by D. M. Pratt
January 2015
Published by
BroadLit ™
14011 Ventura Blvd.
Suite 206 E
Sherman Oaks, CA 91423
Copyright 2015 © D. M. Pratt
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, without the written permission of the publisher, except where permitted by law. The scanning, uploading, and distribution of this book via the Internet or via any other means without the permission of the publisher is illegal and punishable by law. Please purchase only authorized electronic editions, and do not participate in or encourage electronic piracy of copyrighted materials. Your support of the author’s rights is appreciated. This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
ISBN 978-0-9905156-2-3
Visit us online at www.TruLOVEstories.com
This book is dedicated to my children for their love and belief in me. My sisters and friends for their faith in me. My friends and publishers, Nancy, Barbara and Cynthia and the BroadLit team. And to all the women who have been taught to want the happily-ever-after dream, but courageous enough to face reality and still be willing to fight for true love.
Contents
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty One
Chapter Twenty Two
Chapter Twenty Three
Chapter Twenty Four
Chapter Twenty Five
Chapter Twenty Six
Chapter Twenty Seven
Chapter Twenty Eight
Chapter Twenty Nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty One
Chapter Thirty Two
Chapter Thirty Three
Chapter Thirty Four
Chapter Thirty Five
Chapter Thirty Six
Chapter Thirty Seven
Chapter Thirty Eight
Chapter Thirty Nine
Chapter One
Eve Dowling left Thibodaux Hospital and never looked back. After surviving thirteen months in a deep coma she’d returned to consciousness unable to remember huge chunks of her recent past. She remembered her childhood, her parents and relatives, her home in Chicago, high school, college and moving to New Orleans for her dream job at Southern Style Magazine. Her most recent and last memory was of a fabulous party at her favorite estate outside of New Orleans on a lush romantic night dancing sensually with a seriously handsome stranger. That dance led to the greatest seduction she had ever experienced in her life and ended with an orgasm so intense she was told she arched back and hit her head hard enough to give herself a concussion, which left her unconscious and in coma for over a year. When Eve finally awoke, she was greeted by the amazing, intelligent and seriously handsome man with whom she’d danced at the party.
If there was such a thing as love at first sight, she knew the moment she saw him she was his. Like Cinderella at the ball, he had pursued her, found her and stayed by her side during her dark sleep. Like Sleeping Beauty, when her eyes fluttered open, he was there, waiting and wanting her. To her utter surprise, he wanted to marry her and take her into his life with their beautiful … son; Philip: Okay, that was a shocker she hadn’t expected, especially because she’d slept through both the pregnancy and her son’s birth. The nurses had insisted jokingly that after being pregnant and going through the birthing process themselves while conscious, she should count herself very lucky. They had pumped her breast milk three times a day while she slept, fed her son and cared for her sleeping body.
Eve was convinced she was experiencing some type of fairytale syndrome, but her psychotherapist, Dr. Lisette Honoré, with her mountain of blonde hair and lizard green eyes, tried to convince Eve that her feelings were normal reactions to a set of very, very unusual events. As for Eve’s struggle to remember events from her life before the coma, Dr. Honoré said, “That’s just your mind dealing with the gap of time you spent in a coma. Sounds enter your subconscious while one is in an unconscious state. The conversations of visitors, television programs, radio shows that play in another room are carried into the mind through auditory nerves and translated into memory. Even smells picked up through the olfactory nerves can stimulate the mind and be translated into memory. Our brains try very hard to make rational sense of our lives, especially after this kind of trauma.”
“This kind of trauma?” Eve thought. She sounded so annoyingly logical. Eve had awakened into a ridiculously perfect life and, despite the rather scary missing pieces and the occasional flashes that came in shadowed and bazaar images that woke her from her sleep drenched in sweat, Eve told herself she shouldn’t care. She was happy. Right? So happy she promised everyone, especially the police, which the sordid details of her ‘accident’ were of absolutely no importance to her … and mostly that was true … mostly.
Beauregard Gregoire Le Masters was kind and patient during the months Eve was kept at the hospital for observation and physical therapy. Her muscles had severely atrophied and despite all those damn years at the gym doing classes, weights and yoga, she had literally gone to mush. Beau was there every day, encouraging her and cheering her every victory. In between the medical tests and the mental and physical therapy, he courted her, winning her trust, getting to know her and she him. They shared stories like two teenagers dating. In the afternoon he’d pushed her around the hospital grounds in her wheelchair and they had as many meals together as he could. He was dealing with “family matters,” the details of which he wouldn’t discuss with her until she was better. More often than not he had the finest chefs in New Orleans prepare and deliver gourmet meals featuring Louisiana’s most decadent cuisine: etouffé or gumbo or crawdads boiled in Cajun spices, creamy rice and sautéed mustard greens with sweet iced fruit, bread pudding with whisky sauce. Beau had fine French cheeses flown in from Paris. Her favorite was accented with figs and laced with apricot jam. Linen table cloths, flowers and candles were the finishing touches for these unforgettable evenings that made her fall more and more deeply in love with him every day.
Once, even though he got into trouble with the hospital that night, Beau filled her room with sterling silver roses of the palest most delicate lavender color she’d ever seen. Their scent caught the night breeze and made her pleasantly light-headed. He hired a mariachi band to entertain everyone on Eve’s hospital floor. The patients and staff enjoyed the show before the harsh reprimand from the squinty and slightly cock-eyed senior medical advisor ended the performance. When the medical advisor finished fussing at them like naughty school children and left, Eve and Beau turned to each other and burst out laughing so hard they thought they would never be able to stop. Beau was funny and charming, wonderfully loving and romantic, smart and amazingly down to earth. Eve loved him and in turn, Beau seemed totally captivated by her and told her he was happier than he could ever remember.
When he finally kissed her for the first time since her re-awakening, it reminded Eve of an innocent and gentle kiss between two twelve-year-olds and the night she lifted her
bedcovers and invited Beau into her tiny hospital bed, the chemistry that had drawn them to each other the night of the party, came flooding back. The sensual rush of discovery reminded Eve why she’d let this stranger seduce her in a garden during a party without even first asking his name. He was both strong and gentle. When his lips found hers, he took her breath away. Beau explored her entire body with leisurely, meaningful kisses; his lips brushing every inch of her face, her mouth, her neck. When his hands found her breasts, her nipples were already erect, anxious for his touch … his mouth and kiss. Every caress, turn of his tongue, each kiss and delicate bite woke her body from another kind of sleep: the kind that shuts down when a body is left unloved. Still, a strange little voice in the back of her head kept whispering to her, “None of this makes sense.” How could she have fallen so easily for him? She was Eve, the original wall flower when it came to men. Okay, yes, the physical attraction was off the charts, but from what she could remember of her past, she was beyond cautious when it came to men. She had meticulously placed so many walls around her heart, letting anyone, especially a man inside was akin to cracking the fire wall into the CIA. Yet, from the moment she woke and looked into Beau’s eyes, he seemed to have an instant place so deep inside her heart it had to be true love. He belonged there, as comfortable and right as if they had been together in another life and found their way back in this one. There was no question her body wanted him to make love to her again no matter how many times the little voice said, “What’s wrong with this picture?”
Dr. Honoré insisted they could not have intercourse until Eve regained her strength, which inspired Beau’s creativity. Each night he slipped into her bed and found new ways to bring her to the brink of orgasm, only to stop and whisper that they would have to wait until the doctor said it was safe. He promised her delights and bliss beyond her wildest imagination.
“My imagination is pretty wild,” she said with a lascivious smile.
“Good,” he replied. “I’m counting on it.”
‘Once they were allowed to return home’ was the mantra from hell from the senior doctor, the one she hated most. Frustrated and sure Beau was as well, Eve tried to give Beau the same exquisite pleasure with her hands and mouth. He gently refused with a smile, kissing her sweetly.
“I’ll have my turn when we can climax together.”
When Beau was gone, her time was spent cooing and talking and playing with her beautiful little boy. It wasn’t hard to fall in love with him. Like his father he was perfect. Now and then the little voice whispered that he was “too perfect,” but Eve brushed it away like a few strands of loose hair.
Upon her release from Thibodaux Hospital, Eve and their amazing son Philip were piled into a limo. They rode, wrapped in each other’s arms, through the vast expanse of Louisiana countryside, and after what felt like a thousand hours arrived at the family estate. Upon seeing the main house again, its commanding beauty and expansive, architectural grace almost took her breath away. Beau handed Philip to the nanny so he could lift Eve into his arms and carry her through the massive double entrance doors of the Gregoire Estate mansion. On that day her husband-to-be, Beauregard Gregoire Le Masters, gave her a six carat, D, flawless white, pear-shaped diamond set in platinum and asked for her hand in marriage. Eve felt the rush of warm salt tears swell in her eyes as she whispered, “Yes.” She had never felt such complete joy.
From that day forward she, Beau and Philip began the quiet process of settling into the life of a too perfect, happy family. Eve was doing her best to ignore the little voice that kept getting incrementally bigger, bringing with it the relentless, gnawing feeling of terror that pulled at her when she was alone or drifting in and out of sleep. Despite her haunting fears, all of which she kept secret from Beau, the little family moved into the guest house just off the west wing of Gregoire Manor. From there they were close enough to keep involved in the daily progress of the restoration, but far enough away to avoid breathing the clouds of plaster dust and paint fumes, which was a Godsend.
Ten months passed in the blink of an eye. Beau insisted on waiting for the title to the Gregoire Estate to be transferred out of the trust and back into his name before they officially tied the knot. The legal transfer process was finally nearing completion. Because of his parents’ complicated will and his grandfather’s relentless attempts to override the legal provisions when he thought his grandson was dead, Beau found himself buried in a quagmire of legal details that needed to be addressed by an army of attorneys. His legal problems and the day-to-day responsibilities of the estate created a layer of tension in the house. She could see Beau did his best to leave his problems at the front door so she did her best to make their home a respite from the troubling reality. Eve had met Beau’s grandfather, Millard Le Masters, the very day she woke from her coma. From the moment she laid eyes on her grandfather-in-law-to-be, she didn’t like him. More importantly, she didn’t trust him. Yes, Beau had left right after college. He did run away and disappear for twelve years. Because no one had heard from Beau for eight years, as Millard explained, in the pain and grief of losing his only grandson, he declared him dead and went on with life and the responsibilities Beau had apparently walked away from.
Occasionally, the hint of a deeper, uglier truth reared its head and triggered horrible fights between grandfather and grandson. The clashes left Eve feeling trapped in the middle. One part of her wanted no part of the sordid details behind the Gregoire family secrets, but the ever curious journalist inside her wanted to know everything. Why did Beau’s parents block Millard’s access to Beau and the estate in the first place? Why had Beau run away and disappeared? Both subjects were taboo when Eve asked questions. In good old Southern tradition, no one would speak about what had happened all those years ago and what legacy Beau needed so desperately to escape from living. Clearly Eve would not be getting any answers, at least not until she was officially a member of the family. The wedding was still months away so Eve channeled her attention to the needs of Beau, baby Philip and the mansion. So much still needed to be done to redecorate the main house in time for the ceremony, so Eve set to work sweeping away the thick layers of dust, sadness, real and historical cobwebs that clung to the paint, wood and stone that was the Gregoire Manor. Most of all Eve wanted to eradicate the past memories that clung to the tattered silk wall fabric, Persian carpets and brocade curtains. Even after they’d all been pulled down and carried away, the aromas lingered to taunt her olfactory senses each time she stepped through the front door. There were days when she felt like an unwelcome intruder as the house fought against the changes she wanted to make, but day by day it released its hold, somehow knowing she wanted the best for it, and with a creek and a windy sigh it finally let her win.
Beau told Eve her job, if she chose to accept it, was to breathe new life into the grand, old house. Beau wanted her to keep the bones that had stood for centuries, but rip away the past that covered them like a loved outfit of fine, but outdated and musty, old clothes. She was to design an elegant look for every room using her favorite colors, fabrics, wood and stone, all the new things that would someday have meaning only to them. The renovation in the house moved laboriously slow and all the wedding details ate into the precious moments she wanted to spend on her newest and favorite job: raising their new son, Philip.
Beau and Eve were the loving parents of a smart eleven-month-old who was very busy joyously navigating the countless halls and rooms of the estate’s west wing on two wobbly little legs. As Eve entered the makeshift guest house nursery every morning, the sight of Philip happily playing with his fingers and toes in his crib made her smile. The soft, pale blue chiffon curtains that draped over his crib hung from a brass ceiling hook that always glowed in the wash of sunlight that spilled in through the window. The light appeared to give Philip’s body its own aura, a magical spirit from another realm, Eve thought. Just looking at him made her smile. Loving Philip and Beau were the greatest gifts she could have imagine
d receiving. Her heart swelled with love as Philip pulled himself up to his feet by the crib bars and stood smiling with arms outstretched for her to take him. She gathered him into her arms, sat on the soft cushions of the rocker by his crib and offered him her breast. His mouth on her nipple made the world and all its problems and responsibilities, save for him, fall away. Philip was an amazing baby and Eve adored him.
Eve looked at her son and, as he stared back at her with those deep, mysterious, unreadable dark eyes—not hers, not Beau’s, but somehow she didn’t care—she’d lose herself in their silent communication and his unflinching and often unnerving gaze. She didn’t want to admit it, but sometimes he frightened her. Eve closed her eyes and held her breath, fighting against a crushing sense of terror.
Those moments and that tiny growing voice that screamed in her head something is very wrong… but what? Those moments of sweat-drenched terror were followed by violent headaches that stabbed her like a knife piercing through her skull. They came at irregular, random intervals caused by seemingly nothing, but they always came and carried with them flashes of blinding images. At first the image was always the same; a long hallway with a door at the far end she could not open when she finally had the courage to get there. She pressed her ear to the hard wood and could always hear voices on the other side saying things she couldn’t understand, speaking in a low, persistent whisper as harsh and hissing as an icy winter wind relentlessly rushing as it passed through a slivered crack in an almost but not quite sealed window pane.
Today was different. Today the images expanded into a barrage of indiscernible faces and frightening events that made no sense. Places she’d never been to yet she knew them as well as if she had gone and done and seen them a thousand times. The images surrounded her and closed in on her. Eve held her breath, opening her mouth to cry out for help, but no sound emerged only more images. These pictures in color and black and white were even more frightening than the last. Eve knew the longer she stayed in this terrifying nightmare, the more horrifying it would become.