Forever Grace (27 page)

Strength and control emanated from her. He could feel the energy from here. She owned this, and he didn’t think any woman had ever looked more beautiful.

Two more feints in quick succession. Walsh’s scowl deepened. Darkened. He was getting edgy.

Go for it, you prick
, Sean urged him.
I dare you.

And then, the unthinkable. Movement from the cottage. The opening of a door. Josh stepping onto the porch, calling his aunt’s name in a quavering, terrified voice. Distracting Grace for the split-second Walsh needed to swing the bat.

Sean burst from the trees with a yell. Grace’s attention snapped back to her opponent, too late to stop the blow but maybe—maybe—soon enough to save her life. Bat and bone connected. Grace dropped without a sound. Sean yelled again.

“Walsh!”

Barry Walsh’s head snapped up. He stared across the lawn. His gaze narrowed. “I know you,” he said.

Sean slowed his pace, not daring to risk a fall. “Josh,” he called. “Get back in the cottage and lock the door. Whatever happens, you stay inside, understand? The police are on their way.”

Grace.

Tears streaming down his face, Josh nodded and stepped back toward the door. Walsh’s voice stopped him.

“Hold up there, son. He doesn’t give the orders, I do.” He lifted the bat and rested it over one shoulder. Then he placed a booted foot on Grace’s prone figure. “McKittrick, isn’t it? You’re famous after getting yourself shot up like that. How’s the leg?”

Sean continued across the grass, trying not to look at Grace. He divided his focus between the man standing over her and the boy on the porch. “I meant what I said, Walsh. Backup’s on the way. They’ll be here any minute. Josh, inside.”

“Josh, stay where you are,” Walsh snapped. Then he snorted. “I just made the drive out here, McKittrick, remember? I know how long it’ll take them, and I’ll be long gone before then. Josh, get your sisters. Put your shoes and coats on, and come get in the van. Bring the keys.”

“Don’t do it—” Sean began.

“Would you just
shut up
?” Walsh scowled at him. “I came for my kids, and I’m taking them. I don’t care if I have to break down every door in the place and drag them out screaming, so why don’t we save them the additional trauma and let them do as I ask? Josh, your sisters.”

Josh hesitated, and his father’s furious gaze swung to him. “Did you hear me? Now!”

The boy visibly jumped, then scurried backward into the cottage, tripping over the doorsill. He disappeared from view. Walsh turned his attention back to Sean.

“You may as well stop there,” he said. “You and I both know you don’t stand a chance in hell.”

“I just want to check on Grace.”

Walsh prodded her in the back with his boot. “She’s still breathing. That’s good enough for now.” He looked up. “I said stop.”

Sean stopped. On the ground, Grace’s eyes opened. Her gaze met his, glazed with pain but otherwise clear. Focused. Determined. With a monumental effort, Sean didn’t react. He looked up at Walsh again. He had to keep him talking. Keep him distracted. He couldn’t know that Grace was still conscious.

“You know you won’t get far.”

“I know I’ll have a pretty good head start,” Walsh shrugged and his eyes turned flat. Expressionless. “And I don’t need to go far, anyway. Not for what I need to do.”

Grace flinched at the words, and her brother-in-law looked down. Sean’s blood ran cold. He started forward again, drawing Walsh’s scowl back to him. Walsh hefted the baseball bat and nestled the end of it against Grace’s head.

“What part of
stop
do you not under—”

In the blink of an eye, Grace grabbed his pant leg, gave a vicious pull, and toppled him to the ground. He landed with a grunt but even as she climbed to her feet, he rolled away and regained his, too. He still held the bat.

And Grace’s left arm hung useless at her side.

Sean gauged the distance, dropped one of his crutches, hefted the other in both hands, and swung hard. He connected with the baseball bat. If he’d had both legs under him, it probably would have been enough to disarm the other man. Instead, the impact knocked the crutch from his grasp and him to the ground. Walsh kicked away his would-be weapon and only way of getting upright again, and then it was just him circling Grace once more.

A disabled Grace whose breath came in pained gasps.

They all knew there could be only one outcome this time.

Then the cottage door opened, and there came the unmistakable sound of a cartridge being chambered in a shotgun.

Through a haze of pain, Grace saw her brother-in-law step back. He looked over at the cottage, but she didn’t think for an instant that his attention had left her. Even if it had, there was little she could do. Not with a broken arm. All she could do—all
they
could do, because Sean was just as much a part of this as any of them—was keep Barry distracted. Delay him until the police got here. Keep him from taking the kids and—

Grace left the thought unfinished. Focused instead on the boy standing on the porch. The boy pointing the shotgun at his father.

“Move away from them,” Josh said, his voice cracking. Despite the tear stains on his face and the tremble of the weapon in his hands, his gaze was calm and determined. Too much so.

Grace drew a sharp breath.

A dozen feet away, Barry laughed at his son. “Are you kidding me? You don’t know how to shoot, you idiot. And even if you did, you don’t have the balls—”

The shotgun roared. The sound rolled out over the lake and bounced back in echo after fainter echo until it faded to nothing, leaving a stunned silence in its wake. Josh lowered the weapon from its aim at the sky. He pumped out the spent cartridge and leveled the gun again in Barry’s direction.

“I mean it, Dad. Move away.”

A single fresh tear tracked down his cheek. His finger tightened on the trigger. Grace’s heart contracted.
Oh God, Josh…no.

She looked at Barry. At his slack-jawed, disbelieving focus on his son.

Now.

Hugging her broken arm close, she gritted her teeth and buried the pain. Then she stepped past Sean and propelled herself off the ground into a spin, delivering the most vicious roundhouse kick she could summon to the back of Barry’s head. He pitched forward onto his hands and knees on the grass, the baseball bat flying from his grip. Before he could recover, Grace landed, rebalanced, and caught him under the chin with a snap kick. He rolled onto his back, gave a single weak flop, and then lay still. Breathing hard, Grace stood over him, watching for him to move, wishing for the slightest twitch of a finger so she could deliver yet another blow.

He remained motionless.

She began to shake. Slowly she sank to the ground beside the man who had killed her sister. From a distance, she heard Sean’s voice coaxing Josh to let go of the shotgun. She turned her head to find him on the porch beside her nephew, prying the weapon from the boy’s fingers, laying it aside, pulling the boy down into a hug, rocking him gently. His gaze met hers over Josh’s head.

“Are you okay?”
he mouthed.

She made herself nod. His mouth curved into a faint, tight smile. Banked heat reached out from the green eyes to wrap her in its warmth, easing the shaking. The door behind him opened, and Sage and Lilly ventured onto the porch with Annabelle, each of them clutching one of the toddler’s hands. Sean waved them over, settled Annabelle on his lap, and wrapped his free arm around both the other girls. His smile widened. He cleared his throat.

“Hey, Grace Daniels. You know I love you, right?”

Grace went still. Even her shivers stopped. “What?”

“I was going to tell you later,” he said. “Then I decided now was better. I love you.”

“Man owie,” Annabelle patted his cast. She pointed to her unconscious father. “More owie.”

The other three gazed between Grace and Sean with wide eyes, their mouths forming perfect o’s.

“I—I—” Grace stammered.

“You love me, too,” he coaxed.

“But you don’t want kids.”

Sage’s bottom lip quivered, and Sean snugged her closer to his side.

“Turns out I do,” he said comfortably. “But not just any kids. These ones. I want these ones.”

For a long moment, Grace couldn’t say anything past the lump in her throat. Josh, Lilliane, and Sage all watched her with wide, expectant eyes. Faint in the distance came the wail of a siren. She cleared her throat.

“Hey, Sean McKittrick,” she said. “You know I love you, too, right?”

He grinned. “I suspected as much. But it’s nice to know.”

GRACE WATCHED THE ER DOCTOR
smooth the final coat of plaster on the cast encasing her arm. A tap came at the door, and it opened to admit a nurse followed closely by Sage, Lilly, Josh, and Sean. The nurse smiled.

“We were getting a little concerned,” she said. “We thought we’d check on your progress.”

Lilly came to stand beside Grace, Sage pressed close to her side.

“Another cast?” Lilly shook her head and sent an exasperated glance between Grace and Sean. “What are we going to do with you two?”

Sean chuckled. “Help us heal, I hope,” he said. “We’re all going to have to pitch in and give Aunt Grace a hand. No pun intended.”

Josh joined his sisters. “Does it hurt?”

“A little, but they’ve given me something to help with the pain. I’ll be fine.” Grace lifted her good hand to her nephew’s shoulder and tugged him close enough to kiss the top of his head. “As good as new. I promise.”

“It’s a clean break,” the doctor said to Sean. “She’ll be in the cast for about six weeks, give or take, but she can have her own doctor check it after five.”

He peeled off his plaster-coated latex gloves, rolled away on his stool, and dropped them into the garbage bin by the counter.

“Keep it dry, and remember it won’t be fully hardened for at least twenty-four to forty-eight hours, so no handstands or back flips.” He gave the kids a wink, but none of them laughed. He raised an eyebrow. “I usually get at least a chuckle out of that one.”

He did then, but from Sean rather than the kids.

“Grace holds a black belt in jujitsu and tae kwon do,” Sean told him. “I don’t think we realized you were joking.”

Appearing somewhat nonplussed, the doctor muttered a farewell and left the room. Sean looked to the kids.

“You three want to go and help Uncle Gareth with Annabelle?” he asked. “Make sure she doesn’t tear the place apart?”

“Sure.” Josh gathered up his sisters, lingered long enough to give Grace a careful hug, and then the three of them followed the nurse from the room.

“Uncle Gareth?” Grace asked as the door closed behind them.

Sean gave her a lopsided grin. “I hope you don’t mind. It seemed more appropriate that Mr. Connor under the circumstances.”

Far from minding, Grace felt a curl of warmth at the idea. And at the reason behind it. But the
uncle
part wasn’t what she’d been asking about.

“Of course I don’t mind. I just wondered how your cousin managed to end up on Annabelle duty.”

“I called him when you left in the ambulance. He arrived about twenty minutes ago. He and Gwyn are going to take the kids for us tonight. He’ll leave us his car and take the van back to their place, and we can follow tomorrow when I’ve sobered up again from the drugs. He’s booked us into a hotel for tonight. We’ll cab it over when they release you.”

Grace glanced at his leg. Today’s fall had been the third for him. “How bad is it?”

“Sore, but surprisingly intact. They’ll send the x-ray to my orthopedist to be sure, but it looks like nothing’s moved.”

Thank God.

Sean swung over to the exam table. He set his crutches aside and, with both hands, smoothed back the hair from her face. Then he pressed a kiss to her forehead. “You scared the hell out of me today, you know.”

Her brain flashed back to the impact of the baseball bat against the forearm she’d thrown up in defense. The crack of the bone giving way. The knowledge that if Barry had connected with her skull as intended…

She gave Sean a wan smile. “I don’t mind admitting I scared the hell out of me, too.”

Sean rested his forehead against hers. “I’m not surprised. I have to tell you, though, the way you took him down? Those kicks? I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything more magnificent in my life. You saved their lives, Grace.”

“Do you think he really would have done it?” Tears squeezed between her eyelids. Even now, her brain couldn’t quite wrap itself around the idea. “His own kids?”

“I know he would have,” Sean said gruffly. “I’ve seen it happen before.”

“What happens to him now?”

“He’ll be charged with your sister’s murder, and I’m guessing the Crown will add four counts of attempted kidnapping with intent. I’ll find out more after his arraignment.”

“And until then?”

“He’ll be held in custody until his trial.” Sean’s arms tightened around her. “And then, with luck, for the rest of his life. At the very least, he won’t be eligible for parole for at least twenty-five years, so you and the kids are safe, sweetheart. You can breathe again.”

Silence settled between them. Out in the corridor, something rolled by, and shoes squeaked against tile. Grace nestled into Sean’s shoulder. Barry might be out of the way—figuratively as well as literally—but one more pressing matter still stood between her and breathing.

“Can I ask you something?”

“The answer is yes.”

“Yes, I can ask?”

“Yes to your question.”

“But you don’t know what it is.”

“You want to know if I meant what I said at the cottage,” he replied comfortably. “About loving you. The answer is yes. The other answers are no, yes, and no. No, I don’t think it’s because of the circumstances or any inflated sense of honor or responsibility. Yes, I meant what I said about wanting the kids. And no, I don’t need time to think it over. I already have.”

Grace pulled back. She wanted to believe him—with all her heart and soul, she wanted to believe him—but so much had happened. So many emotions had ridden so high for so long…