Ann Major - Midnight Fantasy

Her car spun off to the right, bounced over something on the shoulder, and rolled to a crooked stop in front of the alley that ran between two abandoned fish houses. A long shadowy tail disappeared into the tall reedy grasses of the marshy wetlands on the other side of the road.

The junk heap came to a stop right behind her car, ramming her.

The woman in skintight white stumbled out of her sports car.

Rusty and Hank fell on top of her.

Party time.

Tag ripped his bike off road, stopping so fast, he nearly rolled. His right boot hit white shell, and he skidded in a geyser of white dust.

Party time.

Not their party.

His.

He’d been spoiling for a fight…and a woman.

Looks like he had his own personal wish fairy looking out for him up there in heaven.

Frenchy?

Stay with me, Frenchy.

A girl’s terrified scream went through Tag like a knife. He was off his bike—running.

Tonight should have been the happiest night of Claire Woods’s life. Instead, tears of disillusionment stung her eyes. North had let her drive off. So, now here she was, forty miles from home, her blond hair whipping her face like a mop, and two unsavory goons honking on her tail.

She hit the accelerator. Nothing was turning out the way she’d planned. She had so wanted her wedding to be a fairy tale, but as the big day approached Claire Woods, who everybody thought spoiled and pampered, was feeling bereft and hollow.

If only Melody, her quirky, irrepressible, unpredictable sister, hadn’t come home to spoil everything!

It was just like Melody to helicopter off that freighter bound for China and fly home—tonight! Just like her to stage that provocative dance for North’s benefit and steal Claire’s show and maybe her man.

Claire had wanted to shout, “I’m the bride! North loves me now! Not you!” But, of course, she’d only stood there with a frozen smile while Melody hummed and did her cute routine.

And North…

“It’s not North’s fault!”

He hadn’t known Melody would pull one of her stunts. Who but Melody would fly in from China just to crash their party? From the second Melody had waltzed into the yacht club ballroom in those tight pants and shimmery blouse, looking like she owned the place, everybody had been electrified. Nobody could stop talking about that buffoon, Merle somebody, a fly-by-night P.I. their daddy had sent to find her six months ago. Melody had laughingly explained how she’d lured Merle on board her China-bound freighter and then tricked him into walking the plank, so to speak.

“Why did you come home?” North had demanded of Melody. “Why now?”

“I…I couldn’t miss your wedding.”

“You sure missed the last one.” North’s low voice was rapier-sharp.

If North truly loved Claire, he would be chasing Claire right now instead of the two hoods flashing their highbeams and honking behind her.

Instead, her fiancé and her sister were still at the party, probably making eyes at each other this very minute, while she was driving around alone.

No…. No….

A vision of Melody humming softly, Melody, in those skintight black jeans and a white silk shirt, eyes aglow, her honey-gold hair streaming down her slim back took shape in Claire’s too-vivid imagination. Her sister’s dance had been so enthusiastic, so spontaneous, and so original that everybody had stopped dancing and started clapping the moment she kicked off her shoes and threw them to North. Everyone except North who’d gripped those sparkly high heels in a strangle-hold. Not that he hadn’t watched her dance, his expression darkening when the other men had started clapping.

How much of her childhood had Claire spent curled up with a book or in her room alone with her dreams while bubbly Melody was out in the yard putting on a show that had all the neighborhood children, especially the boys, spellbound?

Applause and love and sheer sexiness came so easily to the uninhibited Melody.

All her life Claire had wanted to be first with somebody.

“Don’t think about Melody,” Claire whispered to herself. “Don’t think about the pain in North’s eyes when he’d watched her dance.”

“But I can’t stop.”

Claire had never outgrown the childish habit of talking to herself, especially when she was in her car alone or primping in front of her mirror.

“Chase me then!” she’d laughingly challenged North a little while after Melody’s dance.

The memory made her blush, made her eyes burn. What a brazen fool she was. When would she ever learn North was too cool and mature to play what he called her childish games?

Or was that really it? Did he love her, really love her as once he had loved…

He had told her once, “I can never love you as I loved Melody. But I believe what we’ll have will be better and stronger than what I felt for her.”

Claire was sick of driving around. More than a little scared, too, and not just of losing North. The jerks behind her were persistent. Her parents’ warnings played like tapes in the back of her mind.

A woman alone on the road is prey, Claire. This in a shrill tone from her bossy mother, Dee Dee.

When a man sees a woman alone, he takes it as an invitation. This from Sam, her all-knowing doctor father.

Maybe the old folks were smarter than she’d thought. Her legs had been jelly ever since these two goons had almost sideswiped her, forcing her onto the shoulder a while ago.

The humid wind that battered her face and tangled her butter-colored hair stank with the pungent fragrance of a plankton-laced bay. When their car speeded up, attempting to pass her again, Claire shakily pushed a sticky strand of hair out of her eyes.

Her front wheels skidded. Her heart skittered.

“I’m not scared!”

When the car in her rearview mirror rushed forward and she could no longer see it, she yanked her steering wheel to the left and cut them off. Honking, they eased off the accelerator and veered back into the right lane behind her. So did she. They slowed, and she relaxed enough to rehash the humiliating little scene at the country club with North and Melody, which was the reason she was in this mess.

North never wanted to discuss wedding details, maybe because his first wedding had ended in such disaster.

“We’ll all be happier when you grow up!” North had thundered distractedly a few minutes after Melody’s dance had ended. Claire had been trying to discuss some of the difficulties with wedding costs. “So, scale back. Compromise!”

North could hold onto his cowboy cool a whole lot longer than most guys, so his uncustomary show of temper should have warned her.

“But I can’t. It’s our wedding day. If your family would just—”

“You know what your problem is?” North had waved one of Melody’s shoes at her. “You’re spoiled, Claire.”

“Me? Spoiled? You’re the big multimillionaire rancher.”

Men. At first she hadn’t been able to believe that North, whose wealth was legendary, had joined forces with the wedding consultant, caterers, her parents, and his family to attack her. Why couldn’t he understand how unsure she felt with Melody home and everybody else pulling her to pieces?

“Darling, Mother keeps saying she just wants our wedding day to be fairy-tale perfect,” she’d whispered, “something special we’ll remember forever. We’re doing this for you…to make up for…” Claire stopped, staring at the sparkly shoes he still held because she couldn’t say, my sister jilting you at the altar.

“I wish you two would worry a little more about what comes after that day—our marriage.”

“Oh, that—That’s the happily-ever-after part.”