“That was so wonderful. We had purification tablets for our water bottles, but we’d had no water for the whole day.”
“We drank like drunken fools,” he agreed. Releasing her hand, he said, “We each ate a protein bar and then we settled down to sleep.”
“Well, I did. You stayed up on watch,” she reminded him.
“We traded places every two hours and yes, I could see how exhausted you were, so I wanted to take that first watch.” He leaned down, his lips against her wrinkled brow. “There was a full moon and the milky rays came down into our cave from the cracks above. I watched the moonlight move slowly across you as you slept. You looked so damned angelic to me, Andy. I never told you that before. I was going to tell you that if we ever got rescued. But that didn’t go as planned either.”
She searched his serious, deeply shadowed face. “That I looked like a bone-tired angel?” she teased, her lips drawing away from her teeth.
“It was more than that. I knew after those two days that you were a real combat warrior. I had never met a woman like you. Ever. I found myself thinking ahead, dreaming of what I’d say to you once we reached safety. That I wanted to know you better and under less dire circumstances.” He lifted his chin, staring into the darkness before shifting his gaze to hers. “Don’t ask me how I knew this, but I knew you were the woman I wanted as a lifelong partner. It was crazy. I thought I was going crazy and then that I was sure as hell sleep-deprived.”
She frowned for a moment. “Seriously? You knew then, Dev?”
“Don’t forget, we Irish can be pretty psychic on occasion.”
“We’d hardly talked at all, using hand signals most of the time. I didn’t know you from Adam. I didn’t even know if you were married or not and figured you had to be. You were so handsome.”
Giving her a pleased look, he said, “That’s nice to know, too.”
“But we got separated at Bagram ER. I never saw you again.”
He touched an errant curl and slid it behind her ear. “There was one more thing that happened that night that you need to know. I was getting ready to wake you up when you suddenly started crying. It wasn’t anything noisy, but I could see the silvery paths down your cheeks. You were having a reaction to everything that had happened to you, was my guess. I quietly got up and crawled over to where you were and gathered you in my arms. The minute I did that, you buried your head into my chest, your hand against your face, as if to protect yourself. I didn’t want to wake you up and I kept you close to me, your sobs drowning in my flight suit. I rocked you, kissed your hair and your wet cheek, wanting to soothe you, wanting you to feel safe when we sure as hell weren’t.” He saw her eyes widen, and then tears filled them.
“I just held and gently rocked you in my arms, and gradually, you stopped weeping. You trusted me, and that’s when I knew you were the only woman I ever wanted in my life.”
Swallowing, she whispered brokenly, “Oh, Dev . . . you never got a chance to tell me that at Bagram . . .”
With a sorrowful look, he rasped, “It was the worst day of my life. I knew in my heart, in my soul, you were the woman I wanted to spend my life with, as crazy as that sounds. And the way I felt wasn’t because of all the stress and pressure we were under either. My mother has that; she knows what she knows without ever knowing why she knows it. And she’s never wrong when she has one of those feelings.” He slanted her a wry look. “I had that feeling about you.”
“It must have been devastating to you when we couldn’t find each other,” she managed.
Dev wiped the tears away from her cheeks with his roughened fingertips. “I wasn’t a happy camper, believe me.”
“No wonder you turned white, like you’d seen a ghost when you first saw me.”
“Yeah,” he said, shaking his head. “I thought I was seeing things. But I wasn’t.”
“And you still felt the same way about me? Even four years later?”
“If anything? Finding you again just increased the love, the need for you I’d had during our escape and those four years we were separated.”
Slowly sitting up, she caressed his mussed hair, seeing the pain, the disbelief and joy in his gaze. “Thank you for telling me that, Dev. That must have been tough on you. I’m sure you didn’t know I was drawn powerfully to you. Did you?”
“At first, I didn’t see anything in your expression, your vocal tone or eyes that you might be attracted to me.”
“I was, but I hid it behind my game face.”
“You could have told me,” he said, smiling a little, smoothing the last of the tears from her cheeks.
“I was afraid, Dev. I’d had so many crash-and-burn relationships with pilots. You’re a pilot. I was projecting on you that you’d be the same as the others.”
“Yeah, I can understand that reaction based on your prior experience,” he growled, mouth quirking.
“Still, over time you wore me down,” Andy admitted, her fingertips tracing the strength of his mouth. “I had to get over my own past, put my career in another slot, of being less important than getting to know you.”
“Until that hike when we ran into the drug soldiers. That ripped off our dance with each other. Up until that point, we hadn’t admitted we loved each other.”
“That did it,” Andy said softly agreeing, leaning over, kissing him gently, her hand coming to rest against the side of his face. His mouth was strong and cherishing and she soaked up his strength, but also his tenderness. As she eased away, she said, “I have a confession to make, too, Dev.”
“What is it?” and he smoothed her hair along the top of her head.
“Because of being abandoned at birth, I always had this hole in my heart,” and she brushed her fingers between her breasts. “After we’d loved each other, I fell asleep. I woke up just now and you had curved me beside you, and I felt so protected. I felt safe, and I’d never felt that way before.” Her voice lowered. “I felt the hole in my heart beginning to close, that sense that no one loved me, that I’d been thrown away. And then I felt a hope I’d never felt before, that you loved me, you wanted me in your life. I was important to you. I’d never felt those things before in any relationship I’d had in the past.”
He kissed her cheek, whispering, “I need you like I need air to breathe, sweetheart.” Pulling away, Dev rasped, “I can’t conceive of a life without you in it every day, Andy. For the rest of my life and yours. What we share? It began four years ago, and it didn’t go away. It just grew and grew, and I think like you, I was looking for you in every person because I couldn’t find you. And I never settled for someone less.”
She snorted softly. “Same here. I had some relationships, but they never were as good as when I was with you in Afghanistan. Even under that life-and-death situation? I trusted you. I had fallen in love with you but just didn’t know it.”
He sat up, back against the headboard, and gathered her into his arms, positioning her such that they faced each other. “Do you feel the same? That this is a forever kind of relationship?”
“I do,” she said, giving him a trembly look. “You’ve always made me feel safe in an unsafe world.”
Nodding, he gave her a pleased look. “I’m going to spend the rest of my life showing you and telling you how you fill my heart. I lost Sophie, and she will always be a wonderful part of my life. With you, I want to look forward to old age, with us both growing silver-haired together.”
Laughing a bit, she touched her hair. “Well, we’re not quite there yet, Mitchell.”
He laughed with her. Holding her, kissing her here and there, her shoulder, her temple, he said, “Your parents need to know.”
“They already do,” she said wryly. “Months ago.”
Eyes widening, Dev sat there digesting her words and saw her give him a devilish grin. “Which condo do you want to live in, then, with me?”
“I like mine better,” she said.
“Done. I need to call my parents, and I would like you to talk
with them.”
“I’ll do it.”
“We need to maybe drop over and talk to your parents sometime today?”
“How about tomorrow?” She would tell Dev about her earlier phone call with her mother later.
“Sounds good.”
“Knowing Mom?” Andy said, irony in her tone, “She probably already knows.”
They laughed together, holding each other, going silent for a long time, absorbing the warmth and care they shared. Dev brought up the chenille bedspread and pulled it over them because it was getting chilly in the early morning hours.
“We should live together for a while,” he suggested.
“Yes. But knowing my parents, Mom is going to be nagging me about a date to get married before too long.”
“Well, we can’t have that. Why not live together, and by next June, we’ll know, and it’s the nicest month in the valley from what your dad has told me.”
“A June wedding would be wonderful. Would your parents be able to make it up here?”
“I’m sure they will. That’s plenty of time for them to prepare to fly up here.”
She moved her finger down the center of his powerful chest. “Maybe my parents, you and I could fly down there this Christmas and share it with them? Do you think they’d like that?”
“My mom and dad would be over the moon,” Dev said.
“Well,” she said, snuggling into his welcoming arms and body, “let’s talk more about that tomorrow morning when we wake up.”
“And after at least two or three cups of coffee,” Dev warned her good-naturedly.
Andy closed her eyes, utterly relaxed against his tall, firm body. She kissed his chest and nestled into his warm flesh, the hair across it like a soft pillow. “Tomorrow,” she murmured drowsily. “A new and wonderful day.”
He slid them down onto the bed, tucking her in with the sheet and blankets, and then bringing her along his length. “The first day of forever with you,” he said thickly, kissing her slowly, appreciating her for who she was.
“Forever,” Andy agreed. “Just like our parents, who have loved one another forever. I like that idea . . .”
Don’t miss Lindsay McKenna’s next book in the Wind River Valley series:
WIND RIVER UNDERCOVER!
Coming to readers in April 2020
In the meantime,
if you’ve missed the previous book in the series,
HOME TO WIND RIVER,
turn the page and enjoy a quick peek!
The book is available
at your favorite retailer
and e-retailer.
June 1
How was Jake Murdoch, her foreman, going to react to the news?
Maud Whitcomb, owner of the Wind River Ranch, pushed her fingers through her dark hair that was threaded with silver. Sitting in her large office, she waited with anticipation. Jake was an ex-recon Marine with severe PTSD he dealt with day in and day out. As the foreman for their hundred-thousand-acre ranch for the last three years, he’d proved himself invaluable despite his war wounds. She was pretty sure he wouldn’t be happy.
Jake’s symptoms made him a loner, boarded up like Fort Knox, and he liked living alone in the huge cedar log cabin a mile from the main ranch area. Dragging in steadying breath, Maud heard heavy footsteps echoing outside her open office door. It was early June and, for once, there was bright sunshine and a blue sky in western Wyoming.
She saw Jake’s shadow first and then him. He was six-foot, two-inches tall, a solid two hundred pounds of hard muscle. His shoulders were almost as broad as the doorway he stood within. At thirty years old, any woman worth her salt would turn her head to appreciate his raw good looks and powerful physique. His temperament, however, was open to question. He was known as “Bear” around the ranch. Bear as in grizzly bear. He was terse, not PC, completely honest and didn’t brook idiots for more than two seconds.
Swiftly glancing up at him as he entered, Maud watched him take off his dark brown Stetson and saw his expression was set; any emotion he felt was hiding behind what he called his game face.
“Jake. Come on in,” she said, waving a hand toward a wooden chair in front of her desk. “How’s your mom doing?”
Grunting, Jake hung up his Stetson on a nearby hat tree and turned, boots thunking across the highly polished oak floor.
Maud girded herself. He wasn’t happy. At all. “Coffee?” It was nine a.m., and usually by this time he was out on the range, managing their wranglers. He probably wanted to be out with his hardworking crew rather than in here with her. But they had to talk.
“Yeah, coffee’s good,” he said, making a beeline for the service on the other side of the room. He poured two cups, black, and turned. Setting one in front of her, he sat down and took a quick sip of the steaming brew. “You know my mother broke her thigh bone a couple of days ago. I just finished talking to her surgeon before coming here, and they said she pulled through the operation with flying colors. She’s resting in her room right now.”
“That’s great to hear,” Maud said, relief in her tone as she sipped the coffee. “I know they call it breaking a hip, but in reality, people break their femur or thigh bone.”
Shaking his head, Jake muttered, “Yeah. Bad anatomy, if you ask me.”
“So? What’s her prognosis?”
She saw him grimace and set the coffee down in front of him. “The surgeon says she’s going to need eight to ten weeks of care. She lives alone in Casper. And she’s fighting having a caregiver in her home twenty-four hours a day.”
Managing a sour smile, Maud said, “Like mother, like son. Right?” She saw worry in Jake’s forest-green eyes. He had been close to both his parents; his father had died at the age of fifty-five of a sudden and unexpected heart attack. For the last ten years, his mother had been on her own. Now, at sixty-five, she had a broken bone and needed help. Jake’s expression turned dark, and she saw him wrestling with the whole situation.
“I’m afraid you’re right, Maud.”
“So? What do you want to do about it?” She leaned back in her squeaky leather chair, holding his narrowing gaze. “How can we gather the wagons and help you out?” Maud made a point of being there for the people who worked for them. Jake had not asked for anything. He never did. Her experience with her wrangler vets, however, had taught her early on that those with PTSD, man or woman, never asked for help, never asked for support, and she knew it came from the shame that they had been broken by combat. “Well?” she prodded, arching a brow.
Jake squirmed. “Mom asked if I could come home and help her for those two months.” Mouth quirking, he mumbled, “I told her I couldn’t, that we had fifty grass leases with fifty different ranchers coming here, bringing in their herds by truck, in the next two weeks. I told her the Wyoming grass was thick, rich and nutritious, that the cattle would fatten up far more quickly on these lands than being put into a livestock pen. That I couldn’t leave because our work triples from June through September.”
“How did Jenna take the news?” Maud heard the pain in Jake’s low, deep tone. He was a man who hated showing any emotions, but they were plainly written all over him now. Some of it Maud attributed to their strong relationship. Jake could let his guard down around her, one of the few people in his life he did trust.
“She was disappointed but understood.” His black brows fell and he looked away. “She needs help. I don’t know what to do. That’s why I’m here.” He gave her a hopeful look. “You’re the go-to gal for ideas, Maud. I’m hopin’ you can come up with a fix.”
“I think I have one, Jake, but I don’t know how you will react to it. Here’s my plan. I talked to Steve last night and he’s in agreement with me. I hope you will be, too.” She straightened, resting her elbows on the desk, her hands clasped, her full attention on her foreman. “We both feel Jenna could be brought by ambulance to the ranch. The foreman’s house is two stories, has three bedrooms, three baths, and is large enough for you to take ca
re of your mom as well as an in-house caregiver.” She saw his brows raise momentarily. “I know you’d rather live alone, but honestly, your cabin is the second largest on the ranch, next to where we live. It has plenty of room for you, your mom and a hired caregiver.”
She took a breath, watching his face go from hard and unreadable to something akin to discomfort, coupled with relief. Jake had a set of good parents, that she knew. And he’d been very close to both of them. As well, Jake had protective instincts toward women. His mother was no exception to that rule. Maud knew he wanted desperately to support and care for her, but he hadn’t thought outside the box on how to do it. That was her job.
“Now,” she said firmly, “before you say no, I talked to Dr. Taylor Douglas, our PA, physician’s assistant, in town. She said I needed to find someone with a medical background, preferably a registered nurse, who could take care of Jenna: help her walk, be there to assist her with the mandatory exercises, as well as cook and clean for you. Taylor put the word out in Wind River for such a person. I haven’t gotten any bites on this yet, but I’ll keep at it. Your mom and the caregiver could have the two bedrooms on the first floor. You have the master bedroom upstairs. If I find a caretaker for Jenna, would this work for you? It would be for a minimum of two months.”
Jake rolled his shoulders, scowling in thought. “Maybe. But I can’t afford to hire a caregiver for Jenna.”
“No worries,” Maud answered briskly. “Your mother is on Medicare and our umbrella insurance on the ranch will cover a full-time caregiver until she doesn’t need one anymore. I’ll pay for the caregiver because you’re so important to the daily work that goes on around here, Jake. I’d do it for any of our wranglers. We meant it when we said they were family, and that’s what you do for your family.” Opening her hands, she added, “We’re grateful to have made money and we aren’t taking it with us. Your mom will have the best of care and we’ll cover any additional expenses. How does that sound?”
Wind River Protector Page 26
