Текст книги "Nauti Enchantress"

Автор книги: Lora Leigh

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Текущая страница: 21 (всего у книги 22 страниц)

TWENTY-THREE

“I was shot.” Graham sighed as he felt the presence ease up to him and sit beside him.

He was in a white place, a bright place. This was a place he had never been before, even those times Doogan had managed to get him wounded.

“Yeah, son, you were shot.”

He turned his head, resignation weighing heavily in his chest as he stared back at his parents.

Garrett and Mary Brock looked as vibrant now as they had the day they died, as they’d looked hours before they stepped onto that doomed plane.

“Hell.” Rubbing his hands over his face as he stared around him, the total lack of anything but the pure white surroundings and his parents convinced him as nothing else could—he was dead.

His mother laughed, a sound as soft and loving as a breeze.

“You’re not dead,” she promised, easing down to sit on his other side.

He felt her arm slide around his waist.

“Then why am I here?”

“To help you decide if you’re going to fight to live, or if you’re going to give up,” his father answered, that firm, commanding tone of his just as grating now as it had ever been.

He gave his father an irritated look. “There’s days I’m convinced you’re a Mackay.”

It wasn’t a compliment.

Garrett chuckled at the observation. “Rowdy, Dawg, Natches, and I were damned good friends at one time.” He sighed. “But our lives were going in different directions.” He looked around Graham and smiled at the wife who had died with him. “We needed different things at the time, I guess.”

Propping an elbow on his knee and resting his chin in his hand, Graham stared into the white surroundings, wondering where the door was.

“Where do you want the door to be?” his mother asked.

“It’s highly uncomfortable knowing you’re doing that,” he told her. The knowledge that she was hearing what he thought instead of what he said had him hoping he could control his thoughts.

“As a boy, you were always so serious,” she said softly, a smile reflecting in her voice.

“I didn’t grow out of that, Mom.” He wondered if she had hoped he would.

“So I see,” she murmured. “But what a fine man you’ve become, Graham. You’ve made more than enough sacrifices in your life, done more than enough to earn your chance at peace.”

Damn, that wasn’t what he wanted to hear.

“I don’t think I’m ready for peace, Mom,” he said warily. “I’ve still got some fight left in me.”

“Do you?” his father asked. “I haven’t seen a lot of fight since you came back from Afghanistan. Even though the woman who died in your arms was a viper, still you let the memory of it hold you back from the place you know your heart belongs. That’s not fighting, son.”

Graham slid a slow look in his father’s direction. “It felt like a hell of a fight.”

Garrett Brock chuckled at the comment. “Love is sometimes the greatest battle a man can fight. You knew she wasn’t like the woman who tried to be her in an attempt to deceive you. You’ve always known she was right there, waiting for you, loving you. Perhaps the question I should ask is, why did you fight it?”

“What does Lyrica have to do with this place?” The white peace was too encompassing. Too peaceful. And he didn’t see a Mackay in sight.

Life without Mackays would be boring, he thought morosely, realizing the part they’d played in his life for so long.

“Those boys promised me the day you were born that they would always look out for you if I were to leave your life,” his father revealed. “They’ve done well. But it’s not the Mackays in general you’d miss, is it, boy?”

He hated it when his father called him boy. It meant he was disappointing him.

“To return is to face her,” his mother said then, her voice gentle. “Having you with us would complete the circle we began in that life. But it would not complete the circle you were meant to build, Graham. Which choice will you make?”

The whiteness slowly receded. It became a world washed in color, in sight and sound and scents that were incredibly sharp and focused.

He still sat. He was in the garden his father had created for the wife who so loved the sight and scent of flowers. He sat on one of the chair-size boulders, his position the same, chin resting in his palm as he watched the most incredible sight.

It was beautiful.

As he watched, the peace that suffused him was far greater than even that of the perfect white peace where his parents had come to him. It was soul deep. It was wonder and beauty; it was a perfection he’d never imagined existed.

“Mine?” he whispered, awed, so taken aback by what he was seeing that it was all he could do to contain his emotion.

“Yours,” his mother whispered, her own voice thick with emotion now. “You knew it was happening. You’ve sensed it. Isn’t it the most wondrous sight, Graham? Is this really what you want to leave? Is this what you want to continue to run from? If it is, then you can have that as well.”

“No!” He jumped to his feet to hold on to the image, anger crashing through him at the knowledge that it was leaving, that it was being taken from him. “Make it stay!”

He turned to his parents, wild with the loss pouring through him, his heart racing as he’d never felt it before, a sense of pain clenching at his chest and arm.

“Only you can make it stay, son,” Garrett said softly, somberly. “Only your choice can bring it back.”

Turning, Graham willed it back, fought for it, snarled with furious determination as the white slowly morphed again, and the image returned.

Stepping closer, he felt tears fill his eyes.

Going to one knee, he reached out, touched her face, brushed his thumb over her lips as she slept.

Then his gaze returned to the children sleeping beside her.

A boy, his Mackay looks diffused with the strong, determined lines of his father’s bloodlines.

The daughter, though, sweet heaven help them all. His daughter was pure Mackay in looks, already the image of her mother, with a hint of that bastard cousin of hers, Natches.

He couldn’t help but grin.

“The son of a bitch is going to crow about that one,” he whispered.

“Will you be there to hear it, though?” Garrett asked. “Or will Natches be the one to stand in for the father who couldn’t fight hard enough to return to her?”

–

“We’re losing him. Goddammit, we’re losing him,” Dr. Caine Branson yelled out to his surgical team, determination raging through him as he felt Graham slipping slowly away from him.

The EKG was quickly going to hell, BP was dropping.

“Like hell I’ll let you go,” he snarled softly. “I made that mad-assed father of yours a promise, Graham Brock, and I’ll be damned if you’ll see me break it.”

A lot of men had owed Garrett Brock, and Caine was but one of them. But at this moment, Caine knew, he was the most important.

His surgical team worked like the well-oiled machine it was, as though the years of working beneath him had been solely for this moment.

For this young man.

The artery was repaired, but the bullet was far too close to the heart, and the other had clipped his liver before ripping out his back.

The surgeon repairing the damage below was one of the best protégés he’d ever had. Giana Worth was worth her weight in gold. She was working quickly, efficiently, refusing to allow the teams keeping his heart beating to distract her from her job.

“BP’s coming up,” Nurse Salyer announced, though Caine could feel it, sense it.

“Heart rate’s coming back.” The male nurse, Jeffers, called out numbers.

Caine kept working. The vein was repaired. The chips of bone were removed from their precarious location next to the heart. He was almost finished, the damage nearly repaired.

“Your dad made me promise if you ever made it onto my table that I’d make damned sure you were breathing when you came off it,” he murmured.

He’d been talking to the boy since his gurney had been rushed into the ER.

“You make a liar out of me, boy, and when I reach the afterlife, I’m coming looking for you.” He worked steadily, tirelessly.

“This isn’t a good day to die,” he muttered as Graham’s heart rate fluctuated again. Garrett Brock had said that once, laughing as Caine warned him that his heroics were going to get him killed. “Buck up, boy. You’re stronger than this.”

Graham was indeed stronger.

Muttered comments and prayers slipped from the surgeon’s lips as he worked, but he was prone to do that often, anyway.

Whatever it took, he often said. He’d always felt his patients could hear him, no matter how irrational that may seem.

“There’s a girl out there crying for you, you know?” He kept the one-sided conversation moving. “Did you hear her crying your name when she came in with you? Really want to leave a Mackay sobbing, boy? Thought you knew better than that. Rowdy, Dawg, and Natches will strip your ass if they find you. Heaven or hell. It won’t matter.”

One of the techs chuckled, no doubt helplessly. They all knew the Mackays. Hell, sometimes Caine thought the whole world knew at least one Mackay, if not all of them.

“BP is strengthening,” his nurse announced, calling out the numbers.

“Excellent.” He breathed out in satisfaction. “That’s it, son. Fight. Fight for her. She’s worth it.”

The commentary continued. Fierce and demanding when it needed to be, determined and encouraging as Graham responded with that fierce will to live.

He would live. Caine refused to allow him to do otherwise.

–

Lyrica was aware of her brother, her cousins, her sisters.

Her mother sat beside her, her lips split, one eye nearly swollen shut from where Dorne had struck her.

She hadn’t realized Tim was limping at first. His leg was fractured. How he’d managed to walk like that amazed her. How he was still sitting in the waiting room, she hadn’t figured out.

Even Zoey was there, her pale green eyes damp with tears, her broken arm casted, the deep bruising at the side of her face swelling her eye nearly closed.

Jimmy Dorne had been determined to force Tim, Mercedes, or Zoey to reveal where Lyrica was hiding.

They’d sworn they didn’t know. Even Zoey, the one who feared pain the most, had fought him back, daring him to shoot her, sneering at him when he hit her. She’d declared she wouldn’t tell him even if she did know. Her brother, she’d informed Dorne, had hidden Lyrica, and she’d dared him to try to force the information from Dawg.

They’d all suffered to keep Lyrica safe.

Curled in the corner of the hard plastic couch, she turned her head back to where she had rested it in her bent arm, and she continued to pray.

To wait.

She felt ragged inside.

Her soul felt shredded, destruction held back by the thinnest thread.

Graham.

Tears fell from her eyes again, pouring from her when there shouldn’t have been tears left to shed.

She could live without him. If he was just alive. If he was just somewhere in the world finding happiness, even if it meant finding that happiness with another woman, then she would survive.

She would get up every morning, she would make herself go through each day, and she might even find a measure of peace.

Somewhere.

Without Graham . . .

What reason would there be to get up every morning?

Her mother rubbed at her shoulder and Eve and Piper sat close, trying to comfort her. But there was no comforting her.

He’d taken that bullet for her, knowing what he was doing. If he hadn’t thrown himself in front of her then she would have been the one lying there in that operating room.

She would have much preferred it to be her.

“Hey, little sister.” Natches’s voice had her head lifting quickly, her gaze meeting his immediately as he squatted in front of her.

He and Rowdy both referred to her and her sisters as their own.

She looked around quickly. Neither the surgeon nor the doctor was standing there.

“He’ll be okay,” he said, the somber belief that gleamed in his eyes pulling a harsh sob from her chest.

Covering her trembling lips with her fingers, she fought to hold back the cries and was even mostly successful. The tears were another story.

“I love him,” she whispered, her voice so hoarse she barely recognized it. “If he’s just okay, then I can live without him, Natches. I can.”

Reaching out, Natches tucked the long, mussed strands of her hair over her shoulder and thought he must really be getting old. Only one time in his life had he ever wanted to cry as much as he wanted to cry for this grown-up version of his precious Bliss.

“Did I tell you I used to know his parents really well?” he asked her gently.

Lyrica shook her head.

“Yeah.” He grinned, a flash of the wicked sensualist she’d always heard he was gleaming for a second in his eyes. “There was a time, before Chaya returned to Somerset, that I wasn’t the man I am today. Rowdy had married. Dawg and Christa were engaged, and I was a little lost,” he stated, then grinned again. “Hell, I was a lot lost, I guess. I was skunk drunk, had just wrecked yet another motorcycle on some back road, was puking my guts up because my Chaya had just left town again, and I had no idea what the hell I was supposed to do.” He winked with a flash of amusement. “Never occurred to me to just go get her. Right?”

Lyrica shook her head. Natches had never done things the easy way, she knew.

“Anyway.” Rising, he sat beside her, and Lyrica didn’t even question why she was turning to him, letting him draw her into his arms and against his chest.

He kissed the top of her head gently.

“So, here I am, about three days drunk, reeking of booze and probably my own b.o. My motorcycle was totaled, handlebars bent to hell and back, and this four-wheeler comes bouncing down that dirt track I was on. Seemed I’d done strayed onto Brock property, and Garrett Brock was real particular about having a Mackay around. He stared at me like I was scum, all distasteful and disgusted. And well, let’s just say I was spewing more F-bombs than social niceties that night.”

Someone gave a brief snort of laughter.

“So Garrett drags me to this pond, throws me in a time or two, laughing at all my Mackay rage, then drags me back out and pulls me back to his four-wheeler, where he starts pouring hot coffee down my throat. Seems he knew I was there before he started out from the house. Brought coffee, lots of it, a few sandwiches, and sat there with me till dawn while I poured out my itty-bitty heart.” He rubbed at her shoulder. Her back. “Then he proceeds to tell me how butt stupid I was for letting my woman out of my life. And how he hoped his son wasn’t too damned dumb to claim what was his when he finally met her. Then . . .” He paused, drew a deep breath, and lowered his voice. “Then, he made me swear on my honor, my life, my firstborn, and whatever else he could come up with that I might actually care anything about, that if his son did turn out that damned dumb, then I’d do what he was going to do. Put all my Mackay calculation and love of games into making sure his son smartened up and realized what he was losing. A week later, Chaya was back. He’d pulled a few strings, called some friends, and made sure I had another chance to make sure she never got away from me again.”

“I knew what you were doing,” she whispered when he paused. “I figured it out.”

He grunted, then whispered low enough that no one else could hear. “Don’t tell Zoey, ’kay? She’s still a work in progress.”

“He doesn’t love me, Natches,” she told him then.

This time, pure amused devilment filled the chuckle that sounded from him.

“Oh, Lyrica, sweetheart, that dumb-ass is so in love he doesn’t know his ass from a hole in the ground and doesn’t want to know the difference if it means losing you.”

Lifting her head, Lyrica pulled back, staring back at him, knowing not to hope. Knowing she didn’t dare hope.

“Now, whether or not he’s smart enough to realize it, we’ll see.” He sighed. “But I’m going to tell you what his father told me to tell the woman he loved if he acted that stupid. A message he wanted me to give her.”

“For me?” she whispered.

He nodded at that. “For you, sweetheart. Don’t give up on him, he said. Graham will always be strong, always be stubborn, and letting go of himself enough to take what he needs above all things won’t be easy. But if you have to, he said, tell him to remember what his mother told him before he left for the Marines.”

“What did she tell him?” She frowned back at him.

“Hell if I know,” he admitted with a grin. “But now, Mary was a smart one, don’t think she wasn’t. Knew what she wanted the first time she saw Garrett Brock, and even Mackay charm couldn’t sway her. So whatever it was, remind him of it.”

“If he wakes up,” she whispered.

“He’ll wake up,” he promised her. “If he’s Garrett Brock’s son, and trust me, he is, then he’ll wake up.”

The operating room doors swung open and the surgeon, accompanied by Graham’s doctor, stepped into the waiting room.

Lyrica came quickly to her feet, too afraid even to breathe as she felt Natches put his arm around her shoulder and her mother move beside her.

“Kyleene.” The surgeon nodded to Kye as she came to her feet as well, Sam Bryce standing beside her as Graham’s sister fought to stem her tears.

“He’s out of surgery and everything looks promising,” he announced. “It was touch-and-go a time or two, but he’s strong, and he wants to live . . .”

Kye turned to Lyrica, her smile brimming with hope as her tear-drenched eyes overflowed once again.

“I told you,” Kye whispered as she covered the short distance to give Lyrica a quick, hard hug. “I told you. He won’t leave us. He’ll not leave us.”

He was alive, that was all that mattered, Lyrica promised herself as she returned Kye’s hug and they stood together, listening to the surgeon as he described the injuries and Graham’s recovery.

He was alive. She could live with it if he wasn’t smart enough to love her. She could live with it if he loved another.

All that mattered was that he was alive.

TWENTY-FOUR

Four weeks later

The hard knock at the door of the inn’s suite Lyrica had moved into surprised her.

It was close to midnight, and the rain-drenched Kentucky night was filled with steamy heat and a loneliness unlike anything Lyrica had ever known.

She’d gotten used to sleeping with Graham. She missed him, even now, a month later. She would awaken in the deepest part of the night reaching for him, realize he wasn’t there, and lie until dawn, staring into the darkness.

Rising from the bed, she padded to the patio doors, pulled the curtain aside, and froze.

It couldn’t be.

Fumbling, her fingers suddenly refusing to cooperate properly, she fought to unlock the door and pull it open.

“I’m going to spank your pretty little ass,” Graham growled as he stalked into the bedroom, glaring at her, his expression filled with male irritation as he moved to the bed and sat down.

“What did I do this time?” Her hands went to her hips as she stared back at him, her gaze raking over him closely to make certain he was okay. “Aren’t you supposed to be home resting? Kye said the doctor ordered no exertion. You’re to stay in bed and rest until you’re healed.”

“Dammit, it’s been a month. How much fucking healing do you think I need?” Irritation flashed in his eyes.

“However much the doctor prescribed,” she snapped back, but once again, there was no heat.

“Undress.”

The order had her blinking back at him in amazement.

“What did you say?” She couldn’t have heard him correctly. Could she have?

He was unbuttoning his shirt, watching her broodingly until he shrugged it from his still-powerful shoulders while toeing off the leather sneakers he wore.

“I said, undress,” he growled.

“And I should do that, why?” Joy erupted inside her like a sun exploding from the fiery heat it contained.

Oh god, she’d missed him so desperately.

“So I can fuck you until you’re too damned exhausted to ever run from me again,” he snarled, hunger, need, and so many other emotions she’d prayed to see in his eyes during the weeks she’d been confined at his home filling his eyes. “Until some of that damned Mackay stubbornness you obviously possess is tamed just a fraction.”

“Won’t happen.” She was unbelting her robe, though, letting it slip from her shoulders before moving slowly to him.

Rising from the bed, he tore at the clasp of the khakis he wore, shedding them before she could reach him, his fingers curling around the stiff length of his cock.

“Probably not,” he agreed. “But let’s say I keep trying anyway.”

“Let’s say you do.”

He reached out, pulled her to him, his lips covering hers as a needy, hungry moan left her lips. Her arms wrapped around his neck, her lips parting beneath his, taking his kiss and the power of his need and returning it. His hands moved over her back, her sides. Gripping the material of her gown, he released her lips only long enough to relieve her of it, then he was sipping from them again, hunger and heat building with rapacious intensity between them once again.

Turning, Graham had her on the bed in seconds, her legs spread as he moved between them, his lips pulling from hers as he guided the throbbing crest of his erection between her thighs.

Nudging at the entrance of her vagina, her slick heat flowing, coating the mushroomed head, he glared down at her.

“Run from me again and I’ll paddle your ass.”

She grinned back at him. “Are you trying to deter or convince me?”

His hips shifted. His cock impaled her until the heated width of the crest was lodged inside the snug, rippling tissue, causing devastating pleasure.

Lyrica cried out, pleasure so sharp it was almost pain tearing through her senses as she lifted to him.

“More,” she cried out, her fingers fisting in the blankets beneath her. “Oh god, Graham, please.”

He waited. He didn’t move, the heavy throb of his cock head tormenting her as she ached, whimpered for a deeper thrust.

Staring up at him, she watched as he leaned back, his eyes locked with hers, his expression gentling.

“I love you, Lyrica,” he whispered.

Her lips parted, shock, disbelief, pure happiness filling her where before only aching emptiness had existed.

“You love me?” she whispered.

Rocking against her, he tore another gasp from her lips as he pressed deeper, taking her slowly, raking across tender nerve endings and sending her senses flying.

“I love you, Lyrica,” he groaned. “God help me. I love you.”

There was no stopping either of them then. Pushing into her to the hilt, penetrating the slick, desperate depths of her pussy, Graham groaned in rising hunger, in a need that echoed clear to her soul.

Perspiration coated their skin and pleasure whipped around them, between them, tearing at the solitary moorings that once held them grounded and binding them together, mooring them to each other.

Deep, hungry kisses, whispered promises, pledges. He took her to the edge of rapture, pulled her back, and pushed her up once again.

His lips roamed to her breasts, suckling at sensitive nipples, sending slashing waves of heat and pleasure to race from the tender buds to the clenched depths of her vagina. His hands stroked, caressed. His body moved over her, inside her, until he tucked his head at the bend of her neck and began moving with hard, desperate thrusts, each thrust pushing her closer to a brink she raced for eagerly.

“Love me, Lyrica,” he groaned, his voice hoarse, filled with all the desperate, hungry emotion that had ached inside her for so long. “Just love me.”

Ecstasy ruptured inside her, blazing in such fiery eruptions of pleasure, joy, and melting bliss that she knew she would never, could never, be the same.

“I love you,” she gasped, writhing with the extremity of the explosions racing through her, the pleasure and emotion surging free of the depths of her soul. “Oh god, Graham. I love you.”

He stilled above her, groaning her name as she felt the heat and force of his release jetting hard and deep inside her, each pulse of semen another caress, another stroke of rapture racing across her nerve endings.

Until they were left, limp, ragged, exhausted. Weeks of lack of sleep, of searching separate beds for that single heartbeat, took their toll.

Rolling from her, Graham groaned at the weariness that poured through his body. He pulled her against his chest, tucked her close to him, then his hand moved to stroke and caress her still-slender belly.

“When were you going to tell me?” he asked then, his voice soft, curious.

She froze against him, almost holding her breath as he flattened his palm over their future children.

“What do you mean?”

He had to grin. He couldn’t be angry. He’d be damned if he could blame her.

“When, my love, were you going to tell me you were pregnant?”

He let her go as she pulled from him and sat up, turning to stare down at him as he watched her with such a surfeit of emotion that she felt humbled by it.

“How did you know?” she whispered, those emerald green eyes wide, surprised. “I just found out myself. I haven’t even told anyone.”

“I’ve known for a while,” he revealed, watching her face, seeing the fear that shadowed her eyes now. “Do you think I’m here because of it?” he growled. “Come on, Lyrica . . .”

“I just want to know how you knew.” She slapped back the hand that would have stroked over her thigh.

Graham grinned at the move, staring up at her, god, loving her.

“I’ll make a deal with you,” he suggested.

Her eyes narrowed. “What kind of deal?”

“Marry me, and I’ll tell you how I know we’re going to have twins. A little boy with a blend of Brock and Mackay looks, and a little girl who’s going to be the very image of her mother. If I have to listen to Natches crow over how much she looks like him, then I’m at least going to have a ring on your finger so he can’t influence them too much.”

She blinked.

Her lips parted, then closed.

“Twins?” She sounded as though she couldn’t breathe.

“Twins,” he promised. “Marry me, Lyrica. Don’t make me sleep alone, without you, again. Don’t let me go another day without you in my life.”

Tears filled her eyes then. A smile filled her face.

“Tell me how you know it’s twins.”

He chuckled wickedly. “Not until you say ‘I do’ . . .”

To which she smiled back at him knowingly. “I’ll say ‘I do,’ but only if you tell me what your mother told you before you left for the Marines.”

For a second, surprise glittered in his gaze before it softened. He reached out to brush back the strands of hair that lay at the side of her face.

“How bad do you want to know?” he chuckled then.

“Just tell me,” she groaned. “It’s been driving me crazy.”

His expression gentled then, fond memories reflecting in his eyes as he thought of his mother.

“She told me to make sure I came home safe, with my soul intact,” he said softly. “Because without the soul, the heart can’t survive. And if I didn’t understand what that meant, then I would understand the first time I stared into the eyes of the woman who would hold my heart. And she was right. That first summer I met you, Lyrica. Standing on that dock at the marina, staring at me with equal parts innocence and a woman’s knowledge, I felt you sink inside me like sunlight. But I knew even then, sweetheart, it wasn’t time. Not for me. Not for you. When the time came, I was just too stubborn, and too damned terrified of how much you meant to me, to realize it.”

“I always loved you, Graham,” she whispered. “I always will.”

“You’re my life.” And she saw it in his eyes, in his expression. “Without you, I’d never be complete.”

He would be in a world without color, alone, staring into a void.

With her, he was all he was meant to be.

He was meant to be hers.