Come and Find Me A Novel of Suspense - By Hallie Ephron Page 0,64
away, overturning. Diana dropped to the floor.
As if he’d flown down, seconds later Daniel was crouched in front of her and holding her hand. It had to be a dream. She closed her eyes, willing herself to wake up. But still she felt his hand, holding hers. Smelled the tang of his sweat.
She opened her eyes. He looked older, thicker. Like Jake, his head was completely shaved.
“Oh God, is it really you?” she whispered. “How . . . ?” She could barely wrap her head around the questions that followed. How had he survived? How had he come back? How long had he been here? How could he have come back and not let her know?
When he brushed the hair back from her forehead and tucked a tendril behind her ear, it felt as if he left a trail of red-hot embers. He put his arms around her.
Daniel, Daniel, Daniel . . . He was alive.
“It’s okay, it’s okay . . .” He whispered the words in her ear.
And then she was crying. Deep sobs racked her body. Waves of agony overwhelmed her as the enormity of his deception washed over her. She tried to pull away but he held her tight in his arms.
Her throat closed, and she could barely get the words out. “You bastard. You lousy son of a bitch.” She struggled to free herself. He’d let her believe that he was dead. Nothing could make that okay. “How could you let me . . . ?”
In a blind fury, funneling rage, confusion, and a backwash of grief, she drew back and tried to slap his face, her open hand connecting with the arm he’d raised as a shield. She tried again but he blocked the blow.
He reached out for her but she scrabbled back across the mesh floor. “Get away from me! How could you do—” When he closed in on her she pounded his chest with every ounce of strength she could muster.
He caught her wrist and held it.
She flailed, trying to free herself. “I hate you I hate you I hate you . . .”
He pulled her toward him.
“I . . . trusted . . . you.” She spit the words out into his face.
He grabbed her other wrist. She tried to twist away but couldn’t.
“And you . . . you . . .”
He held her until at last she went still. Time seemed to stop as he drew one of her hands to his mouth and kissed the tip of her thumb. Her index finger. She felt the warmth of his lips, his tongue.
He kissed each of the other fingers, one by one. Then her wrist, and she closed her eyes, her body vibrating with sensations she’d thought she’d never feel again.
When Diana opened her eyes, Daniel was looking directly at her. Slowly, without breaking eye contact, he kissed her, a long deep kiss. She remembered the soft fullness of his lips, the strength of his arms around her, how his very essence filled and overwhelmed her. She remembered how, in his embrace, the world outside simply ceased to exist.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Diana sat curled in Daniel’s lap on the floor, feeling his warm breath in her ear. She reached up and touched the back of his neck, the hollow where the prickliness of his shaved head met soft skin. He let her draw her fingers across the familiar contours of his cheek, his sandpaper jaw, the puckered cleft in his chin.
“What happened?” she asked. “Why didn’t you come back?”
“I can explain everything.” He put his finger under her chin and gently raised her face to his. “Just give me a chance. I can explain.”
“I’m listening.”
A muscle worked in the corner of his jaw and he took a breath. “I don’t know exactly what happened, but when I woke up in the hospital I had no idea who I was. They told me that I’d crawled out of the wilderness into a little village. I was in pretty bad shape. I’d been out there for days. I have no idea how I stayed alive or I how got there, but I did. They airlifted me to the nearest hospital. They said it was a miracle that I came through in one piece. Pretty much, anyway.”
He splayed his fingers, showing her their scarred tips. “Frostbite,” he said. “My toes too. The end of my nose. They were able to reconstruct it. I was very lucky. It could have been much worse.