Darkest Before Dawn
Page 93

While he worried about her contentment, she worried about his happiness. His life had done a complete 180 in the last year. He no longer lived every day knowing it could be his last, and as crazy as it sounded, she knew he thrived on it. Not because he was an adrenaline junky or enjoyed it. But because he truly wanted to make a difference in the world. Protect the innocent, take out the evil. He thought himself to be an evil man when nothing could be further from the truth.
And the very people who had formed Titan, for the greater good, had turned on him and his teammates, branding them outcasts and traitors because Guy and his men were no longer willing to do their dirty work for them.
She hated them for that. For tarnishing Guy’s honor and daring to question their motives. Pure motives when they were the very best of men, protecting those who had no one to protect them. Standing up for those without voices and rebelling against those who betrayed their country and the citizens they’d sworn to represent.
She leaned forward to set her empty plate on the coffee table, but Guy intercepted, taking it from her, sliding it onto the wooden surface and then pulling her into his arms, tucking her under his shoulder and against his muscled frame.
A sigh of contentment whispered past her lips as she melted against him.
“You sound happy,” he said in a pleased tone.
“Oh I am,” she breathed.
She tilted her head up just enough that she could take in his beloved features. The sensual mouth, the warmth in his eyes and his firm jaw and defined cheekbones. She feathered one hand over his chest, coming to rest over his heart, feeling the steady, reassuring beat against her palm.
“Do you remember our wedding?”
He gave her a look that suggested she’d lost her mind. “Like I’d ever forget the day you officially became mine? I remember every single second. I’m not likely to ever forget a moment of it. Or the way you looked. The sound of you saying, ‘I do.’ The way I forgot that anyone else was there when I tasted the sweetness of your mouth and kissed you forever and didn’t want to ever stop. How time stopped and for that single moment in time it was just you and me. Together. Vowing to spend the rest of our lives together. You have no idea what that day meant to me, Honor. I think of it every night after I’ve made love to you and you drift off to sleep in my arms, and I simply watch you, holding you close and I replay our wedding in my mind.”
“Wow,” she whispered, heat flooding her cheeks, love filling her heart to near bursting.
“It’s a day I’ll carry with me every day for the rest of my life,” he said with utter seriousness. “Because on that day you gave me something very precious, Honor. You gave me yourself, and I take that—will always take that very seriously. I’ll never take it, or you and our child, for granted.”
“I love you,” she said in an aching voice infused with emotion he couldn’t possibly miss.
He kissed her, long and lingering, even as Reece gurgled happily as he kicked and waved his arms in his bouncer. “And I love you, Honor Hancock. Always. Forever.”
She settled more fully into his arms, snuggling into his heat and his strength, her fingers caressing a random pattern over his chest.
“Do you miss them? Do you ever regret not remaining with your team? Walking away and never looking back?”
He pulled back, his expression fierce as he stared intently into her eyes. “No! Never.” He shifted, turning so he could frame her face in his hands. “For more than a decade, Titan was my entire life. My family. Them and the Sinclairs, though I didn’t see them often. But, Honor, you are my family now. My entire world. You and our son. My sole reasons for living. You give me purpose. A reason for being, a reason to truly live. I never had that before. My missions were just jobs performed by rote. My heart and soul were never in them. I was resigned to the reason for my existence. I never had anything for myself. Didn’t want it. Until you. Do I miss that life? Hell no. I can’t imagine my life without you and our child. I don’t want to imagine it, which is why I will go to any lengths to protect you, to ensure that neither of you ever come to harm. Because without you, I have and am nothing. You are everything to me.”
Tears flooded her eyes as she stared at her husband in shock. Guy wasn’t a wordy man. Nor was he what anyone would call poetic or smooth in his speech. He was brusque, even abrupt at times, though she never took it personally. More often than not, he was just silent. His impassioned statement was so uncharacteristic and sincere that she felt each and every word in the deepest recesses of her soul.
She had no reply. What could she say in response to the most beautiful, eloquent words she’d ever heard in her life? And they were all for her. He loved her.
Tears streamed silently down her cheeks. Even if she had the appropriate words to offer, she’d never be able to speak around the knot in her throat.
“Don’t cry,” Guy said desperately, his expression one of sheer male panic.
If she weren’t so overcome by the moment she would have laughed, because Guy couldn’t stand to see her cry. He’d once confided in her that it made him feel utterly helpless, and for a man like Guy to admit to feeling helpless . . . well, that was huge.
Feeling a change in topic was desperately needed, and she still needed a little more time until she unveiled her anniversary present, she grabbed onto the first thing that entered her mind. Guy’s upcoming trip to the Middle East.
“Are you still planning to leave in two weeks?” she asked lightly, keeping a tight rein on the emotion swelling her throat.
His lips immediately turned down. He hated leaving Honor and Reece, but the alternative was Honor going herself, and he’d made himself clear, that over his dead body, would she ever return there.
Despite the majority of ANE being dismantled and left powerless, Honor was still a target to many who sympathized with ANE or were simply offended that a mere woman managed to topple an entire terrorist group. Never mind that she hadn’t done anything at all. Titan and KGI along with help from a CIA operative had headed up that operation.
Not even in the States was she safe, because the remnants of the ANE group would love nothing better than to assassinate her. And other sympathizers, terrorists, would delight in being the ones to take her out. It would be a badge of honor and they would be heralded as heroes to those who opposed everything Honor stood for. Her courage. Defiance. A woman surviving and coming out the victor when most would have died.
Honor had kept the vow she’d made to herself that ANE would not make her quit her relief efforts. Hancock had been equally insistent that she never set foot in the region ever again, and he’d been fully backed by Titan. Or what used to be Titan. Conrad, Cope, Viper and Henderson. Sadness still gripped her heart over the loss of Mojo. She hated that even one of Guy’s men had been killed because of her.
So a compromise had been reached and it had worked surprisingly well for all parties involved. Honor founded a charitable foundation that provided relief efforts to villages desperately in need, places that no one else would venture into. And the former members of Titan found that retirement wasn’t all it was cracked up to be, so they recruited new members to replace Mojo and Hancock as well as increasing their numbers, but they didn’t take missions. They didn’t act as Titan had in the past. Their one and only objective was to provide protection for Honor’s relief center and its workers. They even helped train local men and women in the villages so they weren’t so vulnerable to attack. It was an arrangement that suited all parties involved.