Untamed (Hearts 3)

Nothing can happen to them.

Nothing will happen to them.

“Mama,” she said, and I opened my arms to her. Ronan set her against my skin and she cuddled close. She smelled like sunscreen and baby powder.

“Did you have a good sleep?” I asked her, kissing her cheek.

She rested her head in her hand and babbled at me. I nodded and smiled, only understanding a third of the words she was saying to me. Something about a dog and a fish and a popsicle.

“Poppy,” Ronan said, watching us with his heart in his eyes. “I think it’s time to go home.”

“Yeah?” I asked, watching him over our daughter’s head. “You’re done being a ferry boat captain?”

He nodded. I’d been expecting this. And truthfully, ready for it for a while.

“Okay, but where is home?”

We’d left New York and had Gwen in Ireland, where Sinead got to be a grandmother and help us through those sleepless first few months. And then we’d gone to Greece and been floating among the islands for six months.

“Back to New York,” he said. “You miss your sister.”

Zilla had come to visit us. In Ireland when Gwen was born and then again when we picked her up in Athens and took her to Santorini before I was pregnant again. It had been too long and he was right.

“I do,” I said. “And you miss Niamh.”

He smiled.

He and Niamh and Gwen had almost daily FaceTime calls. He told me about the son she’d left behind and I hoped that Gwen could be a balm on her soul.

“Aye.”

Life in our little cocoon was fun but there was a wider world out there. A wider family and I’d found myself missing not just Zilla. And Haley who I’d gotten to know better. But I missed Niamh. Raj. Even Caroline a little bit, which probably wasn’t healthy, but family was family even if they were bad.

And Ronan was a man who needed to be of use.

“I think I’d like to go to work for Leo. He keeps offering me that job.”

I nodded, stroked our daughter’s hair.

“I thought I didn’t care about being a Morelli, but Gwen, the babe in your belly, I want them to know family. Cousins and aunts and uncles. We’ll keep them safe from the bad ones and let them be loved by the good ones.”

I liked the sound of that. The big family I’d dreamed of.

I held out my hand to him and Ronan curled up on the cushions with me and our daughter. We’d cobbled together a kind of happiness I never thought I’d have. It was dense and deep and never-ending. It was safe and sure.

“All right, then. Let’s go home.”

* * *