Just Eight Months Old...

Hannah remembered the dim interior of The Bar in South Jamaica, Queens, where she had picked up bail-jumper Eddie Fowler an hour before. “Probably still handcuffed to a bar rail. Unless someone took pity on him.” She smiled. “Though that’s highly unlikely.”

Elliott tugged a handkerchief from the front pocket of his silk-blend suit and mopped his forehead.

Hannah glanced at her watch, then sat in the visitor’s chair opposite him. “Okay, why don’t you start from the beginning.”

He fell silent for a good thirty ticks of the antique grandfather clock in the corner. “You know I wouldn’t mess you around on something like this, Hannah. I always pay you on time.” He sighed.

But this time was different. She’d just completed her last run and her new business waited. She needed the money now.

“El—”

He shifted his bulk in the leather chair. “You been watching the news lately?”

“I haven’t turned on the TV or picked up a newspaper since last week.” She wanted to add it was because she was setting up her new business in a rented office downtown, but didn’t. “Are you telling me you did something newsworthy and I missed it?”

Elliott laughed without humor. “No, not me. Two of my clients.” He regarded her as if gauging her disposition then pursed his fleshy lips. “Would you mind if I introduce someone else into our discussion? There’s someone else waiting in the connecting office. Someone I need on this case as much as I need you.”

Case? Before she could ask him what he meant, he got up then crossed to open a door. “I think it’s safe.”

The moment the visitor strode into the room, Elliott’s warning made sense.

Oh, yes, the obstacle in her path could get bigger. And had. By two times.

Hannah looked at the man who had walked out of her life fifteen months ago without a second glance. The man she had loved and wanted to marry. Only it wasn’t Chad Hogan who had needed Blackstone’s warning. Chad had nothing to fear from her.

She, on the other hand, had everything to fear from him.

Chad’s gaze slid over her body, making her skin grow markedly warmer. Her vest and skirt more than adequately covered her, but the open way Chad looked at her made her feel as if she wore very little.

Elliott stepped between her and her ex-partner. “I know this must come as a shock, Hannah. But I think once I explain, you’ll understand why I flew Chad in from Florida.”

She barely heard Elliott’s words. She swallowed back a year’s worth of memories, hardly aware of the interrogation-like silence that had settled over the room.

“I can’t believe you did this, Elliott.” Hannah’s voice sounded like it had spiraled from the bottom of a barrel.

“Listen to me for a minute,” he pleaded. “I need you both—”

“I think you need your head examined,” she snapped. Reluctantly she looked at Chad, as if silently asking him to confirm her assessment of the situation. When he spoke, the deep timbre of his voice was as powerful as his presence. “You look great, Hannah.”

That was the last thing she’d expected him to say.

Through the door to the reception area, Hannah overheard someone arguing with the receptionist. In a corner of her mind that still worked, she distantly realized it was Stokes.

Elliott sighed. “Why don’t I leave you two alone to iron out your differences, huh? I’ve got to go straighten out…whatever is going on outside.”

The door closed behind Elliott. Like a spinning carnival ride, the room seemed to grow distinctly smaller. The distance Hannah stood away from Chad seemed to lessen by inches, though neither of them had moved. Chad was gazing at her with that…look. That half-lidded look that said so much, yet promised so little.

“How are you doing, Hannah?”

She absently rubbed the goose bumps spreading over her skin. “Doing? I’m fine, I guess. You?”

Often, she’d wondered what she would do on the off chance she ever saw Chad again. She’d rehearsed what she might say. Or rather, what she wouldn’t say. But now…now she realized all her preparations were for naught. Nothing could have prepared her for facing a man who commanded a room merely by standing in it. And time certainly hadn’t changed that trait, even if he displayed some other more noticeable changes.

“We never were very good at small talk, were we?” She thought she detected a measure of uneasiness in his question. Chad, uneasy? She walked to the wet bar in the corner of the office, needing to put distance between not only her and Chad, but between the present and the past. She picked up a delicate porcelain cup and poured herself some coffee, the shaking of her hands preventing her from pouring more than an ounce.

“I think any kind of verbal communication was a problem with us.” She took a deep sip of the hot liquid, barely recognizing it was bitter.

Fight or flight. Hannah’s heart beat double-time. She recalled the term she learned at the academy. Fight or flight was the immediate reaction you experienced when faced with a difficult and/or dangerous situation. And despite the time that had passed, the emotions that had dimmed, the obvious and inconspicuous changes in each of them, Hannah wished for the world that she could take flight.

“So…” She clutched her purse closer to her side. Where was Elliott? Her gaze flicked to the desk, the bookcase, anywhere but Chad’s face. Still, time and again it wandered to forbidden territory.

The filing cabinet…Chad. Had the slight crinkles around his eyes deepened, intensifying the mercurial gray of his eyes? The picture on the wall…Chad. Was that a little gray in his sandy brown hair, adding a hint of the distinguished to his rugged appearance? The closed window…Chad. Oh, God, why did he have to look at her that way?

Flight.

“Look, Chad, I don’t know what Elliott had in mind, but…” But what? Did she tell him she was hanging up the “out of business” shingle as far as skip-tracing went? Did she share that tomorrow she was going to open the doors to Seekers, a business they had once planned to run together? Or did she tell him she couldn’t possibly work with him because at a baby-sitter’s house in Brooklyn Heights waited her eight-month-old daughter. A child he didn’t know existed.

His daughter.

She chewed on the soft flesh of her bottom lip. “Why don’t you go ahead and hear Elliott out? I’m overdue for a vacation anyway.” Liar, she called herself. She moved to leave.

Chad stepped forward and grasped her wrist. She faced him, her heart surging up into her throat. “Hannah, I…”

She swallowed with difficulty, her gaze fastened on his mouth, waiting for the rest of his sentence to emerge, sure she wouldn’t hear it over the rush of blood past her ears.

He suddenly dropped his hand, then straightened. “You don’t have to leave. I’m the one real good at walking out, remember?”

She did remember. All too well. But why did she get the impression that wasn’t what he’d wanted to say? “Walking really isn’t the word for it,” she found herself whispering. “You ran. So fast you would have thought I was threatening a death sentence instead of proposing marriage.”

Chad stuffed his hands into the pockets of his well-worn jeans. “I see you haven’t thought about this as much as I have. Not that I blame you. If our positions were reversed, I’d probably have forgotten me the instant the door catch slipped home.”

Inexplicable tears burned the back of her eyes. She would never have expected this from him. She didn’t quite know what to do with this kinder, gentler Chad Hogan.

“Maybe you’re right, Chad. Maybe I haven’t thought about it much.” She slowly drew her shaking fingers through her hair, then dropped her hand to her side. “Anyway, none of that makes any difference anymore, does it? Things have changed, Chad. Everything has changed.”

She grasped the door handle.

“Has it, Hannah? Because from where I’m standing, it doesn’t look like much has changed at all.”

If you only knew.

“Hannah…I made a commitment to you. We lived together for over a year. Certainly I get points for that.”

“Yes, Chad, you do. And when combined with your other scores, you’re way in the hole.” She cleared her throat. “You know, once I believed we had a future together. I even believed you loved me. But it was nothing more than wishful thinking, wasn’t it?”

His gaze was intense. “Wishful thinking? Is that how you see our time together? Wishful thinking?”

Hannah tried to deny the ribbons of memories that unfurled in her mind. Images of him training her up close and personal in the finer points of skip-tracing after she’d quit the force and Elliott had matched them up. The long, intense way he used to watch her before they got involved. Their first, hungry kiss and the countless stolen moments thereafter while they chased bail-jumpers across the country. Their uncomplicated lifestyle, until—