by Cora Seton
“Sadie—”
“No, don’t even try to defend any of them. You have no idea what this land has been putting me through.” She grabbed the hem of her T-shirt and yanked it up over her head, exposing a surprisingly lacy bra underneath.
“Sadie—” Connor glanced around, glad there was no one in sight, glad for the view of Sadie’s breasts, if he was honest, but Sadie wasn’t making sense. Maybe she was overworked, stressed out by the attack on her house—
“Make love to me,” Sadie demanded and flung her arms wide to indicate the whole garden. “It’s what they want! What they all want!”
“What who wants?”
“The tomatoes, the carrots, the zucchini—especially the zucchini—”
“Sadie, I… can’t.” He took a step back to show he meant what he’d said. He’d never thought of Sadie as high-strung, but she’d definitely gone over the edge. “Let’s find one of your sisters. Put your shirt on. Maybe a cup of tea—”
Sadie stared at him. Blinked. Looked down at the shirt in her hands.
Blushed a furious shade of scarlet.
“Oh, my God.”
“It’s okay,” he began, but Sadie yanked the shirt back over her head and thrashed around until her arms were through the armholes.
“I’m sorry. I just—I don’t—oh, my God.” Sadie was shaking and Connor ached to pull her into his arms, but he really needed to know what had happened just now. One minute Sadie had been lucid, the next raving about zucchini. They had to sort this out.
She must have thought so, too, because she made sure to keep a gap between them, narrowing her eyes when he would have stepped closer. She put up a hand to stop him.
“You don’t hear it at all, do you? You don’t even know—” She backed away from him.
Connor pursued her. “What do you hear? When we touch?” It was a long shot, but with the beautiful woman in front of him all but melting down, he had to take it.
“I hear everything.” Sadie hugged her arms over her chest, as if trying to protect herself from his derision. Her eyes filled with tears, and Connor’s heart contracted as she fought to express herself. “My whole life when I worked in the garden, it spoke to me. When I touched the dirt I knew if it was too dry or too wet. When I touched a leaf I knew if a plant was diseased or getting too much sun or too much shade. But then… it stopped. Just stopped. Until you came.”
Connor didn’t know what to make of what she’d said. Didn’t all good gardeners read the signs of the dirt and leaves and so on? Did Sadie really feel more than that when she worked with the plants?
“When did it stop?” he asked to buy more time.
“When—” A tear snaked down her cheek. “When Mark—when the shoot-out happened.”
Clarity crashed over Connor and despite his intentions, he took a step back. Always Mark. Always this man who’d gotten to Sadie before him.
He wanted to crush the life out of him, whoever he was. If Brian hadn’t already shot the guy, he’d have to go do it himself.
“So when the shoot-out happened, and you learned that Mark wasn’t who you thought he was—”
“That’s just the thing. I knew exactly who he was. And I didn’t walk away. I… helped him. I didn’t know what he planned to do, but I knew he was dealing drugs, and I… helped him.”
“Helped him?” Brian had told him everything that happened leading up to the shoot-out, and he’d known Sadie was caught in the car with Mark and Howie Warner when they’d been returning home from running a shipment to Bozeman, but he didn’t know she took so much responsibility for what happened.
“I should have known what they meant to do,” she said as if she’d read his mind. “I should have stopped Mark. I dated the man who tried to kill my sisters—kissed him—let him touch me—that’s why the land wants me gone.”
“Wait—what?” Connor shook his head. Her admission about being with Mark hit him in a place so primeval his vision had gone red before the rest of her words sunk in. “The land—”
“Wants me gone. At least, I thought it did before you came.” Sadie looked at him helplessly. “I know that sounds ridiculous, but Two Willows is different than everywhere else. My mother had this connection to it, and so do I—at least I did. And then I didn’t. But now when I’m with you, I do again. I don’t hear voices, Connor—it’s not like that. It’s a knowing. A feeling. Stronger than anything you usually feel. I get this sense of exactly what the right thing to do is—and what the wrong thing is.”
“I don’t understand, lass.”
She drew in a frustrated breath. “Before you came, the garden was dying. Parts of it still are. The rest is hanging in the balance. I couldn’t feel what the plants needed anymore.”
He remembered how dusty it had all looked when he’d driven up that first day. He’d chalked it up to too many hot, sunny days, her distraction because of the trouble with Mark and the others, and their race to prepare for Cass and Brian’s wedding on such short notice.
But even afterward, when he saw how much care Sadie had lavished on her plants, he’d noticed the blighted leaves, the withered stems and the fruit rotting before it even ripened.
“Some years are better than others, right?” he said, wanting to believe it. What Sadie was hinting at was far too strange.
“No. Not here. Not at Two Willows. Not before I betrayed it.”
“You think your garden is… punishing you? Because you fell for Mark even though he planned to use you, take your home and run his operation out of Two Willows?”
She nodded.
Nothing he’d learned in the military prepared him for a situation like this. “So what changed?” Connor managed to ask.
“You came.” Her words were a whisper. “The very first time I touched you—”
“What happened?” He was intrigued in spite of himself.
“It was like someone flipped a switch and there it was again. I could hear it—feel it. I could save my plants.”
Which was why she kept dragging him around the garden like a wheelbarrow of mulch, he realized.
And he’d thought it had been because she couldn’t get enough of him.
The joke was on him, wasn’t it? He’d always gotten the women he fancied, even though he was never serious about them. Now he found a woman he thought he could make his wife, and she found him as handy as a pile of manure.
“I think it’s because of how I feel about you,” Sadie said, knocking him off balance again. “It’s not like Mark at all. That was just… boredom. Wanting to be wanted. With you, it’s… different.”
Connor waited. He didn’t think he could stand it if she trotted out some line about true friendship or crap like that.
“It’s because… I feel… I feel…”
There was that blush again. But she hadn’t finished the sentence, and Connor didn’t know how much longer he could wait.
“I feel like you set me on fire when you’re close. Like I could go up in flames if you don’t touch me. I want you close to me, Connor. I want… I want you inside me.”
Connor tossed caution to the wind, closed the distance between them, cupped her chin in his hands and kissed her.
They couldn’t do this here, Sadie realized when Connor’s hands crept up to her breasts again. She wanted exactly what he wanted, but they were in full sight of the house, the carriage house, the driveway…
Besides, there was something she needed to know.
“The maze.”
She didn’t have to say anything else. Connor seemed to understand without an explanation. He took her hand and tugged her along, his long strides eating up the ground, leaving her scrambling to keep up. When they reached the entrance he plunged right in, but immediately took a wrong turn. Sadie dug in her heels and yanked him in the right direction. He caught her up in a kiss, took the lead and strode down the rest of the green passage before turning the wrong way again. Sadie took hold of his bicep with two hands and bodily turned him around, keepin
g the kiss going.
“Lass, did your mother not tell not to push your menfolk around?”
The lilt in his accent tugged at something deep within her. She wriggled around behind him, placed her two hands on his back and shoved him in the right direction.
Except he didn’t move.
“Ye’ll have to try a little harder, you wee little thing.”
Now he was laying his Irish burr on so thick she had to laugh.
“You want to actually make it to the center, don’t you?” Frustrated, flushed with desire, panting from keeping up with him, Sadie pushed her hair away from her face and tried again.
Nothing.
“Aye, but under my own power. ’Tis a shameful thing when a man lets himself be pushed around by a lassie—fuck!”
Sadie had elbowed him under his rib cage with a karate-chop-like movement she hadn’t known she knew how to perform. Connor spun around, looped an arm around her waist and tossed her over his shoulder.
“If you’re in such a damned hurry, you should have said so up front.”
There. Now his voice was back to normal. His mock anger made her smile, as did seeing the maze from this angle, jangling on his shoulder as he barged along the paths, taking first one turn, then another, going around in circles until Sadie couldn’t stand it anymore.
“Right. No, your other right!” she called when he reached a turn. “My right.”
“Which one?” Connor sounded as frustrated as she felt.
“Left!”
Connor went left. Following her directions, they made it to the center in short order and he set her down between the bench and the standing stone. “See? The man takes charge—that’s how it’s done.”
“You’re an idiot.”
But he wasn’t paying attention. Instead he was staring at her like he’d never quite seen her before. “Where were we?” he mused. “Oh, right—” He took hold of the hem of her T-shirt and whipped it up and over her head. “Right here.”
“Connor!”
“Want me to put it back on? Oh, wait, lass—I can’t seem to hold it in this stiff breeze.” He balled it up and tossed it over the nearest green wall.
Sadie bit her lip as the shirt unfolded at the apex of the toss and gently settled on top of the hedge.
“Whoops.” Connor eyed the thick evergreen shrubbery that made up the wall. “How high is that? Fifteen feet?”
“Twenty. I always keep it exactly at twenty feet.” She’d have to get the damn ladder out later.
“You’re a beautiful woman when you’re angry, Sadie Reed.” He moved in close.
“Lucky for you, because I have a feeling you’ll see me angry more often than not.”
“Shh.” He kissed her, and Sadie forgot the shirt, forgot their earlier scuffle and the way he’d carried her like a sack of potatoes through the maze’s passages. Here they were.
Together.
As his fingertips slid over her waist, up her back to the catch of her bra, Sadie held still and savored the sensation.
“I know you’re doing this for the garden,” he began.
“I’m doing it for me,” she said truthfully.
“But you said—”
“That, too.” Her voice was husky with need. “I can’t lie—” Not when she knew what it felt like to be used. “I wouldn’t have let you near me if you didn’t turn the connection back on,” she admitted. “But I couldn’t be with someone just for that. I’m not like that. Not… removed.”
He got her bra undone, slid it off and tossed it away, thankfully not onto the hedge this time, although she thought he might have considered it for a moment. “No, you aren’t removed, are you? You don’t hide.”
She wondered what he was thinking about. That sentence seemed to hold a world of pain. She smoothed a hand over his hair and realized the connection arced between them, too. She could hear—or feel—or know—what he needed in the same way she could feel the growing things around them. A touch, just like that.
A kiss.
“I wish I could sometimes,” she told him. She had always been too open with her feelings. It was how Mark had controlled her.
“No, don’t wish for that.” He traced kisses down her neck, behind her ear and over her shoulder. “Be real—like the garden. It doesn’t hide either. It wilts when conditions aren’t right. It blooms when they are.”
She bloomed under his touch. His kisses kept distracting her from the thoughts she needed to work out, and when he cupped her breasts, lifted them and swept his palms over her sensitive nipples, Sadie thought she’d drown in the sensations rushing over her.
“I don’t want to hide from you,” she said truthfully.
“I don’t want to hide from you either,” he told her. “I want—I want you to know me.”
Somehow she understood those other women—Lila and Bridget—hadn’t known him the way he meant. They both had pasts but now they were building a present together. When she tugged at the hem of his shirt, he lifted a hand over his head, grabbed a fistful of the fabric where it stretched across his back and tugged it off.
He tangled his hands in the waistband of her shorts, undid the button, the zipper and shucked them down. She kicked off her shoes and wiggled out of her panties, standing before him in all her naked glory. When she reached for the buckle of his belt, he let her undo it. He was so hard he was straining against his jeans, and he groaned as she undid his belt and fumbled with the button.
Finally, when they were both undressed, he stooped to reach into his pocket and pull out a condom.
“Are you sure about this?” He let her see what was in his hand, giving her one last chance to back away.
He searched her gaze, as if telling her that though it would kill him to stop now, he was man enough to do it. She had to want this as much as he did.
“I’m sure.”
Connor tore open the condom wrapper, sheathed himself as quickly as he could, then lifted her up, took two steps and they crashed into the standing stone. Her back pressed against it, held up by her legs wrapped around his waist, Sadie let him take her hands, lift them above her head and press them with his against the stone’s broad expanse.
“Are we—?”
Sadie leaned forward and kissed him before he could finish his question. She knew what she wanted, no matter what Fate had to say. She pressed her thighs against his hips, lifted up and settled back down, taking him in and allowing Connor to push inside her slowly as gravity urged her down. He let go of her wrists to support her, and she twined her arms around his neck. Sadie held on as he pulled out and pushed in again, moaning with the pleasure radiating through her from this sweet friction.
Sadie forgot everything else but him as he began to move in a rhythm she couldn’t help but join. A rhythm that coaxed waves of sensation into a vortex in her body. She willed him to speed up and he did, his strong motions teasing her to a fevered pitch.
With the stone at her back and Connor in front of her, thrusting into her, winding her so tight she didn’t think she could last another moment, Sadie knew this was her answer.
She was meant to be with Connor.
No matter what the stone said.
No matter if it said anything at all.
This was where she wanted to be. This was her man.
With Connor she’d save her garden, save her home.
Save herself.
Connor had been aching with need for Sadie for days, so when he thrust into her again, and she arched her back and cried out, her abandon pulled him over the edge into the throes of an orgasm so powerful his vision went black.
When it cleared again, he was struck by Sadie’s beauty all over again. Always before when he’d been close to her, she’d shied away from him, or been bent over her vegetables working, or distracted with worry.
For once she was fully present, and she met his gaze with her own.
“That was—incredible,” she said, and then, to Connor’s horror, she teared up.
&n
bsp; “Whoa, whoa—what’s wrong?”
He moved to pull out of her, but Sadie linked her ankles behind his back. “Nothing’s wrong. Nothing at all; it’s…. right. I didn’t expect that.”
She was a pleasant weight in his arms. Every move he made pressed part of him against part of her. He could stay like this forever.
“What do you mean?” Relaxing a little, he smoothed a knuckle over one bare breast and Sadie moaned, a smile on her face.
“I mean, I thought I was supposed to leave.”
“Go to India.”
“Right. I thought the garden—the maze—was telling me I wasn’t fit to live here anymore.”
Connor glanced over his shoulder and frowned. Was the hedge—greener? “Everything looks healthy to me.”
She leaned forward until her breasts brushed his chest. “It does, doesn’t it? I think that’s because of you. Connor… you have to stay.”
“Because your garden will die if I leave?”
He was fishing, but she didn’t care. She felt silly for trying to hide her feelings from him. “Because I want you to stay.”
Chapter Eight
‡
After he’d made love to Sadie slowly and thoroughly a second time, they dressed and returned to the house. Connor gave Sadie his shirt, since hers was out of reach, and when they met up with Lena on the back porch, Lena took one look at his bare chest and rolled her eyes.
“Ready for your close-up?” she asked sarcastically.
Connor simply shrugged and struck a pose. He wasn’t ashamed of the muscles he’d gained during his years in the Air Force.
“Not your man, huh?” Lena said to Sadie as Connor brushed past her and reached for the screen door.
“Not until today,” Sadie said pertly. “Don’t you have some cattle to chase around?”
“Just got a phone call from Autumn Cruz. She wanted to know if we’d host the quilting bee here tonight. She’s got unexpected guests. I told her that was fine.”
