by Cassie Miles
“I’m going to be with you, Shana.” His right arm reached toward her, then fell limply into the snow. “I love you.”
“I love you, too.”
His eyelids fluttered closed. He wasn’t dead yet. She could feel his strong heart beating. He couldn’t die. Not Luke. Not the only man she’d ever loved. Fate would not be that cruel.
Frantically, she screamed, “Help us. Somebody help us.”
Hadn’t anyone else heard the gunfire? Where were the rest of the G.I.’s at the camp?
The snowfall started suddenly. A curtain of white surrounded her. Though she clung fiercely to Luke, her body felt disconnected. The inside of her head went into a dizzying spin. When she looked up, a glowing circle of light descended through the clouds and the snow, and she knew that she would be pulled into that vortex.
She was being lifted, torn away from Luke. Her heart shattered as she fell into the depths of despair.
SHANA BOLTED UPRIGHT in the hospital bed. This was the same place she’d dreamed about. Pink roses in a vase. A CD playing Beethoven.
This was all wrong. She had to get out of here, had to find Luke.
As she reached toward the IV positioned in her arm, a young boy with a curly mop of dark hair placed his hand over the needle. He had the eyes of an angel.
“Are you really awake this time?” he asked.
“I’m awake,” she said more harshly than she’d intended. “Who are you?”
“Roberto.”
Luke’s Roberto? If he was here, then Luke couldn’t be far away. “Where is he?”
“You should quiet down.” His eyebrows pulled into a scowl. “You’ve been very, very sick.”
An elderly doctor in a white lab coat entered the room. Though he had to be in his seventies, he was an undeniably handsome man. “Welcome, Shana. I’m glad you have returned to us.”
“Returned from where?”
“For the past four days, you’ve been drifting in and out of consciousness.” He reached down and patted the boy on his head. “I see you’ve met my grandson. He is named for me. Roberto Rawlins.”
His grandson? Why was this doctor using Luke’s last name. “What year is it?”
The young version of Roberto giggled. “2006. Everybody knows that.”
Sixty years had passed since she’d been with Luke at Camp Hale. The world was an utterly different place.
This doctor in his seventies had to be the adult version of the ten-year-old orphan from Italy. She looked into his eyes. “Luke came back to Italy for you.”
“Yes. He saved my life.”
That meant Luke had survived. He’d recovered from his wounds and returned to Italy to find Roberto. “Where is he? Where’s Luke?”
“This might take some explanation.” He leaned down and whispered something to the youthful Roberto who gave a nod, then darted from the room.
Dr. Roberto Rawlins sat on the bed beside her. Gently, he took her hand and felt for her pulse. “I’ve heard a lot about you, Shana Parisi. After Luke rescued me from Italy, we came to live here. In Aspen.”
“We’re in Aspen?”
He nodded. “As I’m sure you know, the ski industry in Aspen became a big business after World War II. Luke was a part of that development. He became a very wealthy man.”
“I told him to invest in Aspen,” she remembered.
“But wealth wasn’t the reason he chose to live here. He wanted to be close to the place where he’d last been with you. There was no other woman for him. Not ever.”
Tears welled up behind her eyelids. Luke had lived a life of unrequited love. “He never married?”
“He swore that he was engaged. To you.”
She looked down at her left hand. She was still wearing Luke’s 10th Mountain Division ring on the middle finger. Reaching up, she dashed the tears from her cheeks. She should have been with him, should have been a part of his life. Damn it, she was supposed to be married to him.
But Luke had survived and lived his life. He had to be in his nineties by now. But she didn’t care. She wanted to see him, to share whatever time they had left. “Where is he?”
“You have brought him back to us.”
Brought him back? What did that mean?
Her gaze turned toward the door to her hospital room, and she saw him. He looked a little older and leaner. The creases at the edge of his breathtaking blue eyes had deepened. He was maybe in his forties.
In a few quick strides, he came to her bedside and gathered her into his arms. For a long moment, she held him. When his lips joined with hers, her heart began to beat again. The shredded fabric of her life knitted back together into a full, beautiful tapestry. She had found her destiny.
“I missed you,” he murmured. “Every day, I missed being with you.”
“Is this really happening?” She nuzzled against the crook of his neck. “Are you really here?”
“It wasn’t a dream, Shana.”
She was vaguely aware that Roberto had left the room and closed the door. She and Luke were alone.
Much as she hated to be rational at this moment, she couldn’t stop herself. “You have to explain this to me.”
“Time travel.” He chuckled. “I like this little turnaround. This time, I’m the one with the secrets.”
If she hadn’t been so overjoyed to see him, she would have been angry. “Tell me.”
“I’m not sure how or why I traveled through time. After you disappeared from Camp Hale and I recovered, I talked to Dr. Fermi about you and time travel. He told me that some observable phenomenon can’t be explained because scientific knowledge doesn’t have the tools to comprehend.”
“The Fermi paradox,” she said.
“But I knew, by instinct, that we’d be together again. Every year on May sixth, I returned to the cabin and waited for the right conditions. The blizzard. The gusts of whirling snow and wind.”
His devotion touched her heart. He’d been ready to throw himself into a time vortex to find her.
“Roberto was nineteen when it happened. He was already in college and on his way to becoming a doctor. Every year, before I left for the cabin, I made sure he’d be well cared for, and I told him that this was something I had to do. He understood.”
When Roberto told her that she’d brought Luke back to them, this is what he meant. “You disappeared?”
“Apparently. The last thing I remember from fifty years ago is a glowing light and the blizzard. Then I looked up and saw you on the slopes, crashing downhill.” He exhaled a long sigh. “It was beautiful, Shana.”
“I doubt that.” She remembered falling. Not a good thing.
“I scooped you up and brought you here to the hospital. You’ve been in and out of consciousness for the past four days.”
“I’m here now.” She felt herself smiling all over. “And I’ll never leave you again.”
When he linked his fingers through hers, she saw a gold ring on his pinkie finger. The shard of green trinite gleamed brilliantly.
“I love you,” he said. “Will you marry me?”
“Ask that question a thousand times and my answer will always be the same. Yes.”
“There’s someone else here who wants to see you.”
He rose from her bed and went to the door. Her father stood outside. In his expression, Shana saw his love for her and she finally understood that she wasn’t a disappointment to him. He was proud of her.
“Sir,” Luke said to him. “I want to ask your permission to marry your daughter.”
Her father beamed. “As soon as possible.”
All these men gathered around her. Dr. Roberto Rawlins and his grandson. Her father. And Luke.
She couldn’t take her eyes off this incredible, handsome man who had come through time and overcome all the odds to be with her again.
In the back of her mind, she heard her mother’s voice as she gave her fairy-tale blessing. “And they all lived happily ever after.”
ISBN: 978-1-45
92-2245-8
FOOTPRINTS IN THE SNOW
Copyright © 2006 by Cassie Miles
All rights reserved. Except for use in any review, the reproduction or utilization of this work in whole or in part in any form by any electronic, mechanical or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including xerography, photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, is forbidden without the written permission of the publisher, Harlequin Enterprises Limited, 225 Duncan Mill Road, Don Mills, Ontario, Canada M3B 3K9.
All characters in this book have no existence outside the imagination of the author and have no relation whatsoever to anyone bearing the same name or names. They are not even distantly inspired by any individual known or unknown to the author, and all incidents are pure invention.
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Table of Contents
Dedication
About the Author
Books by Cassie Mile
Cast of Characters
Contents
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Copyright