The Dream Wedding

by MJ Rodgers

  Fallen? Briana felt stunned at Carlie’s words, as though she had sustained a blow to the side of her head.

  “She’s still in a coma,” Carlie went on. “The doctors don’t know if she’ll recover. Such a sad business! They found her at the foot of the stairs, just minutes after you had gone up to your room to change out of your wedding gown. The next thing we knew…”

  Briana didn’t hear the rest of the sentence.

  The light in the room began to tunnel. Briana’s head spun with images of a woman falling down the stairs as screams filled her head, silent, deafening screams—her screams. Briana felt her muscles knot, her skin go cold.

  “Natalie?”

  Briana was vaguely aware of Carlie’s voice calling out to her, as though from a long distance away.

  Then Briana suddenly felt Michael’s warm hand on her shoulder and realized that he was standing behind her, standing with her. As nothing else could have at that moment, his touch righted the world once again.

  “Do you have some proof that I am Natalie Newcastle?” Briana heard herself ask, evenly and calmly.

  Carlie handed Briana the purse she had been carrying. “This is yours, honey. You left it at the Ayton estate when you. disappeared so suddenly.”

  Briana took the purse from the woman who claimed to be her mother. It was a simple black bag, fine leather, something she might have selected if she ever had the money to afford it.

  She opened it. The first thing she saw was the flash of an enormous, brilliant solitaire diamond, at least four carats. It sat in the center of an interlocking set of rings—engagement and wedding. Briana closed the purse again.

  “Natalie, come home with me,” Carlie’s voice coaxed.

  “And where is home?” Briana asked.

  “The Ayton estate, of course. You’re an Ayton now.”

  “I’m not going there.”

  “Then I’ll take you home to Louisiana until you can become yourself again.”

  “My home is in Louisiana?”

  “Your main house, the one your daddy owned.”

  “What about Washington State?”

  “No, honey. You have no house there. Just the estate in Louisiana and the horse farm in Kentucky and the hilltop in Kauai.”

  Just, she said.

  “And where do you live?” Briana asked.

  “In my suite at the estate in Louisiana. But we can go to any one of your places.”

  “How can I, when I don’t remember them or anything about this life you say I’ve been living?”

  “You will, Natalie. Just as soon as I get you home and you feel safe again. Once you feel the love and security around you, you’ll be my Natalie again.”

  Briana could still feel Michael’s hand on her shoulder, and its pervading warmth. She had never been more in need of it or more thankful for it than she was now.

  “Mrs. Taureau, I’m staying here.”

  “Here? Why would you want to stay here?”

  “Because at the moment the institute is the only place that feels anywhere near like home to me.”

  Carlie shook her head in disappointment. But she gave no signs of getting up or giving up the fight.

  “I brought your traveling trousseau with me, Natalie,” she said after a moment. “I thought you’d want to select an outfit so you could look your best when you return to Shel. I hope you’ll forgive me if I say that those clothes you’re wearing neither fit nor suit your…taste.”

  “They are on loan from a new friend.”

  “Well, that was very nice of your new friend, I’m sure. But I’m certain you’ll feel more like yourself when you’re in some of your own clothes. They’re out in the car. Perhaps I could prevail upon Dr. Sands to get them for you now?”

  “I’ll bring them in on your way out, Mrs. Taureau,” Michael said nicely, but formally.

  Briana watched a new concern float through Carlie Taureau’s light blue eyes as she looked from Briana’s face to Michael’s hand, on her shoulder.

  “Natalie, Shel is not going to understand this.”

  “Whatever he finds difficult to understand, I’ll be happy to explain,” Michael said, and the way he said it gave Briana the impression that he would enjoy doing it, too.

  As devastatingly convincing as Carlie Taureau’s story was, Michael was waiting for proof, too. That heartened Briana more than anything else.

  She rose. “Mrs. Taureau—”

  “At least call me Carlie, if you can’t manage Mama,” she said as she, too, rose. “I know that calling me Mama has not always been easy for you.”

  “Why was it hard for me to call you Mama?”

  “Because you always felt I deserted you, honey. If I had not fallen for Connor, I would have been there for you while you were growing. You never would have been so lonely and unhappy as to have to try to be someone else.”

  There were tears filling Carlie’s eyes again.

  “The good Lord is only giving me what I deserve,” she said, wiping them quickly away.

  “Carlie, please don’t—” Briana began.

  “But you should not be made to suffer, too!” Carlie exclaimed, interrupting her. “Cut off from your husband, your life. Please, let me help you bring back your memories of being Natalie. Let me help you get your life back.”

  The woman’s emotion seemed genuine, and her manner was persuasive. If she was making up this story, her presentation of it was flawless. Still, Briana held firm.

  “I need time to think. You’ve presented me with an identity and history that is nothing like the one I remember. I have to sort out who I am.”

  “But you can’t do this on your own, honey,” Carlie said, her voice pleading. “You need help.”

  “Dr. Sands is here to help me,” Briana said.

  “But he heads a dream institute. He’s not qualified—”

  “Dr. Sands is a psychiatrist.”

  Carlie stepped back in surprise. “Psychiatrist?” she repeated.

  “Yes. And, as such, he’s eminently qualified to help me. He already has.”

  As surprised as Carlie had been to hear of Michael’s qualifications, she appeared to regroup her thoughts quickly. She took a step toward Briana.

  “You need to be around the people who love you.”

  “At the moment, I need to be around Dr. Sands.”

  “You’re going to just walk away from your mama, your husband, your brother, and put yourself in the hands of a stranger?”

  “This may be hard for you to accept, but you’re much more of a stranger to me than Dr. Sands. Please listen, and try to understand. I have no memories of you, or Rory or Sheldon Ayton—except for his appearance here earlier today, when he attempted to take me with him against my will.”

  “Natalie, put yourself in Shel’s place! You’re his wife. You’d disappeared from your own wedding reception. He’d been frantic about where you were, if you were all right. Then, when he finally found you, it was with this handsome man—”

  “Who is my doctor. And I’m in need of a doctor much more than a husband at the moment,” Briana said quickly.

  “But you must admit—”

  “Sheldon Ayton made no attempt to understand me, Carlie. I hope you will. I have to work this out for myself. Now, I don’t mean to be unkind, but I think it’s best you go.”

  “You’re sending your own mama away?”

  “If you are my mother, you’ll understand why I must. I can’t be a daughter or a sister or a wife to anyone until I can be certain who I am to me.”

  Carlie Taureau sighed heavily as she turned and headed slowly toward the door. Michael quickly strode in front of her to open it. As she stood in the doorway, Carlie turned back once more to look long and searchingly at Briana.

  “Please remember us soon, honey. We all love you very much and are waiting for your return.”

  And with that, she disappeared out into the hallway, with Michael as escort.

  Briana sank down into the chair, her ha
nds still clutching the purse that she’d been given. She felt as though she had just been engaging in an emotional tug-of-war—Carlie pulling her into Natalie’s world, while she fought to hold on to her own.

  She dipped her hand inside the purse, drew out the butter-soft billfold. She flipped it open to a Louisiana driver’s license with Natalie Newcastle’s name and a picture of her face—her new face.

  She searched through the rest of the billfold, looking for something, anything, that was familiar.

  Nothing was. The half-dozen credit cards all had Natalie Newcastle’s name. There was more than five hundred dollars in the wallet.

  Beneath a leather flap was a passbook for a money-market checking account. The balance recorded in a neat script that looked suspiciously like her own showed a hundred thousand dollars and some change.

  The last check had been written to Rory Taureau, for five thousand dollars. She put the passbook back in the purse and pulled out a cosmetic case.

  There was a lipstick inside, blush, eyeliner, everything with Paris labels. A tiny crystal bottle of golden perfume was inscribed with the name Natalie.

  Briana opened the bottle, tipped its top onto her wrist. A sweet, sultry fragrance of herbs and amber filled the air. It was light, sophisticated, lovely.

  She found a keyless remote entry transmitter hanging off a gold Mercedes emblem inside the purse. There were other keys, too, no doubt to the estate, the farm, the mountaintop hideaway.

  Finally, Briana picked up the rings. She slipped them on the third finger of her left hand.

  They fit. Perfectly. She took them off, dropped them back into the purse with a long exhalation.

  She had recognized the real Ayton estate from its dream image. She had recognized Sheldon Ayton as the groom at her dream wedding. And now she had recognized Carlie Taureau as one of the women from that dream argument.

  But how could the house, or these people, be real? She wasn’t Natalie Newcastle, an heiress from Louisiana. She was Briana Berry, a struggling architect from Washington State.

  Unless her reality was a dream, and her dream reality?

  Briana stood up and walked over to the mirror that hung on the wall in the corner of the reception room and stared at the face reflecting back at her—beautiful, flawless, the face that perfectly matched the one on Natalie Newcastle’s driver’s license.

  The face that wasn’t hers.

  Briana shut her eyes tightly. But when she opened them again, those perfect features were still there, reflecting back.

  What in the hell had happened to her?

  Chapter Seven

  “‘Natalie Newcastle is the sole heir of deceased industrialist Markam Newcastle.’” Michael read the e-mail that had been sent from Dun and Bradstreet and was printing out at that very moment. “She definitely owns that real estate Carlie Taureau mentioned.”

  “And Carlie?”

  “’Carlie Newcastle Taureau, a former Miss Louisiana, married Markam at eighteen, was divorced by him at twenty. Married Connor Taureau the month after the divorce was final. Rory Taureau was born seven months later. Connor Taureau died when a horse kicked him in the head seven years ago.

  “Anything else?”

  “Yes. ‘Carlie is the sole owner of Creole Cuisine, a New Orleans restaurant, which has been running in the red for the first two years of its operation.’”

  “Carlie didn’t mention her restaurant,” Briana said.

  “She also neglected to mention that when Markam Newcastle died four years ago, Natalie was worth forty million. Now she’s worth a paltry twenty-five.”

  “She spent fifteen million in four years? Sounds like this woman needs to get herself on a budget.”

  “And this woman, according to Sheldon and Carlie, is you.”

  “In which case, I’d better pay you now for your professional services, before I blow the rest of the money,” Briana said, a nervous chuckle surfacing in her throat for the briefest of moments.

  Michael was not fooled by the lightness of Briana’s tone, or by her words. He saw the desperation clouding her eyes. He knew that she was having a very difficult time trying to cope with this new information.

  The foundation of her sanity was her sense of humor. Sheldon Ayton’s and Carlie Taureau’s visits had to have begun to break through the floorboards of Briana’s certainty about herself. These strangers were the living proof of another life, another reality.

  Was Briana a multiple personality? There was no evidence that Briana Berry existed, and quite a lot that Natalie Newcastle did.

  Michael realized that this might be what her dreams had been telling her—that there was another personality inside her who had been living another life. But if that was what her dreams were saying, Briana had yet to get their message.

  What if she did? What if she stepped out of her Briana Berry persona and into her Natalie Newcastle identity? What if she forgot him as easily and suddenly as she had forgotten Ayton?

  The thought shook him. Hard.

  He couldn’t stand the idea of her forgetting him.

  Don’t be a fool! The best thing that could happen would be for her to forget you. Then you could start forgetting her.

  Michael was determined to listen to the voice of reason. He was determined to do the right thing by her—and himself.

  “Briana, if you are a multiple personality, you’re going to need the help of a specialist.”

  “So you’re going to dump me on some poor, unsuspecting specialist?”

  He could hear the disappointment beneath the forced merriment in her words.

  “I thought you didn’t want me to be your doctor.”

  She laughed. “No. I didn’t want to be your patient.”

  Her words didn’t make any sense intellectually. But, on an emotional level, Michael understood them perfectly.

  And wished he didn’t He had suspected all along that she was as attracted to him as he was to her. And that she, too, had known a doctor-patient relationship would keep them apart.

  It certainly should have. And yet every moment, he felt them drawing closer together. He needed to try to put some distance between them. Quickly.

  “Briana, I’m no longer qualified to help you.”

  “Don’t my dreams contain the answers?”

  “I firmly believe studying your dreams will give you the answers you seek. But if you are a multiple personality, it could be that the personality who is dreaming has to be the one interpreting the dreams. You need a therapist who understands multiples.”

  “I can see how being a multiple personality could complicate understanding one’s dreams. But I just can’t believe that there is another person inside me. Michael, I know I’d feel…her.” Briana shook her head as the confusion grew in her eyes.

  “There’s an excellent specialist in multiple personalities in Washington State,” Michael said. “His name is Damian Steele.”

  “At least now, with this money, I can pay for the airline ticket,” she said. “Maybe it’s not such a bad thing to be a multiple personality, particularly when one of my personalities has this great face and is filthy rich.”

  He rested his hand on hers, unable to resist the sadness in her eyes, despite her tone.

  She smiled at him, with bravery, not humor. “I don’t know why I’m fighting it so hard. I probably should go with the flow.”

  Michael withdrew his hand, keeping his voice even. “And stay married to Sheldon Ayton?”

  “I’m not ready to do that much flowing.”

  “He has money, power and, if Carlie can be believed, apparently charm, when he chooses to exercise it. His feelings for you also seem quite genuine.”

  “Michael, you can’t be serious! Are you forgetting he tried to forcibly take me out of here? What kind of a man attempts to force a woman to do something against her will? Surely you’re not trying to talk me into staying married to him?”

  “Just testing the strength of your identity boundaries,” he said, and kn
ew that hadn’t been all he was doing. He had also been testing the strength of her feelings against Ayton. The last thing he wanted was her back with that man.

  She looked straight at him and spoke slowly, with the calmness of conviction.

  “Michael, I’m Briana Berry. Not Natalie Newcastle. I’m aware that my belief flies in the face of all the evidence and logic. But this goes beyond the confines of evidence and logic. This is knowing, despite evidence and logic. I know who I am.”

  Yes, she certainly did. In spite of everything, she clung to it, too.

  Michael was struck anew by how strong she was. Her special type of toughness—the ability to simply stand firm—had not been breached.

  If there was a Natalie Newcastle inside her, he wondered if she was as resilient. And then he remembered the picture Sergeant Vierra had shown him of Natalie, the picture that Sheldon Ayton had obviously supplied.

  That resilience, that humor, everything he’d seen in Briana, he’d seen in the eyes and the smile in that picture, as well. From that standpoint, the two personalities weren’t different at all. How would he feel about Natalie if she was here?

  “You have a few days to think about whether you wish to see Dr. Steele,” Michael said, annoyed with his personal preoccupation. “Damian’s on vacation until late next week.”

  “You think I have this other person inside me, don’t you?”

  “Briana, I know it seems a paradox, but that explanation fits the facts—even the fact that you have such a strong sense of yourself. Each personality would, don’t you see?”

  She let out a small sigh of disappointment. “No, I don’t see. I only know what I feel. I feel like me, just me. Will you at least hang around until I leave for Washington, Michael?”

  “Yes.” He knew it wasn’t wise, but he knew he would, because she needed him to. “We might as well make our time between now and then productive. I suggest we try to get to know Natalie Newcastle better and see if anything about her life reveals insights into your own.”

  “I must admit, I do like her taste in clothes. The outfits Carlie brought are beautiful.”

  “How would you like to put one on now and take a trip?”