Special Forces Father. Victoria Pade

after a brief greeting when Liam had arrived from the Freelander place the night before, he’d begged off to get much-needed sleep.

      “I was just glad to hit the rack,” he said. “But now that I have, the first thing I need to hear about is Declan.”

      Liam hadn’t known anything unusual had been going on with his twin until a week ago when he’d returned from his latest mission—the same time he’d received the message from Dani Cooper about Audrey. The message waiting from Conor had been old and it had only relayed that Declan had been wounded in action.

      After receiving the two communications, Liam had immediately called Conor. But even then his older brother had said only that Declan was all right. Liam could tell Conor had been holding something back but he hadn’t been able to get him to say more. Because their phone time had been limited, Liam had needed to move on to the other news that had rocked him. Since then Liam had been in transit and unable to make more contact.

      Last night Conor had only repeated that Declan was okay, but now Liam wanted to hear the details.

      “It happened two days after Mom passed—after I’d called you about that. But when I tried to get hold of you to tell you about Declan, you were already out of reach,” Conor began.

      Their mother had died in October. It hadn’t come as a surprise. She’d been in a steep decline physically and mentally for over a year by then. In some ways it had been a relief to Liam to hear it on the eve of his mission because at least he’d left knowing she wasn’t suffering any longer.

      “Mom died, I left, Declan got hurt—all in three days?” Liam said, giving a succinct timeline.

      “Yeah, it was a helluva three days,” Conor said, showing some of the strain it had put on him.

      “So what happened?” Liam prompted.

      “Declan and Topher were in a Humvee when they drove over a buried IED.”

      Topher was Topher Samms. Like Maicy, Topher had grown up in the same small town with the Madisons. Both Liam and his twin brother, Declan, had considered Topher their best friend. The three of them had even gone through Annapolis and joined the marines together.

      “Is Topher okay, too?” Liam asked, suspicious that this was the first he’d heard his friend’s name mentioned in the incident that had injured Declan.

      “I’m sorry, Liam,” Conor said, his words, tone and expression enough to convey that Topher hadn’t made it.

      That news was another blow to Liam, who closed his eyes and leaned on forearms he set on the table on either side of his breakfast. He let his head fall between his shoulders and took a steeling breath that he held until his lungs burned, all while Conor gave him that moment.

      It was a lengthy one as he tried to digest that his and Declan’s old friend was gone.

      When he could, he exhaled, sat up straight and opened his eyes again.

      “Tell me about Declan,” he said curtly because it was the only way he could keep emotions in check.

      “It’s been rough,” Conor finally admitted. “There was more than once that we came near to losing him—”

      “But we didn’t. You didn’t let that happen.”

      Conor was a navy doctor and navy doctors treated marines.

      “He’s family so I couldn’t take an active part in his care, but I took all the leave I’d accumulated so I could go with him from hospital to hospital, to make sure nothing was overlooked—he was in bad shape at the start. But yeah, he pulled through and even kept the leg I wasn’t sure was going to make it with him. I did some shuffling and he’s on his way here for rehab, so I can keep track of that, too. You’ll be able to see him.”

      “So he really will be okay?” Liam said, still needing some reassurance.

      “His body’s healing,” Conor seemed to hedge. “I’m a little worried about his head—”

      “Brain injury?” Liam asked.

      “No, thank god there wasn’t that. But I think he’s carrying a lot of baggage about Topher. Declan was driving the Humvee. As bad as he was hurt himself he did everything to try to save Topher. He even carried him away from the burning Humvee—although seeing Declan and how bad he was, I can’t begin to guess how he did that.”

      “He’d have done anything to help Topher,” Liam said, knowing his twin, knowing it was what he himself would have done.

      “But Topher took the brunt of the explosion. He died before anybody could get to them. Declan won’t talk about it—not to me, not to the counselors I’ve sent in. I’m afraid we’re still facing some rough waters there. But physically... He has some scars, he may have a limp, but yeah, he’s gonna be okay.”

      Liam was grateful for that at least. “I do want to see him. As soon as he gets here. But in the meantime, can I call him?”

      “Sure, I got him a cell phone. I’ll get you the number when you’re ready.”

      “Yeah, I’m ready now,” Liam said. “I’m not going to be staying here...”

      He explained the arrangement he’d made to move into the Freelander place.

      “You’re gonna start playing dad even before you know for sure?”

      He told his brother his reasons for that.

      “Did you see the kids?” Conor asked.

      “For a few minutes. The nanny—that’s the Dani Cooper who sent me the message—told them I was a friend of their mother’s. They weren’t too interested.”

      “And what did you think? Did you feel any kind of instinctive connection?”

      “Uh, no, I didn’t even know what to say to them. I was just glad I wasn’t alone with them and that the nanny is pretty smooth.”

      And even though he meant Dani Cooper was smooth in her dealings with the kids and the awkwardness of him showing up the way he had, it was suddenly the nanny’s skin he was thinking about—flawless peaches-and-cream skin so smooth he’d wanted to run the back of his hand over it to see if it felt like it looked...

      He reined in the odd wandering of his mind and said, “They’re cute kids, I guess... They have dark hair like ours. Blue eyes—”

      “Like ours? The color Kinsey thinks ties us to the Camdens?”

      “No, theirs are more the light blue that Audrey’s eyes were. There might be a little resemblance between the girl and Kinsey when she was a kid, though—I kind of thought I might have seen that.”

      “So they really could be yours.”

      “I told you that anyway. That week with Audrey before I deployed was a wild one. Audrey was a partyer and we were drinking like there was no tomorrow. And not always being safe...stupid as that is.”

      “But that was five years ago and she never came after you for child support, for anything. Seems like if the kids were yours she would have at least wanted you to pitch in with some money.”

      Liam repeated what the nanny had told him about Owen Freelander and described the house that made it obvious there hadn’t been a need for more money.

      “It doesn’t surprise me that Audrey would have gone with somebody who was offering what this guy was,” Liam said. “Marriage, money, to take care of her and claim her kids as his own to provide for, too. And actually, the more I think about it the more sense it makes that the guy was so much older than she was—”

      “She had daddy issues?”

      “Maybe. She saw herself as a helpless kitten, I know that. She was raised by older parents with money. There were nannies and people paid to take care of her every need. Her parents spoiled her rotten and I had the impression