His Dakota Bride (Book 5 - Dakota Hearts) (3 page)

“The less you know about what I do, what I did, the better.”

“Why were we in danger? At least tell me that.”

“Can we sit and talk about this? We used to talk all the time.”

And make love. They used to talk and argue and make love. Skylar remembered every moment of it. She’d played it in her mind over and over during her marriage to Jay. Lying awake in bed, she’d listen to Jay’s breathing and hug the edge of the bed so he wouldn’t cuddle with her. Then she’d lose herself in the memories of dancing naked in her small cabana with her body pressed against Wade’s as the breeze from the ocean billowed the curtains and refreshed them after a luxurious night of lovemaking.

Sky looked at the chair pushed against the table as a tear trickled down her cheek. She pulled the chair out, letting the legs scrape against her floor, then eased herself into the seat. Wade sat down in a chair on the opposite side of the table.

With his hands folded on the table in front of him, he said, “The decisions I made were some of the toughest decisions I’ve ever had to make. But you have to believe me when I say I did it because I love you.”

“What happened?”

“The moment I met you, I decided I was done working for the agency. Every moment we shared was real, Sky. Every plan we made to come back to South Dakota and start a family…I meant all of it. But then I learned through one of my sources that the cover for one of our agents, Adam Calhoun, was blown. In the process, a lot of sensitive information was leaked into the hands of the wrong people.”

“Who?”

“It doesn’t matter who. What matters is that these are the kind of people who will do anything to take down anyone who crosses them. Calhoun was captured and tortured. He had a wife and a young daughter who lived with his mother and his brothers because he traveled so much. No one was sure how much information he revealed, if any, while he was imprisoned. But they got enough information out of him to warrant keeping him alive in order to get more information.”

“That’s horrible.”

“What little information about the agency that leaked out was just the tip. When these people take someone out, they take out their whole family. They have people all over the world who do their work for them. Anyway, by the time the agency got word of the leak, it was too late. A team was sent to Chicago to protect Calhoun’s family, but his two younger brothers and his mother were found dead in their home. They made it look like a burglary. But it was a hit. His wife and daughter disappeared. No one knows if they were killed or if they managed to escape.”

He leaned forward, putting his elbows on the table.

“These people don’t care how many they kill if they can somehow profit through money or information. If Calhoun had leaked information about me while he’d been tortured, then you and my whole family would have been killed in order to get to me.”

“I still don’t understand.”

“We had no way of knowing how many agents still in the field were at risk. We were all told to disappear until information filtered through our sources. That’s when we started making plans to leave the island and come to South Dakota. But about a week before we were supposed to leave, some information surfaced with my name attached to it. It could have only come from Calhoun. Very few people knew the details of some of the missions I’d worked on. But I’d worked with Calhoun on this particular mission so it was clear Calhoun had been broken and given up information about me.

“I had to get you off the island and somewhere safe. I was trying to figure out a way to protect you all in Rudolph when the tsunami hit the island. Mother Nature provided the perfect cover. If I were dead, there’d be no reason for them to come after you or any of my family. So I disappeared. I figured I’d lay low and wait for all the details to emerge. And it worked. Everyone bought my death.”

“Yeah, it worked a little too good, Wade. The only problem is, you never came back.”

“By the time it was safe for me to come home, I’d learned you’d married Jay.”

Anger surged through her as she pushed back from the table and walked the sink. There were no dishes to wash. No busy work she could do that could deter her from memories that converged on her. She fisted the kitchen towel she always kept folded on the counter for cleaning up quick spills and swung around to look at Wade directly.

“One call could have changed that. I would have waited. You gave me nothing to wait for!”

“Weren’t you just listening to me? Calhoun’s family was murdered. In all likelihood his wife and daughter were taken hostage or killed. No one knows. I needed to make sure you were safe. Everyone needed to believe I was dead.”

“Well, you did good, Wade,” she said, “We all bought it. And we all moved on without you. Isn’t that the way it’s supposed to work? Life goes on? Or did you think everything would just be suspended in time?”

“It was for me.”

Skylar squeezed the dish towel she held in her hand. “Well, it wasn’t for me. It was hell.”

“Sky, listen to me.”

“Why?”

He got up from the table and took a step toward her. She put her hands up to stop him. Despite the years that lay empty between them, Skylar remembered with too much familiarity how easy it was for Wade to break her down.

“Don’t touch me,” she said.

He put his hands up in surrender. “Sky, we loved each other once. I know you still do. I know I do. We just have to find our way back to each other. We can do that now.”

She shook her head again, ringing the kitchen towel in her hand so tight her fingers hurt. “I meant what I said, Wade. I used to love you more than anything in the world. So much I thought I died with you. But the truth is, so much has changed since we were together. I’m not the girl you fell in love with in the Peace Corp. That girl believed all those promises you made about our future together. Remember those? That girl is never coming back.”

His smile became wider. “Hey, I came back.”

She stumbled on the word. “You waited too long to come for me. That girl doesn’t exist anymore thanks to grief and a bad marriage.”

“Then we’ll find her.”

“Do you know what I was doing here when I left your parents’ house? I was sitting here alone for the longest time, trying to figure out what I’ve done for myself over the last five years that has been for me. Truly for me. And I couldn’t think of one thing. I came to South Dakota because you wanted me here. I stayed here because Hawk convinced me it was the right thing to do. I married Jay because he asked and I thought, why not give Alex a father.”

“I’m his father.”

“Yeah? That’s news to him. He thinks Jay is his father. Are you going to be the one to tell that little boy he’s wrong?”

“What are you saying?”

“I’m saying that Alex and I are leaving Rudolph.”

“What?”

“Not right away. I can’t do that to Kate. She needs to find someone to replace me. And Alex won’t be happy leaving his best buddy. But I think it’s time. There’s too much here that is a reminder of…of things I don’t want to remember.”

“You can’t leave now, Sky. I just got back.”

“Well, I am. I’ll probably go back Massachusetts for a while. My college roommate, Cara, still lives in Boston.”

“Boston is a long way from Rudolph. What about Alex?”

“What about him?”

“I have a right to see my son and get to know him. He has a right to know me.”

“Biologically, yes, he’s your son. Jay isn’t considered Alex’s father legally because we were married after Alex was born. But to Alex, Jay is his father. He doesn’t know anything else. It’s already been hard on him since Jay left. I’m not going to confuse him more by telling him anything different. At least not right away.”

The look on Wade’s face was heartbreaking. She couldn’t have hurt him more if she’d stabbed him in the heart.

“It’s a lie.”

“No bigger lie than the one you left me with. All this time you were alive, Wade. Every day I thought of you when I looked at Alex. Every day I kept the love I felt for you hidden from everyone because I was scared. I didn’t know why I should be scared because you never told me until right now. I thought I’d lost you forever. And all that time you were alive. I know you believe you were protecting us. But I don’t know if I can forgive you for what you put me through. I know I can’t live here pretending anymore. That’s why I have to leave.”

# # #

Don McKinnon was sitting on the front porch, looking up at the stars when Wade arrived home. Wade remembered the familiar scene from when he was a teenager. His father was still smoking cigarettes back then, despite Kate McKinnon’s constant lectures about good health. But he’d given up that habit long ago. Now he just sat in the quiet and enjoyed the night sky.

Wade parked his car next to the garage where Logan’s truck had been earlier. Then he got out and slowly walked to the porch and joined his father.

“I didn’t expect you back so soon.”

Wade didn’t respond. He was still reeling from his talk with Skylar.

“It’s not the homecoming you thought it would be, is it, son?”

“No,” Wade admitted, looking up at the garage. “It’s hard to see how replaceable I’ve been in everyone’s life.”

His father gave him a hard look. “Don’t you twist this, Wade. Do you have any idea how long it took for any of us to even venture inside that room over the garage? The only reason why your mother agreed to clean it out a few months ago is because Summer needed protection and Sam and Ethan were right here. You want your old room back? That’s easy enough to rectify. Sam and Summer will move into the house tomorrow.”

“It’s not the room, Dad. I don’t care if Sam and Summer stay there.”

“Yeah? Well, the other stuff is not going to be so easy to fix.” His father looked at the dark windows over the garage where he knew Sam and Summer were sleeping, then back at Wade.

“Hawk filled us in about how he found out about Skylar. I’m surprised she was able to keep it secret for so long. Poor thing has been terrified of a ghost for years. No wonder she ran off earlier.”

“I told her everything.”

“Yeah? You mind filling your old man in on the details? Because to be quite honest, I’m having a hard time processing everything.”

Wade spent the next few minutes explaining in detail what he’d never been able to tell the family before. His father listened without interruption.

“The agency raided the compound where Calhoun was being held captive. The threat was eliminated.”

Wade didn’t have to elaborate any further for his father to understand his meaning. There was no one left to come after him.

“Skylar didn’t move on with her life because she didn’t love you, Wade. She moved on because you gave her no other option.”

“I was ready to come back sooner. But I couldn’t while she was still married to him.”

“Him. You can’t even say his name. That’s not her fault. It wasn’t his. Jay isn’t a bad man. If you’d known him under different circumstances you would have liked him. I did.”

Even knowing his father was right, it irritated Wade to hear talk about Skylar’s ex.

“We all did the best we could,” his father said. “Life and death happened while you were gone. Babies were born and people we loved died.”

A sense of sadness filled Wade, understanding fully who his dad was talking about. “I wanted to come home for Kelly’s funeral. I know Logan and Kelly didn’t have the best of marriages, but I know he must have been a wreck when she died.”

“He was for a long time. That grandson of mine helped a lot. Keith kept Logan going. Then Poppy came back and things just fit into place.”

Wade couldn’t help but smile. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen Logan that happy.”

“Poppy is a ray of sunshine in that boy’s life, for sure. But when Keith was born, he helped us all move forward after we got the news you were missing. All that time we had another grandchild right here. But Skylar never said a word even though she’s so close to your mother.”

“It wasn’t safe. She didn’t know what was going on when she left but she knew there was danger. I told her not to tell anyone.”

“Come on, Wade. This is family. Not some Top Secret CIA file.”

“Hawk told me he knew.”

His father shrugged slowly. “Hawk always did have a special bond with both Keith and Alex. Now I know why.”

“I saw them together at the picnic earlier. My son would rather be with him than me.”

“Things changed, Wade. They changed plenty while you were gone. If you want to change it back, you have to be the one to do it. It’s not going to come easy.” Don was quiet a moment. “There are some things I can’t wrap my mind around myself. Ethan was a Navy SEAL. He tried to explain about it to me earlier when you were at Skylar’s. All that secrecy with family makes no sense to me.”

“If I could have gotten word to you, I would have.”

“In the beginning. I can understand that. But after a while you must have known it was safe to come home.”

“Skylar had gotten married.”

Don’s anger rose. “What about your mother? Me? I thank God I’m able to sit with you now. You don’t know what it was like for us when we got that call that you were missing and then presumed dead.”

“I know.”

“Do you?”

“You have every right to be angry. I just couldn’t come home. You have to trust me that I couldn’t.”

“I guess that will have to be enough. Just tell me one last thing.”

“What’s that?”

“Are you home for good?”

“Yes. I’m not going anywhere.”

But from what Skylar told him tonight, she was. Getting her to change her mind and stay was going to be a lot harder than he thought.

* * *

“What are you doing here? You don’t have to be here this morning,” Kate said. “I already called Rachel to come in for you.”

“There’s no need. I need to work, Kate. I have to find normal again.” She quickly got to work filling containers with supplies needed for the morning breakfast rush. The smell of freshly baked muffins and cookies Kate had already made hung heavy in the restaurant. Skylar pulled plates off the shelf so she could quickly transfer the goodies from the cooling racks to the display cases in the diner.