And the Winner--Weds! by Robin Wells

Author:Robin Wells
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Silhouette Montana Mavericks
Published: 2000-11-25T16:00:00+00:00

Frannie sat bolt upright in bed and looked around the darkened room. She thought she’d heard a blood-curdling scream, but the only sounds in the quiet bedroom were the pounding of her pulse and the rustling of the leaves in the tall oak outside the window.

She must have been dreaming, she told herself, brushing the hair out of her face. A scream sure seemed out place among the dream fragments she remembered—dreams of Austin’s face and hands and lips, dreams of his kisses and caresses. There was plenty of material in that dream to make her heart race, but none of it seemed connected to a scream.

Austin was turning her life upside down, she thought with a sigh, leaning back against the pillow propped against the mahogany headboard. Just thinking about the kisses they’d shared made her hot and restless. Throwing off the covers, she glanced at her bedside clock. Two in the morning. She’d be a wreck if she didn’t get some shut-eye. She’d already stayed up far too late, reliving every luscious detail of the evening.

Punching her pillow, she lay back down. But she’d no sooner closed her eyes than another ear-splitting scream ripped through the air.

Aunt Celeste! The scream was coming from her room.

Grabbing her robe from the foot of the bed, Frannie dashed out the door and across the hall to her aunt’s room.

The dim glow of a night-light revealed Celeste curled in a fetal position in the middle of her double bed. Frannie reached out and touched her. “Aunt Celeste?”

The older woman grabbed her hand as if it were a lifeline. “Oh, Frannie. Is that you?”

“Yes. Are you all right?”

Jasmine darted into the room, her white night gown floating around her. “Mom? What’s wrong?” Flipping on a bedside lamp, she helped Celeste sit up. The older woman’s cheeks were wet and her hands trembled as she tried to brush away her tears.

“What happened?” Jasmine asked.

“I—I had a dream. Oh, girls, it was so awful!”

Jasmine and Frannie exchanged a worried look. Jasmine sat on the bed and put her arms around Celeste, hugging her for a long moment. Frannie fetched a tissue from the nightstand and handed it to Celeste. Her aunt took it and wiped her eyes.

“I’m sorry I awakened you. Oh, I hope I didn’t disturb the guests.”

“I doubt if they can hear anything from this wing of the house,” Frannie reassured her.

“Do you want to talk about it?” Jasmine asked. “When I was a little girl, you used to tell me it helped to talk about nightmares.”

Celeste took a deep breath and shuddered. “This was more than a nightmare. It was like a vision. It was so…so vivid. So real!”

“It was just a dream,” Jasmine said soothingly. Celeste took another deep breath and dabbed at her eyes.

“What was it about?” Frannie urged.

Celeste leaned over to her nightstand and lit a white candle. It was her ritual after any of these nightmares. Her aunt rubbed some bergamot oil into her left hand, from a skeleton-shaped vial she’d brought back from Louisiana.

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