As she drew closer, and got a glimpse through the small crowd that had gathered when the plane landed, she realized that this was no government official. Dressed in American jeans and a clean, white Aerosmith t-shirt, the newcomer stuck out like a sore thumb among the impoverished villagers who had been close enough to make their way here to observe the landing.

The sun glinted off too-long wheat blond hair, but it wasn’t until she caught sight of the camera strap dangling around the visitor’s neck that the truth occurred to her.
She stopped breathing, shock holding her lungs and ribcage immobile.

Still, she told herself that she was wrong. That it couldn’t be him.

He was in Haiti, taking pictures of earthquake victims.

In Columbia, investigating the cartels and their negative influence on the indigenous population.

In Cambodia, uncovering shady CIA deals. Anywhere and everywhere but here, where she’d been safe from thinking about him, insulated against her past by the immediacy of the present.

But the build was right—tall and rangy with a lean,long-legged frame that was deceptively strong. The shaggy blond hair worn too long—more from carelessness than fashion. Even the t-shirt advertised his favorite band.

Her breath caught in her throat, but her brain refused to accept what her eyes were seeing. That Simon was here—here—when he’d decided years ago that he’d had enough of Africa’s endless suffering.

But if it was him, what was he doing here? There had been no coup, no newly reported human rights violations, no recent massacres. Only the on-going famine that was neither glamorous nor seedy enough to draw the Western press here.

To draw Simon here.

For a moment, Steven’s guilty look flashed into her mind, his warning that he had contacted someone. She’d ignored him at the time, figuring that he’d been talking about informing the organization they both worked for of her imminent breakdown. Now, as her stomach clenched sickly, she wished she’d let him have his say. At least then she would have been prepared.

Even as the idea formed in her mind, she told herself that she was being paranoid. That there was no way Simon would fly this far to see her after the way they’d last parted. After the way she’d ignored his existence—and his pleas—in the days after they’d buried their daughter.

The argument was a good one and she’d almost convinced herself that she was mistaken, that her mind was playing tricks on her. She’d even managed to quiet the instinctive, involuntary response that took over her body as it had every single time she’d seen him in the last ten years.

Then the man turned and everything within her stilled. It was him. She was sure of it, especially when his bright green eyes met hers as he scanned the crowd, looking for something. Looking for someone. At first he looked right past her, but then he froze. His gaze returned to her. Clung.

Amanda wanted to look away, but she was caught. Ensnared. A rabbit in a trap—unable to even gnaw her own leg off in order to escape—though if it had been possible, she’d have given it a damn good try. Because he was the one person she didn’t want to see her like this, the one person in the whole damn world guaranteed to make the soul-crushing pain she felt even worse.

# # #

She looked like hell Steven hadn’t been exaggerating when he’d e-mailed him three days before. Even from this distance, Simon could see that she was much too thin. Tall and naturally slender, Amanda always lost weight when she was on location, refusing to take time to eat when so many people needed her help. Refusing to take any more of the essential stores than she absolutely needed to stay alive.

“I can eat when I’m home,” she used to tell him. “I’ll curl up on the couch with a loaded pizza and a gallon of ice cream and eat it all.”

“But you never go home,” he would answer. “It’s been two years.”

She’d smile at him, her smoky eyes twinkling silver in the moonlight. “Soon,” she’d promise. “I just need to do a few more things here.”

It hadn’t taken him long to realize that soon almost never came. There was always one more country, one more disaster, one more person who needed her. In that, she was very much like him—except Amanda had spent the last eleven years of her life actually getting her hands dirty while he’d done exactly the opposite.

But he couldn’t do that anymore, couldn’t hide behind his camera lens and maintain his objectivity. Not with her. Not when she so obviously needed him. For a man who’d made a career out of making sure no one got too close—even his lovers or, God forgive him, his daughter—it was a frightening state of affairs.

But what else could he have done? He hadn’t been able to walk away, not after reading those few, heart-stopping lines.

Close to a breakdown, Steven had written. Strung out. Making herself sick.

He had been in an open air marked in the middle of the Andes when he’d gotten the message. Steven wasn’t prone to exaggeration, so Simon had literally forgotten everything but Amanda, had dropped his story and his deadline without a qualm to get here before it was too late.

In the end, it had taken him three hellish days of travel by everything from donkey cart to airplane to reach this small, secluded village. But looking at Amanda now, almost as frail and sick looking as the patients who waited in a long line outside the clinic’s canvas doors, he couldn’t help thinking that he was already much too late.

Weaving his way through the curious onlookers, he walked towards her—his gaze still glued to hers. But the closer he got, the more concerned he became. Her beautiful eyes—usually so filled with life—were bruised and sunken. Her cheekbones were razor sharp, her skin pale and waxy looking despite the strength of the African sun. And whatever small amount of color she’d had in her face had drained the moment she realized he was here for her.

She looked like hell, he thought again, as anger began to churn inside him. How had she gotten herself into such a state? And why had Steven waited so long to tell him about it?

He stopped a couple feet in front of her, reached a hand out to stroke her cheek and maybe push one of her short, corkscrew curls out of her face. But she flinched away before he could touch her, freezing him in mid-motion.

So, she hadn’t forgiven him. But then, why should she have, Simon asked himself viciously, when he hadn’t even begun to forgive himself? Most days he brushed his teeth in the shower because he couldn’t stand the sight of his own reflection in the bathroom mirror.

Doubts assailed him for the first time since he’d gotten Steven’s missive, and he let his hand drop to his side. Maybe he shouldn’t have come, no matter what the surgeon had said. Maybe he was destined to just make things worse for her.

But as he stood there—his eyes locked on her red-rimmed ones—the truth was a no-holds barred punch to the gut. She had been crying. Amanda, who had never shed a tear in the ten years he’d known her, had cried hard enough—and recently enough—to make her eyes bleary and bloodshot.

“Oh, sweetheart, look at you.” The words tangled up on his tongue until he could barely get them out. “What have you done to yourself?”