LAST SEEN...

by Carla Cassidy

  "How's she doing?"

  "All right … considering." She tucked a strand of her long, dark shiny hair behind her ear. "Thank goodness Eddie wasn't mean to her. She only had nightmares for the first two nights. She's going to be just fine."

  "I'm glad." He stared out the passenger window and was grateful when she didn't say anything else. Telling her goodbye would be the most difficult thing he'd ever done, but he'd never been in the market for a long-standing relationship.

  She parked in his driveway and together they got out of the car. "Can I come in for a minute?" she asked and gestured toward his cottage. "I have something I want to talk to you about before you leave."

  He gazed at her curiously, but her expression gave nothing away. "Sure, come on in." It seemed that in the past two weeks of his hospitalization they'd talked about everything under the sun. He couldn't imagine what she might possibly have to talk to him about before he left.

  He dropped his duffel bag on the sofa, then turned to look at her. Goodbye would have been easier if she didn't look so beautiful, he thought. But clad in a sundress of rainbow colors, her skin looked like rich polished wood and her loose dark hair beckoned him to touch it … stroke the shiny length.

  "What did you want to talk to me about?" he asked.

  She took a step closer to him and he tensed as her familiar, evocative scent surrounded him. "Adam … don't go."

  Her simple words hit him like a blow in the gut. He suddenly recognized that the look radiating from her eyes was one of love. "Breanna … don't."

  "Don't what? Don't tell you that I love you? Don't tell you that the thought of you going leaves a hollowness inside me?" She stepped so close to him he could feel her body heat radiating to him. "I swore to myself when Kurt left me that I'd never fall in love again, that I'd never share my life, my love with another man. But you changed that, Adam."

  "Breanna…" He took a step back from her, desperately needing the distance. "You're grateful to me, that's what it is. We shared a trauma with Maggie's kidnapping and that has you thinking you feel something that you don't."

  "Why would you believe that?" she asked incredulously. "Why would you believe that I don't love you?"

  He raked a hand through his hair in frustration. "Because you loved my cousin," he replied. "Because you fell in love with Kurt and I am not like him, will never be anything like him. He was fun and adventurous, he exuded magnetism and a wildness that isn't in me."

  She stared at him for a long moment. "Let me tell you something, Adam Spencer. When I met Kurt, he was pretending to be something he wasn't. He told me he was a bookkeeper on vacation. He led me to believe he was steady and responsible, caring and giving. I fell in love with the man he was pretending to be … and he was pretending to be you."

  He looked at her in astonishment.

  "It's true," she said softly, stepping up before him once again. "He made himself out to be a man just like you, Adam. A man who could be trusted, a man who would make me proud of who I am, a man that I could love with all my heart."

  She leaned forward and he couldn't help himself, he had to kiss her. He took possession of her mouth at the same time his arms wrapped around her. He knew kissing her was a mistake, that it would only make things more difficult, but he couldn't resist haying one last taste of her mouth, one final embrace to last him a lifetime.

  When the kiss ended, he moved away from her. "Breanna, you know it was never my intention to hurt you. But you also know it was never my intention to share a life with you. I told you from the very beginning that I didn't want a wife or children."

  "But you love Maggie," she said softly, then raised her chin. "And you love me. I know you do, Adam. You can't deny it."

  He didn't try to deny it. He did love her … loved her as he'd never loved before … as he'd probably never love again. "That doesn't change the fact that I'm leaving."

  "But why?" Tears suddenly appeared in her eyes and he looked away, not wanting his last memory of her to be one of her weeping.

  "I have a life to get back to." It was the only reason he could give. All he knew deep inside his heart, deep inside his soul, was the need to escape … escape from her and the love she offered, escape from Maggie and the uncertainty of raising a child. He looked back at her. "I never made any promises, Bree."

  Despite the tears sparkling in her eyes, she raised her chin and eyed him proudly. "I won't beg you to stay, Adam. I love you. Maggie loves you. We could have built something together, but you're more like your cousin than you think. He ran from responsibility. He turned his back on me and his unborn child. I'm not sure why you're running or from what … but I hope it's worth what you're leaving behind."

  She didn't wait for his reply, but turned and left the cottage. He drew an unsteady breath, feeling as if his limbs were suddenly weighed down by the tonnage of the world.

  He wasn't miming away, he told himself. He was just going home. He'd taken care of Kurt's final mess and it was time to leave.

  It took him only an hour to gather his things in his car. As he packed, he studiously kept his thoughts from Breanna and Maggie. Instead, he thought of all the things he needed to do when he got back to Kansas City.

  Maybe it was time to move to the suburbs, get out of his high-rise and into a neighborhood. He could move to a little ranch where he'd have a yard to mow. Maybe he'd get a dog.

  Neither Breanna nor Maggie were outside when he got in his car to leave. He stood for a moment and looked at their house, wondering if he wasn't making the mistake of his lifetime.

  She loved him. She loved him and Maggie loved him. He got into his car and pulled out of the driveway. As he pointed the nose of the car toward the highway that would take him back to his life in Kansas City, he told her she was wrong, he wasn't anything like Kurt.

  He didn't run from responsibility, he embraced it. He met life head-on, plowing through instead of racing to the next adventure.

  He was nothing like Kurt … nothing. Then why are you running away? a little voice whispered inside his head. What are you running from? And what are you running to?

  * * *

  She watched from her front window as he pulled out of his driveway and disappeared from sight. Her heart was broken into a million pieces, and she knew it would be a very long time before the pieces found their way back together again.

  She'd had hope. Each day as she'd sat in the hospital room with him and they'd talked, she'd believed there was a chance for them.

  Those hours with him had merely drawn her closer to him than she'd already been. She couldn't deny the fact that she was grateful to him. He had saved her life. The bullet Eddie Duncan had fired from his gun had been intended for her and Adam had thrown his own body in the way to save her.

  But, gratitude aside, she was deeply in love with him. And now he was gone. She was glad she had the house to herself. Maggie was at her parents' place and Rachel was on an outing with David, leaving her to deal with her grief all alone.

  She hadn't wanted to fall in love, had thought she was perfectly satisfied living her life alone with just her family and Maggie to fill in the empty spots. But there had been an emptiness inside her that no family or daughter could fill. Adam had filled it.

  She moved through the lower level of the house like a zombie, willing herself not to spill any tears, reminding herself that he'd been honest about the fact that he didn't want a wife or a family from the very beginning.

  She couldn't even be angry with him. It wasn't his fault she'd fallen in love with him. She'd survived the kidnapping of her daughter. She would survive this pain as well.

  Cleaning. That's what she needed to do. She'd clean the house from top to bottom and maybe in the process exhaust herself so that she didn't have the energy to think about Adam and all that would never be.

  Cleaning didn't help. Twenty minutes later she was upstairs in her room dusting the dresser with tears streaking down her cheeks.

  Somehow Adam had made her b
elieve again in the dreams she'd once entertained. He'd made her think about a happy marriage with a strong, committed man. He'd reminded her of dreams of working together, building a future, sleeping in somebody's arms.

  Adam, her heart cried. Adam, I love you.

  She jumped up off the bed as she heard the front door crash open. For a split second an irrational fear swept through her. Eddie! He's come to finish the job!

  "Breanna!"

  It wasn't Eddie's voice that called her name. It was Adam's. What was he doing back here? "I'm up here," she called and quickly swiped at her tears. She didn't want him to see her crying.

  She heard him coming, taking the stairs two at a time and when he entered her bedroom he filled it with a barely suppressed energy. "We need to talk," he said.

  "Talk?" She stared at him blankly, wondering what had brought him back here. What more they could possibly have to say to one another.

  "I got twenty miles down the highway and realized you'd once asked me a question that I'd never answered, and it was suddenly important that I answer it."

  She sat on the edge of the bed, looking at him in confusion. He remained just inside the doorway returning her gaze with intensity. "What question?" she asked.

  He raked a hand through his hair and broke eye contact. Instead he stared at someplace just over her head. "You asked me once what it was I got out of my relationship with Kurt. What kept me taking care of his life and cleaning up his messes. At the time you asked, I didn't have an answer and it bothered me. I knew it was important that I discover the answer, but I didn't seem to be able to come up with one."

  "And you have now?"

  Once again he looked at her, his eyes so blue they made her ache inside. "I have my answer. As long as I had Kurt's life to deal with, I didn't have to have a life of my own." He took a step toward her, his brow drawn into a deep furrow. "It's so much easier, so much more self-protective to deal with somebody else's life. There's no emotional involvement, little chance for pain."

  "And little chance for any real joy or happiness," she replied.

  "You're right. You are so right." He walked over to where she sat. took her hand and pulled her to her feet. "I had decided I didn't want any children because I'd watched my aunt and uncle be hurt over and over again by Kurt. I didn't want anyone to have that kind of power over me."

  Despite the fact that he was holding her hands, that he gazed deeply into her eyes, she was afraid to hope. "There are no guarantees with children, Adam. You can love them, but they can get sick or bad things can happen to them, or they can make bad choices. But heartache isn't all there is to parenthood. You haven't considered the joy."

  "I've experienced the joy … with Maggie." He smiled, a beautiful smile that seemed to light him from within. The smile faltered a bit. "And I've experienced the pain and fear of the possibility of losing her."

  "But Adam, there is more joy than pain … and not every child is like Kurt was."

  "I know. Maggie fills my heart." He dropped her hands and instead placed his hands on either side of her face. "And you fill my heart. Bree, I don't want to go back to my life in Kansas City. It wasn't a life at all. You make me feel alive. You make me feel as if there is no end to the possibilities for happiness. You were a loose end that wrapped around my heart and made me captive. I love you, Bree."

  "Oh, Adam." Tears of joy splashed her cheeks and then he was kissing her … a kiss filled with passion, a kiss filled with sweet love.

  "Marry me, Bree," he said as the kiss ended. "I can't think of any other family I'd rather be a part of, I can't think of any other little girl I'd rather be a father to and I can't think of any other woman I'd rather share my life with than you."

  "Yes," she exclaimed, laughing and crying at the same time. "Oh, yes, I'll marry you." As he pulled her closer against him and once again claimed her lips with his, the craziest thought went through her mind.

  She remembered the alert that had trailed at the bottom of the television screen when Maggie had been missing and in her mind a new alert was playing. Breanna James … last seen in the arms of love … last seen in Adam's arms.

  * * *

  Alyssa Whitefeather had just served a double dip of Rocky Road

  ice cream when the headache pierced through her left eye, a warning that a vision was imminent. "Sarah, take over for me, would you?"

  With the pain nearly blinding, Alyssa left the ice-cream parlor and went into the living area in the back. She stumbled to the sofa and sat down.

  Blackness … waves of it consumed her. And with the darkness came the horror, a yawning greedy beast of horror that swept over her, through her. And with the horror came the certainty that evil approached and threatened somebody she loved. It was an evil so dark, so malevolent it terrified her.

  She awakened fifteen minutes later to find herself lying on the sofa. Slowly, she pulled herself up to a sitting position, her heart racing with fear.

  When Maggie had been kidnapped, Alyssa had thought that's what the visions had portended. But Maggie was safe and sound and the horrible darkness still haunted Alyssa. This was the third time she'd suffered the awful blackness since Maggie had been recovered safe and sound.

  Something was going to happen … something bad, and until the visions revealed something more than darkness and terror, there was nothing Alyssa could do to stop it. All she could do was wait for it to happen.

  * * *

  Epilogue

  «^

  The darkness filled the bedroom, broken by streams of moonlight that danced into the window and across the bed. Adam loved the way his wife looked when she was bathed in moonlight. He loved the way his wife looked in any light.

  They had married a week ago in a small ceremony at city hall. Adam had never known how rich life could be until now. He awakened in the mornings to Maggie kisses and sunshine, to challenges of opening a new office and Breanna's love and support.

  She raised her head and smiled at him, her eyes shining in the glow of the moonlight. "What are you thinking, Mr. Spencer?"

  He returned her smile and stroked a hand down her silky bare back. "I'm just lying here thinking about what a lucky man I am, Mrs. Spencer."

  "That's funny, I was just lying here thinking about what a lucky woman I am."

  "You know this is a forever kind of thing," he said to her.

  "I wouldn't have it any other way," she replied. She cuddled closer to him and sighed with obvious contentment. "I've never been so happy in my life, Adam."

  "I feel the same way. I never knew what it felt like to have a full heart, but you fill my heart, sweet Bree." They both jumped in surprise as the telephone rang.

  "It's after eleven, who could that be?" she murmured as she reached over to answer. "Hello? Hi, Clay." A frown worried itself across her forehead and she sat up. Adam sat up as well and turned on the light on the nightstand.

  "What's going on? Yes … yes … we're on our way." She hung up the phone and looked at him. "That was Clay. He said we need to get out to my parents' place right away."

  "Did he say why?" Adam got out of bed and pulled on a pair of jeans.

  She stood and reached for the clothes she'd thrown on a chair before bedtime. "He wouldn't say. He said we just need to get out there." She looked at him, fear darkening her eyes. "There was something in Clay's voice … something that frightened me."

  Adam walked around the bed and pulled her into his arms. "There's nothing to be afraid of," he said. "Whatever is going on we'll face it together."

  She smiled up at him. "Together. I love the way that sounds. I love you, Adam."

  "And I love you, Bree." He claimed her lips in a kiss that spoke of his devotion, his desire, his love for her. "And whatever we face in the future, we face together."

  "And we'll be fine because we have the strength of our love to support us," she replied.

  As he hugged her once again, he silently thanked his cousin. Kurt hadn't left him one final loose end, rather he
'd pointed him to a path that had led to a future filled with joy and love … a future filled with Maggie and Breanna.

  * * * * *