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Pieces of Dreams
Donna Hill
MILLS & BOON
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Acknowledgments
I want to thank the countless fans who have continued to support me over the years, buying the books, telling their friends and buying more books! I hope to be able to entertain, inform and make you smile for many years to come. To my family and my friends, who always keep me grounded. To all the Arabesque authors new and old whom I have had the pleasure of meeting, e-mailing and working with: continued success to all of you. And most of all, to God, who continues to shower me with daily blessings!
Contents
MAXINE
Chapter 1: My Forever Came Today
Chapter 2: Now Comes the Hard Part
TAYLOR
Chapter 3: The Bed You Make
Chapter 4: No Turning Back
MAXINE
Chapter 5: Every Beat of My Heart
QUINN
Chapter 6: Things Fall Apart
Chapter 7: Can’t Let Go
Chapter 8: If Only You Knew
MAXINE
Chapter 9: Revelations
TAYLOR
Chapter 10: Only Time Will Tell
Chapter 11: Nowhere to Run
MAXINE
Chapter 12: Over The Rainbow
QUINN
Chapter 13: The Road Back
MAXINE
Chapter 14: Trying To Make It Right
QUINN
Chapter 15: My Turn Now
TAYLOR, MAXINE, QUINN
Epilogue: All In Good Time
Chapter 1
My Forever Came Today
I chased sleep all last night, doing my own version of the dead man’s float on land. Not moving, stifling my sobs, I dared not toss or turn though my heart raced and my brain churned.
Taylor, my man, my lover’s, gentle, enflaming touch unnerved me instead of igniting my heart. He wanted to make love to me—inside out. I knew what he needed, what he wanted, but something inside me shut down. And I was scared. Scared of what it meant.
“Tell me what’s wrong, Baby. Talk to me,” he’d said when I mumbled some incoherent excuse about not feeling up to it. Never in our three year relationship could we keep our hands off each other, right from the very beginning. Did he know I was lying?
Even as still as I remained, as hard as I worked at keeping my treacherous thoughts sealed shut, commanding my heart to stop that thudding noise, Taylor still worried about me. “Max? What’s wrong, Baby?” He stroked my hair. “Want me to get you something?” He began to massage my neck, my back, releasing the knots of tension. That’s the way he was—sensitive and in tune with my needs, my feelings. He always listened to me, really listened, and that made all the difference in the world. Taylor was always more than my man. He was my friend.
From the day we met, it was as if we’d known each other all our lives. There was an easiness about Taylor that just made it to simple to open up to him and not to be afraid of what he might see. From the beginning it drew me to him like a magnet—the need to be cared about totally and completely without having to fight for it.
I wanted to turn into his arms last night, pour out my heart and my darkest fears, bury them in the strength and security of his embrace, but for the first time in the three glorious years that we’d been together I couldn’t. So I did the first thing that came to my mind, did something I’d sworn I’d never do. I lied. I lied to keep from hurting him with the truth.
“Mmm. Nothin’, Babe, really. Just thinking about some things at work. Sorry if I’m keepin’ you up.” I eased out of the bed, nude as usual—Taylor liked that—and slipped on the short, peach silk robe that I kept at the foot of the four-poster bed. “Maybe some warm milk would help.” I leaned down and kissed his temple, there on that salt and pepper spot that I sometimes teased him about but secretly thought only added to his ruggedly handsome looks.
“I’ll sit with you,” he mumbled, his voice a cross between Isaac Hayes’s seductive timbre and tires running over gravel. That made me smile.
“Don’t even think about it, Ty. Go back to sleep, Babe.”
Still emotionally rattled, I tiptoed out of the room, walked down the short hallway, and peeked in at the partially open bedroom door. Something inside of me filled, just as it always did whenever I looked at my son, hunched up like a lump of sugar beneath his Spider-Man sheets. My blessing.
I stood for a moment in the doorway, watching Jamel breathe in and out and the battlefield of action heroes spread out across the sheets, some having fallen onto the navy blue-carpeted floor.
My throat clenched. Three years ago, with one simple phone call, one sentence, this all could be so different—this life I had worked to build—but that was then.
Inhaling my reality, I let it settle in the unlit place inside myself and headed downstairs to think.
That was nearly four hours and three cups of coffee ago. Everything was still out of focus. The only thing that was a bit clear was the view of the Golden Gate Bridge that was slowly materializing beyond my little window on the world.
The beacons of sun streaming into the kitchen window were warm as always for eight a.m., even if they were filtered by the everpresent fog that hung over San Francisco like gauze drapes used to keep mosquitoes out. Music, coming from the little clock radio on the sink, slow and bluesy—the kind that slips through your pores and seeps into your soul—floated around the squared-off yellow room, bringing its own brand of “just sit back and relax.” But I couldn’t.
Above me, from upstairs, I heard the rush of the shower pounding against the ecru-colored tiles, and knew that Taylor was up. Any minute, like clockwork, Jamel would come bounding down the stairs, sleep still stuck in his inky black eyes, eyes just like his father’s, wanting his bowl of Frosted Flakes with no milk.
For all intents and purposes it was a day just like any other, except for the boulder of truth that sat on my chest. There was no way I could put off telling Taylor much longer.
How many times in the past twenty-four hours had I wished that my old homegirl Val hadn’t called from New York—that she hadn’t mentioned Quinten Parker’s name again, hadn’t made me