A Family Homecoming (5 page)

Because there was no defense for abandoning your family. It was a thing beyond understanding, beyond forgiving. But there was an answer: Because he hadn't cared enough to stay. If he had loved her…

She pressed both hands to her chest and waited for the ache to subside.

D
anielle frowned at the racket coming from the attic when she returned to the house after walking Sara to school the next day. What the heck was Kyle doing up there? She kicked off her boots in the mudroom and went to investigate.

She found him in the attic bedroom, dismantling the old brass bedstead in there. “What are you doing?”

“Taking the bed apart.”

“I can see that,” she stated impatiently. “Why?”

“I'm moving it downstairs to the bedroom across from you and Sara.” He pushed a lock of dark hair off his forehead and straightened. “With your permission.”

She wanted to say no just to be obstinate, but that would be petty. She nodded. “I'll help.”

Gathering the six slats into a stack, she carried them downstairs and into the bedroom across the hall from hers. Kyle followed with the railings. Then she hefted the foot railings while he carried the headboard. Together they assembled the bed and aligned it against the wall.

“The mattress and springs aren't very good.”

He nodded. “I thought I would pick up a set in town this morning. Is that okay with you?”

“For a two-month stay?”

“Sara will need something bigger soon. She'll outgrow the youth bed within another year.”

“Yes. She's sprouting up so fast.” Danielle started to tell him about how fast the girl outgrew her clothes. She closed her mouth on the words.

“What?” Kyle asked.

“Nothing. Just…she's growing….”

“I know.” He took two steps closer. “Next thing we know she'll be putting on lipstick and heading off on her first date. And then to college.”

Danielle tried to smile, but her lips trembled.

He reached over and ran a finger along her bottom lip. “Does that bother you?” He dropped his hand.

She shook her head, then changed her mind and nodded. “I want her to have a normal life, but I also want to protect her from ever getting hurt.” She stopped, afraid she would reveal too much.

“The way you were hurt?”

Her gaze flew to his.

“Don't you think I know?” He shook his head. “I wanted to protect you and Sara from harm.”

“Is that what you told yourself? That you were
doing it for our own good when you didn't contact us for two years?”

She thought of the nights when she lay in bed alone and wondered if he was dead or alive. She had agonized over him as much as she had during the fourteen days Sara had been missing. “I don't think so. I think it was a convenient way to forget we existed. Your career was more important.”

Kyle grasped her shoulders and felt his wife steel herself, as if expecting him to do violence. It hit him—really hit him—his wife thought him capable of hurting her. He was a stranger to her as well as to his daughter.

After getting the letter, he knew he had lost his family, but he had never thought Danielle would distrust him, not his levelheaded Dani, who had matched his passion with her own, whose calm center had soothed his soul after his dealings with the harsh underbelly of society.

Her hazel green eyes continued to watch him warily. Her face was pale, the tiny freckles across her nose and cheeks visible as she waited for whatever he would do next.

“Two years ago,” he said bitterly, “I was assigned a case that seemed simple enough. The man I was after had no conscience. He would have gunned down his own mother if he'd thought she'd crossed him. If someone had followed me home or traced a call to you, if the gang had discovered I wasn't who I said, they would have wasted you and Sara without a thought. I couldn't take that chance.”

Her gaze didn't soften. “You made a decision that
important to our marriage without consulting me. Do you think I have so little courage?”

She pulled away from his hands and bumped into the wall. The dull
clunk
he heard reminded him of something he'd noticed yesterday. He slipped his hand between her and the wall. The gun was tucked into her waistband. He pulled it out. A .38 semiautomatic.

“Are you licensed to carry concealed?” he demanded, worry eating at him. Danielle was obviously determined to defend herself and Sara, but would she use the weapon if she needed to? It could mean the difference between life and death. With no idea how ruthless the criminal mind could be, she might think she could scare the kidnappers away.

“Are you going to report me if I'm not?”

She returned his glare without blinking. A standoff. His Dani was a match for any man. He smiled. “I suppose I'm lucky I didn't get shot when I turned up on your doorstep in the middle of a blizzard.”

She retrieved her weapon and tucked it under her shirt once more. “If Sara hadn't been present, I might have considered it.”

A tendril of auburn hair had escaped the band she wore around her head. He fought an urge to brush it off her forehead. Where his wife was concerned, he had forfeited all rights to them as a couple. He wondered if he had been wrong not to tell her of the danger and to let her make the decision regarding their safety. But it was too late for that. He'd done what he thought was right. Why did it suddenly feel as if it might be wrong?

“You were right,” he said slowly. “It was easier
to forget you and Sara existed than to think about you during the dark hours of the night. When this is over, I'll get out of your life forever, if that's the way it has to be.”

“How? You're Sara's father. Are you going to abandon her completely?”

“When did you develop that razor tongue?” he asked quietly, then continued before she could come up with a retort, “I'll expect visiting rights to Sara.”

He headed for the kitchen, needing to put distance between them and the desires that raged through him. Only Dani could make him lose control, and he couldn't afford that. He was pushed to the limit as need and futility knifed through him. He wished he could go back….

Danielle stared after him. The fact that he had offered any explanation at all on his absence stunned her. Why, she thought in frustration, couldn't he have explained himself two years ago? She would have accepted his decision for Sara's sake. But he hadn't even asked her. Maybe the danger had been a ready excuse because he'd been bored.

She went to her room to put on some lipstick and a pair of sneakers. “I have to go to the library and do some work this morning,” she told him, entering the kitchen a few minutes later.

“I'll drive you. I need to run some errands. How long do you think you will be?”

“Until noon. I thought I'd pick up Sara and stop for lunch before coming home.”

“I have some things to do in town. I'll go with you.”

The fake formality of the discussion bothered her.
“I don't need you to guard me. Sara is the one in danger.”

“And you're a direct link to her.”

“I hadn't looked at the situation in that light,” she admitted. “The kidnappers could follow me….”

“Exactly. Ready?”

He led the way out the door, grabbing his parka as they left by the mudroom and went to the garage. The path had been shoveled.

“You've been busy this morning,” she murmured.

He cast her an unreadable glance. His tone was cynical when he spoke. “As a long-term guest, I figured I may as well be useful.”

A frisson swept down her back as she recalled times he had teased her about how useful a man was around the house. With that came other memories—long, lazy winter afternoons of football games and popcorn and lovemaking on the sofa in front of the fire, summer afternoons of hiking in the woods, of hidden meadows and a mossy bed.

Heat followed the chill, making her feel feverish and dizzy. She put a hand to her temple. Maybe she was coming down with something.

He stopped inside the garage and studied her. She couldn't meet his gaze. Last night she'd had such terrible dreams filled with danger and with longing….

“What are you thinking?” he asked.

She shook her head. “Nothing important.”

His eyes darkened dangerously. “Then it must have been about me.”

“It was about Sara,” she lied. She was relieved when he climbed into the truck without challenging her.

On the way to the library, she berated herself for being susceptible to his masculine allure and the memories of their shared past. It was the sleeplessness, she decided, that made her restless and irritable and shattered her self-control.

Kyle went into the old brick building with her and inspected the place thoroughly before he left. She showed him the office where she would be working and gave her word that she wouldn't leave the building until he came for her.

Once absorbed in the inventory check, she set other problems aside. The hours flew past. The next thing she knew, he was back, standing in the doorway and watching her when she glanced up.

“It's time to pick up Sara,” he said. “I would go by myself, but she doesn't trust me yet. I don't want to be alone with her until she does.”

Danielle nodded and closed the computer files. She gathered her papers into their folder and tucked them into her briefcase. “Ready,” she announced.

“I got the mattress and springs and took them to the house,” he said.

“Fine.”

He picked up her jacket and held it while she slipped it on. His fingers brushed her neck, leaving a trail of fire wherever they touched. She worried about that fact all the way to the school.

Rafe was waiting for them inside the schoolroom. “We had a report of two men spotted out on the county road near where Sara was held. The rancher said one guy was a stranger, but he thought the other was Willie Sparks—”

“Who's he?” Kyle broke in.

“A local boy, into misdemeanors as a kid, and some petty felonies—breaking and entering, shoplifting—later on.”

“Do you think he was one of the kidnappers?”

Rafe shrugged. “I don't know.” He glanced at Sara, who was helping Lynn put up the posters for class the next day. “I was wondering if we could show Sara a picture of Willie and see if she could identify him.”

He and Kyle looked at Danielle.

“I would prefer to check with the doctor first and see what she thinks. It's only been a little over three weeks since Sara got away. She still doesn't speak.”

Kyle's gaze locked with hers. “Sara won't be safe until we have those two guys behind bars.”

“I know, but…”

“If we showed her several pictures and let her point to anyone she thought was familiar?” Rafe suggested. “We wouldn't press her about it.”

Danielle could sense the men's desire to get on with the investigation. She resented the pressure they silently exerted. She pressed her fingertips to one temple where the beginnings of a headache pinged in her skull.

“Dani,” Kyle said.

She jerked at the nickname. Heat flooded her body and rose to her face. The name had once been an endearment, spoken during the moments of bliss when his hands and mouth had roamed over her as they made mad, exquisite love and later, when they lay drowsy and content in each other's arms.
Go away,
she ordered the troubling memories.

“I…all right. But I want to be with her.”

“Of course,” Kyle agreed smoothly. “When can you arrange it?” he asked Rafe.

“Saturday?”

Again both men looked at her. Danielle nodded. “At the house. It will be best if Sara is in her own home. She'll be more comfortable than at the police station.”

“Great. I'll come out around ten, if that's okay.”

She agreed, then went to claim Sara. Rafe was gone when Lynn locked up and the four of them walked to the parking lot. After saying goodbye to the teacher, Kyle drove them to the main square in town and parked in front of the Hip Hop Café.

“This okay for lunch?” he asked.

Sara nodded before Danielle could speak. Looking at her daughter's pleased countenance, she agreed. She was sorry the minute they walked into the odd little restaurant with its mishmash of articles from ornate mirrors to a moth-eaten moose head on the wall. The town gossip sat at one of the tables. She motioned them over before Danielle could shepherd them in a different direction.

“Well, if this isn't a surprise,” Lily Mae Wheeler exclaimed, her earrings, which were two bright-green parrots perched on gold wires, swinging madly from each ear as she looked from one person to the other.

Sara, who thought Lily Mae was neat, took a seat. That left Danielle no choice but to join them. Kyle sat next to her, his eyes busy taking in the dining room and each person in it. When he looked at her, he smiled.

Caught off guard, she smiled back.

“Well, so this is your husband,” Lily Mae said.
“We've been wondering if you were real or made up to cover an embarrassing circumstance.” She glanced meaningfully at Sara.

A dark red tinge crept up Kyle's neck. “Danielle and I have been married for six years,” he informed the busybody in no uncertain terms.

Lily Mae giggled, then leaned close. “Well, years ago we had one librarian who told one whopper after another. Lexine Baxter left town as a teenager, then came back pretending to be a children's librarian. Turned out she was a criminal, killed her father-in-law and husband and no telling how many others to get her hands on the Kincaid fortune.”

Danielle felt the air on her neck lift.

Kyle leaned forward. “Did she have a partner?”

“Oh, yes. She killed him, too. At her wedding to poor ol' Dugin Kincaid, would you believe?”

Kyle looked disappointed and settled back into the chair. The waitress came to take their order.

“I'm up for a chili dog with lots of fries on the side. How about you?” he asked Sara.

Her eyes sparkled and she nodded shyly. Danielle didn't argue with their choices, but, setting a good example, she ordered the vegetable plate lunch.