The Last Time I Saw Her (33 page)

Michael didn't show up.

The date Charlie had written on his arm came and went, and there was no sign of him. No word. Tam sent out psychic feelers into the universe, but couldn't pick up a trace of him.

Charlie even tried Google. Google couldn't find him, either.

That was bad.

She started to feel this giant emptiness in her chest, like there was a hole where her heart had been.

The time travel had been real, not a hallucination brought on by Tam's spell or something like stress. She knew that because during that journey she'd lost his watch. She could only suppose that wherever he was he had it now.

She had succeeded in keeping him from being killed in prison. She knew that because his grave in the graveyard of the First Baptist Church had disappeared.

When she checked the prison records, there was no mention of his name.

There was, however, a Dan Foster, formerly a detective with the Mariposa Police Department, on death row.

A new subject for her research, if she'd been going to continue working at the prison.

She wasn't. As she had promised Michael, she was going to take a break and write a book. She'd already found an agent and been offered a contract with a sizable advance.

It was because of the NARSAD, she knew. That was still a huge deal, and she was still thrilled to have won.

Tam was planning to accompany her to the award ceremony, and Tony and Lena and Buzz would be there as her guests. She was glad they would be with her on what would be one of the most important nights of her life: they were, all of them, family to her now. Tam and Lena had taken her shopping after double-teaming her to deplore what they described as her nonexistent fashion sense. She'd let them pick out what they liked: her only proviso was that the dress couldn't show too much skin, and it couldn't be bright.

They'd settled on a form-fitting black lace evening dress.

She packed up her office at the prison. She checked in on Paris and Bree and the rest of the kids, and was pleased to hear they were recovering and doing well. She meant to keep tabs on them for the foreseeable future because, well, somebody needed to, and she felt responsible for them after what they'd been through together. She even stayed in phone contact with Rick Hughes, who'd awakened in her house with the most distressing condition: he'd lost nearly three full days from his memory. Doctors told him he was most likely suffering from hysterical amnesia, and blamed the stress he had endured during the kidnapping.

He kept asking if he could come up and they could get together for a meal and a chat, but Charlie wouldn't agree. Tony had had FBI investigators confirm the fact that he and Michael were identical twins, that they had been adopted separately, and that Hughes's parents had kept the truth from him. They'd even altered the date on his birth certificate to coincide with the date they'd brought him home. At some point, that was information Hughes probably needed to know, but Charlie didn't feel like it was up to her to enlighten him. The truth was, she didn't think she was ever going to want to see Rick Hughes again for the rest of her life.

To be in the presence of someone who looked so much like Michael and yet wasn't Michael would cause her more pain than she could endure.

Which was what she was doing: enduring. She was going on, because she had her life with many good things in it and she was a survivor. Trading Michael's memory of her, of them, for his life was something that she would do all over again, every single time the situation came up.

Now she just had to learn to live without him.

The NARSAD banquet was held at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. Dinner was first on the schedule, followed by the awards presentation, and then dancing. It was a black-tie affair, crowded and glittering, with a live orchestra and so many luminaries that Charlie was dazzled way before her name was called to receive her award.

As she stood to go to the lectern and say a few words everybody in the room rose to applaud. They were smiling and clapping, and as she looked around she felt almost shy. At her table, her friends beamed at her. Tony was clapping like crazy, looking beyond handsome in his tux. Tam was her usual glamorous self in a gold sequined gown with a slit that rose halfway up her thigh. Lena was a curvy seductress in a dark red satin gown that made the most of her curves. Beside her, Buzz, who was also looking handsome in a tux, had the biggest grin Charlie had ever seen on his face.

Lena had accepted his proposal and was flashing a brand-new diamond ring on her hand.

“When you asked me what I wanted, I started thinking about it,” Lena had confided to Charlie earlier. “And finally I figured it out: I want him. Everything else we can work out.”

So there was good news all around.

Charlie's was the last award to be given out, and as she walked back to her table from the lectern the dancing started. The band struck up, and couples began twirling around the floor. Clutching her trophy—it was crystal, engraved with her name, and beautiful—Charlie watched Tony stand up as she approached and knew he meant to ask her to dance.

She was so, so fond of Tony.

She was putting her trophy down on the table and Tony was opening his mouth to ask her when suddenly Tony's gaze shot past her and he froze.

Frowning, Charlie turned to see what he was looking at.

Her heart lurched. Her breathing suspended.

Michael was walking toward her, threading his way along the edge of the tables, head-turningly gorgeous in a black tux.

“Is that—Rick Hughes?” Lena asked with surprise.

“No,” Tam answered, and that's when Charlie knew for sure that he wasn't an illusion, wasn't a bad case of wish fulfillment or anything else. That Michael was real and solid and alive and
there.

As much as he and Hughes looked alike, there was no mistaking Michael for anyone else.

Not for her.

He saw her looking at him, and lifted a hand in an acknowledging wave.

Charlie sucked in a deep, slightly shaky breath. Until that moment, she hadn't even realized that she'd been clutching the back of her chair for balance. Now, as he reached them, she let it go.

“Hey,” he said to her, like they'd last met maybe an hour before. His gaze swept the table. “I'm Michael Garland,” he introduced himself, and shook hands all around.

Then he looked back at Charlie, and said, “Do you want to dance?”

Speechless, she nodded, letting him take her hand and pull her onto the dance floor and into his arms.

The band was playing “Moon River.” She was nestled against Michael's chest, looking up into the most beautiful blue eyes she'd ever seen.

Her heart pounded. Her pulse raced. She felt dizzy, woozy, disoriented.

“You look surprised to see me,” he said.

She nodded. Stunned was more like it, but she couldn't manage to say it. Couldn't manage to say anything. She was lucky she was upright, and doing the moving-breathing-thinking thing.

“Ain't no river wide enough, babe,” he said, and smiled at her.

That's when she knew for sure it was real. That's when joy flooded her veins and her head cleared and she was able to catch her breath and actually say something.

“You remembered,” she said.

“Not until two days ago. I'd almost forgotten about the crazy woman who wrote her address on my arm and told me she was from the future and yelled at me before she vanished right out of a taxi until I found myself in a shrink's office. See, the military reached out to some of us vets with an offer of counseling, and I took them up on it. So there I was, spilling my guts, and this chubby, bearded shrink asks me if I feel any remorse. Bells go off in my head: It's like I can hear this infuriating woman repeatedly asking me the same thing. Then, boom, it hit me, and I remembered the whole thing. Everything we went through together. Up until then, I'd been explaining away that night by telling myself I was drunk off my ass.”

“Oh, my God,” she said, eloquence being beyond her for the moment.

He nodded. “I remembered going to prison, and dying, and Spookville and the whole nine yards, just like that.” His grip on her tightened. Charlie was so focused on Michael that she was scarcely aware until then that they were dancing, but there they were, circling the floor, just one of dozens of beautifully dressed couples moving as the music swelled around them. She was suddenly conscious of the solid muscularity of his chest against her breasts, of the hard strength of his arm around her, of how big and warm his hand felt clasping hers.

He's here with me. He's alive.

Her body was starting to adjust. She could feel the worst of her shock starting to fade. She was breathing almost normally.

He continued softly, “I remembered you. I remembered falling in love with you.”

Her heart shook.

“I love you,” she said.

He said, “I know.”

Her eyes widened and she stiffened in his arms. All of a sudden she was fully functional and back to normal, except for the whole bubbling-over-with-happiness thing that was at one and the same time the most wonderful feeling she'd ever had and totally outside her experience.

The look on her face must have been something to see, because he grinned at her, a gloriously charming grin that made her toes curl in her ridiculously expensive high heels that had been selected for her, courtesy of Lena.

“I love you, too,” he said.

She frowned at him and laughed at the same time and let him twirl her around until she was dizzy and a little bit worried that they might be making a spectacle of themselves on the dance floor with all her professional colleagues around, so she made him stop.

It was when her head quit spinning that it hit her. Clutching his hand more tightly, looking up into his hard, handsome face, she said, “Michael. Oh, my God. We've got forever.”

He looked down at her. His eyes were tender on her face. “Babe, what we've got ourselves here is a lifetime. For now, with you, that's all the forever I need.”

This book is dedicated to Peter, Christopher,

and Jack, with all my love.

So many people go into the creation of a book. I want to thank my wonderful editor, Linda Marrow, whose invaluable insights are always right on the money. I also want to thank her assistant, Elana Seplow-Jolley, who worked so hard on this, as well as the entire team at Ballantine Books. More thanks to my agent, Robert Gottlieb, who is always there when I need him. And last but not least, thanks to my husband, Doug, for hanging in as usual.

The Last Time I Saw Her

Hush

Her Last Whisper

Hunted

The Last Kiss Goodbye

Shiver

The Last Victim

Sleepwalker

Justice

Shattered

Shameless

Pursuit

Guilty

Obsession

Vanished

Superstition

Bait

Beachcomber

Whispers at Midnight

Irresistible

To Trust a Stranger

Scandalous

Paradise County

Ghost Moon

The Midnight Hour

The Senator's Wife

Heartbreaker

Walking After Midnight

Maggy's Child

One Summer

Nobody's Angel

This Side of Heaven

Green Eyes

Morning Song

Tiger's Eye

Dark of the Moon

Desire in the Sun

K
AREN
R
OBARDS
is the
New York Times
and
USA Today
bestselling author of forty-seven full-length books and one novella. The mother of three boys, she lives in her hometown of Louisville, Kentucky.

karenrobards.com

Facebook.com/​AuthorKarenRobards

@TheKarenRobards