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“How long what?” She lifted the phone from the end table and placed it on her knees, as if that could keep him from dialing the cops if he chose.
He let her have her phone victory for the moment. He needed every ounce of information he could wring out of her before he spoke to them, anyway. “When did you leave for Rubistan?”
“I started the teaching job at the embassy school a year ago.” A job his father had arranged for her.
More anger piled on top of a towering load. She hadn’t even considered coming to him with this. Later he would deal with the fact that he would have to reassess his father’s call from Rubistan shortly before his death.
His dad hadn’t been informing him about Mary Elise’s arrival. In fact, had known about her slimeball ex and hadn’t bothered to share with Daniel, another betrayal from a man he already resented like crazy. A man he would never have the chance to chew out.
But Franklin Baker had kept her safe.
As much as Daniel wished he could have been the one she’d run to, he owed his father a debt for keeping her alive so she could sit there on his sofa and frustrate him with every defensive twitch of her head. Sunlight through the window glinted along the wet sheen of her hair.
She’d been in the shower.
Mary Elise had been vulnerable in the shower while McRae had rifled her bags. Walked through Daniel’s place. Touched everything that was his.
Whoa. Full speed emergency stop on a short runway. Mary Elise wasnothis.
Wrong.
She was under his roof. Under his protection. And yes, she’d once been his. If he hadn’t allowed the ties to be severed between them, she would have come to him. This might well have never happened at all.
Anger and guilt tangoed big-time. “You should have told me everything when we landed. Even before that.”
“This isn’t your problem. It’s mine. I didn’t mean to bring you in at all. You were right that crawling into the crate was a mistake.” She speared her fingers through her tangled mass of wet hair. “But I still don’t know how I could have sent those boys off with Austin crying. The guard would have been on them in a minute. And once I was in that crate, everything rolled out of control so fast.”
He backed up a step to keep from yanking her close again. Thoughts of her risking her life a few days ago hammered too hard and fast on the out-of-control mess at their feet right now. “That’s a crock, Mary Elise. You know I would have been there for you. Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Maybe there’s a better answer somewhere, but I did the best I could.” She freed a lock of damp hair twisted around a gold hoop earring, no doubt to avoid looking at him. “God knows Kent told me what a screw-up I was often enough. I know better. I do. But sometimes it’s just hard to trust your instincts. Not everyone can be so all-fired certain their choices are perfect, like you are, Danny.”
Daniel’s slowing steps drew him to her with the seeping realization from her words. He may not agree with her choice to stay silent, yet there was no question but that this woman selflessly had his brothers’ best interest at heart. Always.
She was scared and he was grilling her. Way to go, bud.
He brushed her hand aside and finished untwisting the hair from her earring. “Come on, Mary Elise, don’t clam up now. This is too important for you to deal me half parcels of truth.”
“Yes, Danny, I do know you, and I knew you’d be just like this. That you’d throw yourself in the middle of my mess, which is the last thing I want for you. Or for those boys.”
His fingers gripped tighter around the silky lock. “You would have left today, without telling me.”
“Of course,” she answered without even a blink.
More of that anger and something else he didn’t want to define scratched through the numbed state. Letting her go eleven years ago had been the toughest thing he’d ever done. And yet she could just write him off. She’d put the boys first and once they didn’t need her anymore, she was gone. Over and done without a wince about losing him.
That bit. Too much.
“Yes, I would have left. Would that have been the right decision? Have any of my choices been the best option? God, I don’t know.” Her steady gaze pinned him. “Where is it written that every choice is clear cut? Even in your logical brain, there’s got to be room for shades of gray. And who says that we’re perfect and had better make the perfect, right decision or we’re too stupid to live?”
She clenched her hands by her sides. “Kent told me for years I was defective. Incompetent. Incomplete, if I didn’t live my life his way. I almost bought into it. Almost. But I got away. And willnotlet you take away something harder to rebuild than you’ll ever understand.”
Her voice didn’t so much as quaver. But pain laced her words. Psychological warfare on the home front.
He’d studied and experienced the power of mental mind games in the POW phase of military survival training. And for her, the propaganda had come from someone she had every right to trust, someone who’d vowed to love and cherish her.
When had anyone cherished this woman?
While he didn’t agree with her decisions, he understood how she’d arrived there. She’d been betrayed by her husband and her parents. Why should she trust him, someone who’d already let her down before?
