As she drove into traffic, the two children in the back began to sing. Chloe joined in. The words were a familiar rhyme. Then the sound faded and she found herself drifting out of the dream. She tried to call out a protest. She didn’t want to leave. It was perfect there. She wanted it to be real. She wanted him to be her destiny.
Chloe awoke with a start. Cold night air caressed her cheek and for a moment, she didn’t know where she was. Something long and strong and warm cradled her from behind, trapping her in an unfamiliar cocoon.
She opened her mouth to scream, then the memories clicked into place. She was fine. She was in the forest with Arizona. They were hiking to an archaeological dig so he could look at some artifacts. They weren’t married, she wasn’t pregnant. Nothing was different from the way it had been yesterday or a month ago.
Until the last lie, she’d nearly succeeded in calming herself. But now her heart rate picked up and her body trembled. She wasn’t the same. Everything had changed since Arizona had dropped into her life. Now they were lovers. How was she supposed to resist him? The way he touched her, the way he made her feel—no woman could walk away from that kind of magic.
She closed her eyes and willed herself to calm down. She was overtired. She was reacting emotionally to a difficult situation. That was what the dream had been trying to tell her—that things were different now. She wasn’t really going to marry Arizona, live in Bradley and have three children. That was crazy. She was going to move to New York and write for a major magazine. She wasn’t going to get married because loving someone meant opening herself to pain and Chloe had sworn to never do that again. It hurt too much.
“I’m fine,” she whispered to herself. “It was just a dream. It’s not true.”
She repeated the sentences over and over. Slowly, her body relaxed. It wasn’t real. He wasn’t her destiny. In a couple of weeks he would disappear from her life as abruptly as he’d entered it and she would go on as before.
“There’s nothing to be afraid of,” she told herself. “Nothing at all.”
Arizona shifted in his sleep and pulled her closer. She allowed herself to press against him. Unexpectedly, tears sprang to her eyes. She felt them fill her eyes, then spill onto her temple. What on earth was wrong with her? She was fine. It had just been a strange dream.
And then she knew. The truth dawned and with it a growing horror. She wasn’t crying because she was afraid the dream would come true…but because she was afraid it wouldn’t.
* * *
THEY WALKED IN to the dig a little after one in the afternoon. Chloe hadn’t known what to expect. Her entire experience with archaeology had been a visit to the La Brea Tar Pits in Los Angeles when she’d been ten or twelve. She vaguely recalled some motorized life-size replicas of a woolly mammoth family caught in tar outside, and some fossils on the inside. Behind the buildings was the actual site itself, but that memory was a blur.
Here she’d expected to see a few open pits with college students delicately removing bits of bone using dental instruments. Instead, she and Arizona crested the rise and looked down into an entire village.
To the left were the tents used by the scientists and workers. To the right were obviously ancient stone huts, some reduced to crumbled remains, others standing tall with open places for windows and doors. A couple hundred yards back from the village was an open dirt area with a large circle painted in white.
“What do you think?” Arizona asked.
“It’s huge,” she told him. “I’d pictured something smaller.”
“Most people do. They’re studying a society here, not digging up dinosaur bones. Some of the finds are from two or three different Indian tribes. That’s what everyone came to study. But about three months ago, they started unearthing a much older civilization…and one that was more advanced. No one knows who they are or where they came from. They’re the ones who interest me.”
As he spoke, he started down the side of the rise. Chloe followed him. While she was pleased they’d arrived and she could put down her heavy pack for a few hours, in a way she was sorry to be around other people. Instead, she wanted to be alone with Arizona.
This morning could have been awkward. Between her very strange dream and their physical intimacy, she’d been prepared for stiff conversation and averted gazes. Instead, Arizona had awakened her with a kiss. She’d felt perfectly comfortable lying there in his arms. They’d had breakfast and dressed, but in the process of rolling up their sleeping bags and packing up clothes, they’d become tangled in each other. The lovemaking had been hot and fast, leaving them both satisfied and out of breath. Not a bad way to start the morning.