Someone was lurking in the bushes…
Meliana heard a movement to her left. She crouched, breathed carefully, concentrated. She should have brought a knife, she realized. She kept still and forced herself to remain calm. Her heart was slamming so hard she felt certain whoever was there would hear it. She searched the darkened ground for a weapon. A stone was the best she could find, but she needed something to defend herself in a struggle.
What if it was him?
It had to be him…waiting to pounce. Had he followed her? It was possible. He’d done a number of other bizarre things. Like stealing her underwear.
She waited a full thirty seconds. The frogs seemed to grow louder with each second that passed. The sound of rustling bushes reached her again. Someone was directly behind her. Still in a crouch, Meliana spun. As she did, a man’s arm wrapped itself around her shoulders and a hand came over her mouth….
Dream Weaver
Jenna Ryan
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Jenna Ryan loves creating dark-haired heroes, heroines with strength and good murder mysteries. Ever since she was young, she has had an extremely active imagination. She considered various careers over the years and dabbled in several of them, until the day her sister Kathy suggested she put her imagination to work and write a book. She enjoys working with intriguing characters and feels she is at her best writing romantic suspense. When people ask her how she writes, she tells them by instinct. Clearly it’s worked, since she’s received numerous awards from Romantic Times BOOKclub. She lives in Canada and travels as much as she can when she’s not writing.
CAST OF CHARACTERS
Meliana Maynard—A stalker is sending this gifted Chicago surgeon white roses.
Johnny Grand—Meliana’s estranged husband. Two years undercover for the FBI damaged his mind and his marriage.
Julie Denton—Meliana’s best friend and a Chicago police officer. She predicts the stalker will become murderous.
Sam Robbins—Julie’s awkward stepbrother. He has a strange mental gift, and a big crush on Meliana.
Charlie Lightfoot—Meliana’s friend is a psychologist with powers of his own. He predicts great danger for Meliana.
Zack Crawford—Deputy sheriff in Blue Lake, where Johnny lives and Meliana used to spend her vacations.
Nick Hohlman—A surgical nurse who fought hard to become part of Meliana’s team.
Chris Blackburn—An FBI agent. Once Johnny’s friend and partner, he admits to being in love with Meliana.
Tim Carrick—Johnny’s phantom neighbor in Blue Lake. His wife simply vanished one day.
Sheriff Owen Frank—He enforces the law in Blue Lake, but only when necessary.
Contents
Prologue
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Prologue
I am not crazy!
There, that’s out of the way. Sometimes people tell me I am, and it makes me furious. But I don’t want to think about that, or I might do something unpleasant.
I’ll think about Meliana Maynard instead. Beautiful, exotic Meliana. I’ve been watching her for a very long time now. I know her routine, her habits, even some of her quirks.
I’ve watched her jog on the shore of Lake Michigan and in the park. I’ve seen her at the hospital where she works. She wears blue scrubs when she’s operating and a white lab coat when she isn’t.
She has black magic hair—that’s dark, dark brown with just a hint of red—but it’s her eyes that are the real magic. They’re silver-gray, like the lake on a rainy day when the sun pokes through and shines on it.
I love her. I don’t care that she married another man. I would if they were still together, but she left him six months ago, so it’s okay. Sort of. She came to her senses and did the smart thing, the right thing. We can be together now. Or—well, soon.
She has an amazing body. I took some of her lingerie. Six pieces, and every piece as lovely as she is. I think she wears sexy lingerie all the time. There was a lot of silk and lace in her drawer.
There were a lot of photographs, too, pictures of Meliana on her wedding day. I wanted to tear the man beside her to shreds.
It’s odd, but I find myself staring at a scalpel she used once. I see it covered in blood. I’m starting to shake. She has a mind of her own, my Meliana. She’s very strong.
The shaking is getting worse. All I can see is blood.
I’ve been spinning dreams about her for many long months. I’ve woven the threads of them back and forth in my mind until now, finally, I’ve created the perfect picture of Meliana and me.
And yet I worry. I see blood. I shake. What if she doesn’t want me? What if she thinks I’m crazy? What if she doesn’t love me?
What if the blood is hers?
Chapter One
It was going to rain. At the moment, the air was warm and sultry as late summer stroked lingering fingers over the Chicago area, but there were black clouds suspended above the lake and strong traces of red and gold on the leaves.
Labor Day had come and gone. Children were back in school, the tourists older now, couples for the most part, looking for both excitement and nostalgia as their vacation time wound down.
Meliana Maynard wasn’t looking so much as listening to her neighbor Chris Blackburn’s thumbnail account of the attempted break-in on her midcentury town house.
“Your alarm went off when the guy tried to jimmy the back door.” Chris cocked a thumb over his shoulder. “He must have burned rubber across your lawn. Cops showed within four minutes.” He grinned. “That’s gotta be a first, right? I flashed my ID and went inside with them, but I don’t think whoever it was made it past the back stoop.” His grin widened as he rested both arms on her shoulders and set his face close to hers. “So how was your day, sweet cheeks? Did you cut into anyone worth mentioning?”
“A cute sixteen-year-old with a ruptured spleen and a guy with a gunshot wound to his right leg. Sorry, no gory details on that one.” Meliana looked past Chris at the pair of approaching detectives. “Hey, Julie.”
The female of the pair smiled. She had straight, chin-length blond hair, a squarish