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.
Silence fell over the room. An uneasy one. The quiet that had first attracted him to Danielle was now a shield against him. She had withdrawn, enclosed herself in a cocoon of mute hostility that excluded him. He hadn’t expected anything different after reading her letter.
But a man can dream. If only…
He buried the regret. Feelings didn’t count in this case. He wasn’t leaving until he found the guys who had kidnapped his daughter and now threatened his family. Then he would leave. If Dani said he must.
A tiny unexpected light flared in his heart. He extinguished it with an impatience new to him. She didn’t want him here now. She wouldn’t want him to stay.
“How long are you staying?” she asked, shaking him out of his introspection.
“However long it takes,” he said.
Her frown indicated this wasn’t an acceptable answer.
“I’m on R and R for two months.” He figured he’d have the bad guys locked up by then. If not, he would stay longer. That was one thing she didn’t have a choice about.
“Rest and recuperation,” she interpreted. “Did you finish the case you were on?”
He nodded. Two years ago, he’d been assigned to a jury-tampering case that had quickly expanded into gangland violence involving extortion, gambling, racketeering, drugs, you name it. Upon seeing one of the gang’s own family—the man’s wife and kids—soon after they’d been blown to bits because of a disagreement with the gang boss, he had notified Luke, his contact at the regional FBI office, to get Danielle and Sara out of town, just in case the crime lord should find out who he was and decide to do the same to his family. The deeper he’d gotten into their evil world, the more dangerous he had realized it would be for his family if he was exposed.
Her mouth tightened. “I can see you’re not going to regale me with details.”
Too late he realized he should have explained what had happened. But blabbing on about his cases wasn’t part of his credo. It increased the chances of spilling too much to the wrong person at some unguarded moment. He had made it a habit not to discuss details at all. Life was simpler and safer…that way.
“The case is finished. Right now, I’m worried about you and Sara.”
At the sound of her name, his daughter looked at him. Her eyes, so like his own, held fear and wariness. That distrustful gaze stabbed at something deep and primitive inside him.
A memory came to him. Sara, eyes sparkling, dashing into his arms as soon as he came home from a week-long chase after an escaped felon. The sweet baby scent of her—talc and lotion and grape lollipop.
A fist closed around his heart and squeezed hard. He had missed a lot of his little girl’s life.
Danielle gave a little snort of ironic laughter. He looked a question her way.
“Yeah, it’s a good thing we were here in Whitehorn where bad things never happen. When Luke said we had to go, I chose this area because my family once vacationed here. I thought it was safe.”
He hadn’t heard cynicism from her before. It bothered him that she had changed from his memories of her. She had been a friendly, unassuming woman when he’d met her. There had been a quietness about her. He had fallen into the enticing peace of her inner goodness and never wanted to come out.
Dani. Her name echoed through him, his talisman against the darker forces in his life.
He wanted to be buried inside her, exploring her passion, loving her gentle yet feisty ways, her flashes of humor. He needed her, the woman who had looked at him as if her world were contained in his arms.
The sense of loss hit depths that he had carefully avoided stirring for two years.
Danielle, unable to stand the long, empty silence during the meal, rose as soon as she finished. She excused Sara, who returned to a video she’d been watching in the family room, and took her dishes to the sink.
“Do you want more?” she asked, compelled to be polite to the blue-eyed stranger who had watched her with an unrelenting gaze the entire meal,
