In Your Dreams Read Online Free PDF Page A

with horrific results. For him, those glimpses into who
he’d once been only served to explain his inability to deal with the kid’s
death at his hands.
    According to
Verity, though, he missed the larger picture. So he was stuck here, serving the
Board, until he came to terms with his failings and corrected them.
    “Here in Probation,”
Xavia said, drawing him back into their conversation, “we ensure others don’t
know that pain. We save lives. We protect the future. There’s nothing immoral
in that.” With the clipboard in her grip, she rose, tall and lithe, her brick
red sheath-style belted dress enhancing her height and lush figure. Goddamn,
she had more curves than the racetrack at the Indy 500. And he bet she was just
as dangerous. “Come on.” She strode around the desk. “I’ll show you what I
mean.”
    Opening the
office door, she led him out to the quiet floor where a dozen other people sat
at as many desks. Heads stayed down, attention wholly focused on their
clipboards. He could’ve shouted, “Fire!” and he’d bet no one in the room would
flinch. Whether their attention remained riveted due to their cases or due to
the intensity of their leader, he couldn’t speculate.
    Xavia finally
stopped at the lone empty desk in the rear of the open space and pulled out the
task chair. “Sit.” When he complied, she set down the clipboard in front of
him,  horizontally, and stretched it to a larger size. “Watch.”
    Like a
mini-movie screen, the clipboard lit up to reveal a hospital room. Propped up
in a bed, Isabelle Fichetti glared daggers straight at them. Sean sucked in a
breath.
    “Relax,” Xavia
murmured, her voice dark honey near his ear. “She can’t see you.”
    Really? He
looked again. So who was the target of all of this woman’s animosity? Was there
someone else with her? As if a television camera panned the scenery at his
command, the image pulled back to reveal a man seated in a chair at the foot of
her bed. Aha. A know-it-all doctor with salt and pepper hair and black-rimmed
glasses perched on the edge of his needle nose lectured her in stern tones.
“You were very lucky, Mrs. Romanelli—”
    “Fichetti,” she
corrected harshly. “My name is Isabelle Fichetti.”
    The doctor
frowned. “We have more important things to discuss than your name, Isabelle.
Like why you swallowed all those pills.”
    Folding her arms
over her chest, she clamped her lips into a thin line.
    “You took a
drastic step. Would you like to tell me why?”
    Isabelle simply
continued to glare, stony silent. Anger heated her aura to white hot.
    “I’m not leaving
here until you talk to me, Isabelle.”
    “Oh, well, in
that case, you might want to rethink the brown boat shoes with your tan slacks
and beige shirt. The whole ensemble screams, ‘I dress in Garanimals.’ There.
Are we done now?”
    From his
viewpoint in a faraway realm, Sean smirked. She had style. Gone was the pain
he’d sensed on his first examination of Isabelle Fichetti. Despair still
lingered, but she’d buried all her hurt feelings deep down beneath a bottomless
well of sarcasm. For self-preservation? Probably.
    “Why did you try
to kill yourself, Isabelle?” the doctor pressed.
    Asshole.
    Sean heard her
as clearly as if she’d shouted the word.
    Beside him,
Xavia snorted. “My kind of woman. I’ll leave you two to get better acquainted.
When you’re through here, come back to my office, and I’ll fill you in on the
rest.”
    He barely
registered Xavia’s departure as he focused entirely on the couple in the
hospital room on Earth.
    “I didn’t try to
kill myself, Dr. Valentine.” Isabelle’s glare firmly dared him to challenge her
statement. “I just couldn’t remember the last time I took my pain pills. I
double dosed.” She shrugged with exaggerated doe eyes and furiously batting
lashes. “Oops.”
    “You swallowed a
thirty day supply, Isabelle.”
    “Math was never
my strongest subject.”
    “Neither