polo shirt. He walked with a military bearing—head back, chin up. His hair was short and dark, but winged with silver above his ears. In reflex, she touched her own hair, aware that the same silver threads lay there among the taffy-colored strands, only not as evident as those on the man.
He didn’t see her at first, and so she allowed herself to stare, trying to think why he seemed so familiar. She was certain she’d never seen him before. She would definitely have remembered. And then the stranger suddenly stopped and turned, as if sensing her scrutiny. She waited for him to speak.
David didn’t have to look at the map to Cara’s home that he’d downloaded from the Internet. It was burned into his memory. Even though he knew how to get to her house, he felt lost. As Jonah, he’d done something unheard of by seeking out any part of his past.
But it wasn’t as if he’d just walked off the job. There was enough equipment in the trunk of his car to connect him with everything from spy satellites to the President of the United States, should the need arise. For all intents and purposes, he was still in charge of SPEAR, but in his heart, he was already pulling away.
Frank had set the ball rolling in this direction the day he’d kidnapped Easton Kirby’s son. After the last incident with Maggie and her baby, David had mentally called it quits. There would be no more people assigned to risk their lives on his behalf. Not for an issue that was technically personal. The President knew David’s feelings on this, and although David had not said a word about looking for Cara, he made sure the President knew things were going to change.
As he came around a curve, his heart started to pound. He was almost there. He began slowing down, then turned the steering wheel, guided the car into a long, graveled drive and pulled up to the house. He killed the engine and then sat for a moment, absorbing the structure.
It was a long, rambling two-story brick home with a porch that ran half the length of the house. A chimney rose from the center of the roof, evidence of warm fires on cold winter nights. Ancient trees threw large patterns of shade upon the lawn while flowers in bloom abounded everywhere.
He sighed. It looked so beautifully ordinary. Would a woman who lived in a home like this be able to accept what he was going to say? Then he took a deep breath and got out of the car. Hesitation would gain him nothing. Centering his sunglasses comfortably on the bridge of his nose, he started toward the house.
More than halfway up the walk, he caught a movement from the corner of his eye and paused, then turned.
God in heaven, it was her—standing beneath a cluster of maples with a curious look on her face. Once he’d seen her, his feet moved of their own accord. When he was only yards away, he said her name, and as he did, he saw confusion and then panic as it registered on her face.
“Cara.”
She gasped, then in spite of the heat, shivered.
He took a step toward her, and then another. Cara started to shake.
“Cara, don’t be afraid.”
“No,” Cara moaned, and covered her face. “No ghosts. No ghosts. I don’t believe in ghosts.”
Suddenly his voice was right beside her. She opened her eyes.
“I’m not a ghost.”
“David?”
His stomach knotted. After all these years, hearing his name from her lips was more painful than he would have believed.
Before he could answer her, she shook her head in vehement denial.
“You’re not David. David is dead.”
This was harder than he’d imagined. “Cara… I’m sorry…so sorry.”
He reached for her hand. When he touched her, she shuddered once, then her eyes rolled back in her head.
He caught her before she fell.
“Damn, damn, damn,” he muttered, as he carried her unconscious body to the shade of the porch.
Choosing the nearest chair, he sat down, cradling her carefully as he looked at her face, trying to find the girl that he’d known in the woman he held in his lap, but she was gone.
It wasn’t until her eyelids began to flutter and he saw the clear, pure blue of her eyes that he found the girl he’d left behind.
“Are you all right?” he asked.
Her hands cupped his face—her eyes wide with disbelief.
“David? Is it really you?”
A car drove past on the road beyond the house, and David looked up, suddenly aware of how public their reunion had become.
“Let’s go inside. We need to talk,” he said, and started to carry her inside when she slid out of his lap and threw her arms around his neck.
“How? Why? Did you—”
He put a finger across her lips, momentarily silencing her next question.
“Inside…please?”
Cara grabbed him by the hand and led him inside the house. The moment they entered the hallway, she shut the door behind them then stood, staring at his face with her hands pressed to her mouth to keep from crying.
David ran a shaky hand through his hair, then gave her a tentative smile.
“I don’t know quite where to start,” he said. “Do you want to—”
Tears rolled down her face, silencing whatever he’d been about to say.
“Oh, honey, don’t. You know I never could stand to see you cry.”
And then her hands were on his shirt, moving frantically across the breadth of his chest, then up the muscular column of his throat, then tracing the outline of his features. He grabbed her fingers, trying to put some distance between them so he could think. But there had already been forty years of distance, and for Cara, it was forty years too much.
His name was just a whisper on her lips as she wrapped her arms around his neck. Before he could think, she’d kissed him—a tentative foray that went from testing ground status to an all-out explosion. It was instinct that made him pull her against his body, but it was need that kept her there.
“If this is a dream, I don’t want to wake,” Cara muttered, and then pulled his shirt out of the waistband of his slacks.
His stomach flattened as he inhaled sharply. The feel of her fingernails against his skin was an aphrodisiac he wouldn’t have expected. Then her arms were around his waist as she lifted her lips for his kiss. David was broadsided by the sexual tension erupting between them. He’d planned for everything—except this.
“Cara…God, Cara, we shouldn’t be—”
“Since when did shouldn’t become part of your vocabulary?” she asked.
She caught him off guard, and he laughed. And the moment the sound came out of his throat, he wanted to cry. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d
