Peaches rarely left Hannah’s bedroom once the little girl was asleep. She’d curl up on the end of Hannah’s bed, like a little guardian angel watching to make certain her miniature mistress stayed safe.
Finding the poodle next to her sent a flutter of disquiet through Erica. She stood and headed for Hannah’s room, wanting to check to make sure she was okay.
As she entered the room, the first thing she noticed was the opened window with the screen dislodged. The second thing was the empty bed.
“Hannah?” She turned on the light, hoping the illumination would prove her initial vision wrong. But it didn’t. Erica reeled with alarm and flew from the bedroom. Stumbling down the hall, she cried out for Hannah several times, even knowing as she did with a mother’s instinct that the child wasn’t in the house.
She raced out the back door of her house, crying out in the darkness of the night. Where had Hannah gone? What had happened? Panic surged inside her.
Hannah had been peacefully sleeping when Erica had left her room. They’d had no fight, no argument of any kind. Why would Hannah run away? Dear God…had she run away?
Erica stared at the dislodged screen and open window and a new thought chilled her to her bones. Had somebody else opened the window? Dear God, had somebody taken Hannah?
“Hannah!” Her terrified cries brought Caleb to his back door.
“Erica, what’s wrong?” He left his house and hurried toward the gate. She met him there.
“Hannah’s gone. She apparently went out the window and now I can’t find her.”
Simultaneously, they both looked toward the tree house. A flutter of relief coursed through Erica. “Of course,” she murmured. “I should have thought of that.”
Caleb opened the gate to let Erica through and together they walked to the base of the tree house. “How long has she been gone?” Caleb asked.
Erica frowned and looked at the luminous dials on her watch. “I’m not sure. About a half an hour or so.”
“Did you two have an argument? Was she in trouble?” he asked.
Erica shook her head. “Not at all. Everything was fine. She was in bed and asleep the last time I saw her.”
Caleb looked up the ladder. “She probably climbed up there and promptly fell asleep. I’ll go up and get her.”
Erica stood at the foot of the ladder as Caleb climbed up. She intended to have a long, hard talk with her daughter about the fact that windows weren’t supposed to be used as escape routes.
Her anxiety rose to near panic as Caleb descended the ladder without Hannah in his arms. “She isn’t there,” he said once he was back on the ground.
“Are you sure?” Erica reached out and grabbed Caleb’s hand. “Then where is she? Where could she have gone? We have to call the police.” She heard the hysteria in her voice, felt it clawing up the back of her throat.
Caleb wrapped an arm around her shoulder, a thoughtful frown on his face. “Let’s not panic. There’s one other place she might have gone.”
“Where?”
“Come on.” He led her to his back door. “The last time Hannah ran away, she came here. My door has been unlocked all evening. It’s possible she came in and I wasn’t aware of it.”
“I just don’t understand this at all,” Erica said, tightening her grip on Caleb’s hand. “Why would she sneak into your house?” As they entered the kitchen, Erica didn’t care why Hannah might have come to Caleb’s house, she only hoped Hannah was indeed there.
“If she came in here, I think I know where she is,” Caleb said. Still holding hands, the two of them went up the stairs and down the hallway. They stopped in the doorway of the bedroom with the bunk beds, and there she was, sound asleep on the top bunk.
Erica walked to the side of the bed and stared for a long moment at the sleeping child. Slowly, her heartbeat returned to a more normal pace.
“Hannah?” She touched the child’s shoulder and Hannah stirred and opened one sleepy eyelid.
“Hi, Mommy. I comed to Mr. Man’s house to sleep.”
“Yes, I know. Why did you do that?”
“’Cause my dream friend told me to.” Her eyelid fluttered shut and Erica knew she was once again sleeping soundly.
Erica left the bed and rejoined Caleb in the hallway. “I don’t understand this at all. Why would she come here? Why would her dream friend tell her to come here to sleep?”
Caleb gazed at Erica, his eyes radiating that silvery glow that sent a shiver of delight and a sliver of pain through her. “Hannah knows she belongs here, that this room is hers.” He took her hand once again and pulled her down the hallway, where their voices wouldn’t disturb the sleeping child. “She knows that room was designed specifically with her in mind, just like the rest of the house was designed specifically with you in mind.”
“Caleb…” She tried to pull her hand from his, but he held tight.
“There’s nothing more I can do to make you see how much I love you. There’s nothing left to say that will make you understand that I’m not a man driven to replace what I’ve lost, but rather a man who found the unexpected gift of love. I love you, Erica, and I know you love me, too.”
“I do.” The words whispered from her. “I do love you, Caleb. But I can’t stand the thought that Katie Rose had to die so Hannah could live. I can’t stand the thought that you had to lose your child so I could keep mine.”
“Oh Erica, that’s not the way it is at all.” He dropped her hand and instead placed both his palms on the sides of her face, forcing her to gaze at him.
“Katie Rose died. Nothing I could have done, nothing you could have done, could have stopped that from happening. She was dead whether Hannah got her heart or not. What the doctors did by placing Katie’s heart in Hannah’s chest was to make Katie’s death count for something. They made it mean something good. Without that, Katie’s death would have been for nothing and we’d both be grieving the loss of our daughters.”
Erica stared at him, his words whirling around and around in her head. For the past several days, since he’d told her who he was, all she’d been able to focus on was the fact that Katie had died so that Hannah could live. Now, the truth of the situation struck her. Katie had died…and Hannah had lived. But, even if Katie’s heart had not been placed in Hannah, Katie still would have been dead.
Tears spilled from Erica, and as Caleb wrapped her in his loving arms, she wept. She cried for Katie, for Caleb, and with her tears came a cleansing of her spirit. She realized that all along she’d needed to mourn the little girl whose death had given Hannah the opportunity to live.
When the tears were gone, there was nothing left inside her, nothing but love for Caleb. His heart had become hers, his soul had intricately wound around hers, making it impossible for her to think of a life without him in it.
“Are you okay?” he asked softly as she swiped away the last of her tears.
“I’m more than okay,” she replied. She didn’t make a move to step out of his embrace. Rather, she leaned her head against his chest, listening to the sound of his heartbeat as it whispered softly to her own.
“I accept the offer of this house. I want to live here, raise Hannah here, but my acceptance comes with a condition,” she said.
“A condition?” She heard his heartbeat thudding faster.
Tilting her head back, she looked up at him. “I won’t live here unless you live here, too. I want you with us, forever and for always.”
The sparkle of a million stars lit his eyes. “Are…are you sure?”
She smiled. “I’ve never been more sure of anything in my entire life.”
She barely got the words out of her mouth before his lips possessed hers, as if to brand her as his forever.
“Marry me, Erica,” he said as their kiss finally ended. “Please marry me and let me love you every day for the rest of my life.”
“Yes,” she said, a surge of joy welling inside her. “Yes, yes, yes!” She laughed, but the laughter was stil
led as his lips once again found hers in a kiss that left no doubt as to whether he loved her or not. As her arms wound tight around his neck she knew she held her dreams. Finally, for the first time in her life, fate had finally gotten it right.
Epilogue
Caleb watched with loving indulgence as Erica tied Hannah’s hair bow for the third time in fifteen minutes.
“Hurry, Mommy. The bus is gonna come and I don’t want to miss it on the very first day of school,” Hannah exclaimed. The excitement of the big day glowed in Hannah’s cheeks, shone from her eyes. She was even more excited about school than she had been about Erica and Caleb’s wedding the week before.
“Okay…okay, I’m finished,” Erica said.
“How do I look?” Hannah asked first her mother, then turned to grin at Caleb. “Do I look like a first-grader? I don’t want to look like I’m in kindergarten.”
Erica stepped back and surveyed her daughter with a critical eye. “You look at least six…maybe seven years old,” Erica replied, and Caleb thought he heard a catch of emotion in his wife’s voice.
He placed an arm around her shoulders and gave her a tight squeeze, knowing this day was as difficult as they got in the parenting arena. “I think you look like my little munchkin,” Caleb replied and was rewarded by one of Hannah’s infectious giggles.
“Come on, we’d better get out there. The bus will be here any minute.” Erica hurried them all outside to stand on the sidewalk in front of the house. “You have your lunch money?”
Hannah patted her pocket. “Yup.”
“And you know if you need me for anything during the day you can go to the nurse’s office and call me,” Erica said, a worried frown creasing her forehead.
“Mommy, it’s okay,” Hannah said, then smoothed the plaid skirt she wore. “I’m going to be just fine.”
At that moment the school bus lumbered around the corner, bringing with it the smell of exhaust and the sound of children laughing.
“It isn’t a big yellow monster ready to eat your child,” Caleb said into his wife’s ear.
She laughed, the frown disappearing from her forehead. “I know.”
“And the minute Hannah gets on that bus, I know just what we can do to take your mind off worry.” Caleb watched Erica’s eyes deepen and a slight blush color her cheeks. God, he loved this woman.
“You’re insatiable,” she whispered.
He grinned. “Only for you.”
With a squeal of brakes, the bus stopped before them and the doors whooshed open. With a grown-up little wave over her shoulder, Hannah climbed up the stairs and disappeared into the bus. A moment later she appeared at an open window. “’Bye, Mommy, I love you!” she yelled. “And I love you, too, Daddy Doodle.” The bus pulled away.
A piercing sweetness swept through Caleb even as his mind worked to tell him it had just been a coincidence, a crazy fluke. As the familiar words echoed in his head, he decided not to speculate, not to wonder where they had come from.
“Caleb?” Erica looked at him worriedly. “Are you all right?”
“Yes…yes, I’m fine.” He looked at Erica, his wife…his love, and decided nobody really knew or understood the ways of the heart and perhaps nobody was meant to. Some things were truly better left a mystery.
Beneath a newly planted tree in their backyard was a marker that read: In Loving Memory of Katie Rose and In Celebration for Hannah’s Heart. Two little girls…one big heart, and in the entwining of their lives, Caleb had learned one true thing. The heart knew love, and his was overflowing.
ISBN: 978-1-4592-1753-9
IN A HEARTBEAT
Copyright © 2000 by Carla Bracale
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 editorial office, Silhouette Books, 300 East 42nd Street, New York, NY 10017 U.S.A.
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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* The Baker Brood
† Sisters
‡ Mustang, Montana
Table of Contents
Letter to Reader
Dedication
Books by Carla Cassidy
About the Author
Contents
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Epilogue
Copyright
In a Heartbeat Page 18