Authors: Anna Katmore
Neverland (25 page)
“Aw.” I sink to my knees and brush her bangs off her forehead. “Everything is all right, honey bunny. I’m fine. You two brought me back.”
“I know. But I don’t want to see you lying on the ground when I cannot feel you. Can I sleep in your bed tonight?”
Smiling, I stand up and lift Paulina into my arms. I carry her to my bed, where she crawls under the duvet and grins at me from my pillow. After the light is out and I sneak under the covers, she snuggles up against my chest and her content sigh drifts to me. I kiss the top of her head with one arm wrapped tightly around her. My other hand moves up to the ruby heart. Closing my fingers around it, I shut my eyes and return to Neverland. Even if only in a dream…
Three monthslater…
A WARM EVENING breeze plays around my bare ankles. The heels of my sandals clack on the concrete as I walk up the road to our house, stepping in and out of the wide circles of light the lamp posts cast on the street every fifty feet.
My parents walk a few steps in front of me, my father carrying a tired Brittney Renae. Her head rests sleepily on his shoulder, her arms hanging loosely at her sides. It’s past ten o’clock in the evening. Paulina holds tight to my hand and tries to keep up with her small steps. The twins should have been put to bed hours ago. But a dinner party at my father’s friend’s house that dragged on too long prevented that from happening.
Gee, I’m tired of these banquets. Sitting straight through a meal that consists of more courses than any normal person should be forced to eat is always a challenge. No giggling, no murmuring, no swinging our legs under the table. These dinners usually make me feel like I’m in boot camp. If this is difficult for me, it must be pure torture for my little sisters. Sometimes, I wish the three of us could have grown up in a more adventurous place than the McFarland home. A place like—
Yeah, like what?
Like Adventureland in Disney World? I sigh, studying the stars. They seem to beckon me with their shining light, and have done so for a while now. But I can’t imagine how I’ll ever get up there, so I guess I’ll just have to put up with the fake smiles of adults and the gossip of people I don’t know.
My life hasn’t always been dreary like this. A few months ago, I felt different. A whole lot of different. It was connected to a red glass heart I wore on a necklace. One morning, I woke up in my bed and found my hand wrapped around it. But that wasn’t the only strange thing that day. Paulina was curled up next to me as well. She never sleeps in my bed, so that was a surprise. When I nudged her and she opened her eyes, she sat up in a rush and hugged me with all the love of a five-year-old.
I’d hit my head, she told me then. Apparently I’d fallen off my balcony. It made sense, because I couldn’t remember what had happened the night before. As for the heart pendant, Paulina said it wasn’t from her, even though I was sure she’d gotten it as a free gift from one of her Disney magazines and slipped it around my neck while I slept.
I couldn’t explain the feeling of longing that overcame me whenever I looked at the red heart. A big part of me wanted to be somewhere else. Maybe even
with
someone. A touch of homesickness filled me, one I couldn’t figure out—because I was home. It weirded me out, so after some time, I took off the necklace and stored it at the back of a drawer in my desk with a stack of papers placed over it.
With the necklace out of sight, the longing faded. I could be my normal self again, in George and Mary McFarland’s house.
Squeezing my little sister’s hand as we step into another pool of light, I look down at her and know that it’s a good place to be after all.
We pass our neighbor’s garden. The scent of apple trees drifts to me. I lift my chin and breathe in deeply as something tugs gently at me… A memory? But I can't put the images together.
Then I see him.
A young man steps away from the shadows farther up the street and walks towards us. His head is lowered, the cap he wears covering his face from my view. The wide skate pants and the black hoodie he wears don’t fit his determined, predatory strides.
I don’t know why, but of all the people we pass, he’s the only one who catches my attention. My parents obviously don’t pay him any notice, and smoothly sidestep him. I want to do the same, but at that instant, he lifts his head and I find myself trapped in reckless blue eyes.
Familiar.
That strange feeling of homesickness stirs again. My heart decides to skip a couple of beats before it knocks savagely against my ribcage.
The guy’s jaw is set, his gaze unwavering as he passes me. His warm fingers slip something into my hand. At the skin contact, a shiver races up my arm and makes me want to touch him again. I catch the scent of adventure on him—if adventure could have a smell—a whiff of seawater and tangerines. It intoxicates my mind and takes me away to a place I should know. A place behind those blue, blue eyes.
But the piece of paper in my hand drags me out of my crazy thoughts.
Freezing on the spot, I pull Paulina to a halt with me and spin around. He doesn’t stop, his resolute strides taking him fast down the street. I open my mouth and almost shout after him when he slides a glance over his shoulder and arches one challenging eyebrow. Moments later, he disappears into the shadows.
“What’s wrong?” Paulina whispers to me.
Confused, I look down at her and shake my head. Then I stare at the note in my hand. With trembling fingers, I unfold it. The moonlight highlights the masculine scrawl:
Meet me on your balcony.
To be continued…
Finish this book with a song.
Dexter Britain – A Closing Statement
You can find it on YouTube
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IljIj1Q9cnI
Dear reader,
Please don’t damn me for the cliffhanger. I know it’s a mean moment to stop, but another book was the only possible way to fill the gap between Angel’s fall and the last chapter. And I’m sure you all want to know what happened in Neverland after Hook and Angel said goodbye, don’t you? ;-)
Be prepared for
PAN’S REVENGE
Playlist
Jonatha Brooke – Second Star To The Right
(Catching snow on the balcony)
Main Title of
Peter Pan
(Falling)
Dexter Britain – The Time To Run
(Neverland Theme)
Birdy – Heart Of Gold
(Broken spirit)
Yiruma – Moonlight
(Just Jamie)
Ed Sheeran – I See Fire
(There’s something about her)
Lifehouse – Everything
(Realizing he’s going to miss her)
Tori Amos – China
(He wants to be selfish)
A Great Big World ft. Christina Aguilera – Say Something
(The biggest adventure)
A Fine Franzy – Blow Away
(With the right thought)
Poppy Girls – The Call
(Flying didn’t work)
Theme of
The Little Mermaid
(Falling again)
Dexter Britain – A Closing Statement
(He is here)
Get a sneak peek into Anna Katmore’s amazing fantasy romance SUMMER OF MY SECRET ANGEL
He’s annoyingly gorgeous, provocative, and fast becoming her best friend. But he also has a secret that makes the little hairs on her arms stand on end...
It wasn't nicking an expensive watch or diamond bracelet that landed streetwise Jona Montiniere in the clutches of the police. It was a darn sweater. A judge decides that she has to return to her terminally ill mother, who dumped her in an orphanage more than twelve years ago. Worse, for the coming six weeks, she has to do charity work on an estranged aunt’s vineyards in France.
Yeah, right.
Jona is determined to sneak off at the first chance she gets. But then she meets Julian, her mother’s caretaker. Playful, understanding, and sinfully sexy, he’s everything she dreams of—but she’d be damned if she let him know.
So when the first week in her new home is over, Jona is asking herself two things. One, how could it happen that she ended up in Julian’s arms after only three days? And two, how the hell did he just awaken her mother from the dead…?
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
ANNA KATMORE prefers blue to green, spring to winter, and writing to almost anything else. It helps her to escape from a boring world to something with actual adventure and romance in it, she says. Even when she’s not crafting a new story, you’ll see her lounging with a book in some quiet spot. She was 17 when she left Vienna to live in the tranquil countryside of Austria. From there she loves to plan trips to anywhere in the world. Two of her favorite places? Disneyland and the deep dungeons of her creative mind…
For more information, please visit
www.annakatmore.com
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