No Hero (28 page)
Or more accurately, whole again…
He sat up a bit. His mouth went white at the corners. “Not dismissing your life,” he said hoarsely, struggling to talk. “God knows how much your life…is worth to me. That gunshot— I was so afraid I’d lost you.”
“Oh, Dev. When I saw the blood—” The terror flooded over her again. Tears poured down her face as she shoved it back.
He was okay. He was going to be fine
.
He lifted a hand and caught one of the tears with his finger. “Thought you weren’t a crier.”
She wrapped her hand around his. “And I thought you weren’t a hero.” She brought his hand to her lips and kissed it. “You’re hurting. I can see it in your face. You need to rest.”
He fell back on the pillow. “Yeah.” His voice was hardly more than a whisper, and his quick agreement dismayed her. He was no doubt in a lot more pain than he let on.
“I’ll call the nurse to increase the morphine,” she offered.
He shook his head fractionally as he sank farther down in the bed.
Reghan kept hold of his hand and waited to see if the pain-etched lines in his face smoothed out. They finally did. She moved to get up.
“Connor?” His hand squeezed hers with surprising strength.
“I thought you were asleep.”
“Almost.” He went quiet again.
“I’m just going to go, so you can rest.”
“No.” He struggled to open his eyes. He licked his lips, started to say something, stopped, and then started again. “Connor—”
“I’m right here. Just tell me what you need.”
“Stay.”
She swallowed, so happy he wanted her close. “Dev, I promise. I’ll stay right here until you go to sleep. Then I’ll be right outside—”
“No,” he whispered huskily. “Not what I meant.”
“Oh,” she said, disappointment washing over her. “You want Penn. I can go and find—”
He shook his head. “No,” he croaked.
“Oh. Okay, I guess you’d rather be alone so you can sleep—”
“Connor,” he whispered. “Can I get a word in edgewise?”
She blinked. “Sure. I’m sorry.”
“I want you to—” he closed his eyes. After a couple of seconds, Reghan thought he might have drifted off again. But then he opened them and said, “Stay, Reghan Maria Connor. Stay with me. Forever.”
She felt her face drain of color. Within her heart, incredible hope and joy warred with reality. “You’re tired. You can’t mean—”
He lifted his hand and laid his finger against her lips. “Hush. I know what I’m saying.”
She smiled tremulously. She couldn’t help it. Happiness nearly made her dizzy. “You do?”
His head bobbed up and down slightly. “And what I said before, too.”
Her lips parted. Surely, he couldn’t mean… “Before?”
“Never thought I’d say it to any woman, but…” He stopped, out of air and energy.
Her eyes were leaking tears again, and she didn’t even try to wipe them away. She held onto his hand for dear life. Did she dare to believe…? “What, Dev?”
“You fill a place inside me…that’s been empty a very long time. I don’t…ever want to be empty again.”
Something deep inside her thawed, and all her reservations melted away. She knew what he meant, because her heart was completely filled with him.
“Love you, Connor,” he whispered sleepily.
There they were again
. Those words. She hadn’t had the courage to believe them the first time. She’d never thought she’d hear them from this man, a man of honor she knew she could never, ever forget. A true hero she would never again deny. A man she would walk proudly beside for the rest of her life.
Without letting go of his hand, she leaned over and kissed him. “I love you, too. But you’ve always known that, haven’t you?”
He didn’t open his eyes, and his breathing became even and quiet, but his hand squeezed hers, and his lips turned upward in a smile.
About the Author
“Don’t mess with Mallory Kane,” says Roger Ebert, although he was probably talking about another Ms. Kane. At age three, Mallory taught herself to read, starting a lifelong love affair with books. With a librarian for a mother and a master storyteller for a father, she was destined to be a writer. Always ahead of her time, Mallory was first published
electronically
in 1995. Since then, in addition to a dozen or so electronic books, she has published twenty-eight romantic suspense novels with Harlequin Intrigue and five paranormal romances with ImaJinn Books. She lives in Tennessee with her husband and three cats—all Renaissance beings.
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