Live Wire

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.

Women who had turned dead men into fully living, loving, laughing husbands and fathers who would die to protect what they held dear.

This was living, and Jordan knew life had never been so good.

“Hey, Jordan, come over here and tell Reno exactly how you managed to come up with that plan to flush Orion from his hole,” Micah called out to him, his expression much different now than it had been the night Jordan had first met him, just days after the assassin Orion had destroyed his life.

His hand stroked down his wife’s curls as he bent and kissed her temple lightly. “I’ll be back,” he promised her.

The smile that beamed up at him filled his soul.

“And we’ll be right here waiting on you,” she said, the promise in her gaze one Jordan knew he could depend on.

She would be waiting for him. In life, or in death, holding the vows they had made, close to her soul.

Always his and always loving him as she had since the day they had met.

A love to match his own.

“Thank you,” he suddenly whispered.

“For what?” Her smile was like a blessing, a warmth that would always fill him from the inside out.

“For showing me it’s not an illusion.”

With a final kiss on her sweet lips, he moved across the room to remember, to give thanks they had survived intact.

It was his daughter’s christening, but it was also his and Tehya’s. The affirmation that love existed, thrived, and that they weren’t alone.

The men and women who had followed them in battle, who had laughed with them, pushed them toward each other, and conspired to see Jordan happy and safe in the arms of the woman that loved him, were celebrating as well.

They had all found their homes, in the hearts and in the arms of the women and the children who loved them.