Claire cocked her
head to study him. “I had a funny feeling you were needing me today.”
“Did you now?”
She didn’t
answer but continued to study him. Her eyes were astute and after a minute, he
stepped around the island and pulled her to him. He closed his eyes and held
her, resting his chin on the top of her head.
“You’ve always
known when I needed you.”
“Aye, Re. We’re
joined together, you and I.” They stood for a moment in silence before she
pulled away. “Are you sad on account of the divorce? It’s only natural, you
know—”
“It isn’t
that.”
“Well, what is
it then?”
He could have
gone to his grave with his secret inside him, had she not already known he was
troubled. And she always knew. She’d known since she was six years old and he’d
never been able to keep anything from her. “You remember the dreams I’ve always
had?”
She cocked her
head again. When she looked at him, she didn’t blink, as if she was totally
focused on every word. “Aye.”
“They’ve become
more frequent.”
“It’s only
natural, Re, for you to dream about the perfect soul mate when your marriage
has just dissolved.”
“She’s real,
Claire. And she’s here.”
“What are you
saying?”
He gestured
toward the back yard. “It happened yesterday. I was cooking outside there. And
right before I put the meat on the grill, she just stepped through the hedges
there.”
“She just
materialized in your own back yard.”
“Aye. Right
there between’st the gardenias and the patio.”
“Re.”
“I know it
sounds unbelievable—”
“It sounds
insane.”
“But I swear
it’s the truth.”
“You weren’t
hallucinating.”
“Have you ever
known me to hallucinate?”
“No. I
haven’t.”
“There you have
it.”
“There’s a
first time for everything.”
“My first time
to hallucinate hasn’t happened yet.”
She shifted her
weight from one hip to the other, her eyes still focused on his. “And what did
you do there, after she materialized in your own back yard?”
“We had
dinner.”
She raised one
brow.
“She’s the
woman I’ve dreamed about, all these years. She even had the dragonfly tattoo on
her ankle. Of course, in my dreams, it was always a birthmark, but—”
“Lots of women
have dragonfly tattoos on their ankles.”
He combed his
hair with his fingers but the locks fell back onto his forehead immediately. “It
happened so fast. And it felt so right. I’ve always had this feeling, like I
had a twin in the womb with me. And somehow, coming into the world, that twin
was lost. I’ve always lived with this emptiness, as if someone ought to be
there who isn’t.”
“I know you
have, Re. I’ve always known you have.”
“When she was
here, when we were together, it—it was as though I’d found my twin. The other
part of myself. She made me whole somehow.”
“Your twin soul.”
“She is my twin
soul, Claire. I know we’ve been together before. I know we have.”
Is reincarnation possible? It is a question that Ryan struggles with. A staunch Irish Catholic, he's been raised to believe in one life followed by heaven or hell. Now he must come to terms with the very real possibility that he has known this woman in another life - and that it may end in murder, just as it did nearly two hundred years earlier.
The Tempest Murders is available in all fine book stores, retailers and online. It is a finalist in the 2013 USA Best Book Awards and a 2014 International Book Awards nominee. You can find it on Kindle by following this link, in trade paperback on amazon here, and for all other eBooks formats you can follow this link. It is also available in the iBooks store and on Nook.
