A Promised Fate

by Cat Mann



  A Promised Fate

  Book III of The Beautiful Fate Series

  A novel

  by

  Cat Mann

  Copyright© 2014 by Cat Mann

  https://authorcatmannblog.blogspot.com/

  All rights reserved. Except as permitted under the U.S. Copyright Act of1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

  First Electronic Edition: 2014

  First Paperback Edition: 2015

  The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.

  A Promised Fate: a novel / by Cat Mann-- 1st ed.

  Summary: Trust crumbles and promises lose all meaning as Ari comes to grips with his past and the vows made in the past in his name.

  Without the support of the following people, this series would have remained a secret: Derek Mann, A & L Mann, my parents, Ron Shutts, Patty Shutts and our families, K.B Maggio Weakly, Theresa Norton Greco, Mrs. Esther Kaplan, my favorite book bloggers who gave me such confidence and pride in my work with their praise. Rachel Harmon. Beta Readers: Lana Hughes, Marie Mann, Melissa Brown, Angie Fairchild, Amber Beaghan, Jenny Moore, Mhairi Ferguson, Chantal Goinet, Tina Burton. My primary sales come from Central Illinois, and I want to thank the community, the unconditional love and support that I receive from family, friends and fans is mind-blowing and surreal. I never knew I was so loved and appreciated. Thank you.

  Cover designed by Derek Murphy of Creativindie Covers

   

  Jacket author photo by Jennifer Klitzsch Moore with Moore Memories Photography

  This is again in dedication to you. I am so happy.

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Praise and Acclaim

  Copyright Notice

  Dedication

  1- Nightmare

  2- Her

  3- Evil Eye

  4-Who Am I

  5-The Fourth

  6-The Storm

  7-Fight

  8-Need

  9-A Goodbye

  10-Spaghetti Sandwich

  11-The Future, Setbacks & Proposal

  12-Intruder

  13-Blame

  14-Hot Dog

  15-H Word

  16-NDA

  17-Dinner

  18-Breath

  19-Blush

  20-Gauntlet

  21-Battlefield

  22-Adonis

  23-Clean

  24-Gone

  25-Hunted

  26-Bug

  27-Paper

  28-Gallo

  29-Disappear

  30-The Gala

  31-Pratice

  32-October Seventh

  33. Push

  About The Author

  I love her and that’s the beginning and end of everything.

  - F. Scott Fitzgerald

  Chapter 1

  Nightmare

  The sea was angry. Waves hit the shore with vengeance, one devastating blow after another ripping at the Earth and dragging whatever land it could back for the long return out to deeper waters. The currents churned and white saltwater foam swirled on top of the dark and dangerous tide. Watching from the cliff side above, I tried to keep myself rooted to the ground, but my heavy feet were shoved inexorably forward, forced to carry my unwilling body along the edge of what seemed like the end of the world. Sea spray hissed and then misted the sharp, jagged rocks far below me. Broken and pulverized earth, chipped away with each shuffling step I was forced to take, scattered down the tall, narrow edge of the ridge. A fear unlike any other I had ever felt was lodged deep in my gut and I choked on the impossible-to-swallow heartbeats in my throat.

  I have three choices. I can say no and die, I can say yes and die, or I can jump and die.

  I will do anything for her. I will do anything for them.

  Chapter 2

  Her

  Brilliant rays of morning sunlight slanted in through our bedroom window. Light flickered and danced on the walls and a cool breeze off the sea rustled our curtains. The breeze ebbed and a beam of daylight made a path across the bedroom and rested on her cheek, warming her. Soundlessly, I made my way back to our bed to rejoin her. Taking my eyes away from her is always a struggle. From the moment she came into my world, from my very first glimpse of her, I have been consumed, obsessed and desperately in love.

  Her chest rose and fell with gentle breaths. Her lips, so full and so soft, are rose petals. Whenever my lips touch those lips, a sensation consumes me that is unlike anything I have ever experienced.

  Sinking back into the bed at her side, the mattress bowed a little with my weight. I contoured my body around her curves and my fingers wound through her dark hair. Long, wavy strands splayed across the white pillowcases. A smile grew on her sleeping face and I could not help myself, I leaned down and kissed the corner of her mouth. She blinked up at me sleepily.

  “Good morning, beautiful Ava.”

  “Mmm.” Stretching, she pointed at the face-splitting grin that I couldn’t manage to hide, and rested the tip of her finger on my lip. “What is this little smirk of yours all about?”

  “You. You were smiling in your sleep. 'Twas a sight to behold.”

  “Only because I was dreaming about you.”

  “Is that so?”

  “Mmm,” her head bobbed in a cute confirming nod.

  “Tell me, Ava, please … What was I doing in your dream to make you so happy?”

  “I’ll show you.” She lifted her head up from the pillow and joined her lips with mine. My hand cupped at her nape and I kissed her back. Her mouth opened, allowing my tongue to slip between her rose petal lips. Her hands found their way up my back to my hair, still damp from my shower, and I closed my eyes at her touch. The feelings that she pulls from my body are always powerful and come on fast. My fingers edged up her leg to her inner thigh and the higher they climbed, the hotter our bodies grew and the needier we became. Ava made a little noise of pleasure and blushed at the sound, then pushed herself against me, tugging at the towel that was tightly knotted around my waist. Shifting my body, I pulled her on top of me, straddling her legs over my hips, my hands palming her bottom in a squeeze. We kissed more deeply and my lust and need for her grew until my desire was all-consuming.

  Then Ava’s muscles tightened, she stilled, her eyes opened wide and after a moment’s hesitation, she swiftly moved her hand away from the unconquered knot still securing my towel and onto my chest, pushing me backward, away from her. The passion that had been building between us evaporated in an instant and I looked at her with wounded pride as she promptly moved off my lap.

  She nodded in the direction of our bedroom door and my brow furrowed in question until the thunder of Max’s quick bare feet smacked against the hardwood floor and echoed down the hallway. Our door came open with a crash and our three-year-old son greeted us with the monster smile that is his stock in trade.

  “Hiya, Max!” Ava grinned.

  “Hey, Buddy.” I grabbed hold of his arms, helped him up into our massive bed and then reached for my glasses and cell phone off my nightstand. Ava rested her hands softly on either side of her growing stomach.

  Thumbing through a catalog of early morning messages, a warm crack of a smile pushed up my lips at my latest text.

  “Oh! Max! Ari!” Ava cried and grabbed Max’s chubby hands, placing them quickly where hers had been. “The baby is moving!”

  Max squirmed and his fingers danced on Ava’s stomach. She settled his fingers by pla
cing her open palms over his small hands.

  “Now wait. Be patient,” she told him.

  Max held still for as long he could and was rewarded with his first encounter with the baby kicking. He pulled his hand back at the initial shock of the strange meeting but Ava grabbed him again and put his stubby, dimpled fingers back to her stomach.

  “Relax and try to feel her kick again.” She was excited in sharing the moment with him. Her sea-green eyes twinkled brightly and her ultra-white smile grew bigger and bigger. The baby kicked once more with force and the movement of Ava's belly under their hands made Max's eyes light up with joy. He clapped his hands together happily.

  “Talk to the baby, Max. Your voice makes her happy.”

  “You don’t know it’s a girl, Ava,” I sighed.

  “And you don’t know it’s not a girl.”

  Tossing my cell aside, I leaned back to watch my wife and son, and smiled with my love for them. At twenty-six weeks along in the pregnancy, Ava’s baby bump was hard to hide. Her swollen stomach protruded from her small frame and she had an ever-present glow.

  “Are you sure you don’t want to find out if we really are having a girl? Just think, I could call the nurse on my way to work, have her pull your chart, and we could know by lunch.”

  “Ari! We agreed to wait to find out the baby’s gender. I want to be surprised. I thought you wanted to be surprised, too.”

  “I do, I do. But the thought is tempting all the same and the suspense is killing me.”

  Ava basically ignored my pain and went on to an obviously more pressing matter. “We still need a name,” she reminded me for the hundredth time. “We can’t have a baby without a name.”

  “I know,” I groaned, “but you don’t like any of the ones I've come up with. And I really want Ileana.”

  “Ileana is a no!” She scolded me for the twentieth time, “and you don’t like any of mine either.”

  “Abraham. Really, Ave?”

  Her bottom lip jutted out in a pout.

  “Maybe we should let Max decide on the name,” I proposed.

  Ava tilted her head at the thought and looked down at Max, who was whispering into Ava’s belly button. “I am really not wanting a baby named Llama Llama or Sponge Bob or Elmo. Or any of the super heroes, either, Ari. This is important.”

  “We still have more than three months to decide,” I started to say. Then I noticed the stubborn thing that sometimes takes over Ava's face -- a cute curvy line settling in between her brows. “But I promise to work on it with you this weekend. Let’s each come up with one name we really like by this evening. I’ll pick a girl name and you do a boy. Okay?”

  “Deal,” she gave a firm nod. “You are coming home early today right? Do you promise?”

  “I promise. I'm leaving early and have to make one stop in Beverly Hills. Then I’m all yours.”

  It was the Fourth of July weekend. I planned to take off early the day before the holiday and I had sworn to Ava not to work all weekend. We had plans with our family all weekend long and I was not going to miss anything. Work and school had already been keeping me away from Max and Ava a bit too much and I knew my long hours spent at baio were getting on Ava’s nerves. I knew this because she had said as much several times already in the past two months. Gone were my days of apprenticeship during which I had worked only when Margaux worked. My hours had vastly increased and I had not taken even a Saturday morning off since the new year.

  “Good, I cannot wait to just… I dunno... hang out with you!”

  “Me too.” My lips pressed to the corner or her mouth.

  “You were up early this morning.” Ava pushed out of bed. “I didn’t even hear your alarm go off, that’s not like you.”

  Thoughts of my nightmare flickered and crept back into the corners of my mind.

  “Early bird gets the worm?” I teased.

  “Yeah, right,” Ava gave me a sarcastic laugh with an overly dramatic eye roll and sauntered off to the shower.

  I have never been early to anything a day in my life and she knew it. Despite the fact that I had been awake since the pre-dawn hour, I was late to work once again. I threw on my clothes, pausing just a moment to get my cuffs just right, and then, toothbrush still jutting from my mouth, I picked Max up, tossed him over my shoulder and carried him, squealing with delight, off to the kitchen.

  Just as we arrived at the refrigerator, there was a rap at the glass door to the back patio. I set Max down on his feet. “Let your Yaya Aggie in, Max?”

  He happily flitted in stocking feet across the kitchen floor, slid the lock out of place and let my mom enter our home. She scooped him up in a hug, peppered him with kisses that he wiped off and then she came to my side.

  “Hey, Ma,” I said with a kiss to her cheek. “What are you doing here this morning?”

  “Where is Ava?” Her eyes scanned the kitchen and then out into the living room.

  “Shower.”

  “How is she feeling today?”

  “Great. Why do you ask?” I grabbed a yogurt for Max, some fresh blueberries and small glass of milk and then plopped him down at the table for breakfast.

  “Eat.” I told him sternly and peeled the small plastic dinosaur toy from his sticky fingers.

  My mom shook her camera at me. “Ava is twenty-six weeks today! Do you think she is in a good enough mood to let me snap a photo of her and her belly?”

  I rubbed my cheek in thought. My mother, Aggie is a photographer and has made my pregnant wife her current project. She was trying to create a pregnancy journal, mapping Ava and the baby’s progress. At times Ava cooperated and at others she, well … didn't.

  “Ask her after she comes out of the bedroom,” I suggested. “She was in a good mood when she woke up and I heard her singing in the shower. That was ten minutes ago though, so no telling how she may be feeling now. The hormone thing, you know.” I looked down at my watch. “I have to go, Ma. I'm late.” My mother put on her make-a-plan-of-attack face and I headed back up to the bedroom to kiss Ava goodbye.

  At our bedroom door, I stopped dead in my tracks. Lord, she is so beautiful. How in God's green world did I get so lucky? Ava strolled out of the closet in a flowing summer dress, her baby bump cheerfully on display. The song, “Hello Sunshine” played in the back of my mind.

  “You look ravishing,” I said with overt awe.

  “You too.” She pulled at my shirt collar. “No tie today?”

  “Damn it!”

  Ava laughed at me, walked back in to the closet and grabbed my favorite tie.

  “Thanks, Baby. I’ll have to put it on in the car. I should have left fifteen minutes ago. I love you. Call me no matter what you may need. I'll be home this afternoon, ready to spend the whole weekend in the sun with you and Max. I can’t wait.”

  “Ok. I love you.”

  Unable to resist, I kissed her full, pink lips one last time. Then dropped the bomb: “Oh, um, Mom is in the kitchen with Max. She wants a twenty-sixer. Please, please make her happy and just say yes!” I hollered as I practically ran away down the hall and then down the stairwell.

  I kissed Max on the head. “Be good for your mom today, please.”

  He nodded and wrapped his arms around my neck in a hug.

  “Ava, please!” I heard just before I escaped through the door to the garage, my mom's response to the annoyed groan from Ava. I closed the door to the garage firmly behind me feeling fairly sure one of them would come complaining to me about the other by the end of the day. Both, maybe.

  After opening the driver’s side door to my car, my grin inched up my face before sliding into the seat.

  “Good morning.”

  “Hey, you! You know you’re late, right?” Julia gave a glossy lipped smirk and leaned across the center console for a smacking peck to my stubbly cheek.

  “I’m always late. You know that about me.”

  �
�I don’t get to see you as much as I like anymore. I must have forgotten that particular quirk.”

  “Where to this time?” The garage door rumbled open and I started the engine.

  Julia knows me better than anyone does and she has always made it her business to memorize my schedule. She has been showing up unexpectedly in my car or in my office or outside of one of my classes for as long as we’ve known one another. If she needs me for something, she always knows how to find me.

  “I texted you like three times this morning.”

  “I got your messages.”

  “Then why didn’t you text me back? I almost came in to get you.”

  “I was in bed with my wife when you messaged me.” I smiled crookedly and she shoved her finger down her throat and made a fake gagging sound.

  “Gah! Spare me the details.”

  “I don’t kiss and tell, Jules. You know that. Now, where to this time?”

  “I have a summer class. Will you take me to campus? Pretty please?”

  I looked at the clock on the dash with a grimace. “Sure. But where is your car?”

  “Outta gas.”

  “What did you do with the money I gave you last week for gas?”

  “I spent it.” Julia tucked a neat strand of hair behind her ear and I couldn’t help but notice her new summer highlights. She looked at me from the corner of her eye and knotted her fingers up in her lap.

  “Your hair looks nice.”

  “Thank you.” She began to fidget with a diamond bangle bracelet on her slender wrist that I had given her one year for her birthday. Tucked just underneath her favorite bangle was a small, flesh colored Band-Aid.

  “If you needed money for your hair, you could have just asked. You know I can’t tell you no.”

  “I know.”

  I pulled up to a drive-through coffee place and placed an order with a barista. “May I have a large cup of coffee, black, and one soy, hazelnut macchiato, venti?”

  “Have you eaten?”

  Julia shook her head no and I added a blueberry scone to the order. I got the change from the twenty I gave the barista and I handed it to Julia with her drink and her scone and then palmed an additional fifty dollars into the pile.

  “For gas.” I told Julia sternly and she took the money and shoved it into her oversized designer bag.

  “Thanks again,” she responded over a sip of her drink. “You look tired.”

  “Uh, yeah, I am actually. I had this messed up nightmare. It scared the shit out of me. Anyway, I didn’t sleep much.”

  “You? A nightmare? Isn’t that like Ava’s thing?”

  “Right, yeah normally.”

  “So? What was it? Did you dream that you showed up to work in your underwear or something?”

  “Not quite, no.”

  “What, did you dream that zombies were chasing you or something stupid like that?”

  “No.” I looked at her as if she was a moron and she flipped her hair back out of her eyes.

  “Then what was it? You have to tell me. You tell me everything. C’mon!” She pressed.

  “I do not tell you everything.”

  “Whatever, you totally do. So?”

  “I um… I did something really bad. Something I regretted. You were there…in the dream.”

  “Me?” Her pointer finger jabbed lightly into her own chest.

  “Yeah, you.”

  “Oh? What was I doing?”

  “I’m not sure. I couldn’t tell whose side you were on.”

  She picked at the corner of the Band-Aid. “I’m on your side, Ari. Always.”

  Looking back to the road, I coughed to clear my throat and changed the subject. “Are you going to tell me what happened a few nights ago with you and Rory? Where were you, Julia? You can fool him but you can’t fool me. What’s going on with you?”

  This was my third attempt to get her to tell me the details from an incident that had happened a few days earlier. Julia and Rory had had a massive argument that started after he woke in the middle of the night to find her missing. He freaked, thinking something terrible had happened, and called everyone he knew looking for her, but no one had seen her. He had just decided to call the police when she showed back up at home in the wee hours in the morning with some lame excuse about not being able to sleep and taking a long walk up the beach to clear her thoughts. He was upset but in the end she was able to convince him that she was telling the truth. Love will do that--make an obvious lie seem like God's truth. I knew better than to believe her story. Julia and I have a deeply rooted past together and I know her better than most. She has a near crippling fear of darkness and the beach at night isn’t a place she would dare venture off to alone.

  “I already told you, it was just a walk.”

  “Whatever. Don’t let that shit happen again, Jules.” I warned. “Rory was worried sick.”

  “It was just a walk, Ari.” She said louder and rolled her eyes.

  “Lie to him, not to me.” My teeth clenched down tight and she looked away from me, out of the window.

  We arrived at the edge of campus. “Just drop me off here. I can walk the rest of the way.”

  I glanced down at her tall, strappy sandals.

  “You sure?”

  “Yes, here is good.” She pulled at the door handle before I could come to a complete stop and release the child locks.

  “Will you need a ride later?”

  “Nah, Rory promised he would pick me up.”

  “Ok, then, have a good day.”

  She blew me a kiss from the curb. “Thanks for the ride, Ari. Love ya.”

  “Sure. Bye, Jules.”