Muriel Jensen - New Year's Wedding

Cassie remained still. She had a reputation as a consummate professional whether she was in water, on a camel or in a tree. Discomfort meant nothing as long as they got just the right shot.

Panic began, anyway. It was mild at first because she tried to work the behavior strategy. Breathe deeply, think about wide, open spaces and put yourself there.

Her favorite place was Paloma Beach on the Riviera. She struggled to remember the feel of the warm breeze on her face and the sun on her limbs, to hear the surf and the laughter of other bathers.

She was anxious, though, about meeting her siblings. She could miss her flight, and travel was crazy at this time of year. And the strategy required focus and not distraction to work well.

She finally said politely, “Please stop. I need a minute to...”

But the woman went on as though Cassie hadn’t spoken, determined to fix the troublesome eyelashes.

Mild panic quickly became the serious stuff of nightmares. After twenty-five years and several therapists, she still didn’t know if she’d been born this way or if something she couldn’t recall had caused it. Once the panic took her over, its origin didn’t matter. Dealing with it was all she could do.

Now she couldn’t breathe, felt the darkness coming as though someone lowered a heavy, prickly blanket over her, saw the lights go crazy as the spin quickened and she began to gasp for air. The need to jump out of her skin and run was overwhelming.

It acted like a memory that wouldn’t quite form. She had a sense of something holding her tightly in place, squeezing the breath out of her. In contradiction to the imprisoning hold, she felt something silky against her face. It was always the same. Loud, angry voices, cries of pain and anguish, then a harsh, ugly noise and a moment’s silence. She struggled to put a time and place to what was less a memory than an imprint on her brain without words or pictures. As always, nothing came.

When the makeup artist smoothed the eyelashes again and accidentally stuck her finger in Cassie’s eye, Cassie came back to the moment suddenly, screaming. She grabbed the startled woman’s wrist and held it away from her.

“Stop!” Cassie shouted at her. “I asked you to stop!” She was horrified to hear herself. She never shouted. “Are you deaf?” she demanded.

The cruel question was spoken in exasperation rather than anger but she noted that the woman’s eyes were on her lips. When they rose to meet her gaze, they looked mortified, stricken.

Several members of the crew closed in to try to help, but that was the last thing Cassie’s claustrophobia needed. Though she felt as though a breath was trapped in her lungs, she managed to free a high-pitched scream. She dropped the woman’s wrist, pushed away the coat someone tried to wrap around her, picked up the skirts of her dress and ran away. The scream seemed to fill the night and follow her.

CHAPTER ONE

CASSIDY CHAPMAN HELD Grady Nelson’s hand in a death grip as they raced across the tarmac toward her father’s private jet. Footsteps pounded after them.

“Cassie!” a rough male voice shouted from behind them. The rest of what he said was drowned out by the sound of the growling jet, ready for takeoff. The smell of diesel and grass filled the warm, southeast Texas air, making the Christmas carols coming from the terminal some distance away seem out of place.

“Almost there!” Grady encouraged her as they continued to run.

“Thank goodness,” Cassie gasped. “I feel like my feet are wearing through the soles of my shoes.”

“If you weren’t such a celebrity, you wouldn’t have to keep dodging the press.”

They ground to a stop at the steps leading into her father’s plane. The copilot waiting for them directed a passing security guard to stop the pursuing photographer.

“Drew,” she said as she ran past the copilot and up the steps, her small tote bag weighing a ton after that run. “Thanks for being so prompt. But I thought Dad was sending the helicopter.”

“It’s our job to be prompt, Miss Chapman,” he called after her. “Like the Boy Scouts, only we fly. And I was closer than the ’copter.”

The small Gulfstream G450 was luxurious yet comfortingly familiar with its white-and-gold tapestry-covered armchairs around a low table. Several Picasso prints decorated the bulkhead. She’d accompanied her father on business on this plane many times. Flying with him had been part of her therapy. There’d been a point when she’d thought she’d licked all those old problems, but recent events had shaken that belief.

Grady stopped just inside and looked around in apparent astonishment. She hustled him forward so Drew could pull up the steps and close the door. She stowed her bag and took Grady’s from him.

“Ah...” he said, frowning as his eyes went from the Tiffany lamp on the table to the art prints. “I guess we won’t have to worry about legroom.”

“Nice, isn’t it? It’s really hard to fly commercial airlines when you’ve gotten used to this.” She pointed him to the two traditional passenger seats facing forward and put his bag in an overhead bin. “We have to sit here for takeoff,” she said, taking the aisle seat. “Do you mind sitting by the window?” She nudged Grady toward the window seat as she asked the question.

“Happy to.” He sat and buckled his belt, peering out the window, and then looked around, his expression still one of disbelief. She didn’t blame him. He was probably wondering how a trip to spend Christmas with his friend in Texas had turned into a mad chase with her to the central Oregon coastal town where he lived and worked and was a friend of her family’s.

“Are you beginning to regret helping me escape?” she asked, buckling her own belt, the small Chloe suede cross-body bag she still wore across her chest.

“No.” He turned to smile at her. “But I do admit to feeling a long way out of my element. I seldom have reason to fly, much less in a private plane. My life is so much...smaller than this. And I like that.”

Was that a message? she wondered. I rescued you this time, but don’t get used to it. This isn’t going to be one of those cop-rescues-model-in-distress stories with a romance-movie ending.

If so, that was fine with her. She had too much to repair in her life, and that required her complete attention. Like the panic she always felt when flying. And the fact that she may have just killed her career with a major meltdown in the middle of a shoot in Ireland. Both were related to an issue she couldn’t explain, except to wonder if it was left over from her nebulous childhood. She’d done a good job of keeping that to herself, so, to the world at large, she just looked like a white-knuckle flier and to the crew in Ireland, a spoiled brat.

Added to that, she’d been reunited with her siblings after most of a lifetime spent apart, only to have to escape their Texas reunion when the paparazzi appeared.

She’d dreamed of getting her brother and sister back for most of her life. She barely remembered Jack; just an impression of gentleness and a comforting voice.

But she and Corie had corresponded for a while when she was twelve. Then Corie had run away and they’d had little contact since. Until they’d met in Texas.

As though that wasn’t enough to keep a woman up at night, at age twenty-five, she suddenly had this undefined longing nothing seemed to satisfy. It wasn’t related to men because her life was filled with them, and though she enjoyed their friendships, she felt no desire to spend the rest of her life with one. She did not need one more complication. She needed...something.

She patted Grady’s hand where it rested on his knee, just to be able to touch something strong and solid. “Well, don’t worry about it. I’ll be out of your hair as soon as we get to Beggar’s Bay. Your car’s at the Salem airport, right?”