THE MORNING SIDE OF DAWN

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  THE MORNING SIDE OF DAWN

  Justine Davis

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  Contents:

  Prologue

  1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16

  Epilogue

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  Prologue

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  She was the most beautiful thing he'd ever seen. She always had been. And they treated her so badly, made her stand there in the hot sun for hours while they took photographs that would be seen by millions. It just wasn't right. She should be pampered, treasured, kept safe, away from those millions of leering eyes. For he knew they all leered at her; they didn't feel as he did, didn't really care, didn't want only to protect her, take care of her. They wanted to ogle her, to touch her, to display her like a pagan prize. And she hated it, he knew she did. She had always hated it. Despite her beauty, she'd been a shy child, so quiet, trusting only him…

  They shifted the pose, the flowing white gown she wore whipping in the stiffening breeze. It suited her, that white dress, for it was as pure as her beauty. Her dark hair was a dramatic contrast to the sheer fabric; her eyes were wide and innocent. She needed him, he could see it there in the green depths. Every time she glanced his way, he could see it there, the worry, the tiny crease that furrowed her brow. She needed him to rescue her, to save her from the staring eyes, the touching hands. She needed him to help her, and this time he wouldn't let her down. He would save her. He would save her.

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  Chapter 1

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  "This is impossible, Cassandra."

  "It's Cassie." Her voice had taken on an edge she didn't like the sound of, but Cassie Cameron was mightily tired of being Cassandra. Cassandra was an invention, a creation of the High Profile Agency and the advertising people who used her image. It wasn't her. But she was finding it harder and harder to hang on to the distinction between the two.

  "Whatever." Charlie Tucker waved a hand dismissively. "You simply can't cancel all those bookings."

  There had been a time when she would have acquiesced without argument. There had been a time when she would never have dreamed of even suggesting canceling the string of lucrative assignments that loomed before her. There had been a time when she would have been delighted to be merely a sidelight to the circus, let alone the sole performer in the center ring. But no more.

  "If it's that Willis character who has you spooked—"

  "It's not him," she said, interrupting Charlie, also something she once would never have dreamed of. "Not entirely."

  And it wasn't. The man bothered her, but he wasn't the reason for this. She'd been on the verge long before the pale, thin figure had shown up at her last shoot in the Rockies outside of Denver. He was merely the impetus that had sped up her decision.

  "Then what? You can't just—"

  "I can," she corrected, keeping the edge out of her voice this time with a conscious effort. "And I have."

  Charlie stared at her across the expanse of his rosewood desk. "I never thought I'd see the day when you became temperamental."

  Cassie's mouth curved into a wry smile. "I have been a good little girl, haven't I?"

  Charlie's graying brows furrowed. "What's that supposed to mean?"

  "It means," Cassie said with a sigh, "that I've always done everything you asked. I've let you call the shots, and I've never argued. I even do the unthinkable—I show up on time at shoots, and I never walk off a set. No attitude here, right, Charlie?"

  "Yes, and look where you are because of it! There isn't a top-twenty magazine on the stands you haven't been on the cover of at one time or another, most of them several times."

  "I know that. And I appreciate all you've done. But it's been too long since I've had a break. I'm tired, Charlie."

  "You took that vacation just a few weeks ago."

  "That was three months ago. And for two days, to go to a wedding. Out of how many years?"

  Charlie had the grace to look chagrined. "Well, all right, maybe you have been working a little too hard, but to cancel all those bookings? That's absurd. You're hotter than hot right now. You can't just stop for that long and not expect it to affect your career."

  "I do expect it to affect my career." She shrugged, knowing Charlie would never understand. "I'm just not sure that I care anymore."

  For the first time since she'd hit him with her news, Charlie stayed silent, and for the first time he looked at her as if he just might be taking her seriously.

  "You're tired," he pronounced after a moment's silent consideration, as if she hadn't just said it herself.

  "No kidding," Cassie agreed dryly.

  "All right, look. We can cancel the Parkside shoot. They're not that big an account, anyway. That'll give you a week before you have to be in Morocco—"

  "Not good enough, Charlie. A week is not going to do it."

  Charlie sighed, sounding pained. "All right. I'll call Creative Visions and see if the shoot can be postponed for a week— Why are you shaking your head?"

  "Because you're not listening. I don't want a week off, or two weeks. I don't even want a vacation. I want … a sabbatical. A long one."

  Maybe a permanent one, she thought, but didn't voice the words; she didn't want to send Charlie into cardiac arrest.

  To his credit, the agency head didn't yell, or even sputter. He merely glowered. Cassie hid a rueful smile, remembering the days not so long ago when she would have been reduced to meek compliance at the sight of that expression.

  "This is not a wise choice, Cassandra."

  "No," she agreed. "For Cassandra, it's not. But for Cassie, it's the only choice."

  Her mild tone seemed to give him hope. "Listen. We'll cancel Parkside, postpone Morocco, and then reassess, all right?"

  "Reassessing is exactly what this is all about, Charlie. And I need time to do it. I have some … decisions to make. Long-term decisions."

  Charlie, she thought as she walked out to her car, had been nothing less than stunned, but she'd expected that. She'd thought about this long and hard, and had known that explaining herself wasn't going to be easy. But she hadn't expected it to affect her so much. Hadn't realized that it would bother her so much to let down the people who had come to depend on her.

  "You've become an industry of your own," she muttered as she shifted the little red convertible into first gear and waited for a break in the morning traffic. "Cassandra," she added, drawling her full name out with the exaggerated emphasis virtually everyone seemed to give it.

  She'd hated the name as a child, and her opinion hadn't changed much. But now she couldn't get away from it; she wished she had never listened to the agent who'd suggested she use it. The fact that he'd been proven right, that the name Cassandra had become synonymous with glamour, sophistication and a kind of beauty aspired to—sometimes unhealthily—by far too many women, only made her more determined to stick with her decision. She had to get away, she told herself, before she lost Cassie forever.

  She stopped before she hit the freeway, and after reminding herself to have the annoying tapping noise the engine had recently developed checked out, she put the top down on the little car. She luxuriated in the freedom of letting her hair blow wildly, with no thought given to how it would look when she arrived.

  Maybe I'll get it cut, she mused, envisioning a short, gamine style that she could wash and forget, instead of her famed heavy mane of thick tresses. Charlie would truly keel over then, she thought, not without a modicum of amusement she tried hard to be ashamed for. She wasn't particularly successful, a fact that she put down to the sheer delirium she was beginning to feel at the thought of actually being free for an indef
inite period. She would go home to her apartment and pack, and first thing tomorrow, she'd head south.

  She laughed aloud and reached for the radio buttons. She stopped at the first lively, upbeat song she came to and cranked up the volume. She felt nearly weightless, in a way she couldn't remember having felt since the day she'd found out her brother was alive, after they'd thought him long dead.

  She smiled widely at the memory of Chase's laughter when she'd told him what she was going to do.

  "I wondered how long you'd last, little sister," he'd said with a chuckle. "And of course you can use the house while we're gone. We're leaving a key with Sean, so you can get it from him. I'll tell him to expect you."

  "Thanks, Dad," she drawled, knowing her brother was still feeling a bit harried under the strain of two children, Katie being an eight-year-old hurricane, and Jason a baby of only six months.

  "Cute," Chase said dryly. "If this wasn't the first vacation for Stevie and me in two years, I'd stick around and teach you to respect your elders."

  Cassie hooted loudly. "Elders? This from the guy who still stops traffic? If it's female, that is."

  "Look who's talking."

  She'd giggled then, even though the teasing routine was an old, familiar one. Despite the difference in their ages, they looked enough alike to be thought twins. The same thick, dark hair, soft, full mouth and thickly lashed, vivid green eyes that had been her road to fortune were—to his embarrassment—just as startlingly beautiful in her brother's handsome face.

  But whenever he got self-conscious about his dramatic looks, she quietly reminded him that were it not for the resemblance between them, Stevie might never have realized who he was, and they might have gone on believing him dead long after it had been safe for him to come home.

  Dramatic looks. The thought led her, inevitably of late, to the very man she'd been trying so hard not to think about. Dar Cordell had been taking up too much of her mind since she'd first seen him at Stevie's brother Sean's wedding. Entirely too much, she told herself firmly. Especially since that had been the only time she'd ever seen him.

  Once again she promised herself she would stop thinking about the man with the astoundingly perfect looks. Dark-eyed, dark-haired looks that made nearly every woman who saw him gape. Looks that could have made him a fortune in her world. Could have, had it not been for the little detail of the wheelchair he lived in. Another reason, she thought with a touch of acidity, to leave her picture-perfect world behind; she didn't like the fact that there was little room for people like Dar in it.

  She wasn't going to start that again. She wasn't even going to ask Sean about his friend when she picked up the key to Chase's house. She wasn't.

  * * *

  The trophy he'd flung with all of his considerable strength hit the concrete wall of his workshop with a resounding, clanking, satisfying thud. Dar watched as it bounced back a couple of feet and hit the floor, then rammed his fingers through the thick tangle of his dark hair. Irrelevantly he thought yet again that he needed a haircut, then shoved the thought aside. His hair was the least of his worries. As was one now slightly bent marathon trophy.

  He looked away from the chunk of golden metal, a winged wheel on a heavy wood base. It only reminded him of what he should be doing. He should be working out, trying to shave a few more precious seconds off his race time. He should be working on production; he was behind on his finish work, and his customers would be grumbling soon. He should be doing any one of a dozen things, not sitting here moping, throwing things like a sulky kid.

  "Damn," he swore softly, knowing full well that a sulky kid was exactly what he felt like. And he didn't like it.

  He so much didn't like the feeling that the sound of an approaching car driving along the gravel part of the drive was a welcome distraction instead of an annoyance. The realization made his mouth quirk in rueful self-knowledge as he wheeled his way to the door; that few people bothered to track him down all the way out here was the thing he liked best about this place, and here he was uncharacteristically welcoming a visitor.

  The isolated building that still looked like what it had once been—a warehouse—didn't draw casual visitors or salesmen, so that narrowed it down to people he knew who would bother to make the trip. Which, he thought wryly, narrowed whoever was coming down to people whose number he could just about count on one hand. And most of them were on their way out of town, so that left either Sean, or Sean's wife, Rory.

  "Right," he muttered. As if Rory would show up here. She was far too wary of him. He suspected she thought he still blamed her for hurting Sean so badly, literally jilting him at the altar five years ago. He'd tried to tell her that if Sean could put it behind him, so could he; but judging from the way she looked at him, like a tiny kitten eyeing a testy Doberman, he obviously hadn't succeeded. He wasn't surprised—he wasn't much good at talking to women anymore. If he ever had been.

  He looked out the window, which was situated low down beside the door so that he could easily see out. It had been his second modification to the place after he'd bought it, right after the ramp that ran from the rather high porch that had once been a loading dock, down to the almost level area in front of the building. When he saw Sean's car—a new, bright blue coupé to replace the one that had taken a nearly fatal dip in the lagoon out front when Rory's vicious former boyfriend had caught up with them—he relaxed a little. Sean he could deal with. He didn't have to be sociable, didn't have to pretend to be glad to see whoever was invading his privacy.

  But it would have been easier if Sean didn't look so damned happy. He fairly glowed with it. It wasn't that Dar begrudged him; Lord knows Sean had paid his dues and then some. It was just that—

  It's just your stinking mood, he told himself sternly as he wheeled over and swung open the door.

  "Uh-oh," Sean said after taking one look at his face. "Maybe I'd better come back some other time."

  "Sorry," Dar said, making a conscious effort to lighten the expression he was afraid matched his mood.

  "Problem?" Sean asked as he came in, shutting the door behind him.

  "Bad mood," Dar returned succinctly.

  At the sudden seriousness of Sean's expression, in such contrast to the cheerful look he'd been wearing when he'd first come up the steps, Dar felt an inner tug of guilt. He had no right to inflict his rotten disposition on Sean. The guy's finally found some happiness, jackass, he muttered inwardly, don't rain on it.

  "Sorry," he said again. "I'll get over it. I'm just…" He shrugged, not sure what he was.

  "I know what you are." Sean grinned suddenly. "You're bored."

  Dar blinked. "What?"

  "You're bored, buddy. At the ripe old age of thirty-one, you've won every major wheeled marathon in the country. You've got a successful business building racing chairs that people are clamoring for. You've got enough money to live on for the rest of your life. You're settled in—" Sean gestured around the airy, spacious warehouse "—in a great place that you love. You even harassed that wheelchair basketball team into a state championship last year. You've accomplished everything you ever said you were going to, and more." His grin widened. "You're bored."

  Bored. Dar turned the word over in his mind. Was that the reason for his restlessness? Simple boredom? It made sense, he supposed. Everything Sean had said was true. And that uneasy feeling he'd been having in his gut lately, that feeling that there was much more to his state of mind than that, didn't necessarily have to be right.

  Sean walked over to the couch with an easy stride that disguised the fact of his missing left leg from any but the most aware and knowledgeable observers. He sat down, leaned back and looked at Dar.

  "You need a new project, that's all. You've got the racing chairs down to where they're routine, even though you build each one yourself."

  "Yeah," Dar admitted. He'd refined the basic Cordell Racing Chair until it was at the limits of its performance for the strength of the components he had to use. He could go
further, no doubt, with more exotic materials, but that would put it out of the price range of most of his customers, which seemed self-defeating to him.

  "Maybe you should have hung on to that kids' motorized-cart idea," Sean said.

  Dar shrugged. "Selling that design is the reason I've got, as you put it, enough money for the rest of my life."

  He'd sold his design for a motorized, child-size car, with controls adaptable to a variety of disabilities, to a manufacturer who had been ready to gear up and go into production far sooner than Dar could have lined up backing to get it done. He'd gotten a healthy amount of money for the design and was glad not to have had to hassle with too many corporate minds in the process. And kids would have the car, which would help them learn to control motorized chairs later on, a lot sooner. He'd been happy with the deal, until he'd realized too late how much time he'd been spending on it, how much it had occupied his mind. The gap the cessation of his work on it had left had been the start of his restlessness.

  "Maybe you're right," he mused aloud, looking at Sean thoughtfully.

  "What about that off-road idea of yours? That four-wheeled thing?"

  Dar assumed an injured air. "That 'four-wheeled thing' is a brilliant design, thank you. If I can just figure out the right suspension system—"

  "You mean so it doesn't toss you out on your brilliant head whenever you hit anything bigger than a golf ball or harder than a frog?"

  Sean was grinning so widely Dar couldn't help but grin back. "Yeah, something like that."

  "So work on it."

  "I do have that prototype out in the garage," he said slowly, warming to the idea. He'd begun it as a lark, after watching a group of mountain bikers on the hillside across the lagoon one day, but a new set of orders for his racing chairs had come in, and with that on top of his rigorous training schedule, he'd had to put it aside. Others had now come out with what was called an all-terrain chair, or ATC, but that didn't stop him from wanting to design his own.