politics and the movie industry, and the discussions on the future of both were lively and sometimes more than a little intense. But Joe was in his element, his blue eyes sparkling with interest, and for the first time since the shooting, he seemed like his old self. Rebecca could have sat there for hours, just listening to him talk.
Meredith, however, changed the entire mood with just a few carelessly chosen words. The meal was almost over—Inez was serving her fabulous praline cheesecake—when Meredith took advantage of a sudden lull in the conversation to turn her attention on Austin. “So, Austin,” she said brightly, “how is the investigation going now that you’ve had time to check out the guest list? You must have narrowed down some suspects.”
Just that easily, silence fell like a rock. For a moment, Austin didn’t say a word. A muscle clenched in his jaw, and he just looked at her. But everyone at the table was waiting for his answer, and he finally said quietly, “I can’t discuss that at this point. The investigation is ongoing, and I still have a lot of leads to follow up.”
“But what about suspects?” she pressed. “You must have some idea of who the shooter is by now. You’ve been talking to people all week.”
“This kind of case takes time to solve,” he retorted. “You don’t do it overnight.”
“But—”
“That’s enough, Meredith,” Joe growled. Glaring at her from the opposite end of the dining room table, he gave her a hard look that anyone who knew him well was familiar with. Without saying a word, he told her to shut up. Glancing at his guests, he smiled wryly. “I don’t know about the rest of you, but I don’t want to talk about violence at the dinner table. It doesn’t do a lot for the digestive system.”
Far from intimidated by his warning look, Patsy just barely resisted the urge to scream at him. How dare he correct her in front of guests! She could talk about anything she wanted to, and there wasn’t a damn thing he could do about it!
“I would have thought you’d want to know who your enemies are,” she said coldly. “But if you want to live in a fairy tale and pretend everything is hunky-dory, go ahead. I know where you want to be buried.”
Urged on by that voice in her head that always seemed to get her in trouble, Patsy knew she may have gone too far, but she didn’t care. He could be such a jackass sometimes. She didn’t know what Meredith had ever seen in him. If he hadn’t been so damn rich, she, herself, would have walked away from him years ago. But she’d been alone and poor before, and rich was better—even if that meant she did have to put up with Joe Colton.
Not, she silently amended with a secret smile, that she might have to do that for much longer. Somebody else out there wanted him dead. They’d tried to kill him once. They were bound to try to do it again. And next time they just might succeed. Then she’d have all that lovely money to herself, and she’d never have to deal with Joe Colton again.
Three
The nightmare came out of the darkness like a thief in the night, grabbing her before she even thought to note the danger. Coming awake with a startled cry of horror, Louise Smith bolted up in bed, her brown eyes wide and unfocused, her heart slamming against her ribs. In her subconscious, vague, shadowy images rose up before her, terrifying her, and for a moment, she couldn’t even have said where she was. Then she blinked, and the neat feminine decor of her bedroom came into focus and she realized she was safe and sound in her modest little home in Jackson, Mississippi.
It was then that the tears started.
Suddenly cold all the way to the bone in spite of the fact that it was a warm summer night, Louise wrapped her arms around herself and rocked back and forth in her bed. The nightmares had become more frequent over the course of the last few months—and more terrifying. She’d had them for years, ever since she’d woken up one morning at the St. James Clinic with no memory of who she was, but they’d never been so bad before. Every night for the past week, she’d hardly closed her eyes when she went to bed before the nightmares began. And they were always the same—a little girl crying out for her mommy in the dark. And she was the mommy the little girl cried out for.
A sob welled up from deep inside her, and she could no more hold it back than she could change the fact that she was Patsy Portman, a woman with a prison record and a history of mental disability, a woman who’d had a baby girl taken from her soon after her birth that was still, to this day, lost to her. Just thinking about that still made her cringe. What kind of monster was she?
When the hospital staff at the St. James Clinic had told her about her past, she was sure that there had to be some mistake. She wasn’t that kind of person. She couldn’t be! She might not remember who she was, but surely she would know if she’d killed a man! But then her doctor had shown her her prison record, and there was no denying that she was as amoral as she’d been told she was. Horrified, she’d vowed to change her life right then and there.
The first thing she’d done was return to Mississippi and her last known address, where she’d changed her name to Louise Smith so she could start her new life with a clean slate. But putting the past behind her hadn’t been that easy. She’d had no references to get a job, no education that she knew of, no skills. Finally she’d gotten a job at the University of Mississippi. She’d worked hard, and with time, she’d eventually risen through the ranks to become the head of administration services.
She was proud of that and all that she’d accomplished, but there were some things she couldn’t change regardless of how hard she tried. Her past was still lost to her. And then there were the nightmares that haunted her nights. Inexplicably, they’d first started nearly five years ago, and had never gone away. Losing weight and sleep, she’d finally sought out Dr. Martha Wilkes, a therapist who specialized in repressed memory, and for a while, she’d felt like she was making real progress. Then she’d started having migraines, and her nightmares had gotten progressively worse. Even with Martha’s continued help, she still couldn’t say what her dreams were about. She just knew she was scared to death, and she didn’t know why.
The dreams had to be related to her past—she and Martha both agreed on that. But what had she done that was so awful that she couldn’t face it? After all, she’d murdered a man, for heaven’s sake, and had a baby stolen from her arms. What could be more terrible than that? What had Patsy Portman done?
Scared, her heart aching with a hurt she couldn’t put a name to, she huddled under the covers and told herself whatever it was, she couldn’t keep running from it. With Martha’s help, she had to find a way to face and accept whatever was haunting her dreams. Because if she didn’t, it was going to slowly destroy her, and she was determined not to let that happen.
But when she lay back down and closed her eyes, the specter of her nightmare was right there beside her in the dark, towering over her like the devil himself. Her eyes flew open, and in the deep silence of the night, she would have sworn she could hear the thundering of her heart. With the covers pulled tight around her, she stared at the darkness. It was a long time before she fell asleep.
Rebecca woke with a smile on her face the next morning and didn’t have to ask herself who put it there. Austin. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d enjoyed herself so much with a man. He was just so easy to be around. There’d been no pressure like there was on a date, no expectations of anything romantic. They’d just gone riding like two friends who’d known each other forever, then had dinner with the family and a few guests. It couldn’t have been more perfect.
A kiss on the cheek wouldn’t have hurt, she thought with a smile, but then again, she’d accepted the fact that
