the wall.”
Sara shook her head vehemently. Curls escaped the hair bands and sprung out around her temples.
Danielle frowned as she checked her daughter’s set face, her fear-filled eyes. “You have to tell me—”
The harsh ring-ring-ring of the old manual doorbell tore a gasp from her and froze the words in her throat.
She and Sara stood as if suspended in the shadowy world of late afternoon, caught on the cusp of winter’s darkness and unable to return to the bright warm world of the kitchen where dinner bubbled in the pot.
The noise grated across her nerves as the bell rang again. Whoever it was, was impatient.
Still she hesitated. Would the kidnappers come to the front door and ring the bell? Maybe pretending to be from the electric company or something? The lights had been flickering ominously all afternoon and a blizzard was churning up outside.
Sara tugged at her hand.
Danielle put on a brave smile and went to the door. She edged the window blind away from the etched glass panes of the oak door and peered outside, her heart going like a frenzied trip-hammer.
An unfamiliar shape stood in the dark shadows of the porch. Definitely masculine. Tall. Lean. His black Stetson wore a rim of snow on top and around the brim. His dark-blue parka was zipped up to his chin. She couldn’t make out the details of his face.
Fear ate at her. Letting go of Sara, she put her right hand behind her and clasped the handle of the .38.
Point and fire.
“Yes?” she said into the crack between the blind and the etched panes. “Who is it?”
A voice from the past spoke to her. “Kyle.”
It was shocking, like meeting someone you knew to be dead and buried right on the street, alive and walking. “Kyle?” she repeated as if she’d never heard of him.
“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
