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In truth, Sierra and Caleb were her inspiration. Despite the fact they had been separated for many years by lies and deception, the couple had found their way back to each other last year. Caleb had stepped in to protect Lily when her life was in danger. Now were married and blissfully awaiting the birth of their first child. Caleb liked to say they’d never stopped loving one another – they’d just lost their way. The fact that they’d overcome incredible odds to end up together served as a reminder to her that with love all things were possible.
Tears misted her eyes as a feeling of deep longing swept through her. She wanted a man to look at her the way Caleb was gazing at Sierra. She wanted a love that withstood all the bad things that life threw at you. She wanted her happily ever after moment, complete with a vintage wedding dress and a handsome groom waiting for her at the altar. She wanted the fairytale.
Who was she kidding? She wasn’t Sierra Jackson Matthews. She wasn’t a beautiful heiress brought up in a world of unimaginable wealth and influence. She wasn’t the owner of the Horseshoe Ranch, one of the biggest ranches this side of Texas. She was plain old Marissa Santana. Sierra’s best friend. The working girl with the middle class background and the over-sized mouth. But who was she really? Who did she belong to? Whose eyes did she have? Did she resemble her Mama or her Daddy? She had to rid herself of these crazy questions, ones that kept her up half the night, creating dark circles under her eyes and leaving her with lingering feelings of self-doubt.
What difference did it make? She’d been raised with all the love and care in the world by Eddie and Carmen Santana, two kindhearted souls who’d taken her into their home and adopted her at the age of five. They had raised her, along with their biological son, Tony, in a modest, God fearing home filled with love and affection. Her adopted parents had always told her that she was “the child of their dreams if not their bodies”. And that would’ve been enough for her, had it not been for the periodic flashes of memory that came to her at various periods in her life. Although the flashes were indistinct, fleeting images, they stirred up painful feelings of great happiness and unbearable loss. And there were the nightmares. Dark, terrifying dreams of fire and ash that left her shaking and sobbing.
The insistent peal of her cell phone gained her attention and she quickly glanced at the caller ID, letting out a loud groan as she instantly recognized her brother’s phone number on the display. He had been blowing up her phone for the last few hours with non-stop phone calls. Not to mention he’d called her a few times while she was the shower.
“Leave me alone, Tony,” she pleaded as she willed herself not to pick up the call. Ignoring her brother’s phone calls was an exercise in futility. She knew him well enough to know he would keep calling her phone until she answered. She let out a sigh and picked up the phone.
“Hi, Tony. What’s going on?” she asked in a clipped tone. “I was at Sierra’s baby shower and I see you’ve been calling me repeatedly.”
“Your baby brother needs you, Marissa.”
“You’re not my baby brother. You’re three years older than I am.”
Tony laughed on the other end of the line. “But I know you’d still do anything for me, right?”
Marissa rolled her eyes, wishing she had never taken his call in the first place. Tony usually called her to borrow money or to fill her in on some ridiculous personal matter such as his latest girlfriend drama. She was tired of being his personal ATM machine and twenty-four seven sounding board. It was time for her brother to grow up and get a life. As it was, he was draining her of the little energy she possessed.
“I’m about to pull into my driveway. I’m in need of a serious bubble bath and a glass of Merlot. Can I call you tomorrow? It’s been a long day.”
“I know you’re not going to desert me in my hour of need,” Tony said in a whiny voice.
“If you’re calling me again for money, I’m all tapped out. Like I told you last time, I am not your ATM machine or your personal bank. If you insist on gambling away your money, you need to make sure it’s your hard earned money that you’re throwing away. I work way too hard to throw good money after bad.” She hated to be short with her brother, but enough was enough. She’d prayed for him, given him the benefit of the doubt and waited patiently for him to grow up. So far it hadn’t happened.
Marissa could hear the sound of sniffles over the phone. “Baby sister, it’s serious this time. Really serious. I’m in the hole real deep this time. Problem is...if I don’t get the money into certain people’s hands tonight, you may be singing at my funeral.”
She put her head on the steering wheel and began to massage her pounding temples with her free hand. It never failed. Her brother’s phone calls always gave her a migraine. Time after time she told herself she wasn’t going to let her brother pull her back into his sordid situations. Yet time after time she found herself being dragged back into Tony’s messes.
“Marissa? Are you listening? They’ve made threats to kill me...to chop me up into small, unrecognizable pieces. They want their money tonight. Marissa? Marissa? Can you hear me?”
At that moment she was paralyzed by a feeling of intense, pulsing fear. As a result, her hands began to tremble. These low lives weren’t playing around. They were threatening violence, perhaps even death. She couldn’t lose her brother! Beside her parents, Tony was her closest living relative. For a moment she was swept up in a dark current of sadness and overwhelming pain. The feeling wasn’t unfamiliar, she realized. Goosebumps tingled on her arms and she willed herself to remember where and when she’d experienced these powerful emotions before. For a second she felt as if she could almost remember a smell of burning leaves on an icy cold night. And then it was gone, along with her tidbit of memory.
This wasn’t the first time she had been catapulted into the past, courtesy of a fragment of memory she couldn’t place.
“Are you still there?” Tony asked in a teary voice.
“I’m here, Tony. I’ll always be here for you. You’re my brother,” she responded, her voice full of emotion. “I love you.”
She heard a loud sigh of relief on the other end of the phone. “So, you’ll do it then? You’ll meet Ronnie at the Limelight with the money?”
“The Limelight? That place is practically condemned. You know the wharf is a dangerous place even in broad daylight.”
“You’ll be fine. You won’t even have to get out of your car. I’ll let Ronnie know you’ll hand off the payment to him from the driver’s side window. Is one a.m. Okay?”
She made a tutting sound. “One in the morning? Tony! That’s crazy. I have to be at the office at seven.” A profound silence ensued on the other end of the line. She bit her lip. Guilt swept over her. Her brother’s life was on the line. “I guess that’s okay, given the circumstances. Maybe I can ask one of my male friends to come along for the ride for protection.”
“It’s safer if you go by yourself and make the payment. We don’t
want to rile them up by bringing along anyone else.”
Safer for whom? She had to be nuts to show up at Wharf at one o’clock in the morning to pay off Ronnie Devlin, a lowlife criminal who had an arrest record as long as her arm. Not that she hadn’t done worse, she fumed. Over the years her brother had asked her to save him from the fire more times than she could count. The worst incident had involved bail money, an emergency trip to Tijuana and a DUI charge. She was no longer surprised at her brother’s lapses in judgment, just profoundly disappointed. It was stressful enough trying to hide the situation from her parents, not to mention the endless worrying over his reckless lifestyle.
As she stepped out of her red Lexus onto her pebbled driveway Marissa couldn’t resist admiring her unique home. She’d purchased the yellow Victorian with the sea blue shutters three years ago, shortly after opening her own real estate agency, Santana Properties. At the time it had been a wreck of a place, having been written off as a hopeless case by its owner, Willie Davies, who was eager to sell the place and “be rid of it.” Over the span of two years she’d lovingly restored it to its former glory, painting the exterior and interior, gutting the kitchen, the master bath and bedroom and refurbishing it from top to bottom with plush furniture, jazzy artwork, one-of-a-kind antiques and gleaming mirrors. It was her pride and joy, a testament to her determination and dedication to hearth and home. As soon as she unlocked and pushed open her front door the smell of vanilla greeted her like an old friend. As a woman Marissa loved sensory stimulants – soaps, perfumes, candles and incense.
As a realtor she knew the importance of a good smelling home. There was an old trick in the real estate business involving the scent of baked apples and chocolate chip cookies hovering in the air as a potential buyer walked through the home. These smells evoked images of warmth and contentment, thereby making the potential buyer feel an immediate connection with that particular home. Marissa had utilized that old trick more times than she could count. And more times than not it worked like magic. As realtor of the year for the third year running, she could testify to the fact that a realtor had to use every gimmick at her disposal to move the houses.
