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More Than Cookies (The Maple Leaf Series)

Page 24

by Christine DePetrillo


  I love you, Myah…

  Orion squeezed his eyes shut as what had to be the final seconds of his life ticked by in slow motion. When the shot rang out, a heavy weight suddenly collapsed onto him. Moments later strong arms were helping him to his feet.

  “Come on, buddy,” Sencotte said. “Let’s get you out of here.” He navigated them both up the embankment to the main path. “Need that ambulance team down here.”

  Orion’s vision was spotty and his arm throbbed, but he glanced back to see Adriana on the ground, Detective Henrison fitting handcuffs to her wrists. She didn’t fight back, and Orion noticed the growing spot of red on the shoulder of her white shirt.

  They’d shot her. To save him.

  A wave of nausea undulated inside him. I just got grazed. I’m okay. She didn’t kill me. I’m alive.

  But his hands shook, because he’d almost not been alive. He glanced to his upper arm and the blood dribbling down to pool in the bend at his elbow. Adriana had caused him too many injuries. A hole in his right thigh, a brain-shaking bang to the back of the head in his barn, a slice in the right arm, not to mention the heart she’d broken years ago and the child she’d stolen from him. Good God, she’d kicked the shit out of him.

  But is she dead?

  He looked back again, but this time Adriana was on her feet and stumbling along in front of the detective. She was alive and, unless she somehow talked her way out of it, headed to jail.

  “Is he okay?”

  Man, he’d gotten his ass so kicked, he was imagining hearing Sage’s voice.

  “Son!”

  And his father’s.

  “Daddy!”

  And Myah’s.

  When his arms became full of his daughter and his father, and someone cuddled up behind him, he knew he wasn’t imagining anything. They were here. They were really here.

  “Careful,” Sage said, releasing her hold from behind him. “He’s hurt.” She tugged Myah and Ian back a bit. “Let’s make room for the EMTs to help him.” She stood a few feet away with a firm grip on Ian’s and Myah’s hands. They leaned into her, and Orion wanted to do the same. God, it was all he wanted.

  “Let’s have a look at that, Mr. Finley,” one EMT said.

  He held his arm out for inspection, wincing slightly as both EMTs got to work on cleaning, stitching, and bandaging the slice in his arm. If he thought he had a headache before, it was nothing compared to the jackhammering going on in his skull now.

  While the EMTs tended to him, Sage, Myah, and Ian inched closer. His own pull toward them was magnetic too. He wanted them in his arms. All of them.

  “You’re all set, Mr. Finley,” the EMT said after a few moments. “Follow up with your doctor, okay?”

  He nodded, not able to take his eyes off Sage and his family. As soon as the EMTs cleared away, he motioned for them to come to him. Myah instantly clamped onto his leg.

  “Daddy.” She squeezed him so tightly.

  He reached down and picked her up with one arm, and she pressed her face to his neck like she used to do when she was a baby. “It’s okay, honey. We’re all okay.” He looked at his father, searching for signs of an episode, but all he saw was love in Ian’s eyes.

  His father put his arms around both Orion and Myah. “We’re all okay,” he repeated then he peeled Myah off Orion and stepped off to the side.

  Sage walked slowly toward Orion. “Didn’t I tell you take a nap?” She was teasing, but her voice had cracked on the word nap.

  “I couldn’t sleep without you.” Orion grabbed her wrist and pulled her toward him until their bodies were touching from chest to knees. “I don’t want to do anything without you.”

  “Deal.” She leaned forward and pressed her lips to his, and Orion knew, without a shadow of a doubt, that was where her lips belonged.

  Chapter Twenty-three

  Orion sat on the open tailgate of his truck as Scott questioned him about the events with Adriana by Moosewood Falls. Sage stood a short distance away to keep an eye on Myah who had been allowed to climb into the ambulance with the EMTs. The girl had fired off a million questions, and a vision of Myah in a crisp, white doctor’s coat flashed into Sage’s head.

  Dr. Myah Finley. It had a nice ring to it and made Sage smile. Why she was daydreaming about the prosperous future career of a child that wasn’t hers was a mystery, but somehow she welcomed the thought. In just a short time, she’d come to consider Myah hers. Ian too. He was talking to Sencotte and Landis, the two police officers making him laugh about something after they’d apologized for being tough on Orion during the search for Adriana.

  And Orion? Well, she quite possibly had considered him hers the moment she’d found him unconscious on her couch in her new house. The question was, did he consider her his? He’d said he didn’t want to do anything without her. Did that mean what she thought it did? Did that mean forever?

  “I’m all done with him.” Scott was suddenly standing beside her and gesturing over his shoulder to Orion. “We have enough on Mrs. Whitfield-Finley to prosecute. She’ll get that wound checked and then move into a nice comfy jail cell.”

  “Which means she’ll lose custody of Myah, right?” Sage asked.

  “Oh, yeah. Being a criminal, especially one who attempted murder—multiple times—is definitely grounds for losing custody of a child. So you can get your fancy lawyer to draw up the necessary documents. There isn’t a judge in all the land who wouldn’t willingly give custody to Mr. Finley now.”

  Sage clapped her hands together then hugged Scott. It’d been a rash move, a caught-up-in-the-moment-of-glee move, and he sank into the hug a little. Sage tried to back out of it, but he held her tight for a moment.

  “Any chance you’d dump him for me?” he whispered into her ear. “I’m not such a bad guy.” He released her and took a step back.

  “You’re not such a bad guy, Scott. Maybe a little—”

  “Sexy?”

  “Persistent,” she finished. “But you didn’t let anything get in the way of doing your job and because of that, Orion is okay and Adriana has been found. I can’t thank you enough for calling me when you knew Orion was meeting Adriana here. We needed to be here and you made that happen.” She leaned forward and dropped a light kiss on his cheek.

  “But, you still want him, right?”

  “I do, but are you against a double date sometime? My friend, Danielle, who sold me my house and works with your aunt, might be a good match for you. Do you like brunettes?”

  He tugged on the end of her hair. “Not as much as blondes, but I can be open-minded. Does Danielle like getting flowers?”

  “I believe she does.”

  “Okay, then. You have my number.” He angled his head back toward Orion who was still sitting on the tailgate. “I wish you both the best.” He walked over to Landis and Sencotte. “Let’s go, you two. We’ve got work to do.”

  With good-byes to Ian, three of St. Jamesbury’s finest checked on Adriana in a second ambulance then piled into a black car and followed that ambulance to the exit. A few seconds later, an EMT helped Myah down from the first ambulance. She wore a pair of blue latex gloves and a smile as if she’d just been to Disney World. With a single siren whoop that ambulance drove off too, luckily with no one riding in the back.

  Driving off seemed like a great idea to Sage.

  “Okay,” she said walking to Orion where Myah and Ian already stood. “All Finleys in the Pumpkinmobile, pronto.”

  “What about my truck?” Orion patted the tailgate.

  “I’ll get someone to come back for it. You shouldn’t drive. Into my car. Now.” She pointed to her Subaru.

  “Yes, ma’am.” Orion saluted her and slid off the tailgate.

  Sage noted how he took a minute to make sure he was steady on his feet before following Myah and Ian to her car. She closed the tailgate, locked his truck, and scooted herself under his left arm, her own arm wrapping around his waist.

  “How are you doing?” she
asked.

  He squeezed her shoulder. “Right now, I’m doing wonderfully.” He kissed her temple and breathed her in, the move making Sage feel a little like a batch of cookies someone was sniffing. “How about you?”

  “Let’s see. You’re not dead. Witchy Ex-wife is going to jail. You’ll get to keep Myah. Scott agreed to quit trying to date me. I’d say I’m wonderful too.”

  “Great. Come to my house and we’ll all be wonderful together.”

  “That’s the plan, baby. I’m not letting you out of my sight.” She opened the passenger side door. “Your chariot, sir.”

  He cupped her cheek with a rough palm and she closed her eyes for a minute, enjoying the feel of his skin against her own. When she opened them, Orion looked as if he were going to say something, but he shook his head slightly and eased into the passenger seat instead.

  Sage closed the door and jogged to the driver’s side. Myah and Ian were settled in the backseat, both grinning from ear to ear.

  “Hey, cheer up back there,” Sage said as she peered at them in her rearview mirror. That got them giggling. Even Orion laughed beside her.

  “I get to stay with you now, don’t I, Daddy?” Myah leaned forward as far as the seatbelt would allow.

  “You sure do.” Orion reached his arm back and squeezed her kneecap.

  “Yay!” Myah and Ian yelled together, and Sage had the urge to hurray too though she was technically the outsider here. She wanted membership though.

  Badly.

  Shaking that thought from her head, she drove to her house to grab Ranger and the cookies they’d made earlier then headed to Orion’s. As they made their way up the driveway, Orion let out a groan at the sight of the blackened hole in his barn roof.

  “At least you’re alive to see that hole,” Sage said, resting her hand on his thigh. “That we can fix. That we will fix. If something had happened to you…” She closed her eyes and cleared her throat. “That we couldn’t fix.”

  “There’s no replacing me, huh?” The smile he gave her made her lower regions quiver. Now that the initial stress of wondering if he was okay had faded—Scott’s phone call had scared her senseless—her body shifted right back into arousal mode around Orion. Would that wear off?

  He ran his shortened pinkie finger along the knuckles on her hand, and it was as if he’d stroked her deepest parts.

  Nope. That would never wear off.

  They piled out of the car, and as they made their way up the porch steps, Adam’s truck skidded to a stop in the driveway. Gravel spit up around his tires, and he’d barely shut the engine off before he and Wendie jumped out and ran toward them.

  “Are you okay?” Wendie asked.

  “What happened?” Adam asked at the same time.

  Wendie immediately went to Orion and inspected his bandaged arm. “EMTs don’t know how to bandage anything. C’mon. I’m taking a look at that myself.” She dragged Orion toward the door and everyone else followed.

  “Dude, we were having dinner in St. Jamesbury and suddenly this story of ‘someone trying to kill that hot chainsaw guy’ started flitting around the restaurant.” Adam pulled off his baseball cap and rubbed his hand over his buzz cut as he stood in Orion’s kitchen.

  “We took one look at each other and said how many chainsaw guys are in Vermont?” Wendie added.

  “Dozens,” Adam said.

  “But not many ‘hot’ ones,” Wendie said. “Half of them have positively unruly beards. We knew it was you, Orion.” She’d gotten him to sit on a kitchen stool where she was peeling off the bandage and assessing the slice in his arm. “Not bad stitching. Looks like Myer’s work. He’s good with a needle and thread.” She re-bandaged to her satisfaction, however, then grabbed Orion’s chin, making him look at her. “Tell us everything.”

  Between all of them, they replayed the events for Adam and Wendie. When they were done, a collective dancing ensued in the kitchen over Orion being alive and Myah being reunited with him.

  “Daddy,” Myah said. “I was scared for you today, but it ended up being the best day ever.”

  He kneeled in front of her. “I was scared for me today too, but you’re right. Now we don’t have to be apart anymore.”

  “I love you, Daddy.” She launched herself at him and Sage’s eyes stung with happy tears as she watched father and daughter together.

  “I love you too, son.” Ian rested a hand on Orion’s shoulder. “I want you to know how much I appreciate you taking care of me. I know it’s not always easy.”

  “Oh, Dad.” Orion stood and embraced his father. “I like taking care of you. I like having you here.”

  “Yeah, Gramps,” Myah said. “Now we can play every day!”

  Every day. The words echoed in Sage’s head. She wanted to be with them every day too.

  “Who’s hungry?” Wendie asked. “You all look hungry.”

  “I’m always hungry,” Adam said.

  Wendie looked at Sage, her kind eyes studying her to the point Sage wondered if she had dirt on her face or something. “Myah and Ian, why don’t you come with me and Adam to get some pizzas. We’ll bring them back here and have ourselves a party.”

  “A great idea,” Ian said, giving Sage the same look Wendie had.

  “C’mon, Myah Dandelion.” Adam guided her toward the porch door after shooting Orion a look too.

  What’s with all the looks?

  “It’s Myah Rose, Adam.” Myah put her hands on her hips. “Why can’t you remember that?”

  Adam messed her hair and laughed. “I don’t know Myah Daisy. I guess I’m not that smart.”

  Myah growled at him, but marched to the door.

  In under two minutes, Adam, Wendie, Ian, and Myah were gone, leaving Orion and Sage standing in the kitchen.

  “That was… odd,” Sage said at the same time Orion said, “Convenient.”

  He slid his arms around her waist and pulled her close. “Pizza will take at least an hour by the time they get to the restaurant, wait for the order, and drive back.”

  “An hour?” Sage caught on. “Well, that’s plenty of time to—”

  “Love you,” Orion finished. “Because I do, Sage Stannard. My God, I do.”

  “That’s not a head injury speaking, is it?” she teased.

  Orion took her hand and pressed it to his chest where a steady beating pulsed against her palm. “Nope. It’s my heart speaking, and I’m going to listen to it.”

  He crushed his lips to hers, and Sage decided listening to hearts was the best idea they’d ever had.

  ****

  He literally could not get enough of her. Sage’s lips were a slice of heaven and he wanted to consume that slice. No crumbs left behind. Nothing wasted. He wanted all of her.

  “Orion.” Sage panted his name after their steamy round of kissing. “I love you too. That’s my heart speaking. I don’t usually trust my heart, but I know it’s not lying to me about you.”

  “Hurray for hearts that speak the truth.” He dove back into kissing her and felt weak in the knees when she slid her leg up his and hooked it around his hip. He ran his hand along that gorgeous, flawless thigh.

  “Take me to your bed, Orion.”

  Without a word, he scooped up her other leg and headed down the hallway. His arm stung a little bit under the bandage, but nothing was going to stop him from following Sage’s command.

  When they reached his bedroom, he slowly eased her down on the bed where she immediately shed her shirt and shorts. Neon green panties and a matching lace bra brightened the room instantly.

  “Too much?” she asked, shimmery hair pooling at her collarbone and looking so touchable. She leaned on her elbows as she waited for his answer.

  Too bad his brain had ceased being able to form actual words at the sight of her. No one was as well put together as Sage Stannard. No. One.

  “Not at all,” he finally managed as he peeled off his clothes in as few moves as possible. “You’re perfect, Sage. Perfect.”


  “You’re pretty perfect too.” She grabbed his shoulders and pulled him down to her. “And here I was thinking The Perfect Guy didn’t exist.” She ran her lips along his slightly bearded jawline, stopping to give his mouth more attention. “But you’re right here,” she whispered.

  “For as long as you want me.” He traced the tops of her breasts, aching to free them from that bra.

  “And what if I want you for forever?” She bit her lower lip, waiting for his response. Her vulnerability was a monster turn on. And sweet. So sweet.

  Blood raced south in Orion’s body as he memorized her face. He never wanted her image to be erased.

  “Forever sounds exactly right.” He looked into her emerald eyes and got pulled in. Deep. Deeper. The deepest he’d ever been. “How attached to Cressen’s place are you?”

  “What?” She paused in circling a finger around his abs.

  “I know you just moved in there, but sell it. Sell it, Sage, and live here with me and Myah and my dad. Please. I don’t even want a patch of woods between us. I have Myah back and now I want you. I want a family. One that functions. One that makes me happy. One that will make you happy.”

  It sounded crazy. They hadn’t known each other long, but Sage was what had been missing in his life. Once she’d shown up, his father had gotten better and Myah had been returned to him. Yes, he’d almost ended up dead, but he had to believe he’d lived to be with Sage.

  A slow smile eased across her lips and she blinked slowly, long lashes fanning against her cheeks. “Is this a ploy to gain limitless access to all the cookies you can eat?”

  “That’s merely a side benefit.” He kissed her bare shoulder. “Besides you taste better than cookies. I love you more than cookies.”

  She rolled him to his back and straddled him, her center so hot against his most ready of places. “I’ll get my realtor on it right away then.”

 

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