Nik laughed. “Yeah, I guess she is, baby doll.”

“Awesome. Can I have some cake now, Daddy?”

That she accepted her father’s word so easily made me smile while my friend told his daughter that she had to eat something a little more filling than cake before she got her dessert. With an exasperated sigh as if her world had to be put on pause for the moment until she could get her cake, Mia walked off to ask her nanny for a plate of ‘real food’.

Seeing Mia reminded me of the little girl that Marissa had been when she’d come to live with me and my parents. She’d only been six, a little older than Mia was now. She’d been so lost after the death of her father, so afraid of someone else leaving her because she only had Liam left. It had taken years for her to fully trust that my parents loved her just as much as they loved me and Liam because she wasn’t related to them by blood.

Just before Marissa had been diagnosed with cancer, my father had died of a heart attack and she had been devastated, but nowhere close to how she’d been when my mother had passed away. Marissa had still been in isolation when my mother had had her heart attack and died only hours later. The look on her face as I’d watched the doctors deliver the news while I’d watched through the window that was my only connection to her at the time had nearly brought me to my knees.

That same look of loss had still been in her eyes every time we would go visit my mother’s grave. And it was there, standing over the flower covered grave of Mary Beth Niall with our shared pain over the loss of such an amazing woman, that I had realized how I really felt for Marissa…

“It’s been three years and I still miss her,” Marissa murmured as she bent to replace the bouquet of dried roses with a fresh one. Yellow roses had been my mother’s favorite flower and Marissa made sure she had fresh ones every month.

I clenched my jaw, nodding my agreement. When my mother had died three years ago I’d been too busy worrying about Marissa and her recovery to really deal with my own sense of loss over my mother’s sudden death. I hadn’t even cried at her funeral because I’d been so worried about the distraught sixteen-year-old waiting for me to get back to stand outside her hospital room. By the time Marissa had been recovering from her illness and then considered in remission, Mom had been gone for nearly six months.

The first day home, Marissa had demanded I take her to see Mom grave, which was right beside of my father’s. From then on we would visit together at least once a month, and if I was off on tour with OtherWorld she always visited by herself with my foreman watching over her.

Straightening, Marissa turned to wrap her arms around my waist. Tears glinted in her blue eyes as she gazed up at me. “She loved you so much, you know. You could do nothing wrong in her eyes.” She laughed sadly, shaking her head, causing her shoulder length hair to fall forward. “You’re a good man, Wroth.”

A few strands of hair stuck to her tear dampened cheek and I lifted a hand to brush them away. But the feel of her skin under my fingertips was so soft that I couldn’t help but let them linger as I skimmed my thumb over her cheek. I’d never known skin could be so silky soft. The feel of it made my body hardened and I released her, disgusted with myself for feeling desire for the girl in my arms.

Hastily I pulled away from her. “I’m not always a good man, Mari,” I told her honestly. She didn’t know how bad of a man I’d been when I was overseas in the marines. Killing people that could have been innocents for all I knew because I was ordered to, because it was kill or be killed. And I definitely wasn’t a good man right now when the sudden need to kiss and touch and make bone melting hot love to her was overwhelming me.

I stared down at my mother’s headstone for a moment, silently asking for her forgiveness for feeling this way for the one person I’d always promised her I would protect and cherish. The feeling of relief for her forgiveness didn’t come and I turned away with the sudden choking feeling of being unable to breathe. “We need to go,” I grumbled over my shoulder.

Marissa didn’t protest as she climbed into my truck and I drove us back to the farm. She was quiet on the ride home, shooting me concerned glances across the seat. My fingers gripped the steering wheel so hard that my knuckles were turning white and aching as I attempted to control my sudden need to reach across the seat and pull her into my arms and devour those luscious lips she was now tormenting by biting them.

As soon as we got home, I locked myself in my room and took care of the ache that was tightening my balls. But no sooner than I’d taken care of it I heard her voice outside my door as she asked if I was okay and my body began to ache all over again. It would have been so easy to just open the door and pull her into my room. I could have spent hours teaching her all about the pleasures of sex. There wasn’t anything wrong with it. She was nineteen, after all, more than old enough to have a lover.

My dick pulsed at pictures filling my mind at all the things I could teach Marissa. But it was my heart and brain that screamed at me that I wasn’t going to do that. No way was I going to take something that I wasn’t good enough for. Right then it was only desire fueling my need for her, not love. Although it would be all too easy to fall for her. But Marissa was too sweet, too pure and innocent to defile her just for the pleasure of having her tight little body wrapped around my dick.

I cared about Marissa, and I wanted her with a need that I’d never felt in my entire life, but I couldn’t contaminate her with my dirty past. I wouldn’t.

The feel of a soft, cool hand on my arm jerked me back from my memories of the first time I’d realized that I wanted Marissa. Startled, I looked up into a pair of blue eyes, but they weren’t the blue ones that I had come to love. Dallas gave me a small smile as she took the empty glass of tea from my hands and replaced it with a fresh one. “Easy there, tiger. It’s just me.”

I blinked at her and then glanced around the room, noticing that more people had arrived but there was still no sign of the one person I ached to see with every fiber of my being. I glanced down at my watch and realized that it was more than thirty minutes past the time the dinner was supposed to start. “Where’s Rissa?”

Dallas shrugged. “I have no idea. I guess she and Natalie are running late.” She patted me on the arm. “Don’t worry, big guy. She’ll be here soon enough though.”

Chapter 2

Marissa