Now and Forever by Barbara Bretton Page A

man would be a suitable companion.

    #

    Emilie swore silently as Andrew McVie followed her to the front door. She had to be more careful. Their rapid-fire banter had been delightful and she had come dangerously close to losing herself in the moment.
    There was far too much at stake to take unnecessary chances.
    It was bad enough that she was bringing a Revolutionary War hero inside to talk to a man who thought he was still back home in the 20th century.
    She cast a glance over her shoulder at Andrew McVie. He was justly suspicious of her. The wonder of it was that he hadn't carted her off to the nearest representative of the law.
    The minute Zane opened his mouth, McVie would something was amiss. She supposed she could explain Zane's "eccentricities" away by saying he'd suffered a blow to the head in their fictitious boating accident but McVie wasn't likely to buy that for long.
    Let Zane be asleep, she prayed silently as she reached for the doorknob. Maybe even a tad unconscious. She needed time to explain the situation--and he would need time to accept it.
    What happened after that was anybody's guess.

    #

    Zane was paced the length of the front room, waiting for Emilie to return. His arm hurt like hell, he was sure he had the mother of all shiners over his right eye, and he was hungry enough to eat sand.
    He'd looked all over for a telephone but to his surprise he couldn't find one anywhere. As a matter of fact, he hadn't been able to find a jack or wires or any other signs of human habitation. The place looked new. Rustic, but basically new. Emilie had mentioned something last night about renovations to the lighthouse. Maybe they just hadn't gotten around to rewiring the place.
    He glanced at his watch. The damn thing must've taken as much of a beating as he had when the balloon collapsed on them. Too bad he hadn't bought a Timex. At least then he'd know if he had a prayer of getting to the airport on time.
    Since Emilie had told him about the balloon accident, he'd racked his brain in an attempt to figure out what had gone wrong but all he could come up with was a cloudy memory of watching the earth coming at him like a runaway train, and then nothing. The relief he'd felt when he saw Emilie had weathered the accident with nothing worse than a few bumps and bruises was still enough to make him consider a return to religion.
    She'd said no when he'd asked her to throw caution to the wind and join him on his trip to Tahiti, but that was before they'd faced the grim reaper together. She'd always wondered what he found so seductive about courting disaster. Now that she'd experienced the ultimate thrill, maybe she'd understand.
    He'd learned a long time ago that you were never more alive than you were when death was staring you in the eye. That adrenaline pumping through your veins...the white hot certainty that you were running at top speed...the rush of pure elation when you met the challenge and emerged victorious.
    Last night with Emilie in his arms he'd known the same sense of danger and renewal. He didn't believe in happy endings and never would, but he couldn't help wondering if maybe they should have fought harder to make it work.
    Sara Jane used to say--
    He stopped.
    "That's it," he said out loud. That's what was different. For the past hour he'd been trying to figure out what had changed and now he knew.
    He wasn't hearing Sara Jane's voice any longer.
    At some point last night he'd stopped feeling as if his grandmother was inside his head, trying to tell him something.
    And he knew when it was: when he took Emilie in his arms and--
    No way was he about to pursue that thought. What he and Emilie had found last night had been both real and powerful. He'd be the last person to deny that. She'd stirred something in his soul, a sense of wonder and yearning that he'd forgotten was even possible.
    But to read anything more into it than a wonderful case of chemical attraction was dangerous. She had made her position