His dad winked at him, too, but honestly, Rory only had eyes for that stunning woman on Sawyer Dennison’s arm, the one dressed in a simple strapless gown from some crazy expensive boutique. The smooth satin bodice accentuated her lovely figure without revealing too much more than the exquisite angel wings tattooed across her bare shoulder blades. The skirt tiered from the waist to the floor in rows of taffeta. Her natural colored locks hung loose and casual to her shoulders, nearly a perfect match to the honey-color of the dress.
But it was the orange and black scarf circling her neck that proved she was still the woman he loved. She wore no veil. A single white rose, a gift from Tyler, adorned her hair. Rory’s eyes glistened, remembering. It was supposed to have been a surprise, but Tyler didn’t understand the nuances of keeping a proper surprise. Just because he’d whispered, “Guess what? You gonna be my mom and me and Daddy got you a purdy flower,” in her ear did not qualify as keeping the secret.
Ember was nervous. Rory knew all of her tells. She might look overconfident to everyone else but this traditional marriage ceremony was a huge step out of her comfort zone. She’d surprised him when she’d asked to meet with a priest. But her neck was stiff, just like it was when she’d turned into Mrs. Dillon in the cornfield. And if she kept biting her lip the way she was, there’d be none of it left for him to nibble on. She hadn’t looked up yet. Her lips were moving. It looked like she was—
Oh, my heck, she’s counting.
Sure enough. Just before his father handed her over, Ember turned to Connor Maher and asked in the same incredibly loud voice that Tyler had just used, “One hundred! I did good, huh, Uncle Connor?”
Tyler enthusiastically answered before Connor could stop chuckling into his fist. “You did real good, Mama! I proud of you!”
The audience wiped tears of laughter while the priest took control of the ceremony. Ember finally looked up. The most glorious emerald greens lit up the chapel and Rory was a smitten man again.
He secured Ember’s hand over his arm, his heart bursting with pride for the connection between this daring brave woman and the little guy grinning up at her like she was his very own fairy godmother come to life.
After the priest finished his few opening remarks, Rory turned to Ember to declare his wedding vows. He grasped her slender fingers. The audience hushed.
“Oh, Ember,” he said hoarsely, his tender heart stuck in his throat.
The smile dropped off her face. And there was that scared little girl again—still thinking she was unlovable and that this was just a dream. She tugged her fingertips nearly out of his hand before he snagged them tightly, pulling her closer until they stood nose-to-nose and eye-to-eye.
“Oh, no you don’t, Agent Davis. You’re not getting away from me. Not this time. You and me are not the leaving kind of people, remember?”
She had an adorable way of trying not to cry. Ember blinked those thick full eyelashes extra hard like they were supposed to be windshield wipers or something. No luck. One crystal tear wended its way alongside her nose. He watched it drip off her jaw, bounce once off the edge of her scarf and drop smack dab into that extra warm valley between her extra lovely breasts.
When he lifted his gaze back to hers, she gave him the military two fingers to her eyes hand signal to look at her eyes, not her boobs. A wave of heat flamed his whole body. He would’ve laughed if they’d been anywhere else. Leave it to Ember to bring spontaneity into what could’ve been a stuffy marriage ceremony.
The time had come and he knew what he wanted to say.
“Hey there, little girl.” He pressed his forehead to hers; his eyes brimmed. “You have made me the happiest man in the universe. From this moment on, I pledge to you all my days and all my nights for as long as we both shall live. I promise to hear you when you speak, to listen to you when you whisper, to wait for you when you ask.”
He took a deep breath, filling his chest and letting it out slowly. “And if you will have me, I vow to care for you when you’re sick, to pray with you when you pray, and to cry with you when your heart is broken. I give you my hands to use as yours, my heart to keep as yours, and my life—just to be yours. And if forever is not enough, I swear to you, my darling wife, my only lover, and the perfect mother of my son, I will not leave you even then. I pledge to you, Mrs. Rory Dennison, and you alone, my undying fealty, my whole heart and my soul. Amen.”
He pressed a tender, chaste kiss onto her forehead and took one step back. Now it was her turn. She took a deep breath, and he made sure to keep his eyes on her face despite the way her breasts heaved when she took that deep breath.
“Wow. Oh, wow,” she whispered.
The chapel stilled and once more, Ember refused to look at him. She cleared her throat, gave her head a little shake, and took another deep breath. This had to be hard. Her whole life was changing right down to her name.
She kept blinking and biting her bottom lip. The pink tip of her tongue slipped out more than once to run a lap over top and bottom lips, but still she didn’t lift her chin. She wouldn’t meet his eyes. For the life of him, he didn’t know what was wrong. They’d written their vows together. All she had to do was say them out loud for all to hear.
She grabbed his hand and finally met his gaze, her fingers cold and clammy. “I’m sorry, but I... I can’t do this.”
His heart dropped to the floor. He held onto her hand tighter.
“I mean, I really thought I could, but I can’t. I really tried, honest, Rory, but I just can’t. The words just won’t come, and I can’t... I just can’t make them.”
“But Ember... But....” His stomach pitched a fastball up his throat. You’re leaving me at the altar? “But I love you,” he breathed.
“Wow. Rory. Me too.” She reached between those luscious breasts of hers and pulled out a tightly wound scroll of paper. “I stayed up all last night memorizing this thing, but I’m sorry. I just can’t think straight right now. Is it okay if I read my vows to you?”
The prettiest teardrops lined her lashes and he nodded, weak with relief. Oh, God yes. Read the darn thing. Just don’t ever scare me like that again.
She cleared her throat again. “Okay, so here goes. I, Ember Esmeralda Davis, do solemnly vow to love you every day and to honor you in all I say for the rest of my life.” That seemed to be all she needed the scroll for, just to get started. Her gaze shifted off the paper in her hand. She stepped into him, pressing her body to his, the written vows forgotten. “And I promise to love you faithfully, Rory Dennison, to live with you playfully every single day for the rest of our life. I promise to support your dreams and to always have your back no matter if we’re in the middle of cornfields or in our office or wherever. I vow to be the best wife and friend for you, the absolutely best mother to Tyler. But most of all, I promise to breathe and breathe and breathe you into my soul until there is no more you, and no more me—until there is only us.”
Wow. She’d stabbed him clean clear through.
“I love you, Rory,” she whispered, her lips just a few centimeters away. “I want you more than I’ve ever wanted anyone.”
He leaned in for a taste of heaven, but—
“Ahem.” The priest intervened.
Ember huffed through her nostrils and rolled those dazzling greens. “What now?”
“Do you have the rings?” Father O’Connell asked.
Connor prompted Tyler to join the wedding couple at the altar. Rory carefully untied the two silver bands from the pillow that Tyler clutched under his arm like a football. Yes, there’s my boy, a future Cornhuskers quarterback if ever there was one.
Rory placed one of the wedding bands on Ember’s left hand, the one with the full carat diamond, raised her fingers to his lips and kissed them without taking his eyes off her. There was no way this enchanting woman was leaving or getting away. She’d just infused a heady shot of relief and a heaping dose of gratitude into his heart. One more scare like that, and he’d have to throw her over his sho
ulder and haul her off for another round of hot and heavy.
She placed the other ring on his ring finger, a titanium band with three inset diamonds signifying their new family, one for Rory, Ember, and Tyler. It was she who leaned in this time, and Rory had to suppress a grin.
“Ahem.”
“Excuse me,” she whispered impatiently to the priest, “but isn’t this the part where you tell the groom to kiss the bride?”
“Well, uh, yes, but first—”
“Well, am I or am I not the bride?”
A benevolent smirk tugged the corner of Father O’Connell’s mouth. “You are.”
Enough said.
Ember pushed her bridal bouquet into Mother’s hands. In one step, she was in Rory’s arms and love took over. Before he knew it, his hands were on her butt while her fingers clenched his head in place. Like he was going anywhere else but where all that breathing into each other’s souls could begin. How was he going to get through the rest of the day? His fingers ached to undress her. His gut growled with the need to consume her. And every other organ seemed darned intent on her, too.
Someone clapped, giggling with glee. Tyler. All other sounds faded into the tender heat of this first wedded kiss. The priest’s voice droned on, bringing Rory back to reality just in time to hear Father O’Connell pronounce them to be man and wife. Rory shifted his hands off her backside, aware he had family in the audience and a son who didn’t need to see his father pawing his new mother.
With a sly smile and a wink, Father O’Connell turned them to face the audience. “While I still have the chance, may I present Mr. and Mrs. Rory Dennison?”
Rory raised his blushing bride’s hand with his in victory. The audience clapped.
A mighty “Oorah!” filled the chapel. Marines. You’ve got to love ’em.
Ruth wiped her happy face while Sawyer did the same. Kelsey mopped her eyes. Alex beamed. Harley gave Rory and Ember the thumbs-up sign and a wicked smile. Zack just winked, the dog.
And just like that, Rory Dennison took a wife. A real wife. One who loved him enough to die for him. A woman brave enough to stay.
THE END
Sneak Preview of TAYLOR
Book 7
In the Company of Snipers
An arrow!
Taylor Armstrong bowed his chin to his chest and shuddered. Waves of red hot pain slapped over him from the arrow nestled like a living thing snug in his pectoral muscle above his right nipple. It was master. Satan incarnate. And coming to in this dank, dark place wherever he’d been dumped was Hell.
The morning that began with routine arms certification at the shooting range had morphed into a nightmarish struggle for survival. Glimmering light at the bottom of his prison door told him day was nearly done. So was he.
Stabbing pain was definitely the mother of invention. Every tug of his cotton shirt against the arrow enhanced his misery. It had to go. He tore it very carefully and tossed it to the shadows. Every movement hurt. Every breath. Even the feathers at the end of the shaft caught even the slightest intention to move, offering continuous jolts of razor-sharp reminders to, Hold still. Leave it the hell alone!
God Almighty, he wanted to, but the arrowhead had gone too far into his body to be pulled out the way it entered. He would know. The pain beneath his right shoulder blade evoked instant compliance in the one split second he’d mistakenly leaned against the wall behind him, thinking he could use it for support.
What couldn’t be reversed had to go forward and through because that’s what arrowheads did. Like stupid bone-headed Marines, they weren’t designed to retreat, only to advance.
But once the arrowhead was completely through, and its wicked tip sticking out of his back, he could snap it off and pull the remaining slick shaft from his chest. At least that was the plan. If he lived long enough.
It would be no simple feat. Getting back onto his feet would be a chore in itself. But if some guy in Utah could hack his arm off to escape the boulder that tried to kill him, Taylor could surely do this. The arrow was made of wood and Taylor knew wood. The polished hardwood shaft would follow wherever the vicious tip led.
Blood ran down his chest. It didn’t gush, just trickled in a steady stream like it had all the time in the world to get where it was going. The trail of hair down his belly funneled the red stream to the dimpled bowl of his navel. An innee, a bizarre and silly sight on such a desperate day. Funny the things a man notices when Death draws near, how some things become clear while others fade.
Like Three Star USMC Lieutenant General Michael Armstrong, his father, the last image Taylor needed here at the hour of what very well might be his death. He forced his mind from the cold-hearted man who’d raised him, and upward to the only One who’d truly heard him. It had taken eighteen years to learn to pray and from a USMC chaplain no less, but prayer brought comfort. It brought hope. Even here in this darkest of dark places.
“God Almighty. I don’t want to die,” he whispered. “I wear your patron saint on my neck. Think you could send him to me now? I could sure use his help.”
Saint Michael the Archangel. Patron saint of soldiers and warriors. The tough looking guy on the medal Taylor’d worn around his neck for as long as he could remember. Funny. Never once did he relate the archangel on the medal to his father even though their names were the same. The guy decked out in an armor breastplate, his spear stuck in the top of the serpent, Lucifer’s head, always seemed more of a friend, someone he might be able to rely on. Was it asking too much to get a special appearance now? Isn’t that what patron saints did, showed up in a guys’ darkest hour?
Taylor’s prayer would have disgusted his father, but so many things did. It didn’t take much for a son to disappoint a Two Star as driven as his father.
Real men don’t cry. Only sissies pray.
“Screw you, General!” Taylor bellowed into the dearth of silence in this god-forsaken place, jolting to life the beast burrowed into his chest. Never Father. Never Dad. Just yes, sir, General, sir. Anger surged along with the pain.
His father railed on. Quitters never win and winners never quit.
The chant nagged, its paternal lesson ever taught. A thousand times he’d heard it in rain, in snow, in defeat and in tears, and a thousand times he’d cringed at the lack of empathy it invoked. Sheer desperation drove Taylor not to give in to despair. That’s what got a man killed—what went on in his mind. More than anything he needed his father out of his head.
Shut the hell up, General!
Taylor sucked in another breath before he chickened out, before his weary mind came up with another one of his father’s stupid pearls of wisdom. Just that fast, another tough man sprang to life in the darkness. Of all the unlikely guardian angels God could’ve sent, he’d sent Taylor’s boss. Alex Stewart. And along with him came his single favorite admonition. Think.
“Easy for you to say, Boss,” Taylor murmured, thankful for the steady advice but worried he might be losing his mind here at the end of his time. This damned small shed was getting crowded. “Guess I’d better get my sorry ass moving, huh?”
Without a doubt, Alex wouldn’t have answered had he really been there. Instead, he would’ve spiked an impatient brow, offered a hand up, and pulled the sonofabitchin’ arrow out with his bare hands.
If Alex could do it....
Taylor pushed sideways from the ground, a task all by itself when a guy’s trying damned hard not to bump the three-foot arrow he’s been impaled with. Sweat trickled into his eyes. Sucking in a careful breath, he pushed up from the dirt floor. And so it began. The final dance with Death.
“No-o-o,” he growled at the shadows lapping up his legs and at the side of his peripheral. He refused to go down in the first round. Hell, no. Getting to his feet was just the beginning.
God Almighty, don’t let me faint like some damn sissy girl. Not when I’ve come this far.
He faced the wall. The problem was the shaft extending in front of him was almost an arm�
��s length and Taylor was weak. Only his fingertips and the feathered fletching at the farthest end of the shaft touched concrete. It would have to do. He steadied his weight, one foot forward, one back. He’d only get one chance.
Summoning the stern image of his father, the arrogant prick who right now would be taunting him and calling names if he were there, Taylor roared, letting loose the torment of years. “You. Son. Of. A. Bitch!”
He rammed the shaft into the wall, striving for the most direct frontal attack he could muster. Resistance vibrated up the wooden cylinder, but Taylor would not quit. He growled. He grunted. At last the arrow plunged deeper into his tortured body. It parted strands of muscle on its way through, layers of skin until—the tip pierced his back. And still he pushed his weight forward. The tip was not enough. The entire arrowhead had to follow, and with it, several inches of the shaft. The plan wouldn’t work unless there was a considerable length of the shaft at his back.
Shifting his stance for added leverage, he eyeballed what was left of the shaft in front of him. A couple more inches ought to do it. He groaned at the sheer torture of the act and pushed his body closer to the wall. Finally. It was done. A good portion of the shaft now extended out his back, its evil twin wedged firmly between the concrete and his bloody heaving chest.
He brushed the sweat and tears off his face. Adrenaline roared over him, an avalanche and him the weakest twig in its ferocious path. He blinked in shock. Waves of unconsciousness surged hard and fierce against the physical torture of his accomplishment and the fear—because Taylor was very afraid.
The dance of death began in earnest. His life flashed through his mind, a lightning strike he couldn’t control. With startling clarity his past unwound—his lonely childhood, all those angry awkward school years of never belonging. Always looking over his shoulder for someone to be there for him. Someone who wanted to be there for him. Like her.
Rory (In the Company of Snipers Book 6) Page 31
