and threatening snow. She had ended up helping him, then walking across the street for coffee, which turned into a late meal, then he’d walked her to her car and driven behind her until she was safely in her small cozy house. He’d been waiting when the library opened the next morning. Her heart had quickened. When they’d married, he had moved from his sparse apartment to her two-bedroom cottage. Those had been the happy days, the star-crossed sun-kissed days.
“There’s no point in remembering.” She climbed out, slammed the pickup door and went into the house, her heart heavy with a mass of confused feelings.
He didn’t come in until he’d made a circuit of the house and the stable in the back that had been converted into a four-car garage. After fighting a battle with her conscience, she had told him he could park there, too.
He’d accepted her offer and was gone a half hour. She figured he was checking out the building. When he returned, a cobweb caught on his hat confirmed her suspicion.
His dark-blue gaze met hers. She was at once aware of the silence that surrounded them. They were alone.
Flames ignited in the depths of his eyes. His gaze roamed over every inch of her as if he were comparing her to his memories the way she found herself constantly doing. Sweet, treacherous yearning blazed over her. Her body answered the question in his eyes with a resounding yes.
Shaken, she looked away. Her heart beat like a trapped bird in a cage. Once they would have rushed into each other’s arms. Endless kisses would have been followed by endless caresses, the merging of their bodies and their souls. No! Don’t even think it.
Stretching her arms to the side, she clutched the edge of the countertop and held on, waiting for her body to follow her mind’s bidding. She gazed at the snow out the window and thought of cold things—winter rain, glaciers…loneliness. Heat radiated over her back.
Kyle’s hands clasped the counter beside hers. His warmth caressed her arms, her back, her thighs. She was trapped. Like a cornered animal, she couldn’t move, couldn’t think—
“It’s beautiful, isn’t it?”
His cheek brushed her hair as he leaned his head near and peered out the window. A tremor raced through her.
“The mountains can help put life into perspective,” he continued on a soft, husky note. “They lift our aspirations above the petty irritations of daily life.”
She stared at the snow-covered peaks, but her thoughts didn’t rise to lofty heights. They dwelt on more mundane matters—the earthly delights of kisses and lovemaking and the sharing of hearts and souls. She pressed her teeth into her lower lip and fought the yearning.
His hands touched hers, then glided up her arms. “When I look at the mountains, I think of you.”
He caressed her shoulders, then slid his fingers into her hair and gathered it into bunches in his fists. Through their reflected images in the windowpane, she saw him bury his face in the thick strands and inhale deeply.
“Why?” she asked, needing to know more, seeking an answer to why he had left her. “Why think of me?”
He lifted his head and met her gaze in the reflection. “Because, like the mountains, you remind me of all the good things in life. You are the good things.”
His gaze didn’t waver, but compelled her to listen, to believe what he said. She wanted to. Heaven help her, but she wanted so desperately to turn and fling herself into his arms and beg him never to leave again.
“Dani,” he whispered.
Her name seemed to echo through the silent house, full of need and a desperation she’d never heard from this man who had never truly needed anyone. His lips touched her temple. His hands gathered her hair and lifted it aside. He kissed the back of her neck.
She closed her eyes, feeling vulnerable and helpless. The way she had when Sara was taken. Helpless. And alone.
“No,” she said. It was hardly a murmur.
“Don’t shut me out.”
She heard the agony, and it stunned her. The man she had known would never express such an emotion. He dipped his head. She felt the touch of his lips against her throat, a butterfly caress that threatened to melt the icy core that had enabled her to survive the past two years. For a moment, she imagined that he had been as lonely as she.
“No,” she said again, stronger this time. “I can’t go back. I’m not that person anymore.” Whirling, she faced him. “I don’t believe in us anymore.”
Silence so deep, so filled with despair she thought she would weep, echoed around them. His features shifted slightly, becoming as unreadable as stone. He dropped his hands and stepped back.
She retreated to the small office off her bedroom and turned on the computer. Her hands shook. By sheer willpower, she forced her thoughts to the task at hand. She had a job to do. She had to support herself and Sara. She wouldn’t depend on anyone else. She couldn’t go back.
Bending her head over her notes, she began the task of checking actual library inventory against what the files said they were supposed to have. The inventory and updating of the files for the whole county library system had provided a much needed job and distraction from Kyle’s disappearance when she had first arrived in Whitehorn. She worked twenty hours a week on a schedule that suited her.
She was building a life here. She didn’t need anything else, or anyone other than her child.
A short while later Kyle appeared in the doorway. His face was devoid of expression other than the sternly disciplined remoteness he assumed when working on a case. “Rafe Rawlings and Shane McBride are here. You want to join us?”
She nodded, saved her data on the computer and followed him out to the kitchen. The two men were at the table, coffee mugs in hand. Kyle had made a fresh pot.
Make yourself at home. She sent the thought to her errant husband and couldn’t decide if she was angry or not, or if she should be or not. A husband who wasn’t a husband was a very confusing proposition. She avoided meeting his eyes. Therein lay danger, but she couldn’t say what kind.
“Good morning, gentlemen. Please, keep your seats,” she said, putting on her best hostess smile.
She flicked on the oven and prepared a pan of frozen cinnamon rolls, which would bake in ten minutes. She joined the men at the table in the meantime.
“Start at the beginning,” Kyle requested of the men.
Shane McBride told Kyle about the day Angela had come to interview for a teacher’s position and had been roughed up in the parking lot outside the school. Sara and Jenny had taken a shortcut through there on their way to rehearsal for the Christmas pageant and had witnessed the incident and started screaming. One of the men had chased after them and grabbed Sara, who, as the girls often did, had exchanged coats with Jenny McCallum. Jenny’s name was sewn into her jacket and the two men believed they had the heiress to the Kincaid fortune.
“That’s why they thought they could get a million dollars in ransom,” Shane added.
“The McCallums got the money together to pay the ransom even though it wasn’t their daughter,” Danielle said. “I’ll
