Touched by Lightning [Dreams of You] (Romantic Suspense) (2 page)

“I have no desire to be on the other side of the camera, thank you.” In fact, he went out of his way to keep a low profile. He wanted his photography to speak for itself.

With a loud meow, Oscar, his white cat, made a grand entrance. He walked over to the super-size cat food bowl and sniffed at its emptiness.

Rita opened the cabinet door and filled the bowl. “Do you think Giovanni will ever come back from Australia and get Oscar?” she asked, stroking his white fur.

Adrian smiled, remembering Giovanni’s plea to watch his cat while he ‘found himself’ in the Outback. He found himself all right, along with a lucrative contract for
National Geographic
. Adrian didn’t keep pets or plants, since he was gone a lot, but he’d agreed to his good friend’s request. A year later, Oscar was still in his residence, and Rita took care of him whenever Adrian was away.

“Probably not. The last letter I got from him detailed his new life with some Aborigine tribe, with a three-hundred-dollar check for Oscar’s upkeep. And of course, lots of buttering up for not sticking him in the pound.”

“Ah, you wouldn’t do that, would you?”

He raised an eyebrow. “Nah. Fuzzy bugger’s grown on me.”

Oscar, as if sensing his existence being discussed, wandered over to Adrian and rubbed against his leg. Adrian leaned down and scratched his head.

Rita leaned on her elbows, looking up at him under thick, dark lashes. “Is there a chance I'll grow on you, too?”

Adrian made it a point never to lead a woman on, just as he never lied to them. “Rita…”

“I know, I know. You’re too busy to have a relationship. Lucky Oscar, the only reason he gets to stay is because he was foisted on you.”

He lit a cigarette, taking two drags before crushing it out. “A cat is a lot easier to deal with than a woman.” Then he walked into the bedroom to get dressed.

By the time Adrian returned to the darkroom, he’d forgotten about both Rita and the ragamuffin. He aimed the remote at the central music system, and piano sounds boomed throughout the apartment.

He sat at his white table, the contact sheets spread out before him. A yellow pencil marked the ones he would recommend to Guess. He picked up the last contact sheet and stared at the figure in the background. Holding it under the bright studio light, he automatically reached for the loupe. Something about the woman’s posture sent a funny feeling curling through his insides.

He decided to blow up that shot to see if he could make her out. Even with the negative in the enlarger and the head extended all the way to the top, he still couldn’t get the magnification he was after, so he reached for the 130-millimeter lens. The negative’s image projected onto the easel, and he shifted it to capture only the woman in the background. After testing, he set the exposure for ten seconds and dropped the print in the developer, watching the figure appear as he pushed it around with the tongs. Magic, that’s what photography was.

Fingers of déjà vu gripped his heart as he examined the print in its bath of fix. What he could see of the woman’s features beneath the scarf was delicate, her lips sensual and full. She seemed oblivious to the activity down the beach as she looked out at the ocean. His fingers trembled as he transferred the print to the wash, then held it beneath the blow dryer. He knew this woman with her arms crossed protectively in front of her, fingers up by her throat. She had haunted his life for three years.

BlueFire.

As he started to jump up from the table, he shook his head. Lack of sleep was catching up to him. It couldn’t be her. In his visions, she lived in a mansion, drove a Mercedes, and was exquisite. This woman appeared to be homeless, with her shabby coat and faded scarf.

Adrian set the photograph on the corner of his table and looked through the other shots on the contact sheets. As if a ghost, the woman didn’t appear anywhere else.

He sorted through the prints, but his attention kept drifting to the woman. The feeling that it was her persisted throughout the morning and afternoon. Time and again he picked up the print and held it under the light. He brought it with him to the dining table while he ate his lunch of a stale bagel loaded with lox and cream cheese.

Adrian remembered the image of BlueFire standing on the lawn, her blond hair flowing out behind her as she stared at the ocean. She found solace in the waves and the great expanse of water. He was sure he’d seen her in this exact pose when he was in that tunnel. While he’d always believed his visions to be real, he hadn’t been able to prove it. This photograph wasn’t proof to anyone but him, but it explained his feeling of familiarity with Palm Beach.

What if it was her? The possibility sent pinpricks down his spine. What if that fiery event had somehow made her homeless? Worst of all, what if he airbrushed her and never found out? He dropped down into the leather seat, letting out the deep breath he’d been holding. The thought thrummed through him, but another more foreboding thought crept in: his Aunt Stella’s prediction.

Stella was the only person in whom he had confided his strange experience. Those images haunted him afterwards, and the nightmares about drowning had gripped him in fear and panic every night for months.

His mother scoffed at her sister’s physic abilities, calling Stella a phony every time her name came up. Adrian wasn’t inclined to believe in things paranormal, but he knew he’d go crazy if he didn’t talk to someone. Stella, at least, wouldn’t think he’d lost it.

Nor did she laugh when he relayed the lightning strike and visions.

“Something strange happened while you were dead.”

He felt a tightness in his chest. “Yes,” he whispered.

Stella’s eyes closed, and her hand tightened on his. “This is very strange. I’ve never felt anything like this before. Your soul left your body…and connected with another soul. A woman.”

Adrian hadn’t realized his eyes had drifted shut until they snapped open. “Yes. Can you see her? Who is she?”

Stella raised her other hand, issuing a command of silence. Her eyes remained closed, but a muscle above her lip twitched. “She has golden blond hair and is quite lovely. But there is so much pain.”

“From what?”

Her brow furrowed, and lines gathered around her eyes as she concentrated. “Heat. Fire. Some kind of explosion.”

He couldn’t believe it. Stella could not know about BlueFire unless she was the real deal. “Where is she now?”

“I can still feel pain, but it’s emotional.” Her eyes opened, and she blinked. “That’s all I get.”

“You said our souls connected. What did you mean?”

“When we die, our souls leave our bodies and start down that final pathway to heaven. Sometimes they return to our bodies before reaching our destination. What’s known as the near-death experience. Something else happened to you. Your soul went to hers. At the moment you were hit by lightning, she was experiencing something just as traumatic. Perhaps it was that connection that united your souls.” Stella’s eyes closed, and her fingers slid over his palm again. “Your destiny is entwined with this woman of the golden tresses and eyes the color of a stormy sky. Her life is in danger.”

He had to keep himself from launching out of the chair. “How can I find her?”

Stella frowned, shaking her head. “If you seek her out, you may be able to save her. But I see danger in that. For her. And you.”

“What kind of danger?”

Stella shook her head, coming out of her trance again. “I don’t know. All I see is water.”

He sat up straighter. “Water? Maybe that has something to do with a nightmare I keep having. I’m inside her soul, and suddenly I plunge into water. I fight to stay afloat but eventually I tire out. When I can’t hold my breath any longer, I feel the cold water rush into my lungs.” Even now, he could feel the panic constricting his chest. “Then I wake up.”

Stella looked haunted. “The water I see…that’s her death.”

Adrian snapped out of the memory, taking in a deep breath of air. He looked at the photograph again. Would she drown because of him, or could he save her? If BlueFire existed, then he would find her.

The roar of flames engulfed Nikki Madsen, making her gasp as oxygen burned away.
It’s only a nightmare
, her conscious intoned through the horror.
Wake up, Nikki. Control the dream.

She jerked awake, inhaling the clean air around her. Despite three years’ distance, she still kept reliving the horror over and over again. Now the images came roughly once a month, the ripping heat of the orange fireball as it ravaged her, the feel of the dirt as she dropped into a bed of petunias and rolled out the flames. The sound of her cries filled her ears as she screamed for her mother, saw her engulfed in flames. The worst part was not being able to breathe; even in her dream the choking sensation panicked her.

Nikki snapped on a switch and grabbed her teddy bear to cuddle in the pool of light that encompassed her bed. Trying to push away the memories, she pulled out the leather-bound journal that had indirectly saved her life that day. If she hadn’t forgotten it, hadn’t stepped out of the car before it exploded, she, too, would have been killed.

The webbed scar tissue on the back of her hand looked faint now, but the memories would never fade. Her fingers caressed the blue leather of her journal, covered with tiny cracks. Scarred, too, but from age.

Nikki had always been a vivid dreamer. At thirteen, she’d decided to learn more about the dream world and what it meant. That’s when her dream journal came into existence, where she recorded the strangest of her dreams in order to decipher them. A few years ago she had mastered lucid dreaming, the ability to control her dreams.

The journal had been the subject of one of her last conversations with her mother, Blossom. More like an argument, really. Now it seemed silly to have argued over the journal and what it represented, but neither of them could have known how their lives would be ripped apart only days later.

Blossom had been sitting on the edge of Nikki’s bed when she returned from one of her photography forays. Her mother hardly ever came in her room, but there she sat, holding Nikki’s journal. Nikki felt violated and defensive as she set her camera on the dresser.

Blossom stood, set the journal on the bed and took Nikki’s hands in her smooth ones. “You are a beautiful young lady—”

“I’m not beautiful. I’m okay.”

Blossom’s eyebrow, arched dramatically with a brown pencil, quivered. “Nikki, hear me out. I have been patiently waiting for my daughter to bloom. You’re twenty-three and look at you. You’re dressed like a homeless person. What would my friends say if they saw you like this? ‘Doesn’t Blossom buy her daughter clothes? Hasn’t Blossom given her an education and the opportunity to meet wealthy, ambitious young men?’ Have I failed you in some way?”

Nikki picked up the journal and shook it. “What were you doing with this?”

For a moment Blossom had the dignity to look embarrassed. “I was straightening up in here. I happened to see that and was curious.”

“Why don’t you just admit you were snooping?”

Her mother looked away for a moment. “If I was, it was for your own good. I worry about you, darling.”

Nikki glanced down at her drab clothes. “Because I don’t dress as nice as you do? I can’t walk around taking photographs dressed in silk and linen. I have to blend in. Besides, it’s impractical.” She could never tell her mother where she’d been taking photographs and why she had to blend in.

“But, honey, you shouldn’t have to be practical. You’re a Madsen, poised to inherit millions in a few years. You should be dating, finding a nice man to marry. Then you can photograph your vacations and babies.”

Nikki rolled her eyes. “I want a career in photography. I don’t want to marry any one of those snobs from the country club. I want to be respected for my mind, for who I am, not for how pretty I can look at social functions.” That was her mother’s expertise. “Or for my bank account.”

Blossom walked to the window with a long-suffering sigh, watching the waves wash in from the Atlantic Ocean. “Your father would be so disappointed.”

Nikki whirled around. “Dad would be proud of me. He encouraged me to pursue my photography.” Even ten years after his death, she could still feel his encouragement from above.

Blossom turned at the fiery tone in Nikki’s voice. “He was humoring you. He wanted for you what I want.”

“And exactly what is that, Mother?”

Blossom cocked her head and smiled. “You spend so much time alone; you don’t date, you’re consumed with this photography thing. We want you to fit in, darling.”

Nikki laughed, though the words hurt her. “You send me away for my high school years, then off to college, and you expect me to come back and fit right in?”

Her mother did her best at a laugh. “Darling, you’ve never fit in. Even when you were young, you never wore all those ruffly dresses I bought you, never had a lot of friends or went to school dances. I just wanted the best for you. I still do. Your brother may be an idiot, but at least he’s trying to fit into the Madsen mold. You should do the same.”

Nikki saw how the pressure to fit that mold had made Devlin reckless and insecure. He wanted to prove himself, but he didn’t have their father’s business sense. She returned the journal to the place her mother ‘happened’ to see it: tucked beneath her mattress.

“I don’t want to fit the Madsen mold. I’ve got to live my life my way. I’m sorry I let you down.” Her voice caught in her throat, and she cleared it. “But I can’t be the person you want me to be.”

Maybe there
was
no place for her to fit in. She changed from her silk nightgown into baggy denim pants and the faded lumberjack’s shirt she’d bought at the Goodwill. Peering out the tiny side widow, she could see the first hint of the rising sun. Time to go before she was caught.

Nikki grabbed the glass cleaner and climbed out the back door of the plain, brown van parked at the rear of a used car lot in West Palm Beach. With three quick strokes, she wiped off the price she’d written in shoe polish the night before. Back inside, she pinned her long curls back, tying a scarf over her head. She poured bottled water into a basin and brushed her teeth, tossed the foamy water out the back, then made her miniscule bed. After climbing into the driver’s seat, she pulled out of the lot a full hour before it opened. Some of the used lots erected barbed-wire fences around their perimeter, limiting where she could park at night without being detected or towed away. She rotated between seven different spots, including alleys and hotel parking lots, so she didn’t arouse attention.