Chasing a Dream
Authors: Beth Cornelison
Tags: #Romance, #Suspense, #Texas, #Nashville, #spousal abuse, #follow your dream, #country music, #musician, #award winning author, #Louisiana author, #escaping abuse, #overcoming past, #road story
CHASING A DREAM
B
ETH
C
ORNELISON
Copyright Information
This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author‘s imagination or are used fictitiously.
Copyright © 2006 by Beth Cornelison
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the author. The only exception is by a reviewer, who may quote short excerpts in a review.
eISBN: 978-1-937776-30-5
Also by Beth Cornelison
Trust in Me
, Amazon Kindle Bestseller!
Reyn's Redemption
Healing Luke
Under Fire
Soldier's Pregnancy Protocol
Visit Beth online at
www.BethCornelison.com
!
Follow her on Twitter:
@BethCornelison
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Table of Contents
Special Excerpt from Trust in Me, Amazon Kindle Bestseller
Dedication
To my son, Jeffery—believe in yourself. Dreams do come true!
PROLOGUE
LOCAL BUSINESSMAN RILEY FANNIN FOUND DEAD, APPARENT SUICIDE
A ripple of uneasiness shimmied through Tess Sinclair as she reread the newspaper headline.
Fannin
. She knew that name. But from where?
“Randall?” She peered over the top of the paper to the man seated across their opulent living room on a black leather couch.
He glanced up from his business magazine with an impatient glare. Accustomed to Randall’s short temper and not sure her curiosity warranted upsetting him, Tess hesitated.
“What?” he asked irritably.
Tess drew a deep breath and plunged forward. “Don’t you have a business associate named Riley Fannin?”
Randall’s glared darkened. “My business dealings are none of your business. It would behoove you to remember that.”
She nodded, trying to appease him. “Yes, I know. I only ask because the paper says he died. Apparent suicide.”
Randall dropped his gaze to his magazine again. “Good riddance.”
“Randall, that’s an awful thing to say!” Tess gaped at him, disconcerted by his callousness, though she shouldn’t have been. After twelve unhappy years of living with Randall, she should have learned to expect such coldness from him. Deep in her soul, the naive and idealistic girl she’d been when they met still harbored a tiny hope that somehow, someday, Randall would change. But after twelve years, Randall still hadn’t deigned to marry her, although he called her his wife and took all the privileges. To Randall, Tess was just another possession, bought with his money and subject to his iron will.
Now, as he glowered at her, a muscle in Randall’s jaw twitched, a sure sign he was getting angry. Tess’s defenses went on alert.
“The man was weak. A nothing. And I don’t tolerate weakness, Tess. You should know that better than anyone.” He paused, and his menacing dark eyes found hers. “Get me a scotch.”
Obediently, she rose from her chair and crossed to the wet bar to pour his drink. Her hand shook as she poured, knowing how alcohol encouraged Randall’s fits of rage. She was adding ice to his glass when she remembered where she’d heard Fannin’s name. “The call.”
“What?” Randall groused.
Tess spun to face him when she realized she’d said the words aloud. “I . . . I said ‘the call.’ You had a call last night from someone about Fannin. I overheard because the answering machine picked up at the same time you did.”
Randall narrowed a speculative glare on her and slapped his magazine aside. “You were eavesdropping on my phone call?”
She swallowed. Why had she brought it up? Better that he’d never known. “Not on purpose. I swear. The machine came on while I was starting dinner. I had raw chicken on my ha—”
“Shut up!” Randall surged to his feet. His dark brown eyes glittered with wrath as he stalked toward her. When she’d met him, Randall’s swarthy good looks had been appealing. Now his height and dark features seemed more intimidating, especially when he used his size advantage against her.
Her grip tightened on the crystal highball glass while fear squeezed her lungs.
No. Not again.
Hand trembling, she held the scotch out to him. He knocked it to the floor with a swift lash of his arm. “What did you hear?”
Panic swelled in her chest as she met the blaze of fury in his eyes. He clenched his jaw, flexed and fisted his hands at his sides, waiting for an excuse to use them.
A pit of despair, the gnawing sense of being trapped and at his mercy, filled her gut. She marshaled what courage she could and fumbled with the two-carat diamond on her left hand. On nights like tonight, her jewelry felt like a noose.
“Nothing really. I—”
With a jarring smack, the back of his hand connected with her cheek. Pain streaked through her and weakened her knees. She tasted the familiar metallic flavor of blood and had to suppress the urge to vomit.
“Don’t lie to me, Tess. Don’t ever lie to me.” His tone was frighteningly calm, like the lull before a Texas tornado. “What did you hear?”
Frantically, Tess tried to remember exactly what the man on the phone had said to Randall. The call had puzzled her, she recalled, and the male voice had been unfamiliar.
We took care of Riley Fannin. He won’t be a problem anymore.
Tess caught her breath when the man’s strange words came back to her, and she jerked her stunned gaze up to Randall’s.
You idiot! I told you never to call me on this line!
Randall had answered.
Sorry, boss, I thought—
But whatever the man had thought had been lost when Randall slammed down the phone, disconnecting the call.
Now, Tess blinked in disbelief as the significance of what she’d heard sank in. Icy fingers of horror clawed at her. “You killed him,” she rasped.
“Give me some credit. I’m not stupid enough to dirty my hands with such things.”
No, of course not. Randall wielded his power and position like a despot. He’d have had one of his many minions carry out the seedy details.
“But you knew about it. You . . . ordered his murder. Didn’t you?” Just the idea made Tess nauseated, light-headed with shock.
A sarcastic grin tugged one side of Randall’s thin lips. “You always were the smart one, weren’t you? Which is why I’ve always kept you out of my business affairs. I didn’t need your bleeding-heart, sanctimonious morality interfering with the way I do business.”
“Murder is not business! It’s criminal! It’s evil!” She should have kept her mouth shut. She knew what it meant to challenge Randall. But everything inside her and everything she believed balked at the obscenity of what she was learning.
Randall stepped closer, grabbing her arm with a viselike grip. She gasped as his fingers bit into her arm.
“Are you threatening me?” he growled, his nose shoved close to her face.
“No!”
“Good. Your sister wasn’t smart enough to keep her whoring mouth shut. I’d hate to have to deal with disloyalty from you the way I did with her.”
Tess’s stomach somersaulted, and she shook her head in confusion. “Angie? What does this have to do with Angie?”
“Only that when she got a notion to hold my business dealings against me, she, like Fannin, learned how I deal with traitors.”
Bile rose in Tess’s throat as she processed this new insight to her sister’s thirteen-year-old murder. She’d been living, sleeping, having sex with the man responsible for her sister’s death! A man for whom murder was a business tool. She’d known he had a bad temper, known he became violent when she angered him, but had never imagined the scope of his malice or his immorality. And now that she knew the true extent of Randall’s treachery, what could she do?
“Her pimp owed me money,” she heard Randall say, though her mind already reeled with the implications of his previous revelations. “He handled Angela when she stepped out of line, and I forgave his debt. A simple business transaction.”
Tears of rage filled her eyes, her own safety forgotten in the shadow of the horrid truths she was learning.
“You bastard,” she muttered with every bit of venom that seethed inside her.
Randall jerked as if hit. Fire erupted in his eyes, and he shoved her backward with a force that knocked the breath from her. Crystal tumblers and wine glasses shattered around her as she crashed into the wet bar and slumped to the floor.
“How dare you speak to me like that!” Randall delivered a sharp kick to her ribs. “I took you in when the only other way you could have survived was as a whore. I laid the world at your feet, bought you everything money could buy! And this is the thanks I get?” Another bone-jarring kick. “You ungrateful bitch! I ain’t gonna take it!”
On some level, through the haze of pain, fear and loathing, she heard Randall’s language slip into the street slang he’d grown up using. The lazy speech pattern he worked meticulously to avoid as an adult and a respected San Antonio businessman. His regression spoke for the extent of his fury . . . and her danger.
“I swear, woman, if you ever rat me out, I
will
kill you.”
Tess shuddered and closed her eyes, squeezing back her tears.
“Think about that if you have any half-assed ideas about taking what you know to the cops. The cops can’t touch me. I’ve made sure of it.”
She was sure of it, too. How else had he gotten away with his crimes for so long?
He’d hidden his vile business practices from her well, kept her ignorant to the extent of his evil nature. But she should have known. Had she turned a blind eye to the signs of his wickedness in self-preservation? Had she been too stupid to see what was right before her? More importantly, now that she knew who and what Randall Sinclair was, how did she survive? How did she look at herself in the mirror, knowing how he paid for the clothes on her back, the jewels on her hand?
