Free Rebecca's Lost Journals, Volume 1: The Seduction by Lisa Renee Jones

Saturday, December 4, 2010
    H ave you ever met someone who you immediately knew could change your life? I’ve heard about this happening, but I never experienced anything near it until tonight. Tonight I met him. I don’t know this man’s name, nor does he know mine, but I still feel the impact of our brief meeting deep inside.
    I know where to find him again, but he doesn’t know where to find me. I know how to figure out his name—but I won’t. There are too many reasons why that would be a mistake. I can’t allow myself to seek him out because he will, without question, lead me onto a path I know is better not taken. Already, I fear meeting him has stirred something inside me better left alone; something I crave, but know I do not dare indulge in. I can’t imagine this man not leaving his mark on many women—and most men, as well.
    He owns the air around him, and yours, too. He’s strikingly male, strikingly attractive, exuding raw masculine power. He is what I think we all secretly want to be: in control of everything we are and everything we might one day be.
    I’d do anything to know and understand who I truly am. And I think that tonight, that was exactly what I was looking for: me. I just didn’t realize it until I met him.
    It started when I ended my shift at the bar and decided to go by the San Francisco Chocolate Factory and buy a box of chocolate to celebrate being alone. That sounds like a bitter pity party thing to write, but it’s not. It’s officially a year today since I buried my mother, and instead of letting grief consume me, I’m trying to be positive. (Something I haven’t done a lot of since then.) So . . . the positive to this day is that I, Rebecca Mason, have survived, when I wasn’t sure I would.
    Somehow, though, instead of going straight to the chocolate store, I ended up two blocks away, standing outside the gallery I’ve dreamed of working at since way back when I started college five years ago. It just . . . happened. And at first it wasn’t a good thing. One glimpse inside the gallery and the past year crashed down—burying my mother, deciding my art degree was worthless for paying the bills, learning things about my life I wish I never had. It was a little piece of hell standing there, hurting for what I have lost and what I can’t have.
    The worst part? I still crave my dream, to the point that I couldn’t force myself to walk away without going inside the gallery. Not tonight, though I’ve spent a year away from that obsession. Not even the horrid waitress uniform beneath my long black leather coat could stop me from entering. I just buttoned up and went for it.
    I walked inside, my bargain store heels clicking on the shiny expensive white tile, the soft sound of classical music playing in the background, and I was in heaven. I just stood there, staring at the sleek glass displays of art, and I sighed inside. This was where I still wanted to be, and why I went to school. It’s been my love since I was a child, trying to create my own Picasso, only to realize I’m no artist myself. My gift is an eye for art, a deep love for it I can share with others. If only such things paid real money. How did I think I could be one of the few people who actually made a living in an art gallery?
    But I did. There was a time when I thought I could. When I thought dreams were meant to be chased. That was before reality grabbed me by the throat and choked me into eye-opening revelations.
    But standing there in that gallery tonight, I shoved all of that aside and just lost myself in the experience. I strolled from display to display, absorbing the gift of viewing the work of some of the most famous artists in the city and from around the world. I was enjoying myself until a salesperson, a blond and rather curvaceous woman, approached me with a snooty look that said she thought I was beneath the gallery. The bite of her attitude aroused my own fear that she was right, that I