LITMIR.BIZ

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      Fight or flight. She’d had the classic response to a threat. And she’d flown. She’d run like hunted prey. The way she’d been running emotionally for the last six years. She knew she would have to face him one day. She just didn’t think it would be now. Like this. Here, in her mountain sanctuary.

      And she was scared. She’d built something here for Danny and herself. A home. She couldn’t let his presence in White River rock those foundations. She couldn’t let him hurt Danny. Thank God her boy was away. She needed to figure out how to deal with this.

      Hannah took a deep breath, drinking in the damp, cool air, filling her lungs to the bottom in a bid to steady herself, calm the heart jackhammering in her chest, marshal her thoughts.

      But her heart leaped straight back into her mouth at the sudden firm pressure of a large hand on her shoulder.

      She spun round and stared up, straight into eyes, pale blue as the sky behind him.

      Danny’s eyes.

      She opened her mouth but no words came. He seemed bigger, his face harder. There was no laughter in those ice eyes. Yet there was still that sensual mouth, that powerful masculine aura. He took her breath away.

      “Hannah, we need to talk.”

      He still had a trace of British accent, refined in sound even as it was rough and seductive in tone. It melted her core in an instant.

      “Rex—” His name came from her lips in a breathy whisper. “Please…please don’t touch me.” She couldn’t bear it. His hand on her. The sensation. The heaviness. The warmth, the crashing kaleidoscope of bottled memories that came spinning, splashing out through her brain.

      He let go of her shoulder and she caught the glint of a silver ring. Her breath choked in her throat.

      He was still wearing her ring. The little Ethiopian silver ring she had bought for him at a market in Marumba. It had been a lark. They’d been deliriously happy. She’d been in love, or so she had thought. She had joked that as long as Rex wore that ring, he belonged to her.

      And he was still wearing it. On the little finger of his left hand.

      Hannah was suddenly overwhelmed with six years worth of conflicting emotions. They surged up in waves and crashed over her. Her need for him. Her hate. Her bitterness. Her anger. Her desperate need to understand.

      She started to shake inside. All those things she had thought to say to him if she ever ran into him again were obliterated, deleted, at the sight of those darkly fringed eyes of blue ice. And the ring.

      She looked up from the ring into those wolf eyes. They bit back into her with Arctic intensity, searching, probing. She felt naked under his scrutiny. He held her captive with his gaze as he slowly came round to sit on Danny’s rock.

      “What are you doing here, Rex?”

      “I came for the toxicology conference.”

      Not for her. His words cut deeper than they should have.

      “You…you didn’t know I was here?”

      He leaned forward, as if to touch her, held back. “I knew, Hannah.”

      What else did he know? She felt a talon of fear claw at her heart. What had he really come for? “You were hoping you wouldn’t run in to me?”

      “I was going to look you up. We need to talk.”

      There was so much to say. She had so many questions. Why did you leave me like that? She wanted to scream it at him. Damn her pride. She wanted to hit that hard, muscular chest with her fists. She wanted to shake him. Hurt him. Run her fingers through that gloss of ebony hair. Feel the give of those sculpted lips under the tips of her fingers. God, she just wanted him to hold her.

      She tried to stand. The world seemed to have shifted on its axis, leaving her unbalanced. She fought the buckling sensation in her knees. She needed to stand over him. Feel the height. Find some strength. “I don’t think there’s anything to say, Rex. You made that clear in your note.” She needed to buy time. To think.

      She took a step back, turned to leave.

      “Wait, Hannah!” He was off the rock, gripping her wrist. She could feel her pulse beating against the strength of his fingers.

      She looked up into his eyes. “I did, Rex. Six years ago I waited. I’ve waited long enough.”

      He stiffened, eyes narrowing like those of a Siberian husky. A small muscle pulsed in his jaw. But he said nothing, just loosened the grip on her wrist, let it fall.

      It was the ultimate rejection. He was doing it to her all over again. Hot wetness spilled up into her eyes. She turned so that he wouldn’t see. And she started up the riverbank, half hoping he’d call out to her and explain.

      He didn’t.

      She held her spine stiff. Ignoring the bite of stones in her sandals, she walked smoothly, proudly, away. But inside she cried. Like the child who had cried for the love of her father. Like the woman who had vowed never to need a man to make her whole.

      Rex watched her go. A proud and beautiful woman, her long hair swinging gently across her back. A woman once his. His body screamed to call out to her. To tell her the truth. To explain that he’d had to leave. That he could never be with her. That he’d made the biggest mistake of his life. And nothing…nothing in this world had cost him more than that one act. He’d left her, alone in that tent, sleeping under an African sky. And with her, he’d left his heart.

      Chapter 3

      “’Night, Danny. Love you.”

      “Love you more.”

      “You know that’s not possible. Bye, sweetie. Be good.” Hannah put down the phone, picked up her mug of cocoa and walked barefoot out onto the deck.

      At least Danny was enjoying himself. She stood at the railing, looking out over Alabaster Lake, cradling her cocoa. She missed him more than she could have imagined. She missed his constant chattering, his incessant questions. His funny little quips. His mess of toys all over the living room floor.

      She sipped from her mug. Dusk was settling on the valley but the snow-capped peaks still basked in the sun’s attention. They were bathed with soft peach Alpenglow. So beautiful. So distant. She couldn’t remember when she last felt so alone. She watched as a canoe cut across the glass of the lake, two people paddling in harmony, perfect balance. Their unity lent power to their strokes, purpose to their direction. But she was alone. She’d been left to paddle her own canoe. And she had. Her stroke was not as strong, but she’d found a balance of sorts. She’d been content, if not happy.

      Until now. Until today.

      Rex had brought a storm into the valley, whipping up waves and rocking her fragile boat. She had to find a way to steady it. She couldn’t see that way right now.

      Damn him. He hadn’t even tried to explain. She wouldn’t humiliate herself by asking.

      The sun slipped off the peaks and the chill deepened instantly. She set her mug on the railing and reached for her fleece, pulling it tight around her, blocking out the searching fingers of cold.

      She had to figure out what to do. This past year Danny had started asking more and more about his father. She was not going to lie to him. She’d told him his dad had left before he was born.

      But last month, when Danny asked if his dad even knew that he had been born, she’d been stumped. She’d panicked, changed the subject—and been eaten by guilt since. She hadn’t been ready to deal with it then and she sure as hell wasn’t ready now.

      Danny had a right to know the truth. If she didn’t tell him soon that Rex Logan was his father, he would find out himself one day. And at what cost? Yet Hannah was so damn afraid that even if she brought it all out into the open now, Danny would end up feeling the same kind of rejection she had as a child.

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