A Family Homecoming (12 page)

They were good people. Danielle's heart filled with gratitude. In spite of the kidnapping, she felt more and more that Whitehorn was a good place for her and Sara. It was less lonely than the city had been without Kyle.

“Shall I take Sara back to class now?” Lynn asked. “It's almost time for a story, her favorite thing.”

Danielle looked at Kyle. He thought it over. “The guy isn't going to risk coming back today. It's probably better that she stick with routine.”

Lynn held out her hand to Sara. “Ready?”

Sara slid off Danielle's lap. “What story are we going to have today?” she wanted to know. The two of them walked out, Sara chatting almost normally.

The difference, Danielle noted, was that once Sara would have been dancing ahead while she chattered. Now she walked close beside her teacher, Lynn's hand firmly in hers.

“I want to look around,” Kyle told the principal. “But first, I want to talk to Rafe.” He headed out the door.

The principal gestured to Danielle. “Let's go make a pot of tea. One of the teachers brought in homemade biscotti. That would hit the spot, wouldn't it, after the scare this morning?”

Danielle stayed in the teacher's lounge while Kyle
and Rafe went over every inch of the school grounds, then the grounds outside the fence. Other than a set of footprints that indicated the man might have climbed over the fence, they didn't find anything remotely suspicious, he reported when he collected Sara and Danielle at noon.

They went home. She sighed in relief when they reached the house. “You rest,” he said once they were inside. “I'll heat some soup for lunch, then Sara and I will be as quiet as mice. You won't know we're on the place.”

“What am I supposed to be doing while you're creeping around on tippy-toe?”

“Taking a nap. You sound like a frog with a grass-hopper stuck in its throat.”

“Thanks,” she croaked, but she went in and lay down on the sofa, feeling as tired as if she'd split logs all day.

 

“And they lived happily ever after in their enchanted land far away,” Kyle read and closed the book.

Sara, sitting in the bathtub with her plastic dolls, sighed. “Do you think I'll ever find a prince who will think I'm the beautifulest one of all?” she asked wistfully.

“Of course you will,” he said automatically.

“Well, I'm not pretty like Jenny.” She laid her princess and prince dolls on a doll-size float—it had taken him a while to get used to his daughter playing with totally naked boy and girl dolls—then propped her chin on her hand. “She's got dimples.”

Kyle started to reassure his daughter, but when he
looked into her eyes, he couldn't brush aside her concerns.

Neither could he lie. Jenny McCallum was one of those children who are born beautiful. Along with blond hair and blue eyes with naturally dark lashes, she had a perfectly chiseled face, a rosebud mouth and, as Sara had noted, dimples so cute that people exclaimed about them when she smiled.

By contrast, Sara, who also had blond hair and blue eyes, had gamine features. Her face was broad across the cheeks and tapered quickly to a sharp little chin. Her mouth was wide and her nose was short. As she had noted, she had no dimples. A little cat face.

Like her mother's.

A fist closed around his heart and squeezed hard. He tried to think carefully of what he should say to young Sara. “There're different kinds of beauty,” he began.

She nodded glumly. “Mommy says beauty is as beauty does. Outside beauty doesn't last very long, but inside beauty lasts forever.”

“That's true.” He nodded wisely and tried to think of something to add. Sweat broke out on his face. “Some movie stars are beautiful people, but we wouldn't like them if we knew them because they're not kind or thoughtful.”

“Yeah. But Jerry Smith likes Jenny.”

Ah. Now he understood the problem. “Some people fall for a pretty face,” he consoled her.

“Jenny is very nice,” Sara defended her friend.

Okay, maybe the movie star analogy hadn't been a good one. “Well, sure. So are you.”

He wished Danielle would come in and rescue him
from this conversation. He was afraid he was saying all the wrong things. The sweat collected into droplets. He wiped his face with a towel.

She sighed. “But she's beautiful outside and inside. How does anybody see my insides?”

She gazed up at him earnestly, waiting for his words of wisdom. None came to mind. “Well,” he said and thought hard. He wiped his face again. Must be the steam that was making him sweat.

“How did you see Mommy's?” Sara asked.

Kyle thought back to that cold winter evening when Danielle had told him the library was closing. They were the last two people in the place. He'd noticed her earlier when she'd helped him find the information he'd needed.

The two flagrantly nude dolls floating on their swim mattress bobbed against Sara's knee. She called the float a magic carpet.

“It's sort of like magic,” he said slowly, savoring the memory. “I took one look and I noticed right off there was something special about her.”

Her smile. Her competence. The light in her eyes, the quiet center of her that had made him want to sink into her and bask in the warmth…the peace….

“What?” Sara wanted to know.

“I thought she was beautiful.”

“You did?”

“Yes,” he said huskily, remembering how he'd wanted to touch her hair, its auburn strands surrounding her face in curling tendrils like dark flames. He bent and studied Sara. “You have my eyes, but you have your mom's face. A little cat face.”

Doubt entered Sara's eyes again. “Huh,” she said.

“Kittens are cute,” he hurriedly added, wiping his forehead on his sleeve. The bathroom sure seemed hot. “And when they grow up, they become lovely and graceful cats. Have you noticed the way a cat moves, how smooth and beautiful it is?”

She nodded slowly, her forehead knit in thought.

“So when I met Mommy, I saw all those things—how graceful she was, how kind she was in helping me, and I thought, now there's a beautiful woman. And that's the way I saw her. And still do.”

Sara nodded. “'Cause Mommy is beautiful.”

“Someday some guy is going to look at you and he'll think you're the most beautiful woman he ever saw.”

She picked up her prince doll and stared at him intently. “When?”

“Well, that's the mystery of it. And the romance. One day, when you're all grown-up, you'll meet someone. You'll look into his eyes and you'll know he's your prince.”

Sara tossed the prince doll into the water. He landed facedown and slowly sank. “Daddy,” Sara said wisely, sadly, “princes and princesses are just a fairy tale.”

“Maybe.” Now he was on the defensive. “But wait until you meet the right one. You'll change your mind. Now you'd better get out of the water before you turn into a wrinkled old witch with a wart on her nose.”

Sara thought that was really funny. She giggled about it until she was in bed and he turned out the light and reminded her sternly that it was quiet time.

Danielle was sitting up on the sofa when he entered
the family room. A fire licked merrily over the logs in the fireplace. A television was on, but the sound was muted. The scene was straight out of Currier and Ives.

“That was very nice,” she said. “What you said to Sara,” she explained when he questioned her with a glance.

“Yeah, well, just don't expect me to explain the birds and bees to her.”

She laughed, a sort of sexy croak. A low thrum vibrated through his body.

He noticed she had changed into one of the long flannel nightgowns she preferred in winter. He recalled how soft the material was when he slid his palm slowly along her waist and hip, exploring those wonderful feminine curves. He stared into the fire and tried to force the memories at bay.

Rising, he prowled restlessly from window to window, checking that the house was secure, that the motion detectors were in place and working. He left off the one in the hall. He didn't know if Danielle would go to bed or sleep on the sofa. She'd taken a hot shower and some cold pills after dinner—another soup-and-sandwich meal—and sounded somewhat better than she had earlier.

All seemed quiet outside. The moon reflected brightly off the snow in the fields around the house. He approved the location. There were neighbors, but they weren't too close.

In the field behind the house were patches of woods and outcroppings of rocks—great places for kids to explore and play pirates or cowboys. Or house, if
that's what girls played. And castles and knights and princesses. Sara loved stories of enchanted princesses.

A wry smile pulled at the corners of his mouth. Sara was going to be a pragmatist. She had put him straight on fairy tales and reality. He returned to the family room and added a log to the fire.

Danielle had changed channels to a classical concert with the Boston Pops. The music wafted softly around them. Like golden threads of sound that wove magic…

He sat on the raised brick hearth and punched at the fire, then put the poker up. Turning, he let his eyes feast on Danielle.

His wife. The one person he hadn't been afraid to let into the darkness of his soul. Sometimes he thought she had saved him from hell. And there had been times when he knew she had. Those two years…the abandonment she would never forgive. He could see it in her eyes.

Dani no longer trusted him with her heart.

But watching her as she gazed into the fire, the flames licked along his veins. He hadn't lied to Sara. Dani was beautiful in his eyes. She always would be.

“You've done a good job with Sara,” he told her. “She's a kid to be proud of. How many five-year-olds could keep silent as long as she has to protect those she loves?”

He shook his head and felt the unexpected smart of tears against his eyelids. His women were brave. Dani and Sara had faced terror alone while he was off on his personal crusade to rid the world of evil. It came to him that he didn't have to fight all those battles alone.

Her sigh stilled the remorse. She twiddled a curl between her finger and thumb, over and over. A chasm opened inside him.

She was the only woman he had ever wanted in this way, with an ache that made his teeth hurt, with a seriousness that bound his heart to hers, with a longing that excluded all other women. The thrum in his blood grew louder.

She had taken him into her home and made it his. She had poured her love, her light, her peace into him.

“Dani,” he said.

Every nerve in Danielle's body reacted to her name on his lips. Dani. Only he had ever called her that, and only in the privacy of their lovemaking. She forced herself to look at him and then wished she hadn't.

His eyes were dark and dangerously seductive. Tension filled the air between them and vibrated with suppressed urgency. He wanted her. And God help her, she wanted him.

“No,” she said on an exhaled breath.

His smile was brief but lucid. She caught the irony of his thoughts. It hadn't been necessary for her to respond. He knew it was impossible.

But the longing was still there. She clutched her hands in her lap. Need clamored through her. She recalled how wonderful it had been to touch him the other day, to stop fighting and simply take….

No, that would be foolish.

But why not?

She would wonder, later, if something in her face gave her away. But when he rose and came to her, she didn't protest. She simply watched as he dropped
to the sofa beside her. She didn't move when he caressed her cheek with his fingertips.

When he drew a line across her lips, she had to open her mouth in order to breathe.

“I'm afraid,” she murmured. This could hurt too much. She shouldn't get entangled again so that she learned to depend on him.

“You think I'm not?” His smile was gently mocking.

“You've never been afraid of anything.”

He bent toward her, his mouth drawing nearer and nearer until she felt his breath on her face. “You scare me to death.”

“Don't lie,” she said, the anger rising.

“Men can kill my body,” he said. “But you…you can destroy my soul.”

D
anielle stared into Kyle's eyes. She saw no humor there, only the relentless darkness that made her afraid. For him, she realized. Something had changed in him during the time he'd been gone. It was as if he'd been to hell and narrowly escaped, as if it had taken all that he was as a man to make it back from that ghastly brink.

“Dani,” he murmured.

She heard the need he couldn't express, the hunger he couldn't deny. The familiar ache entered her chest, making it difficult to breathe, to think. She started to speak, then bit back the words, unsure what to say.

“Mommy!”

Every nerve in her body jerked at the sound of Sara's tremulous voice. Kyle drew back. They rose
as one and headed for the bedroom. Inside, she found Sara tossing relentlessly in a troubled dream.

“Shh, I'm here,” Danielle murmured, smoothing the curls around Sara's face. “It's okay.”

Sara stared up at her. Her frightened gaze went to Kyle. Danielle felt the tension leave the small body.

“Daddy's here,” Sara said. “Now it's okay.”

Kyle leaned over Danielle's shoulder to rub Sara's back. “Yeah, I'm here. Go back to sleep. I'm keeping an eye on things.”

Sara yawned and turned on her side, convinced that all was right with her world. Danielle tucked the covers under Sara's chin and continued to smooth her curls while Kyle rubbed her back. In a minute, the child was sound asleep.

Danielle dropped her hands into her lap and studied her daughter. She was suddenly aware that Kyle was in her bedroom, that his chest still pressed against her shoulder as he continued to rub their child. That funny, achy need to cry came over her.

She moved, indicating it was time to go. He stepped back. They returned to the family room.

“Are you going to sleep here tonight?” he asked, nodding toward the sofa.

“Yes. It's easier to breathe partially sitting up. I don't want to wake Sara in case I start coughing.”

The excuse sounded lame. She didn't know why she felt compelled to explain herself, anyway. She frowned.

“You need a vaporizer.”

“I don't know where it is.”

“I do. It's upstairs in a box.”

While he went to get it, she arranged two pillows
on the sofa and lay down, weary to the bone. She kept her eyes closed when she heard Kyle return. In a moment, the gentle hiss of the vaporizer added to the crackle of the fire.

The house fell silent and she went to sleep. An hour later she woke with a start. She listened avidly, then slumped into the pillow. It had been a dream. She wasn't trapped in the cave in the mountains with the voices of the kidnappers coming toward her.

Rolling her head to the side, she gazed at the fire. A silhouette partially blocked her view.

Kyle.

He sat in the recliner, his feet propped on the hearth. Like a lone sentinel against the night and its dangers, he stared into the dancing flames, his features sharply etched in firelight and shadows.

A sense of security washed over her, obliterating the fear caused by the dream. He was protection enough against the dark forces.

She smiled at the fanciful idea. But the truth was, she did feel safer with him there. Longing pierced all the way through her. She wished they could go back to another time, a time when they'd been happy.

He was her husband. Her only lover. All her plans for the future had included him. Then he'd left.

That fact sank into the bottomless pit that had opened inside her when she'd finally accepted that he wasn't going to come back. He'd explained about the danger, but she didn't understand. She could no more abandon him and Sara than she could cut off her arm. It was simply unthinkable.

The ache of tears added to all her other aches. She sighed shakily. He turned his head.

“You awake?” he asked softly.

“Yes.” The word was a croak.

“A hot salt water gargle would soothe your throat. I'll fix you a glass.” He started to rise.

“No, that's okay. I'll do it.” She hurried to the bathroom. After brushing her teeth, taking some cold medication, then gargling with the salt water, she did feel better. The need to cry gradually dissipated.

Returning to the family room, she found her pillows fluffed and the afghan neatly folded back. Kyle arranged two new logs in the fire and settled in the chair again. She sat in the corner of the sofa and tucked her feet under the cover. Then she studied him and wondered why a man like him, a loner, a crusader against evil, would have been attracted to her, a plain, quiet sort of person, in the first place.

As if sensing her perusal, he turned his head. When their eyes locked, an electric bolt sizzled through her. All her senses sharpened and refocused on the tension that arced between them. She couldn't look away.

Finally, his gaze dropped from hers. She watched as his eyes roamed over her, pausing at her mouth, her breasts rising fitfully under the warm material of her gown, the outline of her legs that were folded to one side and tucked close to her body. When he looked into her eyes again, she saw stark hunger and a restless need so great, it couldn't be denied. Neither could hers.

Without looking away, he rose and came to her. Without a word, he sat beside her. Then he stared into her eyes again, and she saw there was only one question.

Yes, some part of her answered before she could think.

When his face dipped toward her, she felt she had to speak. “I have a cold.” She sounded breathless and unsure.

“It doesn't matter.”

His voice was deep, husky, sexy. It joined the rush of blood through her ears, drowning out all other sounds.

“Dani,” he said.

Perhaps if he hadn't said her name in just that way, perhaps if he hadn't laid his hands on her shoulders with that exquisite gentleness he had, perhaps then she could have said no.

She closed her eyes instead, afraid of the hunger she saw in his and of the answer she found in herself.

The kiss was soft, barely a touch. And so sweet, so unbearably, heartbreakingly sweet. Tears filled her eyes behind her closed lids. She lifted her arms to him like a child wanting to be held.

His arms glided around and under her. He swung her up and settled her across his lap. With one hand, he coaxed her head to his shoulder. This was madness. She should run, save herself from the pain of loving him again, then his lips touched hers once more.

She felt his fingers burrow into her hair and cup the back of her head. Heat flowed and mingled between them. Her breasts pressed into his chest. Her hips snuggled into the angle of his hips and thighs. Their lips touched hungrily in a thousand ways—teasing, demanding, cruel, gentle, angry, sad….

A log fell apart. The fire blazed, then settled. The wind piped notes in the eaves of the old house.

The seconds stretched to minutes, to eternity. She couldn't get enough. She held his head between her hands and drank as deeply as she could from this magic nectar.

She couldn't breathe, but she didn't really need to. He was all she needed at this moment. He broke the rapacious contact of their mouths and pressed his face into her neck.

“It's been hell,” he whispered hoarsely. “To hell and beyond, but you were always there. Always.”

She soothed him as she would young Sara, with sounds and half murmured assurances, with all the comforting touches she'd ever known. Gradually the tension changed as physical hunger replaced the emotional.

“I want to see you,” he said urgently. “I've lived on dreams. Now I need…”

His hands, his mouth, showed her his needs. At some point the buttons of her gown mysteriously opened. He planted kisses along her collarbone and down to the swell of her breasts. She whimpered when he suckled there.

“The hunger,” she whispered. “It hurts. I want…but I shouldn't—”

“I know,” he said. He pushed the heavy tresses away from her face. “You make me ache. You fill me with hunger for things only you can satisfy.”

Somehow she knew he hungered for more than her body. He needed more. She wasn't sure she could fill the abyss she sensed inside him. Fear tugged at her. She didn't think she could be all he needed her to be.
She tried to think, to be the responsible one. “Sara—”

“The alarm will go off if she enters the hall,” he murmured, biting and nuzzling along her neck, sending curls of passion through her until even her toes tingled.

“Is this wise?” she asked desperately.

“Dani.”

Her name was a plea. He touched her cheek with fingers that trembled slightly. His breath sighed over her as he gazed into her eyes with a longing so harsh, so wild, it shocked her.

She hadn't known he could need her like that.

All doubts burned to ash in that hot, imploring gaze. She slid her arms around his chest and hugged him as hard as she could. A wild, fierce joy spread over her. She could give him this.

“Come to me,” she commanded, implored. “Come to me.”

“I have protection,” he told her. “If we need it.”

“I'm still on birth control.”

“I had wondered…after two years.”

He could have checked her medicine cabinet, but he had respected her privacy. She marveled at this man she had married so precipitously. He was a frustrating enigma in some ways, but he was the man she loved. She squeezed her eyes shut. Yes, she loved him. Still.

He opened the remaining buttons on her old-fashioned nightgown. He admired her figure with a searing perusal. Then he stripped the sweat suit from his own lean, rock-hard body and reached for her.

The magic grew and filled her heart. The room
glowed in the firelight, and their shadows danced upon the walls as they shifted and turned, exploring all the variations on the theme of passion that played between them.

She sat astride and rode until he pulled her against him, panting for control. He rolled her beneath him and thrust until she cried out in need.

“Dani,” he said on a gasp. “Be still.”

But she couldn't. “Now,” she demanded, dropping love bites along his shoulder. “Now, now, yes,
now.
”

He came to her in wave after wave of blinding delight. The world condensed to them, just them, and the magic points where they touched, and there was nothing else…no, nothing.

 

Kyle lay against the sofa. Danielle, asleep, was tucked against him, her back to his chest, his knees cupped into the back of hers. He listened to the sounds of the old house, its whispering and groaning, and to the almost noiseless crackle of the fire as it burned down to embers.

At this moment his family was safe, and Dani was in his arms again. He wished tomorrow would never come.

But it would, and with it, the inevitable questions, the ones he saw in Dani's eyes whenever she wasn't on guard against him. The fact was, she didn't trust him anymore. By leaving, he had forfeited any right to expect either trust or love. He had accepted that fact, and the act of love didn't mean everything was okay again. It was her call.

When the room cooled, he eased off the sofa and, after hitting the remote to turn off the alarm system,
went to the bathroom. He refilled the vaporizer, checked on Sara, made a tour of the house and rebuilt the fire. Finally he sat in the recliner and pondered the future.

He thought of living in this house with Dani and Sara. There were a thousand improvements he could make to the place. He found himself eager to do them. And there was the job heading up the field office. Not as exciting as undercover work, but it was time he hung up his spurs, so to speak, and became the man his family needed.

If Dani would have him.

She had made love with him, but she, too, had gone two years without physical release. Add that to the terror of the past couple of months and it was no wonder she'd reacted passionately. So lovemaking didn't count. Not yet.

He wanted more. He wanted to be in her bed, but also in her heart. And that was closed against him.

Well, there it was—the cold, stark truth. He'd known he was taking a chance when he'd decided he had to cut them out of his life for their safety, but he hadn't realized how high the price would be. He hadn't figured on living with the regret hour by hour, day by day. And the loss. How did a man live when half his soul had died?

He had no right to ask anything from her. But he wanted it all, everything she'd once given him freely from her generous heart. He needed the deep inner peace she gave to him. It was for her and Sara that he wanted to rid the world of crime lords, kidnappers, drug dealers—the slimy underbelly of society.

But he had to give something back. That's where
he'd failed. As a wife, a mother, as a human being, Dani had needs, too. And he had failed her in all of them.

“What time is it?” she asked, startling him. She sat up and pushed the tangles from her face.

He had always liked seeing her first thing in the morning when he opened his eyes. He used to lie in bed and watch her sleep. She'd always been self-conscious that her hair wasn't combed and she wasn't fancied up, but she was a symbol of all that was right in his world.

“Nearly four.”

“You should go to bed. You don't sleep very much.”

He wasn't surprised that she had noticed. She was like that. “Will you come with me?” he asked, then was surprised by the question. He hadn't known that was what he was thinking, but he wanted her there, in bed beside him.

The firelight cast mysterious shadows in her eyes. Sometimes, when the light hit them right, the golden flecks gleamed, reminding him of the treasure he had once had, and that he had lost. He held his breath, waiting…

“I suppose I had better go to bed. Sara might awaken—”

“With me,” he interjected. “Will you sleep with me?”

The question hovered in the air between them, naked with his need and yearning. He suddenly knew it didn't matter. He was past masculine posturing. Some things were more important than pride. He wouldn't take the question back.