KARA WILLS
Copyright © 2009
Chapter 1
The nightmare began when he woke. The dream lay in a nightmare he never wanted to leave.
It tugged and pulled and played constantly in his mind.
Bryce Hampton sat up in bed and stared blankly at the stark red numbers mocking him as his alarm sounded with the voices of an early morning talk show. His hand throbbed. His hand always throbbed when he rose from one of his tragic dreams. The only reason he wished never to wake was because of her, the woman he loved in those secret moments of his subconscious life. A woman he believed, from as early as he could remember, to be nothing more than an angel of his imagination.
The dreams never changed. They brimmed with joy, love, torment and terror. He woke with cold sweat beading along his forehead. Fear racked through him. Fear of leaving her and never feeling the gentle touch of her fingers against his lips. Fear of never hearing her soft, musical voice whisper her love for him.
The shrill ring of his cell phone jolted him worse than a bat smacking the back of his head. He shot to his feet, fingers grappling in the electronic mess on his nightstand. He cussed when his toe cracked against the leg of the damned piece of furniture, his fingers wrapping around the cell. Sucking in a deep breath, forcing the pain to ebb and the stars to dim from his vision, he connected the call. A fogged glance at the taunting clock made his brow furrow.
“’Ullo?” He cleared the sleep from his throat when he heard how crummy he sounded and tried again. “Hello?”
“Hey babe. You’re running late for work. Thought I’d call to see if you’re out the door. I wanted to stop by the store and have some coffee with you. Oh, and I’ll swing by during your lunch. I want to show you the colors I’ve decided on for the wedding.”
Kate.
Christ.
Bryce pinched his forehead between his thumb and pointer finger. He squeezed his eyes shut.
“You’re calling me at seven to tell me you figured out the colors for our wedding. Are you nuts?” he grumbled.
“Hey, grouch,” Kate snapped. “It’s not my fault you decided to stay out until three with the boys over cocktails and football yap. By the sound of it, you should be thanking me for waking you up.”
Bryce growled, tempted to toss his phone out the window, crawl back into bed, and conjure up a pleasant scene from his dream.
“Anyhow, I’ll be stopping by with Michelle. I need a third-party opinion about some things we need to discuss—”
“Kate, why are we talking about a wedding we have no date for? What’s the rush? I certainly don’t care to hear it when I need to be jumping in the shower. ’Kay?” The silence that met Bryce’s ear resounded with Kate’s displeasure. Oh, hell. This was going to be a wonderful day. Just fucking peachy. “I gotta go. And don’t storm into my store if I’m busy. I don’t need another talkin’ to from Mae.”
“That old hag can deal if I need to speak with you. Everyone knows who my father is. She won’t yell at you over me.”
“Don’t hide behind your father’s position as judge. I don’t hide behind my father’s position as mayor,” Bryce groaned. He brushed a lock of hair from his cheek and began to pull a pair of pants and a collared Polo shirt from his closet.
“What the hell is your problem today?”
“If I called you at three in the morning, when I got home, to talk football and party plans for the next big game, would you be thrilled to discuss it with me? No. Didn’t think so.” He draped his clothes over a plush chair and stepped into the bathroom. So much for dreaming. “I’ll talk to you later.”
“Bryce, don’t hang up. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean—”
“Didn’t mean to call and wake me up with wedding plans. Yeah, it’s becoming a regular routine. Listen, Kate. Take a step back from it, okay? You’re stressing out about a wedding with an indefinite date, indefinite guest list, and indefinite details. I’ll talk to you later.”
He hung up without waiting for Kate to respond. He dropped the cell on the sink counter and leaned on the dark-veined marble top. He shut his eyes, his head lowered, hair tumbling over his forehead and cheeks. He thought. He imagined. He wondered. What would it have been like? If his dream spoke more than what he believed, what would she have been like?
Rihanna.
The same name as the woman he spoke to at a club more than five months ago who became a fleeting promise. Nevertheless, her face burned into his memory. He couldn’t overlook the similarities between the real angel and his dream angel. They both had the same thick mane of midnight hair and unusual rainbow eyes. The same—yes—ears. Even the voice of the real Rihanna had sounded like the music in his dreams. She remained the reason for his late night excursions with his buddies, haunting all the local clubs and bars and pubs. Ever searching.
Never finding.
Bryce turned his face to the mirror. The breath of morning filtering through his windows provided the only light. The fiery glow highlighted the evidence of his pain etched in the creases of his forehead and the pull of his frown. A pain based solely in the hopes of a dream.
His hand continued to throb against the cold marble. He turned his palm skyward. A blind sweep of his gaze over his hand showed nothing but the thoughts of his dream and the memories of the night at the club. Upon more focused inspection, he saw the mark, red and swollen. His mother said he was born with the mark, which resembled a healed gash from pointer finger to heel. An unusual skin defect or a scar with no nerve damage or health risks, surgery was never an option. Just a simple mark that throbbed every morning he woke from a dream of the woman.
“Maybe, someday, this will all make sense,” he murmured to the mark on his hand. “Maybe, someday, I’ll know why.”
* * * *
“You’re late,” Mae pointed out, her magnified brown eyes turning toward the clock behind her. She scrunched her face, pushing the glasses higher on the bridge of her hooked nose. “Again, might I add.”
Bryce watched the elderly woman walk away from the pharmacy counter, a scowl pressing to show on his mouth. His first customer of the day exchanged a glance between him and the store manager. Her brows lifted in a short gesture of exasperation before pulling a credit card from her wallet. Bryce took a calming breath before shedding his most appeasing smile on his customer.
“She forgot her cup of joe this morning, huh?” the woman commented softly. As deep as the desire burned to agree with her, he simply chuckled in response. “I’m picking up a prescription for Duboski.”
Bryce retrieved the woman’s bag, rang her up, and turned his attention to filling the prescriptions already called in by local physicians. Into his third order, his morning hit the top of the Officially Ruined list when Kate interrupted him, bearing a cup of coffee from Starbucks and a spring-sweet smile. Bryce forced a counter smile, despite his lack of any remote happiness in seeing his fiancée. In the brief moments he took to compose himself and finish his order, he thought back to a time when he would have given anything to see Kate all hours of the day.
Then he bumped into Rihanna at a club the night after he proposed to Kate, and everything changed. He felt like a shell of a man. No joy. No pride. He was just another human being, moving through the motions on a daily basis. Kate’s professional attire did little to draw his attention. The brilliant flash of her engagement ring against the fluorescent lamps overhead made his stomach flop, a ten-thousand dollar ring with a carat and a half stone as the centerpiece. Picking it out was easy. Giving it to her was easy.
Now, it just didn’t feel right.
Bryce laid aside the finished order and met Kate on the opposite side of the counter. She handed him the coffee with a chaste kiss against his mouth. She had styled her asymmetrically-cut brown hair the way he used to like it, with the addition of two diamond hair clips holding back her chin-length layers from the right side of her face. She wore a pair of pearl earring he had given her as a Christmas present two years earlier, along with a matching necklace around her slender throat. She stood a whole foot shorter than him, even with her three-inch pumps on. Then again, he stood at six-three, a little taller than average.
“Thanks for the coffee. I have a feeling I’ll be needing it today,” Bryce finally said. Kate shrugged, her rouge lips pursed.
“Daddy would like your parents to come by for dinner tonight. What time do you get off work, sweetie?” Kate asked. She put on her most innocent face, one that caused most men to drop to the floor and do anything she asked. Fortunately, Bryce had built up immunity to her antics.
“I’m here all day until my work is done.”
“Honey, you can’t possibly be here later than six. Daddy would be so disappointed.”
“I’m sure Daddy would understand his future son-in-law working to support his daughter. Wouldn’t you?” Bryce asked, lifting the coffee to his mouth. As he let the shock of the strong liquid burn down his throat, he glanced Kate over once. She seldom wore skirt suits like the one she had on now, taking preference to pantsuits. She flushed despite the lack of emotion behind his casual trek. “Meeting?”
“I’ll be helping our mothers with this latest case. The D.A. is stopping in with the evidence requested by your mother. So here I am, all dressed up to sit in the office. What time is your lunch?”
“It depends.”
“We can go over to Nikki’s and pick up a sandwich. Is that okay?”
“Sure. Let me get back to work. Mae had a meeting with the Punisher today. I have a feeling I’ll be under the hawk’s eyes until she retires,” Bryce said, lowering his voice. Kate snorted, an unflattering sound for a law student to make. Bryce shrugged. “Thanks again for the jolt. I’ll call you later.”
Kate shared one more kiss with him before adjusting her suit jacket and hurrying out of the store, nearly barreling down Bryce’s assistant. Mindy reeled around toward Kate and sneered, shaking her head as his fiancée went on her way as if she did nothing wrong.
“Your woman there needs to watch where she’s going. No offense,” Mindy said as she walked past him and tucked her purse in a small cubby under the counter. “One day, she’s gonna slam into her worst enemy.”
Without a word, Bryce agreed. That’s Kate. Nose-turned-up-to-the-world Kate.
“You know Bryce. You’re such a nice guy. Why do you put up with it?” Mindy asked, signing in and straightening the small mess around the register from the closing shift the night prior. The young woman was in her early twenties, spunky and true to herself. She didn’t dye her mousy hair or apply tons of makeup. She had a rounder figure, and didn’t care. She was genuinely happy and confident. Something, Bryce realized, he lost shortly after Kate took over his life.
“She’s not that bad,” Bryce covered lamely. He rounded the counter and joined Mindy at the register. “She has her days.”
“Keep telling yourself that and you’ll end up on the statistics chart for the greater divorced America.” Mindy shrugged. “But, it’s none of my business.”
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