Deklan

“Do you want me to stop?” His voice is so quiet, I can barely hear him.

“No, but why do you do it?”

I close my eyes and wait for his response, but he’s gone quiet. My head feels heavy, and the warmth of near-sleep starts to fill my limbs. By the time he answers my question, I barely remember what it was I had asked.

“Because”—Deklan pauses for several seconds before continuing—“because it’s what I did the first night I met you.”

“You mean at the wedding?”

“No, before then.”

I glance at Deklan for a moment, trying to remember a previous time when he had touched me. It wasn’t the day before the wedding—I remember that clearly. When had I been in Deklan’s presence before that? When would he have been close enough to touch me at all, let alone so intimately?

I feel strong arms as they wrap around my shoulders and under my knees, lifting me from the deck of the boat. I can smell leather and gunpowder as my head is cradled against his shoulder. The stale odors from the boat are replaced with fresh rain as I’m carried outside. He tears the blindfold from my eyes, and as I look up into the face of my rescuer, I am in awe of him.

“Deklan?” I sit up and pull my hand away from him. He stares at me for a moment before he looks away. I blink several times as I hear a now familiar voice in my head.

“It’s all right,” he says. “You’re all right now. They can’t hurt you.”

The voice in my head belongs to Deklan. I blink again, trying to make sense of it. How could I be hearing the voice of my husband in a memory of my kidnapping?

I remember the feeling of the arms around me and how my rescuer picked me up and mentally compare it with the feeling of Deklan carrying me out of the hospital. The sensation is the same.

“It was you,” I whisper.

Deklan nods but says nothing.

“You rescued me.”

Deklan closes his eyes and grits his teeth before pushing himself off the bed and walking out of the room. I jump up to follow him into the kitchen, fully awake now. I stand off to the side as Deklan pours himself a drink, confused at the vague memory that keeps replaying itself in my head.

“Sit down.” Deklan points to the couch in the living room, and I comply. I watch him get another glass from the cabinet and fill it with water.

“I didn’t know who you were.” Deklan hands me the water and sits beside me on the couch. “I was just doing a job. Mr. Foley told me to go to the marina and get the girl who was being held on a boat there, so I did.”

“You killed the men who took me.”

Deklan doesn’t respond.

“You saved me from them.”

He nods again, remaining silent.

“Why didn’t you tell me before?”

“I thought…I thought you remembered. That day before the wedding, I thought that’s why y

ou said you were okay with it when Sean told you to marry me instead. It wasn’t until you told me later that you didn’t remember any of it—that you didn’t want to remember any of it—that I realized you didn’t know who I was. I was afraid if I said anything, it would bring back memories you didn’t want to recall.”

“Did…did the Foleys have me kidnapped? Is that how you knew where I was?”

“No,” Deklan says with a shake of his head.

“Who did?”

“I have no idea. I was just sent to get you. I’d never seen the men who were holding you before that night.”

“So, my dad asked for help from the Foleys; Fergus Foley found out where I was and sent you to get me?”