He turned to face her. Her face but a pale oval in the dim light.
“Can you be smart for me tonight, Perrin? I honestly don’t know what to do with it all.”
“Me?” He’d shocked her. Himself a little too.
“Don’t see anyone else in the car volunteering.”
That roused her laugh.
“I love your laugh so much.” The words just came out of him. He did. It was like a thousand stage lights come alive. Her laugh shone into the darkest places and shone pure, bright light.
“You want me, of all the loony people on the planet, to be smart for both of us?”
He could only nod.
“Okay,” she huffed out a breath. “Okay, I can try, but understand that you only have yourself to blame if this comes out all stupid.”
“Understood. It’s a risk I’m willing to take.”
She looked away and studied her darkened shop for a long time.
He waited, one hand clamped to the wheel, the other still wrapped so warm between her two hands.
“Okay. Looks as if it’s going to come out as a series of questions.”
“Like I haven’t had enough of those tonight. Talk about the Italian inquisition, it was a tough room.”
“Hey, you asked me to take over here.”
Bill nodded, “I did. Go for it. I trust you.” That snapped her attention back to him. He hadn’t expected those words either. Maria’s words. But who else would he trust in this situation?
“Me?” her voice was a whisper.
“Yes, I do. You. The scary smart lady sitting here beside me like a blessing. So ask. Please?” He actually begged a little. Everything was so mixed up inside him.
“Okay…” her voice was shaky. She took a deep breath. “Okay. Let’s start with a key one. After meeting with everyone, do you still want to be with me?”
“So much it’s killing me.”
“That’s a good answer, Bill. That’s a really good answer. I like that answer too. So if that’s not the problem, then let me think what’s next.”
Bill sat in the dark and waited. He had kissed this woman a half dozen times, total. They hadn’t had a proper, just-the-two-of-them date yet. His kids were half mad for her. And his own feelings?
“Are you afraid that if we make love, your life will never be the same?”
“Yes.” The answer dragged out of him.
“Okay, we’re tracking so far.”
“Tracking?”
“We’re both being scared silly by exactly the same shit.”
That reached him. That finally punched through whatever knot had been slowly winding tighter and tighter in his gut all night. It wasn’t the answer yet, but it was the first strand, broken rather than merely loosened.
“Keep going. You’re doing great, Perrin.”
She let go of his hand, “I can’t think while we’re touching.” Then she grabbed it back between hers, “No, not touching you is even worse.”
“That’s not a question, but yes, I feel the same way.”
Perrin smiled over at him.
“Okay, I think this is the final question of the first round.”
“Fire away.”
“Could we go inside to finish this before I freeze to death?”
“Shit!” Bill scrambled out of the car and hurried around to open her door.
She didn’t lead him to her shop as he’d expected, but rather around the corner. She stopped at a door on the side street. A half dozen mailboxes hung along the wall for the various apartments above her shop and the one beyond. Perrin unlocked a door that led to a flight of stairs.
The stairway was hung with a beautiful series of quilts. It was as if he was following a stream through the seasons. Working his way upstream, the first quilt led him from ice winter to red-and-gold fall. The second stream, appearing to flow out of one quilt and into the next, followed the summer colors and included a pool with a bear pawprint and a golden flower. The third quilt started the stream flowing between banks the color of spring, eventually rising to where it flowed out from under blue-white ice, just as it had ended down below.
“Are these yours? The four seasons. They’re beautiful.”
“I quilt sometimes, not often.” They left them behind at the head of the stairs and Perrin led him down a hall that made his eyes water. It had a green ceiling, a zebra stripe wall to one side, a yellow wall to the other with a purple-lettered poem painted on it in tall letters.
He read a few lines, it was a really bad poem.
“These however, are so not me.”
Bill considered remarking that was a good thing, but wasn’t sure of how good the sound insulation might be. Besides, he remembered the last time Perrin had used those words while standing in a pile of confetti. At least the floors were a rich, if hard worn, hardwood. None of the residents had applied “their art” to improve them.
She led him to the door at the end of the hallway.
Perrin’s apartment was neither neat nor messy, it was lived in, but perhaps not very much. Clearly, her life was downstairs in her shop. There were nice coverings on the couch, a television, but no computer. Several fashion magazines. A wall of reference books on types of art: architecture, fiber, painting, sculpture of a dozen varieties, early Japanese, Italian Renaissance. It was all about art forms and they looked well used. This is where she obviously found many of her out-of-the-box ideas. He couldn’t decided if it was an incredibly focused collection or astonishingly unfocused. Assuming the former, it was immensely eclectic within its range. She moved into the kitchen while he inspected the books.
“I don’t see any on opera.”
“They have books on opera art?”
“About a thousand: lighting, costume, sets, you name it. I’ll get you a couple.”
“Thanks.”
A totally mad quilt, clearly done in one of her gonzo frames of mind, filled the wall above the couch with a dozen blocks, each in a different style with different fabrics. Yet the colors tied it together into a cohesive quilt. A wild one, but cohesive.
He found her making tea in a small kitchenette with a table that could seat only two. She still looked cold and he moved to hug her.
“No,” she fended him off. “You touch me and we’re going to go straight to sex, do not pass go, do not collect two-hundred dollars. And as good as that sounds, it’s not what you asked for.”
“I was being an idiot. Come here.”
She didn’t. So he tossed his jacket aside, dropped into one of the chairs, and just enjoyed watching her move about the kitchen fetching mugs and digging out a box of blueberry tea.
“Sorry, I think this is all I have at the moment.”
“Kids’ favorite. I’ve learned to like it.”
She poured the hot water and sat across from him. “Ready for round two?”
“No. But let’s see where we go anyway.”
# # #
Perrin looked at Bill over their tea cups and tried to decide just how brave she was feeling. Maria had liked him. She’d liked him a lot. Jo and Cassidy too, which helped, but Maria was the wise one. And she and Bill had talked quietly together through so much of the meal.
She’d done her best to listen to everything, while pretending not to. She’d missed a lot, but had heard Maria admonish Bill that “he already knew about his heart,” he just didn’t know that he did. There was no way to be sure what they were talking about, but there were things Perrin already knew about herself. Really knew. Even if they were scaring the crap out of her.
Bill waited so patiently. He’d said he trusted her. Trusted her more than himself. No man had ever said such a thing. Well, if he was going to trust her, how could she return less?
All it took was being brave, right? She wasn’t very good at brave. She could do it if she hid beh
ind crazy Perrin, because then it was someone else. And it came out as a joke that no one believed. But she couldn’t go there with this man. Not when they sat quietly together in the night. Not when she felt the way she did. She’d have to be her more rational self tonight.
“Okay, do you want the scary question first or the hard one?”
“That’s a choice?” He brushed a hand through his hair and she wished she had the nerve to do the same, but she didn’t dare touch him at the moment. Not for his sake but for her own.
“It is.”
“No third choice? Wild sex maybe?”
She shook her head. “As wonderful as that sounds, not yet.”
“Shit! Why doesn’t this look good? What the hell. Hard one first.”
Perrin really didn’t know which one was worse, but she wished he hadn’t chosen the hard one.
“First, I want you to know that if you want to walk out the door afterward, I won’t ever blame you.”
She could see that he almost made a joke, then a denial, but finally thought better of it and set aside his tea mug to listen.
Perrin didn’t know how to do this one. Maybe like she’d told Tamara about tearing up the drawings, “You gotta just do it.” Well, she was about to risk tearing up her life, but she saw no other path.
So she just did it.
Perrin told Bill about a father with a taste for young girls. About a mother with a coke habit she supported by selling her daughter to anyone who came to the trailer. Perrin left nothing out, not skipping one sordid detail of eighteen years of hell that had been her childhood.
She told of her arrival at college, an escape she still wasn’t sure how she’d managed, her test scores earning her a full scholarship. And how, after one particularly horrid drug-laden and abusive affair, it was Cassidy who had taken her own meager savings to fly Perrin home with her. They had gone to her father’s small vineyard just across Puget Sound on Bainbridge Island.
How Cassidy’s father had been kind. Simply kind, expecting nothing in return. She’d never known such a thing was possible. After that, for four years, she’d listened as well as she could to what Jo and Cassidy had told her to do. For four years, she’d slowly left behind a wounded child and invented Perrin Williams. Legally changing her name senior year so that the diploma would bear her “real” name.
She didn’t cry as she told Bill of her true past. Tears were still locked away too deep. She’d often laughed until she cried with Jo and Cassidy. Only once since her early childhood, the first time Mama Maria had said she wished Perrin had been her daughter, had she cried for herself.
But Bill cried for her. Tears ran untended down his face. He tried to reach for her, but she pulled back. Not trusting that she could survive the searing power of his touch and not shatter.
“I haven’t had a panic attack like the one at the dog show in over five years, but I can’t guarantee there won’t be another. So here’s the hard question, Bill. Can you still trust me around your children? Do you want to risk a woman with that past stepping into the mother-role for your children? Because that’s where this might be headed, or we wouldn’t be having this conversation.”
With a shocking abruptness, Bill stood and whirled away, striding out into the living room.
Perrin closed her eyes, wrapped her arms around her belly to hold herself together, and waited for the final judgment and eternal damnation of the front door slamming shut.
But it didn’t happen.
Not even after she waited.
When she dared open her eyes, she could see his back. He stood in the center of her living room facing her couch and the sampler quilt she’d made ages ago to teach herself basic sewing and design skills, her first-ever effort. His arms were crossed so tightly that they were straining the fabric of his shirt.
He didn’t move. She waited five minutes, ten. But still he didn’t move.
She stood and moved into the kitchen doorway. Almost close enough to touch him. But she couldn’t bridge the gap.
“What’s the scary one?” His voice was so harsh, so angry. She’d never heard anything like it, but she now knew better than to fear him. He’d never strike her. Whatever his anger, it wasn’t directed at her.
She’d made it through the hard one, now she had to face the scary one. The one even more likely to send him running down the hall away from her. She swallowed hard before trying to speak through the fear of losing him.
“I love you.”
The words fell into the silence of the room and lay there untended for long enough that her stomach knotted into a hard, snarled ball.
“That’s not a question.” Then he turned to face her. His face was calm, though his cheeks were still wet. He stepped forward, and reaching out very slowly, brought his hands to her shoulders. If she could have stepped back, she would have. But she was too numb, too afraid. Not even for Cassidy had she let her heart out into the world with her words.
He pulled her in, leaving the decision to stop wholly up to her, but she let him do it until she could lay her cheek on his shoulder and he wrapped his arms around her. She couldn’t seem to unlock her own arms from around her midriff, so she simply leaned against him.
Bill rocked her gently, ever so gently. Then he whispered to her.
“Yeah. That’s the same one that’s scaring the shit out of me too. But it’s not a question. I love you, too. It makes no sense that it could happen so fast or so completely, but I do.”
Some time later, Bill’s slow rocking turned into a slow dance in the middle of her small living room.
Perrin was fairly sure that she was the one who kissed him first, rather than the other way round.
He was definitely the one who swept her up in his arms and proceeded to carry her into the coat closet. She redirected him to the bedroom with giggles for his curses.
Bill set her on the bed, then sat beside her. He brushed his fingertips ever so gently over her cheek.
“Don’t!” Her shout was sharp.
“What?” He jerked his hand back as if she’d burned him.
“Don’t you dare treat me like I’m fragile. I’m not fragile. Earlier this evening you wanted to ravage me. So ravage me. I won’t break!” Perrin was so pissed she wanted to swipe at him.
“Not fragile? Not fragile?!” His voice rose as abruptly as hers had. “Any idiot who thinks you’re fragile needs his goddamn head examined. You lived through… through… ” he pointed helplessly back toward the kitchen. “… that. You’re the goddamn strongest and most amazing woman I’ve ever met. I’m being gentle because I can’t believe what you just told me. That you just told me. That you let me in so far. How can you dare to trust me so much? That’s what I’m trying to understand. I’m in awe of you, Perrin Williams, not afraid I’m going to break you!”
“Oh.” If she’d been gone on him before, she was right off the deep end now. The way he saw her was incredible.
“Oh?” He huffed out a breath. “Is that all you have to say after my whole tirade is, ‘Oh’?”
“Best, I have, Mr. Cullen.”
“Shit!” he cursed. “Where was I?”
She took his hand and placed it against her cheek. “Right here.” Then she closed her eyes and turned her head to rub against his fingertips.
Ever so slowly, he relaxed and began again. He traced the lines of her face. She followed the line of fire as he tested every shape and curve: cheek, chin, eyebrows, lips, and tip of her nose.
She was floating by the time he had moved down her throat. He didn’t hasten his investigation of her body in the slightest as he unbuttoned her blouse, released her bra, and teased her breasts until the nipples ached.
When his mouth latched onto her, she hissed at the pleasure so intense it was pain. He knew exactly what to do to drive her upward. No man had ever been so gentle. No man had ever been so intent
on giving her pleasure rather than taking his own. She allowed herself to go where he led, to become a conduit of Bill’s touch. Each line he drew, each place he tasted built until she was clothed in nothing but the light and heat he spread over her skin as he went.
He rolled her over until she lay on her stomach, and he continued to clothe her in his gentle brushes and kisses. He turned it into a massage. One that started at her feet and built as it flowed up her legs, over her buttocks, driving her deliciously into the bed, and up over her back and shoulders.
Just as he had made her feel clothed in traceries of light, now he stripped her bare with a deep cleansing touch. She didn’t remember turning onto her back once again, didn’t know when it happened and didn’t care. He suckled her until the waves finally burned through her insides, scorching away the last remnants of darkness trapped inside her.
When he laid his lips between her legs, she exploded. She cried out as a tidal wave of pure pleasure rushed over her. No man had ever touched her like this. None had ever sent her to such places, ones she didn’t even believe existed.
But now she knew.
They did.
When he went to drive her upward again, she managed to flutter her eyes open. He was still fully clothed.
“That was one hell of a ravage, Mr. Cullen.”
“You’re magnificent, Ms. Williams.”
She managed to sit up, despite her muscles all gone to liquid.
Her fingers weren’t working that well with how her nervous system was buzzing, but she managed to unbutton his shirt. His muscles twitched and quivered under her touch.
“That’s a very nice chest, Mr. Cullen.”
“My wife liked—Aw shit! I’m sorry.” He went to turn away.
She stopped him with a kiss. “Bill. I’m not asking you to push your wife out of your heart to let me in. I know she’s dead or you wouldn’t be here with me. I think it’s nice that you loved her so much. It really shows in Jaspar and Tamara, they’d know if it wasn’t true.”
“But you deserve—”
“Exactly what I’m about to take.” With that she pushed him back on the bed. She dug in a drawer for some protection, then she greedily took all he could give. How many times they made love, how many times the waves rolled through each of them, releasing their bodies and clothing their hearts in such glory, Perrin didn’t know.
Where Dreams Unfold Page 14
