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He would trust the other men to look after her at any time, but he knew Sierra would start asking questions if they did. And he didn’t want the fight that would come with it. He had a very bad feeling she would head straight back to Boston if she knew the trouble had followed her there.
“Let us take care of this, John,” Natches stated, his voice hard. “If things start to look dangerous, we’ll reassess then. Right now, we’re just watching. Agreed?”
At any other time, John would have never trusted that statement from a wild-assed Mackay, but he knew since they’d found the women who held their hearts, each of them was more careful.
He nodded slowly.
“And while we’re all watching your back, why not see what you can do to hold on to that girl,” Dawg ordered him in a slow, lazy drawl. “She suits you, John. She suits you real good. ”
And she did. That was something John knew all too well. Sierra suited him far too much.
NINE
She had always suited him.
John watched Sierra with the wives and children of the friends who were more like brothers to him. He’d always fought that knowledge, and now, he simply couldn’t understand why. He’d wasted so many years of his life running from the one woman he knew now was meant to be his world, and he didn’t even know why.
A bachelor’s self-preservation perhaps. It was damned hard to acknowledge that a woman can strip your soul down to its base level, but she could rebuild it as well.
As the boat emptied of the chaotic Mackay clan and friends, John acknowledged the things he hadn’t wanted to face before the night Sierra had forced the breakup of his engagement to Marlena.
He almost grinned at the thought. She had no idea that she’d done him a great favor that night, and it had taken him a while to realize it, too, he admitted.
It hadn’t been the loss of Marlena that had affected him so severely, though. It had been the realization that Sierra would risk their friendship, risk everything basically, to save him from a marriage doomed to failure.
He had known that night. That unacknowledged part of himself he had hidden from for so long had known that not just his bachelor days were over, but his heart was caught. And it was caught by a tiny bit of a woman who had been a part of his life for as long as she had been alive.
Securing the houseboat, doors locked, drapes drawn closed, he made his way to the bedroom, where Sierra had already retired.
Stepping into the large, open room, he was caught by the quiet pain in her face as she sat in the recliner next to the wide, securely draped windows, and stared at the dark material.
“If I weren’t here, you’d have the curtains back and the windows open,” she said softly. “The breeze from the lake would drift inside and you’d be at peace. ”
“I’m at peace now, Sierra. It’s not open windows or a breeze that brings that peace, baby. It’s what’s inside a man or a woman’s soul. ”
And how the hell had he ever realized that?
“You’ll never move back to Boston, will you?” she whispered, her gray eyes lifting, her somber expression filled with a particular sadness. “When this is finished, you’ll stay here. This is your home now. ”
“It’s my home now,” he agreed as he moved across the room and took a seat in the chair that sat facing her. “But I’ll visit. ”
Her lips tightened as a small, almost hidden flinch crossed her expression.
“I never truly thought you’d stay away forever,” she said. “I thought you’d come back. That one day, someone would tell me you had moved back into your penthouse, that you were back in the office. That you were home. ” She rubbed at the fingernails of one hand with the pads of the fingers of the other. “That’s not going to happen, is it?”
He shook his head slowly. “I’d never be happy there again, Sierra,” he told her. “I was never happy there before, I just didn’t know it. You were never happy there, either. ”
She looked up at him in surprise. “It’s home, John. I was raised there. ”
“Were you happy there, Sierra?” He leaned closer. “Do you have friends there?” He placed his fingers over her lips as she started to protest. “Who did you go to when I left? Who did you go to, Sierra, when I passed out on you just after penetrating you?”
She paled.
John had suspected, but he hadn’t wanted to admit he’d been such a complete fucking fool.
He cupped her face gently. “I was completely drunk. ”
She swallowed tightly and the distress in her pretty eyes tore at his heart.
