He was still there, his shadow long and dark behind him in the bright sunlight. Standing on her doorstep, staring back at her, his amazing eyes roaming over her as intimate as a touch, making her shiver.
Tucker? Really? She couldn’t speak, unable to trust her eyes. He continued to watch at her, his expectant smile fading as she continued to stare in shocked disbelief.
“Say something,” he entreated. “Welcome me home, curse me out, I don’t know. But say something, Lucy. Do something.”
Though he sounded weary, his tone low and ragged, she would have recognized that beloved voice anywhere. Tucker. Tucker was…alive? How could this be?
Paralyzed, she tried to form words to demand answers. Pain warred with hope, agony with desire. Tucker was dead. He couldn’t be standing here on her doorstep. Was this a trick? Some kind of hallucination? One of those nightmares that she’d thought she’d vanquished?
Had she finally completely gone insane?
“Lucy?” he rasped, narrowing his eyes. “Are you all right?”
She didn’t faint, even though the edges of her vision momentarily went gray and the ground seemed to tilt in front of her. Staring at him, she tried to remember to breathe, still dimly certain that this couldn’t be real.
“Lucy?” he said again, cocking his head and studying her with that serious, glinting blue gaze she’d always loved. Finally, hope slammed into her, mingling with joy and shock and disbelief and…love.
“Tucker,” she managed, her throat closing up as words failed her. But it didn’t matter; nothing did, because Tucker was here, with her. Alive. He’d come back alive.
She let her gaze devour him, feeling starved. Taking in his rugged, beloved face, his broad shoulders and muscular arms suddenly wasn’t enough. She needed to feel him, his arms around her. She needed to bury her face in the crook of his neck, to inhale the woodsy scent of him. She needed reassurance that she wasn’t dreaming, that indeed, this was real.
“Is it…?” Her voice came out in a croak. Trying to understand, to assimilate how he could both be here and not, she took a step forward, dizzy, swaying, confused. “Tucker? It’s you? It’s really you?”
Head tilted quizzically, he gave the smallest of nods. Still, he made no move to take her in his arms, to hold her close. She didn’t understand why not, didn’t really care at this point. Tucker was home!
She made the first move herself. Taking a step forward, she threw herself at him, joy filling her. Her heart beat a frantic tattoo in her chest as she wrapped her arms around him, holding on like she never wanted to let him go. Which she didn’t. Not ever.
Gradually, she became conscious of the fact that, though he hugged her back, something was…different. He held himself stiffly. Rather than relaxing into her embrace, he seemed to be only going through the motions.
She pulled back and looked up at him. While his eyes were still the same shocking shade of sapphire, the look in them was not. Anger and bitterness, rather than love, warred in his amazing eyes.
Anger? At her?
As she eyed him, Tucker, this man who’d disappeared from her life so suddenly and violently, whose supposed death had ripped the heart from her chest and stripped all the joy from her world, she suddenly realized she was angry, too. Furious.
Glaring up at him, she stepped back, keeping hold of his arms. “What happened to you? Where have you been all this time? Why didn’t you call?”
“I couldn’t,” he said simply. “After they got me out, they wouldn’t let me have access to a phone, even after my debriefing. Take my word for it. If I could have called, I would have.”
“They? Debriefing?” She needed answers. She deserved answers. “Tucker?” she kept her voice level. “I don’t understand. What do you mean?”
“Sorry.” Letting out a breath, he dragged his hand across his chin. “It’s a long story and I’m dead on my feet. Can I come in?”
Without hesitation, she stepped aside, gesturing for him to move past her. Once he did, she closed the door, quietly clicking the lock into place. All of her motions were slow and deliberate, as though the simple routine of performing regular gestures could make everything normal again.
Normal. As if. For a heartbeat, one frozen moment, she let her own anger simmer, then took a deep breath and ruthlessly pushed it back down inside her, allowing the joy to come flooding back. Tucker was alive. He’d returned home; miraculously back from the dead, like Lazarus pushing aside his funeral shroud. Alive.
They would rejoice, they should rejoice, but first, surely he owed her a few words of explanation. He’d disappeared for over a year, made no effort to contact her, and let her believe he was dead. She needed to understand why.
Trembling from the effort of remaining calm, she turned again to face him. He watched her, expression impassive, detached when he should have been joyful. This, she also didn’t understand.
“You seem surprised to see me,” he commented, one corner of his mouth lifting in a twisted sort of smile. “It’s been a while, hasn’t it, Lucy girl?”
Despite herself, warmth curled inside of her at the familiar nickname. She hadn’t been called that since the last time she’d seen him.
“Of course I’m surprised.” Her voice came out wobbly. Taking a deep breath, she eyed him, full of a cautious sort of love—and pain. “Seriously, I really need to know where you’ve been all this time. We thought you were dead.”
“Dead?” He lifted a brow, inadvertently making her insides clench from the sheer masculine beauty of his rugged features. “Really?”
Scarcely able to believe that he wasn’t taking her seriously, she nodded. “Yes. We were officially notified that you were dead.”
“We?”
“Sean and I. Remember him? Your best friend? Or did you forget about him, too?” Guilt and anger propelling her, she swept by him, leading the way into her living room, hyper-conscious of him right behind. Alive. Alive.
“We thought you were dead,” she repeated. “I wept over your picture at your funeral—we didn’t even have a body to bury. Your parents flew in from Nepal.” Her eyes filled with tears and she turned away to hide it.
Gathering her composure, she continued. “I’ve mourned you, Tucker. You don’t know how much I’ve grieved over you. And now…you’re here. Alive and waltzing into the house as though nothing has happened, asking me if I’m surprised to see you.”
Perching on the edge of the couch, she gestured for him to take a seat in the overstuffed chair he’d always claimed as his own. “I don’t understand. Explain this to me. I don’t even know what page you’re on.”
“I’m sorry,” he said softly, sounding both bewildered and sad. “I’ve been through so much. I’m confused and recovering. But I swear to you, no one told me you thought I died.”
He took a deep breath and blew it back out again. “I was in pretty bad shape. The ones who rescued me, they were mostly concerned with making sure I didn’t really die to tell me anything.”
Again with the odd, sketchy references.
“Once they got me back to health, they had questions of their own that they wanted answered,” he continued. “Too many of them to remember. And yes, I’ve been told I was gone over a year, though time passes differently when you’re in that sort of situation. In this, I had no choice in the matter.”
“I still don’t understand. I guess you think what you’re saying is clear, but it makes no sense to me.”
Slowly, he nodded. “I’m sorry. Let me start over.”