In Your Dreams Read Free Page A

communicated
from those sweet teddy bear eyes. Unbidden, Sean reached out a hand to touch
her, only to draw back when he remembered he was viewing an image in his head.
Whoever the woman was, she resided on Earth, far from his place here in the
Afterlife.
    Scrick-tick.
Scrick-tick.
    The strange
rhythmic sound in her bathroom drew his attention. A bottle of prescription
painkillers, cradled between her trembling hands, rolled back and forth, the
plastic catching on the gold band on her third finger.
    So much pain.
    Where the hell
was her husband? Even separated by dimensions of time and space, Sean sensed
how alone she was. Alone, abandoned, and rapidly losing hope.
    “Who is she?”
The question erupted before he could stifle his curiosity.
    Verity frowned.
“Her name is Isabelle Fichetti. And as soon as she swallows those pills, she’ll
become your responsibility.”

Chapter
2
     
    When the pain
became too intense to bear, Isabelle Fichetti opened her eyes to white light
bright enough to sear her retinas. She blinked and managed to discern wavy
lines inside the blinding blankness. Another blink transformed the lines to
shadows. Finally, as her foggy vision sharpened, she took in familiar details.
A fourteen-inch television mounted on the pale yellow wall, a shabby end table
with a remote control on a cord, and a pink plastic water pitcher on a tray
table.
    A hospital. A
fucking hospital.
    She stifled a
groan and punched the scratchy sheets. No, no, no! She shouldn’t be here. She
should be dead. Instead, she lay in a lumpy bed with raised arm rails in a room
that reeked of wintergreen-scented disinfectant. An I.V. line snaked from the
back of her hand to a bag of clear fluid suspended from a metal pole. God, how
her stomach hurt! Rolling to her side, she brought her knees to her chest. The
pain didn’t ease. Jeez, she felt as if someone continuously jabbed her abdomen
with a red-hot branding iron. But worst of all, she was still alive. Of all the
rotten luck.
    Dammit, couldn’t
she do anything right? Just wait ‘til the tabloids heard about this
disaster. She could see the headline now. Shipp Wreck: Former Television
Star’s Failed Suicide Attempt. Because, after all, no one really knew her
as Isabelle Fichetti. To the public, she was still Bethany Shipp.
    For the last
fifteen years, she’d tried to live down the role she’d played for nearly a
decade, that of precocious Bethany Shipp, daughter of single mom and yoga
instructor, Camilla Shipp in the television sitcom, “Shipp Shape.” That damn
show had launched her into stardom. She’d grown up on the soundstage, from the
age of seven to just before her seventeenth birthday. The viewing public had
followed her journey through childhood into her chubby pre-teen years, seen her
with—then without—braces, watched the acne bloom on her face, and tracked all
the changes she’d undergone on her way to womanhood. Once the cameras stopped
rolling, however, her fans lost interest, having typecast her as that adorable
imp they’d grown up watching. So that, even years after the cancellation, she
couldn’t land so much as a feminine hygiene commercial. Washed up at
thirty-three years old.
    The business had
chewed her up and spit her out. Yet, like a whipped puppy, she kept running
back for more. This last time, she really thought she’d nailed a co-starring
role in the latest movie adaptation of a New York Times bestselling
novel. But after weeks of waiting for the director’s call, she saw the blurb on
“Hollywood Inside and Out.” Her plum role had gone to some no-talent who’d
happened to snag a small part in last summer’s blockbuster. A hooker, for God’s
sake. Autumn Lefleur played a dried-up old hooker for five minutes on the
screen, and suddenly she was the next Meryl Streep.
    Nothing remained
for Isabelle. No favors left to call in, no friends with connections. Her agent
had let her go three years ago. The days of being discovered, or in her case, re