Reunited for the Holidays. Jillian Hart

I couldn’t call home. I was too ill to write a letter. Those people saved my life.”

      “Bless them, and we’re all grateful.” Thankfulness filled her with such power it made her eyes burn. Thankfulness, for the kids’ sake. She tore her hand from his. “Thank the Lord you were able to come back to be with your children.”

      She turned so he couldn’t see her face. She didn’t want him to guess how much this cost her. She wanted to be anywhere but with him. It hurt too much. She moved forward on the chair cushion, needing to get away.

      “Let me help you, Isabella.” His chair scraped.

      “No, I’m fine.” She pushed out of the chair, her left side sluggish. “I’ve got this.”

      “That doesn’t mean you have to do it alone.”

      “It does.” She’d been on her own for decades. She couldn’t start leaning on him now. “The twins might be reunited, but that doesn’t change anything between us.”

      “I didn’t expect it would.” His dark chocolate eyes gleamed with regret.

      Regret she shared. Regret she felt all the way to her soul. The chasm of twenty-five years stood between them, a distance too great to bridge. Their love, once broken, couldn’t be repaired. It just couldn’t. “Seeing you again is harder than I predicted. It hurts.”

      “Yes.” He covered his heart with the flat of his palm. “You would think all this time would have healed it.”

      “Or maybe numbed it a little.”

      “Exactly,” he agreed. “But it hurts the way it did when you asked for a divorce, while our children slept in the next room.”

      “I remember.” The night their marriage ended and they’d given up hope. She gripped the walker for support. Dismissing the doctor’s orders not to be up on her own, she made her way shakily toward the window, hating the impairment that slowed her. Tamping down memories of one of the worst nights in her life wasn’t easy. “We need to come to an agreement, Brian.”

      “What kind of agreement?”

      “About you and me. How we deal with each other.”

      He swallowed painfully. “Right. Do you have any suggestions?”

      “We do the only possible thing. Let’s leave this in the past where it belongs and go on from here.”

      “If that’s what you want.” Traces of pain hid in his voice. “We’ve both been hurt enough.”

      “Yes.” She clunked her walker forward and stepped purposefully. The arguments, the sleepless nights, the stress of being teenage parents with two sets of twins haunted her. She’d been shattered the night she’d asked Brian to leave. No way would she let him see that, so her chin went up with stubborn determination to hide her vulnerabilities.

      “Glad we agree,” he said gruffly.

      “We have to get along for the children’s sake.”

      “The big question is how.”

      “I have no idea.” Her reflection in the dark window looked back at her. She saw a thin woman, hollow cheeked and fragile looking. Not the same vibrant Belle Colby who’d fallen off her horse. The coma and injury had ravaged her, but she was determined to regain her strength...and reclaim her life. She caught sight of Brian struggling to his feet and realized that she wasn’t the only one ailing here. “We are quite a pair, aren’t we?”

      “We always have been.” He shuffled toward her, fighting to stay tall and strong, but she could read the strain on his face, the tension along his carved jaw, even in the window’s reflection. “Carter told me how this all came about, how Violet met Maddie. How the kids came together again. One thing has been eating away at me. I can’t help wanting to protect my children. It can’t be safe to reunite them, can it?”

      “I’ve been worried about that, too,” she said softly.

      “What about—?”

      “David Johnson, the man I testified against? Yes, he’s still in prison, at least as far as I know. I haven’t been well enough these past few days—”

      “You just woke from a coma.”

      “Yes, but that doesn’t mean I can’t fear the worst. What if Johnson figures out where we are?”

      “Exactly. He may be in jail, but he likely still has his contacts on the outside.”

      “The kids don’t know about the danger. They don’t remember going into hiding. They don’t know why we moved from Forth Worth all those years ago, and I refuse to talk about it. That’s what Jack and I argued about right before my accident. He wanted to know about you.”

      “It must have been hard not to tell him. You had to want to.”

      “I did.” She appreciated that he understood. “It was too dangerous.”

      “When I remarried, Maddie and Grayson were young enough not to remember. That made the past disappear.”

      “Disappear?” She held herself steady, breathing as if in pain. “A mother never wants to be forgotten by her children.”

      “Neither does a father.”

      This pain they shared, a pain visible on his sculpted face. She couldn’t believe her eyes. The honest display of his feelings surprised her. They’d already been divorced when she’d unknowingly stumbled into a dangerous situation. Their marriage had fallen apart because she’d been convinced he hadn’t cared about her, at least not the way a husband should. Brian could be so unemotional, closed off, clinical in his relationships. To see him overcome like this, with the manly intake of breath, the gathering of his control as he straightened up, made her realize how much had changed. Emotions skittered across his face, no longer hidden to her.

      “I never even considered we might be in this situation one day, with the twins reunited,” he confessed. “All this time not knowing if you were safe or if they would be all right. The horrific nightmares I had of David Johnson escaping prison and hunting down the kids and there being nothing I could do. No matter what, we have to keep them safe.”

      “We will.” That had never been in doubt. “I need to get in touch with my handler, but I’ve been stuck here with no one I can confide in.”

      “You have me.” A smile touched his lips, chiseled and lean. The years hadn’t changed that smile, masculine and bracketed by dimples. “That may not be any consolation, but I’ll make sure our children are protected.”

      “We’ll do it together.” Gently, she reached out to brush a strand of hair from his eyes. An old habit, she realized too late. She respected her ex-husband and his love for their children, that was all. They were temporarily joining forces to safeguard their family, but when the dust settled, the old conflicts would still be between them.

      “Are you sure you’re up to this?” His emotions retreated, his eyes shuttered and he was closed off once again. His dark gaze gave nothing away. “You may have to trust me to handle the situation.”

      “Together, you and I made the decision to separate the twins in the first place.” She winced, remembering the wrenching decision they’d been forced to make. “We’ll make what decisions we have to together. Remember we are no longer married. You can’t make decisions for me, Brian.”

      “Not that I ever could.” A muscle jumped along his square jaw.

      “No.” Was he remembering their late-night arguments, too? Times best forgotten, she thought, straightening her spine. “The doctors tell me I’m frail, but I don’t believe them. My memory is coming back, my speech is just fine, and before you know it, I’ll be walking on my own steam out the front doors of Ranchland Manor.”

      “I have no doubt when it comes to you, Isabella.”

      “I