappeared.

  Orin pulled her along like they were normal people in a hurry, jamming the gun into her side. As he reached the pickup and opened the door to shove her inside, she saw Sean, squatting on the sidewalk, caught up in his favorite battered military novel, one of the few possessions he’d insisted on bringing along when they’d fled Alabama.

  There were people out on the street, shopping and chatting. Should she scream? Or would that incite Orin even further? He was shaking, his face red with fury. She’d never seen him this bad. Her head spun; her heart thudded.

  Think. No. She couldn’t expect help from strangers—not without endangering them and the kids, too—but she had to get Sean’s attention. “Oh, Orin, you don’t have to be in such a hurry!” she cried in a loud, fake voice.

  Sean looked up, and their eyes met, and then his gaze turned to his father. Bleak understanding darkened his eyes. Always protective, he scrambled to his feet and started to come toward her and Orin, but she gave a sideways jerk of her head, indicating that he should go to his brothers, help them first, as she’d drilled into him on the ride up from Alabama.

  He looked back, biting his lip, and every tendon sung with the need to go to him, to hold him and tell him not to worry, she’d take care of it. As a mother should.

  But she couldn’t take care of this. He was only thirteen, but today, he had to be a man and protect his brothers from their father. Her stomach ached like dull knives were stabbing it. She’d failed.

  Sean squared his thin shoulders and headed toward the other two boys, who were play-fighting inside the store, now armed with toy swords. Tears filled her eyes to witness their last minute of carefree childhood.

  Then she was shoved headfirst into the pickup truck and the door closed behind her.

  * * *

  THREE HOURS LATER, sore in every public and private part of her body, she fell from the truck to the side of the road, limp as a rag doll, barely feeling the gravel dig into her elbow and cheek.

  “You wanted to live here, you can die here.” Orin’s voice was dim, and then the truck door slammed. There was a roar and the truck drove away.

  Her consciousness was fading, her vision blurring.

  She tried to move. Couldn’t.

  Tractor trailers roared past on the highway, but none of them stopped. Maybe no one could see her. It was getting dark.

  Liam was scared of the dark. Who would he turn to when he had a nightmare? Who would teach Cash the right values, how to be more generous? How would Sean have a childhood now?

  Her thoughts circled, becoming more distant. Something burned her eyes, and she realized, vaguely, that she was crying. Crying for all the mothering she wouldn’t get to give to her sons.

  A vehicle was coming, a truck. She clawed at the gravel and managed to heave herself closer to the pavement. Another claw to the gravel, another heave. She had to get help, had to get to her boys. She pushed herself up on one bloody elbow, tried to lift a hand to wave to the truck as its headlights beamed so bright that she reeled backward. Pain made her stomach roil, and blackness dimmed the edges of her vision.

  She pushed herself up higher. “Hey!” she tried to call out.

  The truck thundered on past her and she collapsed down again.

  Her head hurt like the worst headache she’d ever had, times ten.

  She hadn’t wanted it to end this way, but somehow, she’d always known it would.

  CHAPTER ONE

  To make an end is to make a beginning.

  T. S. Eliot

  Present Day

  SEAN O’DWYER LOOKED around the lived-in bayou cottage where he’d spent his teenage years, rubbed the back of his neck and dug deep for patience. Nothing like your childhood home to make you feel like a rebellious teenager.

  He hadn’t been eager to return to the town where he and his brothers had a history that made people pity them. But Safe Haven was known as the place where you could lick your wounds in peace, and while that primarily applied to women, a handful of men had gotten their footing here, too.

  Maybe he’d be one of them. He had nothing left to lose.

  “Living by yourself out there in the salt marshes isn’t going to make you feel any better.” Ma Dixie, the woman who’d taken him in when he was an angry thirteen-year-old and raised him to be a decent man, glanced over from clearing the lunch dishes, her broad face wrinkled with concern. “You could just as well plan the renovation staying right here with me.”

  Liam, who at twenty-eight was the youngest of Sean’s motley crew of adopted and biological brothers, leaned back against Ma’s kitchen counter and sipped sweet tea. “Your ex-wife was worried you’d do something rash.”

  Sean blinked. “You talked to Gabby? You listened to her?”

  Liam spread his hands and shrugged. “She was concerned.”

  “Concerned enough to dump me for our marriage counselor,” Sean muttered, and then was sorry he had. He didn’t need their pity. He and Gabby had grown apart after his two tours in Afghanistan, so her sudden turnaround on their agreement about not having children had broken what was left of their marriage. That, he couldn’t compromise on. He knew himself and his history too well.

  He didn’t even miss her, not really. He just missed the hope he’d felt, getting married. That an O’Dwyer could overcome his past, be a happy husband who treated his wife well and was loved in return. His throat tightened and he shoved aside that stupid dream. “I’m caretaking the place, too, that’s why I have to live there. Eldora was afraid kids or vandals would break into the cottages.”

  Liam studied him steadily. “When I heard you were coming home, I thought you’d find a way to help the shelter. It’s not doing so well.”

  “That’s your department.” Liam was a police officer and lived smack in the middle of Safe Haven.

  “Your brother’s got his hands full. Looking at a promotion to chief.” Ma smiled at Liam with fond pride. She hadn’t raised him or their brother Cash when their family had fallen apart. Her small bayou house had only had room for Sean, but her heart had always been big enough to consider both of Sean’s natural brothers as kin. And although Liam and Cash had landed in different local families, both of them looked at Ma Dixie’s cabin as a second home.

  Sean lifted an eyebrow. “Congratulations. Never thought my little brother would end up the top guy.”

  His brother punched his arm, none too lightly. “Thanks for the vote of confidence. Where’s Cash, Ma? I thought he was supposed to help us talk sense into Stupid, here.”

  “Sean’s not stupid. And Cash called. Some high-flying deal, so he’s stuck in Atlanta.” Ma Dixie pulled the shades to block the afternoon sun, then put her hands on ample hips. “I agree with Liam. You ought to stay in town, figure out a way to help the shelter, not go off and lick your wounds alone. Eldora can find another caretaker.”

  Sean ignored the wounds part. “I’m no use to the shelter.” Just like the shelter had been no use to their mother. “Do I look like the kind of guy a woman in trouble would trust?”

  “You could clean yourself up.” Ma pinched his bristly cheek. “Shave. Cut your hair.”

  “Lighten up on the steroids,” Liam joked, then raised a hand when Sean bristled. “I know, you wouldn’t. But you’re huge! You must’ve been working out 24/7.”

  Sean didn’t bother to correct his brother. The truth was, he’d been doing hard physical labor back in Knoxville, working construction alongside his team. Partly to pay for the divorce, and partly to keep his mind off things.

  But the noise and chatte
r had gotten to him. It was getting to him now, making him think too much. Ma and Liam both had his best interests at heart, but they were overly optimistic about healing wounds and moving on and being happy. He stood. “If the intervention’s over,” he said, softening his words with a smile, “I’ve got a job to do.”

  “You’ll come for Friday-night suppers, now that you’re back in the area?”

  “Sure, Ma.” He put an arm around the woman and squeezed her shoulders. He owed her his life and would lay it on the line for her or any one of his brothers. Outsiders, not so much. “Don’t worry about me. I’m going to be fine. I just need a little peace and quiet.”

  * * *

  ANNA GEORGE STOPPED her car in front of a pair of padlocked gates and stared at the sign.

  Sea Pine Cottages: Closed for Summer Renovations.

  Letting her forehead rest briefly on the steering wheel, she took a deep breath. What was she going to do now?

  This whole mad, cross-country trek had been a terrible mistake.

  “Mommy? Are we there yet?” Hayley’s voice piped up from the back seat.

  Uh-oh. When one twin woke up, so did the other, and patience wasn’t a virtue most five-year-olds possessed. Anna needed a plan, fast.

  She knew no one in South Carolina—which was the point—but as she and the twins had fled the cold mountains of Montana, she’d told them all about the low country’s cute, friendly little towns, salt marshes and warm, welcoming beaches. Right now, though, the closed gates in front of them blocked the first step of her plan.

  “Mommy?” Hope was awake now, too, and her voice sounded anxious. “Where are we?”

  “Let me think a minute.” Anna reached a hand to the back seat and gave each girl a reassuring leg pat. After what they’d seen and heard, they needed to know that they were safe, and that she was safe, and that she had a plan.

  There were nice hotels, farther down the coast, but prices were too high. And the kind of small motels she could afford didn’t offer the protection and privacy she and her daughters needed.