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"Wow," he said.
"Wow what?" The room wasn't that exciting. Bree was well aware the furniture was old and worn and that the overcast December sky lent a gloomy aspect to the room despite its being midafternoon.
"I'm having a serious case of deja vu." Ian moved to the fireplace and fingered one of the mistletoe bunches hanging there.
Bree fought the urge to smack his hand away. Mistletoe, with all its sexual implications, was not what either of them needed at the moment. Or maybe it was.
"I don't believe in deja vu," she said. "I think it's really that our sixth sense sometimes glimpses pieces of our future, then when we see them in actuality we recognize them as familiar, as if they're part of the past. But they're really our recognition of what our subconscious already told us was going to occur."
She expected him to disagree, since Ian didn't seem like he believed in anything but the present, but he surprised her.
"That's an interesting theory. But for me, this is deja vu because I've seen this room in a dream. Right down to the three sprigs of mistletoe over this very fireplace mantel." He touched the grapevines that had been carved in the wood. "These grapevines. It's unreal how clearly I saw it all."
Bree sucked in her breath. "You saw this room in a dream? With mistletoe?" What the hell did that mean?
"Yes." Ian turned and looked at her, and those dark eyes studied her. "I don't believe in anything but logic, but I can't explain this. I've been dreaming about this room, not once, not twice, but over and over."
"For how long?"
"A year. And it always looked just like this, decorated for Christmas. The tree, the mistletoe."
A shiver raced up Bree's spine. It had been a year since they had met. "We just hung the mistletoe yesterday."
"That's really weird," he said, his voice thoughtful, his mouth turning down in a frown. He peeled off his jacket and tossed it on the sofa, moving around the room, studying all angles, all objects.
It was clear he wanted an explanation, and Bree had none to give him. "What happens in the dreams?"
But Ian just shook his head. "It's personal."
Whatever the hell that meant.
His hand was on an ornament on her tree, an innocuous sparrow that had no particular meaning to Bree other than it was meant to represent the power of nature in the smallest things, and he pulled it forward, stroking the faux feathers. Recognition hit Bree in a powerful wave, and she couldn't prevent a gasp from escaping her mouth
"Ohmigod," she whispered.
"What?" He glanced back at her.
Now it was her turn to shake her head. She couldn't say it out loud. She couldn't admit that this was in fact her recurring dream as well, that it always started with the back of a man's head bent over her Christmas tree. That he always turned, his face in shadow so she couldn't see his features, and he came over to her and did delicious things to her body. That he shattered her with orgasm after orgasm, and she always woke up frustrated and aching with want for the reality of her dream.
"This is an unusual tree," he said, touching a pinecone ornament. "It's very natural-looking. I like it."
"It's a family tradition, based on witchcraft. You fill the tree with ornaments that appreciate nature, but also with ornaments that represent all your hopes and aspirations for the upcoming year. You fill it with symbols of that which you want to bring into your life." Bree swallowed hard, still reeling from the realization that it had in fact been Ian that she had been dreaming about so intensely. It had to be him. He was doing just what the man in her dreams did, and her body was already poised, anticipating a touch.
He murmured, "Really? That's very cool. I like that. What does this one mean?"
Bree squinted to focus, not really caring about conversation but striving to find normalcy in the situation. Ian was pointing to a diploma ornament.
"That's Abby's. She's graduating this year and hopefully heading off to college. She's incredibly book smart and I think she'll do well in college."
"And this one?" Ian fingered a baby carriage.
Bree touched her throat, a sudden tightness forcing her to breathe deeply. "That one's Charlotte's. She and Will would like to have a baby."
"I hope they're successful."
"Thank you. Me, too. They'll be fabulous parents."
Akasha came over to Bree and rubbed against her leg, dropping something from her mouth. Bree bent over absently and picked it up, unnerved by the surreal quality of being there with Ian, knowing that in her dreams she had felt him inside her, known the slide of his tongue over her most intimate places. It wasn't until she was standing again that she realized she had retrieved the battered mistletoe that Akasha had been dragging around.
