Haunting Rachel

by Kay Hooper

  Rachel turned toward Richmond, and her car began to pick up speed as it moved down a long slope. She reached absently to change the radio station. When she glanced back up at the virtually deserted road, she felt a shock as she once again saw the blond man.

  He was standing at the bottom of the slope, still a quarter-mile away, but Rachel knew it was the man she had seen before. Sunlight glinted off his silvery hair, and his lean face was turned toward her. He was just off the road, near a big oak tree and the corner of the brick wall that surrounded much of the Grant estate.

  Without arguing with herself, Rachel stepped on the brake, determined not to let him slip away this time. She had to see him, talk to him, had to find out who he was—

  The brake pedal resisted for an instant, and then went easily all the way to the floorboard.

  The emergency brake proved equally useless, and the gearshift refused to budge.

  She couldn’t stop the car.

  In the space of only heartbeats, Rachel knew that her only choice was to somehow get off the road. Just beyond the bottom of the slope was a traffic light, always busy; she couldn’t take the chance of getting through it without hitting another car or a pedestrian.

  She waited until the blond man flashed by on her right, then she wrenched the steering wheel to the right, praying desperately that she could avoid the trees.

  There was no curb to provide even a nominal barrier, and the heavy sedan barely slowed as it plowed through the spring flowers, weeds, and bushes filling what was essentially an empty lot. Still, Rachel thought she might make it.

  Until the rear of the sedan began to fishtail, and she lost control.

  Seconds later, the car crashed headlong into an old oak tree.

  In those first confused moments, Rachel’s mind seemed to function at half speed while her heart pounded in triple time. She found herself sitting behind the wheel, dazed, the air bag deflating now that it had done its job. The car horn was wailing stridently, and the hood was crumpled back almost to the windshield.

  Rachel was surprised to be alive and apparently undamaged.

  The passenger door was wrenched open suddenly, and a handsome blond man with intense violet eyes leaned in to stare at her. “Rachel, my God, are you all right?” he demanded.

  The shock of the accident was forgotten. Her stunned gaze searched that face, as familiar to her as her own, and she was barely aware of whispering, “My God. Thomas.”

  Then everything went black.

  THREE

  n the hospital, where paramedics had taken her, the doctor who examined Rachel was not happy. He could find no serious injury barring a slight bump on the side of her head where she had apparently hit the window frame of the car, yet she had remained unconscious long enough to raise grave concerns. Rachel tried to explain that the cause had been emotional shock rather than physical, but apparently only she had seen Thomas.

  He had vanished once again.

  When she had awakened in the ambulance, the paramedic treating her insisted that there had been no blond man at the scene of the accident.

  Rachel didn’t want to sound like a lunatic by insisting on the reappearance of her long-dead fiancé, so she finally just submitted when the doctor ordered tests and an overnight stay to keep her under observation.

  She was ruefully aware that her father’s generous endowment to the hospital—and her own possible future interest—was largely responsible for the doctor’s caution.

  It was more than two hours before she was in a private room and could call the house to inform Fiona and her uncle, and ask that Graham be called so he could find out about the car. She was fine, she told the anxious housekeeper. There was no need for anyone to come to the hospital, because she’d be home in the morning anyway. She just wanted to rest.

  But when the silence of the room closed around her, Rachel began to wish she had asked for visitors. Anything to distract her from her muddled thoughts.

  Thomas? How could it have been him? He was dead. He had been dead for nearly ten years. And yet … it was no ghost that had leaned into her car, no ghost’s voice that had called her by name and demanded to know if she was all right. No ghost, but a real flesh-and-blood man. She had even felt the heat of his body, caught the scent of aftershave.

  Think it through.

  It couldn’t have been Thomas, surely it couldn’t have. Because if he had been alive all this time, and had let her go on believing him dead … No, the man she had loved would never be so cruel.

  Unless he hadn’t been able to tell her the truth?

  He had often been somewhat mysterious about his trips out of the country, so much so that it had bothered her. Yet whenever she had expressed that worry, he had merely laughed and told her she was imagining things. He was a pilot who worked for a shipping company, and he hauled cargo. Normal stuff, he told her. Supplies and equipment.

  Yet something in his eyes had made Rachel wonder. Mercy had often said that her brother loved intrigue and invented it in his own life, that that was why he sometimes seemed mysterious about his activities, but Rachel had not been reassured. She had been certain that he was sometimes in danger, and with a young woman’s flair for drama, she had imagined that danger to involve guns and bullets even though there had been no evidence at all to support that.

  Now, with an older woman’s rationality, Rachel found it difficult to think of any reason Thomas might have faked his own death, any reason he would have needed to stay away for nearly a decade from those who loved him. It just didn’t make sense.

  But if it hadn’t been Thomas she had seen, alive or dead, then who was this man that might have been his twin? He knew her, or at least knew her name. Three times he had been nearby, seemingly watching her, only to vanish before she could touch him, speak to him. Who was he? What had brought him into her life, and why did he stand back as though uncertain or wary of approaching her?

  That didn’t make sense either.

  She was still arguing with herself about an hour later when a hasty knock at the door heralded Graham’s arrival. He was carrying a vase filled with her favorite yellow roses and looked very much upset.

  “Rachel—my God, are you all right?”

  Odd that he used the exact same words the stranger had.

  “I’m fine, Graham. A little bump on the head and an overly cautious doctor, that’s all. Lovely flowers, but you didn’t have to.”

  He set the vase on the table by her bed and stood staring down at her with a frown. “From what Fiona told me on the phone, I expected to find broken bones.”

  Rachel smiled. “By now you should know how Fiona exaggerates.”

  “I do. But I also checked on your car. After seeing it, I expected worse than broken bones.”

  “I’m fine, really. The air bag worked like a charm. Remind me to send a note of thanks to whoever invented the things.”

  “I’m more interested in what caused the accident.” He drew a chair close to the bed and sat down, still frowning. “How did you lose control? The police say there were no skid marks.”

  “I didn’t lose control. Well, I mean, I didn’t until the car started to slide all over the place on the grass. I had to steer it into that empty lot because I had no brakes.”

  “What? You mean they were just gone?”

  For the first time, Rachel thought about something other than Thomas, and a shiver of remembered panic crept up her spine. “The pedal felt a little spongy for an instant, then went all the way to the floor. I guess the brake line was somehow broken.”

  “I don’t see how.” Graham shook his head. “But I’ll have the car towed to a good garage and checked out bumper to bumper. And I’ll arrange for another car for you. You don’t want to drive Duncan’s Rolls, do you?”

  Rachel grimaced. “Hardly.”

  “Didn’t think so.” He smiled. “Any preferences?” “Anything but a sports car. I hate them.” “So that’s why you never want to ride in my ’Vette.”

&nb
sp; “That’s why,” she agreed.

  “I’ll keep that in mind.” Graham’s faint smile died, and he added very seriously, “You’re sure you’re all right?”

  “I’m sure.” Just losing my mind, that’s all. “The doctor wants me here for observation because I was … unconscious for a little while. But I’m okay. I’ll be able to go home in the morning.”

  “Then I’ll come by and pick you up—not in the ’Vette.” He got to his feet. “In the meantime, I should go and let you rest.”

  Rachel wanted to object, because she really didn’t want to be left alone with her bewildered thoughts. But she also didn’t want to explain to Graham that she had once again seen Thomas’s ghost or his twin, and he would certainly wonder if she expressed an unusual desire for his company.

  So she merely said, “Will you do me another favor?”

  “Of course I will.”

  “Stop by the house and reassure Fiona and Cam? Tell them I’m fine and I’ll see them in the morning?”

  “I’ll do that.”

  “Thanks.”

  “Don’t mention it.” He hesitated, then briefly touched her hand. “See you in the morning.”

  She nodded, and held on to her smile until the door swung shut behind him. Then she sighed and turned her gaze to the uninspiring ceiling.

  It was going to be a long night.

  It was probably after midnight when Rachel half woke from a drugged sleep. The doctor had insisted on the sedative once he’d found no evidence of concussion, saying she needed a solid night’s rest. But now she wanted to be awake and the drug was fighting her. She didn’t know why she wanted to be awake, not at first. It was very quiet, and the room was dimly lit by the panel light above the head of her bed.

  Then he moved out of the shadows near the door and came toward the bed, and Rachel felt her heart leap.

  He came to the side of the bed and stood looking down at her for a moment, his face grave. She made a little sound, wordless but urgent, and reached out a wavering hand to him. And when he took her hand in his, the warmth of his flesh touching hers was so solid, so real that it was shocking.

  “Who …?” It was all she could get out, and Rachel concentrated fiercely on fighting the drug that was trying to drag her back toward unconsciousness.

  He bent down, closer to her, and for a moment Rachel could only stare at that familiar face. Then her heart clenched in pain.

  “I’m sorry,” he murmured.

  His eyes were blue.

  Rachel wanted to cry. She thought she might have, but the drug in her system finally won the struggle, and the familiar face of a stranger grew hazy and then disappeared into the dark peace of sleep.

  In the bright light of day, the sedative cleared from her system, her nighttime visitor definitely seemed ghostlike at best, and a total figment of her drugged imagination at worst.

  Except that she knew he had been there.

  She couldn’t explain the certainty, but didn’t doubt it. The blond man had been in her hospital room last night. He had held her hand, and he had said he was sorry. And his eyes had not been violet as she had thought at the scene of her accident, but pale blue. Despite the dim light of her room last night, she was sure of that.

  He was not Thomas.

  In one sense, that fact was a relief; at least now she could stop agonizing over whether Thomas had been alive all the time she had believed him dead. He hadn’t lied to her, hadn’t been cruel enough to hide himself from her.

  He had, quite simply, died in a tragic plane crash before his thirtieth birthday.

  No, this was another man entirely. A man at least a few years younger than Thomas would have been, maybe thirty-five at most. But the resemblance was certainly uncanny. It made her seriously ask herself if maybe everyone really did have a twin somewhere in the world.

  So. There was a stranger who looked like Thomas, a man who knew her name and who had seemingly been watching her for at least several days. The question was— why?

  That question remained in Rachel’s mind after she went home and all through the weekend, while Fiona fussed over her and Cam exclaimed, and the phone rang with worried inquiries from concerned friends—this surprising her, since she had not realized so many people still thought of her as a friend after she had spent so many years away from Richmond.

  She found herself going often to her bedroom window, where there was a view of the front gate, her gaze searching for sunlight glinting off blond hair. But she didn’t see what she looked for. Who she looked for. And without information only he could supply, there was no way for her to know who he was and why he had come into her life as he had.

  By Monday afternoon Rachel had reached the point of wondering if she should take out an ad in the newspapers asking the mysterious blond man to give her a call. She didn’t, but the thought was definitely tempting.

  No one seemed to notice her preoccupation over the weekend, or if they did, chalked it up to her brush with near death. Graham was the only one to comment on Monday afternoon when she went to his office to sign yet another stack of legal documents.

  “You’re very quiet today,” he said, leaning back in his chair to study her thoughtfully. “Aftereffects of the crash?”

  “Probably.” She made her voice reassuring. “I don’t know, maybe everybody should crash their car into an oak tree at least once. It sort of puts things into perspective for you.”

  “What kinds of things?”

  Her shoulders lifted and fell. “What really matters. Graham, I don’t think I want to sell the house after all. Even to Cam.”

  He didn’t seem surprised. “What about the business?”

  “I haven’t decided about that yet. But the house … Mom and Dad loved it so much, and they’re very much there in spirit.” Despite control, her voice quivered. “I started cleaning out their bedrooms yesterday, finally going through everything, and I couldn’t believe how close to them it made me feel. When I thought of Mom’s letters and her collection of lace handkerchiefs being packed away, and all the books Dad loved going into storage because I don’t have room for them in my apartment in New York … it just hit me what I was thinking of doing.”

  She hadn’t actually begun cleaning out their bedrooms. What she had done was take two steps into her dad’s room and then sit in a chair, crying for the better part of an hour. But the result had been the same. She couldn’t bear the thought of selling out.

  Graham smiled. “Well, there’s enough money to maintain the house, no question. Would you move back to Richmond and commute to New York? Keep the apartment in Manhattan and visit here on weekends? Or do your design work out of the house?”

  Rachel sighed. “I haven’t made those decisions yet— except there’s no way I could work totally out of the house and keep my job. To make a name for yourself in the fashion industry, you have to be where it’s happening— and that means New York.”

  “So that’s still important to you? It’s one of the things the accident put into perspective?”

  She thought about it, nodding slowly. “It’s not fame I’m after. It’s not even success, really. It’s … being creative the only way I know how. It’s the excitement I feel whenever I see an idea actually taking shape in a sketch and then in fabric and on a model.”

  “You could have that here in Richmond,” he said neutrally. “Open a boutique, maybe, with one-of-a-kind designs. The label of Rachel Grant, a Richmond exclusive. I’d say most of the ladies around here would eat it up. In time, New York could come knocking on your door.”

  Even as he spoke, Rachel knew it could work, could be a huge success. She was only surprised she hadn’t thought of it before then.

  “It’s a possibility,” she said slowly.

  Graham nodded. “Definitely something to think about. I mean, if you’re going to keep the house, it’d be a shame to have it go unoccupied for long stretches. Living here, working here. Makes sense to me.” And it would keep her in Richmond, which was w
hat he wanted.

  She smiled at him. “You should have stayed with trial work, Graham. You can be very persuasive when you want to be.”

  “That’s why I stopped criminal trial work.” He smiled slightly in return. “I was able to sway a jury to believe my client was innocent when he was actually guilty as hell. Didn’t much like the way that made me feel, so I switched to corporate law.”

  “I never knew that.”

  He shrugged. “I didn’t run my car into an oak tree, but what happened did put things into perspective for me. I’ve found life often forces us to make choices, whether we think we’re ready for them or not.”

  “I’m beginning to think you’re right about that.” Her voice was somewhat rueful. “When I came back here, it seemed there were nothing but choices to make, and I didn’t want to make them. Yet, somehow, every time I’ve had to choose, it’s been easier than I expected. More simple and clear-cut.”

  “Maybe you’re getting back on balance. You’ve had a hell of a rough year, Rachel, don’t forget that. Give yourself time. There’s no decision you absolutely have to make now, no choice so imperative that it won’t wait a few weeks. As with the house, you’ll know the right choice when it hits you.”

  “I suppose you’re right.”

  “Of course.”

  She laughed and got to her feet. “I’ll let the whole situation simmer for a while and see what happens. Satisfied?”

  “For the moment.” He rose as well, smiling. “How’s the car?”

  “Drives like a dream, thanks. I meant to ask if it’s a rental or leased?”

  “Leased. Let me know if you want to buy it.”

  “Okay.” If she lived in Richmond on a permanent basis, she would need to own a car, something she had not needed in New York. Then there would be insurance, and a tag, and maintenance … responsibilities. Ties to this place. If she kept the house—and she was fairly certain she would—that would be the biggest tie of all. She felt a tinge of uneasiness but pushed that reaction aside. “Rachel?”

  She looked at Graham, saw his frown, and realized that she must have flinched or otherwise betrayed discomfort. “It’s nothing. For a minute there, I let the … weight of choices overwhelm me. But you’re right. There’s nothing I have to decide right this minute. Which reminds me—”