If We Dare to Dream

by Collette Scott

  “Pretty slick, Hayden.”

  He chuckled cheerfully. “Surprisingly, I could say the same for you. Work clothes, I presume?”

  “Of course. You think I wear this kind of stuff daily?”

  “Not even for that slug you’ve been dating?”

  Though laughter was the last thing on her mind at the moment, Jamie was so caught off guard when he raised a brow that a short burst of mirth erupted from her stiff lips. “Slug? Really?”

  “Sure. He’s an accountant, for goodness sake. Seriously? How stodgy can you get?”

  “I’ve only gone on two dates with George,” Jamie protested. “And he’s not a slug. He’s actually a really funny guy.”

  “There is no such thing as an accountant with a sense of humor,” he retorted. His chin lifted toward the sky in an arrogant pose. “They are famous for being dry and humorless, tall and thin, with glasses and baggy clothes.”

  “You have not described George at all, you silly snob,” she replied with a smile. “Thanks for that though, I appreciate the laugh.”

  She also appreciated his loyalty, for he had taken the day off to support her, even though it meant sitting in the hallway the entire morning. At that moment, she needed all the support she could get despite his teasing.

  “I figured as much,” he said with a wink.

  “Thanks for coming with me today,” she said.

  “Not a problem. I figured you might need a friendly smile.” He nudged her with his shoulder affectionately. “Do you want to get lunch after since we’re both playing hooky from work? You can fill me in on this paragon you’ve been seeing.”

  “That sounds great.”

  “All right. Ready to go in?”

  She nodded. “As ready as I’ll ever be.”

  Knowing that they had to pass through security screening, Jamie had left everything but her identification and keys in her car. The items that she did bring fit easily in the tray that passed through the x-ray, and she was quickly waved through. Hayden followed close behind, and they stood in the entry in an attempt to determine which room was their courtroom.

  People of all ages and sizes, in various shades of dress and socio-economic status mingled around them. To her, it was organized chaos. There were lines at every window, and none of them seemed to have the label she needed for direction. The information desk was not any better, with a sour-looking woman and security guard staring at an elderly gentleman with very little patience. She turned to Hayden.

  “Any suggestions?”

  “Look for the lawyer?”

  “He’d be in the room already, wouldn’t he?”

  “Good point.”

  While she paused and glanced around, Hayden crossed the wall to a posted list. He grinned at her over his shoulder. “It’s here.”

  She scanned the list until she saw the courtroom she needed. A sign above the hallway indicated which way to go, so she tugged on Hayden’s arm and headed down a maze of bland white corridors to the correct room.

  “At last,” Hayden said theatrically.

  Jamie glanced at the closed wooden door. There was no sound coming from the room, and she wondered if the day’s proceedings had begun. Darren’s secretary had told her that she would have to wait to be called, so she found an uncomfortable-looking wooden bench to sit down on.

  “Should we peek in?” Hayden asked, still hovering by the door.

  “What if they’ve started already?”

  Several pairs of eyes from down the hall swung in their direction. One helpful looking woman nodded toward them. “They all went in about fifteen minutes ago.”

  Hayden sent Jamie a look that suggested not believing the woman, but Jamie shook her head and settled back to wait. After throwing her a sullen look, he joined her with a dramatic sigh. Within a minute or two, he was drumming his fingers against his thighs. Jamie rested her head back against the cool wall. Another minute or so later, Hayden’s drumming extended to his feet. The tap, tap, tapping quickly elicited Jamie’s ire.

  “Seriously?”

  “What?” Hayden protested in all innocence. “I’m bored. I wanted to see the trial.”

  “Like that’s going to be any better?”

  “Well, better than sitting out here like criminals.”

  “I’m not supposed to go in there because they worry that my testimony will be affected if I hear other people speak.”

  “This is going to be very boring,” he muttered sourly.

  She sighed heavily and sat back again. Sooner or later someone would come find her. Until then they just had to wait. Leave it to her to have her most impatient brother for company. He was bound to drive her crazy by the time she was called.

  After a couple of minutes of squirming uncomfortably, Hayden turned back to her. “So fill me in on your new boyfriend. Who is he and what’s he doing hitting on my little sister?”

  Knowing he would not let her get off easy, she grimaced. She was not sure what she had been thinking when she had agreed to a second date with George. Perhaps it was that she was lonely. Or maybe she wanted to be friendly to her new next door neighbor. The man was divorced like her, except he owned the house he lived in while Jamie had just signed a lease on a rental in the same sprawling development that Ford, Ian and Grady lived in. There was no spark of passion, but he was nice enough.

  “I’m not marrying the guy, Hayden. He’s my new neighbor and we’ve just had dinner.”

  “Twice?”

  “Yes, twice, but that doesn’t mean it’s anything serious.”

  “Good, because you won’t be allowed to marry again until the four of us give you explicit approval.”

  Having spoken, Hayden sat back on the bench and crossed his arms stubbornly. Jamie could feel the argument coming on but held her tongue for the moment. Right now she could not think about George or her family’s insistent overprotectiveness. She had to keep it together, even if it meant entertaining her man-child brother.

  She sighed. It was going to be a long morning.

  ***

  Though he had spent the last five years stuffing down any dreams that he would be vindicated, Andrew still took extra time with his appearance that morning. With Smack watching on and biting his lips to keep from gushing enthusiastically, Andrew washed up carefully and thoroughly. As he did so, he ignored his young cellie, feeling too nervous to admit that he feared an anxiety attack at any moment and too proud to allow the kid to see his overwhelming nerves. There was a time when he had nerves of steel. Today, he felt more anxiety than he had in even the worst of ambushes. To remain calm, he practiced his breathing and focused on making himself presentable for court.

  While he made sure his goatee was trimmed neatly, he reminded his inner optimist that nothing was going to come of this new trial. For at least the hundredth time that week, he told himself that they would still convict him because they had no other suspects and he was the convenient choice. He had to keep the hope down. Then he brushed his teeth three separate times before he was convinced they were clean enough.

  “You’re not going to have any gums left,” Smack commented wryly.

  Andrew scowled at him. “At least I have teeth.”

  Laughing aloud, the kid wiggled his brows suggestively. “So you’ll let me know if the chick’s still hot, right?”

  “Shut up, Smack.”

  “Ah, c’mon. I have needs, too.”

  Andrew could feel himself bristle, but he could not exactly fathom why. He had only met the woman once. But she was the single person that held the keys to his life in her hands, and he had spent many nights fantasizing about her return. For all his dreaming, apparently he felt as though he knew her well. Now she was here, and he was both nervous and excited to see if his memory had played tricks on him or not.

  When he did not answer, Smack’s brows rose in surprise. “Okay, I get it. Hands off, right?”

  “Whatever you say,” Andrew muttered.

  “I get it… I get it. It’s all coo
l.”

  Andrew resumed ignoring the kid and finished his preparation, completing his tasks with enough time for the guards to escort him outside to the waiting bus.

  Every day that he made the journey to the courthouse was like a breath of fresh air. Though his first trip in a vehicle after so long had been surprisingly uncomfortable from the resulting nausea, he felt his spirits rise over his carsickness at breathing prison-free air. Despite being shackled, it was the most freedom he had enjoyed since he went in. His eyes scanned either side of the road eagerly, and he was amazed at the changes in the East Valley in the almost five years since he had been outside the walls of the prison.

  Gold Canyon, once a small retirement community, now sported a shopping plaza and a few restaurants. Apache Junction, the city where his grandmother lived, now had housing developments lining the highway, and East Mesa was built up with a new strip mall and theater. These changes were just what he could see from the highway. He could only imagine how different things looked deeper into the respective cities. How fast things had changed.

  It saddened him that he had missed all of the growth. Yet hidden deep within the recesses of his mind was the dream that it would not be long before he was once again out and about with these people, his new neighbors. No sooner did the thought escape than he was pinching himself as a reminder of his raising spirits.

  Any glimmer of hope was tamped down again when he reached the prisoner access and was escorted in like the criminal he was labeled. Out of everything that had happened to him, all the wrongs he had faced and dealt with, that was the thing he hated the most. He was not a criminal and never had been. He loved and fought for his countrymen and women; he had put his life on the line to protect them. But none of these people cared or believed him. When the tide had turned, every last one of them looked at him as some kind of a monster, including his own brother who had chosen his career over his flesh and blood. His prior service and dedication to protect was forgotten, and in its place it was said that his duty had driven him crazy. Now he was the lowest form of life in the United States, and that had been the excruciatingly bitter pill to swallow.

  Only one person remained loyal. But he hated that his grandmother, the woman who had selflessly raised him and his brother single-handedly, appeared every day with her caregiver. She sat behind him, stoically offering him her silent support and averting her eyes from any reminder of his prison status.

  Once in the containment room, he gave his appearance one last review. When he was first sentenced, he had decided to keep his head shaved completely to give the impression of where his loyalties lay, but with his new trial he decided to allow his hair to grow back in. Ignorance had never been a trait he associated with, and he knew he should appear as respectable as possible given the circumstances. Therefore, he made sure his dark brown hair was neat and not poking out in spots like some sort of comical clown, and he once more smoothed his goatee with trembling fingers. It was imperative that all impressions of him were as a professional adult. Today that did not extend just to the jury.

  Jamie was testifying today. With the consistent pounding of his heart and the nervous tremble in his hands, no one needed to tell him that he wanted to impress her, too. Though it pained him that she would see him in all his shame, he hoped that maintaining a well-groomed appearance would help soften the blow. His image of her had always been a lovely, smiling face in the darkness; today would be the day he would find out if that changed to disgust and fear.

  The early morning was spent listening to the facts piled against him by the prosecutor’s office, reliving the terror he had experienced all those years ago. It was an uncomfortable time for him, where he fought the urge to fidget in his seat. Several times he battled back the impulse to run like a frightened jackrabbit, zigzagging through the benches searching for an escape route. He did not want to listen, did not even want to be there, but Darren had told him it would be in his best interests to have the jury see him. To him it was torture. As they spoke, he could feel his chest tighten with his growing anxiety, but his studious breathing miraculously kept it under control.

  Reliving those terrible details was hard for him, not just as the man accused of doing it but also as a human being. He could only imagine how the family felt. Though he had not turned to see who was present in the small room, he could feel the presence of others and sense the hostile stares on his back. Whether they were the girl’s family or not he did not know and did not want to know. In a show of uncustomary cowardice, he admitted that he just wanted everything to be over with.

  While he battled his discomfort, the subject of the footprint was discussed. In his first trial, it had been explained away as belonging to a previous visitor perhaps before the murder, but this time around Darren stressed that the print was left only on the bedroom carpet, not in the hallway leading up to it or even in the living room. Like a skilled puppeteer, Darren weaved into a web the fine tendrils of suspicion. If the owner of a shoe two sizes smaller than Andrew’s had been a visitor, surely they would have left a print in the main room rather than just in the bedroom near the window where the screen had been cut, right?

  First reasonable doubt.

  Preening like a proud peacock, Darren puffed his chest when he took his seat with a triumphant look in his eye that Andrew could not help but notice. Long, tension-filled moments passed as the prosecution finished their redirect… and then Jamie Morton was called.

  Andrew tensed. This was it.

  A moment later he heard the door open, and then there was a pause during which the room fell silent. Ears straining and breath held in suspense, Andrew struggled to hear the voices in the hallway. They were mingled, some deep male ones and then the higher-pitched female one that he imagined was his potential savoir. The clicking of heels against the white tiled floor echoed through the silent room, growing louder as she approached. Then she was alongside, a flash of black seen out of the corner of his eye while he struggled to maintain an expressionless face for the jurors. He wanted to look, to watch out of curiosity and interest as well as his desire to see her in the light. More than anything he wanted to see if she still held that same captive quality that he had experienced all those long years ago or if it had all been a dream from the dark reaches of a desperate mind.

  She passed by on her way to the witness box, and he was granted a view of her black, suit-clad back. Though she carried herself with an unassuming confidence and self-assurance, he spotted a slight stiffness in her shoulders that belied her attempt at nonchalance. Even so, she was trim and elegant, with her thick, dark hair swept away from her face and piled atop her head. The memory of those mahogany tresses spilling over her shoulders suddenly came back to him. He had liked her hair, the way her gentle curls just begged to be touched.

  Liking what he saw at first glance, he turned to Darren. His lawyer gave him a confident nod, so he refocused his attention back to the witness chair and watched her take a seat. She was glancing down and adjusting herself when the court reporter’s voice rang out to swear her in. She turned to the jury.

  “I do.” Her voice was clear and steady and sounded like music to his ears.

  Granted the view of her profile, he was elated to see that she had not changed very much from his memory of her. Her skin was still smooth and creamy, and her eyes were still her most prominent feature. Large and dark, she was most likely enveloping the jury in those mysterious depths in the same way she had him that night they met. That momentous night that had changed his life forever.

  Then she faced forward, and Andrew’s breath left in a long, unsteady whoosh. Her hands were tucked in her lap, but he could finally see her face. With a mixture of shock and shame, he realized everything about her was just as he remembered despite being a few years older. Damn, but she was pretty. The years had been good to her, granting her a maturity in her features and the confidence of a self-assured woman. Once again he hated that she had to see him like this.

  While Andrew g
awked, Darren came to his feet and began his questioning. The room was respectfully silent while Jamie answered. He liked the way her voice was crisp and clear, and she answered Darren’s background questions with no hesitation, glancing at the jury occasionally when making a point. While he knew that Darren had explained to her how to act and how not to react, she did everything so flawlessly and naturally that he was certain the jury would find her a credible witness.

  He heard the events of her night, how she started with dinner and dancing with friends before ending up at the bar for a nightcap. She explained that she was not drinking at that point because she was driving, a point that Darren stressed. Apparently her level of intoxication would be a focus for the prosecution in an attempt to discredit her.

  That anyone would try to attack her bothered him.

  She had reached the point of going home for the evening and how she met the victim at the bar. Darren slowed his questions here, making them more pointed and detailed for the jury. Jamie continued in her smooth tone, pausing only momentarily on occasion to collect her thoughts and think about her answers. Enraptured, Andrew watched her brow furrow at times when she concentrated. While she seemed to make a concerted effort to not look his way, she did glance over his head and her eyes took on a faraway look as she returned to that night in her mind. Unable to resist her enchanting qualities, he did the same when she began to recount her run in with the victim.

  He had long ago reached the point where he could not view the out-of-control girl as a person anymore. While he pitied the family for their loss, he had more than paid a price for her death. However, Jamie was painting her as a human, and it hurt him to hear her speak so patiently about Kit’s behavior that night. She also mentioned the other people at their table that night, most notably the blonde that had testified against him.