“It hasn’t been so long ago that you were helping me get her back, or don’t you remember?”
“Of course I do.” Guilt twists like a knife as the memory plays out. “It was my fault she was taken in the first place. If I’d have kept my wits about me…”
Regret softens his eyes. “You couldn’t have known someone would be waiting behind the door ready to bash your head in. And with an injury like that, you shouldn’t even have gone after her with me. I should have sent you home or to the doctor.”
Jed keeps going before I can protest. “But you did. Because you’re my brother and I know how much you love my wife.” He pauses before adding sternly, “Like a sister.”
An instinctive smirk merges into a soft smile. “Best sister out of all of them.”
“Now you have a wife and a baby, and Mara needs a family around her more than ever. Men to go to war for her and protect her like she should have been protected before. And I’ll be damned if you try to talk me out of staying behind in this. I’ve got your back just like you had mine.”
Damn it to hell and back, but my eyes start to burn. I drag him into a bear hug. “Thank you.” Two simple words that don’t show even half of the fervor I mean them with.
“You’re my little brother,” he says gruffly. “Always will be.”
Mara tucksherself inside my arms in bed that night, ear flattened to my heart, but I can tell by the coiled tension all over her body that she’s not sleeping. Hell, I don’t guess my heartbeat is soothing enough with its wild rhythm. I hum for her until my throat goes hoarse, but sleep doesn’t come for either of us.
That moment of shock and dread on her face when she heard that cursed name keeps replaying in my mind, as if someone keeps resetting the gramophone needle when it reaches the center instead of letting the damn song come to an end. It’s too late to undo all the things that were done to her. Things that should never have been done to any woman, let alone the young girl she was when it first began. I squeeze my wife tighter and comb through our past conversations for names.
First there’s the Overstreets. Missionaries who were too strict and harsh on a little girl and never loved her. But they’re dead now, and just as well. I’ve never laid a hand on a man or woman proclaiming the gospel, but I’d do that and more for her.
Then there’s the son Neil. Mara thinks he’s dead, and he just might well be. A cheater—especially one who’s bad at cards—isn’t likely to live long enough to keep cheating. Maybe he’s dead and burning in hell right alongside hisparents for the way he stole her innocence and then sold her.
Who else did she speak about?
Those sons of bitches who took Dove.
Joe, Chance, and Crowley.
Jedidiah dispatched all three in his own path of retribution, so that leaves only one man to shoulder the blame for every injustice done to my wife.
Montgomery Blackwood.
Ribbons of cold satisfaction thread around my mind at the thought of him being dead. As long as he’s still breathing, Mara can’t heal. Not completely, anyway. And while I can’t turn back time and stop Blackwood from hurting her, the one thing I can do is make time stop for him.
Permanently.
“I thought I was over everything,” she suddenly whispers, “but I was so wrong. How can he still make me afraid when my life is so different now with you?”
My wife’s words may as well be a ton of bricks by the way they slam into me and made all the worse by the pain they hold. I push Blackwood aside to squeeze her tighter and release a ragged breath into her hair. “It takes time, Mara darlin’. You’ve come so far from where you were, watching and weighing my every action from behind a shield”—more like prison—“of distrust. You’ve let me be a papa to Emmaline and a husband to you. I know it took a hell of a lot for you to do that, and I’m so damn proud of you. But even though you’ve started to heal, it hasn’t even been a year yet. Your mind still sees him as a threat and is trying to protect you by warning you to keep far away from him.”
Some of her tension deflates with her sigh, and I inhale, wishing I could breathe it all in and take it away for her. “I’mnot gonna tell you not to worry because feelings don’t work like that. But I will say this—I promised you that first night that I’d always protect you and Emmaline. Doesn’t matter what or who it is. So every time any thoughts about Blackwood or anyone else come creeping into your mind, just you remember that everything’s different now. You’re not facing him on your own anymore. Now you have me and all your family beside you.”
Silence falls, and I wonder if she’ll answer me or if I made things worse.
“I just want this to all be over with so I can be happy again like I was this morning.” Her small voice disappears into the night. “Before it was ruined. Everything was perfect with just you and me and Emmaline and Patches. I was so happy for our first picture as a family, and now I won’t even be able to look at it without thinking of him.”
“No…it’s not ruined. And you will be happy again,” I swear to her, dragging my lips across her forehead. “All of us will be. I’m not going to let him take that away, you hear me?” She lifts her face in search of my mouth, and I lay claim to her sad lips with everything I have, hoping she can feel the truth of my words since she can’t see it in my eyes. “Now, it’s been a long day, and you need to get some rest before Little Bit wakes up.”
“I don’t want to go to sleep.” Mara’s tangible misery eats at my soul. “Because if I do, I know he’s waiting for me there.”
Fucking hell, but I can’t stop the burning anger that rises toward the phantom son of a bitch. I roll atop her and take her mouth in a possessive kiss. When she softens beneath me, I pull back. “This is our bed, and I’ll be damned if any man other than me touches you in it, even in your dreams.”
Her nightdress might as well be nonexistent for thebarrier it provides against hiding my body’s reaction to the heat of her as she presses closer. I angle my hips away, but she hooks her ankles over my legs and pulls me down further. “Closer,” she begs. “I need you closer.”
I give her more of my weight, but not all. “I need you to be able to breathe, and you can’t do that if I smother you.”
“I can still breathe. But if you hold me tight, then it helps me to stop thinking about everything else. Because then all I can feel and smell is you and know that my life here is real and not something I dreamed up to save myself.”
