A Family Homecoming

Gathering the six slats into a stack, she carried them downstairs and into the bedroom across the hall from hers. Kyle followed with the railings. Then she hefted the foot railings while he carried the headboard. Together they assembled the bed and aligned it against the wall.

“The mattress and springs aren’t very good.”

He nodded. “I thought I would pick up a set in town this morning. Is that okay with you?”

“For a two-month stay?”

“Sara will need something bigger soon. She’ll outgrow the youth bed within another year.”

“Yes. She’s sprouting up so fast.” Danielle started to tell him about how fast the girl outgrew her clothes. She closed her mouth on the words.

“What?” Kyle asked.

“Nothing. Just…she’s growing….”

“I know.” He took two steps closer. “Next thing we know she’ll be putting on lipstick and heading off on her first date. And then to college.”

Danielle tried to smile, but her lips trembled.

He reached over and ran a finger along her bottom lip. “Does that bother you?” He dropped his hand.

She shook her head, then changed her mind and nodded. “I want her to have a normal life, but I also want to protect her from ever getting hurt.” She stopped, afraid she would reveal too much.

“The way you were hurt?”

Her gaze flew to his.

“Don’t you think I know?” He shook his head. “I wanted to protect you and Sara from harm.”

“Is that what you told yourself? That you were doing it for our own good when you didn’t contact us for two years?”

She thought of the nights when she lay in bed alone and wondered if he was dead or alive. She had agonized over him as much as she had during the fourteen days Sara had been missing. “I don’t think so. I think it was a convenient way to forget we existed. Your career was more important.”

Kyle grasped her shoulders and felt his wife steel herself, as if expecting him to do violence. It hit him—really hit him—his wife thought him capable of hurting her. He was a stranger to her as well as to his daughter.

After getting the letter, he knew he had lost his family, but he had never thought Danielle would distrust him, not his levelheaded Dani, who had matched his passion with her own, whose calm center had soothed his soul after his dealings with the harsh underbelly of society.

Her hazel green eyes continued to watch him warily. Her face was pale, the tiny freckles across her nose and cheeks visible as she waited for whatever he would do next.

“Two years ago,” he said bitterly, “I was assigned a case that seemed simple enough. The man I was after had no conscience. He would have gunned down his own mother if he’d thought she’d crossed him. If someone had followed me home or traced a call to you, if the gang had discovered I wasn’t who I said, they would have wasted you and Sara without a thought. I couldn’t take that chance.”

Her gaze didn’t soften. “You made a decision that important to our marriage without consulting me. Do you think I have so little courage?”

She pulled away from his hands and bumped into the wall. The dull clunk he heard reminded him of something he’d noticed yesterday. He slipped his hand between her and the wall. The gun was tucked into her waistband. He pulled it out. A .38 semiautomatic.

“Are you licensed to carry concealed?” he demanded, worry eating at him. Danielle was obviously determined to defend herself and Sara, but would she use the weapon if she needed to? It could mean the difference between life and death. With no idea how ruthless the criminal mind could be, she might think she could scare the kidnappers away.

“Are you going to report me if I’m not?”

She returned his glare without blinking. A standoff. His Dani was a match for any man. He smiled. “I suppose I’m lucky I didn’t get shot when I turned up on your doorstep in the middle of a blizzard.”

She retrieved her weapon and tucked it under her shirt once more. “If Sara hadn’t been present, I might have considered it.”

A tendril of auburn hair had escaped the band she wore around her head. He fought an urge to brush it off her forehead. Where his wife was concerned, he had forfeited all rights to them as a couple. He wondered if he had been wrong not to tell her of the danger and to let her make the decision regarding their safety. But it was too late for that. He’d done what he thought was right. Why did it suddenly feel as if it might be wrong?

“You were right,” he said slowly. “It was easier to forget you and Sara existed than to think about you during the dark hours of the night. When this is over, I’ll get out of your life forever, if that’s the way it has to be.”

“How? You’re Sara’s father. Are you going to abandon her completely?”

“When did you develop that razor tongue?” he asked quietly, then continued before she could come up with a retort, “I’ll expect visiting rights to Sara.”

He headed for the kitchen, needing to put distance between them and the desires that raged through him. Only Dani could make him lose control, and he couldn’t afford that. He was pushed to the limit as need and futility knifed through him. He wished he could go back….

Danielle stared after him. The fact that he had offered any explanation at all on his absence stunned her. Why, she thought in frustration, couldn’t he have explained himself two years ago? She would have accepted his decision for Sara’s sake. But he hadn’t even asked her. Maybe the danger had been a ready excuse because he’d been bored.

She went to her room to put on some lipstick and a pair of sneakers. “I have to go to the library and do some work this morning,” she told him, entering the kitchen a few minutes later.

“I’ll drive you. I need to run some errands. How long do you think you will be?”

“Until noon. I thought I’d pick up Sara and stop for lunch before coming home.”

“I have some things to do in town. I’ll go with you.”

The fake formality of the discussion bothered her. “I don’t need you to guard me. Sara is the one in danger.”

“And you’re a direct link to her.”

“I hadn’t looked at the situation in that light,” she admitted. “The kidnappers could follow me….”

“Exactly. Ready?”

He led the way out the door, grabbing his parka as they left by the mudroom and went to the garage. The path had been shoveled.

“You’ve been busy this morning,” she murmured.

He cast her an unreadable glance. His tone was cynical when he spoke. “As a long-term guest, I figured I may as well be useful.”

A frisson swept down her back as she recalled times he had teased her about how useful a man was around the house. With that came other memories—long, lazy winter afternoons of football games and popcorn and lovemaking on the sofa in front of the fire, summer afternoons of hiking in the woods, of hidden meadows and a mossy bed.

Heat followed the chill, making her feel feverish and dizzy. She put a hand to her temple. Maybe she was coming down with something.

He stopped inside the garage and studied her. She couldn’t meet his gaze. Last night she’d had such terrible dreams filled with danger and with longing….

“What are you thinking?” he asked.

She shook her head. “Nothing important.”

His eyes darkened dangerously. “Then it must have been about me.”