Chapter One
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Pararescueman Connor O’Riley was standing in the large square office he’d shared at USSOCOM these past three months, when Logan Hughes walked in whistling, sat down at his desk and thunked a tall takeout cup of coffee near the monitor of his computer. A barrel of a man from Idaho, with biceps as big as cantaloupes, the marine was always cheerful, and Connor had grown to enjoy his sense of humor.
“Hello, baby girl!” Logan kissed the palm of his hand and slapped it against the photograph of a dark-haired young woman with blue eyes that hung on the wall nearby. Then he pulled a breakfast sandwich out of a paper bag and began to eat.
“Don’t let the General see you do that,” Connor said automatically. The photograph was of the General’s daughter—Lena Reed—and the General didn’t stand for any nonsense where his family was concerned.
“Don’t let him see me eat?” Logan asked in mock confusion.
“For fuck’s sake,” Jack Sanders said from across the room. “Do you two have to do the same routine every. Single. Damn. Morning?” Jack was a member of the Special Forces whose far more serious disposition was always at odds with Logan’s lighthearted joking.
“Nope. This is the last time,” Connor said. It was true—he was due on a plane in just over two hours. He’d land in Montana before the day was done, and soon he’d see Lena Reed in person. But he wasn’t traveling to the General’s ranch to visit Lena. Sadie Reed was his mark.
He glanced at the photograph that hung over his desk, near enough to slap a kiss on like Logan had Lena’s. He’d been staring at Sadie Reed for nearly three months, trying to come to terms with the strange twist his life had taken.
Soon she’d be his wife.
Of course, she didn’t know that yet.
“Thank God,” Jack said. “Because I don’t think I could stand it anymore.”
“Just because O’Riley’s leaving doesn’t mean I plan to stop.” Logan took another large bite of his sandwich. He chewed and swallowed. “Lena and me have gotten to be old friends.” He patted the photograph.
Connor rolled his eyes. The General had done a fine job pairing his oldest daughter, Cass, with Brian Lake, a Navy SEAL who’d been here for the first month of their joint time at USSOCOM. Despite the fact he’d never had any intention of marrying, Connor thought he, himself, had a fair chance with Sadie, who seemed a practical—and pretty—young woman with a penchant for gardening. But he had no idea what the General had been thinking when he picked Logan for any of his girls—or Jack, or Hunter Powell, the Navy SEAL sniper who rounded out the “task force,” either. Logan’s brashness would clash with Lena’s reputed temper.
As for the pairing of the youngest Reed daughter, Jo, with the battle-hardened Hunter? How could the General have made such a mismatch? At thirty-four, Hunter was the oldest of them. Jo, with her elfin, mischievous face, was only twenty-one. The two would have nothing in common.
But by far the worst of the pairings had to be Jack and Alice Reed. If he hadn’t known Jack was with the Special Forces, he would have pegged him as CIA. A slipperier man he’d never come across, and he’d seen the soldier eye Alice’s photograph with similar doubt. Alice was beautiful, Connor would grant her that, but it was a beauty as otherworldly as the premonitions Brian said she had. According to the SEAL, Alice was as fey as an Irish pixie, and Connor, who’d grown up on tales of the wee folk, knew well enough not to mess with them.
How on earth was a girl like Alice going to fall in love with a just-the-facts, cagey man like Jack?
And what was the world coming to when an airman like himself had to be this concerned with the love lives of the men around him?
It was all the General’s fault, of course.
But no—that wasn’t true, was it?
It was all his own fault. And love was what had gotten him into this mess in the first place. The irony of that hadn’t been lost on him.
Connor had given up on love a long time ago. He’d wrung it out of his system as just another lie that people believed because it made them feel better. He’d seen the way love could get two people in its grip, bring them together and then tear them apart. His own parents’ divorce had put an ocean and most of a continent between him and the mother and brother he’d loved. It had ripped him from the country he’d called his home for his first ten years. It had taken his magical, safe childhood and crushed it under the heel of the rancor and discord that had divided his family ever since.
Connor liked women, and dated frequently, but he’d never—not once—risked losing his heart. Not to Lila, who he’d met on leave, nor to Bridget, who he’d met through a dating app, nor to the other women he’d flirted with online and met up with in person when the timing worked out.
So he still couldn’t explain why he’d lost his head during his last mission.
As a pararescueman, he’d made many jumps into difficult circumstances, and he’d seen things that would leave most men curled into a fetal position for days. But the last jump he’d made into Syria had touched him in ways nothing had before or since. Not because of the injuries sustained by the pilot he’d been sent to rescue; the pilot had survived, and that was what counted.
But because during that short and successful mission, for the first time in his life he’d witnessed true love—and true selflessness.
And had been thoroughly humbled by both.
He’d gone beyond the bounds of his mandate to rescue two innocent bystanders in that godforsaken war. He’d thought he’d done what was right.
Too bad the Air Force disagreed.
So here he was at USSOCOM as one of the General’s misfits. Part of the Joint Special Task Force for Inter-Branch Communication Clarity—a bullshit title for a team that didn’t even exist. All Connor and the rest of the men who had landed here three months ago had done was kill time with busywork that accomplished nothing.
They weren’t here to do anything but wait their turn to serve the General’s real purpose for them. One by one he’d ship them off to Two Willows. One by one he’d marry them off to his daughters. Bit by bit the man would reclaim control of his ranch after a feud with his girls that had lasted for years.
And by following the General’s orders and playing his part in the ruse, Connor would clear his record of the big black stain that threatened to dog him through the rest of his life. In the process he’d become part owner in a jewel of a ranch in Chance Creek, Montana. He’d get a new start. Another chance.
A wife.
At first Connor had been as horrified as the other men at the predicament he found himself in, but as the weeks had passed and he’d followed Brian’s progress from intruder, to fiancé, to Cass’s soon-to-be husband at Two Willows, he’d come to see his fate might not be so bad.
Connor missed ranching. It was in his blood, after all. He’d ridden as soon as he could walk, first at his mother’s family’s small holding in Ireland, and then—after his parents’ divorce—on the huge Texas spread where his father worked as overseer. Connor had always wanted his own place. Always thought it was out of reach.
But it wasn’t anymore.
The only catch was he had to pledge his heart to Sadie Reed, whose enigmatic face had stared out of the frame hanging by his desk for the last three months. Sadie, who by all accounts was as tied to her Montana ranch as he’d thought he was tied to Ireland as a child. She had tended its extensive gardens—and its hedge maze—since she was young, and she ran a farm stand and sold herbal cures to her neighbors, according to Brian.
He remembered the helicopter ride back from Syria. Remembered Halil’s words in the midst of all the chaos and noise. Find a wife. Make her your everything. Advice from a stranger, in a war zone, on the other side of the world.
Exactly what he’d always sworn to himself he’d never do.
Exactly what he had to do now.
It was going to be all right, he told himself. Despite his past, he could make a commitment and stick to it.
Because from everything Brian had told them, Two Willows was as special a place as his mother’s small holding, Ard na Greine, in Ireland, and he could see for himself Sadie was a special woman. If he had to marry—and he had to, not just for his own sake, but for the sake of every man in this room—he could do a lot worse.
If Sadie would have him.
Logan finished his sandwich, balled up the wrapper and pitched it into the trash can across the room, pulling Connor from his thoughts.
“Ready to catch yourself a wife, O’Riley?” he asked.
“Ready as I’ll ever be.” Connor wondered who’d take over his line tomorrow in their daily routine. Jack? Probably not. Hunter?
Nah.
“See you on the other side,” he told them, all too used to these kinds of unanswered questions. Someday maybe they’d all be together again on the ranch.
But only if he succeeded at his mission.
And married Sadie Reed.
Her garden was dying.
On the morning of Cass’s wedding, Sadie stood among the rows of plants, her practiced eye noting the yellow and brown shadings among the verdant green. She’d learned the art of tending the three acres that formed the kitchen garden, and the hedge maze that took up an additional acre, at her mother’s knee, parroting the Latin names and uses of each plant as her mother imparted the information she’d learned from her mother before her. She still ran the farm stand her mother had run, and her mother before her. It sat at the end of the lane, and worked on the honor system, with prices clearly marked and a tin for her customers to leave their money in.
Sadie couldn’t remember a time when she hadn’t spent her days here, or in the maze, or in the long, large greenhouse where she started delicate seedlings, grew plants used to a milder climate and prepared the herbs that went into her remedies.
Only once had she let the wider world interfere with her duties, and that had ended disastrously in a shoot-out that almost took her sisters’ lives just a few weeks ago. Mark Pendergrass was gone—wounded, soon to go on trial and hopefully be locked up for a long time. Sadie was glad. She didn’t know how he’d managed to steal her heart. Had no idea how she’d missed all the signs that he was nothing but trouble—that he’d been using her all along to get to her ranch.
Mark and his friends had wanted to use Two Willows as a home base for their large drug distribution network. Cass’s fiancé, Brian, had helped to drive them out. Cass had fought for the ranch, too. So had Lena.
Sadie had done nothing. And her shame at the part she’d played in nearly losing her family’s home still made her heart ache every time she thought of it.
Now the very land was punishing her.
How else to explain the damage in her garden? Sadie had nourished each and every one of these plants from tiny seedlings she’d cared for in the greenhouse. She’d transplanted them with one eye on the phase of the moon and the other on the weather. She’d fed them, watered them, cared for them. Even sung to them from time to time.
Why were they dying?
Because of her betrayal?
Sadie knelt beside a tomato plant that had only recently grown as tall as her thigh and bushed out well beyond the cylindrical cage that gave support to its stem, but now had shrunk in on itself, its foliage a sickly yellow-green that made Sadie wince. Its fruit was withering on their stems, the thin, wrinkly skin of the tomatoes auguring tasteless sponginess rather than firm, mouthwatering bursts of flavor.
Why? Why was this happening?
Because she’d turned her back on her garden? Neglected it in favor of following Mark Pendergrass around on his errands, waiting on him hand and foot, hoping for a morsel of his attention?
She was lucky she hadn’t received any, she knew now. Lucky she hadn’t even tempted the man. He’d squired her around in public like they were a couple—sometimes. The rest of the time he’d ignored her unless he needed her for something. He’d kissed her a couple of times. Groped her once or twice. That was the extent of his attentions, something that had shamed her at the time. She’d felt he treated her like some childish virgin, which she wasn’t, even if she hadn’t had a string of boyfriends. Now his neglect left her thanking her lucky stars.
To have slept with the man who’d tried to kill her sisters—
That would be too much to bear.
“I’m done with men,” she told the tomato. “Forever.”
The tomato didn’t listen. It didn’t speak to her, either, even when she touched its leaves. Even when she dug her fingers into the dirt at its roots. Not a word.
Not that tomatoes spoke with words.
Sadie had always felt the plants communicated with her in the same way the future communicated with her sister Alice. “It’s like I can hear—or see—or something,” Alice always said when people questioned her about her hunches. “Like I have access to information other people don’t.”
That’s what it felt like to Sadie in her garden. When she was near a plant she simply knew what it needed, as if it had told her in words.
At least, that was how it had always been—until the day of the shoot-out.
Since then it had all shut down. She couldn’t hear or see or feel anything—about the tomatoes, the carrots, the herbs, the berries out back of the greenhouse, or the hedge that formed the maze, either. The whole ranch had gone silent. A door had shut on her, cutting off the most important part of her existence—her connection with the growing things.
Her connection with her mother.
Sadie knew what it meant. The ranch didn’t want her here anymore. Everyone had told her Mark wasn’t the one for her. Even the plants had shrunk away from him whenever he came near. She’d known he was trouble. She’d known everything she was doing with him was wrong.
She’d done it anyway.
Now she had to pay.
The price was steep—steeper than she’d ever thought possible. Because while Sadie had foreseen a day when Mark would lose interest in her, and she’d always known it was possible she might be caught helping him in his illicit activities—and suffer the consequences of being found guilty, including the censure of her sisters—she’d never once dreamed that the ranch itself would turn on her and kick her out.
“I’m done with men,” she told the garden again. “I’m done, I swear. I’ll devote my life to you. I’ll never look at another man for as long as I live.”
A half-ripe tomato fell with a plop off the shriveled plant into the dirt.
Her remorse wasn’t good enough. Her broken heart wasn’t enough.
“I don’t want you to die,” she whispered to the plants surrounding her. She’d lost too much that she loved already. More than eleven years had passed since her mother died. All that time she’d kept her promise to Amelia. She’d kept the garden flourishing, nurtured her sisters, and their neighbors, too. She’d done everything she could to keep her mother’s spirit alive in the growing things at Two Willows.
But that was over. If it was a choice between her happiness and the health of Two Willows, the ranch had to come first.
The signs were clear.
She had to leave.
For good.
When Connor knocked on Two Willows’s front door, he could tell Brian and Cass’s reception was in full swing at the back of the house, but he’d been raised right, and he wouldn’t walk into a wedding uninvited. He shoved his hands in his pockets, and took a deep breath to settle his nerves. Soon he’d meet Sadie—the woman he was supposed to marry.
Things like this didn’t happen to a man every day.
In truth, he didn’t know what to make of Sadie. She wasn’t his type. The women he dated were bold, fun-loving—as apt to pick him up in a bar as he was to pick up them. Women who knew exactly what they wanted—and saw what they wanted in him.
Connor had never felt any impetus to settle down before. Why would he? He knew what marriage was—a temporary pretense masked as something permanent. A vehicle for promises men and women couldn’t keep.
His parents’ marriage had torn two families apart. Forged on a holiday when his mother and father had met in Paris, their long-distance relationship couldn’t stand up to the realities of living together when his father had left Texas and moved to Ireland to be with his new wife.
Connor supposed he should give his dad credit for lasting thirteen years in a country where the ranches were called farms, and the largest of them were a fraction of the size of the Texas holdings he’d grown up around. Not that his father ever owned the land he worked there. He’d been a foreman all his days, and hoped Connor would follow in his footsteps.
But Connor wanted his own land. That was why he’d joined up in the first place. He’d planned to scrimp and save until he could buy some—but land was expensive.
Which was why he was here.
Part of the reason, anyway.
Sighing in exasperation, not wanting to remember the other half of the equation that had brought him to this Montana ranch, he pounded on the door with his fist. Couldn’t anyone hear him?
It would be good to see Brian again. The Navy SEAL had—
The door swung open and Connor forgot everything but the woman standing in front of him.
Sadie Reed. Dressed in a spring-green bridesmaid gown, her hair piled on top of her head. She looked thinner than she had in the photo back at USSOCOM. He saw a wariness in her eyes he hadn’t noticed before. She looked older than her twenty-two years somehow, but at the same time she had an innocence about her he found unnerving. She was… stunning. Something shifted in Connor’s heart, exposing a chink in the armor he’d surrounded it with. He’d always prided himself on his ability to remain detached. Without warning, that detachment gave way to a desire to connect. He nearly reached out and touched Sadie—until he saw her eyes widen and he snatched his hand back. Desperate to fill the awkward silence between them, Connor did what he always did when the situation got tense.
Fell back on the Irish accent he could still produce at will. He hammed it up to show he wasn’t taking any of this seriously—least of all the heritage he’d left behind.
“Well, hello there, lassie,” he said heartily, as Irish as the green hills of County Galway. “You must be Sadie Reed. I’m Connor O’Riley. The General sent me.”
The words of greeting Sadie had prepared when she heard the knock on the front door died on her lips when she took in the handsome features of the man before her. He was tall, broad-shouldered, lean with muscle, with hair so dark brown it was almost black and piercing blue eyes that danced with mischief. But it was his outrageously fake Irish accent that left her speechless. No one quite so unusual had ever washed up on her doorstep before.
“That’s right. I’m Sadie.” She made no move to ask him in, despite his mention of her father. The General had sent Brian, after all—the man Cass had married just an hour ago. And even if that had turned out for the best, Sadie was still wary of anyone who had the General’s approval.
She let the silence stretch out—a tactic she’d learned from the General himself. People liked to fill silences. Maybe this Connor O’Riley would spill the beans about why he was really here.
“The General says it’s time,” Connor said finally when it became clear she didn’t mean to speak. He stepped forward, edging his way into the house.
Sadie took in the rucksack he carried. Her suspicions grew. Did he mean to stay?
“Time for what?” She shifted and blocked his way so he couldn’t pass the lintel of the door. Up close, she had to crane her neck to see his face. Connor was no shrinking violet. His biceps, covered with a blazer appropriate for the occasion, strained his sleeves and she didn’t think her two hands could encompass his muscles if he flexed his arm. His thighs nicely filled out the black jeans he wore with the jacket.
Those were cowboy boots under his jeans, she realized. Was this man at home on a ranch?
Why did that thought light a curl of interest low in her belly? His raffish good looks weren’t enough to fool her.
“Time to start building,” Connor said.
Sadie had to admit he was easy on the eyes. She felt drawn to him despite herself. Wanted to know more about him.
Which meant she was a hopeless case.
Tangling with Mark Pendergrass should have taught her that no man was worth falling for. He’d chewed her up and spit her out—humiliating her in the process. Even now she felt vulnerable—naked almost—dressed in this bridesmaid gown, a pretty picture for a man’s enjoyment. Connor looked like he was enjoying the sight of her all too much.
She couldn’t wait to change back into her jeans.
“Building what?” she asked in exasperation. “You aren’t making any sense.”
“Building your legacy.” Connor eased forward until he had room to set his rucksack down. Sadie eased back. What else could she do faced with this monster of a man?
“My… legacy?” What was he talking about? The only legacy she had was the pain and shame of her own behavior these past few months. She’d fallen for a man who cooked meth—whose business it was to profit off the suffering and addiction of others. A criminal and the kind of person she’d been raised to despise.
She’d spent months dancing to his tune like a puppet.
A senseless, stupid puppet.
She wasn’t going to be fooled again. Not by any man.
Not by this… joker.
“Your mother made Two Willows’s gardens what they are today. She caused the greenhouse to be raised and planted the maze around the standing stone.”
Connor had dropped the exaggerated Irish brogue, leaving her wondering if he was Irish at all. He could be as American as she was.
“Now it’s your turn,” he went on. “You want to put your mark on this ranch, don’t you? What do you want me to help you build?”
The ground shifted beneath Sadie’s feet and suddenly she wondered if it was her mother, not the General, who’d sent this man.
An image filled her mind—a walled garden—a place to withdraw from the world when it made no sense, when only growing things and the birds that visited could soothe the soul. She saw herself standing at a doorway looking in through a circular portal formed by a curved gate and the arch above it. A magical entrance to a magical place she could retreat to when the world got too much.
Connor’s eyes flashed, as if he’d caught a glimpse of the vision she’d seen.
“Whatever you can think of, I can build,” he told her, leaning closer. “Like I said, the General sent me. Today we celebrate your sister’s wedding. Tomorrow we get to work.”
She was hooked. Just like that.
Connor saw the light go on in Sadie’s eyes and knew she’d thought about her legacy—surprising in one so young.
But as quickly as that light turned on, it blinked off again. Her wariness was back.
“I don’t need anyone’s help to build a legacy,” she said as if it was the most ridiculous idea in the world. “My legacy is my healing. I help people every day. At least—”
She trailed off. Connor took another step forward. Sadie stepped back. He was almost far enough inside the house to shut the door behind him, and somehow Connor knew it was imperative he be able to shut it. She could still drive him away. And he’d be damned if he’d leave now that he’d met Sadie.
“I need to pay my respects to Cass. The General gave me something for her.”
Sadie bit her lip. He could almost see her mind racing to solve this dilemma. She wanted to block him from her home, but already he was in the door, with a present in his hand for her sister—from her father. How could she kick him out?
Connor took advantage of her hesitation, stepped forward and shut the door behind him.
There.
Home free.
Thank God. Connor knew he’d do whatever it took to actually make this his home.
“Five minutes. Then you need to hightail it out of here and back to the General. We let in one of his goons; we don’t need any more. And I don’t need your help building a legacy.”
“Sure you do.” He reverted to the brogue. “Every lovely lass needs a legacy.”
Ignoring her protests, he dropped his rucksack and strode through the house, intent on finding the party, but he faltered when he reached the large, old-fashioned kitchen. He’d heard from Brian that this room had taken the most damage during the shoot-out that occurred when drug dealers came after Cass and Lena a few weeks ago, but it was one thing to hear about it and another altogether to see it with his own eyes.
He knew there hadn’t been time between the shoot-out and the wedding to renovate the house, which is partly why the wedding was being held outdoors. Brian had ripped out the damaged lath and plaster walls, leaving the studs still visible.
The windows had been replaced, and he could tell the back door was new. But what kept his gaze frozen in place was the heavy, old-fashioned table that stood in the center of the large room.
Bullets had scored several deep grooves in the wood. Connor leaned over and ran his hand across one of them. Did the General know how close his daughters had come to disaster? If so, why wasn’t he here, himself?
He looked up to find Sadie watching him.
She shrugged. “I wasn’t here,” she said. “Not until the end.” Her shuttered expression hinted at pain as she made her way to the back door. “Cass is outside.”
He figured he’d save his questions for another time. He knew Sadie’s boyfriend—ex-boyfriend—had been one of the men who shot up the house that night. Mark Pendergrass was still getting over significant injuries while awaiting trial. Just the thought of him made Connor’s hands ball into fists.
“I’ll be glad to have another man around the place I can trust,” Brian had told him on the phone several days ago. Connor knew he was afraid of reprisals. When he and the Reed women had blown up the trailer where the dealers had stashed their drugs on Two Willows’ land, they’d put a crimp into a large operation.
Outside, the reception was in full swing. Guests ate barbecued chicken and steak and any number of other dishes laid out buffet style on tables on the lawn. Someone handed Sadie a glass of champagne. Connor accepted one, too. Sadie led him to where Cass stood talking to a small knot of guests. Brian stood by her side.
“Connor!” Brian spotted him, broke away from the guests and came to greet him, engulfing him in a quick, manly hug accompanied by several slaps on the back.
“Brian—looking good.”
“Meet Cass.”
Brian made the introductions and Connor shook her hand. “Glad to meet you,” he said honestly. “Brian’s a lucky man.”
“I’m glad to meet you, too,” Cass said, smiling. Connor could see why Brian had fallen for his bride. There was something open and honest about Cass’s expression, and Connor knew she was optimistic and hardworking from everything Brian had told him.
“He’s got something for you,” Sadie told her sister, nodding toward Connor. “Something from the General.”
Cass’s eyes widened. “From the General?”
“I was just with him, ma’am,” Connor said. “Flew in to Chance Creek today. Hope you don’t mind; the General sent me to stay awhile.” He passed her the small wrapped gift the General had handed to him.
“He did?” She glanced at Brian for an explanation. Brian just shrugged.
“I’m here to help Sadie—with her legacy.”
“Legacy?” Cass repeated, much as Sadie had earlier. Now she looked to her sister, but Sadie simply lifted a shoulder.
“According to him, I’m supposed to plant another maze.”
“Not another maze,” Connor corrected. “Something that calls to you. Something that’s all your own.”
“What kind of a plant would that be?” Cass looked confused.
“No—not a plant; a legacy. It could be anything.” Connor warmed to his theme. He’d been the one who’d proposed the idea to the General when he’d learned the history of the maze and standing stone from Brian. Two Willows was a special place, and he knew from his childhood special places needed to be tended and expanded in ways that connected people to them. A standing stone was something that drew people to a certain place in a landscape. A maze was another. Sadie needed to come up with a third. “Anything I can plant or build.”
“We could use a better clothesline,” Cass said.
Sadie rolled her eyes. “A clothesline isn’t a legacy,” she said before Connor could say so. “He means something like… like… a walled garden.”
Connor’s instincts sprang to life. Sadie did get it—and she did have dreams he could translate into reality. He’d build her something that made her as interested in him as he was in her at this moment.
“That’s it exactly. A walled garden—with benches and pathways and a fountain—”
“It was just an example,” Sadie said sharply. “It’s not something I actually want.”
She might as well have doused him with cold water.
“Well, whatever you do want, I’ll build it,” he reiterated. It took a lot more than a surly lass to throw him off the scent of his mission.
“That sounds lovely.” Cass’s lips twitched in a way that told Connor she saw right through him, right through this whole situation.
“That sounds like the General interfering again,” Sadie said.
Her legacy. She didn’t need a legacy, Sadie thought as she watched Cass unwrap the General’s gift—a beautiful necklace that made both of them go silent. It was a locket like the one he’d given their mother long ago. Sadie remembered Amelia wearing it all the time when she was young, but the necklace had gone missing only weeks before her death. She wondered if the General knew that?
Forcing those old memories away, she kept her mind on her own problems. The legacy she’d lost. No one had noticed so far—not Cass, not any of her sisters—but soon everyone would realize something had gone horribly wrong with her. Her glance strayed to her extensive garden, the greenhouse beyond it—and the maze. From here the rows and squares of vegetables and herbs still looked lush and well-tended. But her sharp, practiced eyes could pick out the first signs of trouble.
Spots on otherwise emerald-green leaves. Brown edges. Drooping stems. Infestations of hungry insects.
All through the garden, nature was playing havoc with her plants.
And it scared Sadie. Scared her more than anything else had since the day her mother died, and even on that occasion her intuition with the plants had been strengthened by the sudden shock—not wiped out by it.
But now she felt like she was working blindfolded when she went out to the garden. Worse, like her plants didn’t recognize her. Like she was anyone who’d stumbled into their rows rather than the one person who had a special connection to them.
Not to mention she couldn’t create her cures, which were her real legacy. Without that connection to her plants she couldn’t compound her tinctures and tonics and salves.
What had happened to her?
A man’s loud laugh made Sadie jerk around to search the crowd, her heart in her throat.
Was that Mark?
No—of course not. Thank God.
Sadie got herself under control. Mark was in the hospital… under guard. She was safe from him.
She wasn’t safe from her memories, though.
She still couldn’t believe she’d been so stupid to let Mark use her like she had. She’d been a fool to think such a handsome man was interested in her—or that he’d been worth the time of day.
Mark was a criminal. A callous, miserable loser. Someone who designed drugs to hook their users and siphon off all their money until he’d wrung every last penny from them. Once the scales had fallen from her eyes, Sadie had become aware for the first time in her life of the way that drugs pervaded her little town. People were using them to escape from their problems—to have a little fun. But by using them they were letting trouble into their lives.
Letting Mark into their lives, with his greedy hands outstretched demanding more money—and more and more.
Thank God she hadn’t fallen down that trap. She’d tried pot once—didn’t like it. Had told Mark so, and he’d backed off. Of course, he hadn’t been after her money; he’d only wanted her land, and the ability to use her ranch as a cover.
She scanned the happy crowd around her again. Wondered who among them were hiding secret addictions. She hoped not many; she wished happiness to all of them. Wanted it for herself.
It was funny about the pot—it hadn’t slipped her into that comfortable state she’d heard about—that Mark had told her she’d like. Instead, the herb had whispered to her of its true meaning, and in her mind’s eye she’d seen the religious rites once practiced with it, the way a certain set of peoples had once understood it as a pathway to the divine.
Now it had been overbred, planted far beyond its natural borders, hyped up and hopped up and changed to be more potent—to be used, rather than honored.
Nature knows, she remembered her mother saying once. It knows our intentions—and it gives us what we deserve.
Plants could heal—and harm. Like people.
Connor cleared his throat and Sadie shifted her attention back to the interloper. What were his intentions? They weren’t as simple as he was making them out to be. He wasn’t here to build her legacy. He would be just one more obstacle between her and the healing knowledge that had once existed within her—that she had taken for granted like Alice’s foresight and Lena’s resolve to run the ranch. The healing knowledge that had disappeared with her ability to tend plants, since the two were inextricably entwined.
“I’m here to help you,” Connor said in a low tone, as if it were just the two of them standing here.
“I don’t think that’s true,” she told him. She figured he was a message from her father. That he was disappointed in her behavior and that from now on he’d keep a close watch on her via this enormous airman he’d sent.
But she’d already received another message from the plants—the land—she loved so much.
They didn’t want her here anymore.
It was time to leave.
Could this be his home? Connor wondered as he took in the large white house, the back porch, the neat, orderly rows of Sadie’s garden and the rutted dirt track that led to the barns and outbuildings in the distance.
“Come grab some food from the buffet,” Cass said, sending a signal to her sister with her furrowed brow.
Sadie didn’t seem to notice. Her gaze was on her gardens, her mind obviously somewhere else.
“Sadie? You coming?” he asked.
“What? Oh—okay.” She followed along and Connor resisted the urge to take her hand to guide her through the crowd. She was so slim and girlish in her bridesmaid gown, he instinctively wanted to protect her. He knew that was partly why the General had sent him; trouble could return to Two Willows, and the General wanted men on the ranch who knew how to handle it when it did. He knew he couldn’t send them all at once, though. They were infiltrating Two Willows one at a time.
Now Connor understood the pressure Brian must have felt when he’d first arrived.
What if the plan didn’t work? What if Sadie didn’t find him attractive, or interesting—what if she didn’t care about men at all?
Sadie sent him a sideways look that traveled over his body and up to his face. When her gaze met his she blinked and colored a little.
A grin tugged at Connor’s lips.
She cared about men.
And maybe found him just a little attractive, after all.
He definitely found her attractive. He was glad last night he’d sent texts to Lila, Bridget and a couple of other women he still chatted with online and told them goodbye. He wanted to begin a new life here at Two Willows, with Sadie Reed.
He’d wondered if he was ready for it, but now that he was here, the whole thing seemed like a brilliant idea.
At the buffet, he handed Sadie a plate and went along the length of the tables, offering her portions of dishes he thought might interest her. To his surprise, Sadie meekly allowed him to serve her, murmuring her preferences as they went. In the end, both their plates were stacked high with food when they went to find a table.
But the tables were mostly full.
He was about to admit defeat and suggest they divide up when Sadie said, “Let’s eat on the porch.” She led the way up to a grouping of wicker furniture and indicated he should take a seat. He hoped the settee would hold up when he sat down. Not that he was overweight—far from it. But the wicker looked like it had been out here a long time.
Sadie took a seat on one of the chairs opposite him. “Are you from Ireland?” she asked conversationally, as if he were any old guest at the wedding.
“Yes. Originally,” he admitted.
“So that accent isn’t entirely fake.”
“No. Not entirely.” He was a little abashed. Women usually found his accent charming, but when he turned it on, it was an obvious ploy, and Sadie had seen right through it.
“You must have moved here young.”
“Ten.” He took a bite of potato salad, chewed and swallowed. “Lived in Texas until I joined up.”
“Texas? Some of those spreads down there put Two Willows to shame.”
Connor thought about the huge spread he’d grown up on. Big enough to be its own state, they used to joke—not even trying to cover their pride. But that spread hadn’t belonged to him or his father, and the sun beat down hard on that flat Texas land. It had its own beauty, but not like Two Willows. “Not much can hold up to this.” He waved his fork at the house and the land around them.
“Two Willows is pretty special,” Sadie agreed quietly.
They ate in silence a minute, and Connor wondered what was bothering her. His presence? The shoot-out that had taken place here only weeks before?
He found it hard to make the kind of small talk that might set her at ease. He was too aware that this was the woman he was to marry. Back at USSOCOM, she’d merely been a two-dimensional facsimile of a woman he’d constructed in his mind from her photographs and the information Brian had told him. Here she was in the flesh. A young woman with serious blue eyes, a way of looking at him like she was searching his face for clues about what lay beneath.
Connor thought she was the type of woman who looked beyond surface features to the depths of people—and problems—for what lay at their heart. He was uncomfortably aware that such scrutiny could unearth things about him he didn’t want her to know.
What would Sadie think of his shallow existence—the way he’d held back from forming deep attachments to other people? What would she think if she knew that the few minutes he’d spent with Halil left him feeling he understood the Syrian man better than those he’d served with?
He’d spent far too many years hiding in plain sight. No one knew him. Definitely not the women he’d date previously.
But Sadie would have to as his wife.
“Brian told me about the maze,” he said finally when he’d cleaned his plate.
“Do you want to see it?” Sadie set down her plate on the table, although she’d only picked at her food.
“Sure.” His casual shrug hid his true feelings. Ever since Brian had first mentioned the maze, Connor had known it had significance for him.
“The land holds its own secrets,” he remembered his granny saying when he was young. “Even when men think they’re putting their stamp on it, often they’re following the land’s own will.” They’d been standing before a Neolithic dolmen in County Donegal at the time, Connor staring at the massive stones, wondering how his forbears had moved them. It was one thing to get the enormous uprights into position, but what about the capstone? It wasn’t like they’d had cranes to lift it into place.
His grandmother had been right; he’d been busy thinking about the men who’d built it, but the real question was why? Why there? Why like that?
Could the land really call men to do its bidding?
He scanned the ranch around him again. Two Willows had secrets. He could feel them whispering in the soft breeze playing with Sadie’s hair as they made their way down from the porch, through the gathered guests, across her garden to the tall hedges that formed the maze.
“Shall I lead?”
Connor hesitated. He’d have liked to take his time and explore the maze on his own, finding his way into the heart of it. But on the other hand, he was here to woo Sadie.
He nodded. “This time. Next time I’ll try it on my own.”
She entered the green passage, striding quickly enough Connor knew he would struggle to retrace their steps. He’d get the chance to learn his own way through its passages later, though. He reckoned this was the first of many times he’d trace his way through the maze.
When they reached its heart, he wasn’t disappointed. There stood a tall, rectangular stone, rough-hewn and ancient looking, as if it had been here since the dawn of time. It couldn’t be that old, of course. Maybe a hundred years—a hundred fifty at most. But he felt a kinship between it and the ones he’d seen back in Ireland.
It had presence, and Connor stepped close, wanting to get a better look.
Sadie pressed a hand on the stone, as if greeting an old friend. She was silent a moment.
Listening.
Tenderness flooded Connor’s heart; she reminded him a little of women he’d known back in Ireland. Kind, warm women with an extra bit of knowing he’d always wanted to have, too. How many times had he seen his grandmother get that distant look? He wondered what the stone was telling Sadie.
A shaft of sunshine loaned it a golden hue. Connor couldn’t help himself; he placed both palms on the stone’s warm flanks. Its rough texture under his hands made him fully aware he was really here in Montana. Here at Two Willows. Getting ready to convince Sadie to marry him.
Was this madness? He glanced at the serious woman watching him soundlessly. Sadie had reacted to his arrival with little more than a cool detachment. She wasn’t interested in him. For all he knew she wasn’t interested in marriage. He could be on a fool’s errand.
But standing next to her, both of them touching the stone—acknowledging silently its power—he thought not. They were similar in this at least; they respected the landscape that defined them.
It was funny; he’d thought this mission would require him to overcome his own reluctance to settle down and share his heart with a woman. But only an hour in, Connor found himself wanting to try. Something about Sadie tugged at his heart in a way he hadn’t experienced before. Her sense of place, maybe. Her sense of mission.
Sadie knew what she wanted. Knew where she was meant to be. Connor had never felt that way since he left Ireland.
But if he was falling for her, he wouldn’t have to overcome his own inclinations to marry Sadie; he’d have to overcome hers. Sadie’s indifference to him could prove the impediment that made him fail at carrying out the task the General had given him.
Connor didn’t like failure. He wasn’t used to it. Hell, even when he’d been kicked to USSOCOM, he hadn’t failed. On the contrary, his demotion came because he’d succeeded in saving Halil and his wife.
Is love worth fighting for? he asked the stone silently—as if it could answer.
Too late, he remembered Brian claimed it could.
Connor jerked back his hands, took in Sadie’s surprised expression as she stepped back, too, and searched for an explanation he could give her.
Before he could think of anything to say, the breeze played up, tossing Sadie’s hair into her eyes. It tossed something else past him—a ripple of color that landed in the hedge behind Sadie.
“What’s that?” He leaned past Sadie, just as she turned to investigate, too. Both of them reached for it at the same time, and their fingers touched before Sadie snatched her hand away and Connor lifted a faded hair ribbon from the greenery.
It was striped red, white and blue, but instead of reminding him of the American flag, it called to Connor’s mind the stripes of the French one. His parents had met in France—in Paris. They’d fallen in love there. Married there. Then traveled to Ireland to settle with his mother’s family.
When he held the ribbon up, Sadie shook her head. “I’ve never seen it before.”
On an impulse he caught her wrist and tied the ribbon around it. “Now you won’t forget the day you met me,” he said lightly. He knew he’d never forget the day he met her. Sadie was something else. Different from the other women he’d known. He wanted to touch her again. Wanted more.
Before she could pull away, he bent down and kissed her.
As both she and Connor reached for the ribbon, just for a moment—for one split second—Sadie felt her awareness sharpen. There was the hedge, thirsty, the needled tips of its branches feeling the blight of too much sun and not enough water—an imbalance that went too far beyond the normal long, hot Montana summer days for the hedge to withstand. Sadie sucked in a breath, grateful beyond measure for the return of that knowledge before she yanked her hand away, and Connor pulled the ribbon free of the branch where it had landed.
In that instant, the awareness disappeared. The world went mute again, and Sadie stared in shock at the man beside her as he held up the ribbon for her to inspect.
“I’ve never seen it before,” she managed to say, her mind still reeling. The fingers of her free hand ran lightly over the needles of the hedge again, but she felt nothing. Heard nothing. It was as if a wall had dropped down between her and the natural world.
Then Connor bent to tie the ribbon around her wrist. When his hands touched her skin, her awareness crackled on again, then off. On and off, until Sadie wanted to scream.
What did it mean?
“Now you won’t forget the day you met me,” he said lightly. And before she could pull away, he bent down and kissed her.
The world exploded in sensation. The thirsty hedge, the parched grass beneath her feet, the sere breeze that caressed her face. The acres of kitchen garden behind the walls of the maze, each plant crying out for its own mixture of water and nutrients.
Connor pulled away. With him went her awareness again. Sadie grabbed hold of one of the branches of the thick hedge to steady herself, but felt nothing. No sense of thirst, of too much sun, of dwindling reserves of water in the ground deep below her.
Nothing at all.
Swallowing, Sadie looked at Connor. Really looked at him. His strong features were framed by dark hair. Wide blue eyes watched her, but she couldn’t tell what he was thinking. Had he felt it, too?
No.
No one else ever did.
So how had he—
“I have to go,” she blurted and spun around.
“Sadie—”
“Cass needs me.” She lifted the hem of her bridesmaid gown.
And ran.