“I came to see what’s going on. To make sure Topher’s—” the name choked him up but he conquered it in a hurry “—kids are okay. To do what I can... I’m Trinity’s godfather, you know.”
And Emmy was her godmother. It had happened in two separate ceremonies—one with Emmy soon after Trinity was born, and a second with Declan when Topher and Declan had arranged leave time a month later.
It had been something Emmy was grateful for so she didn’t have to see Declan again then.
“Not long after Topher died, Mandy decided she’d better make a will and name a guardian for the kids in case anything ever happened to her. Nobody thought it would, but...” This time it was Emmy who choked up a bit before she got on top of it. “She named me as the kids’ guardian, so...they’re mine and you don’t have to concern yourself with them.”
That beetled his brow again. And seemed to raise a little ire in him because there was an edge to his deep voice when he said, “Topher was no different to me than either of my own brothers. I feel about his kids the way I’d feel about my own blood niece or nephew. I’m going to do what I can for them.”
“They don’t need you. Or anything from you,” Emmy said tersely, her own ire raised at the thought of having to have anything to do with him—and also at the implication she wasn’t enough to look after them.
“Look—” he said in a commanding, no-nonsense voice just as the front door opened and her mother came out.
“Declan! Is that you? I looked out to see if Emmy was back and... It is you, isn’t it?”
Oh nooo... Emmy groaned silently.
She knew how her mother felt about Declan Madison. Even before meeting him, Karen Tate—like Emmy herself—had been grateful to him for saving Emmy’s life in Afghanistan.
At Mandy and Topher’s wedding—unaware of the memories Emmy feared that the sight of him might cause her—her mother had expressed that gratitude and developed a fondness for him.
What her mother didn’t know was what had happened later on the night of the wedding.
Or how incredibly confused Emmy’s feelings about Declan had become.
Or that he’d walked her to her hotel room, made a date for breakfast with her and then gone next door for a night of what had sounded like very raucous sex with another bridesmaid.
So of course Karen Tate was excited to see him and hurried down the steps of the front porch to give him a hug.
“Oh, honey, how are you?” she asked.
Declan returned the hug stiffly, keeping his solemn, steady gaze on Emmy over her mother’s head as if to let her know that they weren’t finished with their talk.
“I’m okay,” he answered, his tone oddly reserved.
Emmy’s mom must have heard it, too, because she ended the hug and linked her arm through Declan’s to turn him toward the porch. “Come in. I want to know how you really are. And I know you must want to see Kit. And every time Trinity looks at the picture of her daddy, I point you out standing next to him and tell her who you are—she calls you Decan. Let’s see if she recognizes you in person.”
Then over her shoulder, Karen Tate said, “Go on up and have your shower, Em. I’ll keep Decan occupied.”
As her mother urged Declan to the porch steps, Emmy noted his slight limp.
For his part he didn’t cast her so much as another glance. Which irked Emmy even more.
She let them get all the way through the door before she followed, thinking about what had seemed like nothing but a generous idea when Mandy had said she wanted to volunteer for the Red Cross mission to Afghanistan that Emmy had been assigned to follow and photograph four and a half years ago.
And how much her sister’s life and her own had been altered when Topher Samms and Declan Madison had become their military escorts.
“You’re going to stay at Topher’s farm?”
Declan was sitting at the kitchen table with his sister, Kinsey, in the farmhouse where they’d grown up. Kinsey had made him breakfast, and while she was at it, he’d told her about his visit to the Sammses’ place the day before. About the long talk he’d had with Topher’s mother-in-law that had made it clear Emmy Tate needed his help.
“I know you thought it would be fun for us all to be back here,” he said. “To stay in the house together one more time before it gets packed up and sold—”
“I keep scheduling times to come and clear it out, but something always interferes. So while we still have it—and it isn’t packed up yet—I wanted to get married here.”
“Sure. But come on—this place will be bursting at the seams by the wedding next week. Me, you, your groom and his mother are already here. Conor and Maicy, and Liam and Dani and the twins are all coming... This place just isn’t that big. What difference does it make if I bunk in the workout room downstairs or down the road? I’m just five minutes away. And I need to do what I can for Topher’s family. Whatever I can. I owe him that...”
“I know that’s important to you,” his sister admitted.
It was. He felt responsible for his best friend’s death, and that meant it was on him to step in on whatever Topher had left behind. Even more than his sister’s wedding, that driving need was what had brought him back to the small town where he’d been made to feel like the scum of the earth growing up.
“It’s bad over at the Sammses’ place, huh?” his sister asked. “It’s so strange that the storm totally missed us but decimated them. I guess we dodged the bullet.”
“It’s definitely bad over there,” he confirmed. Karen Tate had described three fields full of spring plants wiped out, the orchard torn apart, the family vegetable garden gone, the roof and one side of the house and the barn shredded, the chicken coop battered and untold damage on the apiaries.
“The farm has been in the Samms family for six generations, and Topher—and Mandy—loved that place,” he went on after outlining the problems. “They were dedicated to keeping it in the family, to raising the kids there, to passing it down to them.” And had his friend been alive, Declan knew that there was nothing Topher wouldn’t have done to meet that goal.
“It can’t happen the way Topher and Mandy planned now,” he said, hearing the ragged edge that came into his own voice as guilt weighed him down. “The kids aren’t going to grow up on the farm—Mandy made her sister their guardian—”
“Emmy—that’s her name, right? Mandy’s sister? You rescued her in Afghanistan?”
“I dug her out of some rubble when a bomb hit a school she was in taking pictures of kids for the Red Cross,” he confirmed.
“You say that like it was no big deal, but you saved her
