“Thanks, Doc,” I said.
“Oh, you’re there. Hey, do me a favor and put in a good word for K19, would ya? We’d love to have Paxon on our team.”
“That’s up to him, but if it means we get to come back and visit this sweet little house by the sea, it might work in your favor.”
“Bye, Doc,” said Paxon, ending the call.
“How are you feeling?” I asked.
“Free. Completely, thoroughly free.”
Paxon and I spent a month at Laird and Sorcha’s seaside cottage. We took day trips up and down the coast but ended every night in each other’s arms in the bed where we’d first made love.
“You haven’t said anything about returning to Colorado, and I haven’t wanted to ask, but do you need to?”
I shrugged. “I suppose I should, even though I wish we didn’t have to leave.”
“We don’t. Not until you say you’re ready.”
“Maybe a few more days.” While he showered, I called Cord, like I had once each week.
“We’re doing fine,” he said instead of hello, and I laughed.
“You don’t even miss me?”
“Do you miss us?”
“Not so much.”
He laughed. “You’re making up for all those years you never left. You probably accumulated six months’ vacation time, at least.”
“There’s something I want to talk to you about.”
“Shoot.”
“Paxon and I are getting married.”
“Well, yeehaw!” he shouted. “Flynn’s getting married,” I heard him say. In the background, I could hear my brothers hooting and hollering.
“Would you be upset if we just had a simple ceremony here?”
“I don’t know where here is, but I’ll speak on behalf of all four of us. All we care about is your happiness, Flynn.”
“That’s what I told Paxon.”
“Whenever you decide to come home, we’ll throw a big party.”
“A small party.”
“Whatever.”
“I want to ask you something else.”
“Good God, girl. Get to it.”
“We want to move into the cabin Paxon stayed in.”
“Are you sure you don’t want the main house?”
“What about you, Holt, and Porter?”
“We could move out.”
I thought it over for a minute. “The cabin is where we want to start our life together.”
“I think you already did that, but you have your pick of anywhere on the ranch, sis.” I heard my oldest brother say something in the background, but I couldn’t make it out.
“Sorry, Buck says you can’t have the old farmhouse, but everything else is fair game.”
I laughed. “You tell Buck I’m good with that.” Paxon came out of the bathroom with a towel wrapped around his waist. When I wiggled my eyebrows, he dropped it.
“I gotta go, but I love you all, and we’ll see you…sometime.” I ended the call and tossed the phone on the floor when the man who would soon be my husband stalked my way.
Epilogue
Irish
Two Months Later
One week after she told her brothers and I told Cope and Ali, Flynn and I were married at Butler Ranch in what we’d planned to be a small ceremony by “our” bench in the vineyards.
No one confirmed it, but I guessed it was Sorcha who had arranged for so many of our friends and family to join us, including most of the men and women who had been a part of bringing down Argead once and for all.
Buck and Stella could only stay one day because of the bizarre terms of my wife’s father’s will, but it didn’t take away our joy of having them, her other three brothers, along with Cope and Ali with us. The biggest surprise was when I saw Lynx, Emme, and Saint walk up with Money McTiernan.
Decker apologized for missing it but had a damned good reason. He and Mila’s baby boy, who they named Huck, had finally arrived. Doc joked that his absence would give him time to convince me to join K19, but Decker knew better. I’d been honest with him about not being ready to make any decisions.
We’d spent our honeymoon in the cabin where we began our life together even before we knew that’s what we were doing. I’d never been happier in my life. In fact, I hadn’t known a life like the one I was leading was even possible.
Instead of spending my days thinking about missions or agents dying or even world politics, I learned to ride a horse, mend fences, tend cattle, refurbish cabins, and be part of a family.
I ate every meal in the dining hall with my wife when she was working, at our own table for two no one else dared sit at.
In a few months, we’d add a couple of high chairs when our little family grew from two to four, since Flynn was pregnant with twins.
“Are you sure about traveling to Washington?” I asked when she and I crawled into bed and she snuggled in my arms.
“If you think I’m going to stay here while my beloved husband is awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, you’re crazy.”
“It isn’t that big of a deal.”
Flynn rolled her eyes. “Oh yeah? So why is it that everyone who was at our wedding, along with a few who weren’t, is flying in for it?”
“I still think Cope should be receiving it too.”
“Maybe one day he will, but tomorrow is your day. Let us all love on you, Paxon.”
Little by little, my wife taught me to accept honor, praise, and love, and I did the same for her. My chest swelled with pride as I watched her blossom into a confident, self-assured force of nature.
Whenever I thought about how we met, I couldn’t help but shake my head at the irony of it. The worst thing I’d ever gone through in my life, resulted in the best thing ever happening to me.
“Where did you go?” she asked, stroking my cheek with her finger.
“Just thinking what a lucky man I am.”
“You know what I need?”
I chuckled, already knowing what she was going to say. It had become a code for when our bodies couldn’t stand another moment not being joined together.
“Let me guess,” I teased. “You want to be Irished.”
“You got it.” Flynn smiled and slid her hand down the front of my body.
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Keep reading for a sneak peek
at the next book in the
Invincibles series,
Sainted
He’s a playboy M16 agent trying to change his ways.
She’s straight-shooter working for the CIA.
Together, they’re INVINCIBLE.
SAINT
I’ve got a reputation to mend—a lifestyle to correct. Hell, I’m no saint; I like my women. But I want this job more than anything. Walking the straight and narrow is going to be hard, but being an INVINCIBLE is even harder. And the hardest job of all: keeping my hands off of the sexy CIA assistant who has me praying for mercy.