Last Breath (24 page)
Authors: Mariah Stewart
“Are you leaving already?” She covered a yawn with an open hand.
“As soon as I get my stuff together.”
“I'll get up.”
“You don't have to do that. Go back to sleep.”
“I'll come down and make you some coffee.” She swung her legs over the side of the bed.
“Daria, you haven't made coffee the entire time I've been here.”
“It's a substitute for breakfast.”
“You haven't made breakfast, either.” He hastened to add, “Not that I expected you to.”
“I know. That's the point.” She stood and stretched. “My mother is the most undomesticated woman on the face of the earth. She can't cook worth beans, and I can't remember her ever making an entire meal from scratch.”
“Who made dinner?”
“Most of the time, the housekeeper did. But the point is, she never let us leave the house in the morning without doing something for us. Even if it was pouring cold cereal in a bowl and splashing some milk on it. Iona went through a stage where she ate nothing in the morning except bananas. Every morning, my mother peeled her banana. That was just her way of sending us off.”
“You make the coffee.” He leaned over and kissed the side of her mouth. “I'll make the eggs.”
“Deal.” She started toward the bathroom.
“I'm going to run Sweet Thing outside for a bit. I'll meet you in the kitchen.”
Ten minutes later, Daria came downstairs to an empty kitchen. She went to the back door and looked out, and in the illumination of the streetlight at the end of the path, she could see Connor strolling along, his hands in his pockets, the dog by his side. There was a slight mist on the ground and a halo around the light at the top of the pole. She wished she had a camera so that she could capture that moment and save it, the beautiful man and the dog, walking through the mist before dawn. Walking back to her.
I will always come back to you.
Most of the moments she'd saved through the years had been of things. Of places she'd been, work she'd accomplished. Ruins and the secrets she uncovered beneath them. She'd spent her entire life examining the bits and pieces of other lives, lives that had been spent centuries ago, but she had rarely examined her own. She'd always felt the pull of the past more strongly than the present, and almost never gave thought to the future.
Maybe it was time for that to change.
She heard Connor coming up the back steps. She went to the door and opened it, and let the future in.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
M
ARIAH
S
TEWART
is the bestselling author of numerous novels and several novellas. She is a RITA finalist for romantic suspense and is the recipient of the Award of Excellence for contemporary romance, a RIO (Reviewers International Organization) Award honoring excellence in women's fiction, and a Reviewers' Choice Award from
Romantic Times
magazine. A native of Highstown, New Jersey, she is a three-time recipient of the Golden Leaf Award and a Lifetime Achievement Award from the New Jersey Romance Writers, of whose Hall of Fame she is an honoree. Stewart is a member of the Valley Forge Romance Writers, the New Jersey Romance Writers, and the Romance Writers of America. She lives with her husband, two daughters, and two rambunctious golden retrievers amid the rolling hills of Chester County, Pennsylvania.
A
LSO BY
M
ARIAH
S
TEWART
Last Words
Last Look
Final Truth
Dark Truth
Hard Truth
Cold Truth
Dead End
Dead Even
Dead Certain
Dead Wrong
Until Dark
The President's Daughter
Last Breath
is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2007 by Marti Robb
All rights reserved.
Published in the United States by Ballantine Books, an imprint of The Random House Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.
B
ALLANTINE
and colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Stewart, Mariah.
Last breath : a novel of suspense / Mariah Stewart.
p. cm.
1. Archaeological theftsâFiction. I. Title.
PS3569.T4653L37 2007
813'.54âdc22 2007021142
eISBN: 978-0-345-50016-8
v3.0