The Past Is A Foreign Country

by TunnelsOfTheSouth

On impulse, Devon stops to buy some roses for Stevie. He never expected to come face to face with his past. A woman he'd been told had died thirty-five years ago. Now he's looking down into her translucent sea-green eyes once again and the years between just melt away. He's transported back into the distant past. But is Carolyn going to be in his immediate future or is it too late?

1. Chapter 1

"The Past Is A Foreign Country"

A Knight Rider Story

By TunnelsOfTheSouth

※※※※※

Knight Rider and all its canon characters are the eternal property of Glen A. Larson and NBC Television Studios.

I have enjoyed myself hugely with this work.

I make no monies from this one or any of my TV series fanfics, only the joy and delight of creation.

"The past is a foreign country; they do things differently there..."

L. P. Hartley

Chapter One

With Love All Things Are Possible

"Edward?" A woman's voice called from further down the street behind me.

I froze, immediately at a loss for how to respond. That had once been my name. But hers? I stopped walking, closing my eyes as I fought not to remember. No, it couldn't be…

She came closer. "Edward? Is that really you?"

Unbidden memory tugged at the edges of my distracted mind. I didn't want to remember. It was too painful. Of course, it was better to keep walking in the sunshine of an overly warm L.A. morning, feigning ignorance and keeping the past firmly behind me where it belonged.

Someone had once said, ignorance was bliss. How wrong that idiot was!

I was no longer that idealistic young man who'd been ordered to go deep undercover by the British Secret Service. I could ignore the woman's tentative inquiry. Pretend I didn't hear her.

I should be hurrying to be somewhere else, as those around me always were. The endless streams of humanity, constantly on the move like so many millions of busy ants. Never looking up, never seeing what was in front of them. Or, in my case, behind me, right now.

Of course, Schrödinger's blasted cat came into my mind, then. How would I know if it was her? How would I see if she was truly alive, and not dead as I had been told, unless I turned to look? Unless I opened the box in Schrödinger's experiment in quantum mechanics and actually peered inside.

I moved my feet, picking up my pace. My breathing hitched with temptation even as my rational mind dictated I lengthen my stride and put much-needed distance between us before it was too late. It stated I was better off losing myself in the faceless throngs of bustling humanity and not looking back. I could do that.

For God's sake, I was now Devon Miles, the powerful head of FLAG! I could do anything I blasted well pleased! Except look behind me or back into a past that was supposed to be long dead and gone. And on another continent entirely.

"Edward…?"

The soft, crisp English tones of her voice washed over me. It said she was losing hope now. Doubt was creeping in, making her hesitate. Good. But I could also hear the tapping of her high heels on the sidewalk as she tried to keep up with my faster pace. She wasn't giving up just yet.

Of course, she'd always had that trouble, being so much smaller than myself. She said she loved that. She said I made her feel so safe and cherished. My lips curved involuntarily at the memory. We used to joke that, at times, she almost got lost when we embraced. Her small slenderness enfolded against my superior height and size. It had been a private joke that lovers shared.

Lovers… And then, when we'd kissed that first time…

My mouth dried to a desert as my groin cramped painfully with remembered need even as my tortured mind willed my feet to keep right on walking. But my head, that wilful place where all such sweetly intoxicating memories reside to be recalled like a miser with his precious pile of gold, had other ideas.

As always, reality must resolve itself into one possibility or the other. I was moving further away from her with every furious stride. Keep going! The devil can take Schrödinger's blasted cat! I wasn't going to look! I couldn't…

I kept arguing with myself mentally as I walked. I didn't need to look behind me to know that she was still there. Or was she? What if she was only in my mind? A sweet fragment of confusion brought on by too little sleep and too many long, tedious hours spent behind my desk trying to keep the world on an even keel.

I hunched my shoulders as I hurried on, down the street and around the corner. Fifty more steps and I would reach my car, unlock it, get in and drive away - back to the Foundation where I was already late for a very important wedding rehearsal.

I shook my head. If I hadn't stopped on a sudden impulse to buy some roses from a convenient florist shop, as a gift for Stevie, I would have been well on my way back to the FLAG headquarters by now. Michael's lovely fiancé was having pre-wedding jitters and doubting herself. I bought the flowers to cheer her up and tell her it was going to be all right. Michael loved her and their lives together stretched before them like a shining path of love and hope.

Hope… my lips twisted.

Once I had believed in that ideal. In the ethereal promise of a happy ever after. I shook my head. Such is the stuff that dreams are made of…

Behind me, the clicking of feminine heels began to sound frantic now. I remembered her strides had always been so much shorter than mine. She'd often joked, that it would be easier if I had carried her, slung over my shoulder than try to keep up.

I said, no. Instead, I would hold her high against my chest, where I had easier access to her sweet lips and then put my comment into deed as I lifted her like she weighed nothing at all and carried her to bed. That had been a very memorable first night among the many we had shared...

Oh, Lord… Guilt bit into my determination as everything inside me went on full alert. The kind of raw, gut-clenching desire I had never felt before she came into my life - nor since I'd callously abandoned her - shot through me like all the fireworks on the 4th of July.

Against my will, against all that wanted to deny me one brief glance, I stopped, inhaling deeply as I turned my head. I looked. I couldn't help it.

I opened Schrödinger's confounded box… and became lost all over again in the translucent, sea-green colour of her beautiful eyes. The singular feature about her lovely face that wasn't small.

Of course, it was her. I knew it from the very moment she said my name. Or what had been my cover name before I surrendered it, along with my clandestine work for the Secret Service. I'd moved quickly and quietly into the private sector and never looked back. There was nothing to see.

The intervening years had treated her very kindly. She looked almost as fresh and young as the long-ago day I last saw her. Her high cheekbones were more prominent than before and there were a few more lines denoting laughter around her eyes. But then she used to laugh a lot with me and at me. She had a thirst for life that was unquenchable. I drank her in as often as I could.

It was the generous curve of her mouth that now showed signs of some dissatisfaction in life. Her lips were turned down slightly at the corners, lending her sweet face a more solemn look that matched the sadness in her eyes.

I couldn't help but stare. I was glad for the concealment offered by my reflective sunglasses. I knew my searching eyes would give me away. I wanted her still. I always would.

"Lucy?"

We'd often joked about how much her cover name suited her. A suitable diminutive for a petite woman. I needed to remind myself that dynamite also came in such neat packages. If I was in a teasing mood, which I always seemed to be with her, I called her my Luciana. The name meant light. And in my arms, she had felt as light as gossamer and just as fragile. The soft glow of her unquenchable spirit warmed my deeply cynical soul.

Of course, that name was as fake as mine. I never knew her real one in case I blurted it out by mistake at the wrong moment. Like in the throes of passion or under the threat of danger. But to me, she would always live on in my memory as Lucy.

My Luciana…

I stared down at her. Suddenly it was as if nothing had changed. That none of the intervening thirty-five years had ever been. I felt as if I was that brash, cocky young man again and we'd only just been assigned to meet for the first time in that small, seedy pub in the back streets of London.

Our cover was to pose as a newly married couple very much in love. Both young and unattached to anyone else, we surely made the most of our new identities. We had been set the task of uncovering any fugitive Nazi sympathisers hiding out in the United Kingdom. We were together for one glorious year.

I found myself studying her hands which were closing and opening at her sides as she stared up at me in consternation. Those sweet little fingers that could make a man cry with need or shout with the joy of ecstatic possession as we both touched the very edge of heaven before we tumbled over the edge of the world and back into the wide, rumpled bed that looked like a storm had just torn through it. Sometimes, in the dark, cheerless cold of the London winter, we never left our tiny apartment for days at a time.

My heart squeezed tightly. The poet, E.E. Cummings once said, 'I do not know what it is about you that closes and opens. Only something in me understands. The voice of your eyes is deeper than all roses. Nobody, not even the rain, has such small hands…'

Lucy had always loved that poem. Many times she had asked me to quote it to her, while she nestled against me, after we… After we…

"Hi…" I said lamely, my accelerated breathing becoming jammed in my throat.

What was that? I mean, what in Hades was that? Right then, I willed the pavement to open up and swallow me whole, flowers and all. I'd studied the great poets and gifted philosophers and all I could manage was that single, pathetic word.

"Sorry…" I shook my head. Worse…

At least, I'd remembered, just in time, to use my Irish accent. Lucy knew me when I had been someone else entirely. A tall, gangly young man from Cork, pretending he wanted to make it big on the stage in London's great capital while we hunted for those elusive Nazi sympathisers. We found a few. Our success pleased our ever-watchful masters, for a while.

"Oh, Edward…" Tears sparkled on her lashes. "They all told me you were dead. They even showed me your body. But I never truly believed it was you. I just couldn't…" Her beautiful eyes flickered to the large bunch of a dozen perfect yellow roses in my hand.

I wanted to shove them behind my back. Pretend they didn't exist. I could see it in her frown. She'd deduced I'd bought them for a woman. Well, I had. But not in any romantic way. But I couldn't explain. It was too complicated and I was already late.

"They told me you died in a car crash…" I struggled with reality, belatedly realising we were standing in the middle of a busy sidewalk staring at each other.

Her mouth turned up at the corners in a wry grimace. "That's what they told me about you. Not very original."

"The Secret Service's ideas never were. They used what worked. Look, we can't do this here…" I shook my head, trying to clear its confusion and think rationally. Logically… "My car. It's just around the corner. We can talk there."

I turned sideways, using my free hand to indicate she should walk with me. Lucy hesitated, looking me over with eyes that contained such hunger my groin cramped anew.

"Luciana… please?"

"Yes…" Her sad lips quirked at the remembered pet name. "All right…" She shook her head even as she slipped her left hand into the crook of my elbow.

It was a dearly familiar gesture from days long ago. Then I would have smiled as I lifted her hand to my lips and kissed the backs of her fingers in an intimate salute before tucking it back into my possession like some wondrous treasure.

I restrained the dangerous impulse. She was just making sure I didn't escape her. And I'd just seen the flash of the diamond on the ring finger of her hand along with a band of gold. Lucy had been claimed by someone else. Some other man owned the right to take her to bed and lose himself in her warm, silken depths. Lucky man!

I reached for the inane again. It was all I had. "You're… looking well…"

"For a dead woman, you mean?" Lucy shivered against me, briefly gripping my bicep between both hands. "I have missed you so much, Edward. I just knew you weren't dead."

I didn't reply as we reached my red sports car. I released her to unlock and open the passenger door. She tucked herself neatly inside and I closed the door behind her. I circled the hood and got in, shutting us both into the warm, leather-scented interior. I turned to place the roses on the back seat.

Lucy watched me closely. "She's a very lucky woman," she said, nodding to the flowers and making all the wrong assumptions.

Her gaze checked the fingers of my left hand for any sign of a wedding ring. She noted the antique gold signet on the little finger of my right hand. Lucy was always very good at noticing such tiny details.

"Oh, they're not…" I inhaled as I caught myself in time. "Ah, yes, she is. Very lucky, indeed." I smiled as I remembered Stevie and how much in love she was with Michael.

Together they made a very handsome couple. I was proud to be able to call them my friends. It hadn't always been that way with Michael. Not in the very beginning when he reminded me so much of myself at his age that I wanted nothing to do with him. Or strangle him. He still gave me the occasional nightmare.

Now Michael had recently resigned from the Foundation after he'd gone through a terrible near-death experience. He and Stevie planned on settling down after the wedding and I wished them both well. But none of that helped me with my more immediate problem of what I was going to do about Lucy.

"I see you still like driving European cars…" She grimaced, giving a small, embarrassed laugh. "This is all rather awkward, isn't it?"

Her fingers tangled in the strap of the handbag in her lap. "I just never expected to ever see you again. I couldn't believe it when I saw you walk right past me. I almost didn't follow you. I thought I was only dreaming."

"That makes two of us," I murmured in the same Irish brogue as I pulled the sunglasses down from the bridge of my nose and tossed them onto the dashboard.

I turned to face her, careful to maintain some distance between us. An awkward task in the small confines of my favourite vehicle of all to drive. I remembered that the riddle of Schrödinger's cat remained an unsolved problem in physics. Now I was faced with another problem I was at a total loss to resolve.

"You used to call me the pulse of your heart," Lucy whispered, not looking at me. "I loved hearing you say that."

"Cuisle mo chroí…" I nodded. "Yes, I remember…"

I'd called her many more such endearments than that in the throes of our shared passion. It had all been a part of my deep cover while keeping very close to the truth.

My grim childhood had been spent growing up in Cork. I'd been taught to speak, think, write and understand the Irish language in all its beauty and lyrical magic. I'd slipped back into the way of it with the ease of a loved piece of old clothing.

"I loved you…" Lucy went on, still working the strap of her bag between her restless fingers. "I know I was never supposed to. I would have died for you in truth. But it was never enough, was it?" Her tremulous smile was filled with sadness. "You moved on to your next assignment and left me behind."

"Yes…" My breath left me in a rush. "I'm so very sorry, Luciana."

What else could I say? That I had my orders? I knew I'd betrayed her trust and love, but I was not free to say no to my British masters. Not then. They wanted our enforced break to be clean and irrevocable. They said we'd become too close, endangering the mission.

There was no going back. No pining for what might have been. They wanted my whole focus, not my fractured attention, on my new duties.

My past truly was another country, lost beyond all hope of recall. And yet, here she was. My past, alive and well and just as beautiful. And I wanted her all over again.

"Then why are you here in LA?" she asked softly. "I last saw you on the platform for the Piccadilly underground. You said you had a train to catch. You were leaving for Paris."

I froze, my mind working overtime. "I… left the service. Or, more rightly, it left me after we disagreed. I've lived here in the US for the last thirty years." I looked pointedly at the rings on her finger. "And you?"

"I came here with my husband," she admitted quietly. "He's the CEO of a computer software company. He wants to relocate everything from New Mexico and expand the business to a nationwide enterprise."

"New Mexico?" My eyebrows rose in astonishment. "How long have you been living in the US?"

"After they told me you'd… died, I resigned from the service. I'd had enough of pretending to be someone I wasn't. I… took that same train to Paris. I'd just found work as a concierge in a small hotel when I first met Ian. He swept me off my feet and proposed after a whirlwind romance. He said he loved me and promised me the world."

Her slim shoulders lifted. "And a free pass to live in this country. So, I accepted. Without you, I had nothing more to lose. I didn't want to die… all alone."

She turned to stare at me. "You look as if you've done very well for yourself." She studied my expensive suit that fairly shouted Saville Row. My car was another giveaway that I wasn't short of a dollar. "I'm truly happy for you."

"You don't love your husband," I guessed softly.

"No…" Lucy shook her head. "How could I? He wasn't you." She shrugged as her sad eyes lifted to mine. "Ian is the father of my three children whom I love with all my heart. They've all grown up and left home now."

She glanced at the flowers in the back seat. "And you? Did you find that elusive one you were searching for after I… died?" She frowned at my left hand again.

"No," I said flatly, then shrugged. "I guess you could say I'm still married to my work."

Her brows rose. "I see. Which is?"

"In a way, you could say I work… for the US government," I hedged, unable to tell her the whole truth.

Lucy smiled sadly. "Ah, once a spy, always a spy. I knew it was in your blood. You were always so good at it."

"Something like that," I replied evasively. "But I'm now my own master and in charge of a large corporation. I'm truly sorry how it ended between us. It should have been handled better by our masters. But I was given no choice in my reassignment."

"I know…" Lucy sighed. "We had something, didn't we? It wasn't all for show."

"No, it wasn't all for show." I closed my hands on the steering wheel to prevent myself from reaching for her.

She looked so lost and alone suddenly. Like her best friend had died. Which I had all those years ago. I reminded myself she was a married woman. I would never threaten what she had by trying to reclaim the past.

"Were you going somewhere?" I asked in the same Irish brogue she was used to hearing. "Can I drive you anywhere?"

"Were you ever truly Irish?" she asked, ignoring my question. "I mean, I know Edward wasn't your real name. But I knew so little about you. Your face has always haunted my dreams. I was even foolish enough to look for you in Paris."

She didn't wait for me to answer as she held out her hand between us. "Hello, whoever you are now. My real name is Carolyn. Mrs Carolyn Bridges. I'm very pleased to meet you…" She opened her green eyes wide at me in encouraging inquiry.

I didn't want to touch her. I feared I might never let her go again. I knew I didn't have any time or room in my life for her. She was a sweet distraction I couldn't afford. But I couldn't leave her small hand hanging between us like an orphaned child.

"Devon…" I supplied in a rush of breath, finally abandoning my Irish lilt in favour of my usual clipped English accent. "Devon Miles."

Bracing myself I touched my fingers against hers. "And I was born in Ireland. That part of me was real. A good cover identity should always be as close to the truth as possible."

"Then I'm very pleased to finally meet you, Mr Devon Miles." Carolyn smiled mistily as she managed to latch onto my hand before I could escape.

The length of my fingers curled around her much smaller ones involuntarily and I touched against the pulse beating rapidly beneath the soft skin of her inner wrist. The tip of my middle finger began to move lightly, unconsciously caressing across the tell-tale giveaway of her state of agitation and making her jump.

Warm colour flooded into Carolyn's cheeks, exposing her inner turmoil as she jerked her hand away, settling back in her lap with its twin. She looked down, not meeting my frowning gaze as she twisted her rings around and around her finger.

She jerked her chin toward the back seat. "And what about the lady who's lucky enough to be given those beautiful roses? Is she waiting for you to come home?"

"Yes…" I drew a long, steadying breath and expelled it roughly. "She is. But she's only a very dear friend. She's been having a few pre-wedding jitters. I thought the flowers would help to settle her nerves before the big day next week. Her fiancé is worried about her."

I stared at her for a long moment. "I'm not married," I finally confessed. "I guess I never found the right time or enough time. My workload is impossible."

"I see." Carolyn looked up. "You always were so very thoughtful when we were together. I remember when you used to bring me flowers from Covent Garden…"

A strained silence settled between us. Was there anything left to say? Except goodbye...

"Can I drop you somewhere?" I repeated. "I really do have to get back to the office. And the bride-to-be. She'll be waiting."

What else could I say? There could be no future for us. Not now. She was still a married woman. Only no longer pretending it was to me.

"If that's what you want." Carolyn inhaled deeply, releasing her breath in a rush. "After I'd wasted years enduring his many pointless affairs, Ian finally left me over a year ago. Well, actually I threw him out and told him never to come back. I was so sick of his lies."

She shook her head. "Ian didn't even contest the divorce. He'd already found someone else. He's in New York trying to secure more funding to expand his company since he had to pay me out. Work was all he talked about. I doubt he noticed I was no longer there."

Her eyes tracked slowly back to mine. "I'm staying at the Beverly Wilshire while I'm looking for a house to buy. I've decided to stay here in LA." She waited, watching my expression for any trace of disgust or rejection.

She would never beg. It wasn't in her nature.

She lifted her hands and stripped off her rings. She pushed them into a side pocket of her handbag and snapped it shut. Her long sigh of relief was audible.

"Carolyn…" I knew I should say no to her unspoken question.

I was deeply aware it would be the far greater part of valour to drive her to her hotel and wish her well. Kiss her soft cheek and leave her behind in the lobby, turn my back and walk away.

I had a wedding rehearsal I was already very late for and roses to deliver to a nervous bride-to-be who was waiting for my reassuring presence by her side. I had so many other places to be. People who needed and relied on me. Me, Devon Miles, the head of FLAG.

Oh, Luciana… My gut clenched with agonised denial.

Despite all the rational dictates of my analytical mind, I became lost all over again in the translucent depths of her sea-green eyes. It was there that I could see both my past and my future. If only I dared reach out and grasp her offer with both hands.

'Impossible…' I closed my eyes briefly against the bleakness of knowledge. I was being utterly selfish. There could be no place in my complicated life for her softness. No matter how much my heightened emotional state demanded I make some space for her. Saving the world again and again required all my attention.

And the inherent dangers involved in that were immense and the obstacles insurmountable. My long-buried past truly was a foreign country and there could be no going back. 'Make the break clean and make it now. She deserves that.'

"Devon?" she asked tentatively, watching me closely.

"The Beverly Wilshire, I believe you said…" I replied roughly as I reached to turn the key in the ignition. "I'll drop you off."

※※※※※