who held his soul, sat at her graveside and stared into the night.
He could feel it. His Erin had always laughed at him when he looked at her and told her when he felt his sons and his grandsons.
He blinked back his tears and reached out a gnarled hand to touch his wife’s headstone, feeling the warmth of the marble as he fought to imagine it was the warmth of his beloved Erin.
She’d made him swear that if she went before him, he’d stay long enough to see her babies wed and happy.
There would be another wedding soon, he thought, then he’d just have to wait on his namesake, young Rory, to find his future.
Damn, that boy could be slow, though. He’d never been one to move fast on anything, and he didn’t seem to be in a hurry to settle down anytime soon.
“What are we gonna do with him, my Erin?” he sighed into the night. “He’s too slow, and I’m tired of waiting. I’m ready to come home.”
Home. Back to his wife’s loving arms.
And God he missed the warmth those arms held. The gentleness, the acceptance.
He missed his Erin.
Bending his head he kissed the top of the stone, touched his forehead to it for a moment, then rose from the bench he’d placed there.
He was getting too damned old to kneel the way he used to. But he couldn’t miss saying good night to his laughing lass. To the woman who had completed him.
“Good night, my love,” he whispered. “We’ll work on young Rory soon, I promise,” he sighed. “Just a little more time to finish growing the boy into the man, then I’ll be comin’ home to ya. Ah my Erin, I can’t wait to come home to ya.”
He patted the stone, turned, and walked back to the small home he’d shared with her, the one he’d raised his boys and his grandsons in, where he’d grown old, grown tired, and now, moved ever closer to leaving to his boys.
Soon, he could go home.
EPILOGUE
Two years later
Alpine, Texas
The house was full.
Jordan watched as his nephew, Noah “Nathan Malone” Blake and his wife Sabella laughed over the antics of their two-year-old daughter, Mira Paige, while their eight-year-old son, Noah Nathan, rolled his eyes at his sister and his parents. Little Noah was content being the “big brother,” but told anyone who would listen that she just simply refused to listen to her elders.
Micah Sloane stood beside his wife, Risa, their younger son exchanging an animated conversation with little Noah. Nik Steele and his wife Mikayla sat close by, a delicate little blond girl perched on his knee as she watched everyone shyly, obviously entranced by the antics of the boys a few feet from her.
Travis Caine’s other half, Lilly, sat beside her husband, holding her child. At eight months old, the surprise package still had the power to bemuse her parents.
Likewise, the son John Vincent and his ex-CIA wife had given birth to almost a year before, was often regarded as a miracle by the parents who had believed they would never be so blessed.
The men of the Elite Ops had come full circle, from “dead” men without lives, to men who enjoyed living far more than they had ever imagined they could.
Joining them were the men and women who had followed them through eight years of operations and two years of learning how to be simply husbands. Simply men.
They were all there. Laughter filled the room as the children, Joseph McIntyre, Kyle and Elissa Chavez, Jessica, Laine and Little Macey March, along with the much younger Lincoln Richards joined in to create a laughter-filled, harmonious event.
The christening of Erin Elizabeth Malone, the newest addition to the extended family, who watched the world with bright, Irish eyes.
His daughter.
Jordan stood behind his wife of two years, Tehya Malone, and couldn’t help the smile that curved his lips or the pride that filled his soul.
And the love.
This was no illusion. It was no desperate attempt to justify anything. It was pure, rock solid, and it filled every particle of his being.
He was a husband, a father, a friend. He was a man that awoke each morning to the warmth and the pleasure of the one woman who completed him as nothing ever had in his life.
As he glanced around once again, he saw that same love, that same remarkable miracle of salvation that bound the men he had once commanded with the women who had fulfilled them.