The Marine's Family Mission Read online

  What her mother didn’t know was what had happened later on the night of the wedding.

  Or how incredibly confused Emmy’s feelings about Declan had become.

  Or that he’d walked her to her hotel room, made a date for breakfast with her and then gone next door for a night of what had sounded like very raucous sex with another bridesmaid.

  So of course Karen Tate was excited to see him and hurried down the steps of the front porch to give him a hug.

  “Oh, honey, how are you?” she asked.

  Declan returned the hug stiffly, keeping his solemn, steady gaze on Emmy over her mother’s head as if to let her know that they weren’t finished with their talk.

  “I’m okay,” he answered, his tone oddly reserved.

  Emmy’s mom must have heard it, too, because she ended the hug and linked her arm through Declan’s to turn him toward the porch. “Come in. I want to know how you really are. And I know you must want to see Kit. And every time Trinity looks at the picture of her daddy, I point you out standing next to him and tell her who you are—she calls you Decan. Let’s see if she recognizes you in person.”

  Then over her shoulder, Karen Tate said, “Go on up and have your shower, Em. I’ll keep Decan occupied.”

  As her mother urged Declan to the porch steps, Emmy noted his slight limp.

  For his part he didn’t cast her so much as another glance. Which irked Emmy even more.

  She let them get all the way through the door before she followed, thinking about what had seemed like nothing but a generous idea when Mandy had said she wanted to volunteer for the Red Cross mission to Afghanistan that Emmy had been assigned to follow and photograph four and a half years ago.

  And how much her sister’s life and her own had been altered when Topher Samms and Declan Madison had become their military escorts.

  Chapter Two

  “You’re going to stay at Topher’s farm?”

  Declan was sitting at the kitchen table with his sister, Kinsey, in the farmhouse where they’d grown up. Kinsey had made him breakfast, and while she was at it, he’d told her about his visit to the Sammses’ place the day before. About the long talk he’d had with Topher’s mother-in-law that had made it clear Emmy Tate needed his help.

  “I know you thought it would be fun for us all to be back here,” he said. “To stay in the house together one more time before it gets packed up and sold—”

  “I keep scheduling times to come and clear it out, but something always interferes. So while we still have it—and it isn’t packed up yet—I wanted to get married here.”

  “Sure. But come on—this place will be bursting at the seams by the wedding next week. Me, you, your groom and his mother are already here. Conor and Maicy, and Liam and Dani and the twins are all coming... This place just isn’t that big. What difference does it make if I bunk in the workout room downstairs or down the road? I’m just five minutes away. And I need to do what I can for Topher’s family. Whatever I can. I owe him that...”

  “I know that’s important to you,” his sister admitted.

  It was. He felt responsible for his best friend’s death, and that meant it was on him to step in on whatever Topher had left behind. Even more than his sister’s wedding, that driving need was what had brought him back to the small town where he’d been made to feel like the scum of the earth growing up.

  “It’s bad over at the Sammses’ place, huh?” his sister asked. “It’s so strange that the storm totally missed us but decimated them. I guess we dodged the bullet.”

  “It’s definitely bad over there,” he confirmed. Karen Tate had described three fields full of spring plants wiped out, the orchard torn apart, the family vegetable garden gone, the roof and one side of the house and the barn shredded, the chicken coop battered and untold damage on the apiaries.

  “The farm has been in the Samms family for six generations, and Topher—and Mandy—loved that place,” he went on after outlining the problems. “They were dedicated to keeping it in the family, to raising the kids there, to passing it down to them.” And had his friend been alive, Declan knew that there was nothing Topher wouldn’t have done to meet that goal.

  “It can’t happen the way Topher and Mandy planned now,” he said, hearing the ragged edge that came into his own voice as guilt weighed him down. “The kids aren’t going to grow up on the farm—Mandy made her sister their guardian—”

  “Emmy—that’s her name, right? Mandy’s sister? You rescued her in Afghanistan?”

  “I dug her out of some rubble when a bomb hit a school she was in taking pictures of kids for the Red Cross,” he confirmed.

  “You say that like it was no big deal, but you saved her life.”

  He shrugged that off. “I was just doing my job,” he said as if he hadn’t been frantic to get her out from under that debris. Because even though it hadn’t been the same love at first sight for them as it had been for Topher and Mandy, before that school had been hit, he’d had a few laughs with Emmy, he’d liked her.

  But that was water far, far under the bridge now.

  “Anyway,” he continued, “she doesn’t know squat about farming. She lives and works in Denver, and her mother says that’s where she plans to take Trinity and Kit. But she wants to keep the farm in the family so the kids have the option of running it when they grow up, which means she’s figuring on leasing it. Only nobody’s going to take it on until she gets it cleaned up. And she needs an extra pair of hands and someone who knows their way around a farm to do that.”

  “Are you well enough for farm work?” Kinsey was a nurse and very protective of his health right now.

  “I’m fine. The knee is a little stiff, but I’m keeping up on the physical therapy exercises for it. The farm work will just help get me the rest of the way back in shape. I have to wait for my review with the Medical Evaluation Board anyway before I can get the go-ahead to get back to my unit. Might as well be productive in the meantime.”

  His sister didn’t look convinced, but he knew his body. He knew how hard he’d worked in rehab not just on regaining the use and strength of his leg, but with weight training on the rest of his body so he’d be ready and able to return to duty.

  “Plus there’s the kids,” he said then. “Mandy’s mom has been staying at the farm, but she told me she’s leaving today. Mandy’s dad has been holding down the fort at their travel agency, but her mom really needs to get back. The timing is rough. Before the hail hit, there was someone serious about leasing the farm—he was set to take over so Emmy could take the kids to Denver with her mother this weekend. But he backed out once he saw the hail damage.”

  “So now they have to start all over trying to find someone else?”

  “That’s what Karen said. She also said that Emmy is good with the kids but she was in over her head with the farm even before the storm, when other farmers were lending her a hand here and there—”

  “But now other farmers have to regroup from the hail themselves,” Kinsey said.

  “Right. So she has to clear the damage, replant the fields, take care of the animals and, with her mother leaving, do all the household stuff and take care of Trinity and Kit, too. Plus Karen said Kit is colicky—whatever that is—and he cries a lot at night... There’ll be some help from babysitters coming in during the day, but Emmy will be on her own for one sleepless night after another and—”

  Declan sighed. “Bottom line—there’s a big need for help over there, for more than two hands. So I’m going to work with Emmy to do what I can.”

  As long as he didn’t go over there today and find her standing on the front porch with a shotgun to run him off the property.

  It had been her mother—not Emmy—who had told him what was going on. In fact, Emmy had looked like she wanted to strangle her mother when she’d come downstairs after her shower to discover just how c
andid Karen had been.

  And when he’d offered his services, Emmy couldn’t have been more against it. She’d flatly and fervently refused his help.

  The two women had gone back and forth for a while. But Karen had held her ground and eventually Emmy had conceded, even to the idea of him moving into the basement so they could trade off nights being up with Kit.

  But the whole concession had been so obviously against Emmy’s will that he thought she might have only pretended to go along with the plan in order to end the argument, always intending to keep him away once her mother was out of the picture.

  It was what Declan was half expecting.

  More than half, really. He already knew how changeable she could be.

  She’d been friendly when they’d first met in Afghanistan. But after digging her out of that bombed school, she wouldn’t even let him visit her in the hospital. Instead she’d sent a thank-you note with her sister. Her sister, who hadn’t been inside the school when it was blown up and had escaped injury.

  After leaving the hospital, when Mandy and Topher were still keeping as constant company as they could, Emmy had had her sister tell him that she still wasn’t up for any visits.

  And during Mandy and Topher’s lengthy parting at the airport? Emmy had hidden aboard the plane and Declan had been left hanging on the tarmac, not even allotted a goodbye.

  Message received—that was what he’d thought. Apparently sharing a couple of laughs had meant more to him than it had to her and she didn’t want anything to do with him. Okay, fine.

  But then there was the wedding.

  She’d been weird toward him initially. She hadn’t done anything but raise her chin to say hello before taking off as if her tail was on fire. And she’d kept her distance from him through the rehearsal and rehearsal dinner, through the pre-wedding pictures.

  Then at the reception she’d approached him. She’d said she wanted to thank him again for unburying her from the school debris. She’d even stuck around to chat and that friendly, fun side of her had come out again. To the extent that he’d started to think they might hit it off after all.

  They’d spent almost the entire reception together, doing a lot of drinking, dancing, laughing. He’d had a great time with her. But she’d been pretty drunk by the end of it, so he’d walked her to her room. He hadn’t so much as kissed her because he hadn’t wanted it to seem as if he was taking any kind of advantage.

  What he had done was make a date for breakfast the next morning.

  But by breakfast she’d turned on him again—she’d stood him up, and when he’d happened to run into her in the hotel lobby and asked if she’d forgotten about it, she’d said, “Are you kidding? You really thought I’d have breakfast with you after last night?”

  Then she’d turned her back on him, stormed off and not spoken to him the two other times their paths had crossed post-wedding.

  So yeah, he wasn’t putting much stock in her agreement to his help now. She was a Jekyll and Hyde if ever he’d seen one.

  But despite that, he did hope that she accepted his help.

  Not because he had any desire at all to deal with her but because helping with the farm and the kids until a leaser could step in or until he passed his medical review and was deployed again was something he could do for Topher.

  For Topher he would do anything. For Topher nothing would ever be enough...

  “You don’t say her name like you like her,” Kinsey observed, bringing him out of his reverie.

  “I don’t dislike her,” he said, though it didn’t sound altogether believable even to him. “I don’t know... For some reason things just don’t gel between us.”

  “I’ve heard that she’s really pretty, though. I met Greg Kravitz in town and he asked if I knew her—he sounded interested.”

  “Kravitz? He’s still here?” Declan said through nearly clenched teeth.

  “Yeah, he has a landscaping business—mostly I think he mows lawns, shovels snow in the winter... I forgot, you guys really hated each other, didn’t you? You were like archenemies.”

  Kinsey had no idea...

  “He’s a jerk” was all Declan said. He’d always kept things to himself when it had come to Kravitz. And maybe his own long and ugly history with him was the reason that it rubbed him so wrong to think of Kravitz being interested in Emmy Tate. But it did. It rubbed him really, really wrong...

  “I wouldn’t wish Kravitz on anyone,” he grumbled.

  “But especially not on Emmy Tate?” his sister probed.

  Declan sighed and shook his head. “You know what happens when everybody in your family finds someone and you’re single? They all think they have to pair you up with someone. But let’s just put any idea of me and Emmy Tate to rest once and for all, huh? I don’t know what makes her tick, but I do know that it doesn’t work for me.”

  Sure, she was great-looking, there was no doubt about that—even when she was as dirty as a farmhand after a day’s hard work yesterday he’d still seen that. And then she’d cleaned up and...

  Okay, yeah, great-looking.

  She had the creamiest skin he’d ever seen and a face like some kind of enticing girl next door, with gorgeous, big, doe-brown eyes, a straight little nose, kissably full lips that he’d never had the chance to kiss and dimples—she had the damn sexiest dimples...

  Plus she had smooth, shiny reddish-brown hair that turned toward her chin on the bottom, with a long wisp of bangs that sometimes fell like a see-through silk scarf over one eye in a way that was shy and coy and seductive all at once.

  And her body?

  Yeah, that was great, too. Trim and tight with just enough oomph in all the right places.

  So sure, he’d been interested when he’d come across what had seemed like a little breath of fresh air from home in Afghanistan.

  And yeah, she’d been intriguing enough for him to drop his guard again with her when she’d warmed up at the wedding reception.

  But those cold shoulders she’d thrown his way the rest of the time—including yesterday? That definitely didn’t work for him.

  “I’m here because we lost Topher and there are things that have to be taken care of on his behalf,” he said firmly then. “And from here the only place I’m headed for is where I belong—back to the marines and my unit. So don’t go hoping for some kind of romance with anyone while I’m here.”

  “It might do you some good,” his sister suggested with a different tone that he also recognized—the worried-about-him-and-his-state-of-mind-since-Topher’s-death look and sound that he’d met from Kinsey and Conor and Liam.

  “I’m good enough,” he proclaimed, even if he was finding it hard to be the old Declan. “So all you happy lovebirds can roost here and I’ll go down the road and hope I can do some good there. But don’t be putting some other kind of spin on it because it isn’t gonna happen.”

  “Declan...” his sister said, sounding more worried still.

  “I’m good, Kinsey,” he cut her off, his tone more reprimand than anything. He knew that wasn’t going to reassure her, but it was still the best he could manage.

  And feeling the weight of his sister’s concern heaped on top of what he’d been carrying around since Topher’s death—over Topher’s death—had him thinking that weathering the ups and downs of Topher’s sister-in-law was preferable to hanging around here and weathering concern from all three siblings.

  At least he hoped it would be.

  But with Emmy Tate?

  He couldn’t be sure of anything.

  * * *

  “The guy whose gorgeous face gave you nightmares, the guy who turned out to be a player, will be moving in with you?” Carla Figarello demanded.

  “I don’t know...” Emmy said uncertainly. “It’s my mother’s idea... A really bad one...”

  Saturday had be
en a loss in terms of getting anything done beyond the usual morning chores—water and feed the animals, collect the eggs, milk the cow and the cantankerous goats that gave her fits. Then a babysitter had come in to stay with Trinity and Kit so she could drive her mother to the Billings airport.

  The babysitter had had to leave when she got back, so she’d given Trinity lunch, fed the baby and put them both down for naps. And now, while the kids slept and she couldn’t be out of earshot, she was indulging herself with a much-needed phone call to Carla—her best friend since kindergarten, her confidante, the only person she’d talked to about what had begun to happen to her in the aftermath of Afghanistan.

  “It’s not a bad idea when you desperately need help and he’s someone who can give it,” Carla hedged. “But it sounds like your mother steamrolled you into agreeing to let the guy move into the basement, and what I want to know is if you’re going to be able to handle being with him.”

  Emmy didn’t know.

  Since the wedding—and until the hailstorm—she’d been sure she was in control of the emotional backlash from the school collapse. Yes, some things had changed for her, but she’d found ways to manage her anxiety pretty well. A lot of people didn’t like small spaces, so she wasn’t the only one to avoid them, and who wouldn’t be afraid of the idea of being underneath something that might fall on them—like the broken tree limbs in the orchard?

  For the most part, though, she’d considered herself perfectly fine until seeing the devastation of the hail damage had brought the fear back. Not a lot of it—she took heart in that. But now seeing Declan Madison again did make her worry that more might break through.

  “I didn’t have a panic attack at the first sight of him,” she said, putting as much optimism into her voice as she could.

  Panic attacks when she saw him didn’t make any sense to her, but soon after her rescue from the rubble, her reaction to Declan Madison had morphed from deep gratitude into the first of that emotional turmoil.

  When the bomb had hit the school in Afghanistan, she’d been alone in a supply closet, packing her cameras and equipment. The explosion had flung her, knocking her unconscious.