Bewitching You

by Estrella, Viola

  “Oh, Gray,” she whispered into his ear, as he continued to pulse inside of her. “I love you.”

  ~ * ~

  Gray punched his hand into the mattress when he woke and found himself lying in his own wet mess again. Alone.

  “Goddamn it,” he yelled into the darkness of his bedroom. He leaped up and stripped the sheet from his bed.

  The whole situation was embarrassing, humiliating. It tortured him. Made him…fuck, it made him feel lonely. Not whole. He had enough problems. The loss of his brother apparently hadn’t been the last straw. Now he had this to deal with.

  Lord only knew what this was.

  The dreams were unpredictable, uncontrollable, and that was the last thing Gray wanted in his life. If he couldn’t control it, then it controlled him.

  He wouldn’t stand for that. He trudged down the hallway and pushed open the laundry room door. Three fitted sheets already sat in the washer. He’d need to do a wash if he wanted something to sleep on tonight.

  That was something he could manage. A clean sheet. Wash away the reminder of what she did to him. How she brought the dreams on, he didn’t know, but he hoped it would stop before his wedding night.

  He could imagine how Rachel would feel about him dreaming of another woman.

  Rachel. She was the one, he reminded himself. She was a beautiful woman with a future in law. She was sure to become the ideal woman. Stable. Dependable.

  A loyal wife, a dedicated mother, and a confident career woman. He’d have it all. They’d have it all. Then everything would be normal. No surprises to knock a guy off his axis. That’s what he needed.

  Gray started the machine and headed back to his bedroom. The clock on his bedside table read four in the morning. No point in attempting to sleep anymore. He needed to get ready for work.

  He had a big day ahead of him...a life-defining day.

  ~ * ~

  Rachel set the phone back down. She couldn’t call Gray this early. He wouldn’t be up. Besides, she had no idea what she’d say to him.

  “I can’t do this,” she mumbled to herself. “You’re perfect in every way, but I don’t love you?”

  Oh, her mother would like that one.

  “Sure, I’ll just call off the wedding a month before I’m supposed to walk down the aisle.” See how much respect she’d get from her parents then. Probably enough for them to ask her to pay back every single penny they’d put into this ceremony, she was sure. Money she didn’t have.

  They were already paying for her education.

  Not that Rachel wanted to end up as a lawyer, but it was their money, their trust in her and what you could do if you put your mind to it.

  Those words. They were a mantra that ran through her mind relentlessly. “You could be so much more if you only tried,” she said aloud, as she whipped the duvet off her body.

  “I don’t know about that.” Grayson’s voice filled the room. “You look pretty good as is.”

  Startled, Rachel stood straight up on the floor beside her bed and scanned the room. The door was shut, as it had been for the past five hours that she’d been tossing and turning. The moonlit room showed no sign of another human being.

  “Grayson?”

  No one answered. Not a sound. Just an eerie, cool breeze that touched the back of her neck and ran down her arms.

  She shivered, and goosebumps erupted over her skin. Where the hell had that come from?

  The windows were locked tight and the air conditioning wasn’t running. “Grayson, are you here?”

  Her alarm clock sounded off, shrieking its annoying buzz. She reached for it and pressed the snooze button. The green neon numbers blinked on the display.

  Had there been a power outage?

  “No, baby, it’s not Grayson,” his voice gusted into her ear, along with a chilled wind.

  “Who?” Rachel turned quickly to see a man standing right behind her. She jumped back, bumped into the side of her bed, and fell back onto the mattress.

  Oh my God. Hayes. It couldn’t be. But there he was, flesh and blood, looking exactly like Grayson’s identical twin brother, with hair to his shoulders, tucked behind his ears. He wore a worn t-shirt and jeans with holes in their knees.

  All appropriate attire for a man who knew no boundaries—wanted no boundaries—a man who was always carefree…confident…sexy.

  A man who had been dead for over six months.

  “No. It’s not you,” Rachel said, more for herself than for the man before her. Hayes’s death had been a complete surprise. A tragic halt to a vibrant, exciting life. Grayson had hated that his brother had been so frivolous, hated that he was a reckless thrill-seeker…and that he’d died in the same fashion.

  A thousand miles an hour until I reach the end, baby. He’d joked about his antics, and Rachel had eaten up every ounce of his energy. He’d had more than enough to fill up any room he walked into. More than enough to share with her.

  Rachel hated Hayes for the night they’d spent together the weekend before he decided to jump from an airplane with a faulty parachute. The fool had probably never even checked to see if it worked in the first place. He’d loved the adrenaline rush of danger. He’d lived for it.

  She supposed that was why she hadn’t pushed him away that night he’d taken her virginity. She’d watched Hayes as he interacted with Grayson, how passionate Hayes was about life. She’d heard the stories of his adventures, and when he’d come to her that weekend while Grayson was away on business, an overwhelming desire had overcome her to feel Hayes’s carefree spirit. To absorb it.

  To be his next thrill.

  And she had been, if only for a short while.

  A smile spread across his face, showing a familiar dimple on his left cheek. “Have you missed me?”

  “We buried you.”

  “I know. You cried for me.” His smile faded. “Why haven’t you told Gray about us? About our weekend?” He lifted his leg, resting it on the mattress beside her, and reached his hand out to her.

  “No. No, no, no.” Rachel inched back away from him. “You cannot possibly be him.” She kept a baseball bat under the other side of the bed. If she could get to it.

  “It’s me, Rache. You know it is.”

  “Okay, so…” She was almost there. Just keep him busy. “You’re a ghost?”

  “Sure, why not? A ghost, an apparition, a spirit, an angel, or waves of energy that so far only you can see. Really interesting, I have to say, that the only person who can see me is the one person I want to see me. I guess that’s the trick.”

  Slowly, she slid off the other side of the bed and bent down. No sudden moves.

  He followed, crawling onto the bed. “You have no idea how difficult this has been for me.”

  “Oh, I can imagine.” Yeah, imagine him in a straightjacket. How was she going to explain to Grayson that a man broke into her apartment, claiming to be Hayes Phillips?

  So what if he looked like him, sounded like him, had that same damn dimple? Rachel had seen Hayes lying in that casket. She had cried for him and for their night together. She’d known it was in all probability a one-time deal, but she hadn’t cared. He’d been the first man in her life to push her to her limits and keep on pushing. He’d dared to go there, and she’d rewarded him for it.

  The man stopped in the middle of her bed and sat on his knees. “Rachel, you have to tell him about what happened between us. You can’t marry him and let him find out on his wedding night.”

  “I don’t know who the hell you are, but this is sick. It’s wrong. You have to leave now.”

  “I fell in love with you that night. Did you know that?” He shook his head. “No, you probably didn’t. I guess I forgot to mention that little fact.”

  Rachel’s head whirled and pounded and wouldn’t stop rehashing the details of the passion they’d shared. “You’re not Hayes,” she whispered.

  “Gray’s not the man for you, Rachel.”

  “You don’t know what you’re
talking about.” She felt the cold aluminum bat at her fingertips and grasped the handle. Keeping it clenched tight behind her back, she stood and faced the stranger.

  He narrowed his black eyes at her. “What do you have back there? A gun? I’m already dead, sweetheart, remember? A big oops with the parachute and then splat?”

  “That’s not even slightly funny. And you can understand that your story is a little hard to believe, right? You don’t look like a ghost. You look like a man who’s sitting on my bed, uninvited. So either I’m dreaming this, or you’re a complete stranger who has broken into my apartment, who I have to protect myself from.”

  In a blink, he wasn’t there anymore. Rachel blinked again and then again.

  There hadn’t been enough time for him to hide. It was as if he’d simply disappeared. The same chilled breeze swept over her, sweeping her hair back off her shoulders and bristling her skin.

  She shook her dizzy head and blew out a breath.

  “A baseball bat?” His voice came from behind her.

  Startled, Rachel spun around and lifted the bat up to her shoulder, prepared to swing. He stood there, laughing and clapping his hands. And he appeared…well, he appeared blurry. Like a television with a bad signal.

  “You’re…you’re not…” She tried to think of the words, but was stunned by what was happening before her very eyes.

  “What?” His smile crumbled.

  “You’re not all there.”

  He looked down at himself and waved a hand through his abdomen. Through his abdomen.

  “Holy shit.” She slumped to the mattress. The bat loosened from her shaky grip and landed on the bed behind her.

  “This is weird,” he said with a hazy voice. “Listen carefully, okay? This is important. Don’t marry him. You don’t love him. And he sure as hell doesn’t—”

  Then he was gone. Just like that.

  “Hayes?” Rachel swept a quick glance around the room to see if he’d pulled the invisible act again. “Are you there?”

  Nothing. She was alone—she thought so anyway.

  What the heck had she seen? Hayes’s ghost? A hallucination?

  Oh, God, was she going crazy? She’d managed to put that night behind her, to forget about how Hayes had made love to her, so sweetly and with such adoration. She’d tried hard to forget the week before his death, the guilt of sleeping with him, and the debate in her head of whether she should break it off with Grayson so she could spend her nights with Hayes.

  His funeral had decided that for her. Hayes had made the choice to jump out of the airplane. He’d made the choice, and when Grayson asked her to marry him two months later, there was no other answer.

  How dare Hayes, hallucination or otherwise, tell her not to marry Grayson? As far as she was concerned, as far as her parents were concerned, a wedding would take place in one month.

  Chapter Four

  A day of job-hunting was ahead of Sofia. Only problem was she couldn’t seem to force her eyes open. Heck, she didn’t feel like getting out of bed, period. In fact, if sleep could guarantee she’d dream of Gray, the nice Gray, and not about dead people she couldn’t save, then she would never open her eyes again.

  “Get it together, girl,” she mumbled to herself, while slipping out of bed and into her slippers.

  Life doesn’t happen with your eyes closed was one of mother’s favorite sayings. But her mother had no idea just how much happened in Sofia’s premonitions.

  Love experienced for the first time, eyes closed or not, was so much better than anything she’d ever encountered. Life be damned if it couldn’t catch up…and quick.

  Her stomach grumbled, reminding her she hadn’t eaten since lunch at Nana’s house yesterday. Maybe a good breakfast would cheer her up and take her mind off of her whole good Gray/evil Gray situation.

  “Yeah, right. Like that’s going to happen,” she said while walking down the staircase.

  “Are you talking to yourself again?” Her mother stood at the kitchen doorway with a sweet smile on her face. Her tall thin frame leaned against the doorjamb as she held a bagel in one hand—gluten-free, of course—and a glass of orange juice—undoubtedly organic—in the other hand. Her long, curly blonde hair was pulled back in a loose ponytail.

  A classic beauty, Sofia had to admit. Natural. Hardly a dab of makeup and the woman still beamed with radiance. What was worse, the morning sun shone on her from the window, making her look like an angel, which was somewhat paradoxical, considering how her mother behaved on a daily basis. Not that she was evil, just a bit ornery, that was all.

  Sofia smiled back. “Of course. It’s the best conversation I’ve had all year.”

  “That’s my girl,” Laura said, and disappeared into the kitchen.

  Sofia followed. She was hungry, after all, and what better time to talk about Mr. Lawrence’s latest issue?

  Her mother sat at the table-for-two next to the bay window. She seemed in deep thought as she nibbled on her bagel and drank her juice.

  Sofia grabbed a cup of coffee and poured a couple scoops of her mother’s fake sugar in, stirred it, and took a long, slurpy sip. Mmmm. Boy, did it hit the spot.

  Now to find something decent for breakfast in this soy abundant, high fiber, low fat kitchen...

  She opened the fridge and was overjoyed to see the pizza box from the other night still stuffed on the very bottom shelf, way back, where she’d left it. One piece of veggie pizza, extra cheese with jalapenos, sat inside. Yum!

  She grabbed the piece and sat at the table, ignoring the way her mother eyed her choice of breakfast.

  Living with her mother at the age of twenty-four wasn’t something she was proud of. Nor was it something she planned to do for much longer. It was just… Her mom needed her. Sofia had found that out the hard way when she’d been admitted into a prestigious art school in New York after high school. Her freedom had lasted a year before she received a call from her crying mother, deeply depressed and heartbroken over a devastating breakup. The relationship had lasted two years, and he’d been the first man Laura had let into her life since Sofia’s dad left.

  She’d never heard her mom sound so hopeless, rejected again for something she couldn’t control. Her psychic abilities were a part of her, and if men couldn’t get that, she didn’t want any part of them.

  Long story short, Sofia left school to look after her mom. No matter the tough façade Laura Good tried to portray, Sofia knew how important it had been to help her through that break-up.

  There hadn’t been another man since, and Sofia hadn’t had the heart to move out. What could you do? She missed school and being with people her own age who shared the same interests. But…her mom was more important.

  “How old is that pizza?”

  “A couple days. It’s still good.” Sofia picked at a jalapeno and changed the subject. “Herbert wants you to knock it off. Again.”

  Her mother smirked. “What the hell did I do this time to anger the uptight ass?”

  Sofia caught herself rolling her eyes and stopped. It was a bad habit she’d been trying to break.

  “I swear, that man doesn’t like anything I do. Is this not my house to do with what I want?”

  “It’s yours, Mom.” No point in pushing the subject. She’d relayed Herbert’s message and now it was time to duck out before her mother got any angrier. For what reason, Sofia didn’t know. With anyone other than Herbert Lawrence, she was a reasonable woman...for the most part.

  Laura dropped her half-eaten bagel on her plate and blew out a breath. “You look tired.”

  “Kind of am.” Sofia swallowed the bite of stale pizza crust she’d been chewing on. “Had another dream about that airplane again.”

  “With all the dead people?”

  “Yep, and I don’t have a clue what to do about it. It’s not giving me much to work with.”

  “Well, you’re not God, Sofia. You know that.”

  “Yes, I know, but if I can find out what the airline
and flight number are, then I can do something to keep it from going up in the air.” Sofia’s shoulders tightened and burned, so she stretched her neck to release some of the tension. Tension she hadn’t realized she’d been holding in, but what did she expect?

  She dreamed about dead people night after night and now she’d lost her job.

  And Gray, the only man she’d ever envisioned loving, was an arrogant jerk.

  “You worry too much.” Laura frowned. “You can’t save the world and yourself at the same time.”

  “Well, I can try at least.” Sofia set the pizza down, not quite as hungry anymore.

  “What about that man you’ve been dreaming about?” Her mother grinned but avoided eye contact, a telltale sign that Nana had told her about Gray. Great. In less than twenty-four hours the news had already spread.

  “I met him last night at the restaurant. He’s engaged to be married to someone else.”

  “And?”

  “And he’s kind of mean.” Sofia didn’t want to get her mother riled. Men were the enemy as far as Laura Good was concerned.

  “Well, of course. Testosterone can do that to a person, but was he good looking?”

  Sofia stared at her mother, shocked. “Uh, yeah, you could say that.”

  “Then go get him.”

  “What?”

  “Sweetheart.” Her mother grabbed for Sofia’s hand across the table. “You’re a twenty-four-year-old virgin.” She whispered the last part as if it were some sort of crime.

  “You don’t know that.”

  Her brow rose. “Really. If this man from your dreams is the only man you’ll ever feel comfortable giving yourself to, then for God’s sake, go rape him if you have to.”

  “Mom. Just stop.” Sofia pulled her hand away. This was not what she’d expected to hear.

  “Okay, maybe rape is too strong of a word. Seduce him. You can’t let these dreams rule your future. Why not take charge? Why not use it to your own advantage for once?”

  “What if it’s not that easy? What if he doesn’t like me?” Just as the question left Sofia’s mouth, she realized how absurd it was. At some point in the future, Gray would love her. It was only a matter of time.