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Danny took her hand, shifting his focus for these next few weeks together. He was no shrink, but he knew enough about human nature to know that bottling up the dark stuff inside probably wasn’t helpful. Perhaps he wasn’t doing her any favors by trying to move past the event that redirected both their lives so dramatically.
“Outrage only scratches the surface of what I felt.” For the first time he didn’t try to hide the fury that ruled his life that whole year of her abduction. “When I heard you were taken, I was ready to swim the Atlantic with a knife between my teeth to get you back myself. I didn’t sleep for weeks.”
She looked ready to interrupt, to thank him for his concern and be done with it, but he didn’t think about that time too often himself, and this wasn’t a topic he was willing to revisit.
Now or never.
“I was a walking powder keg when I didn’t know what was happening to you,” he continued, remembering vague arguments he got into with everyone around him. “My father and brothers traveled a lot, meeting with powerful people we knew in the Middle East through the resort business to see if a ransom would help you and Christina.”
“She was family,” Stephanie said haltingly. “That only makes sense.”
“For me, it was about you.” Sure, he loved Christina like a sister, but he’d been focused on Stephanie, knowing Christina had the whole rest of his family looking out for her. He’d only suffered through the “diplomatic channels” crap because he thought it might help them. “I was less than diplomatic in those meetings—” Calling a sheikh a lying bastard hadn’t been his wisest move. “I just really needed to find out if you were okay.”
Looking back, he was lucky it hadn’t caused an international incident. The Murphys were damn fortunate to get that meeting in the first place. It had been their last hope for trying to arrange a private negotiation with the insurgents who held Christina and Stephanie.
Now, Stephanie studied Danny as if she’d never seen him before, as if trying to make this glimpse of his dark side fit with her understanding of him.
“My brothers had to take over the negotiations.” Actually, both Ryan and Jack had wrestled him out of there, and even then, they nearly hadn’t been able to hold him back. The fact that Danny hadn’t slept and had hardly eaten for three weeks had ultimately made him easier to subdue despite his fury. He’d been completely depleted and living on adrenaline by then. “At the end of the day, I decided negotiation was a lost cause and that I’d rather fight for you.”
He’d still wanted to put his knife between his teeth and sneak into Baghdad himself. But his brothers had convinced him he might be in the way of well-trained specialists who actually knew what they were doing.
So he’d done the next best thing.
“I flew home and signed a navy contract.” He figured he’d at least be able to support the war effort somewhere. His brother Jack was so concerned for his mental health that he’d joined the service, too.
“My God,” she said softly, breathing the words more than saying them out loud.
His laid-back image was shot. And he’d probably lost whatever chance he had with her now that she understood what a basket case he’d become back then. “Don’t ever think for a second that no one was outraged on your behalf. If I’d had my way, I would have scoured Baghdad until I found you or died trying.”
8
“IF YOU HAVE SECOND thoughts about being here, I understand.” Danny sat next to her in the luxurious BMW sedan that had been waiting for them, his voice sounding stilted. “You’ve been quiet since we landed.”
She hadn’t said much since he’d revealed his real reaction to her kidnapping. She was too busy trying to figure out what it meant that he’d cared about her a great deal more than she’d ever realized. Why hadn’t the PR agency she’d hired to handle her reader letters forwarded the note from Danny? It bothered her to think she’d missed something personal from him.
More than that, it unsettled her to realize how much her kidnapping had affected him. He’d tried to help her behind the scenes and she’d never known it, making her regret all the more that she hadn’t looked him up sooner. It also made the fling she wanted a heck of a lot more complicated since there were deeper feelings at stake.
“I’m right where I want to be.” She couldn’t walk away from Danny now, not when she was on the verge of healing a wound she’d had for years.
Danny’s grip on the steering wheel tightened as he took a hard turn to the right, bringing them closer to Nantucket Sound, according to the signs.
