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So, after an hour-long session over the phone with a lot of begging and IOUs, I get my parents to agree to put us up for a few days.
This should be fun. Especially when my parental units are into the whole white everything modern style and the dogs love puddles.
I get packed, convince Coffee and Cream to get in the car, and head for the small airport that’s only for private planes and cargo two towns over. We wait there for hours since the plane doesn’t come in until after ten o’clock.
Getting them on the sleek private jet Cromwell sends takes time and a hundred treats.
Thankfully, they’re exhausted from all the fussing and sleep through the flight. I’m able to enjoy forty minutes of riding in a flying hotel on wheels, complete with a Bloody Mary snuck to me from a sympathetic attendant.
Once we land, I have to lure the dogs in the car that picks us up.
It’s almost two a.m. by the time I get settled in Seattle, and I should be at the office at seven o’clock sharp according to the team chat.
I sleep like the dead and I don’t think the weird dreams start until near dawn.
I’m on the secret beach again.
The same oasis of swirling waters and sapphire blue that matches the spotless sky seamlessly.
It looks like that memorable day with my grandparents, except my whole perspective has shifted.
I’m not a little girl anymore, laughing and wading through the water.
I’m on a picnic blanket with a dark-haired man, and we’re watching a tiny girl with long dark hair wade knee-deep in the ocean.
“Rose, time for lunch!” I call. My heart swells when she looks at me.
Wow. The girl has the most beautiful blue-grey eyes.
“Five more minutes, Mommy?” Her adorable smile cuts me in two, especially when Coffee and Cream come bounding over, splashing like overcaffeinated gazelles in the tide.
“Two,” I say, holding up two fingers.
“Two!” She mirrors me, sticking up her chubby hand.
The man I still haven’t looked at twines his fingers through mine. “We’re negotiating now, huh?”
“She’s too cute not to.”
“Which doesn’t mean she gets to decide.”
“Maybe so.” I grin. “But that gives us two more minutes.”
He unlaces our fingers and draws an invisible heart on the top of my hand. “Not enough time for what I’ll do to you, kitten.”
Time blurs in the sweetest kiss.
I giggle. “Rose, your two minutes is up. Come on, and bring the dogs!”
She totters over with the Dobermans protectively flanking her. They all fall down on the picnic blanket with us. I hand her half a turkey sandwich and some watermelon spears.
“Hang on,” the dark-haired man says. He gets up and walks away without explanation.
I frown.
It’s not until he comes back to the picnic blanket and hands me a long, twisted piece of sea glass that I realize who he is.
But before he can tell me it’s mine now because I’m so good at making things beautiful, I look down at the object in my hand.
It’s bigger, sharper, muddier—and much redder—than the piece of glass Gram turned into a lovely ornament.
And I think that redness is blood.
I jerk awake, gasping so loudly the dogs perk up on the floor.
“What the hell was that?” I mutter.
So much for keeping my dreams free from vampire bosses. Apparently, I can see the future so clearly it hurts, right down to the kid named Rose.
But that bloody dagger-like glass...
Is it just a subconscious warning? I’m definitely due for one of those.
But I realize something else, too.
I’ve never been one to create things out of nothing the way Gram did. I won’t be making a sea glass wind chime anytime soon, but I do know how to showcase other people’s creativity.
Miles recognized that talent pretty fast. It took me years to figure it out, and I still don’t think my parents agree, always so sure I’m destined for bigger and better things in the safe, stuffy corporate world.
Whatever.
“Just a dream,” I whisper.
Dreams don’t mean anything. Do they?
They’re figments of stress and that frozen zucchini-Alfredo pizza I regret stuffing my face with before I turned in for the night.
I glance at my phone. Almost five thirty.
Since I’m not going back to sleep after that...
I need to forget about it.
I also desperately need coffee.
My other Coffee paces back and forth in front of my bedroom door, up and alert and anxious to explore his new digs.
“Okay, okay, boy. Just a minute.” I yawn, stretching my arms.
His head whips from the closed door to where I sit in bed. I can see him getting ready to jump into bed with me.
“No!” Before I can get the words out, there’s a big pile of dog licking my face. I stroke his long back with an exasperated groan, and Cream is right behind him in a flash. “You can’t do that here, guys. If my mom sees you on the furniture, you’re stew meat.”
