Imaginary Lover

by Sandra Chastain

  Then Dusty stopped.

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “I don’t know where I’m going now. I reach this point and I feel as if I ought to move out of the room and into the hallway.”

  “That wouldn’t be smart,” David said. “The children would be all over you. I think you’d lose the sense of illusion you’re creating.”

  “I agree,” Betty said. “Don’t worry. This is just fine. You work on it some more, and we’ll try again tomorrow night. You’ll become more confident as you go.”

  Dusty nodded. But she wasn’t at all sure about tomorrow night. She was still having trouble with the kind of ending she was seeing in her mind. She was drawn to the stairs. Somehow she knew there was a place up there where the woman in her story wanted to go. She wasn’t meant to wait here, in this room, but somewhere else.

  The tour moved on, with Betty inviting Dusty to join them to see the last story, which would be told on the lawn in front of the house.

  Dusty didn’t respond. She stood, moving her head from side to side like some kind of antenna, trying to focus on the source of her concern.

  Nick came forward. “What’s wrong?”

  “I don’t know. What’s upstairs, Nick?”

  “Two storage rooms and a corridor.”

  “No, that isn’t it. What else?”

  He frowned. “I don’t know. They’re locked, with a chain and padlock. I’ve never been inside. Is it important?”

  “No. That’s all right.” When he took her arm this time, she let him, leaning against him as if she were cold and sought the warmth of his body.

  “Are you too cool?” He stopped and pulled her close, folding his arms around her.

  “Yes. I mean no. I guess it must be this place. It’s got me spooked big time.”

  “Sorry, I don’t have a coat, but there’s hot apple cider in the food tent.”

  She laid her head against his chest and pressed closer. “I think I need you to hold me for a minute,” she said. “If you don’t mind.”

  He didn’t.

  In fact, as he had every time she’d gotten close to him, he ended up holding her. But this time he was determined not to let it go further. When she leaned back and looked up at him, he smothered the thought of her lips and how inviting they were. He’d only allowed himself to move a little closer. He wouldn’t do anything more than give her a gentle kiss of comfort.

  Her eyes were dazed, almost sleepy, trusting. She lifted her mouth willingly, wrapping her arms tighter around his waist, pressing her breasts against him. Nothing on earth could have stopped them.

  Nothing on earth did.

  As their lips met, the smell of honeysuckle swept down the hallway from the second floor. At the sound of footsteps descending the stairs, Nick pulled away.

  “What’s wrong, Nick?”

  “There can’t be anyone up there,” he said, tucking her in the curve of his shoulder as he stared up into the darkness.

  “Let’s get out of here, Merlin. This kind of spell is too much, even for a magic man.”

  They left the house, catching up with the group watching the last storyteller. As they stood in the yard listening to the tale of a body that kept coming back to life, Dusty turned and glanced up at the house.

  The windows on the top floor were dark. Then for a moment she thought she saw a faint light silhouetting the shadow of a woman, a woman watching.

  A woman with silver hair.

  SEVEN

  Dusty changed into her regular clothing and met Nick at his car. She was caught up in a strange mood of shifting emotions. His presence had been the only thing that had kept her in that parlor tonight. Yet that same presence was almost as disturbing as the sensations that had invaded her mind and touched her story.

  He didn’t seem inclined to talk either, driving slowly and carefully back to the house.

  “You did very well tonight,” he finally said as he let them inside the house. “I was impressed.”

  “Thank you, I think.”

  “Would you like something to eat, a snack?”

  “What I’d really like is a drink. Do you have a beer?”

  “Sorry, no beer. But I believe that Hattie kept a bottle of sherry. I could pour you a glass.”

  “No, never mind. If I can’t tempt you into joining me, I’d better not. I think I’ll watch a little television and go to bed.”

  Nick smiled. Every time Dusty saw that wicked smile, she was surprised. It was so unexpected, and so perfect for the sardonic face it adorned.

  “Fine, but maybe you’d better arm yourself with more than sherry. The only TV set in the house is in my bedroom. I’d enjoy the company, but the commercials always make me look for something to fill the time. You might not be safe.”

  This was what she’d wanted, but when she’d voiced her need, he’d refused. “No thanks. I’ll pass.” She pulled a book from Hattie’s case, started up the stairs, then stopped. “I didn’t hear the television set playing.”

  He turned out the lights and followed her up the stairs. “Ear phones. I didn’t want to disturb Hattie.”

  Dusty moved ahead, down the corridor. “I never liked the things.”

  “Neither do I. But it puts the sound right in your mind. Keeps you from thinking or dreaming. I always thought thinking was the worst, but now I’m not so sure.”

  With that strange statement he stepped into his bedroom, gave her one last look of longing, and closed the door. He wished he had a cigarette, then realized that he hadn’t smoked in days. Everything seemed to be changing.

  Dusty, left in the darkened hallway, decided that reading might be fine for later. Now she needed action. She took a deep breath, moved down the corridor, found the light switch inside her room, and flipped it on. She decided that if she hurried, she could claim the shower first.

  Moments later she was standing beneath the lukewarm spray of water, allowing it to cool her skin. Because she didn’t have a dryer, she’d pinned her hair beneath a shower cap. Once she was clean—and calm—she dried herself, then realized that she was standing in the bathroom without a robe.

  “No problem, Dusty, you have your nightshirt.”

  She hung the wet towel back on the rack and pulled the Florida Marlins T-shirt over her head. Tiptoeing to the door, she cracked it a hair and listened. Everything seemed quiet. Taking a deep breath, she opened the door and stepped into the hall. Nick was leaning against the frame of his open door.

  “Marlins, huh? I’m a Saints fan myself.”

  There was a tightness in his voice that stopped her. “Are you spying on me?” she asked.

  “Not unless I’m Superman. I don’t see through walls too well.”

  “Magic men don’t need to. They just dematerialize and, like a cloud of vapor, move through the wall.”

  “I’m no wizard, Dusty. I’m just a normal flesh-and-blood man.” Too normal, he thought, feeling his body surge to life at the sight of her with the light behind her.

  “That’s what I thought. It’s you who keeps trying to claim that you’re some kind of freak. I’m finished in the bathroom.”

  He moved down the corridor, stopping too close. In spite of her attraction to the man, he frightened her.

  “So tell me,” he said, his voice deepening. “What are we going to do about sharing this house?”

  “Well, I’ve been thinking about that.”

  “And?”

  The glow from a light in his room spilled out into the corridor. Her eyes were becoming adjusted to the half-darkness. He wasn’t wearing a shirt and his jeans were unbuttoned, almost as if he’d been naked and just threaded his legs into them to step into the hall. A dark growth of whiskers on his face accented the hollows of his cheeks, drawing attention to eyes that continued to burn her skin with the intensity of his gaze.

  “Why don’t you sell me your half?” she asked.

  He’d been stalling, only half listening, recovering ground already covered as he attempted to keep her from fleeing
. But this proposition caught him by surprise.

  Hell, almost everything she did surprised him.

  “Where do you intend to get the money?”

  “Old J.R. said I had plenty, remember?”

  “I also remember that it was Hattie’s wish that we share the house. The money was to be used to support the ART Station, wasn’t it?”

  “Not all of it. I asked. She left it to my discretion. I could make a down payment and pay you off in installments.”

  “Suppose I don’t want to move?”

  “Why wouldn’t you? You’re a doctor, a surgeon. You can help people. It would be wrong to hide here and not give what you can.”

  “What about you? It seems to me that a police officer gives. What’s the difference?”

  “The difference is that I can’t be a law officer anymore. You can still be a doctor. Unless they’ve taken your license. They haven’t, have they?”

  “No. I still have a license. It’s the knowledge I’ve lost.”

  “That doesn’t make any sense.”

  He took a deep breath. “Believe me, Dusty. It’s the truth. After the accident it was all gone. My medical knowledge vanished. I couldn’t even take a temperature.”

  “Now I know you’re pulling my leg. You treated the cut on my finger.”

  “An idiot could have done that.”

  “What about that woman in the restaurant?”

  He hesitated. “That’s a bit harder to explain. I didn’t know what to do, until—” he might be baring his soul, but he couldn’t bring himself to say that Dr. Sigmund Freud had suddenly appeared and showed him the procedure—“it suddenly came to me. Until then I didn’t have a clue.”

  A strong breeze sprang up, whipping a tree limb against the roof of the porch, moaning around the corner of the house like the chorus in a Greek play.

  The hall was cool and Dusty was still damp. Standing there, she began to shiver. “Knowledge? Or confidence?” she asked, her voice trembling. “I would, but I can’t. You can, but you won’t. Hattie knew what she was doing, didn’t she?”

  It must be the house, he thought, that seemed to feed his senses with fire. Until Dusty came, his life had been serene, pleasantly free from any complications. He’d transferred all his patients to his partner and removed his name from the door. After a few turndowns, they’d stopped any pretense of missing him. Only Bill, at the hospital, refused to let him simply exist. Bill and Hattie.

  In her own way Dusty was as direct as Hattie. She couldn’t understand his memory loss. Hell, he couldn’t understand it himself, and he was a doctor. He’d alibied his efforts as being a result of ghostly intervention, uncertain whether his explanation was better or worse than the truth.

  Until Bill had blindsided him in his office with the X rays of the fetus with the tumor. He hadn’t been able to forget about that, and the more he remembered, the easier it was. The hell of it was the uncertainty. Where he’d once been so confident that he would have attempted almost anything, now he held back.

  “What’s your problem, Merlin?” Dusty asked. “Out of magic dust?”

  She wasn’t going to let go. He’d managed to draw a line between himself and the rest of the world. Only Hattie and Bill had stepped over. Now Dusty. He was being forced to examine and defend his position. He didn’t like that. And he didn’t like the way she refused to let him be. He didn’t even want to give voice to the need he felt to take her in his arms.

  Trying to sort out his emotions was like trying to turn smoke into something solid. Smoke, sex, and surrender. The words became a kind of chant. Outside the house the wind blew again. There was a rainstorm coming.

  There was another kind of storm already raging in the hallway. He could have waited in his room until she was finished. His motives for standing in the hall were selfish and primitive. He didn’t have to prop himself against the wall and visualize droplets of water running over full breasts, circling around beaded nipples, finding a path through the soft hair between her legs, and making obscene ripples down long legs. But that was what was happening, and now all he wanted to do was plunge himself inside her and stop the twisting emotion that was messing up his mind and all his resolve.

  A wise woman would have pushed her way past Nick and closed and locked the door behind her. But Dusty didn’t know how to back down. Standing opposite her was like walking on a nylon carpet and coming in contact with something metal. Static electricity bounded off him, and they weren’t even touching.

  “So,” she said in a voice that managed to be reasonably steady, “we’ve established that you’re not Superman and I’m not Mary Poppins. You’re not Merlin and I’m not Desirée. What does that make us?”

  “Vulnerable,” he said in a hoarse voice, and turned back into his room. “And ready to explode.”

  The storm broke in a fury, throwing lightning at the house and yard in a furious rage. Dusty lay in bed, shivering one minute and kicking off the covers the next. Nothing in her life up to now had prepared her for the rampaging emotions she felt every time she parted from Dr. Nick Elliott.

  She turned on her stomach and punched her pillow into a lump. “I need to go to sleep. Hattie, if it’s you and your spirit buddies who are causing this hullabaloo, I wish you’d stop. I’m hurting here.”

  Then, just as quickly as it had come, the storm moved away, leaving the house in some suspended, state of calm. Dusty felt her nerve endings relax and her eyelids grow heavy, and finally she slept.

  Dusty’s dream began slowly, music playing softly. No, not music, a woman’s voice humming. The woman was happy. She was bathing in some kind of hip bath, her hair pulled up on her head and her nightclothes draped across the foot of the bed.

  Then she stood and began to dry herself, rubbing the towel across her breasts, down her stomach, and across the mound of light-colored hair between her legs. Her eyes were closed. The touch of the soft fabric against her body brought a shiver of anticipation. Dusty moved against the towel, feeling the flush of heat, the desire that was building.

  Then she stepped from the tub and reached for the nightdress of delicate lace. She pulled it over her body, then released the mass of silver curls, allowing them to cascade down her back.

  It was time.

  He would come soon.

  She lay down on the bed and waited, her lips curled into a smile.

  Then, with no sound or warning, hands were touching her body, soft lips feathering her face and neck, warm breath heating her skin as his mouth moved lower to tease her breasts.

  The woman didn’t open her eyes. The room was enchanted. The woman was bewitched as her imaginary lover continued to caress her body, whispering indistinguishable words of love. She felt his body, strong and hard, against her. And she spread her legs, opening herself up to him, to that part of him that sought and found the core of her need.

  Dream? Vision? Dusty wasn’t sure. She only knew that her body was on fire. Her arms were clasping him tight against her, and she raised herself to meet his hungry thrusts with wild abandon. She wanted to wake up and let it be real. To take his mouth and ravish it. To run her fingers through his hair and know that the touch was real.

  In the dream, across time, across the centuries, passion came rolling in, claiming and intensifying, turning the four-poster bed with its gauzy hangings into another world. Then that world exploded. There was such incredible joy and peace that it reverberated through Dusty’s mind and rippled down her body into her soul.

  Then she was abruptly awake, her body jerking with the aftermath of her vision, or her climax, or the enchantment under which she’d dreamed.

  Her body was glowing. Her mind floating in some state of suspended animation. She couldn’t think where she was, or what she’d feared. Only that he’d come to her in the night. The woman in the vision wasn’t somebody from the past.

  The woman was Dusty O’Brian.

  As for the man, sorcerer, magician, apparition, whatever he was, or whatever she’d needed
him to be, he’d made love to her in a way that she’d never thought possible.

  And it had all been a dream.

  Or had it?

  The house was empty the next morning. Across the lawn were broken twigs and debris left over from the storm the night before. Dusty made coffee and buttered two pieces of toast as she tried to force her mind to sort out the half-memories of her dream.

  Like a sleepwalker, she poured the coffee and ate the toast. Whatever she’d experienced the night before, she felt emotionally drained.

  The phone had been ringing for several seconds before she heard it. “Hello?”

  “Hello, is Nick there?” a strange voice asked.

  “No. At least I don’t think so. I haven’t seen him this morning.”

  “You must be Dusty. I’m Bill Lewis, his friendly doctor and associate. Will you tell him that everything is looking good for the operation?”

  Her heart stopped. “Nick needs an operation?”

  The voice laughed. “No, not Nick. This is a procedure we’re about to pioneer. Just tell him the team would like him to assist.”

  Dusty replaced the phone on its cradle. So, Dr. Nick Elliott was being invited to assist in a surgical procedure.

  By lunchtime a messenger from Aunt Hattie’s attorney had delivered a check which was by no means the small amount Dusty was expecting as walking-around money. She studied the cashier’s check and decided she needed to open an account and do a little grocery shopping. It was time she checked out the village. Betty Hirt could advise her about banks and grocers.

  It was David who was in the office. He motioned Dusty to come in as he carried on a telephone conversation. Absently she studied the scripts and brochures on the table by the door. There was a poster advertising the tour. What does a Southern Ghost say? “Boo, Y’all” was the catchy copyrighted phrase used on the playbill to promote the event.

  She walked around the office while David was talking. On the wall were cast pictures, playbills announcing original works presented on the little theater stage, and newspaper reviews. One advertised an adaptation of a piece of popular fiction by a local author, Betty Hirt. Then she caught the gist of David’s conversation.