"Doing things like what?" she repeated.

"Nice things. Thoughtful things. And I wish you wouldn't hum when you worked in the kitchen."

She stared at him as if he'd lost his mind, and perhaps he had. "My humming bothers you?"

"Yeah, it does. It sounds nice, but it's irritating." He knew he was being a jerk, and yet he couldn't help it.

"Does my sitting out here next to you bother you?" she asked, her eyes narrowed slightly as if in thought.

He looked out at the pond again, unable to watch her features when he replied. "Yeah, actually, it does."

"Then I'll just head back inside." She jumped out of the chair and disappeared into the house before he could form the words to stop her.

He turned and stared at the gla.s.s of lemonade she'd brought him. d.a.m.n her for making him want her, and d.a.m.n him for wanting her. He didn't just want to taste her lips again, feel her naked body moving against his own. He wanted her thoughts, her dreams. He wanted to be her best friend and her lover. More than anything, he wanted to be strong enough to reach out for love, but the truth was that when it came to matters of the heart, he was nothing but a coward.

MARLENA STOMPED BACK inside and sank down at the kitchen table, her feelings stinging from his words. Her humming bothered him? Tomorrow night when she fixed dinner, she'd sing at the top of her lungs, and the next time she made him a gla.s.s of lemonade, she'd pour it over his handsome head.

She finally decided to take her hurt feelings and go to her own rooms. She would watch a little television and then get a long night of rest. Although her bruises were starting to fade, she still felt as if she'd been run over by a truck. She'd stopped taking the pain pills during the day, but took a couple at night to help her sleep.

Maybe tonight the pills would not only ease the ache of her muscles but also banish the pain in her heart. Loving Gabriel wasn't hard. Realizing he didn't have the capacity to love her back was devastating.

She settled onto the sofa in her private sitting room and tuned the television to one of the few sitcoms she thought was funny. But tonight no laughter escaped her lips. In fact, she found herself drifting off in thought rather than watching television.

One week.

She only had to see his handsome face, to smell his familiar scent and to be around him for one more week, and then she and Cory would be free to leave here.

The sadness that she would pack in her suitcase would make a heavy load if it had true weight. She would carry with her the ache of absence for the loss of Sam and Daniella and Macy. And she would take with her a heart filled with love for a man incapable of loving her back.

Her love for Gabriel had been formed by a hundred different elements. While their l.u.s.t for each other had certainly been undeniable, over the past two weeks she'd also fallen in love with his dry sense of humor and the soft vulnerability he certainly didn't realize occasionally shone from his eyes.

It was impossible to dissect why she loved Gabriel. She just did. It was as simple and as complicated as that. She was about to go to bed when she heard a soft knock at her door.

"Come in," she said.

Gabriel stepped into her room. "Mind if I have a seat if I plan on offering up an apology?"

She wanted to be angry with him, but he truly looked contrite, and she just couldn't summon any emotion except the love that threatened to bubble out of her.

"Sounds like a fair trade," she replied and made room for him on the sofa.

He sank down as if he weighed a thousand pounds. "I'm sorry. I acted like a jerk earlier."

"Yes, you did," she agreed easily. "You're lucky I'm not a woman who holds a grudge. And tomorrow morning when I make your breakfast, I promise you I'm not going to hum. I'm going to sing at the top of my lungs just because it will aggravate you."

"Your humming doesn't aggravate me. This case has aggravated me, and you were a handy scapegoat." He raked a hand through his thick hair and leaned back. "As if Sam's family's disappearance isn't enough, we still haven't figured out why anyone would want to hurt you."

"Maybe because they heard me humming?" she said in an effort to bring a smile to his face.

It worked. His sensual lips curved upward and he released a small laugh. "You aren't going to let me off the hook, are you?"

"You're off the hook. I just wanted to see your smile." Her love for him pressed hard against her chest and teased on the tip of her tongue with the need to be released, with the intense desire to be spoken aloud. "I care about you, Gabriel."

His smile fell away, and instead a deep frown cut across his forehead.

"It upsets you that I care about you."

"That's your problem, not mine," he scoffed.

"I know, but you can't do anything about how I feel about you. You can't stop me from caring about you, from wanting to comfort you when you're sad, from sharing your laughter when you're happy. You can't stop me from falling in love with you, Gabriel, and I am in love with you."

His shoulders stiffened defensively. "Those pain pills you've been taking have definitely addled your mind." It was obvious he was uncomfortable with the conversation. He twisted on the sofa as if to gain more distance from her, as if afraid she might decide to reach out and touch him in some way.

"It's okay, Gabriel. You don't have to do anything about it. You don't even have to care. I just want you to know that you are loved, that you're worth something and that somebody cares about you and wants you to find happiness."

For the first time since she'd met him, he appeared speechless and more than a little bit stunned. "Why are you telling me this?" he finally asked.

"I don't know. I just felt like I needed you to know. Maybe it's because I've been reminded in the past weeks how fragile life is and I wanted you to know how I felt about you if something happens and I don't get a chance to tell you. Consider it a gift from me to you."

"Nothing is going to happen to you," he said firmly.

"I hope not, but there are no guarantees, and you have to admit you don't have a clue who might have tried to hurt me."

"After talking to Thomas, we went by Pamela Winter's place to speak with her." It was an obvious attempt for him to guide the conversation away from personal things and back to the reason he was here at the bed-and-breakfast. "Her alibi for the time that you were pushed down the stairs is that she was at home alone. She received no phone calls, n.o.body saw her, so there's no way for us to know if she's telling the truth or not."

"I don't understand. What would Pamela hope to gain by killing me now? Daniella is gone, and in one week, Cory and I are heading out of here."

Gabriel shrugged. "We figured maybe Pamela doesn't believe you're really going to leave."

"I don't know. Considering that Daniella is missing, it just doesn't make sense to me that Pamela would do something like this."

"I can't figure any of this out, but I know you're wrong about me." He stood. "My own mother decided I wasn't worth loving, and n.o.body has made me feel any different about myself since then."

Her heart ached as she heard the empty hollowness in his voice. "I could," she said softly. "I do."

"Hey, sis." Cory's voice came from nearby. He appeared in the doorway holding two gla.s.ses of chocolate milk. He stopped short as he saw Gabriel. "Oh, is this a bad time?"

"No, I was just leaving." Gabriel shot out of the room as if he'd just been looking for a reason to make a hasty retreat.

As he left, he took her heart. She'd laid it all out on the line, had spoken the words of love that had burned inside her, and he'd refused to either accept or return that love to her.

What shocked her was that she'd believed she was prepared for exactly the response she'd gotten from him. She hadn't been prepared for the sweeping heartache that filled her as she watched him leave.

Chapter Twelve.

She loved him.

Gabriel had left her sitting area and had immediately gone upstairs to his own room, where he'd paced the small confines and tried to erase her words of love from his mind.

Somehow her actually saying it out loud had shocked him, but if he looked deep in his heart, he'd already known she was falling in love with him. He'd seen it in her eyes when she gazed at him, had felt it in the most simple of touches.

He'd warned her in a dozen ways not to love him, that he was incapable of returning that emotion, but it obviously hadn't made any difference to her.

One week, he told himself. In a week she'd be gone. She and Cory would leave here the way they had arrived: in her beat-up old car, with a suitcase full of clothes. The only difference was she'd leave with enough money to start a new life.

She would not leave with him, and he refused to return her gift of love back to her. It was her problem, not his, and she would just have to fall out of love with him.

Once he felt as if he had his wayward emotions under control, he went back downstairs to retrieve the information about Daniella and Macy's kidnapping. He knew it was a long shot that he'd find anything in that paperwork to help with the current situation, but he had to do something, and at least it might take his mind off Marlena.

It was just after nine when he took off his gun and holster and sat at the dining room table with the folder in front of him. Marlena's door was closed, indicating that Cory had left and she was probably in bed.

Andrew had gone upstairs a few minutes earlier, and Jackson was planted on the sofa in the common room watching the end of an old movie.

Other than the distant sound of the television drifting through the air, the house was silent. For several long moments he sat with his eyes closed, playing and replaying every second he'd spent with Marlena.

For the first time in his life he'd felt softness, he'd experienced kindness and, yes, he'd felt the nudge of love attempting to take possession of his heart.

With an irritated sigh, he opened his eyes and stared at the thick folder on the table in front of him. First things first, he thought, deciding to make a small pot of coffee before delving into the elements of a case that had occurred over two years before.

The coffee was dripping into the carafe when Jackson stepped into the kitchen. "I'm heading off to bed, unless you want me to help you go through that material."

"Nah. I'll be fine by myself." Gabriel stepped closer to the coffeepot that had finished making the four cups that should see him through the rest of the night. "I'll catch you in the morning."

Jackson nodded. "Good night, Gabriel."

Gabriel poured his coffee and returned to the dining room table. This time the silence of the house was complete around him. He took a sip of coffee and opened the file.

Within minutes he had disappeared into the crime that had occurred so long ago, a crime that had brought two people to love but not before danger had struck.

As Gabriel read, he scribbled away in his own notebook, noting the people who had been players in Daniella's drama and listing who of those players was still around.

He paused occasionally to sip his coffee and stare out the nearby window, fighting thoughts of Marlena and her words of love for him.

Was it truly possible that he could be loved, that he wasn't a throwaway child who had become a tossed-away man? Had he so embraced the fact that his mother hadn't wanted him, that his father had needed to beat him, that he'd never let go of that baggage? That he'd become what they'd indicated him to be? Not worth caring about, not worth loving? So then, why could Marlena believe herself in love with him?

At thirty-four years old, he was far too old to change his ways now. He was alone and had always been alone. Besides, Marlena was in a state of transition and grief. Her friends had been missing for over two weeks, and her own life had been threatened twice. With all that emotion inside her, she was probably grasping onto something solid, and he just happened to be there.

Feeling a little better, being able to rationalize away Marlena's words of love, he got another cup of coffee, and then left the dining room and headed to the bathroom just off the common area.

Once there he sluiced cool water over his face in an effort to fight the drowsiness that had begun to overtake him as he'd pored over the notes, lists of evidence and interviews.

He leaned back against the door, wondering how it was possible that three trained, professional FBI agents couldn't get a grasp on what had happened here.

They had worked many cases together and separately in the past, and they'd always closed the case, found the bad guy and seen him or her thrown in jail.

But this case had them all stymied, spinning around like Keystone Kops, hoping to b.u.mp into a bad guy. He splashed water on his face once again, dried off and then left the bathroom.

He walked back through the common room and returned to the dining room table, where he focused on the crime of Daniella and Macy's kidnapping.

Frank Mathis had obviously been psychotic. He'd not only killed Daniella's first husband, Johnny, but he'd believed Daniella and Macy were destined to be his own family.

He'd managed to get in through the window of the rooms Marlena now called home, then had dragged Daniella and Macy outside and carried them away.

As the investigation had continued, Frank hadn't even been on the list of suspects until Sam had run out of potentials and had begun to look at the gardener more closely.

Sam, along with Sheriff Thompson, had finally decided to follow Frank home, and on that night they'd discovered that what had been an old storm shelter in the ground near Frank's cottage had been transformed into a bunkerlike apartment where Daniella and Macy had been locked away.

Gabriel sat up straighter in the chair. A bunker? Hidden someplace near the cottage? He hadn't heard anything about it until now.

He doubted that John, the current gardener, even knew it was there. He stared out the window to the darkness beyond. Did Marlena know about the bunker? Had its existence simply slipped her mind?

Was it possible that the Connelly family could be that close? Held for some reason on their own property in a secret bunker under the ground?

Adrenaline shot through him as his gaze searched outside the window where the darkness was profound. How could he find a secret bunker at night when he didn't know precisely where it was?

And why hadn't Sheriff Thompson mentioned the place where Daniella and Macy had been confined? Did the man have one foot so far out the door into retirement that he'd missed an important element to share with the agents who had taken over the latest crime?

Again he glanced at Marlena's door. Was it possible she was still awake? That she might be able to pinpoint for him the entrance to the underground bunker?

There was only one way to find out. He knocked softly on the door that led into her private quarters, unsurprised when he didn't hear an answering response.

He grabbed hold of the k.n.o.b and breathed a sigh of relief as it turned in his hand. He opened it and followed the faint glow of the night-light that shone from her bedroom.

It was just a little after eleven. Maybe she wasn't so deeply asleep that he could wake her enough to find out what she knew.

Surely Daniella would have talked about her time in captivity. She might have taken Marlena to the place near the cottage where Frank Mathis had held her and Macy against their wills.

Silently he crept toward her bedroom door. If he couldn't get the answers he needed from her now, then he'd get the good sheriff and some of his men out here with lights to find the cellar door apparently built into the earth.

He took a step into Marlena's room and instantly froze in horrified shock. Marlena was in the bed, but she wasn't alone. In the pale illumination from the night-light, he could see the slithering of snakes at all four corners of the bed. They were not just any snakes, but cottonmouths-poisonous, deadly snakes.

Two things instantly pierced through his shock. First, Marlena lay on her back, not moving. He couldn't even be sure if she was breathing. Second, his gun. He needed his gun.

As he took a step backward, the snakes coiled and vibrated their tails as their mouths gaped open to display a startling whiteness.

Afraid of moving too fast and agitating them further, with agonizing slowness he backed out of the room and then raced toward the dining room where he'd left his gun on the table.

She'd looked dead. Had the cottonmouth snakes already bitten her enough times to deliver sufficient venom to stop her heart? His hand shook as he grabbed his gun, and then he crept silently back to her bedroom doorway.

The snakes stirred with ominous intent. It was like a picture from a nightmare, the snakes guarding the innocent princess...or determined to keep her as their own.