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knew our time together was coming to an end.  But last night it was almost like the first time, like a beginning instead of an ending.”
     
    “Miss Delacourte…”
     
    “Please…call me Rachel.”
     
    “Rachel, I was wondering if you’d like to have breakfast with me.  To talk about what happened here last night,” he added hastily.
     
    Rachel’s heart tripped.  “I’d like that.  Just give me a few minutes to dress and run a brush through my hair and we can go.”
     
    Nic hesitated for a moment before turning to go.  What he really wanted to do was ask if she remembered waking up and kissing him but in truth he couldn’t swear that she really
had
been awake.  And if she’d been asleep…well, maybe it wouldn’t be completely immoral to admit he kissed her but not elaborate on just how long or heated that kiss had been.  And if Rachel asked what happened afterwards, what would he say?  At least that was a mystery he could solve quickly enough.
     
    If Rachel was like every other woman he knew, running a quick brush through her hair meant thirty minutes of primping before she came back.  He wouldn’t need more than ten minutes to search the recording, maybe less than that since he knew what time it was when he left the observation room and went to her.  Nic made a back up disk as he always did after a session then slipped the original into his computer and advanced it to a few minutes before eleven, which was about the time the equipment had started to malfunction.  Nic was still sitting there slowly advancing the recording back and forth when Rachel stepped inside.
     
    “Sorry I took so long…” Rachel’s smile froze when Nic turned around and stared at her as if he’d seen a ghost.  “Dr. Covelli…is something wrong?”
     
    “I’m not sure.”  Nic glanced back at the screen before pushing himself up off the chair, his legs a little unsteady as he approached Rachel.  “I need to ask you something, Rachel, and I need you to be completely honest with me.”
     
    “Of course I’ll be honest, why wouldn’t I be?”
     
    “Because what I’m going to ask might embarrass you, but it’s imperative that you tell me the truth.”  Nic could see he was worrying her and tried to ease her anxiety with a reassuring smile.  “I promise I’m not harboring a tape of you standing on your head and singing the National Anthem.”
     
    “Good,” she smiled back, “because I couldn’t hold a note if my life depended on it.”
     
    “Rachel…do you remember waking up last night?”
     
    “Not that I recall,” she replied, but even as she said it a vague memory began to stir in the back of her mind.
     
    “So you don’t remember talking to me?”
     
    “No, but I suppose I could have been talking in my sleep.” 
Nicolo, where have you been? 
“I was talking to him…in my dream, is that what you heard?”
     
    “In French?”
     
    Rachel laughed.  “Maybe you interpreted my mumbling as a foreign language but I assure you the only words I know in French are what I picked up off the menu at Pierre’s.”
     
    “That’s about the extent of my French too,” he said with a grin. 
     
    “Why do I get the feeling there’s more to it than that?”
     
    “Because there is.  I’m just not sure I know what to make of it.”
     
    “You’re making this all sound very mysterious, Dr. Covelli.”
     
    “I’ll make a deal with you; call me Nic and I’ll tell you all about it over breakfast.”
     
    “Are you paying?”
     
    “I’ll even pick up the tip.”
     
    “In that case…Nic, I’d be honored to join you for breakfast.”
     
                           ***
     
    Nic couldn’t take his eyes off of her.  He peered over the top of his menu as Rachel tried to decide what she wanted, drinking in her beauty and fighting the urge to reach across the table to take her hand in his.  He didn’t mind the distraction because it kept him from thinking about