Elisabeth Naughton - Wait for Me

Screw the meter. He didn’t even bother to see if he’d parked in a handicapped spot. He could only think about one thing. That goddamn familiar, irritating as hell, sweet voice.

He raced through the building, swore at the elevator when it didn’t seem to move, then headed for the stairs. By the time he got to the fourteenth floor he was panting, but it didn’t slow him down. He headed straight for Kate Alexander’s office.

The secretary with the tattoos and nose ring he’d run into earlier stood when she saw him, her brows drawing together in an obvious sign of worry. “Mr. Mathews, you can’t go in there!”

He swept past her, shoved the door open with his shoulder. The room was empty.

“Where is she?” He glanced around the cramped office that was the size of his bathroom.

“Ms. Alexander’s not here. She’s out for the afternoon. I can make you an appointment if you’d like.”

He barely heard her. He scanned the room, for what though, he didn’t know. Stacks of journals were shoved up against the wall. A bookshelf sat to his right, loaded with geology books and minerals. Her desk was a sea of papers, and the small window that looked out over the city cast late-afternoon light over the boxes and boxes of journals and books waiting to be unpacked.

Dammit, there had to be something, anything that would tell him…

“You can’t be in here, Mr. Mathews,” the secretary said louder as he rounded the desk. “I’m going to call security.”

He flipped through the files on her desk, moved stacks of paper looking for…shit, he didn’t know what. Just anything. His gaze moved to the photograph beside her computer. And everything inside him froze.

Holy shit.

With shaking fingers, he reached for the frame, then sank into her chair, barely believing what he was seeing.

It looked like Annie. Not the exact image he remembered, but close enough. It didn’t matter that her nose was slightly different, her cheeks a little higher or that she had a scar near her temple. The face staring back at him had the same eyes, same chin, the same dimple that was in his own damn face. And she was cheek to cheek with a young blond boy.

A young boy who was the spitting image of Ryan.

Every ounce of blood drained from his face.

“Mr. Mathews,” the secretary asked. “Um, are you okay?”

“Where is she?” he managed.

“I don’t know. If you come back tomorrow—”

“I need to know now!”

The secretary jumped. “We don’t give out personal information. If you come back tomorrow, I’m sure she’ll see you.”

“Dammit! This isn’t about the goddamn article she wrote! This is personal. Where the fuck is she?”

“I don’t know. Look—”

He clenched his jaw, realizing he wasn’t getting anywhere with the gatekeeper. Grabbing the photo, he headed for the door. She ran after him, yelling something about stealing personal property, but he didn’t care. All he cared about was getting to Ryan.

Now.

Her legs felt like they might just buckle.

Kate checked the address she’d pulled from the Internet. Simone had told her not to jump to conclusions, to let her do some research, but as soon as Simone had recognized Julia Harrison in that photo, Kate couldn’t stop thinking about the coincidences.

There was a reason Jake had locked that photo in that box. A reason she felt a surge of déjà vu when she looked at it. A reason she’d found Simone Conners.

She’d gone back to her office. Ran a search on Ryan Harrison, the man Simone had told her Annie Harrison had been married to. Felt sick over what she’d found. Of course, she’d seen his face plastered on the covers of Fortune and Money, and more recently, the tabloid magazines, but she hadn’t known much about him other than the fact he was incredibly attractive. Now she did. There were numerous reports on the Internet that he was a ruthless pharmaceutical CEO who had a reputation for aggressive corporate takeovers and for walking over anyone in his way on the road to success. The press dubbed him money-hungry and uncompromising. And he had a habit of sneering at the cameras whenever they got close. But he didn’t seem to mind being photographed with a different woman on his arm every weekend.

There was no way she would have been with someone like that. Money? Power? Fame? None of that mattered to her. Someone so obsessed with those things would never have been attractive to her. There was no way she would have been…

She swallowed the lump in her throat, unable to say the words, let alone think them. She’d had a husband. Jake. A wave of nausea rolled through her as she fingered the ring still on her left hand. It didn’t matter that Reed looked a little like this man. Everyone had a twin, right? Hadn’t Simone said that to her only hours ago?

Oh, man, this was a bad idea. She closed her eyes and took deep, calming breaths. What the hell was she doing here? She never should have come to San Francisco. She never should have gone to see Simone Conners. She never should have looked in that damn drawer.

She opened her eyes, scanned the affluent street. Enormous maple trees lined each side of the road in the Sausalito hills. Lawns sloped from one attractive home to the next, each property stately and more impressive than the last. This was a mistake. This wasn’t real. She needed to go before she made a complete fool out of herself.

She was just about to head back when the jingle of a bell sounded close. She looked up as a trio of young girls on bikes came whipping by.

The last girl slammed on her brakes as soon as she saw Kate. Her friends went sailing past, laughing, but she planted her feet and gripped the handlebars of her bike, then did that same damn I’ve-seen-a-ghost stare that Simone had done when Kate stepped into her office.

Kate swallowed hard. Every inch of her skin tingled like a thousand needles being stabbed into a pincushion. The face—the girl—she was the one from the picture.

She couldn’t leave now. She had to see. She had to know.

Fear rippled through her. She didn’t know what to say. Didn’t know what to do. But something pushed her forward. “Hi.”

“You,” the girl said, still staring wide-eyed at Kate. “You…you look like—”

“My name’s Kate. Are you Julia?”

“Yes.” Her eyes narrowed. “How do you know my name?”

“A friend told me.” The awkward silence and the way the girl continued to stare at her like she had a third head was more than Kate could bear. She glanced up the road. “I came to talk to your dad. Is he home?”

The girl jumped off her bike as if she’d just been slapped. “He’s not home. He can’t see you.”

Kate’s palms grew damp. “Wait—”

“Julia!” A male voice echoed from across the street. “Time to come in!”

The girl’s bike crashed to the ground. She sprinted across the pavement and up the path toward a stately, three-story house. A man was just stepping down off the porch. A man dressed in slacks and a dress shirt with the sleeves rolled up to his forearms. A man with blond hair and a devastatingly handsome face that didn’t even compare to the one Kate had seen in magazines or on the Internet.

A man, she realized as she drew in a sharp breath, who up close didn’t just look a little like her son. He looked just like him.

Ryan’s adrenaline surged as Julia tore straight at him, her face a mix of fear and anger and heartache.

“What is it?” he asked as he dropped to one knee in front of her, gripping her shoulders and scanning her body to make sure she wasn’t hurt.

“I…go inside, Daddy. Go inside!”

“Julia, calm down. What’s wrong? Tell me what happened.” His gaze jumped past her, to her bike lying in the road. To the person standing in the middle of the street staring at them. To the woman who looked like…

The air whooshed out of his lungs. His knees turned to gelatin. “Oh, my God.”

“No, Dad!” Julia pushed against his shoulders, tried to force him back into the house as he slowly rose to his feet. “No, Dad. It’s not her. It’s not her, Daddy. It just looks like her. Please, Daddy, please. Look at me.”

His gaze dropped to Julia’s tear-streaked face. Panic filled her eyes, but it barely registered. With shaking arms, he lifted her out of his way then looked toward the brunette standing still as stone in the road. Watching him like he was watching her.

His head spun. His pulse raced. It couldn’t be.

He was vaguely aware of a car screeching to a halt next to the curb, of Mitch climbing out of his Land Rover, of Julia’s hysterical voice as she tried to pull him back into the house, but he couldn’t feel her hands. Couldn’t seem to stop his feet from moving forward. He felt like he was in a fog. A dream. Like he was hallucinating in broad daylight.

Somehow he made it down the block, stopped in front of her. Stared at her in shock. At his side he heard Mitch mutter, “Mother of God.”

No one spoke. For a long minute there was nothing but silence. And fear and hope and utter disbelief. And then his heart lurched in his chest.

“Oh, my God.” He closed the distance between them, cupped her face in his hands, ran his fingers over the smooth skin of her jaw. This couldn’t be real. It had to be a dream. Memories bombarded him from every side, condensed beneath his breastbone and squeezed as he soaked her in. As he felt her pulse beat beneath his fingers. As the heat of her body surrounded him to leave him foggy and light headed.

She was real. She was warm and soft and alive beneath his fingers. She was…Annie.