Low Country Hero

by Lee Tobin McClain

  It still felt like a miracle to hear her voice. He drew a ragged breath. “It’s okay, honey,” he managed to say. “Carry the marshmallows for me?”

  “Marshmallows!” she squealed. She grabbed the bag he put into her hand and ran to Hope.

  “Maybe we can toast them like in the campout book,” Hope said, and they both turned to look at Anna and Sean.

  “If it’s okay with your mom, we can. We can even make something called s’mores.”

  “S’mores! S’mores!” They shrieked and giggled and dug through the bag he set down beside them.

  He knelt beside Anna, and she put a hand on his arm. “Thank you,” she whispered.

  Her lips were full and pretty. It was hard to stop looking at them. But he reined himself in and nodded. “Hope you don’t mind. I’m a sucker for s’mores.”

  They taught the girls to roast marshmallows, comforted Hope when she dropped one into the fire, and helped them put the graham crackers, chocolate and toasted marshmallows together. Seeing their faces when they tasted the gooey treats tugged hard at his heart. So did the look on Anna’s face.

  When the twins got sleepy, Anna had them lie down on one blanket and covered them with the other. Then she sang to them, her voice low and sweet. When she got to “Ash Grove,” he couldn’t resist joining in.

  By the end of the song, the girls were out.

  Anna scooted quietly back toward the fire, and he followed her like she was a flower and he was the bee.

  “This might have been a mistake,” she said, wrinkling her nose at him. “Carrying them up to the cabins won’t be easy. I just couldn’t resist this chance to sit awhile longer and look at the waves.”

  “We’ll work it out. I’ll help you carry them.” He stuck a marshmallow on a stick and handed it to her, making another one for himself.

  “Wait—we’re eating more?”

  “We’re eating grown-up s’mores.”

  “Oh really?” She looked sideways at him, something speculative in her eyes. She was young, and mostly seemed innocent, but clearly she wasn’t unaware of vibrations between a man and a woman.

  “Really.” His body stirred. Awareness of her flowed and crashed through him like the rhythmic waves of the Atlantic. He busied himself pulling out dark chocolate and thin, crisp cookies while he tried to get a grip on his own desires.

  Anna needed a strong, steady man who would be the perfect father for her daughters. But what did he know about how to be a good father? His own dad had abused his mother and that same blood ran through his veins. How could he take the risk?

  Yet Anna and her twins made him feel like king of the world. They seemed to think he was something special.

  And Anna, with her soft hair and shy, wise eyes, the little tilt in her nose saving her from model-like perfection, made him feel protective. And, yeah, turned him on, too. She was a real beauty. Man, when he’d seen her in the library talking to that guy—he still wasn’t convinced the teacher didn’t have designs on her—he’d felt a primitive urge to claim her as his own.

  “It’s on fire!” Anna whisked her marshmallow out of the fire and blew it out, and he could barely take his eyes off her lips. “What’s next?” she asked.

  What’s next is that I kiss you senseless. He drew in a calming breath. “Next, you pop it right here with the good chocolate and a cookie—and we smash another cookie on top of that. Now taste it.”

  She opened her mouth and took a big bite. Her eyes closed as she savored it. Her tongue flicked out to grab a little bit that was on the corner of her mouth.

  And he was a goner.

  She opened her eyes and caught him looking at her. Lifted an eyebrow. “Are you going to join in, or just watch?”

  “I didn’t make one yet,” he said.

  “I’ll share.” She held out her s’more, smiling.

  He took a bite and she seemed to be watching him with the same kind of intensity he’d felt watching her.

  They finished the s’more and he held up the bag of marshmallows. “Another?”

  “No.” She shook her head, a dimple appearing in her cheek. “That was so good. Nothing else could be that good.”

  Sean could think of something that would be even better.

  But he didn’t say it, because he wanted to treat her well. She hadn’t been treated well enough.

  He wanted to lean over and kiss her. With any of his good-time dates, he’d have done just that.

  But Anna was different. He didn’t want to spook her. He needed to take it slow, nice and slow.

  Anna was special. She was a loving mother, committed to her girls through the most difficult of obstacles, and that meant more to him than it probably would to most people, given his background. She had courage. And he admired the way she was trying to lift herself up. How many people would be working on their GED in the midst of escaping an abusive husband?

  He wasn’t going to add to the pressures on her. Nor destroy the infinitesimal chance that something might, just maybe, be able to grow between them.

  He pulled out the final blanket from his bag and spread it beside the fire. “Are you a stargazer?”

  She shrugged. “Never had much of a chance, but...every now and then, in Montana, you’d see something amazing.”

  He gestured to the blanket. “Lie down, and you can see some nice stars. I’ll let you have the side close to the fire.”

  She bit her lip, studied him. Finally, she spoke. “This blanket, the stars...some guys might think it’s headed toward something more. But it doesn’t mean that for me, okay?”

  She watched him steadily and he felt like a dog for the ideas he’d been having. Of course he knew what she meant; he’d thought that very thing.

  But he wasn’t going to act on it, and that was what was important. “You’re a beautiful woman. And a complicated one, with a complicated life. I won’t add to that, I promise.”

  She studied his face for a moment longer, eyes narrowing, then seemed to make a decision. She moved to lie down on the blanket. He lay down beside her, keeping a good six inches of distance between them.

  “Do you have a favorite star?” he asked.

  She moved a little, looking at the inverted bowl of the sky. Their hands touched, and it seemed sweet and natural to let their fingers intertwine in a quick squeeze.

  She drew in an audible breath. “I don’t know the constellations, not really. I mean, we learned some in school, but I never put it together with the real world.”

  He pointed out a couple, the Big Dipper and Orion. “He’s supposed to be a mighty warrior. Do you see it?”

  “Nope, not at all. That’s clearly a ballet dancer.”

  “No way! If anything, it’s a football player.”

  She snorted. “Spoken like a man. Did you play, back in school?”

  “Yeah, just for a little while. Did you take ballet?”

  “No. But I got a book from the school library about it, and spent hours in my room practicing. I can do the five positions to perfection, or so I thought.” She paused, then turned to look at him. “How come you only played for a little while?”

  “Kicked off the team. I was a bad kid.” He’d said it often enough that he could make it sound like a joke, but this time, he felt a qualm. He didn’t want to be a bad kid around Anna, didn’t want her to think of him that way.

  She turned her head, studying him. “That’s hard to believe.”

  “Well... I could be bad. I scared you the first time we met.”

  Her mouth curved into a smile. “Yeah, to the point that I sprayed you with pepper spray.”

  “Don’t remind me.” He flashed back to that first night, his own suspicions, her actions and obvious fears. They’d come a long way since then.

  “I’m sorry.” She reached out and gripped his hand again, lightly, and the s
ensation strummed along his nerve endings until she pulled her hand away. “I don’t know if I ever told you that, but I am. You’ve been more than kind to us.”

  He shrugged. “Case of mistaken identities, or expectations, or something.” He looked up at the sky. “Kids like us—me, Liam and Cash—nobody expected us to accomplish anything. Just staying out of jail was doing better than we were supposed to do.”

  “I know what you mean,” she said, low. “But you’ve accomplished a lot. You own your own business, you served overseas...”

  He crossed his arms, a way to keep his hands to himself. “It was more than anyone expected of an O’Dwyer. And then look at my brothers. Cash makes a stupid amount of money, and Liam’s up for police chief. I’m proud of them.”

  “You should be. You should be proud of yourself, too.”

  Not hardly. He lifted himself on one elbow to look at her. “How come you didn’t get ballet lessons, if you were so good at it?”

  She wrinkled her nose. “After my mom died, my dad wasn’t really...” She shrugged. “He just wasn’t really there. He didn’t know anything about girls, and he was scrambling to make a living and keep himself together. I was just kind of in the background, you know?”

  He risked putting a hand out to cup her chin, lightly. “You shouldn’t be in the background, Anna George. You should be center stage, and someday, you will be.” He let his finger push a strand of hair away from her face.

  She searched his eyes as if she wasn’t sure whether to believe him, as if she were thinking about what he’d said, weighing it. “I don’t want center stage,” she said finally. “But I want my girls to have the chance at it, if they like.” She sat up. “I want to stay here, Sean. They’re doing well, and it’s a good town, and... ” She looked down at him. “You’ve been so kind. To them, and to me.”

  Their eyes locked, and for a crazy moment he thought she was going to lean down and kiss him.

  But she just turned and stared out to sea and he could see that the problems of their lives, of her family, had descended back onto her shoulders.

  He wanted to give her a few more minutes of respite. “Show me the positions,” he said.

  “What?” She looked back at him, wide-eyed.

  “The ballet positions. Show me.”

  A smile tugged at her lips. “I can’t do that.”

  “Why not?”

  “I’m embarrassed!”

  He stood, reached down and pulled her to her feet. “Teach them to me, then. That ought to be good for a laugh.”

  She held on to his hands, and they were just inches apart, and he almost ditched the whole ballet idea. He’d rather just hold her.

  But she was nervous, looking up at him, then looking away. He didn’t want to scare her, so he dropped her hands. “I’m ready. What’s first?”

  “Really?”

  “Really.”

  “Okay. First position, you put your heels together and point your toes out, like this.” She demonstrated.

  Sean did the same thing, less flexible than she was. “Like that?”

  “Um, yeah.” She fought a smile. “Then for second position, you just keep your feet at the same angle and move them apart.”

  “Easy. I could be on the stage,” he joked. “Do I do anything with my arms?”

  “You think you can learn the arms, too?”

  “No problem,” he boasted. “Bring it.”

  So she showed him how to hold his arms low in first, and out in second. Then they moved on to third position, which was a little harder to balance, and then fourth, which left him feeling foolish, one arm up.

  “Now, fifth position is the hardest,” she said, giggling. “Your arms go up like this.” She demonstrated, and then he tried to duplicate her efforts. She moved around him, adjusting his arms.

  Every time she touched him, his body registered the fact with extreme interest.

  “Okay, now your legs go like this.” She put her feet next to each other, one in front and one in back.

  Sean tried to do the same and nearly lost his balance. “My feet don’t go that way.”

  “Try again,” she said with mock sternness, and when he did, she knelt in front of him. “That’s good! Now straighten your knees. Especially this one. It’s way bent.” She touched his front leg.

  Whoa. If she didn’t know what her closeness and touch were doing to his body, she was blind.

  He stepped back, thinking this had been a really terrible idea, and then he looked at her face, tilted up at him, laughing. It was the most lighthearted he’d seen her. For once, she wasn’t thinking about her girls or her responsibilities. She was just having fun.

  He put his hands down to pull her to her feet, but she surprised him, tugging him down, off balance. “Hey!” he said as he landed beside her.

  “Hey, what?” She looked at him, her hand brushing back her hair in an unconsciously provocative gesture.

  Or was it unconscious? Maybe she knew exactly what she was doing to him.

  He ought to get up right now, load all their supplies into his pack and carry the girls to bed. Some good physical exertion was what his body needed. Physical exertion that didn’t involve being inches away from this beautiful, mysterious woman.

  That was what he ought to do. But when did an O’Dwyer ever do what he ought to do?

  He reached out, touched her cheek and let his thumb play along her lower lip. “That was fun.”

  She laughed, shakily. “Yeah. Silly, but fun.”

  “You know what else would be fun?” He tugged her just a little closer.

  “What?” She whispered the word.

  “This.” He closed the distance between them and lowered his lips to hers.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  ANNA MOVED CLOSER to Sean as his arms encircled her. Was she making the best decision of her life, or the biggest mistake?

  Or was it even a decision when she felt so melted, soft and warm, like she had no bones, no tension, no life before or after this moment? This tender kiss?

  She lifted her hand to Sean’s cheek as his mouth moved over hers, running her knuckles over the stubble of his heavy beard. Through her breathing, a little too fast, she smelled his woodsy, spicy aftershave.

  The waves pounded in time with his movements as he pulled her closer and deepened the kiss.

  She’d felt nothing like this before. In her marriage, in her few other dates, kissing had felt perfunctory. She’d never felt she deserved the kind of tender treatment women got in romantic movies or books.

  But Sean made the kiss feel special in itself. Like he had all the time in the world, and like he wanted to give rather than take. Full of promise, as if the ocean, and Sean, were washing her past away.

  Sean made her feel special.

  Her heart pounded harder as his lips grazed hers, then tasted again more deeply. A blossom inside her unfolded, fragile and soft and new. It could be so easily crushed, but his tenderness nurtured it instead, brought it carefully to life. She was swept into a whole different world. Losing control, with no idea where she was going.

  But she couldn’t lose control! She jerked back and he let her go immediately, an expression of concern coming onto his face. “What’s wrong?”

  “I can’t... I don’t want to...”

  “Shhh, it’s fine,” he said, and ran a gentle hand down her arm, shoulder to wrist. “There’s no pressure. I just really enjoyed that.”

  She had, too. And this wasn’t Beau—it was Sean, and though he was new to her and more an acquaintance than a friend, he seemed to care about her.

  There was a murmur from the blanket a few feet away, where the girls were sleeping, and she welcomed the chance to check on them. Hayley turned and snuggled closer to her twin, and Anna adjusted the blanket, taking deep breaths, trying to regain control of herself.
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  That had been the most amazing kiss. She’d never felt so entranced, so cherished, so melting.

  “Are they okay?” Sean’s voice was a low rumble.

  “They’re fine. We should take them up to the cabin soon, though. It’s getting chilly.” Though chilly here was nothing like the harshness of Montana, but rather just a quickening in the air.

  “Come here a minute.” He slid onto the blanket and pulled it half up. “Let me hold you and talk to you just a minute, first.”

  An irresistible offer when her whole self yearned for more of him. “Okay, for a minute.”

  He pulled her close to his side and wrapped the top half of the blanket around her shoulders, and she felt the warmth radiating from his big body. Heavenly caring and safety and security.

  “What made you so tense?” he asked.

  Was he deriding her, scorning her for not falling into his arms, making love on the beach with her girls just feet away? “I...” She shrugged, gestured toward the girls. “Getting carried away is scary. I can’t let it happen.”

  “If I promised that I won’t get carried away, and I won’t let you, either, would you let me hold you?”

  “Oh, Sean...” She turned her face away, but didn’t pull away, sort of leaned into him.

  He stroked her cheek as gently as you’d stroke a tiny kitten. “You might find this hard to believe,” he said, “but I don’t want to get carried away, either. This isn’t the time or the place, not with your girls right there.”

  Her tense muscles relaxed as she heard what he said and processed the sincerity in his voice.

  “See? This is nice, too.” He wrapped his arms loosely around her and pulled her back against his chest. Then he just stroked her arms and hair.

  It felt so good to be held. Like nothing she’d ever experienced before. She sighed and relaxed into him.

  But after a few minutes, it wasn’t enough. She half turned and kissed him lightly.

  He drew in a breath and touched her chin, and then he was kissing her more deeply. She could barely breathe. But who wanted to breathe?

  He tugged her closer, and for a moment she had a vision of what it would be to make love with him. He was being gentle now, restraining himself, but he wouldn’t hold back in the end. She felt the passion that was an inherent part of him. It wasn’t far beneath the surface.