Free Rated: X-mas: Twice Blessed by Rachel Bo Page A

ahead and faxed this over because I didn’t want you calling me at midnight on New Year’s Eve wanting me to bring it over right now.”
    Carol knew her well. Jenny chuckled wryly, carrying the stack of papers into the bedroom with her. She set them on the dresser, intending to look them over after she changed. But once she was in her nightgown, she felt utterly exhausted and crawled into bed, praying for a dreamless sleep.
    She didn’t dream, but still woke the next day feeling sluggish and irritable. Trying to shake herself out of it, she went to the beach and wandered aimlessly for a couple of hours, one of only a few hardy souls out braving the misty rain. She went to the mall, picking up a couple of presents for Becca and Carol, and some small gifts for the seamstresses Hartmann regularly employed. She ate dinner out and returned to the apartment after nine o’clock, worn out.
    For the next several days, this became her pattern. For the first time, her apartment felt like a cage. Her space no longer seemed warm and cozy. It was cluttered. Suffocating. So she wandered the beach, the mall, the boardwalks, keeping herself busy and active. Outside, the restless whisper in her veins grew stronger, but the sounds of the city made it easier to ignore. She came home so exhausted, she fell asleep the moment her head hit the pillow, and the dreams stayed away.
    But the twenty-second dawned a sickly grey. Dark, ugly clouds dumped buckets of rain, flooding the streets. She pulled on some sweats and made hot chocolate. She considered calling Becca to see if she was home yet, but some part of her still wanted to be alone, so she curled up on the bed with a book.
    The steady rhythm of the rain, the warm chocolate, and the slow pace of the story combined to make her eyelids heavy. Setting the book aside, she closed her eyes, meaning to rest for only a minute.

    62 Rachel Bo
    She dreamed of the ocean. Or rather, the beach. She was a million grains of sand, washed by gentle wavelets, warmed by the sun. Crabs and clams, seagulls and minnows -- she had a thousand constant companions. But the water ceased its gentle caress.
    Receding, it left her, baking in merciless heat. Her companions fled, leaving her to the grasshoppers and ants that now roamed her surface, but eventually even these left. She hardened, her surface shriveling, cracking in the white glare.
    Every part of her was there. She was as whole as she’d been before the water went away -- even more so, because waves no longer carried tiny bits of her out into the ocean.
    But nothing moved on her parched surface. Nothing stirred within her. She was empty.
    Dead.
    Gasping, Jenny sat up in the bed abruptly, clutching at her sweat-soaked shirt. She stumbled into the kitchen and fixed a glass of ice water, drank it down, then poured another and carried it back into the bedroom.
    The Blood was pounding in her veins. Desperate for a distraction, she grabbed the contract on the corner of her dresser. She never had gone over it. She sat down in a chair by the window and began leafing through the pages. Each and every clause had two sets of identical initials by it, albeit in very different handwriting: D.B. She idly flipped to the back page, looking for names to go with the letters.
    Her head swam as two signatures leaped from the page.
    Devlin and Damien Blake.
    Blake and Blake.
    B&B Productions.
    Her hands shook as she dropped the papers in her lap. Had they known? Of course they had known -- she told them where she worked. Why hadn’t they said anything?

    Rated: X-mas: Twice Blessed
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    Because she’d never see them, that’s why. They owned the company, but probably had very little to do with its daily operations. She ran an unsteady hand through her hair. There was no reason to freak out. This didn’t change anything.
    But it did. She stared down at the lines below their signature. At Devlin and Damien’s address in Wyoming.
    She was as parched as the desert in her dream,