A Family Homecoming

Stories of family and romance beneath the Big Sky!

Sara Mitchell: Even five-year-old Sara could tell her mommy and daddy were still in love. And she desperately wanted to keep her daddy home safe and sound forever—and complete her family!

Kyle Mitchell: After two years under deep cover, the FBI agent came home to find his family in danger. Now nothing would stop this passionate husband and father from defending his own.

Danielle Mitchell: Danielle didn’t want to need Kyle—after all, the sexy secret agent had become a stranger to her during his long disappearance. But she couldn’t deny her daughter his protection. How would she keep herself from falling for the husband she no longer knew?

LAURIE PAIGE

“One of the nicest things about writing romances is researching locales, careers and ideas. In the interest of authenticity, most writers will try anything…once.” Along with her writing adventures, Laurie has been a NASA engineer, a past president of the Romance Writers of America, a mother and a grandmother. She was twice a Romance Writers of America RITA® Award finalist for Best Traditional Romance and has won awards from RT Book Reviews for Best Silhouette Special Edition and Best Silhouette Book in addition to appearing on the USA TODAY bestseller list.

Settled in Northern California, Laurie is looking forward to whatever experiences her next novel will bring.

Contents

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter One

Home.

Kyle Mitchell stood on the cracked sidewalk in front of the white ramshackle house. Danielle, his wife of six years, had bought it when she’d moved to Whitehorn two years ago. Until this moment he’d never laid eyes on it.

The wind howled forlornly through the evergreens that lined the drive and formed a windbreak against the driving snow. It slid icy fingers under the thick collar of his down-filled parka, roamed down his spine in a series of chillbumps and robbed the heat from his body.

January in Montana was something to be reckoned with.

The lights of the house glowed faintly through the windows, urging him inside where there would be warmth and human companionship. Still, he lingered.

The letter packed in his luggage didn’t invite a rush into the old homestead, which was sort of Victorian, sort of early ranch house style. The twin gables in the steeply pitched roof indicated a second story, perhaps with bedrooms carved out of the attic.

He wondered where Danielle slept.

The longing he’d blocked for two years hit his chest and radiated outward. Dani, his heart repeated with each beat. Dani.

She wouldn’t be glad to see him. The letter proved that. In it, she had said it was time for a divorce. So that they could get on with their lives. So that the uncertainty of their marriage would be resolved. So that they could be entirely free of each other to do whatever they wanted.

What he wanted…her warmth. Her generous love. Her catchy way of laughing. Dani. Ah, God, Dani.

The wind rushed down the Crazy Mountains, blew snow in a swirl around his head and blinded him for a moment, bringing the unexpected sting of tears to his eyes. When the gust passed and the air cleared again, he blinked away the flakes that clung to his lashes and stared into the eyes of a young girl. Joy flashed through him.

Sara. His daughter. She’d been three when he’d left two years ago.

Her eyes rounded in obvious fright and her mouth dropped open as if in a silent scream. She spun from the window. The heavy curtains dropped into place behind her, shutting out most of the light.

Stunned, he realized she didn’t remember him. That brought its own remorse, separate from all the other regrets that lingered inside him. If he could go back…

But, once started on a course, life wouldn’t let a person go back to Day One and make a better decision. And regret didn’t do a damned thing but deepen the pain of loss.

The words of the letter burned in the back of his brain, stamped there for all time, a personal message from Dani to him written on the crumbling wall of their marriage.

I think it best if we consider divorce. I made the down payment on the house from my own savings. Naturally I would like to keep it. Your salary has mostly gone into your savings account. I did have to use some for Sara, clothes and dentist and such. I have split her expenses with you, which I thought was fair.

Yeah, it was fair. Taking a deep breath, he walked up the sidewalk and onto the porch that wrapped around the side and front of the house. Damn, but it was colder than a well digger’s…

He would have to watch his language around a five-year-old. The last couple of years had been spent with rough company. He had of necessity spoken their lingo. Now he could shut off that part of his life. It was over.

Just like his marriage.

The cost of serving justice had been high, but the safety of his family had come first, or else the price could have been even higher. The picture of a woman and two children, blasted beyond recognition by a shotgun, lingered in his mind like a horror movie. He’d arrived too late to save them.

Given a tiny twist of fate, that family could have been his. Dani and Sara. It was an image that haunted him in the depths of long, long, lonely nights.

A shiver snaked down his spine. He reached for the handle of the old-fashioned bell on the front door.

Danielle heard Sara’s running steps cross the living room, the formal dining room that they used for a family room, and on the linoleum of the old-fashioned eat-in kitchen—the quaint, cozy kitchen being one of the reasons she’d bought the drafty old house that needed more repairs than a demolition derby junk heap. She laid the stirring spoon aside and knelt just as Sara rushed to her.

“There, darling, it’s all right. Nothing is going to hurt you,” she crooned.

She held her daughter tightly, every fiber of her being ready to fight or soothe or do whatever was necessary to protect her daughter from harm or fear or anything that bothered the five-year-old.

For a second she marveled at the ferocity of feelings that swamped her. She had rarely felt this intensity of emotion, not even in the heady weeks after meeting Kyle, not even during their first year of marriage when she had thought nothing could be more exciting than her dark-haired, blue-eyed FBI agent husband. Fear had put a different spin on the nature of her feelings for her child.

For a moment the loneliness and loss of something—perhaps her expectations that life would be good, that it would be fair—threatened her emotional control. This past month had come close to being too much—

Pushing the thought firmly behind her, she snuggled Sara close until the child’s tremors subsided. Drawing back, she studied the frightened face of the five-year-old.

Blue eyes. Like her father’s. Blond hair, thick like her own auburn curls, but wispy fine as children’s hair often was and so hard to keep contained in barrettes or ponytail bands. At present, hair straggled over Sara’s forehead and tear-reddened cheeks.

Fury crimped the corners of Danielle’s soothing smile. If she ever got her hands on the men who had put fear into Sara’s soul, replacing the trust and bighearted goodness of childhood with the terror of being kidnapped and held for ransom someplace up in the mountains…

“Here, let’s get you fixed up,” she said lightly, putting a brightness she was far from feeling into her voice and smile. She, too, knew fear. Terror was no stranger to her heart. Her nights had been filled with it for weeks.

When her child had been kidnapped and forced to rely on her own quick thinking to escape, Danielle’s view of the world had also changed. The two men who had taken her daughter, thinking she was Jenny McCallum, heiress to the Kincaid fortune, were still on the loose.

The police hadn’t been able to find them after the men grabbed her daughter from the school parking lot. They hadn’t been able to find them after Sara escaped from their lair, even though the authorities knew the general area where the men had held Sara because of the holly berries found in her hair.

December fourth to December eighteenth. Fourteen days of the most awful fear she’d ever known.

Then Dr. Winters had found her child running coatless down the county road, her pixie face streaked with tears.

Anger seared down Danielle’s spine like a hot poker. She hated those men for what they had done to her child. At times during the past month, she had hated the police for not preventing the abduction and for not finding her baby.

Sometimes she hated the FBI who hadn’t answered her call for help after she had gotten Sara back and realized her child was still in mortal danger. Sara was the only one who could identify the men.

And Sara’s father? Did she also hate the supercool FBI undercover agent who had deserted them, who hadn’t answered her frantic calls for help?

She pressed her face into Sara’s sweet baby flesh and fought a need to cry as loudly and painfully as her daughter. With an effort she pulled herself together. There was no point in thinking about it. That was the painful past. She had the terrifying present to contend with now that she and Sara were on their own. They had been staying with Sterling and Jessica McCallum since Sara had been found. Sterling was a special investigator with the Sheriff’s office and he had offered Danielle and Sara the protection of his home. Though Sara had enjoyed staying with the McCallums, who were the parents of her best friend, Jenny, Danielle knew her daughter needed to return to her normal home life sometime and so they’d come home after the New Year.

Taking a deep breath, she fixed the smile more firmly on her face. “Where’s your pony band? Ah, here it is, dangling by a hair.”

No answering smile appeared on Sara’s trembling lips.

Danielle finger-combed the wisps of hair into place and replaced the band around the left ponytail, then did the same for the right side. “There.”

Sara sniffed. She looked worried.

Danielle had consulted the pediatrician about the trauma and how to handle it, especially the fact that Sara hadn’t spoken a word since she had been found. Studying her daughter, Danielle decided this wasn’t a case of Sara’s realizing she’d wandered into a room alone and rushing back to her mother or teacher.

Dear God, what more did she and young Sara have to face? How long could terror last?

“What is it? Can you tell me? What frightened you?” She spoke confidently. As if she could handle everything that life dishes out. Sometimes she wondered how close the breaking point was.

Sara stared at her mutely.

Danielle fought the anger and despair. “Show me, then. Did you see something? Or someone?”

Her heart lurched. She felt the reassuring weight of the semiautomatic pistol tucked into the back waistband of her jeans and covered by a flannel shirt worn over her T-shirt. She didn’t know if she could aim it at a person and deliberately shoot him.

Do not give warning. Point and fire. Keep shooting until they stop coming.

The police training program played through her mind. If someone broke in the house, she was to go into the self-defense mode.

Assume they mean you harm. Because they do.

“Show me, love,” she encouraged with a show of bravado. She would do whatever necessary to protect her child.

Taking Sara’s hand, she gently urged her into the family room, then through the glass-paned doors into the big, drafty living room they never used in winter. Her eyes darted left and right as she tried to see everywhere at once. She didn’t want to be surprised and not have time to use her gun.

Don’t give warning.

The living room was empty of strangers as well as furniture. She couldn’t afford to fill every room in the old house. “I don’t see anything,” she announced, the tension easing out of her neck and shoulders somewhat. “Perhaps you saw your shadow on the wall.”

Sara shook her head vehemently. Curls escaped the hair bands and sprung out around her temples.

Danielle frowned as she checked her daughter’s set face, her fear-filled eyes. “You have to tell me—”

The harsh ring-ring-ring of the old manual doorbell tore a gasp from her and froze the words in her throat.

She and Sara stood as if suspended in the shadowy world of late afternoon, caught on the cusp of winter’s darkness and unable to return to the bright warm world of the kitchen where dinner bubbled in the pot.

The noise grated across her nerves as the bell rang again. Whoever it was, was impatient.

Still she hesitated. Would the kidnappers come to the front door and ring the bell? Maybe pretending to be from the electric company or something? The lights had been flickering ominously all afternoon and a blizzard was churning up outside.

Sara tugged at her hand.

Danielle put on a brave smile and went to the door. She edged the window blind away from the etched glass panes of the oak door and peered outside, her heart going like a frenzied trip-hammer.

An unfamiliar shape stood in the dark shadows of the porch. Definitely masculine. Tall. Lean. His black Stetson wore a rim of snow on top and around the brim. His dark-blue parka was zipped up to his chin. She couldn’t make out the details of his face.

Fear ate at her. Letting go of Sara, she put her right hand behind her and clasped the handle of the .38.

Point and fire.

“Yes?” she said into the crack between the blind and the etched panes. “Who is it?”

A voice from the past spoke to her. “Kyle.”

It was shocking, like meeting someone you knew to be dead and buried right on the street, alive and walking. “Kyle?” she repeated as if she’d never heard of him.

“Your husband,” came the dry reminder. “Open the door. It’s damned…it’s cold out here.”

Sara peered up at her anxiously. For a second, Danielle could only stare at her daughter, her muscles locked in shock, anger, regret, too many emotions to name.

“Kyle,” she said again. “It’s your father,” she said to the child. “Daddy. Do you remember?”

Sara, big-eyed with fear, shook her head.

Danielle pulled herself together. “Wait,” she called out. “I’ll unlock the door.”

Her hand trembled as she flicked open the chain, the dead bolt and finally the old-fashioned key in the door lock. She turned the knob. A blast of cold air hit her in the face as the storm door opened and the man who claimed to be her husband stepped into the tiled foyer.

“It’s colder here than in Denver,” he said and took off his hat, then banged it against the door frame to knock the snow off onto the porch.

Danielle stepped back instinctively and felt Sara’s warm presence as the girl hid behind her, one small fist holding on to Danielle’s flannel shirttail.

Kyle removed his coat, checked the snow that clung to the shoulders and shook it off on the porch before closing both doors against the temperamental wind.

“Where can I hang this so it won’t drip on the floor?” he asked while she locked up.

“In the mudroom.” At his questioning glance, she added, “The kitchen. It’s off the kitchen.”

Trying to grab the tatters of her composure, she led the way back into the light. The homey aroma of beef stew calmed her somewhat when they entered the family room. She closed the French doors behind them to shut out the cold of the unheated areas.

Sara, Danielle noted, kept close to her and far from the silent man who followed at their heels. Looking over her shoulder, she encountered dark-blue eyes that had once turned her insides to jelly. An electrical current ran through her at the visual contact. She wasn’t sure what it meant. The moment seemed surreal.

The bitter gall of subdued anger rose to choke her. It centered on the silent man behind her. She had needed him desperately and he hadn’t come. With the memory came the silent, painful tears she never allowed herself to shed in front of her daughter.

“Did you get my letter?” she blurted, stopping in the middle of the kitchen. Sara scooted behind her and watched Kyle with a distrustful gaze.

He visibly stiffened. “Yes.”

“Well?”

“We’ll talk about it later. We have…other problems to deal with at the present.”

He glanced pointedly at Sara, then back to her. So he knew about the kidnapping, she realized as he spotted the mudroom and went to hang his hat and coat in there.

Turning back to the kitchen, he silently perused her. She saw his gaze take in the thick socks she wore around the house, the jeans that fit her loosely after the ordeal of the past month, the flannel shirt that had once been his, an old T-shirt with an unreadable message.

She was aware she wore no makeup, that her hair, always unruly, was slipping from the rubber band at the base of her neck. She felt vulnerable, as if all her insecurities were laid out bare before the world. She didn’t want him to see. He was a stranger, not the man she’d once trusted with all her heart. She’d lost that man, and she didn’t even know how or why….

Aware of Sara watching them in her solemn way, Danielle bit back the torrent of questions and strived for normalcy.

“We’re about to have supper. Do you want to join us?” she asked.

Her innate politeness, taught at the knee of her loving parents, forced her to be courteous, but she didn’t want to share anything with this man, this stranger back from the dead or wherever he’d been.

“Yes.”

“Well, have a seat.” She gestured vaguely.

He pulled out a kitchen chair and sat down with a weary sigh. “It’s been a hell of…a heck of a trip.”

“Two years.” Her voice shook…with rage, with loneliness, with accusation. “You shouldn’t have come. You didn’t have to.”

“You sent for me.”

She denied it with a quick shake of her head.

His eyes narrowed. She watched him, tension in every nerve as if she might have to fight or run at any moment. His cheeks were dark with five-o’clock shadow and leaner than her image of him.

He was all muscle and bone and sinew. As sleek as an otter, every movement fluid and controlled. She remembered the way he could hold back until she was satisfied—

She cringed as if she’d touched a hot stove. She wanted to do something physical, like throw him out with her bare hands, to flail at him until all the pent-up feelings were drained and she was free of them. She wanted answers—why he’d deserted them, and why he’d come back.

But not now, not in front of Sara, who still trembled behind her, frightened of the man who had once been her favorite person.

Sara’s father. Her husband. She wanted to cry.

“Dinner smells good,” he said. “It’s been a long time—” He broke off abruptly.

“Yes.” Her voice was hardly above a whisper. She cleared it and spoke more firmly. “Yes, we’ll eat. Then talk.” She lifted Sara into her arms. “It’s okay. This is…this is your daddy. Don’t you remember him?”

The blue eyes darted to the man, back to her. Slowly Sara shook her head.

“She’s frightened of strangers,” she said to Kyle, leveling the blame at him with her gaze.

“I had to go,” he said. “For you and Sara—”

“For us?” she interrupted in blatant disbelief. “For us you disappeared for two years? No visits, no calls, not even a note to tell us you were alive? This was for us?”

Sara hid her face against Danielle’s shoulder. Danielle clamped her lips together, stopping the flood of questions and accusations.

“The case had reached a crisis point,” Kyle said, his tone level and matter-of-fact compared to her emotional outburst, “Luke and the director agreed with my assessment that it was too dangerous for me to go home. You and Sara could have been at risk. I couldn’t chance it.”

“You and Luke and the director,” she repeated with an effort to appear as calm as he did. “What choice was I given in the matter? When were my wishes and needs considered? Sara and I were whisked out of Denver in the dead of night without one word from you. Not one. So much for being a family, for discussing the future, for sharing decisions. So much for loving and honoring and cherishing.”

A flicker of emotion dashed through his eyes…Sara’s eyes…then was gone. Guilt, regret, sadness? She turned away, angry and upset. He should feel guilty.

After placing Sara on the stool at the end of the counter, Danielle went to the stove. She dished up three bowls of stew, poured three glasses of milk and placed a wooden bowl of crackers on the table.

It seemed strange, setting dinner for three when for days, then weeks, then months, it had only been the two of them. She glanced at the dark-faced stranger at the table. For a second, she was more afraid of the man in her kitchen than the two men who threatened their lives.

Kyle inhaled deeply as Danielle set the stew in front of him. The aroma was intoxicating—the rich, meaty smell of the stew, the lemony trace of cleanser and wax used on the furniture, the scent that was unique to his wife—a blend of her cologne and powder and shampoo and her sweet womanly essence.

Home. But not welcome.

The knowledge dwelled in the bottomless pit that had taken over his soul. He studied Danielle’s face, noting her carefully averted gaze, as she finished serving the meal and took her place at the opposite end of the table. Their daughter ate at the counter, still perched on the stool.

Silence fell over the room. An uneasy one. The quiet that had first attracted him to Danielle was now a shield against him. She had withdrawn, enclosed herself in a cocoon of mute hostility that excluded him. He hadn’t expected anything different after reading her letter.

But a man can dream. If only…

He buried the regret. Feelings didn’t count in this case. He wasn’t leaving until he found the guys who had kidnapped his daughter and now threatened his family. Then he would leave. If Dani said he must.

A tiny unexpected light flared in his heart. He extinguished it with an impatience new to him. She didn’t want him here now. She wouldn’t want him to stay.

“How long are you staying?” she asked, shaking him out of his introspection.

“However long it takes,” he said.

Her frown indicated this wasn’t an acceptable answer.

“I’m on R and R for two months.” He figured he’d have the bad guys locked up by then. If not, he would stay longer. That was one thing she didn’t have a choice about.

“Rest and recuperation,” she interpreted. “Did you finish the case you were on?”

He nodded. Two years ago, he’d been assigned to a jury-tampering case that had quickly expanded into gangland violence involving extortion, gambling, racketeering, drugs, you name it. Upon seeing one of the gang’s own family—the man’s wife and kids—soon after they’d been blown to bits because of a disagreement with the gang boss, he had notified Luke, his contact at the regional FBI office, to get Danielle and Sara out of town, just in case the crime lord should find out who he was and decide to do the same to his family. The deeper he’d gotten into their evil world, the more dangerous he had realized it would be for his family if he was exposed.