by Lola Gabriel
“Come on now, princess. Eat your breakfast,” Rachel said to Stephanie as she picked up the cup and blew on the coffee. “Lena will be here soon and she might take you to the park if you’re a good girl.”
Stephanie made a cute little sound that may or may not have been her attempting to say Lena’s name. Lena had been Rachel’s nanny since Stephanie was three months old and Rachel had gone back to work. Rachel trusted Lena and she loved the bond she shared with Stephanie.
Rachel stood leaning against the counter, sipping her coffee and watching as Stephanie nibbled on the piece of banana in her hand. The doorbell rang and Rachel hurried from the kitchen and walked down the hall. She pulled the door open and smiled at Lena. Lena was twenty-four and she had straight, red hair and a mischievous smile that made her look younger than her years. Her smile was infectious and Rachel felt her own smile widen when Lena grinned at her.
Rachel greeting Lena and led her down the hall to the kitchen where she greeted Stephanie with a wide smile and an excited “Hi!” which got her a wave.
“Anything I need to know?” Lena asked.
Rachel shook her head.
“No, all good. Her clothes are laid out in the living room, and as you can see, she’s almost done with breakfast.”
Lena walked over to the highchair and scooped Stephanie out of it as she finished the last of her banana.
“Are we going to have fun today, little miss?” she asked.
Stephanie’s smile suggested they would.
“I might take her down to the park today if that’s okay?” Lena said.
Rachel nodded and laughed.
“You ask me that every day and every day I tell you that you can take her wherever you want to, Lena,” Rachel said.
Rachel had been in Dallas now for two years, and for sixteen months of that time, she had had Stephanie with her. She no longer looked over her shoulder every time she went outside, and by the time Stephanie had been born, she had been settled into her new home and her new job and she was no longer paranoid that Bastian would try to find her. It always made her laugh when Lena asked her permission to take Stephanie out. It was almost like she knew that there had been a time when the idea of it would have horrified her.
“It never hurts to check,” Lena smiled. “So how’s work now that you’re the big shot?”
Two weeks ago, Rachel had been promoted to the office manager in the office where she worked under Dr. Monroe. It basically meant she was in charge of all of the other receptionists.
“I would hardly say I’m a big shot,” Rachel said, but she couldn’t stop herself from smiling. She was proud of her promotion. “It’s going well. The other receptionists actually listen to me, so that’s a bonus. And nothing has gone wrong yet.”
“Speaking of things going wrong, you’d better get going unless you want to be late and abuse your position of being the boss,” Lena grinned.
Rachel laughed and checked her watch, seeing that Lena was right.
“Yeah, I should go. I don’t want to start abusing my position for at least another week or so,” she grinned.
She moved closer to Lena and kissed Stephanie on the cheek.
“Bye, honey. Be good for Lena, okay?” she said. She turned her attention to Lena. “As always, give me a call if you need anything. Otherwise, I’ll see you at around half past five.”
“Have a good day,” Lena said.
Rachel headed for the door to the kitchen, waving at Stephanie and getting a cute little wave back. As Rachel left the house, she heard Lena chatting away to Stephanie and she smiled to herself. She had been nervous about getting a nanny at first, but she knew she had no real choice except to go back to work and she had had a good feeling about Lena right from the start, a feeling that had proved to be right.
Rachel left her garden and turned left. She only lived a five-minute walk from the office and she only bothered driving there if the weather was particularly bad. Today was cool but nice enough. Rachel enjoyed the walk to and from work, getting a bit of fresh air before being confined in the stuffy office and then getting to cool down a bit after a long day in the stifling warmth.
She crossed the street and spotted a man walking in front of her. Her heart lurched as she took in his height, his build, and his close-cropped dark hair. It was Bastian. She ducked into a shop doorway and watched him as he kept walking. She could feel the sweat breaking out on her body. How had he found her here?
Rachel gasped and ducked back out of sight as Bastian turned and checked both ways before crossing the street. Her heart slowed down and she gave a shaky laugh. The man wasn’t Bastian. Now that she had seen his face and saw that he looked nothing like Bastian, she realized he was a little bit too short to have been Bastian anyway.
She left the shop doorway and started walking again, asking herself why she was suddenly back to jumping at shadows after two years. She supposed it would always be with her, the need to check the face of every man on the street who looked about the right size to be Bastian, but it didn’t usually affect her so much. She figured it was because she had made the mistake of thinking of him that morning when Lena had asked her about taking Stephanie to the park.
Every now and again, Rachel found herself thinking of Bastian, and for the rest of the day, she was always a little jumpy like this. It was ridiculous and she knew it. Bastian would never think to look here for her, and besides, it had been two years. There was no way he would still be looking for her, and that was assuming he had even tried. Maybe he hadn’t even bothered to call her. Maybe her name didn’t even ring a bell with him. She half wished she had kept hold of her old cell phone for a day or two after fleeing from Fredericksburg, just to see if Bastian even bothered to try to call her or not. If he hadn’t, it would have eased her mind a lot quicker than just waiting it out had done.
She shrugged the thought away. It was too late to go back and change things now, and she no longer cared one way or the other whether Bastian had ever called her. And when she did occasionally think of him now and felt the butterflies swimming in her tummy at the thought of his piercing green eyes, she told herself it was just nerves, nothing more. And who knew? One day, she might even start to believe that.
8
Bastian answered his cell phone when it rang. It was Oscar. He had been expecting his call. They discussed some pack business and then Bastian asked Oscar if there was anything else.
“Actually, yeah. Are you still looking for that Rachel girl?” Oscar asked.
Bastian felt his stomach turn over. He had been looking for Rachel for two years. He had had the pack search the state, then the country, and then he had even started to send pack members into Canada and Mexico. After eighteen months of searching for Rachel, he had called the search off. As much as he wanted to find her, and perhaps more importantly, find his child, he knew that he was using a lot of the pack’s resources on finding her, and he knew that his senior pack members were starting to get restless about the search. Reluctantly, he’d called it off, telling himself that if Rachel and he were meant to meet again, fate would intervene. Was it possible that was what had happened here?
“Not actively, but I’d still like to find her,” Bastian said. “Why?”
“Right. Hang on,” Oscar said. “I’m going to email you a photo. This woman matches Rachel’s description and a source told me she moved here to Dallas two years ago. That would all line up with when she disappeared from Fredericksburg, right?”
“Right,” Bastian said, hardly daring to hope it could be her after all of this time.
He turned to his computer, anxiously waiting for Oscar’s email to arrive in his inbox. He knew he was likely getting his hopes up over nothing. What were the chances of the girl in the photo actually being Rachel? Still, his senses were jangling and as much as he tried to tell himself not to get his hopes up, it was already too late for that. His hopes had gone up the moment Oscar had said Rachel’s name.
Bastian’s computer gave
a soft ping sound and he saw an email drop in from Oscar. His heart racing, he opened it and clicked on the attachment. He waited impatiently for it to open. As it did, Bastian felt his whole body jolt. There was no mistaking the girl in the picture. It was his Rachel.
“It’s her,” he said.
“Do you want me to track her down?” Oscar asked.
Bastian thought for a moment and shook his head.
“No,” he said.
If Oscar approached Rachel, he might spook her and she might flee again. He figured his best chance of meeting his child was to get on a plane and go to her himself.
“I’m going to fly out to Dallas and talk to her myself,” Bastian told Oscar. “When and where was this photo taken?”
“The picture was taken earlier on today. It’s in a small park not far from where Rachel lives. She works in a doctor’s office just up the road from home and unless it’s raining, she walks to and from work, cutting through that park. I’ll send you the address of the park once we end the call,” Oscar said.
“Oscar, how long have you been watching Rachel?” Bastian asked.
Oscar seemed to have a lot of intel on Rachel and Bastian was afraid she would work out that he was following her. He was also kind of pissed off that Oscar had sat on the information for a long time.
“I haven’t been watching her,” Oscar said. “One of my sources brought her to my attention yesterday. He gave me the intel on her route to and from work and I went to the park this morning to snap that picture. Don’t worry. I made damned sure she didn’t see me. I would have called sooner, but I only got back home an hour or so ago and I knew we had this call scheduled anyway.”
“Okay. Thanks, Oscar,” Bastian said.
He ended the call and instantly got online to book a flight. He booked a late morning flight for the next day that arrived Dallas around lunchtime, which would be perfect. He would have time to get checked into a hotel and then go to the park and wait for Rachel to walk through it on her way home. If it was raining, he would wait until a morning or evening when it wasn’t raining and go back again. As much as waiting would kill him, he had waited two years for this moment. Another few days were doable, especially now that he had hope again.
He waited for Oscar to send him the address of the park and then he went online and looked it up on Google maps and booked a hotel close by. He knew the time between now and seeing Rachel again was going to feel like the longest day of his life. God, please don’t be raining tomorrow, he thought to himself.
Bastian knew he was early as he sat down on a bench in the center of the park, a spot he was sure Rachel would have to pass as she was moving from one gate to the next, but he figured it was better to feel like he was doing something and come to the park now than spend any more time pacing across his hotel room. He had begun to be afraid he would wear out a path in the room’s carpet, he had paced so much.
The park was fairly busy, mostly occupied by parents or nannies of small children. Everywhere he looked, someone was pushing a stroller or clutching the hand of a chubby toddler. It made Bastian wonder where his child was. Did Rachel have a nanny or was the child at daycare somewhere?
A woman with a stroller sat down on the end of the bench Bastian occupied. The stroller faced away from him and the young woman fussed with a blanket inside of it for a moment. Bastian looked at her. She looked young, but not too young for the baby to be hers. She smiled when she saw him looking at her and brushed her red hair back from her eyes.
“Nice day to just sit and enjoy the sun, huh?” she said.
“It sure is,” Bastian smiled.
He turned away, not wanting to get drawn into a conversation and risk missing Rachel. He found himself watching a boisterous group of young boys running around chasing a ball while a harried-looking woman looked on.
“One of them yours?” the woman on the bench asked him, nodding to the small group.
“No,” Bastian said.
He wasn’t going to say more, but the woman frowned at him and he suddenly realized that it might seem a little strange for a childless man to be sitting in a park occupied by so many children, watching a group play like this. He smiled at the woman.
“I’m meeting the wife here from work and then we’re going to pick our son up. The little blond kid over there reminds me of him,” he lied.
The woman smiled and seemed to relax a little bit and Bastian knew he had made the right call.
“How old is yours?” he asked, nodding toward the stroller.
“Oh, she’s just over a year, but she’s not mine. I’m her nanny,” the woman said. The baby inside the stroller began to fuss and the woman flashed him another smile. “Duty calls.”
She leaned down into the stroller and spoke to the baby for a while, but the fussy sounds soon became cries. The woman unclipped the safety harness and lifted the baby out. Bastian glanced across and saw that she was a beautiful baby girl. And that she had his piercing green eyes. He shook his head. It couldn’t be. But somehow, he just knew she was his baby.
His bear stirred inside of him, giving a protective growl, and Bastian knew for sure then that this baby was his daughter. His bear wouldn’t respond like that to anyone who wasn’t either his mate or his own flesh and blood. The baby stopped fussing when the redhead sat her on her lap.
Bastian pulled his gaze away from the baby, but he kept glancing back at her, drawn to her. He smiled when the woman caught him looking.
“She’s beautiful,” he said. “She looks a little older than a year.”
“She’s actually sixteen months,” the woman said.
Bastian nodded and did the mental calculation, confirming what he already knew. This was definitely his baby. His bear was going nuts, demanding he take the baby from the nanny and keep her safe with him. He pushed his bear down, but the feeling of wanting his baby in his arms remained. He smiled at the woman in what he hoped was a charming manner.
“Can I hold her?” he asked.
The woman looked at him like he had gone mad, and then fear flickered across her face. She jumped to her feet.
“Umm, actually, we’re running late. We really need to go,” she said.
She turned away before Bastian could respond and she practically ran from him. He debated going after her. He could catch her easily enough. He hadn’t meant to scare her and he realized now, too late, that it had been a bad move asking to hold the baby. He wanted to reassure the woman that he meant neither her nor the baby any harm, but he reasoned that if he went chasing after her, he was only going to scare her more. He would never hurt the baby, or indeed anyone who cared for her. He had just wanted to hold his daughter in his arms.
He consoled himself, telling himself that Rachel would be along soon, and then he would be able to meet the baby officially and she would be in his arms soon enough. He glanced at his watch. It was just after five and he figured that Rachel would be along at any moment.
He knew he would have no trouble recognizing her. Even without the photograph Oscar had sent him, Rachel’s face was as clear in his mind as it had been the first day he had met her. Her face was never far from his mind and the mere mention of her name brought it forth every time with startling clarity.
He wondered if she would recognize him. It hardly mattered. She would remember him when he told her who he was. No one would forget the name of the father of their child, even if they chose not to tell him about the child.
Bastian looked in the direction he thought Rachel would come from. After a couple of anxious minutes that felt like hours, hell, weeks, he spotted Rachel. As he saw her, it was like time stood still for a moment. Even in his memory, he hadn’t done her beauty justice. She was as gorgeous, as mesmerizing as ever, and the second Bastian set eyes on her, that feeling that they were connected rushed back to him.
Rachel spotted him at the same moment he spotted her, and he now had no doubts that she recognized him. She stopped walking, her eyes on his, and for a moment, they
just stared at each other. Bastian felt a hundred emotions flood through him as he looked into her eyes. He was as much under Rachel’s spell now as he had been two years ago.
The spell was only broken when Rachel turned and ran from him. Bastian recovered himself quickly and jumped up from the bench and began to weave through the crowd. He had lost her once and he wasn’t about to let it happen again.
9
Rachel was walking home from work. She was in no particular hurry. It was a nice, warm day and she was just enjoying the feeling of the sun on her skin, warming her beneath the short sleeves of her blouse. She reached the park and stepped through the gates, wondering if Lena would be here with Stephanie. Sometimes Lena went to the park in the morning and other times, she timed it so that she would be there as Rachel walked through on her way home from work and then they walked the rest of the way home together.
She looked around but she couldn’t spot Lena or her stroller. As her eyes scanned the park, she did a double-take when she spotted a familiar face on a bench. Familiar and yet a face she hadn’t seen in two years and had hoped she never had to see again: Bastian.
For a second, Rachel froze. Her eyes met Bastian’s and despite the fear that flooded her, she couldn’t help but notice the striking color of his eyes, a color she saw every time she looked into Stephanie’s eyes, and the intensity of his gaze. Even after all of this time, she felt as though when Bastian looked at her, he really saw her. It was like he saw through everything and viewed her very soul. Beneath the dread at seeing Bastian sitting there, Rachel felt her body flood with warmth as her mind automatically went back to the night they had spent together.
Rachel wanted to believe so badly that Bastian being here was just a coincidence and this was just a chance encounter, but she couldn’t quite bring herself to do it. She knew why he was here—he was here for her, for Stephanie. He had to be. Why else would he be sitting on a bench in the park she walked through every day? It made no sense that he would be here for any reason other than to wait for her to pass through.