A Family Homecoming (7 page)

He watched while Danielle removed Sara's coat, then her clothing and slipped warm, footed pajamas on. She saw a smile dance at the corners of his mouth for a second before his expression became unreadable again.

“Let me,” he murmured when she started to lift Sara.

He picked their daughter up and held her while
Danielle pulled the covers back on the youth bed. Sara opened her eyes when she was tucked in. She pointed to the books crammed into the headboard of her bed and gave Danielle an expectant look. A story was part of their bedtime ritual.

“It's late,” Danielle told her. “You watched a video with Jenny—”

“I'll read her a story,” Kyle volunteered.

There was a beat of silence while Sara looked at her father warily, then she nodded.

Danielle didn't have the heart to deny Kyle the moment with Sara. Besides, Sara needed to learn to trust some males again if she was ever to have a normal life. Nodding absently—she didn't want to make a big thing of it—Danielle busied herself around the room.

After Sara and Kyle had selected a book, he sat on the floor beside the low youth bed and began reading in his deep, pleasant voice. He liked to sing and had a fine singing voice, Danielle had discovered after their marriage, but he never used it in front of other people, only her.

When she had asked why, he shook his head and said nobody wanted to hear his caterwauling. Later, she had realized he was shy about it, except with her.

Her heart gave its usual hitch at memories of their former life together. She quickly gathered her nightgown and robe and went to the bathroom to change.

If only a person could excise the past from their brains as easily as a surgeon could cut out a defective organ, she mused as she washed her face and brushed her teeth. Finished, she drifted down the hall and stopped at the bedroom door.

Kyle finished the story and closed the book. He pulled the covers up around Sara's neck, then hesitated. Slowly, he reached down and touched her cheek with his lips.

Danielle held her breath.

Sara stared up at her father, their identical blue eyes only four inches apart. Then she wrapped her arms around his neck and planted a shy kiss on his jaw.

“Good night, punkin,” he murmured, brushing a hand over the unruly curls spread over the pillow.

Danielle hurried away, down the hall and into the kitchen, her heart thumping for reasons of its own. He was a hard man in some ways. There was determination—maybe even ruthlessness—within him to do whatever he thought was right. But there was also that exquisite gentleness, a tenderness so true and deep it melted all sorrows and made the world right. Her world…he'd made her world right.

In a few minutes she heard his steps in the hall. When he came into the kitchen, she saw he had changed to blue sweats that enhanced the blue of his eyes and the sultry darkness of his hair. He was the handsomest man she had ever met, with a grace of movement in every line of his lean body. He smiled when he saw her watching him.

“Sara's foot pajamas reminded me of when we were first married. Remember how I told you there ought to be a disclosure law so that you have to tell the other person before you marry if your feet are going to be like two blocks of ice all winter?”

“Would you have refused to marry me if you'd known?” she demanded, falling into their former teasing ways without realizing.

“No,” he said softly. “Nothing would have stopped me from that.”

She managed a laugh, but wouldn't look at him. “My dad used to complain about the same thing. My mom told him it was a husband's job to warm his wife's feet.”

Kyle didn't reply.

When she glanced at him, she saw his eyes roaming the lines of her fleecy robe. He paused at her slippers, which were really thick socks with soles. A smile appeared at the corners of his mouth, then flickered out. His face became still, but his eyes, oh, his eyes…

She turned from the despair she sensed inside him. She had grieved, too. Changing to a more neutral subject, she said, “I'm hungry. Would you like to join me for milk and cookies?”

“Yes.” He moved away, over to the table. “You've lost weight. Was that recent?”

She brought the treat to the table. “Yes, after Sara was taken, I couldn't eat. I kept imagining her hungry and frightened. I didn't know if they were taking proper care of her.”

He reached across the table and touched her arm. “It's okay now. She's going to be fine.”

“Is she?” Danielle demanded, her anger rising as she recalled those terrifying fourteen days and nights when no one had been able to find her child.

“Yes, I think so. She let me read to her and tuck her in.”

“She kissed you nighty-night,” Danielle added. “You've only been here a week, but she seems to trust you.”

“I'm her father,” he said in a harder voice. “I was
part of her life for three years. She couldn't have forgotten me completely in the time I've been away.”

Danielle ate a cookie, then picked up another. Many thoughts, accusations really, passed through her mind, but she didn't say them.

“Neither have you,” he added softly.

The air became electrified. She couldn't breathe, or think. Gulping down the cookie with the help of the milk, she finished the snack and took her glass to the sink.

She gazed at the moonlight on the snowy lot next to the house. Across the way, the neighboring home was dark. The retired couple who lived there were already in bed.

Behind her, she was aware of every movement in the room. She knew when Kyle pushed back from the table, when he crossed the room, when he stood behind her. She moved aside.

He rinsed his glass and set it beside hers in the sink, then he turned toward her. His eyes gleamed dark-blue and mysterious as he watched her intently.

“It's time for bed,” she said. “I mean, it's late. Sara will be up early. And we have to go to church.”

“I know what you mean,” he said. “You go to your bed and I go to mine. That's the rule, isn't it?”

She hesitated, then finding no hidden meanings in the statement, nodded briskly.

“You said in your letter that you wanted to get on with your life. Is there a man in your future? Have you met someone here?”

His eyes were burning her. She felt the sheen of moisture break out all over her body. His body heat engulfed her. She should move away.

“Is there?” His tone was harsher.

She shook her head.

“Has the cat got your tongue, too?” he asked softly.

Again she shook her head, then realized what she was doing. “No, of course not.”

He traced a line down her cheek to the corner of her mouth. “You seem a trifle warm.” His gaze lingered on her eyes, her lips. “So am I.”

Her mouth went dry as longing seared through her—that terrible, terrible need to lean into him, to rest and refresh herself in the pure warmth of him. Once she had thought it endless, the great well of love they shared.

Tremors ran over her like cold rivulets of melting snow. “Go away,” she said. “I don't want you here. I had accepted everything.”

He dropped his hand to her shoulder. His thumb burned her skin where he rubbed it across her collarbone, even with the robe and gown between them.

“I need you,” he murmured. “I did from the first moment we met. That scared me then. It scares me now.”

She pushed his hand away. He curled it into her hair.

“You don't need anyone. Home…Sara and I…we were just a convenient place to stop between cases. A clean house, food, a warm bed—” She bit the words off too late.

“With a willing lover in it,” he added.

“You could have found a woman. There were several at the office who would have welcomed you.”

His fingers were sending tingles through her scalp
as he toyed with her unruly curls. His hand stilled as he studied her face. She refused to meet his gaze and stared out the window instead.

The snow, she thought, the deep cold snow. She and Kyle had married in winter. He had left them in winter.

And now the snow covered her heart. The only warmth inside her came from Sara. She drew a shaky breath.

“I never got mixed up with any woman,” he said, almost as if musing aloud to himself. “I never meant to. But then I met you. All my good intentions fizzled with one look into those green eyes. There's never been anyone but you.”

She couldn't believe him. She didn't dare. She had learned to live with the loneliness and the grief of rejection. She wouldn't go through that again.

“That can't be true,” she protested in disbelief, her voice as shaky as she felt inside. “You can't have gone two years…you can't mean…there must have been women around. The molls—”

“The what?” He clasped her upper arms and leaned down slightly to peer into her eyes, his puzzled.

“Molls. The women that hang around gangsters.”

Incredibly his face softened. He grinned. “Only a librarian would know some word like that. Molls.”

He shook his head in amusement. Danielle was insulted by his attitude. She had imagined him in a variety of relationships during the past two years. She had even been afraid he'd left them for another woman, but Luke had told her rather impatiently
when she'd called that Kyle was on an important case. She'd had to accept that explanation.

Gazing at her again, his smile died. “There's never been another woman in my life or in my bed from the moment I met you. Not one.”

“Not even as part of your cover? Didn't the other men think you were a little odd?”

“I told them a woman had once betrayed me and that they were fools to trust any of them. I maintained that pose for two solid years.”

Her heart went through a major contraction, then expanded until there wasn't room for it and lungs, too, in her chest. She couldn't breathe for a minute.

“Each time I was contemptuous of a woman,” he continued, “I apologized to you. You were the most trustworthy person I'd ever met. The only one I've ever trusted completely.”

She stared up at him, recognizing the despair in his eyes. It only made her more confused. She was unsure of him, of herself, of the old feelings that rose like a geyser inside her.

“Dani,” he whispered.

He bent slightly and his mouth settled on hers, softly at first, like the kiss of a butterfly's wing, then more firmly when she didn't push him away. She sensed he held himself in check. Feeling the ripple that passed through his strong body, she knew the effort it was taking.

“Ah, Dani,” he groaned and held her closer.

His arms slid around her, enclosing her in his warmth. She was instantly aware of his masculine strength, the pure male ruggedness of his trained body…and yes, the need.

An answering hunger clamored through her veins.

All week she had listened to his quiet footsteps in the house. She'd known when he went to bed, when he paced his room in restless agitation, when he paused outside her door before going to the kitchen.

He claimed her mouth once more, the kiss going deep and intimate, filling her starved spirit with the beauty of the moment and her body with a longing that couldn't be satisfied with only a kiss.

She knew she was on dangerous ground. She didn't want any regrets in the morning. She'd lived with a lifetime of those during the past two years. But she couldn't pull away.

Neither could she respond fully.

Kyle lifted his head. For a second, in the depths of his eyes, he seemed as emotionally ravaged as she felt. Despair, anger, need, physical hunger and the sadness…yes, the sadness. She knew the sadness on intimate levels.

“I want a place in yours and Sara's lives,” he said, the storm passing and his expression opaque once more.

“For how long?” she asked.

His lips curled in a bitter smile. “It's always going to be there, isn't it? A gap of two years that I can't erase.”

He walked out, leaving her standing there with a thousand questions that she couldn't ask, her body hot and bothered, her heart in shreds. All the things she had thought possible when she wrote her matter-of-fact letter detailing why they should get a divorce
suddenly seemed impossible. She had no future with him. She couldn't imagine one without him.

She dropped her head forward and pressed her hands over her eyes, feeling as frightened as five-year-old Sara.

“R
afe Rawlings available?” Kyle asked when someone finally answered the phone.

“Just a minute,” the officer on the line said. “Hey, Rawlings, it's for you.”

The door opened at that moment and Danielle entered the kitchen. She'd walked Sara to school that morning. As usual when he saw his wife, his heart clenched, then beat like mad for a moment before settling back down.

It was still pounding when the sheriff picked up and Kyle heard the click as the other man hung up.

“Mitchell here,” he said. “I want to ask you a couple of questions that came up over the weekend.”

“Shoot,” Rafe said.

“Has anyone investigated a guy named Dillon
Pierce in relation to the attack and kidnapping in the parking lot?”

“Well, that was Angela Sheppard's…uh, McBride—she's married to Shane McBride now—”

“I know,” Kyle broke in impatiently.

“Pierce was her first husband's partner,” Rafe continued unperturbed. “Yeah, we did some checking on him but he'd left for parts unknown long before she moved to Whitehorn. There were no traces of the man to be found.”

Kyle muttered an expletive. Glancing up, he noted the slightly shocked expression on Danielle's face as she lingered in the kitchen, listening to his end of the call. He had always been very careful about separating his home life from that of his work, especially watching his language in front of his wife and child. He felt a stab of guilt at the foul word but didn't apologize.

“Hmm, what about Willie Sparks? Any word on him?”

“Nah, he hasn't been seen in his usual digs, either, but that isn't unusual. He sometimes takes jobs at remote ranches or hauling logs for some of the small operators around the county.”

“Okay, keep me posted, would you?”

“Sure thing.”

Kyle hung up and turned toward Danielle. She was wearing a green sweater of that real soft material that reminded him of a bedspread, sort of like velvet. Her slacks were gray flannel wool and flowed over her hips in an alluring curve. She was in her socks. As usual.

Funny, the things he'd remembered while he was
away. Her cold feet. The socks. The little silky summer thing, the long gown for winter. The sweet sounds she made when they made love—all those soft, crooning notes of desire that had driven him wild.

Those things he'd given up. He had no right to the memories, either. They didn't help the situation. He'd done what he thought was right. He'd done it knowing he might never see her again. But he couldn't risk her life…

“Why are you interested in Dillon Pierce and Willie Sparks?” Danielle asked, breaking into the useless cross-examination of his past decisions.

He hesitated, wondering if he should mention what could amount to nothing. Seeing her stiffen, he realized he had offended her with his silence. Again.

“Never mind,” she said and walked down the hall.

He followed, determined not to let the matter stand and fester between them. “I saw Sara's face when Dillon Pierce's name was mentioned. I thought I saw fear in her eyes, but she looked down, so I wasn't positive.”

Danielle turned after flipping on the computer in her office. Her forehead crinkled into a frown as she thought. “I felt her stiffen when we started talking about the assault on Angela and the kidnapping. Then she put her hands over her mouth….”

Her voice trailed off. Kyle waited with the patience learned from years on the job.

“Was that when that man's name was mentioned? Dillon Pierce?” she asked. “Was that when you noticed she was frightened?”

“Yes.”

“I thought so, too. It was just like when she was looking at the mug shots. I felt the jolt go through her whole body.”

“Why didn't you tell me about that?” He subdued the impatience and gave her an eagle stare.

“I didn't think of it. Later, when we got home, I wondered if I should mention it to Rafe the next time I saw him. He was the one who showed us the mug shots.”

“She covered her mouth then, too,” he said. The pool of emotion shifted dangerously as she realized that Dani, his wife, hadn't thought to tell him, her husband and an FBI agent, of her suspicions. That told him better than words that she had no trust in him to solve the problem. Or to look out for her and their daughter. The bleakness rippled through him like the head winds of a storm.

“Yes,” she said. “Yes. Kyle, there has to be a connection. There has to be!”

His heart skipped a couple of beats when she looked at him expectantly, her eyes shining like young Sara's. He looked away. He'd lost any rights to Dani when he had opted out of her life. But he could help her now. And he would. “Could they have been the two men in the parking lot?” Danielle voiced the question that loomed in his mind. “But how would the Pierce guy know Willie Sparks?”

“He could have followed Angela to town, then met up with Willie here. If Pierce didn't want Angela to recognize him, he would need a partner to help keep an eye on her.”

“Wouldn't it have been difficult to find someone to work with him?”

“The bad types always find a kindred spirit.”

She seemed to think about this for a moment, then was silent as she turned back to her computer, signed on the internet and downloaded a couple of E-mails.

When she was through, she turned to him once more. “How did you get involved with the gangsters? How do you know how to do it?”

His first impulse was to tell her nothing, but looking into those green eyes with their intelligence, with the new wariness of the human race that now resided there, he knew he couldn't gloss over the facts.

“You hook up with one of their minions in order to penetrate or you deliver some information they want, pretending you got it from someone in the pen, or better yet, from someone dead. You build up their trust.”

She studied him for a moment, as if she was trying to see him—really see him—for the first time. Then her expression became shuttered once more and she bent her head over the keyboard. “I have to get to work,” she murmured.

He bit back his desire to reach out to her—to make her look at
him
once more. Instead, he said, “Okay. I'm going to call Luke and ask him to do some checking on Dillon Pierce. Maybe he can come up with something on the guy. And on the business he was in with Angela's husband.”

He didn't pick up the phone as soon as he went to the kitchen, though. He thought about trust and how it was built. And how it was destroyed.

As a child, he'd learned not to trust his father. After his mother's death, he hadn't trusted anyone very much.

Then he had met Dani.

It had all been so easy with her—to trust, to let himself dip deeply into the cup of life, to let her light shine in his soul. But she had learned not to trust him. She hadn't confided her observations about Sara to him. Just as he hadn't told her what he'd seen.

The darkness shifted inside him, making him aware of all the things he'd lost. His heart thumped painfully. He wondered if he'd been a fool.

 

Danielle hesitated outside Kyle's door. She wasn't sure if she should go in. But it was her house. And it was the day she washed the sheets.

Angry with herself, she flung open the door and froze in her tracks. Kyle was in there. Dressing. Or undressing. She wasn't sure which.

He wore a pair of dark-blue thermal pants and nothing else at the moment. They stretched over his body like skin, outlining every curve and muscle. Dark hair swirled over his chest and arrowed down to the thermals in a tantalizing line that drew the eyes to the bulge beneath the material.

As she watched, the bulge grew larger. Her breath caught in an audible gasp. She looked away.

“I thought you went outside,” she said.

“I did. I stepped in a puddle that was iced over and went in up to my knee. I came back to change clothes.”

“Oh.” She glanced at the walls, at the neatly made bed, at his two pieces of luggage open on the floor under the window that had no curtain or shade to block the light. She looked at everything but him.

“Do you need me for something?”

“No. I was going to wash the sheets.” She backed up. “It can wait.” She closed the door.

In the mudroom, she threw the rest of the sheets into the washing machine and started it. Her heart was still pounding as if she'd run a long, long way.

Hunger riffled through her. She clenched her teeth on her lip and fought for control. This wouldn't do. Not at all. Not in any way. She wouldn't want him. She wouldn't need him. Not again. Never again.

 

Danielle held up the picture while Lynn clipped it to a line running across the top of the chalkboard. “Is that straight?” the teacher asked.

She and Danielle looked over their shoulders. Kyle studied the prints of the presidents who had birthdays in February. “Yeah, that's fine.”

Lynn was planning a joint Valentine and presidential birthday celebration for the next month. She tried to tie learning to fun things so the kids would associate pleasure with knowledge. Danielle liked that idea, too.

Outside, Sara and a little boy whose mom was helping in the first-grade class played on the jungle gym. Rafe was on a ladder nearby, cleaning leaves out of a gutter.

She grinned and wondered if he resented doing such chores in his undercover pose as a janitor. She started to ask Kyle, then stopped. He had never talked about his work to her. He'd made it plain that part of his life wasn't her concern. She sighed and dismissed the spurt of resentment she felt whenever she thought of the past.

Hearing laughter, she went over to the window.
Sara hung upside down on a bar by her knees, her coat flopped down over her face. “Sara's laughing,” she said to Kyle, needing to share the moment with him.

He strode over and stood beside her. They watched their daughter quickly climb off the bar and begin to chase the first grader. Danielle's shoulder brushed his chest occasionally as they observed the youngsters.

“Can't catch me,” the boy repeated in a singsong.

Sara gave up running after him. She formed a snowball instead and zeroed in on the boy, hitting him in the back and splashing snow down his neck. A brief snowball fight ensued, with Sara, although smaller, giving as good as she got. In fact, her aim was better and she got in more hits.

“She has the eye,” Kyle murmured in satisfaction.

“She should,” Danielle countered wryly. “You started her playing ball as soon as she could sit up alone.”

They smiled at each other. His head dipped. She thought he was going to kiss her right there in the kindergarten room. Lynn had her back turned to them. Rafe and the children were busy with their own thing. Without further thought, she lifted her face. Her lips shaped themselves for the touch of his.

He reached up and brushed at her bangs. “There. You had a piece of lint on your hair.” He stepped back, his eyes darkly mysterious as he watched her.

She rushed off to see if there was anything else she could do for Lynn, her movements jerky, her face on fire. She didn't look back in case he was laughing at her.

They went to the grocery to pick up supplies after
she and Lynn finished. A storm was predicted over the weekend. She didn't want to get snowed in and run out of staples. She glanced at Kyle, who was maneuvering through the usual Friday traffic in town as people cashed payroll checks and did their shopping or went out to dinner.

“How about a pizza?” he suggested when they stopped at the store. “There's a pizza place right across the street.”

Sara nodded vigorously.

“It's one of the four food groups, isn't it?” Danielle asked with a smile at her daughter. “Yes, let's have one.”

“I thought Sara and I could pick it up while you do the shopping. If that's all right.”

Danielle quickly studied Sara's young face. The smile had disappeared and the girl appeared solemn. “Do you want to go with Daddy to get the pizza?” she asked brightly as if this was a decision the child was used to making.

Sara stared at Kyle, her face worried. In a completely natural way, he held out his hand to her. Danielle felt her heart dip in sympathy as the five-year-old transferred her gaze to his hand but made no move to accept his touch.

“Well, Sara can go with me,” she began, but at that moment Sara slipped her hand into her father's and clasped his thumb tightly. “Of course it's fine if she goes with you,” Danielle added quickly.

“We'll meet you at the truck,” he said in a husky tone as he led his daughter away.

Danielle watched them go as she unhooked a cart from a stack and started into the store. Another mile-
stone. Sara was slowly opening up again. Hope bloomed inside her heart. Her little girl was going to be all right. She knew it.

At the house, Kyle told humorous stories about his experiences in the snow and the first time he'd gone skiing. He was originally from the South and hadn't come west until the department had sent him there while on a case. He'd liked the mountains and had decided to stay.

“That's how come Mommy and I met,” he concluded. “She tried to throw me out of the library because it was closing time. But I took one look at those pretty green eyes and knew I wasn't going to let her get away. I made up a story about how I was on an urgent case. She, being softhearted, helped me look up the information I needed. I had her under my spell before we said good-night.”

He waggled his eyebrows in a sinister mode and twirled an imaginary mustache. Sara giggled.

“I believed you,” Danielle informed them indignantly. “I have all these years. I thought you
were
working on an important case.”

His smile was lambent. “Well, I was, but it could have waited a day or two. I had to make you think it was a rush job so you would stay and help me.”