that was connected to the little girl she had once been.
It was a rite of passage, Anne thought sadly.
She was just about to turn on the TV and call her daughter into the family room when she heard the doorbell.
Someone was at her door.
Anne looked at her watch. Ordinarily, she would be still at the animal clinic at this time. Her friends all knew that, which meant that this wasn’t a social call. And it was way too early for Hank.
Maybe one of her neighbors had seen that her car was in the driveway and was bringing over their beloved dog or cat for some free medical advice. For some reason, some of her neighbors thought that just because she worked at the vet clinic, she knew everything that the vets did.
Only one way to find out who was at her door, she thought with a resigned sigh.
She went to the door, preparing to dispatch the neighbor and their pet as quickly as possible.
Opening the door, Anne said, “What seems to be the problem?” before she actually looked at the person who was standing on her doorstep.
The word problem came out as more of a squeak than an actual word.
Her heart was suddenly pounding in her ears. Anne blinked, just in case she actually was seeing things.
The person on her doorstep didn’t vanish, didn’t change.
She had imagined this very scene so many times in the last dozen years, she couldn’t even begin to count them. Now that it actually seemed to be taking place, she felt as if her entire body had been dipped in glue, then held fast against some invisible canvas. She was unable to move.
Unable to even breathe.
All she could do was stare at him in complete disbelief.
Slowly, she fought back from the emotional paralysis that held her in its grip, struggling to say something, a sentence, a word.
A sound.
“Hello, Anne.”
His deep voice rumbled, the sound echoing within her very chest, interfering with the beat of her heart, or what might have passed for a beat right now if it wasn’t as paralyzed as the rest of her.
Finally, with the inside of her mouth drier than the desert and swiftly turning into sand, Anne forced herself to say something.
Or rather, to say a word. A name.
His name.
“Danny?” she asked hoarsely, her throat all but closing up.
She saw a smile, that same faint, funny little smile she had loved so well, curve his lips just before he confirmed what she was asking.
“Yes, Anne, it’s me.”
The moment he said that, she felt them. Felt the tears that she had been harboring within her for the last twelve years, tears she’d forbade herself to ever shed, even once. She had been able to maintain almost superhuman control over herself, afraid that if she ever allowed herself to cry, to shed so much as a single tear, then there would be no way to stop the flow.
Twelve years’ worth of tears.
Anne bit her lower lip, desperately trying to prevent them from falling. Struggling to keep from losing the battle she felt she was doomed to lose.
And then she heard him hesitantly say her name again, the name he used to call her, when the world was so full of possibilities and their love was brand-new.
“Annie?”
In the minutes before he’d knocked on Jamie’s door, anticipating the end of a twelve-year separation, Dan had experienced a strong bout of nerves. But he realized now that that had been a piece of cake in comparison to what he’d went through just before he finally rang Annie’s doorbell.
For one thing, he hadn’t been sure who would be on the other side of that door, Annie or her husband.
Jamie hadn’t told him about Annie’s marriage when he’d urged him to go see her, but he’d known about Annie’s marriage to Hank for a long time now.
He wasn’t quite as technologically backward as everyone obviously seemed to think. During one of his bouts of homesickness, he had availed himself of the computer in the ranch town’s library and poked around on social media, searching for information about someone he knew.
About Anne.
He himself wasn’t on any websites, but that didn’t keep him from looking for information about Anne.
And he’d found it.
He found several photos of Annie, her husband and her little girl posted. He remembered the first time he saw the photo of Annie and Hank. It felt as if someone had taken a jagged knife to his chest and savagely carved out his heart. It was also the last time he looked at that site. It hurt too much.
But then he told himself that he had no right to feel that way. He’d left her life; there was no reason to believe she would spend her days pining away for him. He’d left town—and Annie—because he felt he was unworthy of her, felt that he didn’t deserve someone as good and pure as her.
That meant that she was free to go on with her life, to marry anyone she chose.
And he was happy for her, happy that she had found someone to love, someone to take care of her. Someone who had obviously started a family with her. He had no right to feel as wounded as he did.
Nonetheless, wounded was how he felt.
And after all these years, there was no denying that he still loved her.
Dan had thought twice about just turning up on her doorstep.
And then he’d thought some more.
However, his need to see Annie again, to just look at her outweighed his fear that she would see right through him and guess how he still felt about her.
But that was his problem, not Annie’s, and for her sake, he intended to keep his guard up and maintain a tight rein on all those feelings. Above all, he didn’t want to risk making her feel uncomfortable in his presence, not for anything in the world.
Annie stared at the man on her doorstep. A thousand questions instantly sprang up in her head, crowding out one another. A thousand questions that she wanted to put to him. But giving voice to any of them would only tear at the scabs that covered wounds which had taken so very long to heal.
And then there was the little girl who was only two rooms away.
Danny’s little girl.
It was one thing when she couldn’t find Danny to tell him that he was a father, but it was entirely another thing when all that separated Danny from finding out that
