ONE
The night after the fierce storm, Alice dreamed while she lay in the circle of Dylan Fall’s arms.
She was again sitting in front of the vanity mirror at the Twelve Oaks Inn—that lovely home overlooking the lake where Dylan had first told her she was special to him, where she’d first realized she was more than passingly pretty in an edgy, “I don’t take any shit” kind of way. She was beautiful. Desirable. That was a truth she’d read in Dylan’s eyes that night.
In the dream, Deanna Shrevecraft, the sophisticated, kind owner of the Twel
ve Oaks Inn who had been so knowing and compassionate of Alice’s awkwardness during the romantic getaway, was once again applying her makeup.
“Your eyes are so pretty,” Deanna murmured as she gently stroked on eye shadow.
“Dylan doesn’t like the way I wear my makeup,” Alice confessed impulsively, once again experiencing a sharp pain of embarrassment at the memory of Dylan’s words. “I hate that you darken your eyebrows. And you shouldn’t put so much liner and mascara on your eyes.”
“He doesn’t like to see you hiding yourself. He knows there’s something special underneath,” Deanna said matter-of-factly.
“If you think basket-case geeks are special,” Alice mumbled.
“Some are,” Deanna assured with a glance of amusement. She reached for a tray of eye pencils. Something glittered on her wrist, capturing Alice’s attention. An uneasy feeling coursed through her.
“How did you get that bracelet?” Alice demanded. She noticed Deanna’s startled expression. “I mean . . .” What did Alice mean, snapping at Deanna that way? “It’s so pretty,” she faltered awkwardly. The vision of the unique bracelet on Deanna’s wrist felt wrong somehow. Out of place. But Alice’s dreaming brain struggled to recall why exactly.
“My husband gave it to me,” Deanna said, stepping toward her with an eye pencil in her hand. Alice lunged back when she saw the stains and burns on her gripping fingers, the dirty fingernails. A familiar chemical odor entered her nose, toxic and foul. She looked up, startled, and saw the gray pallor of a ravaged face. Deanna had disappeared. In the magical way of dreams, Sissy had taken her place.
Alice’s mother, Sissy Reed, was forty-five years old. She could easily pass for seventy. It was one of the many hazards of being a methamphetamine cook and abuser.
Anger flooded Alice, not because of the vision of her mother, but because Sissy dared to wear the exquisite rare bracelet. She grabbed at her mother’s bony wrist, lifting the bracelet with the ridge of her finger.
“This isn’t yours. You stole it. Your husband didn’t give it to you! You don’t even have a husband, Sissy.” She pushed at the other woman’s arm disdainfully, guilt mixing with disgust when she realized how hollow and insubstantial Sissy felt . . . when she saw how she stumbled back at her shove.
“You never would call me Mom,” Sissy accused, her passive-aggressive whine an all too familiar splinter under Alice’s skin.
“You never did earn the title.”
Her disgust and guilt stung like acid at the back of her throat. So did her longing for something different. Something more.
Before her eyes, Sissy altered, transforming into a beautiful pale-faced woman with large blue eyes—eyes that looked very much like Alice’s, except they were wide with terror. Alice realized with her own sense of dawning horror that there was bright crimson liquid wetting the side of the woman’s cheek and neck. She reached out to Alice, desperate in her intent, and Alice again saw the delicate gold bracelet on her wrist.
“Run, Addie. Hide!”
Alice awoke, gagging in fear.
She looked wildly around the shadow-draped bedroom, searching for a threat. Her heart was beating like it might explode any second now.
Within seconds, Dylan’s embrace penetrated her anxiety. Eased it. She was in Dylan’s suite at Castle Durand. She was in his arms.
Safe.
She exhaled shakily, willing her racing heart to slow.
With waking rationality and returning memory, Alice recognized that the unique gold bracelet belonged to neither Deanna Shrevecraft nor Sissy Reed. The last woman in the dream, Lynn Durand, had been the true owner of it.
She’d seen that bracelet and the wearer in dreams before tonight. In fact, she’d thought she’d seen the woman walking right in front of her while she was wide awake. At the time, she’d wondered if it was a ghost. Later, she’d realized it was her own long-forgotten memory resurfacing within the familiar setting of the Durand mansion.
Lynn was the wife of Alan Durand, the maverick brilliant businessman who had founded Durand Enterprises, the multibillion-dollar international company that manufactured everything from candy to yogurt to sports drinks. Durand chocolates and confections were a mainstay across every candy counter in the world. Just through the surrounding woods was another Durand legacy: Camp Durand, an acclaimed summer camp that served at-risk children from Chicago and Detroit. Camp Durand was Alan and Lynn’s favorite charitable endeavor. Alice was a Camp Durand counselor, one of fifteen MBA graduates who had been hand-picked by Durand executive officers to compete for nine highly coveted Durand junior management positions.
Was she really just going on her third week at Camp Durand? Time had become so difficult to gauge. Especially since a few days ago, when Alice’s life had been heaved completely upside-down.
Really, the first shaking of Alice’s known world came the moment she’d walked into the business department’s dean’s office months ago for an interview with the impossibly gorgeous, light-years-out-of-her-league CEO of Durand Enterprises, Dylan Fall: the man who currently held her naked body against his own.
The man who currently held her naked heart in his hand.
“I knew I would care about you. I had no idea I’d fall in love with you.”
She pressed her fingers against her breastbone. Her heart squeezed with anguished wonder at the memory of Dylan saying those words just hours ago, following their stormy lovemaking. The memory felt very beautiful to her: fragile and tender, new and raw, the weight of the reality of his words seemingly too big to hold inside her. She was desperate to believe him, but she wasn’t sure she could.
Especially given the magnitude of all the other information she’d been told in the last few days. The nightmare from which she’d awakened brought it home to her. She was very confused.
Very afraid?
In his sleep, Dylan shifted slightly and pulled her tighter against him. Unnamed emotion swelled in her chest, feeling like an expanding balloon. For a few panicked seconds, she couldn’t breathe from the pressure of it. Jesus. How was it possible for her to have acquired this level of feeling for him when she’d barely known he existed these last few months, and only been intimate with him for an even shorter period of time?