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“No.” He heard the low word but did not see even a small parting of her lips. Then her chest moved as she drew a deep breath. She closed her eyes. “I am Mrs. Hamilton.”
He felt strangely calm, looking at this stranger, hearing Katie’s voice in her words. Time slowed, allowing him to notice all the small details of the moment. The way her hand curled tightly around a pencil. A strand of nut brown hair that had fallen free of its pins to rest against her cheek. The stiffness of that lush, unforgettable mouth.
“Katie.”
Her lips fell apart just a bit then as she inhaled sharply. “No,” she said again, finally lifting her head. Her closed eyes opened slowly, unwillingly, and met his.
The world sped up with a terrifying ferocity when he caught her brown gaze and knew, finally, that it was her.
“Katie,” he breathed again, the only word he could think past his confusion.
Her face was a terrible mix of emotion—grief, yearning, fear. Before he could speak, that glimpse of turmoil was gone, closed behind a rigid wall of polite indifference. “I’m afraid I’ll have to ask you to leave, sir.”
He stared at her, drank in the sight of her—her slightly square jaw, her lovely skin, the thick hair held back in a merciless knot. An hour seemed to pass before he realized what she’d said. “Pardon?”
“The shop is closing early. You’ll have to leave.”
“Leave? It’s me. Aidan.”
“I know who you are.”
He frowned, blinked, then felt a veil of shock begin to lift from his mind, exposing a maelstrom of anger and excitement. “What the hell is going on here?”
Her expression did not budge. “I am closing the shop early.”
“Closing the—?” The words evaporated in his mouth, leaving a gritty film. He could only stare at her, openmouthed, utterly stunned at her calm. Perhaps he had lost his mind. Perhaps she was only a stranger and he was imagining that she looked like his dead lover. But she did not look confused. She knew him.
“How can you be here?”
Her eyes blazed with fear, only for a moment, then she turned on her heel and walked toward the doorway in the back wall.
Aidan’s mouth numbed. “You were dead.”
She stopped, spun around and pinned him with a glare. “Dead? What do you mean?”
“They told me you were dead.”
“Who told you that?”
“Your parents. Your parents, of course.”
“My parents. Well, that is not surprising, I suppose, though I cannot fathom their reasoning. I am not dead,” she added needlessly. “Please leave my shop.”
“The hell I will.”
Her eyes narrowed further, but her breath shuddered so hard in her throat that he could hear it.
“Please don’t . . .” he started. His mind was spinning, spinning. This was Katie. His lover. The girl he’d meant to make his wife. The woman who’d died ten years before.
“Katie, damn you. You’d better start explaining.”
“Damn me?” she ground out behind her teeth. “Damn you, you cold bastard.”
He took a step toward her, reaching out blindly, meaning to touch her, to shake her, but she jerked away from him and bolted into the dark room behind her. He heard her ragged breath, heard the slap of her shoes on the floor, then a bright shaft of sunlight pierced the dim as she opened a door to the alley.
By the time he recovered himself and followed, she was gone, the alley deserted. He stood there in the shadowed air and wondered if he’d gone stark, raving mad.
Chapter 3
