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The blissful smile on his face trapped her breath in her lungs.Again, he raised his hand.This time, his fingers moved in a gentle undulation, as if he was touching something… or someone.
The pain that ripped through her was as irrational as it was impossible to dismiss.
“Zach.”As selfish as it sounded, she didn’t want him trapped in a dream with someone else when she was right here next to him.
His head jerked but he didn’t wake.
“Farrah,” he said on a long sigh.“Farrah.”
Bethany froze, but her brain buzzed with a hundred thousand thoughts.
Farrah.
She frowned.The name sounded familiar.It was unique enough that she didn’t think she’d misunderstood it.
Farrah.
She sucked in a breath as the memory of where she’d seen it blazed in her mind.Ice and a tsunami of foreboding overwhelmed her.
Sliding out of bed, she quickly donned a discarded T-shirt and left the room.It was too early for any of the staff to be up, which was a blessing.She didn’t want anyone witnessing her slide into despair and insanity.
She opened the French doors and stepped out onto the terrace.
The sight of the shallow and deep pools surrounding the house caused her anxiety to escalate.Forcing it aside, she skirted the building until she reached the long slab of pavement that dissected the shallow pool.
Heart thumping, she fixed her gaze on her target and walked along the pavement to the structure she’d seen Zach emerge from last night.
Up close, she noticed that the rocks had been smoothed into similar oblong shapes.She also saw the thick, multi-colored candle burning to one side, sending the scent of jasmine and eucalyptus into the thin night air.
Her heart rose and fell, her pulse frantically racing as she took a final step closer.
There, inscribed on the largest stone, was the name she’d just heard on the lips of the man she loved.The man whom she’d dared to think could one day belong to her as surely as her heart belonged to him.
Farrah.
“Bethany.”Her name was a low imploration.And a hard command.
She whirled.
Zach stood behind her, clad only in the boxers he’d hastily pulled on.
He was so beautiful in the moonlight, so utterly breathtaking.And, she realized with a cold stab of reality, so utterly out of her reach.Still she couldn’t look away, couldn’t deny her heart one last chance to stop the shattering she knew was coming.“What is this place?”she asked.
He shook his head slowly, his eyes intensely forbidding.“Don’t ask, Bethany.Please.”
“I can’t not,” she replied.
His chest rose and fell in a shaky exhalation.And he waited.
“Who is Farrah, Zach?”she asked, although in her heart of hearts, she knew she must be a former lover.Or more.
Bethany remembered seeing her name in a newspaper in Paris.But lumped together with a bunch of other names, she’d had no way of knowing its significance.
Well, she was about to find out.
“Farrah was my wife.We were married for one day.Then I killed her.”
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