Deeper Than Dreams

by Jessica Topper

  My mouth dropped open. With a smile, Adrian handed me a Sharpie marker from his back pocket and put a finger to my lips. As a former librarian, I knew all about silence, and how it could sometimes be, for better and for worse, even louder than love.

  Taking his left hand in mine, I inked Y E S ! across his four knuckles.

  Adrian gave a rebel yell and swooped me into his arms. The limo door burst open, and there was Abbey, racing up to join in our embrace.

  “Well?” Luke and Kimon climbed out of the limo next, followed by Liz and Kev.

  “What’d she say?” My brother hollered up the steps between cupped hands.

  Grinning, Adrian gave a strong fist pump into the air triumphantly, as Abbey hugged our legs. There were cheers and claps from not only my family below, but from the bystanders and gala guests who had gathered nearby to watch.

  Rick stood with his arms crossed, a slight smile playing across his handsome face and softening his chiseled jaw. Was it a smile of consent, or of defeat? I didn’t know him well enough to read him just yet. Isabelle approached him from behind. She tugged at his shoulder with one hand, while impatiently hailing her waiting Town Car with the other, but he didn’t react.

  “Mommy, I think Dad’s winking at us!” Abbey gasped.

  I gazed far above our heads, up at the clear view of stars. I imagined Pete up there with the brightest of them. You had a journalist propose to you in a rock club. He’d chuckle over the irony. Only fitting to have a rock star propose to you at a library.

  Adrian nestled something solid over my ring finger. “Chatoyant,” he said of the brilliant green stone in its antique, diamond-surrounded setting. “A cat’s eye emerald, for my Kat.” Kissing my knuckle, he added, “For always.”

  I wanted Abbey to grow up with Adrian in her life. And I wanted to grow old with him in mine.

  Plenty of stories for when we’re old and gray

  Arise and drink your bliss!

  “I think I really did wake up in a fairy tale today,” I said to Adrian.

  “Or perhaps you’re still in my arms, dreaming a wonderful dream.”

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Thank you to all the readers, bloggers, reviewers and librarians who inspired me to spin this heavy metal fairy tale. Your letters and emails, your comments, reviews and word-of-mouth recommendations continue to breathe life into Adrian, Kat, and Abbey long after the ending was written on Louder Than Love. And your love of these characters brings new dimension to them, beyond my wildest (and deepest) dreams. Through your words, I learn something new about them every day, which fuels me to write more words. Thank you for supporting the book of my heart, and I hope you continue to enjoy the rest of the Love and Steel series. I welcome your feedback and questions, so please feel free to reach out to me at jess@jesstopper.com—you rock!

  Keep reading for a preview of the

  next book in the Love and Steel series

  SOFTER THAN STEEL

  Available September 2015

  Rick

  Shafted

  Rick surveyed the crowd before him, clearing his throat loudly. Discordant chatter fell to an expectant hush, and all eyes were on him. Camera flashes popped.

  I don’t belong here.

  A prod in the back from Isabelle reminded Rick that this wasn’t about him.

  He looked down at his hands and almost burst out laughing. It was like one of those horrible dreams you had as a kid, showing up at school and suddenly realizing you’re naked. Except he was way overdressed in a bespoke suit, with a horrible Brioni tie strangling him in ways his guitar strap never could.

  But that sinking feeling of the dream, of looking down to the utter shock of nakedness? Yeah, that was there. He had no guitar to hide behind. But what he did have in his hands was a pair of gigantic ceremonial scissors.

  “Don’t hurt yourself,” Isabelle wisecracked from behind him.

  “Right.” He knew the drill. Welcome everyone, allow the hospital president to say a few words, shake hands for the camera, cut the blasted thing and call it a day. Both his publicist and the hospital’s spokesperson had been over it ad nauseam.

  He opened his mouth, and words started to flow. But the audience began to murmur again, shaking their heads and raising brows to one another.

  “Sorry, sorry.” He tapped the dead microphone, then remedied it with a flick of the switch. “It’s been a long time since I’ve had to sound-check my own mic,” he joked. “Check, check one-two.” That garnered a laugh, mainly from the under-forty crowd.

  Rick had done the easy stuff earlier. Posing for pictures with various board of directors muckety-mucks, signing autographs for them and for some of the doctors, their children, and their children’s children. Now came the hard part. He glanced down at the wide orange satin ribbon stretched out before him as Isabelle gave him another nudge. It was the only thing keeping him from performing a perfect swan dive into the arms of the city officials and dignitaries seated below.

  That and social decorum, he supposed.

  “Thank you all for coming, and for giving me this honor. Simone would be—”

  Simone would be what?

  Rick glanced around at the shiny new cancer wing of the famed Manhattan hospital. His wife had died far away from here, the city of her birth, and from her parents, who had been unable to make the opening due to unforeseen circumstances. They were the ones who tirelessly raised the money and spoke for the cause, year after bloody year. He was just another checkbook, a token figurehead. Putting money where his mouth—or daresay where his heart—was not. He certainly didn’t deserve this honor that had fallen upon him right in the middle of his band’s tour, yanking him from the promise of the road and back to the crapshoot of reality.

  “Simone would be—”

  As he searched for the right words, the devil riding shotgun on the shoulder seam of his designer suit provided some choice ones.

  Simone would be here if it weren’t for you, you pompous, self-centered prick.

  His fists clenched, and he heard the crisp bite of stainless steel cutting through the satin. The orange bits fluttered to either side of him, and he stepped back, feeling faint. A collective gasp emanated from below and the president gaped uselessly, unread speech gripped in his hand. Isabelle was at the podium now, not a hair out of place and smiling as the crowd recovered and politely clapped.

  “I have to get out of here,” Rick hissed at the back of her perfumed neck, “or I’m going to lose it.”

  “Fine. Go. Take the service elevator,” she replied, mouth still frozen in her happy publicist’s smile. Isabelle was on the board of the Simone Banquet Memorial Foundation, and was certainly equipped to provide the lip service for it. “There’s a car waiting downstairs to take you back to the airport.”

  She relieved him of the Goliath shears and planted what felt like the kiss of Judas on his cheek. Exposing him for what he really was. Why, why, why did he let her talk him into this?

  Rick bounded behind the pipe and drape toward the old part of the hospital, away from the Simone Banquet Memorial Cancer Center wing that he had just prematurely dedicated.

  Why had he even bothered to come? He was useless at these types of things. Beyond useless, actually, and tipping over into the hazardous category. God, he couldn’t get out of here fast enough. He should be safely on the other coast with the band in Los Angeles, not here. Anywhere but here. Fingers worked to loosen the tight knot at his throat as he proceeded down the hallway toward the service elevator, which was miraculously opening at that very moment to allow a worker off.

  “Hold the lift!” he barked, as the doors began to close upon his approach. He saw no one inside move a finger in response. “Dammit!” Curse New York and its bloody New York minute, with everyone rushing and no one taking the time—

  A slim, tan leg shot through the gap in the doors, ca
using them to spring open again.

  Rick murmured his thanks as he wormed in, past the tiny sandal dangling from the foot holding the door at bay.

  “Crap. My flip-flop!”

  The owner of the leg shifted a huge paper sack of heavenly smelling baked goods in her arms, just in time to catch a glimpse of her shoe slipping neatly through the crack as the doors slid shut with a smug ding.

  “Son of a bitch!”

  The expletive hardly matched the wisp of a girl who had uttered it. She had the delicate features of a china doll, and barely came up to Rick’s chest. Yet he and the other occupants of the elevator cowered as she swore like a trucker.

  “Sorry,” was all Rick could muster.

  “Me too.” The girl glared at him with eyes startlingly bright, banded in colors that reminded Rick of the tiger iron stone he used to bring back as gifts for his sons after tour stops in Australia. She mumbled something about good deeds unpunished and left it at that.

  As they rode in uncomfortable silence, Rick realized the elevator was going up, not down. He had been so intent on escaping, the thought hadn’t even occurred to him that it might not be going the way he wanted.

  Nothing was going the way he wanted these days.

  He sighed, his eyes drifting down. The girl was balanced like a stork, her bare foot nestled against the inner thigh of her opposite leg. How she was able to stand like that while the elevator took its time to stop at every other floor, Rick had no clue. Not that he could blame her; he wouldn’t want his skin coming into contact with any part of Manhattan’s terra firma, whether inside or out. Her arms were still clutching the huge bag. Rick caught a whiff of cinnamon swirling with honey and walnuts, and realized he had not eaten since landing on American soil.

  An older woman in pink scrubs commandeering a cart full of hospital supplies finally spoke up. “Here, chica.” She rummaged through the items on the bottom shelf of the cart. “You take,” she continued in her broken English, smiling and offering up a scrunched handful of something.

  Without a word to Rick, the girl handed off her bag to him so she could slide what looked like a pale blue paper shoe over her bare foot.

  “Gracias,” she said politely and pointedly to the woman. Which seemed to imply No thanks to you as far as Rick was concerned. She was a firecracker, this one.

  Pink Scrubs got off at the next floor, leaving just the two of them on board. She took back custody of her bagels and kept her eyes on the lighted panel above the door. The only number left lit was sixteen, and they were almost there. Rick leaned past her to press L, feeling like an idiot. L for Loser. The girl smirked but didn’t comment.

  Her hair was straight and glossy, darker than even his, and caught back in a ribbon the same orange hue as the one he had just snipped in half, back in the multi-million-dollar wing that bore his wife’s name. He had felt so useless earlier. Now he had the sudden urge to do something, say something, to remedy the current situation.

  “Can I buy you a coffee?” he blurted. Lame. “A new shoe?” That earned him a roll of those tiger iron eyes, flecked with golden jasper and bits as dark as black hematite. “How about a tetanus shot?”

  With a dismissive snort, she scuffed down the hall in one paper shoe and didn’t look back.

  Sidra

  Cinderella in Reverse

  Do a good deed and what do you get? Sidra reasoned. The shaft.

  Literally.

  Truth be told, she had been too busy sneaking a glance at the gorgeous specimen who had entered the tight quarters of the elevator to notice her silly shoe was falling off her foot.

  And that accent. Talk about imported!

  Guys in power suits usually intimidated her, but something about this guy was different. Make no mistake; he absolutely owned the look. Especially with that cascade of long hair. The unexpected contradiction made him even more intriguing.

  His suit had appeared tailor-made for his body, and that tie screamed spendy. Sidra would bet the last bagel in her bag that his shoes were a) Italian and b) worth more than her whole wardrobe combined. Not that her wardrobe contained much more than yoga pants and sports bras, but still. His shoes were really nice. Way too expensive (and whoa—big!) to ever lose down an elevator shaft.

  She thought back to her “where have all the good guys gone” conversation with Liz. Gay? Maybe. Taken? Maybe that too. He had had a faint but fresh-looking lipstick mark on his cheekbone, she had noticed. Shoot. Oh well.

  Sidra delivered the bag of bagels left behind by Seamus without incident. The receptionist even gave her a tip. Enough for the subway ride home, but since she only had one damn shoe, she’d have to spring for a cab. No way was she going to deal with the hassle of the MTA while a paper bootie was cinched to her ankle.

  Mr. Import had offered to treat her to a tetanus shot. Cute.

  And she totally blew him off for his trouble. Nice one, Sid. You may as well have given Manhattan’s last knight in shining armor the finger.

  She wondered if he was a doctor. Plenty of them seemed to have abandoned the white coats these days. And the way he carried himself gave the impression he was some sort of Big Cheese, compared to the other lab rats in the maze of a medical center. But why the hell had he been riding the service elevator? Sidra knew why she was on it. Upon checking in at the front desk, she had been relegated to taking the route reserved for deliveries and dirty laundry. Certainly not the preferred mode of transportation for someone so well dressed.

  The clap-scuff of her hurried pace echoed through the empty hall. Back to the scene of the crime, she thought, as the elevator doors slid open.

  “Your chariot awaits.”

  Mr. Import was back, and he had brought a wheelchair.

  “You’ve got to be kidding me.” Sidra laughed self-consciously. She hoped the Manhattan Goddess bagel hadn’t given her tuna-breath.

  “It’s the least I can do.” He pointed to the seat. “In you go.”

  Sidra humored him. Maybe he could roll her down to the taxi stand, at least.

  “Do you make a habit of this?” she asked.

  “Of what? Absconding with hospital property?” As his laugh rumbled above her, she wished she hadn’t taken the seat so she could see the smile that went with it. Like his suit, she bet it looked like a million bucks. “Hardly.”

  “No, of riding the dirty service elevator all day.”

  They passed by two more floors before he answered. “Only when there’s the possibility of rescue and redemption.” The handsome stranger’s stilted murmur was close to her ear, raising goose bumps and questions she didn’t dare ask.

  The ride going down was fast and smooth, with no stops in between. He whisked the wheelchair into the busy lobby and finessed his way to the sliding glass doors, humming something in a melodic baritone as he pushed.

  “Okay, well. The ride stops here. I’m fine, thanks.” She really needed to get downtown so she could grab another pair of shoes from home and hoof it to the studio. “I’m going to be late for work.”

  “Well, you certainly can’t go to work barefoot.”

  Now it was Sidra’s turn to laugh, as she accepted his large hand and allowed herself to be helped out of the wheelchair. “Actually, I can.”

  He raised one heavy, sculpted eyebrow. “Look. You said no to my offer of coffee . . .”

  “And to your offer of immunization,” Sidra interjected.

  “So let me at least replace your shoe. I insist.” He was already signaling to a—no joke—a long black limousine idling out front. Its driver popped out and stepped lively toward the back door.

  “Dude. I’m not getting in a car with a total stranger. Sorry.”

  Mr. Import’s dark brow furrowed as if he didn’t quite understand. He so wasn’t from around here.

  “You’re not getting in a car with a total stranger, you’re getting
into a car with . . .”

  “James, sir.” The driver tapped his own name tag with a smile.

  “You’re getting in a car with James.” He turned to the driver and Sidra saw a flash of a bill disappear into the liveryman’s breast pocket as they spoke in hushed tones. “James is going to take you to a shoe store, and then he’s going to take you to work.” Now Sidra caught a glimpse of his smile, which appeared to be tinged with the tiniest bit of regret. “I’ve actually got a plane to catch.”

  Sidra watched from the open window of the limo as Mr. Import stepped to the curb and raised his arm. “JFK airport, please,” she heard him say.

  So, chivalry isn’t dead after all, she thought. It’s hailing a yellow medallion cab to Queens.

  Jessica Topper is an ex-librarian turned rock ’n’ roll number cruncher. She is the author of the Much “I Do” About Nothing novels, including Courtship of the Cake and Dictatorship of the Dress, as well as the Love & Steel novels, including Deeper than Dreams and Louder than Love. Jessica lives in Western New York with her husband, daughter, and one ancient cat.

  Looking for more?

  Visit Penguin.com for more about this author and a complete list of their books.

  Discover your next great read!