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To dream meant he was railing against the promise he’d made to his father so long ago. To dream meant Mace wanted to change, just as Sierra had said. Those changes he’d gone through with her were the most beautiful moments he’d spent in his entire life. She was morphing him into something else, he realized. Just by her being herself. It wasn’t that she was manipulating him. Mace knew the difference.
No. As he began to allow himself to dream, he dreamed of them. Together. Of waking up with Sierra in his arms, her warmth against his in this very bed. Dreams of living a normal life. Settling down. Marrying her. Wanting to give her children because he knew she loved them. And so did he. Children had always held a special place in his heart. He went so far as to dream of what their children would look like, their faces, the color of their eyes and hair. And at some point, Mace dropped off into a dreamless sleep, with the woman he loved with his life in his arms.
CHAPTER 21
It was lateJune and Sierra was glad to be out between the furrows of her garden, weeding. Cal, Lauren and Alex Kazak, had been out often to help her put the deer fence around it. Mace hadn’t been able to help out much, limited by his walker a lot of the time.
But now, he was graduating to utilizing a cane and she glanced over her shoulder on this Saturday morning to see him with a can of paint out at the front gate to the cabin. She smiled to herself, continuing down the row on her hands and knees, picking out every last little weed that thought it was going to take root.
She’d put up the picket fence around the cabin herself but had never gotten around to fully painting it. Now, over the last week since Mace’s swollen foot had reduced in size by half and the fang holes had closed, he was outside every chance he got. Her heart warmed just thinking of him. Nights were special to her. On nearly every one, they made hungry, passionate love, as if they couldn’t get enough of one another.
The morning was cool and the sky cloudless. She sat back on her heels, gloved hands resting on her jeans as she surveyed her plot of two hundred square feet. She had tomatoes of three different varieties, green beans, Hubbard squash, a row of different pot herbs, sweet potatoes, and scallions. Mace had helped her pick out the seeds, suggesting certain veggies for this land and altitude. He couldn’t help her with their planting, but he always brought out a chair and sat there keeping her company. Her heart warmed but she drew in a deep sigh. Mace was going to leave her. She sensed it.
Sometimes, usually at night, when she was in her rocking chair watching TV, she would look up and he’d be on the couch, staring at her. It didn’t unsettle her, but he looked so damned torn, as if undecided. And in bed, especially after making love to one another, she would try to get through those walls of his. He would gently turn her questions aside, avoiding her and ‘it’. Whatever ‘it’ was. They all carried an ‘it’ of personal trauma. She did. He did. How she wished she knew what his was.
Sierra felt like she was battling an invisible enemy who she could neither see nor define. What was Mace hiding? Who had stoved him up like this? She knew from long experience that operators were pretty well emotionally suppressed to the nth degree. And it was tough for them to open up. And if they ever even slightly pried the lid off, they feared their own personal ‘it’ could escape, and they might never get it back in that box they all kept buried deep within themselves.
Was that in Mace’s box?
What was so terrible in there that whenever he started opening up to her, he feared the lid would rip off from its hinges and had to slam it shut again? Sierra suspected that he thought, if that ever happened, it would interfere with his job as an operator, a major distraction that could get him, or worse in his mind, members of his team killed. She felt as if she were on thin ice with him all the time, that nothing between them was stable or reliable. He still had not told her he loved her. But in all honestly, Sierra hadn’t mentioned her own admission of love since that one time she’d blurted it out back in Peru. She was pulling her own punch, too. Sometimes, she was so weary from the dance they did around one another, that she’d take a walk into the woods and cry to release her heartache.
Getting up, brushing her knees off, she wanted to go help Mace paint the picket fence. She washed her hands under a faucet just outside the gate, then wiped them dry on the thighs of her jeans. Mace was so alone. So often, she felt an aching loneliness within him. Was he still grieving about Ana Beth? About their baby? Surely, he was but Sierra didn’t know if that was the big bad that lurked inside his box or not. She plopped down beside him, throwing him a smile. He wore his dark green baseball cap, a bright red t-shirt that showed off his gorgeous masculine body, and jeans that emphasized his long, powerful legs.
“Like some company?”
“I always like your company,” he said. “What do you think?”
She peered at the painted picket his brush had just gotten done with. Days ago, Mace had patiently sanded down every last one by hand before bringing out the paint and brush. He was a stickler for doing a job right or not at all. “Looks good. Would you like some help? Have another paintbrush? Maybe I can paint one side and you do the other?” She drowned in his light-gray eyes. Sierra was getting to know the nuances of tone of his eyes, whether light or dark. They were an indicator of his mood. When they were light like this, it meant he was happy. Indeed, he was relaxed, sitting on the tarp that covered the grass so it wouldn’t get splattered with paint.
“Sure,” he said, handing her a small brush. “If you go on the other side, we can share the same can of paint.”
“I like the way you think,” she murmured. Sierra caught her hair up in a twist on top of her head and anchored it, not wanting any paint to get in the strands. She felt Mace watching her. It almost felt like an invisible, loving embrace.
Sitting down, she reached between two slats, dipped her brush in the can of paint and began to lay it on the other side of the next picket he was working on. “Tell me about your father, Hank?” Sierra looked across at Mace. “I got to talk to him once, calling him about your condition right after you arrived here.”
“Yeah, he said you did.” Mace took a deep breath. “My father has always been a hardworking man, Sierra. He is a quiet man of his word, and he never went back on a promise.”
“He sounded pretty gruff,” she admitted.
“What? Like me?” and Mace grinned a little.
“Are you two a lot alike?” she wondered.
“Probably are.”
“You were the oldest. Right?”
“Yes.”
“What happened to your father when Caleb died of his…” and she paused, her brow furrowing in sympathy as she continued, “…of his drug overdose?” Sierra watched the pain come to his darkening gray eyes. She hated snooping into his family history, but she had to because she felt whatever was just under the lid was there.
“It took my father down,” Mace admitted heavily. “He never saw it coming. I didn’t see it, either. My mother, Hannah, did. She always worried about all us boys at school with so many drugs around.”
“How did your mom take it?”
“Hard.”
The word came out flat. Filled with grief. Sierra reached through the fence, gently touching his hand. “I’m so sorry, Mace.”
