his eyes had disappeared. It wasn’t the first time Jessica had noticed his troubled look, but he would never let on to her that anything was wrong. In spite of what he’d said earlier, she couldn’t help wondering if he might be having problems with the business.
“Pierce, is something wrong?” she asked anxiously, touching his arm.
His expression instantly altered as he smiled down at her. “Everything’s fine. Now, where were we?” He reached for her, pulling her into his arms and holding her close, as if he could somehow protect her from the outside world. Or, from whatever might be troubling him. “Have you decided what you’re in the mood for tonight?”
“Actually…” Jessica trailed off, trying to shake the dark premonition stealing over her. Her own expression turned coy as she skimmed one finger down the front of his shirt. “I have this irresistible urge for…”
Pierce’s voice deepened. “For what? For once, tell me exactly what you want, Jesse.”
“I want…some ice cream,” she admitted. “I’m dying for butter pecan ice cream.”
He groaned. “That’s all?”
“Well…for starters.”
“In that case, I’d better get to the store.” He paused at the door and looked back, lifting his brows suggestively. “Need anything else? Whipped cream? Jell-O?”
“I’m seven months pregnant, Pierce,” Jessica reminded him, but the look he gave her had her heart racing just the same.
“And sexier than ever,” he added with a wink. “I’ll be back in a flash.”
By Jessica’s calculations, it should have taken Pierce no more than ten minutes to walk to the store, no more than ten minutes inside, no more than ten minutes to get back home.
When he’d been gone an hour, she started to worry.
When he’d been gone two hours, she drove to the store and looked for him, but no one remembered seeing him.
When he’d been gone three hours, she called her brother, Jay Greene, who was a naval officer at the Pentagon in nearby Washington, D.C.
When Pierce had been gone four hours, she called the area hospitals while Jay searched the streets.
At midnight, when he’d been gone ten hours, Jessica sat in the darkened nursery, hugging a teddy bear to her chest as she rocked back and forth, her dry eyes burning with grief. A star had fallen from the ceiling and lay shimmering on the floor near her feet.
It seemed like an omen to Jessica, that fallen star. Like a symbol of all her lost dreams, her hopeless prayers, her unshed tears.
Because Pierce Kincaid, her beloved husband, had vanished in broad daylight without a trace.
Chapter One
Five years later…
Where in the world was he?
Jessica glanced at her watch for the umpteenth time as she gave the chocolate batter the requisite fifty stirs. Sundays were the only full days she had to spend with her son, and she’d promised him this morning they’d make brownies together. She’d been out of eggs, though, so she’d sent Max next door to borrow one from her best friend, Sharon McReynolds.
“That was your first mistake,” she muttered. Sharon’s daughter, Allie, had just acquired a new kitten, a white fluff ball named Snowflake, that attracted five-year-old Max like metal to a magnet.
Jessica grimaced, envisioning the conversation that would ensue with her son as soon as he returned. “Allie’s not even as old as I am, Mom, and she has a pet. Why can’t I have one?”
Jessica knew the routine by heart because they’d been through it every afternoon for the past four days, ever since Sharon had taken Allie to the animal shelter to pick out a kitten. Explaining to Max that Allie’s mom didn’t work outside the home and, therefore, had more time than Jessica did to help take care of a pet did no good.
She knew Max already felt cheated because he had to go to the baby-sitter’s after morning kindergarten while Allie got to go home and spend the afternoon with her mom. Jessica knew Max thought it also unfair that Allie had a daddy to take her to the zoo on Saturday mornings and work on special projects with her on Sunday afternoons.
Allie had a real family, with a mother and a father. Max didn’t.
Jessica suspected her son’s penchant for superheroes was his own way of trying to make up for the lack of a male role model in his life. Superman and all the other comic-book characters that Max loved and tried to emulate were substitutes for the father he’d never had.
Sometimes Max pretended that his own father was a superhero, off fighting bad guys. That’s why he couldn’t be here with them now. In spite of the fact that Jessica had told Max his father was dead, she knew that deep down, her son had never really believed it.
Sighing deeply, Jessica wiped a stray lock of hair from her forehead with the back of her hand as she stared out the window, trying to catch a glimpse of Max’s red cape as he came through the hedge. Wiping her hands on a dish towel, she reached for the phone just as she heard the screen door on the back porch slam shut. Without turning, Jessica picked up the spoon and began stirring the brownie mix again.
“What took you so long, sweetie?” she asked over her shoulder, trying to hide her impatience. She knew full well what Max’s explanation would be.
“You’ll never believe what happened.”
The deep, masculine voice that responded shocked Jessica to the core. A chill shot up her spine. She whirled to see a tall, dark stranger emptying a bag of groceries into her freezer.
Scream! she commanded. But to Jessica’s horror, not a sound escaped her throat.
Run! she ordered, but her feet remained rooted to the floor.
The man stood with his back to her, but even in her terror, Jessica saw that he was tall and lean with dark, unkempt hair. The blue jeans he wore looked old and threadbare, and the cotton shirt was shredded at the hem, as if it had been caught on something sharp.
“It was the weirdest thing, Jesse.” He closed the freezer door and opened the refrigerator. “Have you ever arrived somewhere without knowing how you got there? I mean, I left the house, and the next thing I know I’m in front of the ice-cream freezer at Crandall’s, and I have no idea how I got there.” He chuckled softly as he shook his head. “Anyway, once I finally found the ice cream, I remembered we were out of milk, and then I saw the grapes, and one thing led to another. I forgot the whipped cream, though.”
He folded the sack and turned, smiling.
Jessica’s knees threatened to buckle. “Dear God.” Her hand flew to her mouth. It couldn’t be! It couldn’t be possible! She clutched the counter for support as she stared at the man, at the darkly handsome face that seemed so familiar and yet so strange.
The brown eyes stared back at her in confusion. “What the devil’s the matter with you? You look like you’ve just seen a ghost.”
