Maybe they would fall in love all over again. Or maybe they would sleep together one last time for old times’ sake.
Maybe by some glorious fluke they would make a baby, she thought wistfully. Okay, it was highly unlikely, but what a joyous blessing it would be! Whether their relationship resumed or faltered, she would treasure a child of theirs, raise it on her own, if need be.
The decision to go to San Francisco was made as impulsively as the purchase of that crib. It took an hour on the phone with the travel agent to nail down all the arrangements. By the time she was finished she was late for Daisy’s shower.
The party was in full swing when she arrived, the laughter and teasing audible from outside. When she walked in, the group fell silent and stared.
“Where on earth have you been?” Daisy demanded, hefting her bulky figure from a chair and rushing over to hug Jane. “You’re never late.”
“We tried calling the house a half-dozen times but the line was busy,” Ginger added. “Donna was about ready to drive over there.”
“So? What happened?” Daisy prodded. “Don’t tell me Mike showed up on your doorstep after all these months.”
“Nothing like that,” Jane said. “I just lost track of the time.”
“You never lose track of the time,” Daisy protested.
“Well, this time I did,” she said, a defensive note in her voice that clearly startled them.
Donna, who’d known her since first grade, studied her intently. “Okay, maybe he didn’t show up, but it has something to do with Mike, doesn’t it? Did he call?”
“No, he didn’t call.”
“But it does have something to do with him?” Donna persisted with the unerring accuracy of such a longtime friend.
Jane wasn’t ready to discuss her plans with anyone, not even her closest friends. She forced a brilliant smile. “Hey, forget about me, okay? I’m here now and I want to see the presents.” She handed her own to Daisy to add to the pile beside her. “Get busy. You look as if that baby could pop out any second now. I want you to finish opening all these before it does.”
With some reluctance, everyone finally turned their attention back to the gifts. Jane oohed and ahhed with the rest of them, but her mind was already somewhere else, in a city she’d never seen, with a man who was part of her soul.
CHAPTER 1
Engineer Mike Marshall had had more adventures than most men twice his age. Most of the riskiest had come in the past twelve months, since his move to San Francisco. Until today—his thirty-second birthday—it hadn’t occurred to him to wonder why he was suddenly so willing to put his life on the line.
The truth was, he’d always been eager to take risks. As a kid, he took every dare ever offered. Now, though, he didn’t even wait for the dare. If an overseas assignment for his company didn’t satisfy his hunger for adventure, then he scheduled a trek up Mount Everest or a rafting trip on the Snake River. It had been months since he’d had a spare minute, much less a moment’s boredom.
And yet, something was missing. He knew it, just the way he knew when a design for a bridge or a dam wasn’t quite right. He stared out his office window at the Golden Gate Bridge emerging from a thick fog and tried to put a name to what was missing from his life.
Not excitement, that was for sure. Every day was packed with it.
Not companionship. He’d met a dozen women, beautiful, successful women, who shared his passion for adventure.
Not money. His salary was more than adequate for his needs, more than he’d ever dreamed of making back in Virginia. For the first time in his life, he felt financially secure, able to support a wife and family if the right woman ever came along.
Not challenges. The partners in his engineering firm only took on the most challenging jobs.
What, then? What was the elusive something that made him feel as if the rest hardly mattered? What was behind this vague sense of dissatisfaction? It irked him that he couldn’t pin it down.
To his relief, the buzzing of his intercom interrupted the rare and troubling introspection.
“Yes, Kim. What is it?”
“You have a visitor, sir. She doesn’t have an appointment,” she added with a little huff of disapproval.
Mike grinned. Kim Jensen was a retired army drill sergeant with close-cropped gray hair and the protective instincts of a pit bull. She maintained his schedule with the precision of a space shuttle flight plan. Flexibility was not part of her nature.
“Does this visitor have a name?” he asked.
“Jane Dawson, sir.”
The clipped announcement rattled him as nothing else could have. His heart slammed to a stop, then took off as if he’d just been advised that it was his turn to bungee-jump from the penthouse floor of a Union Square office building. The reaction startled him almost as badly as the mere thought of Jane in San Francisco. Jane, who’d never flown in her life, had come clear across the country, out of the blue, with no warning? He had to see it with his own eyes.
“Send her in, by all means.”
“Are you sure, sir? You have an appointment at fourteen hundred hours. Sorry, sir. I mean in ten minutes.”
“Send her in,” he repeated and stood up, wondering at the astonishing sense of anticipation that was zipping through him.
“Just plain Jane,” as she’d been known a dozen years ago, was in San Francisco? The woman who’d vowed never to leave their small Virginia hometown had braved her first flight on a whim, just to say happy birthday, perhaps? The concept was so out of character he found it almost as impossible to grapple with as the design for a sturdy, yet inexpensive bridge in some third world country.
But unless he’d imagined Kim’s
