by Carlyn Cade
The chauffeur hopped out of the limo and opened the door for his first two passengers. “Your keys are inside, sir.” He opened the trunk and asked Sam which luggage was his, and then carried the suitcases up to the door, opened it and set them inside.
Stacia noticed Sam hand the driver a tip, and from the size of the bill, it was a very generous offering.
Hal and Linda were dropped off next, and the procedure was repeated. When they rounded the next corner, Stacia figured they had arrived at her villa.
“I’ll get out here,” Clay told the driver. “Just take my bags to my villa. And thanks.” He reached into his pocket and handed the driver another tip, just as large as Sam’s.
Stacia thought everyone in Vegas must be rich. From the guests to the casino owners to the people hired to do their particular jobs. Tipping seemed to be a way of life here. Only the sand in the desert was dried up. The money tree seemed to be very much alive.
As the driver guided the limo down the driveway and took off to chauffeur the next set of new guests, they were finally alone standing in the center of, what seemed to Stacia to be, paradise. Even her prince was at her side.
“What now, Stacia?” her prince asked.
Quit dreaming, Stacia. Reality has returned. “Do you want to go gamble by yourself and not be bothered with me?” she asked, not willing to push herself onto Clay.
“Is that what you want?”
She shook her head. “I’d rather talk.”
“Okay, let’s do it then.” Clay began to walk toward the door.
She followed, and when they reached the door, he opened it for her.
Before she could take one step inside, the scent of fragrant flowers welcomed her. The sight of huge arrangements of fresh, cut blooms placed artistically around the room created a garden effect. Exotic orchids and Birds of Paradise blended beautifully with the red, pink and white roses and hydrangeas dressed in their blue and pink blossoms. The flowers’ rainbow colors and heavenly perfumes created eye pleasure and an essence nothing else on earth could match.
“It’s gorgeous,” she exclaimed and turned to Clay. “It reminds me of SwissDen.”
“You’re right,” he said and then was silent again.
Stacia couldn’t seem to get her fill of the beauty of the flower display. She circled the room in her enthusiasm, stopping to touch some of the petals and bending to smell others.
“You’re gorgeous too,” Clay remarked quietly.
She stopped and turned around. His mood had changed. She could tell. The old Clay was back again. One compliment based on three words had changed everything. But would it last? She didn’t know, but it was a good beginning at least.
He stood stone-still gazing at her like Cinderella’s prince at the ball when he first saw his princess. Clay’s smoky, brown eyes captured hers, and she knew she couldn’t break their hold. She didn’t want to. Fluttery feelings floated around inside her. It felt like butterflies had joined their flower party.
“You have no idea of the picture you create standing there,” Clay said. “You and the flowers together. And you are completely irresistible. You take my breath away.” He placed his hands on the sides of her face and held her close as he scattered kisses wherever there was an available space.
She wrapped her arms around him and hugged him closer to her, and just when she thought his tingling, tantalizing kisses couldn’t get any better or hotter, they did as he found her lips where the sexiness of his kiss exploded into passion. The beauty of the flowers, of the suite, and of the trip were forgotten. Just as when he’d kissed her before, she wanted more and more.
All too soon, the kiss ended. No ‘more’ appeared in the horizon. He stepped back and stood as he was before, arms straight at his side. He looked as if he wanted to say something. She settled for glancing around the room. A doorway, which led into an exquisitely designed bedroom, teased her to venture there. Would he follow her?
She noticed the large, side windows and walked toward them to see what the sunny afternoon in Vegas had to offer from the inside out. More beauty was her conclusion after looking outside at the green topiary trees and the blue water of the pool. The desert flowers and yellow and pink hibiscus growing wild outside matched the beauty of the ones inside, only these were nature’s gift.
Clay followed her, stood next to her and interrupted her thoughts. “You did it again, you know.”
She was puzzled. “What?” she asked and turned toward him.
“I have no resistance when it comes to you. I tell myself we have things to discuss and straighten out between us before we kiss. I make the rules and then I break them. Because just the slightest touch of your finger or the look in your eyes, and I forget everything I promised myself, and all I want is to tempt you and show you how much I love you. It’s a wild desire I want you to feel too, from the tip of your head to your toes and everywhere else.”
Well, you certainly got your wish with that. Kiss me again.
“And I wanted to apologize to you.” His voice was low and sincere.
“Excuse me?”
“I’m sorry for acting like a jerk the last time we talked on the phone. I didn’t mean to hurt you or shut you out of my life, but I know I did both. The only thing I can say in my defense is I had some problems that took time to resolve. Can you forgive me?”
She hesitated. What did she want more, romance and its trimmings…or an apology? No choice there. However, there was only one decision to make. Stacia smiled. “You know I can, but I just assumed there was someone else.” She complimented herself on her acting, not her choice.
“What’s that all about?” He looked perplexed.
“Well, after all,” she said, trying to explain. “We haven’t known each other very long, and even though I have strong feelings for you, my background isn’t like yours at all. I don’t know how your parents feel about me, if they even approve of me. I keep remembering the night in London, and the way your mother talked about me on your speaker phone. You are royalty. I’m not, and I know nothing about what royalty expects. The world might accept us, but what about your parents?”
Clay didn’t hesitate with his answer. “I may be a prince, but the woman I marry will be my princess, and I will share everything with her. My life, my love…and my parents.”
She was stunned. “Where did you ever come up with that reasoning?”
“Isn’t it good enough for you? Does it sound like a line?”
“No. It sounds like something I heard when Josie regressed me,” she admitted.
“I’m not a snob, Stacia. I knew someday I’d fall in love, and that, and only that, would be my number one criteria for choosing a wife. The second requirement would have to be that she loved me as much as I loved her.”
She sat down on the sofa, tucked her legs under her, and reflected on what he’d just said. Well, I would certainly fill your second requirement. I am so in love with you. She wished she could speak her thoughts out loud, but instead as usual, she turned to her talent of changing the subject. “I can’t get over you saying what I heard in meditation. Aren’t you amazed?”
“No. If you can think of it, why can’t I?” He joined her on the sofa, crossed his arms and slouched down on a pillow, propping his feet up on the coffee table.
“You make it sound easy.”
“And you can’t?” Clay asked.
“I guess you’re more in tune with Josie’s line of thinking than I am. She says it’s all out there for anyone to tap into.”
“Is it too hard for you to believe two people in love can think the same thing?”
“I suppose not.” With all the bizarre things happening to her since she met him, that seemed like a simple question with a simple answer. “Of course they can,” she rephrased.
Clay exhaled a sigh and uncrossed his arms. “Well, here goes,” he said. “I’d like to explain why I was a jerk.” He smiled at her, then turned serious. “The first night at your condo, when I flew over to
bring you to SwissDen, I began to have what turned out to be a recurring dream, like what you were having also. I saw myself sitting at a table writing in a book. I was starving and in pain. I had headaches and cramps in my stomach. But strangely enough, what I felt in my heart was the strongest pain of all.”
“Were you having a heart attack?” Stacia was surprised how much his symptoms sounded just like Mark’s in her dreams. An eerie feeling rushed through her. It felt like déjà vu but it went deeper than that. It was almost like she was a ghost watching a séance happen.
“I thought I was having a heart attack at first, but I didn’t have pain when I was awake. This dream kept coming back every few days. Then I dreamed death was dancing in front of me, and I saw the face of someone who was going to die. Before I could recognize who it was, I woke up, and I never could figure out whose face I’d seen. I obsessed about it, and that’s when I started to withdraw from you. I couldn’t tell you what was going on. I figured maybe you were right. We weren’t meant to be together. I was afraid I might die, but I was more scared of losing you. How could I tell you I thought you might die?” He stood up, stretched his arms toward the ceiling, and then sat down again.
“Then who do you think it will be? Your dreams match mine. I’m certain if I marry, disaster will strike. We both know I’m the most likely candidate in your scenario.”
Clay reached over and put his arm around her. “You’re not going to die, Stacia, and neither am I.”
“How do you know that? How can you be sure?”
“Because I have faith in our destiny together. We’ve had enough bad things happen in our lives in a short period of time. We’re due for many years of happiness.”
“I’d like to believe you, but I can’t. Josie told me I lacked faith, and perhaps I do, but when you know something, you just know it.” Stacia remained very still, her hands folded in her lap. She didn’t know how to express her feelings. They were jumping all around inside her. She couldn’t tell how she even felt. Frustrated, she guessed. How could he think she wouldn’t be there for him? It astounded her. She looked up at Clay. “I don’t understand how you could cut me out of your life that fast. One day you claim to love me, and the next you don’t want me around you. Am I just someone who turns you on fast and off the same way?”
Clay held out his hands in a defense mechanism. “Stop, Stacia. How can you even ask me a question like that?” He shook his head back and forth in a state of total disbelief. “You know that’s as far from the truth as anything can be.”
She looked down and fiddled with her fingers, clenching them together and unclenching them before she could answer. “I know.” And she did. “I’m sorry.” And she was deeply sorry. “But we went through the stalking together, and I was afraid I was going to die any minute then, and we both believed that was a possibility.”
“That was different. I felt in control like I could help prevent it from happening. It’s not like thinking a dream, or nightmare, might come true. There’s nothing you can do about that except believe it or don’t believe it. If you do believe it, you live in fear, which is what happened to me. And when things got to the point that I couldn’t take it anymore, I remembered what Josie had told me the night I met her. She said to learn what’s inside me, I should learn to meditate. I figured this dream was going on inside me, so if I meditated, maybe I’d discover what it was all about.” He took a deep breath.
“And…?”
“And my love for you had everything to do with this. I felt like a drowning man with nothing to hang onto except water. No one could save me. I had to save myself, and somewhere in my deep depression, I did. Or rather Sedona did.”
“Sedona?” Stacia laughed. “Don’t tell me you learned to meditate?”
“Why do you think that’s funny?”
He didn’t seem to see the humor in that thought. “I think it’s strange we were both doing the same thing at the same time but not together.”
“I remembered you talking about Sedona, so I searched the web for meditation and Sedona. I flew there to see if it would help. Before I got there, I felt better, until I went to a psychic who confirmed my thoughts of death.”
“You went to Sedona? You were that close to me, and you didn’t even call or come to see me? You rescued me when I needed you. Why couldn’t you have given me a chance to do the same thing for you? I remember you saying that together we should be able to solve most anything, yet you didn’t even want me around you.”
“You need to understand the frame of mind I was in. The last thing I could have done was rationalize or put things into the right perspective. As depressed as I was, seeing you would have been more painful than not being with you at all. I believed one of us would die. As bad as I felt, I couldn’t subject you to that kind of thinking. I had to fight it myself, and I did...and I won.”
“You could have at least called Josie.”
“That would have involved you, and I needed time to heal.”
“Were you regressed in Sedona?”
“Accidentally,” Clay said. “I bought a CD on meditation. The one disc was on meditation. The second happened to be past life regression. I played the wrong disc, but it worked out okay.”
“Did you discover what your dreams were all about?”
“When I left Sedona, I went home. I meditated every day, but so far, nothing.” He flipped the palms of his hands upwards and shrugged his shoulders.
“We could call Josie and ask her about it.”
“I’d rather not...for now, at least.”
“So, what about us?” Stacia asked.
“That depends on you and whether you think we have a future together. Has Josie helped you figure out your dreams?”
“Not entirely. She regressed me though and thinks I probably was Audra in a past life.”
“Audra? I have to admit she keeps turning up in your life recently,” Clay said. “First, as the actress in London Affair, and then in the stalking.”
“And don’t forget my dreams. Also, Farrell Fontaine came into my life, and he was involved in hers too.”
“The synchronicity of the Universe, right?”
Stacia nodded. “According to Josie.” She stood up and went over to look out the window again and up at the blue, cloudless sky, wondering what was really up there, then she turned to face him. “What happens now?”
“I vote we start over, that is, if the time is right with you.”
“I think perhaps it is.” She was disappointed he hadn’t said he wanted to take up where they left off, especially after his last kiss, but starting over meant being together, and that’s what she wanted most.
“Perhaps?”
“The time is definitely right to begin again,” she said with a smile and in a more positive manner. “Can you live with that?”
“For now.” Clay glanced at a nearby clock. “We have time before the wedding. Let’s see what Sam ordered to stock our refrigerator. Bellagio has my standing order, but I’m sure he figured out something he thought you’d like.”
“Whoa, he must have ordered everything on the menu,” Stacia said when Clay opened the refrigerator door. “Wow! There’s shrimp and oysters, caviar, even vodka, cake and all those different colored cookies. Look at the fruit bowls.”
“What looks good to you?”
“Hmm. It seems like I’ve heard that question before.” Funny how he could turn her appetite into another completely different desire.
Clay laughed. “I just wanted to see if girls thought the same as boys.”
She gave him a sideways glance and grinned. “On behalf of all the girls in the world, I am happy to tell you, they do.”
“And as a female, that includes you, too, right?”
“Well, you might have gotten a clue about that on our picnic at SwissDen.”
“I got it loud and clear, and you don’t know how hard it was to resist you and your little green top.”
“It’s okay. My damaged ego and I
survived.”
He grinned. “I’m glad and sorry at the same time. Moving on though…what are you hungry for?’”
Stacia laughed. “I wouldn’t answer that for anything.”
“It might be worth it if you did.”
“I’ll bet it would be, but for now, let’s check out these masterpieces. Chocolate-dipped strawberries. Yummy.”
“I’ve heard girls like to feed those to boys.”
“Heard? You’re kidding me, right? I’ll bet you’ve had lots of food fed to you. Grapes. Cheese. Cavi–”
Clay interrupted her. “I’m speaking from experience here. It’s much more fun to feed someone like you.”
He stood there straight and tall, almost like he had before only minutes ago. The only thing that was different was a slight change in his body language. She could read his longing and desire in his stance…the waiting for her to respond. His eyes didn’t flinch as he gazed into hers. She saw he wanted her as much as she wanted him. With the utmost control, Stacia forced herself to focus on something else. She remembered the London restaurant where they had breakfast and how she didn’t want him to stop feeding her. That was about the biggest breakfast she’d ever eaten, even on the farm. She never did get enough to eat though, as she wanted the food to last forever. “Sorry, it’s much more fun to be on the receiving end.” She reached inside the refrigerator and took out two strawberries. “Contest time. We have to do this officially now, okay?” She had to lighten up the situation at hand. She handed him one of the strawberries.
“I like the sounds of this already.”
“Concentrate, please. We cross arms and feed each other a strawberry at the same time. Here.” Stacia handed Clay his strawberry.
“Now, what?”
“We eat them, silly.”
“How do we judge who’s the winner?”
“I don’t know. I didn’t get that far yet.” His strawberry slowly came closer and closer to her mouth. “Wait. I didn’t get to tell you all the rules.” She took her strawberry and stuck it in his mouth as he opened it to speak. “I win,” she declared.
