Seduced (18 page)

“I don’t think that’s what she wants,” she said.

“She would go to Denver alone?”

“She is strong and ambitious. And I think she has her own happiness in mind.”

He kissed the top of her head and held her close, as if he could sense her sadness. “Let’s go back inside.”

They gathered up their things. He left off his shirt and she could not stop touching the skin of his shoulders and arms. Pressing good bye kisses to his chest.

“Already you are making this difficult,” he murmured.

Hand in hand they walked back toward the cabin, where Steven and Annie were still asleep as if nothing had happened. The urge to wake up her sister and tell her that she was . . . happy, or at least hopeful. . . for the first time in years, was nearly overwhelming. But after one last goodnight kiss she slipped into bed with her sister and she stared at the ceiling, clutching her news and her hope to her chest, and fought back tears.

Because the cost of choosing Cole and this clearing was that she would lose Annie.

“I’M SORRY.” ANNIE looked from Melody to Cole and back again. “What did you say?”

Melody pushed aside the coffee to grip her sister’s hand. “Cole and I are getting married—”

Annie stood. A coffee cup tipped over and fell onto the ground. “I . . . w . . . w . . . w—”

The stammer, gone for so long, came back and it was alarming to see her sister so upset.

“Annie, calm down.”

“I will not!” she screamed. Shaken, Melody gaped at her sister. Annie did not yell. Ever.

“We’ll . . . we’ll leave you alone,” Cole said, helping Steven to his feet and then out of the cabin. At the doorway he stopped to smile at Melody, and she felt the ties of their connection double. It had been like that all morning. Every glance, every word she felt in her stomach and heart. A longing. For him. Not just for his lips, or that magic that he’d wrought in her body last night, but for conversations. For stories from his childhood. Why didn't he like honey? Who taught him the harmonica?

She wanted to know him.

And she wanted to tell him about riding bareback across the beach, the wind and salt and sea surrounding her. How she loved strawberries and hated asparagus. She was terrified of storms but loved the ocean. About the dark nights alone in the house with Annie during the war, clutching the rifle in her arms.

She wanted to open herself up and show him the treasures she had hidden and forgotten about.

“I’ll be right outside,” he said, and then stepped out onto the porch with his brother, shutting the door behind him.

“H . . . has he p . . . proposed?”

She’d lost her innocence years ago, but last night Cole had found some of it and handed it back to her. “He said yes to mine.”

“D . . . id you have your dress on when he said yes?”

Melody gasped, shocked, and then she had to look away, so stunned, so terribly, horribly wounded.

“I’m sorry,” Annie said, reaching across the table for her hand, and Melody stood so fast the chair fell down behind her. She jerked away from her sister’s touch.

“I suppose you have every right to think that,” she said, blinking back the tears. “But I never thought you would say such a thing to me.”

“I spoke out of anger. I want to go to Denver.”

“I know.” When they were children they used to go to the riverbanks after the rain and slide down the mud. Her heart felt like that. Sliding. Down.

“I can be whatever I want there.” Tears stood out in Annie’s eyes, and Melody could not bear to see her sister’s pain. “I can be whoever I want there. I could get a job. Be useful.”

“Then you should go.”

“Without you?”

“This was going to happen eventually, wasn't it? The two of us finding our own way? I have always needed you, but maybe, maybe what you've needed is to be away from me.”

Annie blinked as if stunned, and Melody understood. She was stunned to be saying it.

“He means so much to you? So quickly?”

Melody circled the table and grabbed Annie’s hands. Pressing them to her cheeks, the decision that was going to be made so painful she could barely stand it, but neither could she bear not to make it.

“I am falling in love with him, Annie.” It was more faith than anything—the feeling was simply too new to bear the weight of a name. But she wanted it to be love. "It's more than I've ever felt. And I can't...I can't bear to think of not being with him."

Annie's hand cupped her cheek. “I'm so glad for that.”

“It will be okay,” Melody whispered, and they clung together in silence. Their familiar oath broken.

“YOU LOVE HER?” Steven asked as Cole paced in front of the porch.

Annie was in there right now, convincing Melody to go to Denver, and Cole didn't know how to stop it. Or if he could. What had felt so secure in the cave last night was in danger of being pulled apart. Melody had sacrificed everything for her sister; there was a very good chance he could be pushed aside.

“Is that so hard to believe?”

Steven shrugged. “It's been three weeks.”

“I knew the moment she took that gun from my hand.” It was the truth. This feeling in his chest, this fire, the spark was that moment. That terrible moment of faith and trust. And it had only grown until it filled this whole clearing.

“You are worrying over nothing. Melody will convince Annie to stay.”

“You think?”

Steven shrugged and Cole wanted to throw his hands in the air.

“I feel like . . . everything I wanted in my life is gone. And I’ve come to understand that, Steven. Mother and Father, Sam and Gavin, the orchard, the work I loved—it’s gone. But here, we could have something new. Something that’s ours. And it feels familiar, but different. In the best way. And she feels familiar and different, but in the best way. As if I know her, but I don’t. And I want to. I want to spend the next hundred years of my life knowing her. That doesn’t make sense, does it?”

“No. But I like that you feel it. I like that you feel anything. I’m . . . envious.”

Cole turned to face his brother. “What do you want, Steven?”

His silence seemed impossible, hopeless. Sad.

“You survived that war for something.”

“Did I?” Steven shook his head and looked out over the garden. “I just want everyone to be safe. Melody, you. Annie. I want everyone here and safe.”

It broke Cole's heart to know Steven would not get that.

The door opened and the women stood there, their arms around each other’s waists, their faces red with tears. And he knew in the list of things that might factor into her decision, he barely made an impression, but he suddenly needed to stand up. Be heard.

“If you go to Denver, I'll go with you,” he said, drawing everyone's attention. “I woke up this morning happy. For the first time in more than six years, I was happy. Because you were here. And I could see your face and make you smile. I thought I’d walk you over to the high meadow and we could pick out a place to build a house. Build a life. Start something new. Untouched by all the ugliness in our pasts. And I want that, Melody. I want that with you. But if you want to go to Denver, we can do that there.”

On the porch, Melody and Annie were slack-jawed, and he felt himself shaking. Suddenly Steven was there, beside him, the press of his shoulder against his own, shoring him up when he would falter.

Family. Everything he wanted was right on this porch, and he could not believe he'd survived all he’d survived to find it, only to lose it.

“I’m not going to Denver,” Melody said.

Cole closed his eyes with relief.

“But I am,” Annie said, and his eyes popped back open.

“What?” Steven asked.

“I’m going to Denver.”

“By yourself?” Steven asked. “Alone?”

Annie nodded, smiling. Melody’s eyes filled with tears again, but she tried to smile too and he longed, absolutely ached, to pull her into his arms.

“I’ll go,” Melody said. “See her settled, but then . . . I’ll come back. Because I woke up happy this morning, too. Because I want to know everything there is to know about you, Cole. And I want you to know everything about me. The bad and the good and the things I've forgotten about. And I want that here.”

He held out his hand, knowing he really didn’t have the right to ask her for anything, but she walked across the porch right into his arms. The delicate strength of her matched all the spots in him that had been burned out. Where he was weak, she made him strong.

He hoped he did the same for her.

Steven and Annie were arguing, but he turned Melody away, giving them all some privacy.

“I wish you did not have to choose between your sister and me—”

“I’m not,” she said, looking up at him with tears in her eyes. “I’m choosing between my sister and me. I’m choosing myself, what I want. I want you. Us. A life here. And she is doing the same for herself.”

He touched a tear as it slipped from her eye to her cheek. They ran faster and faster and he could not catch them all. They ran over his fingers, bathing his hands. He bent his head to kiss them away.

“If I could stop your sadness—”

“It is happiness, too,” she whispered. “I am happy here. And I don’t know that I’ve ever known this kind of happiness. But she is my sister—” Her voice broke, and he held her as hard as he could against his chest.

“Denver is a three-day ride,” he said. “We will visit. Often. She can come stay with us at any time. For any amount of time.”

“Promise?”

“I promise. I knew love before the war,” he murmured into her hair. “It was comforting and easy and I took it for granted. What I feel for you is not comforting, or easy—it is sharp and alive and it . . . it fills me up, Melody. I could never take this for granted,” he whispered.

“Good,” she said, wrapping her fingers in his shirt. “Because I am not a woman who would enjoy being taken for granted.”

“You’re not going to stop her?” Steven cried out, and Melody and Cole turned to face them. “You are going to let her go to Denver. Alone.”

Cole felt Melody crumple against him and he held her as hard as he could, giving her strength. Support.

“Her adventure is just beginning,” Melody said, smiling at her sister through her tears. Steven threw up his hands and stepped off the porch, heading for the barn. Annie watched him go and then shrugged before going back inside.

“Our adventure is beginning, too,” she said, and kissed Cole.

They stood on the edge of a vast, unknowable frontier. Their lives would be dangerous and unpredictable, and sorrow would no doubt visit them time and time again. But they were together, and that created more than enough light to banish all the darkness.

Dear Reader,

Thank you so much for picking up Seduced: Into The Wild Book 1. I hope you enjoyed Cole and Melody’s journey back to love and life. Annie and Steven's book, TEMPTED, will be available later this year.

I love to hear from readers. You can sign up for my newsletter to find out about new releases and receive my The Author Is…interview series at
www.molly-okeefe.com

Come find me on Facebook at
https://www.facebook.com/MollyOKeefeBooks
and Twitter at
https://twitter.com/MollyOKwrites

If you have a moment, please review this book. Reviews help readers find books and I appreciate all of them, negative or positive.

Turn the page to read an excerpt from Never Been Kissed about Brody Baxter, a dangerous loner turned bodyguard, hired to save Ashley Montgomery, a woman from his past he's never been able to forget.

Cook's Bay, Moorea, Polynesian Islands

July 2013

FOR A MAN of few words Brody Baxter hated silence.

Watching the waves crash on the beach, he wished his brother were there. Sean’s chatter would make him focus.

At this point, the third hour in a four-hour shift with nothing but moonlight and dolphins in the ocean in front of the villa, Brody prayed for a three-man paramilitary attack from the water but would settle for camera-wielding paparazzi jumping out from the Tiare bush to his left.

Anything to break up the monotony.

Funny, but at one time he’d thought guarding shady politicians would be more exciting than guarding the earnest ones, but the years had taught him otherwise.

The screen door behind him slid open with a gasp and a swish. The short hair on his neck prickled in warning, but he didn’t turn around. It was the woman Senator Rawlings had brought. Gina Bassili. The smell of sweat over perfume preceded her.

“Sorry,” Gina said, her voice gaspy and rough. “I forgot you were out here.”

That’s the idea,
he thought, and stepped farther into the shadows of the balcony.

Perhaps knowing he was out here, she’d have second thoughts about enjoying the view from the balcony.

But no, the woman came to lean against the railing overlooking the bay. Her robe, barely tied at her waist, looked like a dark oil spill over her body. The color blended with her hair. The night sky behind her.

Quickly, he glanced away. She’d been loud in that villa. Lots of
Oh, Daddy
s
.

“Is all this really necessary?” she asked, waving her hand around to indicate him and the other members of the team, silently guarding the senator and, by proximity, her. Her accent was nearly non-existent, but the alleys of Cairo clung to her vowels.

She’d come into the senator’s life suddenly. A friend of a friend of an aide at some political fundraiser in D.C. Brody didn’t particularly like how much they didn’t know about her.

Choosing not to answer, Brody scanned the edge of the cliff to his left. If Brody was lucky, Senator Rawlings’ wife would come rappelling over the edge with a submachine gun and he wouldn’t have to engage in this conversation.