See You in My Dreams: Speed, Book 1 (15 page)

Sophie’s strangled cry broke through his musings.

She stood with her hand on her chest and a horrified look on her face. Regret shone in her beautiful blue eyes. “You don’t believe me.”

He shook his head. It wasn’t actually a matter of disbelief, it was a matter of wrapping his head around what his heart already knew.

He and Sophie were fated to be together. His grandmother had told him so from the time he was a young boy. His dreams—and Sophie’s—just corroborated her knowledge.

They’d seen each other while they slept.

Eyes of fire, heart’s desire.

Sophie’s eyes, reflecting the fire that burned between them. Sophie, his heart’s desire. The woman he wanted in his life. The
only
woman he wanted in his life—forever.

“Oh, God.” The horrified words sounded as though they’d been wrenched from Sophie’s mouth. “What have I done?” Panic flashed across her face. “I shouldn’t have told you. Shouldn’t have said anything. I knew you’d think I was insane.”

Insane? He thought she was wonderful. Incredible. Beautiful. He thought she was the embodiment of every single one of his hopes for the future.

“God, now you’ll see me as another crazy-assed fan who’d do anything to get your attention. Another star-struck groupie who just wanted to get into your pants.” Her cheeks were pale, her eyes bleak. “I’m not. I swear, I’m not. I’m just a woman who fell in love with you—long before I ever met you.”

Nathan’s heart leapt violently. “Sophie Rose—”

“Uh-uh.” She shook her head frantically, lifted her hands to stop him from talking. “No, don’t say it. Don’t say anything. I’ll go. I’ll leave quietly. No scenes, I promise. I know you think I’m crazy, and I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have opened my big fat mouth. Shouldn’t have said anything. But…but…” She shook her head again. “But first I fell in love with a dream, and then I fell in love with the real thing.”

Nathan’s chin dropped. She loved him.

Sophie stared at him, still looking horrified. A soft keening wail echoed through his ears.

And then she bolted.

One minute she stood before him, the next she was gone, the door to the suite standing wide open. She’d moved faster than expected. Much faster. Nathan, stunned all the way down to his toes at her confession and his realization, was too slow to react.

By the time he tore out of the room after her, intent on telling her he felt exactly the same way, she was nowhere to be found.

He searched the party. Searched the faces of every guest there. Banged on the bathroom door and sprinted up the corridor and back down again.

Nothing.

No one.

She was nowhere to be found.

He looked for Luke. Luke would know where she’d gone. Luke knew everything. But Luke wasn’t around either.

Even Sophie’s friends had vanished, as if none of them had ever been there to begin with.

Chapter Ten

Self-sabotage, a whole new concept.

One Sophie had spent Sunday researching.
An act intending to hamper or hurt one’s own goals.
Or in Sophie’s situation: a subconscious attempt to destroy whatever she and Nathan had built together.

And she’d done a stand-up job of it too.

She’d taken whatever had developed between the two of them—and whatever it was had been damn amazing—and stomped all over it.

First she’d revealed the truth about her dreams, and then, instead of giving Nathan a chance to talk about it, she’d bolted. Like a coward.

What was wrong with her? Why hadn’t she hung around?

Nathan had revealed everything about himself to her—in front of forty thousand people—and then stayed to face the consequences. Why hadn’t she afforded him the same opportunity in the privacy of a hotel room?

When she’d woken up the next morning and realized how dumb she’d been, her instinct had told her to get over to the apartment as soon as possible and make things right. But she hadn’t. The exercise would have been pointless, since Nathan had already left Sydney.

She’d been too late.

Speed
had held their first concert in Melbourne last night, and according to
Sunrise
on
Channel 7, they were holding another one tomorrow night.

Sophie stared at the keys in her hand, her heart pounding a mile a minute. She had to open the door, go into
that
apartment and clean it. She’d methodically made her way through the other units until she had no choice but to tackle this one.

The prospect made her feel sick, just like it had yesterday. So sick, she’d phoned Alana, one of the other cleaners, and asked her to cover the Monday shift for her.

But Sophie couldn’t hide anymore. She’d had to return to work.

She shoved an errant strand of hair away from her eyes, surprised it had escaped the tight, ugly bun she’d pinned at the back of her head. Today she’d donned dark glasses, a cap and a pair of shapeless white coveralls before coming to work. Anything to hide the fact she was the woman who Jamie Speed had pulled up on stage.

As promised, her face had made every paper in Sydney on Sunday and Monday. She’d seen herself on all the telly channels too, local and international. By the time her image flashed across a BBC news report, she’d wanted to toss the damn remote at the screen.

Fortunately, Jamie—Nathan—and Luke had been meticulous in holding her personal details from the press. She’d woken up two mornings in a row half expecting a camera crew to be waiting on her front doorstep. They hadn’t been.

She thanked her lucky stars no one she knew had come forward with her information either.

Sophie sighed. Never mind paparazzi and media. She had to get inside and clean.

She knocked only once, knowing she had nothing to fear about bumping into Nathan. He was very far away.

When she received no response, she shakily opened the door. Just because Nathan was in another city didn’t mean her stomach wasn’t quivering uncontrollably. This was the place she and he had spent hour upon hour together, making love.

Pain crashed into her all over again.

She’d had him and she’d lost him.

Run away from her dream guy before they’d had a real chance to live in the real world.

Tears rushed her eyes, but she blinked them back.

She was a mess. An emotional wreck. How she’d managed—finally—to complete her assignment yesterday was beyond her, but she’d thrown herself into the task, determined to shove thoughts of Nathan aside.

Problem was, it was too damn difficult to shove those thoughts aside now. Not when she stepped straight back inside the very place they’d been so intimate. Her belly tumbled so many times it made her nauseous.

Sophie tugged her bucket of cleaning products inside. She hadn’t bothered with her iPod this morning. Music just wasn’t a huge item on her agenda right now.

Which meant she had no difficulty hearing the voice that said, “Good morning, Sophie Rose,” as she kicked the door shut behind her.

Sophie screamed, flinging the bucket from her hands with a start.

Someone was in the apartment.

Bottles flew everywhere, landing with a clatter and rolling across the floor. The mop handle conked her on the head before that too crashed to the ground.

Not just someone.

Sophie’s hands shook so badly she didn’t try gathering the stuff together. It would all just slide straight through her fingers again.

Her heart slammed against her ribs, and her lungs ceased to function. A dull pulse throbbed in her head where the mop had hit it.

It had to be
just-someone
,
because the
not-just-someone
was in Melbourne.

“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to startle you.”

Sophie gawked at him.

“Yeah, I know, you’re gonna lecture me about not responding when I hear a knock on the door. But we both know if I had answered you’d never have come inside. So reasonably speaking, keeping quiet was the only workable option.”

Sophie gawked some more.

He was shirtless, hadn’t shaved, and he wasn’t wearing contacts. The man who stood before her, with his hands tucked in the front pockets of his jeans, was a perfect mix of her dream guy and
Speed
’s lead singer.

There was nothing that wasn’t perfect about him. Except maybe the fact that he thought Sophie had lost her mind. The rest of him? A-okay! So okay, Sophie began to salivate. And panic.

Her nipples hardened as her hands began to shake. Her vision blurred even as Nathan became the focal point of her attention. Breathing turned into a challenge of epic proportions.

Oh God.

What was he doing here?

She tried to still the hammering of her heart with no success. Next she attempted to put a sentence together, but seeing as she didn’t have a clue what she wanted to say and no idea where her voice had gone, she failed miserably at that task too.

Sophie chose the easiest option. She stood rooted to the spot and continued to gawk.

“You look surprised.”

Duh!

“I guess you figured I’d be in Melbourne right now.”

She forced her mouth shut. It was pointless keeping it open if she wasn’t putting it to any use.

“I was there, but I couldn’t stay. Not when I had unfinished business in Sydney.”

Eyeing him nervously, Sophie edged to her knees and began to collect her bottles, experiencing a strong sense of déjà vu as she worked. Once before, in this very apartment, she’d dropped to her knees in front of Nathan to gather up her cleaning products.

“Unfinished business?” she managed, ridiculously grateful her voice sounded halfway normal.

Nathan nodded. “I’d been working on a song, and I had to finish it.” He walked over to the couch and plunked down in front of the coffee table he’d pulled over. A pile of papers and a pen sat on the glass top. “Figured this would be the best place to do that. Wanna hear it? It’s an old melody my grandmother used to sing to me when I was a kid.”

What the…?

What was he doing here? And why was he being so nice?

Had life stopped making sense in her brief hiatus from the world? She’d only been gone two days. Okay, so the time had felt like an eternity, her self-induced desolation stretching seconds into hours, but still. That was just her personal hell. Outside of her home the world should have continued as normal.

Nathan singing his grandmother’s song, in the apartment he should no longer be in, while she crouched on the floor, once again collecting cleaning products? Not so normal.

She shrugged, dumbfounded. “Be my guest. Sing away.”

He did. He opened his mouth, and his beautiful, golden voice poured over her skin, giving her goose bumps.

Dear God, the man could sing, with a resonance and timbre that set her soul on fire. The sound filled her ears and reverberated through her heart. She sat back with a thud, wrapped her arms around her knees and just listened, just let his voice pour into her.

So enrapt was she by his dulcet tones, by the honeyed sweetness of the sound, it took her a good minute or so to realize she recognized the song.

The tune may have been slightly different to the one she knew, but the words were so familiar, she could recite them in her sleep.

If old wives’ tales were simply words, they never would be told.

There’s truth in every fable, child—so heed this song of gold.

When day is done and night has come, you’ll see it in your dreams—

Sophie didn’t wait for him to sing the last line. She simply whispered the words herself.
“Eyes of fire, heart’s desire, you’ll know just what it means.”

Nathan blinked. “You know the song?”

She nodded.

He was sitting beside her on the floor before she’d taken her next breath.

“How?” His eyes were alight with intrigue.

“My gramma used to sing it to me. When I was little.”

“Did she tell you what it meant?”

“No.” Sophie shrugged. “She just told me never to forget it. Said one day I’d think about her song and smile.”

“I think today’s that day.” Nathan’s gaze bore a hole straight through to her heart, which in turn beat like a hummingbird’s wings.

“There’s something you should know.” He removed the bottle she currently clutched in her lap, set it carefully on the floor and took her hands in his.

Had holding hands ever felt this good?

“I dream about you too,” Nathan said.

Correction. He’d dreamt about her. Once. And that was a dream that had occurred
after
they’d met. Unlike her millions of dreams about him. She opened her mouth to tell him as much, but he spoke before she could.

“I’ve seen you in my dreams every night for the last ten years.”

Her jaw dropped. “P-pardon?”

“I dream about you all the time, Sophie Rose. Hot, erotic dreams that leave me winded. I make love to you in my dreams. Kiss you, hold you. Fuck you. But up until a few days ago, you were a phantom. A faceless woman who haunted me while I slept. I could feel your touch, taste your lips, see your eyes, but your face was always hidden. I’ve made love to you countless times, yet I had no idea who you were—until you walked into my life six days ago.”

“Y-you have to be joking.” Sophie hardly dared to believe.

“Not even a little bit.”

“But that’s impossible.” It had to be.

“I thought the same thing when you told me about your dreams.”

“We’ve been dreaming about each other all this time?”

Nathan nodded. “But that’s not all.”

“There’s more?” How could there be? This information was stupefying enough.

Another nod, then he smiled a self-deprecating smile. “Now you’re gonna think I’m the crazy one, but…well, I suspect my grandmother knew I’d be having these dreams long before they even started.”

Her mouth fell open.

“And, if I’m not mistaken, I think your gramma knew too.”

Sophie stared at him, dumbstruck. Just how did she respond to that?

Nathan began to sing Gramma Rosie’s lullaby again. He sang it from start to finish, enunciating every word clearly.

By the time he finished, Sophie had chills running up her spine. Partly from his voice and partly from the message he’d so clearly given her.