Once in a Lifetime by Danielle Steel Read Free Book Online

three of them, she, Jeffrey, and Aimee, and the sound of the cascading water was so loud that it disturbed her sleep, but there was something more, too, a smell in the woods that somehow she couldn't escape from, and at last she stirred beside Jeffrey, coughing, opened her eyes to flee the dream, and looked through their bedroom doorway to discover that the sound of water that had roused her was the roar of fire, and that beyond their bedroom was a wall of flame.
    "Jeff! ... My God, Jeff!" She jumped from the bed feeling dazed and dizzy and he stirred slowly as she shook him and began to scream. "Jeff! Aimee!" He was awake then and saw instantly what was happening as he struggled from their bed, heading naked toward their bedroom doorway. Daphne was right behind him, her eyes wide with terror as he was forced back by the flames. "Oh, God, Jeff, the baby!" There were tears streaming from her eyes from the pungent smoke and raw fear, but he turned to her swiftly and grabbed her shoulders tightly in his hands, shouting above the roar of the fire.
    "Stop it, Daff! The fire's in the hall. We're safe, so is she. I'm going to get her now and she's going to be fine. I want you to put the blanket around you and crawl as fast as you can down the stairs to the doorway. I'm going to grab Aimee out of bed and I'll be right behind you. There's nothing to be afraid of! Do you understand me?" He was wrapping her in the blanket as he spoke, his movements quick and agile as he shoved her down toward the floor in the doorway of their bedroom and spoke clearly into her ear. "I love you, Daff. If I'll be fine." He spoke with absolute conviction and then dashed the few feet toward Aimee's bedroom as Daphne headed down the stairs, trying not to panic, knowing that Jeff would keep Aimee safe, he always took care of them ...always ... always ... she said it over and over to herself as she crawled down the stairs, trying to glance behind her, but the smoke seemed to have grown more dense and she could barely breathe, she felt as though she were swimming in the acrid smoke, and she couldn't see, and suddenly there was the sound of an explosion behind her, but as she heard it, it seemed to come from a great distance, and she was back in the dream she had had, standing beside the waterfall with Aimee and Jeff, and suddenly she wondered if the fire had only been a dream too. She felt comforted as she realized that it was ... just a dream ... just a dream ... as she drifted off to sleep and felt Jeff at her side ... she heard voices then in the dream as she slept on and after she heard a strange and eerie wail ... that familiar sound again ... that sound ... and the lights coming at her through the fog ... Mrs. Fields, the voices said, Mrs. Fields ... and then the lights had been too bright, and she was in an unfamiliar, frightening place, and she had felt terror course through her like hot blood, unable to remember how she had gotten there or why, and she had looked everywhere for Jeff ... trapped between reality and dreams ... there had been bandages on her hands and legs, and a thick coating of ointment on her face, and a doctor had looked down at her with despair as she cried ... "no, NO! Not my baby! ... not Jeff!!!
    NOOO "
    Daphne Fields called out in the night in an anguished broken voice, remembering when she had seen those bright lights before ... after the fire.... It was Christmas morning when she woke, and the day nurse in intensive care came running to see her, lying there, shaking, her eyes wild, her face frozen with remembered pain. She had waked then as she did now, feeling the same shaft of agony slice through her like a guillotine, just as it had then, nine years before, the night Jeff and Aimee died in the fire.
    Barbara Jarvis arrived at Lenox Hill two hours after Liz Watkins had called. She had looked up Barbara's number when she got home, and Barbara came at once, shaking from head to foot at the news. It was nine o'clock in the