Mine Tomorrow Page 8

  “No!”

  She was in her tiny apartment, back in 2014. And Gregory was nowhere to be found. That didn’t stop her from looking for him. She started in the bathroom before going to her closet to get dressed. Devin always put out her clothes for the next day. It saved time in the morning. She hadn’t bothered with that in 1945. But hanging from the door handle of her closet here were the hangers that held the turtleneck and wool dress pants she’d been wearing the morning she put on the overcoat.

  Devin pressed her palms against her temples when her head began to throb. Doubt crept in. Had it all been a dream—a very elaborate, realistic and detailed one? Or had she really traveled back and forth through time?

  A glance at the clock confirmed that, just like before, she was running late. She would miss her train and Emily would arrive at the shop ahead of her. Devin inhaled deeply, letting the breath spill out slowly afterward. Soon enough, she would find out, she thought.

  As Devin had expected, Emily was standing outside the shop when she arrived. She was shuffling her feet and blowing on her hands to ward off the cold, the hand-knitted scarf secured around her neck. Her sister looked exactly the same as she had, right down to the cute, if impractical shoes on her feet. A coincidence? Devin didn’t think so.

  “I was getting worried,” Emily said.

  That was all she got out before Devin wrapped her in a bear hug and started to cry.

  “Hey! Hey! What’s wrong?” Em asked.

  “Sorry.” Devin wiped away her tears and sniffled. “It’s just that I’ve missed you so much.”

  “Um, we had pizza last night, Dev,” Emily replied dryly.

  Devin didn’t correct her. Instead, she hugged her sister a second time and said, “I’m really glad to see you.”

  “I’m glad to see you, too, but can we go inside now?” Emily laughed. “I can’t feel my toes or my fingertips.”

  Devin complied, unlocking the door with shaky hands. She was anxious to go through the boxes from the sale. Would the overcoat still be there? If she put it on again, would she find herself back in 1945?

  Several minutes later, the coffee was brewing, and she and her sister were unpacking the boxes. The day was unfolding just as she remembered, further evidence that she was reliving the moment.

  “That’s gorgeous,” Emily enthused.

  “I know.” Devin stroked the overcoat’s soft wool gabardine. Her heart was racing, that feeling of déjà vu causing her pulse to pound in her ears.

  “You should try it on.”

  She glanced up at her sister. “I…I did.”

  “At the sale?” Emily sipped her coffee.

  Devin wanted—needed—to share everything. Unfortunately, she didn’t expect things to go any better with her sister than they had when she had explained the situation to Gregory. But she had to try.

  “Emily, listen to me,” she began. “I already put on this coat once before and…and when I did, something happened. Something…unbelievable. I wound up in 1945. With Gregory.”

  Emily didn’t look confused or concerned. Her expression changed to amused. “Very funny. What’s the joke, Devin? And who’s Gregory?”

  She swallowed. “He’s the man I used to dream about. He was…is real.”

  “Real.” Emily nodded. She no longer looked amused. “Okay.”

  “I know it doesn’t make sense. He thought I was crazy when I tried to explain it to him.” She gripped her sister’s shoulders. “But I swear to you, Em, as sure as I’m standing here, I spent the past several months with him.”

  “We saw each other yesterday.”

  “I won’t pretend to understand how time works in this case. I only know that I lived in 1945. My name was Devin Prescott. And I was married to Gregory.”

  “You dreamed all this?”

  “No. I lived it!”

  “So, like, you were reincarnated or something?” Emily snorted out a laugh. She was still waiting for a punch line. In fact, she looked eager to hear one.

  “Yes.” Devin intensified her grip on her sister’s shoulders and gave them a little shake. The movement caused the coffee in Emily’s cup to slosh over its rim. Devin ignored the spill and pleaded, “You have to believe me! You have to!”

  “Dev, knock it off.” Emily pulled away and went to the counter for some napkins. As she sopped up the spill, she grumbled, “This isn’t funny anymore.”

  Tears stung Devin’s eyes. “I’m not trying to be funny. I’m trying to explain. If only I had some proof.”

  A thought occurred to her. What if…?

  She pulled on the overcoat, buttoned it up. “Hold my hand.”

  “What? Why?”

  “Just…just do it.”

  When Emily complied, albeit reluctantly, Devin slowly lowered her free hand into the coat pocket and held her breath. But she experienced no blinding flash of light, no ear-splitting boom. She felt around in the pocket for the watch. It wasn’t there. Of course! It was in Gregory’s overcoat pocket. She’d left it for him. She released her sister’s hand.

  “Devin?”

  “I have to go, Emily.”

  “Go where? What about these boxes?”

  “Leave them for now. I’ll be back.” And she would be, of that much Devin felt certain. She couldn’t explain it any more than she could explain time travel, but she suddenly knew that she was in 2014 to stay. As such, Gregory was lost to her.

  Or was he?

  She hurried out the door and hailed a cab to take her to the Upper East Side. The sale was over, but as she’d hoped the woman who’d been in charge of it was inside overseeing the removal of the items that had not sold.

  “You’re back,” she said with a smile. “I’m afraid there’s not much left at this point.”

  “I’m not here to buy anything. I…I wanted to know if you could put me in touch with the owner. You mentioned that he had recently been moved to…” Her voice was a raw whisper when she finished, “to hospice care.”

  Gregory would be an old man, one who was dying and might not know her, but she needed to see him.

  “That’s right. Unfortunately, I got word yesterday that Mr. Prescott passed away over the weekend.”

  “Oh, God. No! No!” Devin pressed one hand to her heart, the other to her mouth. Her chest ached and she felt as if she might be sick. She’d hoped…

  “Are you all right? Here, sit down.”

  The woman helped Devin to a chair and brought her a glass of water. The irony didn’t escape her. Gregory had done something similar in this very apartment. As before, the water did little to make her feel better, but she sipped it anyway.

  “From our conversation the other day, I didn’t realize that you knew the man who lived here,” the woman was saying.

  “I…I hadn’t seen him in a long time,” Devin told her. A thought struck her then. “The desk, did it sell?”

  “Yes. Sorry.” Devin’s heart sank until the woman added, “The buyer is picking it up today.”

  “So it’s still here?”

  “Unless it grew feet and walked out.”

  “May I see it, please?”

  The woman looked puzzled, but she nodded. “Sure. It’s still in the back room.”

  This time Devin knew exactly where to find the cubby hole. The compartment opened with a squeak of rusty hinges. Her breath caught when she peeked inside.

  “It’s empty,” she whispered.

  “I took the letter out.”

  “You have it?” she asked breathlessly.

  The woman eyed Devin strangely. “I threw it away after you read it. It’s probably still in the trash, if you want it?”

  She was talking about the letter Gregory had written, not the one Devin had penned to him. Disheartened, she nodded. After the woman retrieved it from the garbage can, Devin took it, thanked her and left. It was all she had of him, the last tangible link to the man who owned her heart.

  She pictured him returning from the war to an empty apartment. She swore
she could feel his anguish as he’d searched for her to no avail until finally, in an act of utter desperation, he’d penned a letter he couldn’t send. A letter begging her to return to him. He’d died thinking that she had left him.

  When Devin returned to the shop, Emily was waiting on a customer.

  “Is everything…okay?” she asked after ringing up the sale.

  Nothing was all right, but Devin didn’t want to cause Emily further worry, especially when it was so pointless. So she lied, “I’ll be fine.”

  * * *

  But she wasn’t fine. Rather, Devin was obsessed. For the next couple of weeks, she spent hours on the internet in the evening and every lunch hour at the library. She found enough answers to fill in the blanks of her memory and to further shatter her already broken heart.

  Gregory had died a widower, never having remarried after his wife of mere months vanished during his deployment overseas. A couple of brief news articles covered the tragedy of the naval officer who had survived the brutal attack on his ship only to come home and find his wife missing.

  While he never gave up hope of her returning, Devin Prescott was officially declared dead in 1946 when police discovered the decomposed body of a young Jane Doe in Central Park.

  The woman had been the victim of an apparent robbery. She’d died from a blow to her head, no identifying information found on her person, not even a wedding band. Police matched her clothing to that of the missing Mrs. Prescott’s, the same dress she had been wearing in the wedding photograph Gregory had provided when he filed a missing person report.

  “My wife will come back to me,” he was quoted as saying in a news article in the Times that ran after the police announced the case was closed. “I know she will come back.”

  And Devin had, but only to leave him again.

  As she had so many times the past couple of weeks, she took out the note that he’d written and reread it, using her fingertip to trace his pen strokes. Emily came into the shop’s back room as she wiped away her tears.

  “Dev?”

  “Sorry, just feeling sentimental today…” she said.

  Before she could tuck away the note, though, Emily took it. Upon reading it, her sister sighed in exasperation and shook her head.

  “You need to stop this. I’m getting really worried about you.”

  Worried, yes. But Emily still didn’t believe Devin. Why would she? Devin herself might have begun to question her sanity…if not for the test that she’d taken.

  Two blue lines on a stick that confirmed not only the life growing inside her, but the existence of the man time had stolen from her.

  Come back to me.

  That was Devin’s plea now.

  Chapter Fourteen

  It might have been the first day of spring, but Mother Nature hadn’t received the memo, so Devin wore the overcoat, grateful for its warmth as she hurried the last couple of blocks from the subway stop to her shop.

  She made coffee, decaffeinated at her obstetrician’s request. One hand on her rounding belly, she turned the sign over to open.

  Emily hustled in not long after on a blast of frigid air. “Sorry I’m late. The strangest thing just happened. This guy stopped me on the corner. He asked if I could point him in the direction of a watch repair shop.”

  Devin’s skin prickled, but she knew better than to get her hopes up. Keeping her tone casual, she asked, “Did he say the name?”

  “Sam’s I think. Or Sal’s. He thought it was on this block.”

  “Where is he?” Without waiting for a reply, she rushed to the door and then outside, unmindful of the cold. She scanned the faces of the people on the sidewalk, but none of them was familiar. Emily joined her outside.

  “Devin, what are you doing? It’s freezing out here. Come inside.”

  She allowed her sister to guide her back into the shop, but she couldn’t keep the desperation from her tone when she asked, “Did you see which way he went?”

  “No.” Em eyed her uneasily.

  “What did you tell him? Think, Emily! Please! This is important.”

  “I told him I didn’t know of any watch repair shops on this block. That was it. He walked away. Are you all right?”

  “I’m fine,” she lied, feeling foolish for getting her hopes up.

  She and her sister had reached an agreement of sorts. Devin no longer tried to convince Emily that she’d lived another life. And Emily had stopped peppering her with questions about the identity of the father of Devin’s baby. It wasn’t an ideal solution. In fact, far from it. The unanswered questions were driving a wedge between them, but Devin didn’t know what else to do.

  So, she put on a brave face now. With tears threatening, she excused herself so she could cry in private. She didn’t want to upset Emily or give her any more reason to question Devin’s sanity.

  It was several minutes before she stepped out of the restroom. When she did, she heard voices coming from the front of the shop. She recognized Emily’s. It was the other voice that held her attention. On shaky legs, she came out of the back room.

  “I’m pretty sure my sister will be interested in this.” Emily was saying to a man who stood on the opposite side of the counter. His head was tipped down, his face obscured by the brim of a fedora. Over his arm was draped an overcoat. Herringbone.

  Devin’s heart sped up. She knew that overcoat. She knew that man!

  Her steps faltered and she gasped, drawing her sister’s attention.

  “Oh, Devin, there you are,” Emily said. “This is the guy who asked me about the watch repair shop. He has the coolest coat he’s interested in selling. I know we don’t carry much in the way of men’s clothing, but…Dev? Are you okay?”

  “Gregory!”

  She shouted his name, but needn’t have bothered. He was already rushing around the counter, a smile wreathing his face even as tears made his eyes bright.

  Even their reunion in Times Square hadn’t been as emotional as this one.

  “Devin!” When he reached her, he wrapped her in a fierce hug. “I won’t pretend to know what’s going on—whether it’s real or a dream—but now that you’re in my arms, I don’t care.”

  “This is Gregory,” Emily said slowly. “The guy you…the guy from…”

  That was all she got out before she dropped onto the stool behind the register. Her mouth gaped open in disbelief.

  “I know how she feels,” he said. “I’ve been out of my head with worry for the past month, searching everywhere for you.”

  “Did you find my letter?”

  “The one you left in the desk?”

  “Yes.”

  “It didn’t make sense, but it was my only lead. I decided to go back to Times Square. To see if…I don’t know, if I could find you there, I guess.”

  “How did you get…here?” She wasn’t talking about the shop and he seemed to know that.

  “It was the damnedest thing. I put on my coat this morning and headed out the door. While I was waiting for a cab I put my hands in the pockets and…” He held out the watch.

  “Blinding light and a loud boom?”

  He nodded. “If I’m dreaming or if I’ve gone crazy, don’t tell me, all right?”

  “You’re not dreaming. You’re not crazy. You’re my husband.” And the father of my child. She’d tell him that soon enough. Right now, it was more pressing that she let him know, “I love you forever, Gregory Prescott.”

  “Forever,” he agreed.

  Then, as a wide-eyed Emily looked on, they shared their first kiss in 2014.

  JACKIE BRAUN is the author of more than two dozen romance novels. She is a three-time RITA® Award finalist and a four-time National Readers’ Choice Award finalist. She lives in Michigan with her husband and two sons.

  Other Mills & Boon titles by Jackie Braun

  Falling for Her Rival

  Must Like Kids

  Greek for Beginners

  After the Party

  If the Ring Fits�
�

  Mr. Right There All Along

  ISBN: 978-1-474-00882-2

  MINE TOMORROW

  © 2014 Jackie Braun

  Published in Great Britain 2014

  by Mills & Boon, an imprint of Harlequin (UK) Limited

  Eton House, 18-24 Paradise Road, Richmond, Surrey TW9 1SR

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