A loud banging woke Faith.

She opened her eyes, aware that she must have slept at some point, curled close to the TV.  An old black-and-white film flickered across the screen and Bogie growled something through a cloud of cigarette smoke.  Above the TV, a clock glared the witching hour of midnight.

“Faith?  Hurry and let me in before the reporters come back.”

The banging resumed and she struggled to get her feet properly situated beneath her.  Her legs were a mass of pins and needles, throwing her off balance.  The voice sounded like Luke’s and the minute she recognized that fact, all thoughts but one gripped her.  Lily!  Did he have news about her daughter?  She ran for the door, belatedly checking the peephole before opening up.  Catching a glimpse of Luke’s muscular build and distinctive dark hair, she flung off the chain and ripped open the deadbolt.

“Luke?  Have you found her?  Have you found—”

It wasn’t Luke.  In fact, it was the last person she’d have ever expected to find on her doorstep.

“Hello, Faith,” Ethan said.

Faith stumbled backward, staring in disbelief.  “Ethan?”  She bumped up against a small table.  It crashed to the floor and she followed it down, landing hard on one hip.

Ethan was in the house like a shot, slamming the door behind him.  He attempted to catch her as she fell, but his bad leg folded beneath him and he hit the floor alongside of her.

She scrambled backward away from him.  “You’re not Ethan.”  Her face was dead white, her lips the odd purplish-blue of a hypothermia victim.  “You can’t be.  Ethan’s dead.”

He clumsily gained his feet and held out a hand.  “I didn’t die.”

She stared at his hand as though it were a viper.  Ignoring the offer of help, she continued to inch away from him.  “No.”

“Honey—”

“No!”  A thousand different emotions swept across her face.  Denial.  Joy.  Relief.  Confusion.  After all the turmoil in the wake of Lily’s abduction, he could tell she was fast approaching the point of overload.

Ethan started toward her, then stopped when she scuttled backward like a crab.  She was rapidly transitioning from general overload to total system meltdown, and he held his ground at a safe distance, afraid of tipping her over the edge.  “It’s me,” he said simply.  “I’m sorry to frighten you, sweetheart.  But it really is me.”

She shook her head.  “Jack came.”  She struggled to her knees and Ethan forced himself to watch instead of lending assistance.  It was clear she didn’t want him touching her, though the knowledge just about killed him.  She planted her shoulder against the wall and used her legs to shove herself upright, while her arms remained weighted at her sides.  After a momentary struggle, she managed to align her feet and legs sufficiently to stand.  She appeared wobbly, but he didn’t think she was in imminent danger of falling again.  “He said you’d been killed.”

“They thought I was dead.  They didn’t know I’d survived until five or so months later.”  He spoke dispassionately about events too hideous for words.  Boxing off the memories gave him the best chance for survival.  Unfortunately, it also made light of a time when darkness had nearly crushed the life from him.  But every instinct told him to bury the darkness, to hide scars too hideous to bring into the light.  “It took another full month for the unit to organize and mount a successful rescue.

She fought to take it in and Ethan couldn’t tell how much actually made it through.  “Jack said you’d been ambushed.  Your jeep . . .”  Her chin quivered uncontrollably.  So did her hands.  They told a story all their own, sweeping the air in jerky, disjointed movements that lacked her usual grace.  “Your jeep.  It blew up.  I said it was a mistake.  You couldn’t be dead.  I’d know.  But they found your identification on the . . . on the body.  They said there wasn’t any question.  We had a funeral for you.  It was quite beautiful.  You should have been there.”  A laugh broke from her.  Then she started to cry.

He kept his voice low and soothing.  “The people who captured me set it up.  They wanted everyone to think I was dead.”

Her mouth worked, striving to form a coherent string of words.  “I don’t understand,” she got out through the tears.  “Why?”

“So they could find out who I was working for, without my employers realizing they’d been exposed.”

Relief and joy broke through all other emotions.  At least, he hoped he read her right.  He wanted desperately to believe it was joy that lit her face.  “You’re alive?” she begged.  “You’re really alive?”

He managed a smile.  “I’m alive, sweetheart.”

She was in his arms then, practically bowling him over.  She hugged him, kissed the sweep of his jaw, his mouth, his throat—anywhere she could reach.  Her tears wet his face and he absorbed them into his skin, absorbed all of her.  Her softness, her scent, the sweetness of her mouth, the urgency of her touch.  It had been so long since he’d last held her in his arms and he drank in her essence, instantly intoxicated after what felt like an endless drought.

He cupped her face and kissed her fully, shuddering at the intense pleasure.  He couldn’t get enough.  It would never be enough, not after all they’d been through.  Their bodies remembered each other, coming together with a delicious familiarity.  She slipped into the juncture of his thighs just as she always had when they’d been a couple, leaning into him.  He responded automatically, planting his hands low on her hips and tugging her close.  Cupping her bottom, he lifted her up and into him.  She shimmied closer, wrapping herself around him.

Their mouths moved in concert, joining, parting, rejoining, clinging.  Slow.  Then fast.  Then hard and long, tongues entwining.  They were kisses of reacquaintance.  Frenzied kisses.  Gentle kisses.  Kisses that expressed an odd curiosity, as though comparing what they were experiencing now, to what had once been.

For the first time in five-and-a-half long, lonely years, Ethan felt hope stir.

The minute they came up for air, her words came, singing in his ear like the sweetest jazz, tumbling over themselves in a rhythmic staccato.  “You have no idea.  It’s been awful.  Awful!  I needed you.  Badly.  Elizabeth helped, but it wasn’t the same.  It took years before I came to terms with—”  The singing ended as abruptly as it had begun, the jazz fading from the air on a jarring note.  “I hurt for years and years, Ethan.  But you . . .  You said you were only imprisoned for—”

She broke off, struggling free of his arms.  She took a quick step backward, then another.  He stood silently, waiting.  He knew what she was thinking.

“Say it,” he ordered.

She’d gone from joy to fury in the space of a heartbeat.  “You son of a bitch,” she whispered.  “You said six months.  You said they imprisoned you for six months.  What about the rest of that time?  What about all those years I thought you were dead?  Where the hell have you been?”

This book was a:

Finalist for 2003 RITA Award, Long Contemporary Category.

From the book:

KEEPING FAITH

by Day Leclaire

Book #5 of the Forrester Square Continuity Series

December '03

ISBN:  0-373-61272-9

 

ANOTHER 4 1/2 FOR DAY LECLAIRE'S RITA NOMINATED BOOK!

"Mercenary soldier Ethan Dunn leaves for a military mission, unaware that Faith Marshall is pregnant with their child.  When he is captured and presumed dead, Faith must raise their daughter alone.  Her world is torn apart again when her child is abducted, and Ethan reappears -- willing to do whatever it takes to get their daughter back.  Can he win Faith back as well?  KEEPING FAITH (4.5) is filled with lively characters, and Day Leclaire keeps the tension high with this satisfying read."  Rebecca Carefoot, Romantic Times Reviewer.

Copyright © 2003 by Day Leclaire.  ® and ™ are trademarks of the publisher.  This edition published by arrangement with Harlequin Books S.A.  For more romance information surf to: http://www.eharlequin.com