on this godforsaken stretch of road....
Mackenzie Williams bolted upright, heart racing, sweat cold and clammy on her body. The bedclothes were a heavy tangle around her legs and for a few disoriented seconds she fought to free herself before reality reasserted itself.
She was alive. She was at the beach house in Flinders. And she ached. God, how she ached. Her hips, her shoulder, her back...
She scrubbed her face with both hands, then let out her breath on an exhausted sigh. It had been almost two months since she’d had a nightmare and she’d hoped they were a thing of the past. No such luck, apparently.
She threw off the covers then swung her legs to the floor. Her joints and muscles protested the action, as they always did first thing in the morning or when she’d been sitting in the same position for too long. She gritted her teeth and pushed herself to her feet anyway. If she waited till the pain stopped, she’d never get anything done.
It was still dark outside and the floor was cool beneath her feet. She shuffled forward a few steps until she found her slippers, then reached for her dressing gown.
She could hear the skitter of Mr. Smith’s claws in the hall outside her bedroom and she smiled as she opened the door.
“Hello, Smitty. How you doin’?” she asked as he began his morning happy dance, walking back and forth in front of her with his tail wagging madly, his body wiggling from side to side.
“I’m going to take that as a ‘very well, thank you very much.’ Shall we go outside?”
Mackenzie made her way to the living room. The bitter morning chill was like a slap in the face when she opened the French doors, but it didn’t stop Mr. Smith from slipping past her and out into the gray dawn light. Mackenzie followed him, stopping at the top of the deck steps, arms wrapped around her torso as she looked out over the jungle that was her yard.
The air was so frigid it hurt her nose. She inhaled great lungfuls of the stuff and let the last remnants of the nightmare fall away.
It was just a dream, after all. She wasn’t dying. She was alive. She’d survived, against all odds. Better yet, she was on the track to a full recovery and resumption of her former life.
Which reminded her...
She left the door open for Mr. Smith before collecting her iPad from where it was charging on the kitchen counter. One click told her that Gordon hadn’t responded to her email. Again.
This was getting ridiculous. Twelve months ago, her boss wouldn’t have ignored an email from her. Then, she’d been a valuable commodity, the only producer in ten years who had managed to improve the ratings for the production company’s longest-running serial drama, Time and Again. Now apparently she was a liability, an employee on long-term sick leave who didn’t even merit the thirty seconds of his time it would take to respond to her email.
He doesn’t think I’m coming back.
The thought made her blood run cold. She had worked hard to land the job of producer on a network drama. She’d kissed ass and gone beyond the call of duty and even trampled on a few people in her rush to climb the ladder. She’d sacrificed her time, her social life, her marriage...and then her car had hit a landslide at sixty kilometers an hour and flipped down the side of a mountain. She’d fractured her skull, broken her pelvis, her hip, her leg, several ribs as well as her arm, torn her liver and lost her spleen.
And it looked as though she was going to lose her job, too, even though she’d been driving to a location shoot when the accident happened. Gordon had promised that they’d keep her job open for her, filling the role with a short-term replacement. He’d given her a year to recover—a year that was almost up. And yet he wasn’t returning her calls.
Lips pressed into a tight line, she opened a blank email and typed a quick message to Gordon’s secretary, Linda. Linda owed her, and Mackenzie knew that if she asked, the other woman would make sure Gordon called her.
At least, she hoped she still had that much influence.
Mr. Smith pressed against her legs, his small body a welcome weight. She bent to run a hand over his salt-and-pepper fur.
“I’m not giving up, Smitty. Not in a million freaking years.”
She wouldn’t let Gordon write her