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praying desperately that she could avoid the trees.
    There was no curb to provide even a nominal barrier, and the heavy sedan barely slowed as it plowed through the spring flowers, weeds, and bushes filling what was essentially an empty lot. Still, Rachel thought she might make it.
    Until the rear of the sedan began to fishtail, and she lost control.
    Seconds later, the car crashed headlong into an old oak tree.
    In those first confused moments, Rachel’s mind seemed to function at half speed while her heart pounded in triple time. She found herself sitting behind the wheel, dazed, the air bag deflating now that it had done its job. The car horn was wailing stridently, and the hood was crumpled back almost to the windshield.
    Rachel was surprised to be alive and apparently undamaged.
    The passenger door was wrenched open suddenly, and a handsome blond man with intense violet eyes leaned into stare at her. “Rachel, my God, are you all right?” he demanded.
    The shock of the accident was forgotten. Her stunned gaze searched that face, as familiar to her as her own, and she was barely aware of whispering, “My God. Thomas.”
    Then everything went black.

THREE
    n the hospital, where paramedics had taken her, the doctor who examined Rachel was not happy. He could find no serious injury barring a slight bump on the side of her head where she had apparently hit the window frame of the car, yet she had remained unconscious long enough to raise grave concerns. Rachel tried to explain that the cause had been emotional shock rather than physical, but apparently only she had seen Thomas.
    He had vanished once again.
    When she had awakened in the ambulance, the paramedic treating her insisted that there had been no blond man at the scene of the accident.
    Rachel didn’t want to sound like a lunatic by insisting on the reappearance of her long-dead fiancé, so she finally just submitted when the doctor ordered tests and an overnight stay to keep her under observation.
    She was ruefully aware that her father’s generous endowmentto the hospital—and her own possible future interest—was largely responsible for the doctor’s caution.
    It was more than two hours before she was in a private room and could call the house to inform Fiona and her uncle, and ask that Graham be called so he could find out about the car. She was fine, she told the anxious housekeeper. There was no need for anyone to come to the hospital, because she’d be home in the morning anyway. She just wanted to rest.
    But when the silence of the room closed around her, Rachel began to wish she had asked for visitors. Anything to distract her from her muddled thoughts.
    Thomas? How could it have been him? He was dead. He had been dead for nearly ten years. And yet … it was no ghost that had leaned into her car, no ghost’s voice that had called her by name and demanded to know if she was all right. No ghost, but a real flesh-and-blood man. She had even felt the heat of his body, caught the scent of aftershave.
    Think it through.
    It couldn’t have been Thomas, surely it couldn’t have. Because if he had been alive all this time, and had let her go on believing him dead … No, the man she had loved would never be so cruel.
    Unless he hadn’t been able to tell her the truth?
    He had often been somewhat mysterious about his trips out of the country, so much so that it had bothered her. Yet whenever she had expressed that worry, he had merely laughed and told her she was imagining things. He was a pilot who worked for a shipping company, and he hauled cargo. Normal stuff, he told her. Supplies and equipment.
    Yet something in his eyes had made Rachel wonder. Mercy had often said that her brother loved intrigueand invented it in his own life, that that was why he sometimes seemed mysterious about his activities, but Rachel had not been reassured. She had been certain that he was sometimes in danger, and with a young woman’s flair for drama, she had imagined