Elusive Echoes (40 page)

"We can live at the homestead for a little
while." Sean kissed her and began nuzzling her neck. "But I guess
we'd better get started on that dream house." He sat up. Grinning,
he laid a hand on Mel's belly. "We need us a nursery, woman!"

Mel had no need to question whether her man
was happy. She covered his hand with her own. "Just so you know . .
. this baby gets delivered in a hospital. With drugs. Lots and lots
of drugs."

Sean's grin faded into a
loving smile. "Just so
you
know, Sweetness . . . you won't be going through
any of this alone."

Epilogue

At the soft knock on the front door, Mel's
heart leapt into her throat. This was it. The Carters had arrived.
A fluttering sensation rippled through her abdomen, followed by a
strong push against her ribs. Apparently, even Baby Mustang, who
Sean insisted was a boy he planned to name Mitchell Mustang, was
nervous about this meeting.

Sitting at the kitchen table, Mel took a
deep breath and looked at her husband to find him watching her.
"You okay with this?"

She nodded. "Nervous, but very okay."

The trembling in her hands increased when
she heard voices heading in their direction from the foyer. "We
should move to the living room. The kitchen is so—"

"Perfect." Sandy finished arranging a meat
and cheese platter and added it to the other informal finger food
on the table. "It's perfect."

Ryan entered the room, leading a middle-aged
couple. "Mel, this is Hugh and Vanessa Carter."

Mel stood rather awkwardly. In her seventh
month of pregnancy, she'd given up all hope of ever being graceful
again.

Vanessa Carter was a very pretty, fuller
figured woman with curly blonde hair. Her eyes were pale blue and
gentle, and reminded Mel of her mother, Sylvia.

Vanessa smiled a little uncertainly at Mel.
"Oh, my. I'd have recognized you anywhere. Just look at her, Hugh.
Nattie looks just like her."

Hugh was about as opposite to his wife as it
was possible to be. Tall and lean, with black hair and nearly black
eyes, his smile was easy and strong. "It's like looking at our girl
all grown up."

Mel tried not to be too obvious as she
looked beyond Hugh and Vanessa, hoping to glimpse their daughter.
But as Justin followed them into the room, Mel realized sadly that
the girl wasn't with them.

"Nattie had some last minute butterflies,"
Vanessa explained. "She went off with a very nice young man with
red hair to see the horses. I hope that's okay."

"Ricky's my brother-in-law." Mel moved
toward the kitchen window and looked out. "She couldn't be in
better—" Her breath caught in her throat.

They hadn't made it to the stables. Her
wonderful seventeen-year-old brother-in-law was pushing the
Carters' fourteen-year-old daughter on the tire swing.

Sean came to stand behind Mel. With his arms
around her waist and resting on her belly, he looked over her
shoulder out the window. "I recognize that captivated look on her
face," he murmured for Mel's ears only.

"And I recognize that
careful look on
his
face," she whispered back.

About the Author

From the time I was age 5
and my mom read me Lewis Carroll's
Alice's
Adventures In Wonderland
and
Through the Looking Glass
, I have loved stories. My reading tastes have changed over
the years, but I always keep coming back to romance and that
happily ever after ending. I believe in magic and real life fairy
tales, and the romance of life. I believe everyone has a happily
ever after waiting out there somewhere. But until you get to it,
why not pick up a good book and think about the
possibilities?

A former Michigan native, I now reside in the
shadows of the Blue Ridge Mountains in Virginia with several of my
children nearby. When I'm not settled in with a good romantic read,
or writing one of my own, I enjoy photography – and often the
subjects I see through my camera's eye are my other favorite
things: My garden, hiking in the mountains, my kids and grandbaby,
and my pups.

Meet some of the other characters from
Orson's Folly in Lifeline Echoes:

There is no natural phenomenon which is held
by all mankind in greater dread than earthquakes. Our ideas of
permanence, solidity and strength are based upon the condition of
the earth, as we daily see it; so that when the firm ground shakes
under us, there naturally comes over the mind a feeling of abject
helplessness. ~New York Times April 9, 1872

Seven years ago. . .

The day the earth tried to swallow L.A.,
Alexandra Wheaton dropped her double chocolate iced mocha in the
parking lot. It landed with a splat, pale brown slush sliding off
the toe of one white shoe to form a sticky puddle beneath her foot.
Cleaning it up made Sandy two minutes late for her job as a
dispatcher for Los Angeles City Emergency Services.

Her day was about to become much worse.

Moments past eight in the morning, the
tectonic plates along the Newport-Inglewood-Rose Canyon fault line
started to move with a little more force than the normal sway and
push. The seismograph needle in the monitoring station leapt wildly
and the machine registered the largest magnitude quake along that
fault in greater than forty years.

Millions of dollars spent on equipment
upgrades for emergency services over the past year proved no match
against the relentless heave of the agitated earth. Radio towers
toppled and satellite dishes were knocked out of alignment,
creating a system-wide communication blackout until Los Angeles
Central Dispatch switched to their ten-year-old backup system. When
the earth stopped its initial temper tantrum, the telephone
switchboard began to light up with calls from citizens, while the
status of each individual emergency response unit was being
verified by radio check-in.

In less than ninety seconds, chaos erupted
in Central Los Angeles. The nightmare deepened moments later when a
ruptured gas line beneath the Convention Center was ignited by the
cigarette Marcus Fulton had been smoking in the basement janitorial
supply closet.

Sandy couldn't stop the tremors running
along the inner fault lines of her own neural pathways. But she was
a professional, so with a voice that only barely trembled, she
dispatched Fire Station Number 9 to the L.A. Convention Center.

The first shift after Sandy's vacation was
off to a very rocky start. Before her shift was over, she would
learn two important things. First, she was getting the heck out of
L.A. Second, it was possible to fall in love with someone, sight
unseen, in twenty-three hours and fifty-seven minutes.

Astraea Press

Where Fiction Meets Virtue

www.astraeapress.com