fingers were at her throat, massaging the vicious red mark left by his hand. She moistened her lips with the tip of her tongue, “I think you already know,” she said, as the quiver in her voice shook Pierce anew. He felt his muscles tighten with awareness, with anticipation, as if preparing for a situation fraught with danger.
Their gazes clung for one electric moment, and then she whispered into the silence, “I’m Jesse.”
* * *
Jessica thought for a moment he would collapse. He staggered backward, supporting himself against the counter much as she’d done earlier. Her own knees were shaking so badly she could hardly stand. The sound of her heartbeat seemed to echo through the silence.
Pierce had come back. Somehow, some way, her husband had found his way back to her. But why had he left? Where had he been? And, dear God, why was he here now after all this time? The questions exploded in her head, mirroring the confusion and shock in Pierce’s brown eyes.
She closed her eyes, trying to shut him out, but the man standing before her drew her gaze against her will. He looked at once so dear and familiar, and yet so strange and frightening. His once handsome face was haggard and deeply lined. His body, once powerful and athletic, had thinned to gauntness. A narrow white scar sliced the left side of his face, marring what had once been a perfect jawline.
She reached a trembling hand up to touch it. “What happened to you?” she whispered. “Where in God’s name have you been?”
He recoiled from her touch, and Jessica instantly drew her hand back, nursing it against her heart as if to hide the bitterness of his rejection. His brown eyes were bleak, distant now. The eyes of a stranger.
“I don’t know,” he said numbly.
“You don’t know what happened to you?” She knew her voice sounded disbelieving, but Jessica couldn’t help it. The whole situation was unbelievable. Incredible, but terrifyingly real. “You don’t know where you’ve been for five years? Were you in an accident? Is that how you got those scars?”
Pierce put an unsteady hand to his temple. “I have no idea what you’re talking about,” he said.
“Are you saying…you don’t remember anything?”
He shook his head. “I don’t know. I remember leaving here to go get ice cream. The next thing I know, I’m standing in front of the freezer in the store. I get the ice cream, I walk back here, and in the space of half an hour, everything has changed. It’s like…a nightmare. Am I going crazy, Jesse?”
At that moment, Jessica wasn’t completely sure of her own sanity. Her heart was beating against her chest so quickly and so hard that for a second she thought she might actually pass out. She took a deep breath, trying to calm herself. “You walked out that door five years ago,” she said shakily, “and until you walked back in a few minutes ago, I hadn’t seen or heard from you in all that time. I thought you were dead.”
If he noticed the faint note of betrayal in her voice, he chose to ignore it, concentrating instead on her words. “Five years? That’s impossible!”
“Look at me,” she said desperately. “You said yourself I look different. I am different. I’m five years older.”
His proprietary gaze raked over her, stirring something in Jessica she thought had long since died. She struggled to keep her expression calm, composed, but her mind reeled in confusion. The dark gaze probed her face, making her only too aware of the changes five years had wrought in her appearance.
“If what you say is true, then that must mean—” he trailed off as his gaze dropped to her flat stomach once again “—that must mean…you’ve had the baby.”
In the last few minutes, Jessica’s emotions had run the gamut—terror, shock, disbelief, anger and maybe even a glimmer of joy. But the emotion she felt now overwhelmed all the others. The fierce protectiveness for her child settled around her like an impenetrable shield.
Max was hers. She’d given birth to him all alone. She’d raised him single-handedly. She’d made the sacrifices, she’d worked the endless hours to provide for a child she loved more than life itself. No one would take that away from her. Max was the one thing in her life she had ever been able to count on.
She opened her mouth—to say what, she was never quite sure—but suddenly the back door slammed, and both of them jumped. In unison, Jessica and Pierce whirled toward the kitchen doorway where five-year-old Max, clad in jeans, a T-shirt and a shiny red Superman cape, stood staring up at them.
The dark hair, the huge brown eyes, the stubborn set of his jaw and chin—all were identical to the stranger who stared back at him.
The very air quivered with emotion. Max’s solemn little eyes took the stranger’s measure and seemed to find him lacking. His gaze shifted to Jessica then back to Pierce. He squinted his eyes. “Who are you, mister?” he demanded suspiciously.
Jessica’s own gaze was locked on Pierce’s white face. She could see a muscle throb in his cheek, saw emotion after emotion sweep across his features. There was no mistaking Max’s identity. He looked exactly like his father. Pierce took a tentative step toward him.
The slight movement roused Jessica. She made an involuntary sound of protest which drew both pairs of male eyes. She knelt and opened her arms, and Max flew across the room to her. She hugged him tightly against her as both of them stared up at Pierce.
“My God,” he said woodenly as he gazed at mother and son across the room, “I don’t even know if I’m dead or alive.”
He didn’t wait for a response but turned and walked through the swinging door of the kitchen. Jessica wanted to go after him but found that her heart was suddenly pulling her in two different directions as Max’s little arms caught around her neck and held on for dear life.
“That man’s scary, Mom,” he whispered, clinging to her. “Is he going to hurt us?”
“No, darling, he won’t hurt us,” Jessica soothed, hugging him. But even as she gave voice to her denial, she could feel the tender flesh of her neck where Pierce’s hand—a real, flesh-and-blood hand—had pressed.
A warning pounded in her brain. He’s a stranger, she thought. The man somewhere in her house was not the Pierce she had known and loved. Wherever he had been, whatever he’d gone through in the past five years had changed him. She only had to look into those haunted eyes to know that.
Maybe she’d never known him, she thought with a jolt. She’d shared her life with him, shared his bed, but had she ever really known him?
She thought now, as she’d done for those five years, of all the times he’d been away during their marriage. So many of the trips had been unexpected it seemed now in retrospect. Sometimes when he’d been gone, she hadn’t heard from him for days at a time, but the answer to that had seemed very plausible. Many of the remote areas he traveled to in Europe and Asia, looking for treasures for The Lost Attic, his antique shop, didn’t have easily accessible telephones. In fact, Jessica had been to some of those off-the-beaten-track places with him.
Back then, it had never occurred to her to question Pierce’s absences, the lack of phone calls. She’d simply accepted it. But maybe she should have questioned Pierce. Maybe she wouldn’t have gone through
