by Cora Seton
She batted him away, and a wet chunk of mashed potato flew from the fork she held and stuck to his shirt.
“None of those women mean a thing to—”
Sadie had heard enough. All she could remember was Mark dancing with Tracy Jones at the Boot. Flirting with her. Going home with her. Leaving Sadie there to find her own way back to Two Willows. She’d never told her sisters about all the ways Mark had humiliated her. She hoped they didn’t know. Doubted it; this was a small town and people talked.
She wasn’t going to let this… man… come and do it to her again.
“Sadie, I mean it. You’re different. You’re special—”
You’re special. Hadn’t Mark said the same thing when he was wooing her?
She had to stop Connor. Stop those sweet words that had fooled her once and couldn’t fool her again.
“Come on, honey. Give me a chance to—”
In a fury, she scooped the pile of potatoes Lena had left on her plate and threw them at Connor. “Get away from me!”
The white mess stuck to his chin and the stubble of his beard. His expression darkened, but Sadie didn’t care. She grabbed a chicken bone from Jo’s plate and tossed it at him. It bounced off his head.
She was done with men. Done with them.
“Sadie!”
Past caring. Past listening. No one cheated on her. No one—
She lifted the salad bowl, still more than half full, and flung its contents at the airman—
But she lost her grip and the bowl followed.
Connor caught it in one hand. Thumped it down on the table in a shower of lettuce, carrots and cucumber.
Came after her.
Sadie shrieked, but Connor hooked her with an arm around her waist and dragged her close. “Stop throwing things at me, woman.”
“Don’t you woman me—”
Connor cut off her words with a kiss that electrified Sadie down to the tips of her toes, even if it did taste like mashed potatoes. The world, muted since they’d left the garden, came to life in vibrant sound and color. “I need you,” Connor said and kissed her again.
Shocked all over again at the buzz of the connection between them, Sadie couldn’t pull back. She wanted more—needed more—needed to get that connection back for good. She lifted her arms and twined them around his neck, the taste of salad dressing and mashed potatoes on her lips.
She was hungry for him, she admitted to herself. Or maybe just hungry, she thought with a desperate inner laugh. She kept kissing him, even though she knew she should pull back. Should still be furious with him. She should have run.
“Sadie, you’re amazing,” Connor whispered.
Some instinct told her he was speaking from his heart. Still, how could she trust him after what she’d seen? Men played with women. Used them.
So even if she felt more alive in Connor’s arms than she had in months—years—she couldn’t give in to it.
“No!” Sadie came to her senses and tore herself from his grasp. “No—I won’t play this game.” This was a man who juggled women like bowling pins, who thought it perfectly acceptable to play them off each other. A man who’d make up a wedding to trick his parents. Or who maybe really was getting married, and only lying to fool her.
She’d been a fool for far too long.
This had to stop now.
“Don’t ever touch me again,” she hissed at Connor and walked out the back door to deal with the farm stand.
Let someone else clean up the mess.
Chapter Six
‡
“Like you’ve never screwed up,” Connor said to Logan several days later when he’d locked himself into the guest room and set up the video call to the men back at USSOCOM. He’d hoped that in the interim he’d be able to make things up to Sadie, but she’d turned a cold shoulder to him he couldn’t seem to get past. The garden wall was progressing slowly, since he was doing all the work himself, but at least he’d finished painting the living room and kitchen—switching to the inside work when his back told him it was time to stop hefting stones into place. Sadie had been peevish through the whole process—especially with how it had made it harder for her to handle meals—but Connor thought the results looked good. The only bright spots in his days were spending time with Max, who seemed to grow every time he turned around. The puppy was always cheerful and overjoyed to seem him—unlike some people.
“I’ve screwed up,” Logan admitted, “But not like you are now. You mess this up for yourself and you’ll screw all of us over, O’Riley. The General should have sent me next. I’d get the job done.”
“You think so? Lena will kick your ass to kingdom come the first time you open your mouth.”
“She’ll take one look at this fine example of Grade A American beef and fall all over herself trying to get a bite of it.”
“You are so delusional—”
“Cut the crap,” Hunter said, his thick Southern drawl like a honeyed whip. “Both of you need to get your heads on straight.”
“I’m not the only one who can blow this.” Connor turned on him, still stung by Logan’s attack. “You’re as liable as either of us to screw it up when it’s your turn.”
“I won’t screw it up.” But Hunter glanced away at something off-screen, and for the first time Connor wondered if the SEAL could carry it off.
“You sure about that? You’ve never said one thing about Jo.” He couldn’t blame the man. Hunter was the oldest of them. Why had the General paired him with twenty-one-year-old Jo, his youngest daughter?
“What do you want me to say?” Hunter drawled. “A man doesn’t talk dirt about his future wife.”
“Is she your future wife?” Connor pressed. Because if Hunter knew already it wouldn’t work, they needed to have that conversation. None of them would end up with a ranch if they all didn’t follow through. And what about their records? He needed his name cleared—
“I said I’d marry her, and I will.”
Now Logan and Jack were staring at him, too. “It ain’t that easy,” Logan said. “You have to persuade her to marry you. And you’re one ugly son-of-a-bitch, so if your crappy attitude is the cherry on top, this ain’t going to work.”
Connor suppressed a grin at the spark of anger in Hunter’s eyes. The man liked to act like nothing fazed him, but that ugly crack had hit the mark. So the man was vain. Interesting. Connor had no doubt Hunter got his fair share of female attention, even if he spoke little and laughed even less.
“What about you?” Logan turned on Jack.
“I’m here, aren’t I?”
“That doesn’t answer the question.”
“What was the question again?”
“Are you going to marry Alice?”
“You just told Hunter that wasn’t the question.”
“No, I didn’t.”
“You don’t listen very well, do you? You don’t even listen to yourself.”
Connor sat back as the conversation between the two men settled into the kind of bickering that usually drove him nuts. Today he’d noticed something new.
Jack hadn’t answered the question.
He never did.
Why was that? Connor knew better than to jump in and demand he do so right now. Jack was a master at evading any topic he didn’t want to talk about, and that seemed to encompass just about every personal question possible. They’d all had rough times in the past. They’d all acted on impulse at some point in a way that threw them into hot water and landed them here, subject to the General’s whims.
So what made Jack so damned hard to pin down?
Suddenly Connor reached his limit. Bad enough he wasn’t at all sure he could persuade Sadie to marry him. He needed everything else pinned into place—no questions asked.
“You’re going to marry Alice,” he snapped at Jack. “You’re going to get us this ranch—not because we deserve it but because Sadie and Cass and the rest of them—including Alice—do. Got it?”
Jack—
mid-sentence—stared at him for a long moment.
And nodded.
Jean Finney. How on earth could she have forgotten Jean Finney? Sadie glanced at the greenhouse clock again, and rummaged through the cupboard where she kept her remedies. She wouldn’t find what she was looking for, of course—a week ago, when she’d handed Jean a bottle of the elixir in her stores, she’d known it was the last one, and that she’d have to think of something before Jean came back for a refill.
At twelve weeks pregnant, it was crucial she get it. Jean had first come to her last summer to confess that barely two years into her marriage, she’d had three miscarriages. Sadie had seen the desperation in her eyes, heard it in her voice and known she’d do her damnedest to help. She’d made Jean take six months off trying, while she concocted mixtures of herbs to support her body’s reproductive health. Jean had quickly fallen pregnant when Sadie had given her the go-ahead to try again, but as she’d said, it had never been getting pregnant that was the problem; it was staying that way.
As Sadie gathered the ingredients for the tonic, she knew it was no good. She could mix them in exactly the same way as she had before, but without that connection she normally felt to the plants, the balance would be wrong. And with Jean, the balance simply couldn’t be wrong.
“Mom—what should I do?” she whispered aloud, her hands trembling. Jean always came at eleven o’clock and it was past ten. She had the roots and herbs laid out before her on the table. The sterilized bottle. All her tools to prepare the tonic.
But it was no good.
“Mom?”
Sadie gripped the edge of the table, closed her eyes and tried to calm her mind. What would her mother do in this situation?
“Mom, I need help—”
The greenhouse door whipped opened and Sadie gasped, opened her eyes and saw Connor.
“Sorry; I didn’t mean to interrupt… Were you praying?” He slowed to a halt.
Sadie supposed she had been, in a way. She’d asked her mother to send help—but all she’d gotten was—
Sadie stared at Connor. Let go of the table. Took a deep breath. “Come here,” she ordered.
His brow furrowed. Was he suspecting a trap? “Okay.” He moved through the narrow space between the tables loaded with seedlings, and came to join her.
“I need help,” she said.
“Anything.”
His quiet assurance took her breath away, and Sadie clutched the edge of the potting bench again, battling vertigo. She’d been rude to him for days but he was ready to do anything she asked. Why was that? Why was he here?
“I need you to stand behind me.” Her voice betrayed her nervousness, and Sadie fought to steady it. After a moment, Connor did as she asked, moving behind her.
“Like this?”
He was so close, Sadie shivered with awareness, bit her lip, reached behind her and lifted his hands near her waist. “Hold on to me.” She sucked in a breath when he settled his hands lightly but firmly on her hips. Even though she’d been ignoring him since their last fight, her body had taken notice whenever he was near, and Connor had done whatever he could to stick as near to her as possible.
Now every nerve in her body was at attention, and desire tugged deep inside her. She wanted him to kiss her again. She’d missed the taste of his mouth on hers.
Missed this aliveness he passed to her when they touched.
She wanted him, she admitted to herself. No matter that he was a player. That he would break her heart.
“That’s it. Stay like that,” she managed to say.
Focus, she told herself, but it was difficult. Not only had his touch turned on the world, as if he’d turned up the volume on a radio, but it set her nerves buzzing with a sweet ache for him to do far more than hold her so innocently. She swallowed, made herself reach out and begin to prepare the herbs and roots she needed to make the tonic for Jean. As soon as she touched them, instinct told her everything she needed to do, and for the first time in weeks her hands moved over the ingredients and implements on the table with the confidence they’d always used to hold. Creating the tonic felt so right, Sadie knew this was the work she was meant to do. Knowing exactly how to measure and add the herbs was like coming home, and tears of gratitude started in Sadie’s eyes, but she didn’t have time for that. In fact, she barely had time—
Connor lifted her hair away from her neck and kissed her.
Sadie nearly dropped the bottle she’d begun to fill. She couldn’t describe the sound she’d just made, half a sob, half a plea for more.
But she couldn’t do that right now. “Hold still,” she hissed, and kept working. Connor held still, his mouth still pressed to her neck, and they were standing like that when the door opened again a minute later.
“Oh, sorry! I’m early—” This time it was a female voice.
Jean’s.
Sadie elbowed Connor away, and immediately the connection went out, making the world feel so gray and mute she wanted to scream. “I was just finishing up your tonic.”
“I can see that.” The amusement in Jean’s voice made Sadie blush.
“Connor was… helping.”
“I can see that, too.”
Sadie swung around to stopper the bottle and hide her burning face. When she had control of herself, she turned back. “You can’t use this until tomorrow,” she told Jean. “I just finished it and it needs time to steep.”
“I’ve got enough for today. Thank you, Sadie. And cross your fingers for me—I’ve never made it this far before.”
Sadie knew the next two weeks were the dangerous ones. She gripped Connor’s hand suddenly, needing to check one last time. Instantly, she knew the mixture was correct. She knew, too, it was crucial Jean have it. Handing it over to the woman, she let go of Connor and gave her friend a quick hug.
“I know there’s no guarantee,” Jean said. “I know my body will do what’s right. But I’m hopeful this time—”
She didn’t finish her sentence. She didn’t need to.
“I’m hopeful, too,” Sadie said—and meant it with every fiber of her being. She refused payment like she always did in cases like these. You couldn’t put a price on a pregnancy.
“I’ll see you next week!” Jean waved on her way out.
“Rest a lot,” Sadie called after her. “Get that husband of yours to help you out.”
“Will do!”
When she was gone, Sadie turned back to Connor. “Thank you.”
“You going to tell me what that was all about?”
“I’m not sure I can explain it,” she answered truthfully.
He took that in, and Sadie wondered what he was thinking. She wished he would touch her again, but squashed the thought. Not when she knew what type of man he was.
“Tell me this, then,” he said finally. “Did I help?”
“Yes.” He’d definitely helped. She couldn’t have done it without him. “You might have saved a baby.”
Just for a second something shifted in his eyes. A softening—before he covered it up by moving closer.
“Thank you for letting me help you. It’s what I came here to do.” He pulled her into an embrace.
She resisted. “How many other women are you helping right now?” she made herself ask. She wasn’t going to be won over with a kiss or two and an assist with an herbal remedy.
“None. Sadie—” Connor sighed. “Lass, I’ve never done serious. I’ve never done long term. Lila and Bridget know that. They flirt with me, I flirt with them, we see each other when we see each other, have a little fun—”
Every word he said felt like a knife to her heart. He was just like Mark. It was all a game—a chance to get what you wanted by using the other person.
“It’s not like that with you.”
“Of course not,” she said sarcastically, pulling free of his arms. “Of course I’m the one woman who’s different. The one woman who’s changed your mind about everything.”
Did he think she wa
s stupid?
“You have every right to doubt me.” Connor hooked his thumbs in the belt loops of his jeans. Shrugged. “I’m being honest about who I’ve been. And I’m being honest about how I feel about you.”
“Why should I believe you?”
“Because I’m telling you the truth; just like I’ve always told the women I date. Hell, Sadie—I’m single. In the Air Force, I put my life on the line every time I went on a mission. If I wanted to flirt—or fuck—” He got a hold of himself. “No one got hurt but me. I made sure of that. Lila and Bridget have their own reasons for not wanting something permanent.”
“How can all of you be so… calculating?” She’d never been like that with her affections. She either fell for someone or she didn’t. To choose how much to want someone—to simply fuck someone just for the sake of fucking—the idea was completely foreign to her.
Connor chuckled, but it wasn’t a happy sound. “That’s just it; this isn’t me being calculating. This is me—caught—in something I hadn’t looked for.”
That didn’t make her feel better. So he hadn’t wanted to fall for her. Hadn’t wanted to be a one-woman man. Didn’t that mean he’d struggle to break free of the feeling?
“Let me help you. I’ll do anything you ask. That’s why I’m here.” He put his arms around her. As he pressed kisses to her forehead, her cheeks, her chin and finally her mouth, Sadie closed her eyes and tried to sense what was true as her connection to her surroundings turned on again.
Was he here to help?
All this time she’d thought Connor had come to take her place—to step into her shoes so that she could leave the ranch. What if she’d been wrong? What if he was here to do exactly what he’d just said?
Help her.
She wanted to believe it.
She clung to him as his kiss deepened, and for once she didn’t fight it. Instead she let down her defenses, let herself feel his strength—let herself sag against him. She was rewarded when his arms tightened around her. This was nothing like the offhand way Mark used to kiss her, or the selfish way he used to touch her—as if he could take without giving anything back.
