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“How? My schedule’s a beast. I’m gone for weeks at a time. This place is too small.” He flicked a hand toward the glass doors revealing the stretch of sandy beach. “Even that’s a hazard with Austin around.”
His quiet anguish echoed, transporting her back to the time he’d asked her how his father could be so cliché as to opt for a trophy wife in his midlife crisis. Why couldn’t the guy have just bought sports car?
Daniel rested his elbows on his knees while studying the mud-brown carpet as if it bore answers not likely held in the stack of books by his bed. “What kind of screwed-up world is this where those boys don’t have anyone but me and a terrorist uncle ready to recruit them?”
Austin shuffled under the covers.
Taking a moment to gather her thoughts, she closed the glass door and drew the steel blinds, trying to avoid other memories. Of knowing Daniel was trapped by circumstance now as he’d been years ago with her pregnancy.
But even at twenty-one, he’d been a man of honor, putting others first. She’d known he would come through for their baby. She just hadn’t expected the surprise need for him to come through for her, too.
A tiny voice taunted from the far corners of her brain that she’d misjudged Kent. Horribly so. She’d been looking for something different in those days.
Her medical problems had increased, the endometriosis progressing to the point she’d realized bearing children would be doubtful. Her first miscarriage years ago hadn’t been some fluke, and with the build-up of internal scar tissue over the years, even conception became difficult. She’d met Kent at a time when she’d expected to focus on her newspaper career since life had shifted her plans.
Kent had changed the rules.
Now, she refused to let her ex-husband take anything else from her, and that included what good memories she had of Daniel. Despite the traumatic last hours, she welcomed the distraction of thinking about someone else’s problems, tackling concerns that didn’t involve a stalker ex-husband.
Moving deeper into the room, she let her hands glide over Daniel’s dresser, tap a change cup, an abacus. “The world isn’t fair, Danny, and it’s wasted energy expecting it to be. We make the best of what we have.”
Mary Elise shuffled the abacus beads back and forth and back again. Whimsical memories slipped past her guard. “God knows, you always were one who could build a rocket out of a junior chemistry lab and a piece of your mother’s Corning Ware.”
A rusty chuckle slipped free. “I blew a hole in the yard big enough for a pig roast. Man, was my father mad.”
Too easily she could see Danny standing in the middle of his parents’ landscaped lawn taking a reaming from his father. The son not recognizing his father’s fear for his safety. The father not recognizing his son’s need for freedom and acceptance.
“But you built a rocket, Danny, when most kids were still struggling to put together store-bought model planes or cars.” Forget keeping her distance. She knelt at his feet so she could see his eyes. “You can do this. You’ll move to a bigger place. A live-in nanny is probably their best choice, someone they can bond with. They have money, which gives you options.”
“The old man’s money.” He grimaced.
She rested a hand on his knee. He ducked away from her touch. From her offer of comfort.
He strode toward the door. “There are extra towels under the sink. Sweats on the closet shelf, T-shirts in the top dresser drawer.”
She trailed him, the two of them meeting in the suddenly too small portal, a pendulum in the hall ticking away the seconds. She should have expected him to duck past. The old Danny had dodged offers of comfort over his parents’ split, seeking escape in her body rather than in her arms.
His eyes narrowed, his pupils widening.Uh-oh.
She stared into his brown eyes so deep and dark. He’d lost his father in a far more tragic way now than during the rift at his father’s wedding. Would Daniel reach for her again? She wanted his kiss as much as—no, more than— before since she knew the promise of what they could experience together.
Except, she would have to stop as she should have done years ago. Because Danny with his restless feet didn’t do forever well. Difficult enough to overcome even before she’d lost her ability to trust in forever.
In a move so quick she didn’t see him shift, he pulled her to him. But not for a kiss.
Daniel gathered her against his chest, held her close and a little too tight. She wouldn’t allow herself the indulgence of bringing her arms up. She simply absorbed the familiar feel and scent of him, absorbed the differences she’d observed earlier, the harder edges of a man instead of a boy.
Why was he doing this to her? To them?
He pressed a brusque kiss to the top of her head, then softly spoke heated words into her hair. “Crawling into that box was the stupidest thing you could have done. You could have died today.”
He held her tighter for one final, eternal moment that ticked by with countless clicks from the pendulum. Then he thrust her away, the door snicking closed behind him.
She stood frozen, an odd contradiction since every nerve within her had flamed to life.
Stupidest thing? Not by a long shot. Crawlingoutof that box and agreeing to stay with Danny beat her other decision by a mile.
* * *
