{"id":6454,"date":"2026-01-05T23:52:32","date_gmt":"2026-01-05T23:52:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/epub-book.com\/download\/your-heart-belongs-to-me-koontz-dean\/"},"modified":"2026-01-05T23:52:32","modified_gmt":"2026-01-05T23:52:32","slug":"your-heart-belongs-to-me-koontz-dean","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/epub-book.com\/download\/your-heart-belongs-to-me-koontz-dean\/","title":{"rendered":"Your Heart Belongs to Me – Koontz, Dean"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Book Preview<\/h3>\n
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\n\u00a0<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\nONE<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

R<\/span><\/span>yan Perry did not know that something in him was broken. At thirty-four, he appeared to be more physically fit than he had been at twenty<\/span>-four. His home gym was well equipped. A personal trainer came to his house three times a week.<\/p>\n

On that Wednesday morning in September, in his bedroom, when he drew open the draperies and saw blue sky as polished as a plate, and the sea blue with the celestial reflection, he wanted surf and sand more than he wanted breakfast.<\/p>\n

He went on-line, consulted a surfcast site, and called Samantha.<\/p>\n

She must have glanced at the caller-ID readout, because she said, \u201cGood morning, Winky.\u201d<\/p>\n

She occasionally called him Winky because on the afternoon that she met him, thirteen months previously, he had been afflicted with a stubborn case of myokymia, uncontrollable twitching of an eyelid.<\/p>\n

Sometimes, when Ryan became so obsessed with writing software that he went thirty-six hours without sleep, a sudden-onset tic in his right eye forced him to leave the keyboard and made him appear to be blinking out a frantic distress signal in Morse code.<\/p>\n

In that myokymic moment, Samantha had come to his office to interview him for an article that she had been writing for Vanity Fair<\/span>. For a moment, she had thought he was flirting with her\u2014and flirting clumsily.<\/p>\n

During that first meeting, Ryan wanted to ask for a date, but he perceived in her a seriousness of purpose that would cause her to reject him as long as she was writing about him. He called her only after he knew that she had delivered the article.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen Vanity Fair<\/span> appears, what if I\u2019ve savaged you?\u201d she had asked.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou haven\u2019t.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cHow do you know?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t deserve to be savaged, and you\u2019re a fair person.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cYou don\u2019t know me well enough to be sure of that.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cFrom your interviewing style,\u201d he said, \u201cI know you\u2019re smart, clear-thinking, free of political dogma, and without envy. If I\u2019m not safe with you, then I\u2019m safe nowhere except alone in a room.\u201d<\/p>\n

He had not sought to flatter her. He merely spoke his mind.<\/p>\n

Having an ear for deception, Samantha recognized his sincerity.<\/p>\n

Of the qualities that draw a bright woman to a man, truthfulness is equaled only by kindness, courage, and a sense of humor. She had accepted his invitation to dinner, and the months since then had been the happiest of his life.<\/p>\n

Now, on this Wednesday morning, he said, \u201cPumping six-footers, glassy and epic, sunshine that feels its way deep into your bones.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve got a deadline to meet.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cYou\u2019re too young for all this talk about death.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cAre you riding another train of manic insomnia?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cSlept like a baby. And I don\u2019t mean in a wet diaper.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen you\u2019re sleep-deprived, you\u2019re treacherous on a board.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI may be radical, but never treacherous.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cTotally insane, like with the shark.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThat again. That was nothing.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cJust a great white.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWell, the bastard bit a huge chunk out of my board.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd\u2014what?\u2014you were determined to get it back?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI wiped out,\u201d Ryan said, \u201cI\u2019m under the wave, in the murk, grabbin\u2019 for air, my hand closes around what I think is the skeg.\u201d<\/p>\n

The skeg, a fixed fin on the bottom of a surfboard, holds the stern of the board in the wave and allows the rider to steer.<\/p>\n

What Ryan actually grabbed was the shark\u2019s dorsal fin.<\/p>\n

Samantha said, \u201cWhat kind of kamikaze rides a shark?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI wasn\u2019t riding. I was taken<\/span> for a ride.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cHe surfaced, tried to shake you off, you rode him back down.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cAfraid to let go. Anyway, it lasted like only twenty seconds.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cInsomnia makes most people sluggish. It makes you hyper.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI hibernated<\/span> last night. I\u2019m as rested as a bear in spring.\u201d<\/p>\n

She said, \u201cIn a circus once, I saw a bear riding a tricycle.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat\u2019s that got to do with anything?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was funnier than watching an idiot ride a shark.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m Pooh Bear. I\u2019m rested and cuddly. If a shark knocked on the door right now, asked me to go for a ride, I\u2019d say no.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI had nightmares about you wrestling that shark.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cNot wrestling. It was more like ballet. Meet you at the place?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ll never finish writing this book.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cLeave the computer on when you go to bed each night. The elves will finish it for you. At the place?\u201d<\/p>\n

She sighed in happy resignation. \u201cHalf an hour.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWear the red one,\u201d he said, and hung up.<\/p>\n

The water would be warm, the day warmer. He wouldn\u2019t need a wet suit.<\/p>\n

He pulled on a pair of baggies with a palm-tree motif.<\/p>\n

His collection included a pair with a shark pattern. If he wore them, she would kick his ass. Figuratively speaking.<\/p>\n

For later, he took a change of clothes on a hanger, and a pair of loafers.<\/p>\n

Of the five vehicles in his garage, the customized \u201951 Ford Woodie Wagon\u2014anthracite-black with bird\u2019s-eye maple panels\u2014seemed to be best suited to the day. Already stowed in the back, his board protruded past the lifted tailgate windows, skeg up.<\/p>\n

At the end of the cobblestone driveway, as he turned left into the street, he paused to look back at the house: gracefully sloping roofs of red barrel tile, limestone-clad walls, bronze windows with panes of beveled glass refracting the sun as if they were jewels.<\/p>\n

A maid in a crisp white uniform opened a pair of second-floor balcony doors to air the master bedroom.<\/p>\n

One of the landscapers trimmed the jasmine vines that were espaliered on the walls flanking the carved-limestone surround at the main entrance.<\/p>\n

In less than a decade, Ryan had gone from a cramped apartment in Anaheim to the hills of Newport Coast, high above the Pacific.<\/p>\n

Samantha could take the day off on a whim because she was a writer who, though struggling, could set her own hours. Ryan could take it off because he was rich.<\/p>\n

Quick wits and hard work had brought him from nothing to the pinnacle. Sometimes when he considered his origins from his current perch, the distance dizzied him.<\/p>\n

As he drove out of the gate-guarded community and descended the hills toward Newport Harbor, where thousands of pleasure boats were docked and moored in the glimmering sun-gilded water, he placed a few business calls.<\/p>\n

A year previously, he had stepped down as the chief executive officer of Be2Do, which he had built into the most successful social-networking site on the Internet. As the principal stockholder, he remained on the board of directors but declined to be the chairman.<\/p>\n

These days, he devoted himself largely to creative development, envisioning and designing new services to be provided by the company. And he tried to persuade Samantha to marry him.<\/p>\n

He knew that she loved him, yet something constrained her from committing to marriage. He suspected pride.<\/p>\n

The shadow of his wealth was deep, and she did not want to be lost in it. Although she had not expressed this concern, he knew that she hoped to be able to count herself a success as a writer, as a novelist, so that she could enter the marriage as a creative\u2014if not a financial\u2014equal.<\/p>\n

Ryan was patient. And persistent.<\/p>\n

Phone calls completed, he transitioned from Pacific Coast Highway by bridge to Balboa Peninsula, which separated the harbor from the sea. Cruising toward the peninsula point, he listened to classic doo-wop, music younger than the Woodie Wagon but a quarter of a century older than he was.<\/p>\n

He parked on a tree-lined street of charming homes and carried his board half a block to Newport\u2019s main beach.<\/p>\n

The sea poured rhythmic thunder onto the shore.<\/p>\n

She waited at \u201cthe place,\u201d which was where they had first surfed together, midway between the harbor entrance and the pier.<\/p>\n

Her above-garage apartment was a three-minute walk from here. She had come with her board, a beach towel, and a small cooler.<\/p>\n

Although he had asked her to wear the red bikini, Samantha wore yellow. He had hoped for the yellow, but if he had asked for it, she would have worn red or blue, or green.<\/p>\n

She was as perfect as a mirage, blond hair and golden form, a quiver of light, an alluring oasis on the wide slope of sun-seared sand.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat\u2019re those sandals?\u201d she asked.<\/p>\n

\u201cStylin\u2019, huh?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cAre they made from old tires?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cYeah. But they\u2019re premium gear.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cDid you also buy a hat made from a hubcap?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cYou don\u2019t like these?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIf you have a blowout, does the auto club bring you a new shoe?\u201d<\/p>\n

Kicking off the sandals, he said, \u201cWell, I<\/span> like them.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cHow often do they need to be aligned and balanced?\u201d<\/p>\n

Soft and hot, the sand shifted underfoot, but then was compacted and cool where the purling surf worked it like a screed.<\/p>\n

As they waded into the sea, he said, \u201cI\u2019ll ditch the sandals if next time you\u2019ll wear the red bikini.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cYou actually wanted this yellow one.\u201d<\/p>\n

He repressed his surprise at her perspicacity. \u201cThen why would I ask for the red?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cBecause you only think<\/span> you can read me.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cBut I\u2019m an open book, huh?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWinky, compared to you, Dr. Seuss\u2019s simplest tale is as complex as Dostoyevsky.\u201d<\/p>\n

They launched their boards and, prone upon them, paddled out toward the break.<\/p>\n

Raising his voice above the swash of the surf, he called to her: \u201cWas that Seuss thing an insult?\u201d<\/p>\n

Her silvery laughter stirred in Ryan memories of mermaid tales awash with the mysteries of the deep.<\/p>\n

She said, \u201cNot an insult, sweetie. That was a thirteen-word kiss.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ryan did not bother to recall and count her words from Winky<\/span> to Dostoyevsky<\/span>. Samantha noticed everything, forgot nothing, and was able to recall entire conversations that had occurred months previously.<\/p>\n

Sometimes he found her as daunting as she was appealing, which seemed to be a good thing. Samantha would never be predictable or boring.<\/p>\n

The consistently spaced waves came like boxcars, four or five at a time. Between these sets were periods of relative calm.<\/p>\n

While the sea was slacking, Ryan and Samantha paddled out to the lineup. There, they straddled their boards and watched the first swell of a new set roll toward the break.<\/p>\n

From this more intimate perspective, the sea was not as placid and blue as it had appeared from his house in the hills, but as dark as jade and challenging. The approaching swell might have been the arching back of some scaly leviathan, larger than a thousand sharks, born in the deep but rising now to feed upon the sunlit world.<\/p>\n

Sam looked at Ryan and grinned. The sun searched her eyes and revealed in them the blue of sky, the green of sea, the delight of being in harmony with millions of tons of water pushed shoreward by storms three thousand miles away and by the moon now looming on the dark side of the earth.<\/p>\n

Sam caught the second swell: on two knees, one knee, now standing, swift and clean, away. She rode the crest, then did a floater off the curling lip.<\/p>\n

As she slid out of view, down the face of the wave, Ryan thought that the breaker\u2014much bigger than anything in previous sets\u2014had the size and the energy to hollow out and put her in a tube. Good as it gets, Sam would ride it out as smoothly as oil surging through a pipeline.<\/p>\n

Ryan looked seaward, timing the next swell, eager to rise and walk the board.<\/p>\n

Something happened to his heart. Already quick with anticipation of the ride, the beat suddenly accelerated and began to pound with a force more suited to a moment of high terror than to one of pleasant excitement.<\/p>\n

He could feel his pulse throbbing in his ankles, wrists, throat, temples. The tide of blood within his arteries seemed to crescendo in sympathy with the sea that swelled toward him, under him.<\/p>\n

The sibilant voice of the water became insistent, sinister.<\/p>\n

Clutching the board, abandoning the attempt to rise and ride, Ryan saw the day dim, losing brightness at the periphery. Along the horizon, the sky remained clear yet faded to gray.<\/p>\n

Inky clouds spread through the jade sea, as though the Pacific would soon be as black in the morning light as it was on any moonless night.<\/p>\n

He was breathing fast and shallow. The very atmosphere seemed to be changing, as if half the oxygen content had been bled out of it, perhaps explaining the graying of the sky.<\/p>\n

Never previously had he been afraid of the sea. He was afraid of it now.<\/p>\n

The water rose as though with conscious intention, with malice. Clinging to his board, Ryan slid down the hunchbacked swell into the wide trough between waves.<\/p>\n

Irrationally, he worried that the trough would become a trench, the trench a vortex. He feared that he would be whirled down into drowning depths.<\/p>\n

The board wallowed, bobbed, and Ryan almost rolled off. His strength had left him. His grip had grown weak, as tremulous as that of an old man.<\/p>\n

Something bristled in the water, alarming him.<\/p>\n

When he realized that those spiky forms were neither shark fins nor grasping tentacles, but were the conceptacles of a knotted mass of seaweed, he was not relieved. If a shark were to appear now, Ryan would be at the mercy of it, unable to evade it or resist.<\/p>\n

\n\u00a0<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

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Book Preview \u00a0 ONE Ryan Perry did not know that something in him was broken. At thirty-four, he appeared to be more physically fit than he had been at twenty-four. His home gym was well equipped. A personal trainer came to his house three times a week. On that Wednesday morning in September, in his … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":6453,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[421],"class_list":["post-6454","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-dean-koontz"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/epub-book.com\/download\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6454","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/epub-book.com\/download\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/epub-book.com\/download\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/epub-book.com\/download\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/epub-book.com\/download\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6454"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/epub-book.com\/download\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6454\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/epub-book.com\/download\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6453"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/epub-book.com\/download\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6454"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/epub-book.com\/download\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6454"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/epub-book.com\/download\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6454"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}