and once she had her life back?

simply because she'd reclaimed her inner self didn't make her any more right for danny than she'd been eleven years before. not that he was even the same person. parts of danny remained, mingled with the newer, darker daniel. even if he stayed single after however long it took her to reclaim her life...

she didn't know. but for the first time in years, she knew she wanted to dare. to dream.

and the steamy whispers of possibility made packing somehow easier and tougher at the same time.

"hey, mary elise, where ya going?" austin piped from four steps ahead as he sprinted into the condo, his blankie dragging.

going? daniel's brain went numb.he stood in the open doorway staring at mary elise's suitcase, and freaking couldn't process what he was seeing.

didn't want to.

hell, his mind never stopped working. never. his thoughts always operated three paces ahead of his feet, and his feet were mighty damned fast even on a bad day.

and thanks to austin's question, this promised to be a sucky day. once again mary elise flipped his world.

daniel double-timed into the condo, his boots traveling ahead of his reason. he charged past the boys, stopping toe-to-toe with mary elise and her small suitcase.

austin shuffled to a stop in front of her, his bottom lip trembling.

mary elise knelt eye level with austin's blueberry-syrup-stained face. she licked her thumb and swiped it over his cheek until the smudge disappeared. "well, sweetie, it's time for me to get a place of my own."

"why ya gotta go? i want you to stay."

"i'd like to stay, too. but this isn't my home."

he hitched his blanket under his nose and sniffed. "are you gonna be close? are we gonna see you again?"

she smoothed back sweaty brown curls off his forehead. "you bet you will." she answered the latter question while avoiding the first. "it may take a while for me to get everything ... settled, but i'll be back here to see you sometime. and when i come back, i want you to show me all your new dives into the pool, and i'll bet you won't even need water wings anymore."

damn it, he could see the tears in her eyes. why was she doing this to herself? to the boys.

to him. "mary elise, let's talk without the boys here."

"daniel, i'll be sending you the money i owe you for all the clothes and such. and i made a list of things austin and trey have mentioned wanting for christmas." she avoided his eyes by rifling through her suitcase with jerky agitation. "where did i put them?"

trey leaned forward to tug the side zipper pouch. "are they in here?"

"no. i don't think so. i haven't used that pocket yet."

"but it's half-zipped."

hell, did the kid have to flipping help her out the door with a hoo-ya just to piss him off?

"hmm." she yanked open the zipper and jammed her hand inside. "maybe i put it in here without think-"

she shrieked. her hand whipped back out of the bag. blood dripped from her fingertip. "ouch."

daniel knelt beside her, pressing his thumb to the pinprick. "trey, run back to the bathroom and get one of those winnie the pooh band-aids."

maybe he could stretch this into a trip to the hospital for a tetanus shot to buy him time to talk her around. or he could stand here and hold her hand for another hour and stare into the damned prettiest eyes he'd ever seen.

mary elise tugged her hand free and stuck her finger in her mouth. she looked away, taking all that endless green with her.

prying open the side pouch, she peered inside. color drained from her already-pale face. swaying, she withdrew a small medicine bottle for a shot.

daniel supported her shoulders with one arm and grabbed the bag from her. a syringe lay in the side pouch, and from the stunned glaze in mary elise's eyes, it didn't belong there.

instincts went on full alert. something wasn't right.

trey charged back down the hall, band-aids waving from his hand like banners. "got it. two of them. one tigger and one ee-yore."

"thanks, pal." daniel snagged the bandages and wrapped an orange tigger band-aid around the tip of mary elise's finger. "how about you fellas take your game boys to your room for a minute."

austin's bottom lip trembled. "but i wanna say goodbye to mary elise."

"i promise you'll get to." he scruffed a hand through the tousled curls. "meanwhile, let me see if i can talk her into staying a little longer."

mary elise exhaled, shaking free whatever had gripped her. "please, trey? could you keep austin busy for a bit? i promise not to go anywhere without talking to you first."

trey shuffled from foot to foot, then shrugged. "yeah, okay, but i want eggplant parmesan for supper."

daniel faked a smile. "sure kid, whatever."

trey yanked his little brother by the arm, promises of pokemon nintendo fading with the close of their bedroom door.

anger on a tight rein, daniel jabbed a finger toward her. "cut the crap. i'm not letting you walk out until you tell me exactly what's going on."

mary elise sunk back on her bottom. "oh, god, danny. i've screwed up so bad."

mary elise forced her hand to stay steady around the empty bottle, willed her teeth not to chatter. still, the shaking swelled inside her.

she'd tried so damned hard to weigh the options and make the right choices to keep the boys from being traumatized. yet, once the cargo plane had become airborne, her life had spiraled out of control until every option absolutely stunk.

even if little austin hadn't been frightened to the point of being immobilized and she could have run right away, daniel would have been curious. which would have led him-and therefore the boys-directly to kent.

except kent had found her anyway.

she'd expected fear, and hell yes, fear stirred a storm within her. but she hadn't anticipated the blind explosion of fury.

how dare he do this to her? to the family she'd grown to care about so much? rhetorical questions that served no purpose. kent dared anything. and now she had to tell daniel. surely he would understand he needed to stay near the boys, protect them. once he heard the truth, he would realize the farther all three were from her now, the better.

a horrific notion took root. she knew kent had planted the bottle, but when? her mind echoed with the rustlings when she'd showered. "danny, once you and the boys left for ihop, did you come back to pick up anything?"

"no." impatience stamped his face. "the boys stopped to talk with wren for a minute and then we left. what the hell's going on here?"

she flattened a hand to the carpet, slumping back against the couch. nausea roiled. bile burned. she dropped the bottle like a snake onto the glass-topped coffee table. "this isn't mine. someone broke into the condo and put it here."

kent, the man who dared anything and respected no boundaries, had placed it there. while she was n**ed in the shower.

incredulity furrowed daniel's brow, feeding her worries that he wouldn't believe her, either.

"what the hell for? ah hell, whatever the reason," he reached for the phone on the chrome end table, "we need to call the cops, now."

"wait!" she lurched to the side, flinging her hands over the telephone, the pinprick forgotten in a new panic.

he paused midreach. "the longer we wait, the farther away whoever it was will get."

"i know who it was, and no way is he anywhere near here now. he's left his message and will undoubtedly leave another, but not today."

his hand fell back to his knee as he sank down beside her. "run that by me again?"

"i know who planted it there. or at least i know who was responsible." and damn it, she prayed she hadn't made a huge mistake in lingering at danny's this long.

"want to share that nugget? because i'm getting pretty torqued off thinking about someone slipping in here when the boys may have been around."

"the boys are fine." she would have never stayed at danny's for so much as one night if she'd thought for a second kent would come near the boys. he'd always been precise in his sanctimonious anger. "it's me he wants to rattle."

"he?"

"my ex-husband."

"your ex did this? how can you be sure? you haven't even let him know you're here." his eyes narrowed with a glint of ... jealousy? "have you?"

"no! of course not. but somehow he must have found out." she nudged the bottle beside a stack of junk mail on the table. "only he would think to leave behind a medicine bottle with my name on it, used back when we were married."

medicines to increase fertility.

a bottle from one of her daily shots.

as much as she hated giving daniel details, she had to convince him, for his own safety and the boys'. "kent didn't take our breakup well. he pulled stunts like this all the time right after i left him."

"you still haven't explained why you know this is from him."

"i had difficulty conceiving. we tried ... everything. i wanted to adopt. kent wanted to keep trying for a biological child." she couldn't make herself tell him about the miscarriages. her precious son born too early. but daniel needed to know her suspicions, no matter how paranoid they sounded. "i think maybe this wasn't the first time he's attempted to rattle me since i returned to the states. there was a plant mixed in with your neighbor's potted garden, a plant that's supposed to promote fertility. i thought it was a coincidence, and now i'm not so sure. i'm so very sorry for not telling you then."

daniel's hand fell to rest beside the bottle, inching over to straighten the stack of junk mail beside it with an odd precision. "why not just contact you?"

long-buried resentment clawed its way to the surface, having been denied light too long, due to her more basic survival needs of the past year.

"because he's a sick bastard who enjoys tormenting me. god, i could go on forever. regardless, he's a nut case, danny. and i'm so, so sorry for bringing him anywhere near the boys. i didn't think there was any way he could know where i was. even if he'd tracked me to rubistan, it's not like my leaving the country was exactly out in the open."

"you went to rubistan to get away from him?"

"i'd have gone to the moon to get away from kent mcrae." she pushed out the words she'd told her parents, only to be parted on the hand and ignored by them. "danny, my ex-husband was more than just a mistake. he's dangerous."

"the bastard hit you?" daniel's eyes flamed.

he canted forward, already on the offensive just as she'd predicted. as much as her heart cheered his ready acceptance, she also feared his reaction.

with her own anger building by the microsecond, how would she stay calm enough through the rest of her explanation to keep him from going ballistic? she forced herself to sit still when her feet wanted nothing more than to pace out the edgy bite of emotions.

she shook her head. "no. he never raised a hand to me. he's much more subtle than that, like with leaving this old medication bottle. you can call the police, but what are they going to do? unless we can prove he broke in here, they'll just issue another restraining order, all the while looking at me like i'm a hysterical woman because i don't have bruises to show for proof."

sometimes she wondered if things might not have spiraled down so if only she'd left sooner, once kent started changing from the charming man she'd married into a manipulative control freak. easy to second-guess now with hindsight, but at the time she'd let guilt blind her to the signs. deep in her heart she'd been certain the fault was hers because, god help her, she didn't love kent as much as she'd once loved daniel.