Rachel laughed and checked her watch, seeing that Lena was right.
“Yeah, I should go. I don’t want to start abusing my position for at least another week or so,” she grinned.
She moved closer to Lena and kissed Stephanie on the cheek.
“Bye, honey. Be good for Lena, okay?” she said. She turned her attention to Lena. “As always, give me a call if you need anything. Otherwise, I’ll see you at around half past five.”
“Have a good day,” Lena said.
Rachel headed for the door to the kitchen, waving at Stephanie and getting a cute little wave back. As Rachel left the house, she heard Lena chatting away to Stephanie and she smiled to herself. She had been nervous about getting a nanny at first, but she knew she had no real choice except to go back to work and she had had a good feeling about Lena right from the start, a feeling that had proved to be right.
Rachel left her garden and turned left. She only lived a five-minute walk from the office and she only bothered driving there if the weather was particularly bad. Today was cool but nice enough. Rachel enjoyed the walk to and from work, getting a bit of fresh air before being confined in the stuffy office and then getting to cool down a bit after a long day in the stifling warmth.
She crossed the street and spotted a man walking in front of her. Her heart lurched as she took in his height, his build, and his close-cropped dark hair. It was Bastian. She ducked into a shop doorway and watched him as he kept walking. She could feel the sweat breaking out on her body. How had he found her here?
Rachel gasped and ducked back out of sight as Bastian turned and checked both ways before crossing the street. Her heart slowed down and she gave a shaky laugh. The man wasn’t Bastian. Now that she had seen his face and saw that he looked nothing like Bastian, she realized he was a little bit too short to have been Bastian anyway.
She left the shop doorway and started walking again, asking herself why she was suddenly back to jumping at shadows after two years. She supposed it would always be with her, the need to check the face of every man on the street who looked about the right size to be Bastian, but it didn’t usually affect her so much. She figured it was because she had made the mistake of thinking of him that morning when Lena had asked her about taking Stephanie to the park.
Every now and again, Rachel found herself thinking of Bastian, and for the rest of the day, she was always a little jumpy like this. It was ridiculous and she knew it. Bastian would never think to look here for her, and besides, it had been two years. There was no way he would still be looking for her, and that was assuming he had even tried. Maybe he hadn’t even bothered to call her. Maybe her name didn’t even ring a bell with him. She half wished she had kept hold of her old cell phone for a day or two after fleeing from Fredericksburg, just to see if Bastian even bothered to try to call her or not. If he hadn’t, it would have eased her mind a lot quicker than just waiting it out had done.
She shrugged the thought away. It was too late to go back and change things now, and she no longer cared one way or the other whether Bastian had ever called her. And when she did occasionally think of him now and felt the butterflies swimming in her tummy at the thought of his piercing green eyes, she told herself it was just nerves, nothing more. And who knew? One day, she might even start to believe that.
8
Bastian answered his cell phone when it rang. It was Oscar. He had been expecting his call. They discussed some pack business and then Bastian asked Oscar if there was anything else.
“Actually, yeah. Are you still looking for that Rachel girl?” Oscar asked.
Bastian felt his stomach turn over. He had been looking for Rachel for two years. He had had the pack search the state, then the country, and then he had even started to send pack members into Canada and Mexico. After eighteen months of searching for Rachel, he had called the search off. As much as he wanted to find her, and perhaps more importantly, find his child, he knew that he was using a lot of the pack’s resources on finding her, and he knew that his senior pack members were starting to get restless about the search. Reluctantly, he’d called it off, telling himself that if Rachel and he were meant to meet again, fate would intervene. Was it possible that was what had happened here?
“Not actively, but I’d still like to find her,” Bastian said. “Why?”
“Right. Hang on,” Oscar said. “I’m going to email you a photo. This woman matches Rachel’s description and a source told me she moved here to Dallas two years ago. That would all line up with when she disappeared from Fredericksburg, right?”
“Right,” Bastian said, hardly daring to hope it could be her after all of this time.
He turned to his computer, anxiously waiting for Oscar’s email to arrive in his inbox. He knew he was likely getting his hopes up over nothing. What were the chances of the girl in the photo actually being Rachel? Still, his senses were jangling and as much as he tried to tell himself not to get his hopes up, it was already too late for that. His hopes had gone up the moment Oscar had said Rachel’s name.
Bastian’s computer gave a soft ping sound and he saw an email drop in from Oscar. His heart racing, he opened
