As she stood to go to the lectern and say a few words everybody in the room rose to applaud. They were smiling and clapping, and as she looked around she felt almost shy. At her table, her friends beamed at her. Tony was clapping like crazy, looking beyond handsome in his tux. Tam was her usual glamorous self in a gold sequined gown with a slit that rose halfway up her thigh. Lena was a curvy seductress in a dark red satin gown that made the most of her curves. Beside her, Buzz, who was also looking handsome in a tux, had the biggest grin Charlie had ever seen on his face.
Lena had accepted his proposal and was flashing a brand-new diamond ring on her hand.
“When you asked me what I wanted, I started thinking about it,” Lena had confided to Charlie earlier. “And finally I figured it out: I want him. Everything else we can work out.”
So there was good news all around.
Charlie’s was the last award to be given out, and as she walked back to her table from the lectern the dancing started. The band struck up, and couples began twirling around the floor. Clutching her trophy—it was crystal, engraved with her name, and beautiful—Charlie watched Tony stand up as she approached and knew he meant to ask her to dance.
She was so, so fond of Tony.
She was putting her trophy down on the table and Tony was opening his mouth to ask her when suddenly Tony’s gaze shot past her and he froze.
Frowning, Charlie turned to see what he was looking at.
Her heart lurched. Her breathing suspended.
Michael was walking toward her, threading his way along the edge of the tables, head-turningly gorgeous in a black tux.
“Is that—Rick Hughes?” Lena asked with surprise.
“No,” Tam answered, and that’s when Charlie knew for sure that he wasn’t an illusion, wasn’t a bad case of wish fulfillment or anything else. That Michael was real and solid and alive and there.
As much as he and Hughes looked alike, there was no mistaking Michael for anyone else.
Not for her.
He saw her looking at him, and lifted a hand in an acknowledging wave.
Charlie sucked in a deep, slightly shaky breath. Until that moment, she hadn’t even realized that she’d been clutching the back of her chair for balance. Now, as he reached them, she let it go.
“Hey,” he said to her, like they’d last met maybe an hour before. His gaze swept the table. “I’m Michael Garland,” he introduced himself, and shook hands all around.
Then he looked back at Charlie, and said, “Do you want to dance?”
Speechless, she nodded, letting him take her hand and pull her onto the dance floor and into his arms.
The band was playing “Moon River.” She was nestled against Michael’s chest, looking up into the most beautiful blue eyes she’d ever seen.
Her heart pounded. Her pulse raced. She felt dizzy, woozy, disoriented.
“You look surprised to see me,” he said.
She nodded. Stunned was more like it, but she couldn’t manage to say it. Couldn’t manage to say anything. She was lucky she was upright, and doing the moving-breathing-thinking thing.
“Ain’t no river wide enough, babe,” he said, and smiled at her.
That’s when she knew for sure it was real. That’s when joy flooded her veins and her head cleared and she was able to catch her breath and actually say something.
“You remembered,” she said.
“Not until two days ago. I’d almost forgotten about the crazy woman who wrote her address on my arm and told me she was from the future and yelled at me before she vanished right out of a taxi until I found myself in a shrink’s office. See, the military reached out to some of us vets with an offer of counseling, and I took them up on it. So there I was, spilling my guts, and this chubby, bearded shrink asks me if I feel any remorse. Bells go off in my head: It’s like I can hear this infuriating woman repeatedly asking me the same thing. Then, boom, it hit me, and I remembered the whole thing. Everything we went through together. Up until then, I’d been explaining away that night by telling myself I was drunk off my ass.”
“Oh, my God,” she said, eloquence being beyond her for the moment.
He nodded. “I remembered going to prison, and dying, and Spookville and the whole nine yards, just like that.” His grip on her tightened. Charlie was so focused on Michael that she was scarcely aware until then that they were dancing, but there they were, circling the floor, just one of dozens of beautifully dressed couples moving as the music swelled around them. She was suddenly conscious of the solid muscularity of his chest against her breasts, of the hard strength of his arm around her, of how big and warm his hand felt clasping hers.
He’s here with me. He’s alive.
Her body was starting to adjust. She could feel the worst of her shock starting to fade. She was breathing almost normally.
He continued softly, “I remembered you. I remembered falling in love with you.”
Her heart shook.
“I love you,” she said.
He said, “I know.”
Her eyes widened and she stiffened in his arms. All of a sudden she was fully functional and back to normal, except for the whole bubbling-over-with-happiness thing that was at one and the same time the most wonderful feeling she’d ever had and totally outside her experience.
The look on her face must have been something to see, because he grinned at her, a gloriously charming grin that made her toes curl in her ridiculously expensive high heels that had been selected for her, courtesy of Lena.
“I love you, too,” he said.
She frowned at him and laughed at the same time and let him twirl her around until she was dizzy and a little bit worried that they might be making a spectacle of themselves on the dance floor with all her professional colleagues around, so she made him stop.
It was when her head quit spinning that it hit her. Clutching his hand more tightly, looking up into his hard, handsome face, she said, “Michael. Oh, my God. We’ve got forever.”
He looked down at her. His eyes were tender on her face. “Babe, what we’ve got ourselves here is a lifetime. For now, with you, that’s all the forever I need.”
This book is dedicated to Peter, Christopher,
and Jack, with all my love.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
So many people go into the creation of a book. I want to thank my wonderful editor, Linda Marrow, whose invaluable insights are always right on the money. I also want to thank her assistant, Elana Seplow-Jolley, who worked so hard on this, as well as the entire team at Ballantine Books. More thanks to my agent, Robert Gottlieb, who is always there when I need him. And last but not least, thanks to my husband, Doug, for hanging in as usual.
BOOKS BY KAREN ROBARDS
The Last Time I Saw Her
Hush
Her Last Whisper
Hunted
The Last Kiss Goodbye
Shiver
The Last Victim
Sleepwalker
Justice
Shattered
Shameless
Pursuit
Guilty
Obsession
Vanished
Superstition
Bait
Beachcomber
Whispers at Midnight
Irresistible
To Trust a Stranger
Scandalous
Paradise County
Ghost Moon
The Midnight Hour
The Senator’s Wife
Heartbreaker
Walking After Midnight
Maggy’s Child
One Summer
Nobody’s Angel
This Side of Heaven
Green Eyes
Morning Song
Tiger’s Eye
Dark of the Moon
Desire in the Sun
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
KAREN ROBARDS is the New York Times and USA Today bestselling author of forty-seven full-length books and one novella. The mother of three boys, she l
ives in her hometown of Louisville, Kentucky.
karenrobards.com
Facebook.com/AuthorKarenRobards
@TheKarenRobards
The Last Time I Saw Her Page 33