Chapter Two
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It took him nearly a half-hour to find his way out of the maze, and by that time Connor was ready to barrel straight through its evergreen walls. He needed to find Sadie again. Talk to her.
But he figured if he damaged the maze, it would set Sadie against him forever. Besides, his Gran would rise from her grave and read him the riot act if he desecrated something as special as the maze out of sheer impatience.
Chasing Sadie now wouldn’t score him any points, anyway. His kiss had surprised her. Hell, it had surprised him.
But she’d reacted to it.
When his mouth had brushed her cheek, she’d jolted like a live wire conducting a current. He wasn’t sure if it was attraction—or fear—that had made her suck in her breath, but she couldn’t say she was immune to his touch, for better or for worse.
He decided to look for Brian, but before he’d taken three steps out of the maze toward Sadie’s garden, his phone buzzed in his pocket and he pulled it out and saw his father was calling.
“Dad, what’s up?” he said when he’d accepted the call.
“Not much. You in Montana?”
“That’s right.” Connor hadn’t exactly come clean about the trouble he’d gotten himself into, or about the nature of this mission. Instead he’d classified it as a leave, and told his father he had come to help out a friend.
His father hadn’t been entirely pleased. Sean O’Riley might share his ex-wife’s Irish ancestry, but he was a Texan through and through, as his forefathers had been for over a hundred years. He couldn’t understand why anyone would want to live anywhere else than Texas, which made it hard for Connor to admit he was trying to make Montana his home.
“Should have come here. Haven’t seen you in a while.”
“You could always visit me.” Connor said the words out of habit. His father rarely left the spread he oversaw, and never for as frivolous a reason as a visit to his son.
“Heard from your mother lately?”
“You could call her yourself, you know.” How many times had they had this exchange? For a couple divorced for twenty years, they were awfully nosy about each other’s business.
“Answer the question.”
“I hear from her every week. You know that.” Whether by phone, text, email or video chat, Keira O’Riley never failed to reach out to him. She’d always wanted him to be clear that she loved him despite the distance between them.
Despite the fact she’d let his father take him to America.
“How about Dalton?”
“Nah.” His brother was a whole other matter. Dalton had stayed in Ireland when the family split, and while Connor told himself it wasn’t Dalton’s fault their mother had kept him there any more than it was his fault his father had taken him to Texas, he hadn’t been able to keep from resenting his brother for getting his mother’s full attention. And he had the feeling Dalton felt the same about him and his father.
Not for the first time he wondered what his parents had been thinking when they each took a child from their marriage. Had they thought it was somehow fair? Had they known even when Dalton was twelve and Connor ten that Connor would thrive on a huge spread and Dalton would suit the smaller Irish ranch?
And what about the part of Connor that longed for those green, green hills? Was there a similar part to his brother that craved the wide open, sunny skies of Texas?
He’d never know. They didn’t speak of things like that, when they spoke at all.
“All seems well, Dad,” he finally said with an equal amount of pity and irritation. Sean O’Riley had hied himself home to Texas after thirteen years in Ireland, swearing he couldn’t stand another misty morning on a ranch no bigger than a thimble, but he’d never found himself another woman.
Connor thought he missed his wife.
“Good, good.” His dad paused for so long Connor thought he might have hung up. “Might take you up on that.”
“Up on what?” Connor paced the long rows of Sadie’s garden, turned onto a main path and headed back toward the party. He spotted Brian near the back porch steps talking to a knot of well-wishers. The evening was mellowing out as the sun went down, and the murmur of voices and the lilt of dance music made Connor want to belong here.
“On visiting. I’m taking a vacation in a few weeks.”
Connor stopped in his tracks. “A vacation?” He didn’t think he’d ever heard the word on his father’s lips. “A vacation?”
“That’s right.” Sean sounded testy. “A man can take a break now and then. ’Specially one who’s worked as hard as I have.”
“Of course.” Connor rushed to appease his father. It was just he couldn’t remember an instance when Sean had taken more than an hour or two off work to fish in the pond, let alone travel to another state for a real vacation. His trip to Paris as a young man when he’d met Connor’s mother was the single instance of that kind of thing. “I’m sure we can put you up.”
If he was still at Two Willows. If Sadie hadn’t run him off by then.
“When were you thinking?” he asked.
“Three weeks from today,” his father said, as if planning vacations was as normal as drinking a beer. “I plan to stay awhile, too.”
“O-okay.” Hell, he’d better work fast to have things in order by then. “Any reason in particular for taking a vacation now?”
Another long pause had him pacing toward the party again. Something was up with his Dad. He wished he knew what.
“Henry put his foot down. Said I’d better be gone for a month. I ain’t staying away for a month, though. Three weeks tops.”
Connor nearly laughed in relief. Henry Butler owned Valhalla, the enormous spread Sean oversaw. The man had urged Connor’s dad for years to take regular breaks. “No health issues, then?”
“Health issues? You think I’ve gone soft?”
“No, Dad.” He was glad to hear his father was in good health. Sean was nearing sixty. It was time for him to slow down. Ranch work was hard on a man—it wore you down over the years. “I look forward to your visit.”
After a few more minutes of small talk about cattle, drought, the price of grain and the relative sizes of Valhalla and Two Willows, Connor signed off the call and pocketed his phone, just as he reached Brian.
“Here he is now,” Brian said, moving aside so Connor could join the conversation between him, his new bride and her sisters, all congregated around her in their bridesmaid gowns. “Connor will take care of Two Willows while I’m gone.”
The dark-haired woman to Cass’s right scoffed openly. “We don’t need help caring for Two Willows. Sadie will take on Cass’s jobs, and I’ll run the cattle operation—like always,” she asserted.
Lena Reed. Connor bit back a smile. He’d already heard from Brian she was a firebrand and fiercely protective of her role as overseer of the ranch. The General had a bad habit of sending men to take the position from her and she’d dug her heels in good this time; she wouldn’t hand it over again.
Brian didn’t seem to care. “We agree on practically everything,” he’d said once in a video chat with the men left behind at USSOCOM. “She’s lived here all her life. She knows this ranch like the back of her hand. Why butt heads when she’s right?”
Connor figured they’d come up with a kind of partnership when all the men had arrived on the ranch. They’d either divvy up responsibilities or make decisions by democratic means. He had no problem with Lena having her say.
“I won’t interfere,” he told her. “I’m here to help Sadie.”
Lena raised an eyebrow. “Help her with what?”
“Make her mark on the property.” He explained the concept of the legacy the General had sent him to build.
“You’re so lucky,” Jo said to Sadie.
Alice kept her gaze on Connor, though. “That won’t be easy,” she said finally.
“Is that one of your predictions?” Connor challenged her. Brian had told him about them.
She nodded. “It is.”
When she didn’t back down, Cass said, “What will you build, Sadie?”
Brian was looking at his wife fondly. Cass was obviously be the peacemaker in the family, Connor thought.
Sadie shrugged. “I haven’t decided yet.” Without another word she left the group, ran lightly up the steps to the back porch and disappeared inside the house.
“Connor, can I have a word?” Without waiting for Connor to answer, Brian guided him away from the others to an unused table far from the dancing. “Cass and I will head out for our honeymoon in an hour or so. I wish you’d been here longer so I could show you the ropes.”
“I’ll figure things out.” Brian had been sending him notes about the ranch and the General’s daughters every day for the past few weeks. He was about to set out with Cass on a road trip down to the Grand Canyon, among other places. Connor wondered again if the General should have sent all the rest of the men at once, but he guessed that wouldn’t have worked very well, given Sadie’s cold reception of him. The women might have ganged up and kicked them all to the curb.
“Just because we ran off the men trying to get a hold of this ranch doesn’t mean we’re out of danger here.” Brian leaned forward. “I figure this is bigger than just a handful of small-town operators, you know? Someone’s bound to come sniffing around sooner or later to find out what happened. And they’ll probably want revenge. The General should have sent the others with you.”
“I’ve got it handled,” Connor said. He figured it’d take time for their enemies to regroup. The main players were injured—on their way to jail.
“Cass and I should have booked a shorter trip. I just felt—”
“Cass needed a break. A month away. I know, you’ve told me.” A half-dozen times. “She’s been through a lot. You two need a chance to be together without all this. I’ll handle it. Don’t worry.”
Brian sighed. “That’s just it; I’ve already gotten used to worrying about Two Willows—and Cass’s sisters. You know they all can’t leave the ranch—”
“At one time. I know.” Brian had made it clear how much the tradition meant to Cass and her sisters. A Reed had to be on the ranch at all times to guarantee the General’s safety. Their mother had come up with the superstitious compact with the land, and the girls treated it like a sacred prophecy. The General’s daughters might hold a grudge a mile long against their father, but they’d protect him until the end.
“Really. I’ve got this. Sadie and I will finish up the repairs to the house, too,” he said to Brian. “Enjoy your honeymoon.”
“Make Sadie fall for you. None of us get this ranch unless all of us succeed,” Brian reminded him.
“I know. I won’t screw up.”
He hoped he sounded a whole lot surer of that than he felt.
“There you are, Sadie. We should talk,” Cass said when she entered the kitchen. She looked up, spotted Alice sitting cross-legged atop the refrigerator and sighed. “Alice, not in your bridesmaid gown.”
Sadie suppressed a smile. The top of the fridge was Alice’s favorite perch, bridesmaid gown or no. They’d been chatting amicably about the wedding and their guests—but not about Connor, which Sadie appreciated. She had a feeling Alice knew something had happened between them. She got hunches about things all the time. Sadie touched the ribbon on her wrist, not sure why she hadn’t pulled it off and thrown it away.
“It’s perfectly clean up here.” But Alice climbed down gracefully. “I’ll keep our guests happy while you two talk.”
Sadie watched her leave with misgivings. She’d been worried for days Cass would spot the signs of trouble in her garden and confront her. Or maybe her sister meant to talk about Connor.
Sadie didn’t want to think about him.
“I updated the manual Mom left me,” Cass told her, leading the way up to the bedroom she now shared with Brian and picking up a three-ring binder from her desk. She hugged it to her chest for a moment. “It means a lot to me,” she admitted. “It’s hard to let it go.”
“It’s only for a month,” Sadie reminded her, but she understood. Right now, a month seemed like far too long to be without her sister. Somehow she’d have to get the garden to hobble along until Cass returned and she could make her escape. She prayed no one noticed the problems until then. Her sisters had been so kind, even when it became clear how she’d betrayed them by dating such a monster—letting him get so close to them. But if they realized how she was struggling to do the tasks she’d always done so easily, they might think about the matter more closely.
They might realize how much she was to blame.
“You need to be the one who stays,” Cass said, handing her the binder.
Sadie took it, her mouth dropping open. Had Cass read her mind?
“I mean, you can leave for errands of course, things like that, but for the most part, it has to be you.” Cass must have noticed her confusion. “That’s what Mom said to me when she died. ‘Let it mostly be you.’ To stay on the ranch. That’s part of the job. Part of what I do here.”
Sadie understood in a flash. “For the General.”
Cass nodded. “For Mom,” she added. “One of us always has to be here. Let it mostly be you,” she repeated, and Sadie knew that those words must have run through her sister’s mind a dozen times a day since their mother died. “While I’m gone,” Cass amended. “Once I’m back it’ll be me again. But out of all of us you’re the most connected to Two Willows physically. It makes sense for it to be you.”
“Okay.” But the word felt like dust in Sadie’s mouth. Didn’t Cass see she wasn’t connected to Two Willows at all anymore?
Except when Connor touched her.
“Is something wrong?” Cass touched her arm. “Are you still worried about Mark? He’s gone, honey. He can’t hurt you now. And even if he could, Connor’s here. He’s Brian’s friend. He’ll protect you. Brian told me all about him earlier. They served together back at USSOCOM.”
“It isn’t that.” But of course it was, in a way. Mark might not be here, but he could still hurt her. He was hurting her with every breath she took. She’d chosen him over the land. Over her sisters.
Now the land wouldn’t forgive her.
“You’ll feel better in time,” Cass promised her. “I know it doesn’t feel like it now, but it will happen, believe me. When I learned who Bob really was, it hurt so bad I didn’t think I could ever love again. But now I have Brian. You’ll find someone, too—I know you will.”
Sadie wanted to tell her she was wrong, but this was Cass’s wedding day, and she couldn’t allow even a hint of her own pain and confusion to mar it. “Of course,” she made herself say. “I know that.”
“You’ll be so busy doing my jobs and your own you won’t have time to think about anything for the next month anyway,” Cass told her and patted the binder. “Think of Connor as a guardian angel, standing in for Brian while we’re gone. The days will pass in a flash and I’ll be back. By then you won’t give two hoots what Mark did.”
“He nearly killed you,” Sadie blurted. “You think I can forget that?” She cursed herself for letting the words spill from her mouth.
Cass softened. “Of course not. But you can’t hold on to that. You have to move forward. Find your own happiness. None of us can change the past.”
Sadie nodded. “Have fun on your honeymoon. You deserve to have a good time.”
“Have fun building your legacy. Make it something really special—something worthy of Two Willows.” Cass kissed her on the top of her head. “Come on, we’d better get back to our guests.”
Sadie followed her downstairs, blinking back tears. How could she build something worthy of Two Willows when she wasn’t worthy of it? Connor would have to accomplish that on his own.
As if her thoughts had summoned him, the man himself appeared at the back door when they reached it. She let Cass go first and watched her sister head straight for her new husband.
“Dance with me,” Connor said.
And the moment he took her hand, the world came alive again.
As dusk eased into nighttime, Sadie danced with him, drank with him, toasted the happy couple with him and introduced him to the men and women who came to make his acquaintance, but the whole time Connor felt as if the beautiful young woman by his side was somewhere else.
It was as if she was listening for something only she could hear. He thought she’d beg off after their first dance, but to his surprise she allowed him to ask for another, and then another. Even when they moved away from the dance floor, Connor was all too aware of the way she kept brushing his hand with hers, touching his sleeve, bumping her elbow against his. With any other woman, Connor would have thought she was flirting—taking the opportunity to touch him and send a signal of her interest.
Sadie didn’t seem the slightest bit interested in him, however. Certainly not in what he said. He had to repeat himself more than once throughout the evening to get her attention.
When the happy couple left, and the other guests slipped away into the night shouting their goodbyes, all the remaining Reed women began to clear the dishes from the outside tables. Connor pitched in, but soon Alice’s yawns became enormous, and Lena and Jo were visibly drooping.
“You three go to bed,” Sadie ordered, suddenly present after hours of distraction.
“We need to help,” Alice protested.
“You’ve been run off your feet helping to put on this wedding,” Sadie told her. “And you two need to be up before dawn to do your chores,” she said to Lena and Jo. “You’ll have to fend for yourself for breakfast, but there are plenty of leftovers. I’ll get the rest of this cleaned up. Go on,” she continued when her sisters balked. “Up to bed; all of you.” She turned to Connor. “You, too. You can have the guest room. For now.”
“I’m not sleepy.” He turned back to folding up the rented chairs they’d used for the reception, brooking no argument. Lena, Alice and Jo trailed away inside and went to bed.
Under a full moon and the fairy lights that had been strung around for the wedding, they continued to work. Sadie moved in and out of the house, packing up food and bringing in the dishes and silverware. Connor stacked the chairs and folded up the tables as she cleared them. When they were done, they moved inside where Sadie washed the dishes and he dried them. Not knowing where everything went and what was borrowed and what came from Two Willows, he stacked the dry dishes on the long, scarred kitchen table, his gaze taking in the bullet trails again.
One of those bullets could have ended Cass’s life. Is that what Brian thought every time he saw them?
Connor didn’t think he could stand the thought of Sadie in danger. Now that he knew her—and thought of her as his future wife—he wanted to protect her from anything that might hurt her.
They worked in silence for a long time, but when Sadie had drained the sink and rubbed the counter with a damp cloth for the last time, she came to take the broom out of his hand to put it away. Once again, she brushed her fingers over his, an act that sent his senses tingling.
Once again, she ignored him, that faraway look on her face.
Connor took her hand, determined to get to the bottom of her behavior. He set the broom against a wall, tugged her outside, down the steps and into her garden, where they both looked up at the large, full moon already dropping toward the west.
“My gran would say it’s a night for pixies,” he told her in a low voice, still holding on to her.
There was his Irish accent—not the fake brogue he’d tried on her earlier, but the real deal. The one that shone through his slight Texas twang when he thought of home.
“She’d be right; the whole world is awake for this moon.” Sadie chuckled, but she shivered, too. She tried to pull free of his grip, but he kept hold of her, unwilling to let go.
“My gran was a little like Alice,” he went on conversationally. “She saw things ahead of time. On a night like this I’d catch her listening.”
“I bet she was always listening.” Sadie clamped her mouth shut. Connor turned to her.
“You hear it, too? Like Alice?” Brian hadn’t told him that.
“Not like Alice,” she said quickly.
“But you hear something?” He could believe it. On this night, under this moon, standing on a property as special as the one he’d left behind when he was ten—with a woman as beautiful as Sadie, he could believe it.
She shrugged and tugged her hand free. When she wrapped her arms over her chest as if cold, Connor decided he’d pushed her hard enough for one night.
“It was a fine reception,” he declared to set them back on common ground.
“It was. I think they’ll be happy. Don’t you?”
“I do.” He’d read the love in Brian’s and Cass’s eyes and he wondered if his parents had ever looked at each other that way.
“Why did your family move to Texas?”
He gave her an abbreviated story of his parents’ meeting in Paris, falling in love, their quick marriage and the way they’d settled in Ireland until his father couldn’t stand it anymore. “He never loved it like the rest of us did. He was a Texan through and through.”
“But he lost his wife and one of his sons when he left.”
“That’s true.” Connor shifted closer to her. He couldn’t help it. “And if you’re asking if it was worth it, I don’t know the answer to that. Seems to me he’s always been lonely.”
“He never remarried?”
“No. Neither did she.”
“Maybe they’ll find their way back to each other.”
“After all this time?” It seemed more unlikely than the pixies his gran would claim were watching him even now.
“You’re right; that’s silly. Things don’t work like that in the real world.”
He couldn’t stand to hear the pain in her voice. Was she mourning the man who’d played her to get to her ranch? He hoped not.
“So what’ll it be, lass?” he asked, slipping into his thick Irish accent again as he reached for her hand. “What kind of legacy will you build with me?”
He was touching her again. And she was feeling it again. All evening she’d experimented with the phenomenon. After a lifetime of living with a connection to the natural world, now she could only dial into it through the conduit of Connor.
She’d tried to see if it would work with other people. She’d touched her sisters, their guests. Brian. Not one of them had sparked the awareness; only Connor did.
She’d have to keep him here.
No.
Sadie wrenched herself away from the idea. That wasn’t what the ranch was trying to tell her, even if she wanted to believe it—and after hours of being close to the handsome airman, she did want to believe it. It was telling her she had to leave, and that her place on the ranch would be filled by Connor. He felt things, too—he had the ability she’d lost.
Why else would he be here—now? Why else would his touches turn her senses back on? Fate was showing her she’d been replaced.
She could barely admit to herself that when Connor had arrived, a little part of her had hoped he was there for her the way Brian had seemed to come for Cass. She’d hoped Fate had placed him in her way—as ludicrous as that was after the disaster of her relationship with Mark.
She didn’t deserve a second chance, certainly not with a man as special as Connor. It wasn’t just the way he brought back the connection to nature, either. Every time she touched him—
Sadie didn’t know how to put it into words. A fire lit deep inside her. A wanting so fierce it unnerved her. Connor seemed to be kind, attentive, thoughtful, strong—everything Mark wasn’t. Everything she’d always wanted in a man.
But she wasn’t allowed to want anything.
She definitely wasn’t allowed to want Connor. The man had to stay here. He had to tend Two Willows. She had to keep away from him—
Sadie shook her head again. No, she couldn’t stay away. She had to teach him.
She straightened, the thought taking hold of her. That’s why Fate had placed him here when she had to stay for another month; their time at Two Willows would overlap so that she could show him all he needed to know about the garden, the greenhouse, the maze, the produce stand and the cures she created and sold. He’d have the internal knowledge he needed, of course, but she could help with all the practical aspects. She’d work with him on the legacy project and use that as an excuse to tell him everything she could about her home.
By the time she had to go, he’d be all set to keep Two Willows safe and sound.
The thought tore at her, but Sadie made herself face it. The important part was the ranch—not her. If she could leave it in Connor’s hands she could be—not happy, maybe, but content.
That was the best she could hope for.
“Sadie?” he said again, pulling her from her thoughts. “What kind of legacy will we build together?”
“A garden, of course,” she said slowly. It had to be a garden; how else to give her the chance to tell him what he needed to know?
“You already have gardens.”
“A walled garden.” She wanted to cringe with the irony of it. A walled garden. A garden with walls meant to keep her out. Banishment from Two Willows would be so—
He didn’t remind her she’d said she wasn’t interested in such a thing just a few hours earlier. “A walled garden,” he repeated instead. “I like it. A safe place. A retreat.”
She didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. This ranch used to be her haven. Not anymore. But that was all right. There was a big world outside Two Willows, she reminded herself. A world she’d dreamed of as a girl. She could go anywhere. Be anyone when she left. And that’s what she’d do—keep moving. She’d see everything.
And in time, she’d heal.
“That shouldn’t take too long,” he mused. “Although the rock work—”
“We have a month,” she told him.
Connor frowned, and his grip on her hand tightened. “Why a month?”
“Because when Cass gets home, I’m leaving.”