Time After Time

by Kay Hooper

  “He seems gentle enough. How old is he?”

  “Thirty-one.”

  The other woman’s face went still as she looked at Alex, sympathy stirring in her brown eyes. “Then he is … very old.”

  “Yes.”

  After an eternally long moment Teddy nodded as if to herself. “I have a few friends downtown,” she said briskly. “I think maybe we can get those permits for you.” Her eyes gleamed at Noah. “You may have trouble renting these lofts, but I’ll take one.”

  “You’ve got it,” Noah said. “Rent free.”

  “Oh, no.” Teddy chuckled softly. “That’d be considered bribing an officer—or something like that. No, I’ll pay rent, Noah. It’ll be well worth the price of admission to watch you cope with a zoo!” She laughed again. “I’ll start the wheels turning downtown tomorrow. For now I’ll leave you two to your unpacking.” She turned for the door.

  “Teddy?” Alex knew her cheeks were wet, and didn’t give a damn.

  “Yes?”

  “Thank you.”

  “Don’t thank me, Alex.” She smiled widely. “I’m a sucker for old lions, white kittens … and love. See you.” And she was gone, closing the door quietly behind her.

  Alex found herself held tightly in Noah’s arms, laughing and crying at once. Relief and happiness were filling her until she thought she’d burst.

  “You startled the hell out of me by telling her the truth,” Noah said, leading her around so that they could sit on the couch. “But I decided you knew what you were doing.”

  “Did you?” Alex wiped her cheeks with the back of her hand and grinned at him. “I didn’t. I just hoped Teddy would be with us rather than against us, crossed my fingers, and jumped.”

  “You took quite a chance.”

  Alex leaned against him with a sigh. “I know, but somehow I just had a feeling she wouldn’t take Cal away.” With a frown she added, “And why do I think she should be taller every time I see her?”

  “That’s odd, I keep thinking the same thing.”

  For a crazy moment Alex wondered if Teddy had played a part in their past lives. A helpful part, maybe? Then she winced. It was tangled enough now.

  “Since we have Cal’s future settled,” Noah said, smiling at her, “shall we make firm plans for our own?”

  Alex decided the time had come. She wouldn’t feel comfortable in keeping her dreams from Noah, not when they had influenced her so much. “Um, Noah, there’s something I want to tell you about.”

  “If it’s a bar to matrimony, I don’t want to hear about it,” he said definitely.

  “No, nothing like that. At least—it certainly hasn’t changed my mind, although it might change yours.”

  “Nothing could change my mind.”

  Alex rose to her feet and began to wander around the room aimlessly, trying to find words for the impossible. “Ever since we met, I’ve been having … dreams.”

  “Dreams?”

  He sounded startled, she thought, and her pacing became even more aimless. “Yes. Odd dreams. At first I didn’t really think much about them. Or at least I didn’t want to think about them. They seemed to be—were—pieces of two stories, two lives. And each story progressed very neatly and logically, with beginnings and middles … and endings.

  “One story was about a Gypsy girl and a lord’s son. And the other was about a Union soldier and a Southern lady. But somehow I knew that I was the Gypsy girl and the Southern lady, and that you were the lord’s son and the Union soldier.”

  “Alex—”

  She interrupted him, hurrying on. “When I began believing that what I dreamed were actually memories of past lives, I started to worry that you and I were caught up in some strange pattern of—oh, hell—fate, for want of a better word. Because those endings I dreamed weren’t happy ones. I lost you. The Gypsy girl was sent away, and the Union soldier rode back into the war—”

  “I came back to you, Alex.”

  Alex felt a shock that was oddly both hot and cold, his husky words and the meaning behind them stopping the breath in her throat and halting her restless steps. “You—?”

  “I came back to you.”

  She turned slowly to stare at him.

  He was on his feet only a few steps away. “That soldier,” he said softly, “came back to the beautiful Southern lady, and the child that was theirs.”

  She hadn’t told him about the child, Alex realized wildly. How could he have known? Unless …

  “I’ve been dreaming too.”

  Alex swallowed hard. “And the Gypsy girl? You sent her away.”

  “No. My father sent her away. Paid her brothers gold to take her away. But I found you, Alex.”

  The certainty in his voice was too strong to be questioned. And Alex didn’t want to question. It felt too right; they were both too certain to be wrong.

  She stepped toward him and held out her right hand. “Look at the lifeline,” she said softly.

  He took her hand, studying for a moment, then looked at his own palm. She traced her lifeline and his with her left index finger.

  “From this point—the point where we met—our lifelines match. It’s impossible, but they match.”

  “Fated to share all our lives together,” he concluded, lifting shimmering silver eyes to hers.

  Alex drew a shaken breath. “I’m not sure that I believe in any of this.”

  “It’s probably something much simpler,” he agreed. “Like telepathy.”

  She looked down at their palms. “Just lines on skin,” she observed.

  “Just lines. Not, after all, much else. Lines.”

  “Reincarnation … there’s no way to prove it.”

  He nodded. “No way to know. Just faith. Belief.”

  They stared at each other.

  “I love you,” he said. “I’ve always loved you. I loved you when you danced in front of a campfire, and when you hid me from soldiers. You taught me what love meant in a clearing near a stream, and in a bedroom with an old rock fireplace. Leaving you to go back to a war was the hardest thing I’ve ever had to do, and finding you after my father’s cruelty was finding a heaven I thought I’d lost.”

  It held the sound of vows spoken from the heart, and Alex’s heart responded instantly.

  “I love you. I loved you when you were a Union soldier and when I was a Gypsy girl. I loved you when you went away to war, and even when I thought you’d paid to be rid of me. I’ve been searching for you, searching for someone I couldn’t name. And when I found you this time I was so desperately afraid of losing you.”

  Noah enfolded her in his arms, holding her tightly. “Marry me,” he whispered.

  “Yes.” Alex slipped her arms around his neck as he lifted her and strode toward the bedroom. “Yes, my love.”

  It wasn’t the same little glade, but the Gypsy girl was drawn to it because it reminded her of that other one. She sat on a fallen log and stared at the stream, memories tormenting her. Months. Months, and they were far from the place where she’d learned of love … and betrayal. The gold was long since spent, her brothers’ jeering triumph lessened by time.

  Her own pain was an ache even time could not heal.

  She felt more than heard someone coming, but stared at the stream blindly. No. It wasn’t he. It was never he. But she heard a soft sound and looked up despite herself, everything in her going still. This time it was he.

  “They lied,” he said hoarsely, looking at her with desperate need. “They lied to you. My sweet, don’t say their lies have killed your love. Don’t say it’s too late for us!”

  With a wild cry she flew to his embrace, the coldness gone forever. She listened to his broken endearments, to the sound of his heart pounding in time with hers, and her own murmurs of love were the outpourings of a heart filled with a fierce, joyous release….

  She no longer stared down the dusty, empty road, but a part of her could not help glancing from time to time. And today was a hot and sunny day, much as
that day had been. On this day, though, her son played happily on a blanket spread beneath the big oak tree, his infant gurgles mingling with the sounds of birds in the branches high above him.

  She sat nearby, her fingers occupied with the mending in her lap and her mind ranging free. Memories. She hoarded them within her heart. Her fingers moved automatically as she lifted her head and sent a yearning glance down the dusty road. Then her fingers stilled.

  The mending fell at her feet as she rose, heart pounding. A horse was coming down the road. A single horse and rider. She walked toward the gate steadily, hope and dread clashing within her, biting her lip to hold back the cry of desperate longing. It would be just a stranger, asking for a dipper of water or a meal or directions. Just another stranger to pass through her life briefly. So briefly.

  But … dear God, he looked familiar! Straight and broad-shouldered in the saddle. No uniform, of course, but the hot sun shone down on golden hair.

  Her heart stopped, then began thudding against her ribs.

  It was he!

  She waited, still and silent, by the gate. Stared into blue-gray eyes as he swung from the horse and stepped toward her. And when he held out his arms, she went into them with no more than a sigh.

  “I love you,” he said huskily, fiercely. “I’ve nothing to offer you, but—”

  “That’s enough,” she whispered, gazing up at him tenderly. “It’s more than enough.”

  He framed her face in warm hands, eyes alight, and kissed her with aching gentleness. Then his eyes were drawn by the sounds of a child, and he looked back at her with incredulous hope.

  Smiling, she took his hand and led him toward the blanket beneath the big oak tree. “Come and meet your son, my love.”

  And he held a babe with blue-gray eyes….

  Alex smiled and listened to the heart beating steadily beneath her cheek.

  All stories had endings.

  And some endings … were no more than beginnings.

  Read on for

  a special preview of the

  third thrilling novel in

  Kay Hooper’s Blood trilogy….

  BLOOD TIES

  Coming from Bantam in Spring 2010

  BLOOD TIES

  On Sale Spring 2010

  PROLOGUE

  Six months previously:

  October

  Listen.

  “No.”

  Listen.

  “I don’t want to hear.” She kept her eyes down, staring at her bare feet. Her toenails were painted pink. Only not here. Here, they were gray, like everything else.

  Everything except the blood. The blood was always red.

  She had forgotten that.

  You have to listen to us.

  “No, I don’t. Not anymore.”

  We can help you.

  “No one can help me. Not to do that, what you’re asking me to do. It’s impossible.” At the edge of her vision, she saw the blood creeping toward her, and immediately took a step backward. Then another. “I can’t go back now. I can never go back.”

  Yes. You can. You have to.

  “I was at peace. Why didn’t you leave me there?” She felt something solid and hard against her back and pressed herself against it, her gaze still on her toes, so much of her awareness on the blood inching ever closer.

  Because it isn’t finished.

  “It was finished a long time ago.”

  Not for you. Not for her.

  ONE

  Present day:

  April 8

  Tennessee

  Case Edgerton ran along the narrow trail, aware of his burning legs but concentrating on his breathing. The last mile was always the hardest, especially on his weekly trail run. Easier to just zone out and run when he was on the track or in his neighborhood park; this kind of running, with its uneven terrain and various hazards, required real concentration.

  That was why he liked it.

  He jumped over a rotted fallen log, and almost immediately had to duck a low-hanging branch. After that, it was all downhill—which wasn’t as easy as it sounded, since the trail snaked back and forth in hairpin curves all along the middle of this last mile. Good training for his upcoming race. He planned to win that one, as he had won so many his entire senior year.

  And then Kayla Vassey, who had a thing for runners and who was remarkably flexible, would happily reward him. Maybe for the whole summer. But there’d be no clinging to him afterward; she’d be too busy sizing up next year’s crop of runners to do more than wave good-bye when he left for college in the fall.

  Sex without strings. The kind he preferred.

  Case nearly tripped over a root exposed by recent spring rains, and swore at his wandering thoughts.

  Concentrate, idiot. Do you want to lose that race?

  He really didn’t.

  His legs were on fire now and his lungs felt raw, but he kept pushing himself, as he always did, even picking up a little speed as he rounded the last of the wicked hairpin curves.

  This time, when he tripped, he went sprawling.

  He tried to land on his shoulder and roll, to do as little damage as possible, but the trail was so uneven that instead of rolling he slammed into the hard ground with a grunt, the wind knocked out of him, and a jolt of pain told him he’d probably jammed or torn something.

  It took him a few minutes of panting and holding his shoulder gingerly before he felt able to sit up. And it was only then that he saw what had tripped him.

  An arm.

  Incredulous, he stared at a hand that appeared to belong to a man, a hand that was surprisingly clean and unmarked, long fingers seemingly relaxed. His gaze tracked across a forearm that was likewise uninjured, and then—

  And then Case Edgerton began to scream like a little girl.

  “You can see why I called you in.” Sheriff Desmond Duncan’s voice was not—quite—defensive. “Since this is outside the town limits of Serenade, it falls into my jurisdiction. And I’m not ashamed to admit it’s beyond anything the Pageant County Sheriff’s Department has ever handled.” He paused, then repeated, “Ever.”

  “I’m not surprised,” she replied somewhat absently.

  His training and experience told Des Duncan to shut up and let her concentrate on the scene, but his curiosity was stronger. He hadn’t known what to expect when he had contacted the FBI, never having done so before; maybe any agent would have surprised him. This one definitely did.

  She was drop-dead gorgeous, for one thing, with a centerfold body and the face of an exotic angel. And she possessed the most vivid blue eyes Duncan had ever seen in his life. With all that, she appeared remarkably casual and unaware of the effect she was having on just about every man within eyesight of her. She was in faded jeans and a loose pullover sweater, and her boots were both serviceable and worn. Her long gleaming black hair was pulled back into a low ponytail at the nape of her neck.

  She had done everything short of take a mud bath to downplay her looks, and Des still had to fight a tendency to stutter a bit when speaking to her. He wasn’t even sure she had shown him a badge.

  And he was nearly sixty, for Christ’s sake.

  Wary of asking the wrong question or asking one the wrong way, he said tentatively, “I’m grateful to turn this over to more experienced hands, believe me. I naturally called the State Bureau of Investigation first, but … Well, once they heard me out, they suggested I call in your office. Yours specifically, not just the FBI. Sort of surprised me, to be honest. That they suggested right off the bat I should call you folks. But it sounded like a good idea to me, so I did. Didn’t really expect so many feds to respond, and I sure as hell didn’t expect it to be so fast. I sent in the request less than five hours ago.”

  “We were in the area,” she said. “Near enough. Just over the mountains in North Carolina.”

  “Another case?”

  “Ongoing, though at the moment mostly inactive.”

  Duncan nodded even though she wasn
’t looking at him. She was on one knee a couple of feet from the body—what was left of the body—her gaze fixed unwaveringly on it.

  He wondered what she saw. Because, word had it, the agents of the FBI’s elite Special Crimes Unit saw a lot more than most cops.

  What Duncan saw was plain enough, if incredibly bizarre, and he had to force himself to look again.

  The body lay sprawled beside what was, among the high-school track team and some of the hardier souls in town, a popular hiking and running trail. It was a wickedly difficult path to walk at a brisk pace, let alone run, which made it an excellent training course if you knew what you were doing—and potentially deadly if you didn’t.

  There were numerous cases of sprains, strains, and broken bones in this area all year round, but especially after the spring rains.

  Still, Duncan didn’t have to be an M.E. or even a doctor to know that a fall while running or walking hadn’t done this. Not this.

  The dense undergrowth of this part of the forest had done a fair job of concealing most of the body; Duncan’s deputies had been forced hours before to carefully clear away bushes and vines just to have access to the remains.

  Which made it a damned good thing that this was obviously a dump site rather than a murder scene; Duncan might not have been familiar with grisly murders, but he certainly knew enough to be sure the feds would not have been happy to find their evidence disturbed.

  Evidence. He wondered if there was any to speak of. His own people certainly hadn’t found much. Prints were being run through IAFIS now, and if that avenue of identification turned up no name, Duncan supposed the next step would be dental records.

  Because there wasn’t a whole lot else to identify the poor bastard with.

  His left arm lay across part of the trail, and it was eerily undamaged, even unmarked by so much as a bruise. Eerily because from the elbow on the damage was … extreme. Most of the flesh and muscle had been somehow stripped from the bones, leaving behind only bloody tags of sinew attached here and there. Most if not all of the internal organs were gone, including the eyes, and the scalp had been ripped from the skull.