in the heart he’d always known had been totally his.
Well, he’d found her again, and he’d seen how she felt about it. While he’d used every resource of strength he’d had not to haul her against him and lose his living nightmare in her loving kiss, inside her welcoming arms and body, all she’d done was scramble to put distance between them.
A distance as emotional as it was physical. A distance she seemed determined to keep there.
So his parents were right: she’d escaped from him; she’d been glad he was dead. She’d found a new life in Sydney, leaving a trail so faint that it took almost two years to get a handle on her whereabouts.
Was the memory of what they’d been to each other so insignificant in her eyes? Was he so unimportant to her?
The child was definitely his; he’d seen the pictures of their child, a girl named Casey. The eyes were his, as were the dimples. There was no way Sam could claim her daughter was another man’s. He’d get DNA tests if he had to.
But, damn it, he shouldn’t have to—not with Sam, his Sam, whom he’d once trusted with his life, his heart and his entire future. Never in his vilest dreams had he believed that Sam could be this hard, so selfish as to disappear without trace, to take his child away from his parents, to deny them the comfort of his only child when they believed he was dead.
“What happened?” she broke into his reverie, sounding as if she was driven to ask. “To your leg, I mean.”
Funny that he’d been the one so long in a war zone, facing life and death every day, fighting death more than once; yet the real question wasn’t about him. What happened, Sam? What changed you?
He shrugged, feeling the shadows fall down on him. If he was going to break through Sam’s barriers, he had to lower some of his own. But the memories of Mbuka—oh, God help him, would he ever forget? Just getting through each night without taking something to kill the dreams—dreams of what he’d lived through left him a shaking mass of pain, waking from fevered dreams drenched in sweat, screaming Sam’s name like a prayer—seemed a victory.
“Brett?” Her voice sounded tentative, and he knew she’d seen him shaking.
“Sniper shot.” If he didn’t keep details to the bare minimum, the dreams would be worse tonight. “A splinter tribe near the Congo needed a doctor. But this time the cruciate ligament shredded into strips, stabbed the cartilage and got infected. I was no use to the warlords sick, so they left me out on the road to die. I was picked up by a tribe on the run with some compassion. They dosed me up with traditional healing cures and left me with some UN volunteers, who got me to a camp hospital.”
“This time?” she whispered, her eyes filled with horror. “Is that what happened to you when you…disappeared.”
He nodded; she deserved to know that much, to know why he hadn’t phoned or come home to her. “It’s an occupational hazard of being a doctor working in war zones. It took two years to escape from the first warlord, but I was captured again on the road south.”
“Why didn’t it hit the news?” she whispered, those amazing blue eyes of hers enormous with disbelief. “Your father has power and influence. Why didn’t your disappearance hit the world media? Why didn’t they look for you?”
“I signed the contract with my eyes open, knowing I could be shot or taken. It wasn’t anyone’s fault.” He shrugged. “Everyone assumed I was dead.” Funny, he knew that should mean that it wasn’t Sam’s fault, either, and he couldn’t blame her for believing he was dead—but he did blame her. She’d loved him, damn it. Why hadn’t she believed, as Mum and Dad had? Why had she just packed up and left?
“They didn’t check to see if you were there? How fair is that on families?” she cried.
“They had the living to save. The boundaries change in war zones every day, Sam. There is no way to check, to be sure.” He gave her a tired smile. “I’m sure they gave you the standard patter. ‘There is a very slim chance he could be alive, but please get on with your lives. You may never know.’”
She gulped, bit her lip and nodded. Her eyes were dark with emotion. “I—I believed them. I had to get out. Your parents were so—so…”
He nodded. “If Dad could have gone there and throttled someone, he would. But he’s in a wheelchair. He had a series of strokes.” He looked at her. “He had the first a week after you left.”
Her lashes fluttered down; she bit her lip. “I’m sorry, Brett. I didn’t know.”
“If you’d stayed, you would have known, Sam. Would it have changed anything for you?” he asked, unable to hide the fury. “Would you have stayed to help them through the nightmare? Would you have given the gift of their grandchild, my only child, to my sick parents? Maybe you wouldn’t have turned into a human shadow, changing your name and hiding my daughter from my family—her family, who only wanted to know and love her?”
She stood still, unmoving, her pallor even more strongly marked. She either couldn’t or wouldn’t answer him.
He watched and waited. From experience he knew Sam would rush into speech and say whatever was on her mind if he kept his peace. He’d always learned a lot about her that way—but then, that had been when she’d loved and trusted him. Back when he’d held her in his arms as he’d waited for her to purge her pain. But in the lengthening silence, he knew how far he’d have to go to regain her trust.
That goes both ways, Sam, he thought grimly. Like it or not, they had to deal with each other. If she thought he’d walk out on his daughter, she’d better think again.
It seemed they both had some thinking to do. The one thing he’d banked on in this living nightmare was that Sam would be the girl he’d fallen in love with, loved so hard and deep that he’d married her after only eight weeks. But she had changed, so profoundly he found it difficult to recognize her. At this moment he didn’t know if the Sam he’d loved and would have trusted with his life still existed inside the lovely yet withdrawn woman in front of him.
“Coffee?” she asked when the quiet stretched out to unbearable proportions.
“If you have decaf.” At this time of night caffeine kept his mind active and led to the kind of visions that made him reach for the tranquilisers.
“Okay.” With relief in her eyes, she left—no doubt to gather her thoughts. Her legs and hands were shaking. She held on to pieces of furniture as she walked.
She was still in shock. As a doctor, he knew he needed to go easy on her and wait before he made any judgments. Anything else was unfair to Sam.
To his surprise, he found he needed time, as well. He thought he’d known exactly what he was going to say to her, but his mind had emptied the moment he’d seen her in the pool, as lithe and beautiful as he remembered.
He sighed and rubbed his knee; it was aching badly. He’d have to take a painkiller soon, but he wanted to be coherent for what was coming.
He’d never felt so lost or alone in his life, as if he was still missing in action…
Or maybe it was his world that had gone missing. His tunnel-vision focus for so many years had been getting home to Sam, his light and life. But that particular tunnel had been blasted out of existence, as if he’d
