Mariah Stewart - Last Breath

“Are you thinking what I’m thinking?” Connor asked.

“Probably.” Daria nodded. “This should be interesting. I’ve never worked with a priestess before.”

“What do you mean?”

“I was planning to ask Louise if Sabina could work with me on the museum. There’s just too much for one person to do, and there’s no one else who knows as much about Shandihar as Sabina.”

“Apparently, she knows even more than you figured.”

“Which will work to our advantage. I was looking at the cylinders in the crates again the other night. It’s going to be impossible for me to both translate them and design the displays. There just isn’t enough time. Sabina would be perfect.”

“I don’t know, Daria. Maybe the chief is right. Aren’t you even a little nervous about working with her?”

“Not a bit. She’s no threat to me. Besides, Sabina is not Vita.”

“Aren’t you just a little bit concerned that someone is going to want to punish you for what Alistair did? After all, he was never properly punished.”

“I’m not so sure about that,” Daria told him. “There was something in one of Iliana’s diaries that makes me wonder how he really died. I don’t know if that story about a lung infection was true. That’s something I’m going to have to investigate when I have the time.”

“You might start up talk of the curse again.”

“Someone’s bound to bring it up sooner or later, anyway.” She shrugged. “If nothing else, it’ll make good press.”

Connor’s phone rang and he took the call. Daria stood and tugged on Sweet Thing’s leash, and started walking back to McGowan House. In spite of everything, Howe had started to grow on her. She liked the campus, and wondered what it would look like in the fall, when all the trees turned color.

It had been many years since she’d experienced a true autumn. She thought back to the years when they lived in Princeton. Their house had been on a side street off Nassau, in a neighborhood of houses that all had yards and garages and front porches. The back of their property had been lined with maple and oak trees, and in October, the four McGowan kids fought over the family’s two rakes, to see who would have the privilege of making the leaf piles. Jack had been the best raker, though Sam was older and stronger. He’d keep raking until the pile was chest high, and then they’d all jump in. When the boys had finished playing and gone on to other things, she and Iona would lie on their backs and look for angels in the clouds. The squirrels would race around the sides of the trees chattering at each other. Black squirrels, she recalled. She’d never seen them anywhere else but in Princeton.

She couldn’t remember the last time she’d thought about that house and those years and the black squirrels.

“Penny for your thoughts.” Connor caught up to her on the path.

“I was just thinking about a house we used to live in.” She smiled as he fell in step with her. “It made me think about Jack.”

“What a coincidence. I was just talking to my friend in South America.” He took her hand.

“About Jack?”

“Yes. I told him that if your family approves, I’d send him copies of the investigators’ reports.”

“Of course we’ll approve. Then what?”

“Then we wait and see what he comes up with.”

“Do you really think there’s hope? After all this time?”

“It’s fifty-fifty, right? The odds are just as good that he’s alive as not. So why not go for it? Why not hold on to that chance?”

“All right, yes. Let’s do that.” She squeezed his hand.

“I’m going to be leaving sooner than I’d planned,” he told her as they walked back to the house. “I’ll be meeting with Coliani later today to fill him in, and then I’ll be meeting with Polly at the office early tomorrow. She’s going to pretty much take over from here. You’ll be hearing from her as soon as she can get her paperwork together. She identified a number of artifacts that are in institutions, and she’s going to work with the university’s lawyers to negotiate the return of as much as possible.”

“Finally, some good news. Louise will be thrilled.”

They reached the front steps of the house.

“Connor, how long do you have to be away?” she asked.

“I’m not sure.”

“Will you come back?”

He reached up and tucked a strand of her hair behind her ear. “I will always come back to you,” he said simply.

The moon was still full when Daria heard Connor slip out of bed.

“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.

MARIAH STEWART 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.