All she saw was the knife. The curved wood-grain handle, the smooth, silvery blade glowing balefully in the dappled blue light.
Then explosive movement behind him.
Daniel’s arms, fists, legs flying. She stepped backward, tripped, and landed hard on her tailbone.
The knife hit the floor with a soft thud and skittered across the hardwood floor as one of the two scuffling men kicked it with their foot. She scrambled to her knees and crawled across the floor to it. Clasping it with sweaty hands, she scuttled in a wide berth around the grunting, grappling men.
Theo lay half on, half off the sofa, twisting around as he tried to see what was happening behind him.
“Stay still.” She sliced the duct tape holding his wrists together. As soon as she cut through the tape, Ana threw the knife under the sofa where Harrison couldn’t reach it, and urged Theo to his feet, shoving him toward the hallway. “Run.”
“Mum?” His eyes were wild and pleading.
God, how she loved him.
“Don’t you dare argue. Go now!” She propelled him down the hallway and all but threw him through the laundry room door.
She raced back to the living room, frantically trying to see Daniel and her dad at the same time. Catching sight of tartan slippers poking out from behind the sofa, she prayed he’d gotten there on his own steam. Over the harsh grunts of each man trying to force the other into submission, Ana heard Theo yelling for help outside.
Evenly matched in height and weight, the two men hammered each other. She started forward then stopped. This time there was nothing she could do to help. If she got in the way, she’d make things worse.
Daniel had a blank, focused look on his face, his concentration completely on subduing the other man. His nose was bleeding again and his lower lip had split. A lucky punch knocked him off balance, sending him crashing into a wall.
Harrison swung around and his eyes, unwavering and empty of all emotion, met hers.
She took a step backward. He took a step forward.
His lip rippled back in a snarl, blood seeping down his chin in a dark red line. “Bitch.”
Daniel was a blur of motion, launching himself at Harrison in a full body tackle and sending them both hurtling across the floor into the tarpaulin-covered window frame. The tarpaulin ripped away from the frame as the two men slammed into it and fell, Daniel’s arms still wrapped around Harrison’s midsection.
For a second, shock froze her trembling limbs and her thoughts were a turbulent whirlpool. The only thing making sense in all the chaos was that Daniel mustn’t die. Not when she’d been too proud and scared to tell him how she’d fought not to fall in love with him, but had anyway.
Ana screamed his name and threw herself toward the window.
Daniel crouched beside Harrison’s prone body on the damp grass. He flexed his right shoulder which ached with the impact of meeting the muddy ground from the height of John’s living room window. Everything else appeared to be in working order after his not-so-perfect breakfall roll executed on landing. Not so perfect, as Harrison had cushioned most of the impact of them slamming into the ground.
Ana flew down the stairs screaming Daniel’s name over and over like an air raid siren. She fell to her knees at his side and patted his back with trembling hands until he grabbed her wrists, kissed her briefly, and ordered her off to find Theo.
He’d stayed where he was, making sure Harrison, who was slipping in and out of consciousness, didn’t make any further aggressive moves.
“Can’t feel…my legs. Fuck.”
He turned his head toward Harrison’s slurred voice. Sprawled bonelessly on the dirt, the man glared up at him with eyes hot with impotent hatred and a growing spark of fear.
Daniel waited a beat, anticipating the memory of Jodie’s accident to launch an attack, but there was only silence. Peace. He closed his eyes and lifted his face into the breeze. He’d done what he could to help Jodie, ignoring for years her repeated claims of forgiveness, because it was easier to hold onto the guilt than admit he was ready to move on.
And he’d done right by Ana and her family. John was safe, Theo was safe, and thank God, Ana was safe. His sexy counselor was right. Time to stop dragging that heavy load around.
Harrison groaned again. “You crazy fucking bastard.”
Daniel shrugged. The roar of hot, protective fury drove him to action when he’d seen Harrison with the knife against Theo’s throat. The cold narrowing of his focus happened when that knife had switched to Ana. The man’s assessment of ‘crazy bastard’ was spot on.
Ana had called him a hero before she left to find help. He hadn’t been thinking heroic thoughts when he’d tackled Harrison and sent them flying through the tarpaulin. He hadn’t cared if he’d broken both their necks in the fall. No one was going to hurt his woman. Heroic, his ass. Crazy bastard in love was more like it.
He looked over his shoulder and spotted Ana through a gap between the side of the house and the fence, one arm around Theo and the other gesturing to a burly bloke with a chainsaw. His damsel was distressed no more and had shown him that she’d fight like a lioness to hold onto what she loved. Would she fight as hard to hold onto what they’d found with each other? Daniel turned back and caught the gleam of calculation flare in Harrison’s eyes.
“She’s not worth it,” Harrison spat. “She’s a whore.”
Daniel swiped his hand across his mouth and indifferently smeared the blood off his palm onto the grass, then placed his hands precisely on either side of Harrison’s shoulders and leaned in. “Call the woman I love a whore again and you’re a dead man.”
Harrison swallowed and wisely shut his mouth and then his eyes.
The shriek of sirens grew louder and blipped to silence as they arrived in the cul-de-sac. Daniel stood, shrugging off the final tattered dregs of misplaced guilt like a snake shedding old skin, and walked toward his new life.
Chapter 35
Tuesday, July 27. 7:26 p.m. Southgate, Wellington, New Zealand.
* * *
“Daniel was awesome, guys. You should have seen him.”
Theo lounged on a beanbag in their living room, lapping up the attention from Nadia and the boys next door. They’d sucked up Theo’s recalled account with the same enthusiasm as a new PlayStation game while Ana watched in the background, relieved that Theo seemed unscathed by it all. His description of Daniel’s dive out the window had Adam and Jimmy goggling at Daniel with newfound respect.
“When can you teach me how to do stuff like that?” Adam leaned forward on his chair to peer at Daniel, slouched on the sofa.
“Yeah, me, too.” Theo seconded the notion with an enthusiastic air punch.
“No one is teaching you anything to do with falling or rolling tonight, Theodore Grace.” Ana decided it was time to break up the party. “Adam, Jimmy, thanks for all your help, but I think it’s time to say good night. It’s been a long day.”
“Sure, Ms. G.” Adam unfolded his gangly frame from the armchair. “C’mon, Jimmy, let’s see if the internet’s back up. Maybe someone videoed the cops arresting Theo’s psycho teacher and posted it online. Later, guys.”
With her father safely tucked up in Theo’s room, Maggie and Joel from the office having phoned briefly to say they were home, and both her children close by, Ana figured she should be feeling a lot more relaxed then she was.
Police and paramedics had taken charge of one reason for her restlessness. Harrison wasn’t critically injured but his prognosis for ever walking again was grim. She’d mixed emotions about his survival from the fall, a small part wishing he’d died but a larger part grimly satisfied that the man would face justice for what he’d done.
However, the other reason for her unease sat on her sofa, nursing a beer.
After shutting the door behind Jimmy and Adam, she took a deep breath, preparing to duke it out with Theo about having an early night. Then she’d tackle her other problem head on.
She bumped into her son in the hallwa
y.
“I’m going to bunk in with Alyssa now,” Theo said, and hugged her awkwardly. It’d been a while since he’d initiated affectionate contact between them, so Ana closed her eyes and savored it.
“I knew you’d come for me,” he whispered. “Love you, Mum.”
He slipped into Alyssa’s room and shut the door. Her babies; thank God they were both safe.
Nadia met her at the living room doorway, said good night to Daniel over her shoulder, and then glared. “You’ve been falling over yourself to avoid talking to him since you got back,” she grumbled quietly. “You call yourself an adult. Sort it out, boss.”
Nadia stalked past her, turned, pointed to her eyes with two fingers and then back at Ana, and cocked a brow to indicate she was watching her.
Ana grinned weakly and waved her away.
Yeah, she admitted it. Brave enough to charge into a house with a man holding her son at knifepoint, but she was a yellow-bellied coward when it came to the man sitting in her living room. Ana sidled through the doorway, feeling pathetically lost for words as her gaze landed on Daniel, who had one ankle propped on his opposite knee, totally relaxed and totally gorgeous.
“Are you ready to talk to me now?” he asked.
And so totally on to her.
She nodded imperceptibly and perched on the opposite edge of the sofa, keeping a distance of one and a half sofa cushions from him. He made no move to close the gap, just looked at her with those eyes that melted her insides to mush.
Daniel didn’t waste time on small talk. “I love you, Ana. Stop running away and deal with it.”
Her pulse hiccupped and her mouth felt strangely dry. “We’ve only known each other a few days.”
“I’m not suggesting we head off to the registry office first thing tomorrow,” he said, those cute-as-a-button dimples making an appearance. “We’ve got plenty of time to get to know each other more intimately in a less intense situation.”
Droplets of sweat burst from her skin in a superheated rush. Was it only her, or was it getting warmer in here by the second? She shifted on the sofa, her gaze snagged by a tiny rip in the fabric of the cushion between them.
This was the moment when a reply was expected. Something along the lines of I love you, too, darling. Let’s run off into the sunset together. But she couldn’t do it. Couldn’t get her lips to move at all because the space between them was crammed with ghosts. Silent, almost palpable reminders of her past failures.
One she could disperse with little effort. The power of her feelings for Daniel had lessened the hold Theo’s biological father had on her. His ghost disappeared without complaint, the hurt that had remained now recognized as bruised pride.
But her dad, the man he’d been, the man she’d once told she wanted to marry as he was her Prince Charming, was not so easy to shift. If a good man like John Grace could let her down, so could a good man like Daniel. Neil also refused to budge, stubbornly reminding her with his hound-dog eyes that she was the reason he’d been in that bar that fateful night.
So she did what she did best around Daniel Calder. Switched topics.
“On the night Neil died, we had a fight.” She looked up at him with haunted eyes. “I was eight months’ pregnant and convinced he was sleeping with one of the girls he worked with. I accused him outright and he denied it. He said he loved me and would never do anything to hurt me. That he’d go out for a drink and come back in a few hours when we’d both calmed down. The next time I saw him, he was dead.”
She shook her head. “It doesn’t matter now whether he was unfaithful or not. Because of what Theo’s father did, because of Dad betraying my mum, my inability to trust was the cause of Neil’s death.”
“Bullshit.”
She jerked at the vehemence of his tone. “What?”
“You heard me. Your inability to trust no more caused Neil’s death than the color of your hair. You had an argument about infidelity. What if you’d argued because you forgot to pick up his dry cleaning? What if he’d simply decided to have a beer at this particular bar without even coming home first? Would that mean you were to blame for Neil being in the wrong place at the wrong time?”
He slid along the couch until he was once again in her personal space, crowding her senses with his nearness. “Was I to blame for Jodie’s accident?”
“No! You can’t still think it was your fault?”
“You know I did, for a long time. Hanging onto the guilt became easier than letting it go and moving on. With all that’s happened in the last few days, I’ve finally put that behind me. I’m ready now to fight free of that stranglehold. Isn’t it time you did the same?”
He cupped her face with gentle fingers. “You’re using Neil’s death as a smoke screen. You already told me you were never in love with him, but I won’t believe you if you tell me you’re not in love with me. It’s written all over you, the same way it’s written all over me. So tell me right now. Tell me you love me.”
“I do love you,” she whispered.
His lips claimed hers. Hot, demanding, and impatient, she couldn’t stem her response to him. She wanted the feel of his mouth on hers to be enough. She wanted the truth of her words to be enough. She did love him. Passionately.
But.
Something held her back. She saw herself one day picking up the phone, hearing Daniel say, “I’m sorry, honey. I never meant you to find out this way.” She saw herself turning into her mother, broken into tiny pieces and spending years of her life trying to glue herself together again. Lily Grace hadn’t been able to let go of her husband even after he’d trampled all over her heart. She’d loved him that much, that passionately.
Was that Ana’s future if she threw caution to the wind and let love sweep away all her doubts?
Tears streamed in liquid heat down her face. He must have felt them dampen his fingers as he broke the kiss.
“There was a silent but, wasn’t there?” He grazed his thumbs across her cheeks, catching tears in their tracks.
She nodded and he sighed, for a moment resting his forehead against hers. Then he pulled away.
“Back to the lack of trust again?” His voice was tight and it cut through her like razor-sharp wire.
“Yes.”
“I know it won’t make any difference to point out that I’m not Theo’s dad or Neil, or even your father. If I tell you that when I make a commitment to stay faithful to one woman it might as well be chiseled in stone, you still won’t believe me, will you?”
“I want to believe you, but in time, if things start to go wrong—”
“Hold on a goddamned second.” He stood abruptly, towering over her. “If at some point in the future things between us started to get off track, don’t you think I’ve got balls enough to talk to you about it?”
“I’m sorry.”
“No, you’re not sorry. You’re asking for a relationship to come with a money-back guarantee. I can’t give that to you, no one can. There’s nothing else I can say, nothing else I can do to earn your trust.” His fingers raked across his scalp and his eyes were the dark blue of an uncharted ocean sinkhole.
“We should talk about this tomorrow,” she said, and panic tore her control to shreds at the shuttered way he continued to look at her. “It’s best if you stay at Adam and Jimmy’s tonight.”
“Tomorrow?” His laugh contained not a trace of humor. “Will you feel differently in the morning?”
Heart thudding sickly against her ribs, she sank farther into the sofa, all her strength bleeding out of her, leaving nothing but weary acceptance.
“No. Probably not. I think we need to get back to our own lives—our own separate lives,” she said, and her lip wobbled uncontrollably for a moment until she finally reined in her emotions. “As soon as possible.”
He said nothing else, just dipped his head in a slow nod and left the room. A soft, hiccupping sob burst from her, but even through her tears she heard the click of the front door closing behind him.<
br />
Chapter 36
Friday, August 5. 11:12 a.m. Southgate, Wellington, New Zealand.
* * *
Daniel swiped sweat from his forehead, hoisted the length of timber up flush to the one below it, and snarled at Adam to stop wagging his jaw with Mr. Green and move his ass over here with the fresh bag of nails already.
Adam rolled his eyes and slouched over from Mr. Green’s doorstep to the nearly boarded-up window. “What’s the matter, dude? Wake up on the wrong side of our couch again this morning?”
“Thank God it’s the last morning I’ll have to wake up on it after ten days of bugger-all sleep.” Daniel grabbed a fistful of nails and started pounding.
Jimmy, holding the other end of the plank, shifted his weight from foot to foot with a sigh. “Yeah. Lucky you, getting outta the city.”
Daniel stopped hammering. “Roads are finally open now and I’ve done all the repairs I can do round here. Besides, Nads is keen to head north to see our mum.”
“Right,” Adam muttered as Daniel lifted his hammer again. “Like getting away from Ms. G. has nothing to do with it.”
Daniel cut him a look and Adam raised both palms. “Just saying.”
“Well, be a mate and don’t. Theo’ll be back any minute.” Daniel’s fist tightened around the hammer and he whacked the first nail in with one blow.
By mutual, silent agreement, he and Ana had kept out of each other’s way. It wasn’t like it was hard with the multitude of odd jobs to be done in the neighborhood. As he had overheard Nadia sniping at Ana a few days ago—much to his embarrassment—he wasn’t the type of guy to walk away when his help was desperately needed, just because things hadn’t worked between the two of them. Each time his mind swerved off his work to think about that, it felt like an invisible fist pounded every single one of those nails into his gut.
Adam shrugged and wandered off to do who knew what in Mr. Green’s garden shed.
A few minutes later Theo trudged around the corner of the house, sporting a small cooler and a scowl. “Vegemite or peanut butter again, sorry.”
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