CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

Now that the seeds had been planted, Erin found herself finding reasons not to work. What if she could work behind the scenes as a reporter? Did that kind of thing exist out there? Could she write a column for an online publication? Never meet the people she interviewed in person? Like a fake profile on a dating site, maybe she could reinvent herself again in a world where she could follow that dream.

Matt had brought her home after their ride and had made love to her in the shower before going home. He’d picked up a shift the next day and needed to sleep. They both knew that wasn’t going to happen if he stayed another night with her.

She found herself chasing the “What if” rabbit down the Wonderland hole until she fell asleep.

And she started to dream.

Erin was walking down a hall wearing shorts and four-inch pumps she’d sold. In her head she kept wondering how it was possible that she had the shoes on her feet. They weren’t even her favorite pair of heels, yet there they were making clicking noises as she walked the endless hall.

She followed the light and walked through double doors, and Matt was there on his bike telling her to get on. She looked around for her helmet but didn’t find it. Still, Matt beckoned.

Erin smiled, and her tongue ran over her teeth.

One was missing and the others didn’t feel right. Like they were moments from falling out of her mouth. She covered her lips, hoping Matt didn’t see her broken smile.

I’m dreaming.

Only it felt so real.

Wind was flying through her hair, which felt wonderful, but she wasn’t wearing a helmet and what happened if they crashed? All her teeth would fall out.

Wake up.

She looked over Matt’s shoulder and saw a stop sign. On the right was a car.

Desmond sat in the driver’s seat.

“Stop!”

Erin shot up in bed, her hand reached for her mouth. She pressed on her teeth, sighed, and flopped back against her pillows.

The clock said three in the morning.

She rolled back over with her eyes wide open.

Outside she heard the cry of a coyote, and before long another joined the chorus. The emergency lights outside the house clicked on.

She covered her ears in hopes of blocking out the sound and falling back to sleep. Twice she dozed, and twice the animals woke her. Giving up, she crawled out of bed and flipped on her porch light to scare the coyotes off.

It didn’t work.

Eventually the animals moved on, but by then, Erin was wide awake. Her dream buzzed in her head.

Back when she was with Desmond, she’d often have dreams of missing teeth, or walking naked in a crowd. The counselor she’d once talked to said it was a sign of insecurity. That the subconscious made you vulnerable in your dreams so you would wake up to what was wrong in your life.

So why now?

Things were steady and secure.

The only thing she could come up with was that she was revealing her truths to Matt. The man was slowly extracting her past from her and making her think about it all over again.

He was also giving her hope that she had a future that didn’t involve running and hiding. She’d been warned that would happen. The counselors in the program she’d found to help battered wives told her that once she finally felt comfortable, her mind would settle and she’d go through a growing period where she would battle the demons of her past in order to move on. If that didn’t happen, they would always lurk in the shadows threatening the new life she was attempting to live.

It would seem her toothless dream was the start of her moving on.

Instead of fearing her dream, she removed a notepad and wrote down her feelings about it. Words of a song drifted in her head. Write it down and it won’t live inside of you.

So she did. And when she was done, she opened her laptop and researched the phases of letting go of the past.

The sun crested the horizon in shades of pink, and by the time she finished her first cup of coffee, Erin had five pages of notes and it was almost eight.

She’d gotten lost in the work of battling her demons.

Surprisingly, it made her feel good. “I won’t let you control me any longer,” she said to the man in her past.

“What are you doing now?”

Matt glanced up from his tablet, met Tom’s eyes, and looked back down. “Wasting time.”

“Really? You’ve been on that all afternoon.”

Yeah, they’d had a slow day. He wasn’t complaining.

Here he thought Desmond was a unique name, one a Google search would pull up very few of and give him some direction.

He thought wrong.

He’d looked up Desmond Fleming. Looked up Erin Fleming. Used searches in celebrity weddings, elite magazines. CEOs, Fortune 500 . . . He realized early on that Erin wouldn’t have kept her married last name. In fact, she probably changed it. No telling if Fleming was her maiden name. Again, if he was hiding from someone who had that information, he wouldn’t use it. Erin was smarter than that.

All he had was her ex-husband’s first name, the fact that he held controlling interest in a company, and that he abused women.

He needed more information. A birthday . . . a location to start. Something to narrow his search.

“Earth to Matt?”

He closed his tablet in frustration. “Sorry.”

“You’re up to barbeque,” Tom told him.

Matt unfolded from his seat and tossed his tablet to the side. “On it.”

Tom shook his head as he walked by. “Woman. Has to be a woman.”

Matt was at work. Colin was at his house, and Austin was out with friends.

Parker pulled a cork out of a bottle of chilled wine while Erin tossed a salad. “Girls’ night. We absolutely have to keep doing this once I’m married.”

“Yes. You do. Friends are important in the mix. Trust me.”

Parker poured wine into two glasses and handed one to her. “You speak from experience.”

“Much as I wish that wasn’t the case.”

Parker lifted her glass. “Cheers.”

They sat on the porch as the heat of the day faded.

“Soooo, Matt?” Parker wasted no time.

Erin instantly smiled.

Parker rubbed her hands together and squealed. “Tell me everything. Don’t leave out one detail!”

She felt like a schoolgirl talking about her first kiss. “I’m blaming the motorcycle. That darn thing is like an oyster on the half shell.”

For the next hour, Erin told all. From butterflies to orgasm . . . Parker knew every detail. “But what really threw me was how I knew that if I had to throw in the towel and yell watermelon, he would stop. I never doubted that for a second.”

“It’s the Hudson charm. It’s a real thing.”

“He’s so darn perfect. Here I come with all kinds of baggage and he’s like, ‘Let me get those for you.’”

“It’s a Hudson thing. I can’t find a whole lot wrong with Colin either.”

“Does he snore?”

“No. Does Matt?”

“No.” She stared into her wine. “You’d tell me if I was missing something, right?”

“In a heartbeat. And I’m not just saying that because Matt’s going to be my brother-in-law.”