Sarah climbed into her car and turned the key. Instead of the quiet roar of a healthy engine that she expected to hear, what filled her ears was the dreaded sound of a dead car battery on a Thursday morning.

Sarah cursed and hit the steering wheel with clenched fists. So much for a dramatic exit, she thought. This had turned out to be one of the worst mornings of the school year. She climbed out of the car and leaned on the hood, trying to figure out what she was going to do. She could take the bus, but that would make her late. It was a ten-minute drive to school but it took twenty on the bus.

As she was thinking, something moved at the corner of her eye and she looked up to see a silver convertible headed down her street. As it neared her, the car slowed down and stopped at the curb. A young man with silvery-blonde hair and the most captivating blue eyes she'd ever seen stepped out of the car and came toward her. Unsure of what to do, Sarah let him approach.

"Looks like you could use a hand," he spoke with a hint of an accent that Sarah couldn't place. She found herself avoiding his stare; it was so raw and enchanting it almost hurt to look him in the eyes.

"My battery's dead and I have to be at school in fifteen minutes."

"Would you like a ride?" Sarah looked at him suspiciously and was about to politely decline when he took the words from her mouth. "No, of course not, I understand. No sense making a habit of taking rides from strange men now is there? What about a jump start?" There was a hint of a provocative tone to his voice and it made Sarah's heart race.

Sarah composed herself inwardly, gratefully thanked him and he pulled his car into the driveway. In no time, her car was running and the man said goodbye. As Sarah drove to school, her thoughts were consumed with the foreign stranger and how lucky it was that he'd appeared there. She arrived at school and hurried to class from the parking lot with three minutes to go and she decided that she'd never see him again. Why dwell on it?

She entered her English class directly as the bell rang and hurried to her seat up front. The teacher shot her a look and she smiled apologetically. As the lesson began and the class around her conducted an in-depth discussion about Fahrenheit 451, she found herself lost in thought again about her mysterious angel of mercy. He had been so captivating and, she admitted to herself, so incredibly gorgeous……and, somehow, very familiar although she was certain they'd never met before. As she mused, a voice from the back of the room woke her from her thoughts.

"…a world full of programmed robots. No emotion, no real work and of course no thoughts outside of what is acceptable. It seems like that could be our future if we continue to stifle our own human desires, our creative tendencies."

She placed the voice right away; she'd heard it not twenty minutes ago in her own driveway. But separated from that gorgeous frame, the voice that floated bodiless in the room now was familiar from long ago but she couldn't seem to place it.

She turned around in her seat to look at him. There he sat, in his silvery splendor speaking words that seemed to float on the air like wisps of cloud. As she watched him, her heart sped up and her cheeks flushed. His voice was deep and came from back in his throat, yet it was clear and crisp. As he finished speaking, the teacher looked at him with raised eyebrows, obviously caught off guard.

"Thank you, Lucas. All right, you will be spending the rest of the period reading the final chapters of Fahrenheit 451. I expect that by tomorrow you will be prepared to lead a discussion on the metaphors for modern society used by the author." She was a stout little blonde woman who wore too much makeup and sounded like she barked at squirrels more often that she talked to senior English students. She reminded Sarah of a bulldog wearing lipstick. As she spoke she went to her desk and pulled an extra copy of the book out of a drawer and walked it back over to Lucas.

The room went gradually quiet as people opened their books and reclined in their seats to at least pretend they were reading. Sarah was having trouble with even that. She continued to sneak glances back at Lucas and at one point she watched him squint slightly at the book, pull a pair of silver-rimmed reading glasses out of his bag and slip them on. That's it, Sarah thought as she watched him leaning over the book, genuinely enthralled, with this thoughtful look on his face, there's no going back now. She knew in her heart that she was hooked.

Before she knew it, the bell rang, signaling the end of first period. Sarah smiled inwardly as she realized that within the half-hour she'd been pretending to read, she hadn't turned a single page.

As she walked from her English classroom across campus to her Calculus class, lost in thought, she was awakened by a voice behind her.

"Excuse me, did you drop this?" She spun around to face Lucas, who had Sarah's delicate gold locket dangling from his long fingers. His eyes burned into her as he practically melted away her ability to stand. Taking a deep breath, she composed herself.

"Thank you," she said, reaching to take it from him.

"Please, allow me," he replied, moving behind her. His fingers brushed ever so lightly against her throat as he fastened the chain around her neck. He leaned down and spoke softly in her ear. "You'd best be careful, you wouldn't want to go losing such a beautiful specimen, now would you?"

Sarah turned slowly around to face this strange creature that had appeared in her life out of the blue. But when she turned around, he'd vanished. This day just keeps getting weirder, she thought to herself.

"Hello?" Sarah came in through the back door, coming straight into the break room of The Goddess Trinity Book Store. She grabbed her black apron off the hook that had been put up especially for her use six months ago when she'd been hired.

"Jeanie?" No one answered. She must be out on the floor Sarah assumed. She donned the apron embroidered with the name, address and phone number of the bookstore and passed through a beaded archway leading out onto the sales floor.

There was a line of at least fifteen impatient customers all waiting to make their purchases while behind the desk Jeanie frantically tried to run her usual one-woman show and not being very efficient about it. Her hair was a tangled mess of frizzy curls and her face was flushed with stress. Sarah sighed and smiled, moving through the strings of purple beads and taking her spot at the second register. The woman who was next in line moved up to Sarah's register and Sarah gave her a full grin.

Before Sarah knew it, it was seven o' clock. She went to the back to unload some new shipments before she was to go home at eight. She unloaded the first box and stacked them in alphabetical order. Using her box-cutter, she sliced open the second box and was humming as she sorted and stacked books with titles like Getting In Touch With Your Inner Psychic and Paganism's Influence on Christianity.

As she worked, Jeanie came back from the counter and took the books from her. "You work the counter," she said. "I'll take over for you."

Sarah raised an eyebrow. "Why?"

Jeanie shrugged and gave her favorite response to that question. "Destiny."

Sarah laughed and got up from her kneeling position. "Okay, I'll bite."

She pushed the purple beads aside and stepped up to the register, only to come face-to-face with Lucas. He smiled at her and handed her a book to ring up.

"Fancy seeing you here," Sarah said, attempting to sound sly.

She rang up the book automatically, never taking her eyes off his beautiful face. He raised an eyebrow and leaned in close to her. "I have a confession to make," he said softly."

"What's that?" Sarah asked, barely able to speak as she studied his perfect features and felt his voice rumble in his throat.

"It's really no coincidence that I'm here. I wanted to see you again."

"How did you know to find me here?"

"I asked."

"And why are you here now?"

He moved closer.

"I'm trying to work up the nerve to ask you to dinner, but I'm having trouble."

Lucas moved even closer so that their faces were inches apart. He reached up to brush a strand of hair from her face and he brushed his fingertips lightly across her cheek.

"Would you like to accompany me to dinner, Sarah?"

A shiver ran through her as she nodded yes. "I'd love to…Lucas."

He pulled back slightly and smiled at her. "Please, it's Luke."

"Luke," she whispered, mostly to herself.

"Pick you up tomorrow at seven?"

Sarah nodded, smiling, and handed him his book. Luke smiled back and left the store, getting into his car and pulling away into the mad rush of traffic.

"And who was that?" It was Jeanie's voice behind her. Sarah turned to face the eccentric little red-haired woman whose age of 48 was hidden beneath the smile and disposition of a twenty year-old.

"That was Luke," Sarah replied, her head still spinning.

"He is a dream, where did he come from?"

"That…is a good question." Sarah sighed and went to finish alphabetizing.