A Family Homecoming

“Your husband,” came the dry reminder. “Open the door. It’s damned…it’s cold out here.”

Sara peered up at her anxiously. For a second, Danielle could only stare at her daughter, her muscles locked in shock, anger, regret, too many emotions to name.

“Kyle,” she said again. “It’s your father,” she said to the child. “Daddy. Do you remember?”

Sara, big-eyed with fear, shook her head.

Danielle pulled herself together. “Wait,” she called out. “I’ll unlock the door.”

Her hand trembled as she flicked open the chain, the dead bolt and finally the old-fashioned key in the door lock. She turned the knob. A blast of cold air hit her in the face as the storm door opened and the man who claimed to be her husband stepped into the tiled foyer.

“It’s colder here than in Denver,” he said and took off his hat, then banged it against the door frame to knock the snow off onto the porch.

Danielle stepped back instinctively and felt Sara’s warm presence as the girl hid behind her, one small fist holding on to Danielle’s flannel shirttail.

Kyle removed his coat, checked the snow that clung to the shoulders and shook it off on the porch before closing both doors against the temperamental wind.

“Where can I hang this so it won’t drip on the floor?” he asked while she locked up.

“In the mudroom.” At his questioning glance, she added, “The kitchen. It’s off the kitchen.”

Trying to grab the tatters of her composure, she led the way back into the light. The homey aroma of beef stew calmed her somewhat when they entered the family room. She closed the French doors behind them to shut out the cold of the unheated areas.

Sara, Danielle noted, kept close to her and far from the silent man who followed at their heels. Looking over her shoulder, she encountered dark-blue eyes that had once turned her insides to jelly. An electrical current ran through her at the visual contact. She wasn’t sure what it meant. The moment seemed surreal.

The bitter gall of subdued anger rose to choke her. It centered on the silent man behind her. She had needed him desperately and he hadn’t come. With the memory came the silent, painful tears she never allowed herself to shed in front of her daughter.

“Did you get my letter?” she blurted, stopping in the middle of the kitchen. Sara scooted behind her and watched Kyle with a distrustful gaze.

He visibly stiffened. “Yes.”

“Well?”

“We’ll talk about it later. We have…other problems to deal with at the present.”

He glanced pointedly at Sara, then back to her. So he knew about the kidnapping, she realized as he spotted the mudroom and went to hang his hat and coat in there.

Turning back to the kitchen, he silently perused her. She saw his gaze take in the thick socks she wore around the house, the jeans that fit her loosely after the ordeal of the past month, the flannel shirt that had once been his, an old T-shirt with an unreadable message.

She was aware she wore no makeup, that her hair, always unruly, was slipping from the rubber band at the base of her neck. She felt vulnerable, as if all her insecurities were laid out bare before the world. She didn’t want him to see. He was a stranger, not the man she’d once trusted with all her heart. She’d lost that man, and she didn’t even know how or why….

Aware of Sara watching them in her solemn way, Danielle bit back the torrent of questions and strived for normalcy.

“We’re about to have supper. Do you want to join us?” she asked.

Her innate politeness, taught at the knee of her loving parents, forced her to be courteous, but she didn’t want to share anything with this man, this stranger back from the dead or wherever he’d been.

“Yes.”

“Well, have a seat.” She gestured vaguely.

He pulled out a kitchen chair and sat down with a weary sigh. “It’s been a hell of…a heck of a trip.”

“Two years.” Her voice shook…with rage, with loneliness, with accusation. “You shouldn’t have come. You didn’t have to.”

“You sent for me.”

She denied it with a quick shake of her head.

His eyes narrowed. She watched him, tension in every nerve as if she might have to fight or run at any moment. His cheeks were dark with five-o’clock shadow and leaner than her image of him.

He was all muscle and bone and sinew. As sleek as an otter, every movement fluid and controlled. She remembered the way he could hold back until she was satisfied—

She cringed as if she’d touched a hot stove. She wanted to do something physical, like throw him out with her bare hands, to flail at him until all the pent-up feelings were drained and she was free of them. She wanted answers—why he’d deserted them, and why he’d come back.

But not now, not in front of Sara, who still trembled behind her, frightened of the man who had once been her favorite person.

Sara’s father. Her husband. She wanted to cry.

“Dinner smells good,” he said. “It’s been a long time—” He broke off abruptly.

“Yes.” Her voice was hardly above a whisper. She cleared it and spoke more firmly. “Yes, we’ll eat. Then talk.” She lifted Sara into her arms. “It’s okay. This is…this is your daddy. Don’t you remember him?”

The blue eyes darted to the man, back to her. Slowly Sara shook her head.

“She’s frightened of strangers,” she said to Kyle, leveling the blame at him with her gaze.

“I had to go,” he said. “For you and Sara—”

“For us?” she interrupted in blatant disbelief. “For us you disappeared for two years? No visits, no calls, not even a note to tell us you were alive? This was for us?”

Sara hid her face against Danielle’s shoulder. Danielle clamped her lips together, stopping the flood of questions and accusations.

“The case had reached a crisis point,” Kyle said, his tone level and matter-of-fact compared to her emotional outburst, “Luke and the director agreed with my assessment that it was too dangerous for me to go home. You and Sara could have been at risk. I couldn’t chance it.”

“You and Luke and the director,” she repeated with an effort to appear as calm as he did. “What choice was I given in the matter? When were my wishes and needs considered? Sara and I were whisked out of Denver in the dead of night without one word from you. Not one. So much for being a family, for discussing the future, for sharing decisions. So much for loving and honoring and cherishing.”

A flicker of emotion dashed through his eyes…Sara’s eyes…then was gone. Guilt, regret, sadness? She turned away, angry and upset. He should feel guilty.

After placing Sara on the stool at the end of the counter, Danielle went to the stove. She dished up three bowls of stew, poured three glasses of milk and placed a wooden bowl of crackers on the table.

It seemed strange, setting dinner for three when for days, then weeks, then months, it had only been the two of them. She glanced at the dark-faced stranger at the table. For a second, she was more afraid of the man in her kitchen than the two men who threatened their lives.

Kyle inhaled deeply as Danielle set the stew in front of him. The aroma was intoxicating—the rich, meaty smell of the stew, the lemony trace of cleanser and wax used on the furniture, the scent that was unique to his wife—a blend of her cologne and powder and shampoo and her sweet womanly essence.

Home. But not welcome.

The knowledge dwelled in the bottomless pit that had taken over his soul. He studied Danielle’s face, noting her carefully averted gaze, as she finished serving the meal and took her place at the opposite end of the table. Their daughter ate at the counter, still perched on the stool.