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Category:
Action/Thriller
Type: Fiction
Copyright: April 5, 2014
Price: $0.99 (eBook)
It's been years since the dream...a memory as elusive as smoke and shadows in the night. But some dreams refuse to fade.
After graduation, Savannah traded the farm and her awkward past for the neon lights of the big city. Her life is finally back on track—until the dreams start to happen again. Now every night Savannah's slumber is filled with a man who is all too familiar, and this time he's bent on wooing her...at all costs.
Excerpt
Dream lover...
He came to her every night for the next three weeks. Sometimes they walked through forests lit with golden light, and other times they were dancing under the stars or swimming on exotic beaches under a bright, low-hanging moon. They talked for hours, night after night. Rather, she talked and he listened. He liked to hear her voice, but what he loved even more than that was seeing her smile and watching her eyes light up when he created things for her.
Sometimes he would materialize something simple, like a bouquet of flowers or a sterling silver charm bracelet. He would weave costumes that fit her as though they had been made especially for her, which she supposed they had been. But her favorite creations were the elaborate worlds he constructed for her enjoyment. A beach with white sand and glittering, purple water so clear you could see twenty feet to the bottom, waterfalls lush with vegetation and smooth, brown stone. One night, he designed an entire amusement park simply because she said she had never been to one. She had only to think of something and he made it into reality.
Tonight they had been swimming in a shallow, sparkling blue lagoon. The surface of the water had been shimmery before Savannah had asked him to coat the entire lagoon in blue glitter. Now it bordered on outrageously gaudy, eye catching as it was.
Tired and momentarily spent from the hour-long swim, Savannah had needed a break and so they were stretched out, side by side, on a large flat rock that jutted like an island from the center of their glitter lagoon.
“So then what happened?” her angel asked.
“You don’t want to hear all this.” Savannah shook her head and half turned from him. Of course he didn’t want to listen to her prattle on and on about herself for hours on end. She told him as much.
“It hasn’t been hours,” he assured her with an easygoing smile. “And anyway, we’ve been swimming most of the night, not talking. But it wouldn’t matter. I like listening to your stories.”
“Really?” She sat up and locked her hands behind her back, darting a glance at him. “If you’re sure?” Dream or not, modesty demanded that Savannah at least offer to shut up. When he nodded, she took a deep breath and continued, still a little uncertain.
The only person who had ever encouraged her to talk about herself—or anything else for that matter—was Rachel. No, Savannah frowned, that wasn’t right, not really; now that she thought about it, Rachel usually did all of the talking when they were together. But that was just Rachel’s personality, and Savannah’s other friends were more casual. She’d never discussed her old life with them, with the exception of Anthony. But even with Anthony and Rachel she’d only skimmed the surface of her past.
“Savannah?” A gentle hand brushed across her shoulder.
“Sorry, where was I?”
“You were ten years old, and the school talent show was coming up.”
“Oh right.” Savannah laughed.
He leaned forward. “So, did you try out?”
“You mean did I enter? I did. Secretly, of course. The Holbrooks never would have allowed it if they’d known.” Savannah’s eyes took on a faraway look as she stared at the myriad of pink and gold strewn across the horizon. Around her, the surface of the lagoon caught the fading light and reflected it back at them in dazzling detail. “Such a beautiful sunset.” She sighed.
“Savannah?” he gently prompted.
“They wouldn’t have immediately forbid it,” she finally told him. “Not right at first anyway… They would have been sour-faced and full of silent disapproval, but they would’ve waited until a week or two passed and then, just before the talent show, Myra would have complained that I hadn’t done something or other—some chore—properly, and Vern would have decreed a fitting punishment to be removal from the talent show.” Savannah shrugged. “So, that particular time, I didn’t tell them.”
“And what happened?”
She cringed at the memory of what had happened next, but forged ahead anyway. “Um, well you see, I’d always wanted to sing,” she confessed. “Bayleigh has the most beautiful voice, and sometimes I would hear her singing in her room, or out in the barn. She used to sneak away to hide out there every year just after the fall harvest and—” Savannah paused and took a deep breath, collected her thoughts. “Well, anyway, the point is, I’d always wanted to be able to sing, and so that’s what I marked down on the talent show entry form. I was going to sing,” she finished on a shaky laugh.
“What song?”
Savannah blinked, surprised that he had asked.
“What song did you pick?” he pressed.
“Amazing Grace.” She smiled. “It was the only song I knew all of the words for. They sang it in church.”
“That was probably the only place you’d ever been outside of school,” he muttered.
“More or less.” She nodded. “How did you know that?”
“Lucky guess.” He inched closer to her on the smooth, flat rock. “What happened next?”
Savannah shot him a rueful smile and leaned over to run her fingers through the glittery surface of the lagoon, using her index finger to create a tiny whirlpool as she spoke. “I learned that little girls who are barely allowed to talk shouldn’t get up on a stage in front of the entire school and sing Amazing Grace. It turns out I’m not much of a singer.”
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