Sweet Dream Lover

by Karen Sandler

  It would be so easy to tug him down to her, to tip her mouth up to his. Then maybe the constant jangle of her nerves would quiet and for a few short minutes, the calamity of her life would recede.

  A faint smile had curved his lips. “The Elliot Hotel.”

  “You want to get a room?” She ought to be outraged, but at the moment it sounded like a damn good idea.

  He laughed, low and sexy. “The Starbucks at the hotel stays open late.”

  Starbucks. Right. “Lead on.”

  He took her arm and directed her back up Fourth toward Pine. A breeze gusted along the downtown Seattle street, sending her burrowing deeper into Mark’s jacket. Almost like snuggling in his arms. She tried to squelch the image, but it kept popping up like an unwanted bloom on badly tempered chocolate.

  When they reached the Elliot Hotel, Mark opened the lobby door for her, then took her arm again when they’d both stepped inside. She ought to shake him off, ought to give him back his jacket; it was certainly warm enough in the expansive lobby. But she couldn’t bring herself to surrender it and didn’t want to consider why.

  She zeroed in on the Starbucks outlet and made a beeline for the counter. The baby-faced barista, a young man who’d nearly solidified with boredom, stared idly at the clock behind him as it ticked off the minutes until closing.

  Kat slapped a hand on the counter, no doubt knocking a decade off the young man’s life. “Venti double latte with a shot of caramel.”

  As the barista hopped to, Mark gave her shoulder a shake.

  “Maybe you ought to rethink that beverage choice.”

  “You have a point.” She barked at the young man, “Better make that nonfat.”

  “It’s not the calories, Kat. God knows you could use a bit more meat on your bones.”

  She planted a hand over Mark’s mouth. “Not another word. Not another commentary on my skinny, nothing body and my nonexistent boobs.”

  Damn, she felt like crying. In her mind’s eye, the events of the last few weeks toppled domino-like in a serpentine line, closer and closer. The last one teetered above her head, ready to squash her flat with some final catastrophe. She couldn’t do anything to stop the inevitable collapse, but she could distract herself from the calamity.

  No more safe choices. It was time to be wild and reckless. She snatched her hand from Mark’s hot, sensuous mouth and speared the barista with a steely gaze. “Make that a double double.”

  The fresh-faced young man’s jaw dropped. “Four shots of espresso?”

  “You got a problem with that?”

  The barista flicked a questioning glance at Mark, but Kat elbowed her ex aside. No one was speaking for her tonight. “He’s not my keeper. Start brewing.”

  The young man shook his head, but he did as he was told. One tiny silver pitcher after another was upended into the venti cup, the steamed milk darkening with each addition of thick black Colombian. The last time she mainlined coffee like this, she’d been pulling an all-nighter at USC before her graduate macroeconomics class.

  The barista handed over the high-test latte. The paper cup just about vibrated with java-fueled energy. Even the foam was brown.

  Mark stared down at the witch’s brew in her hand. “You realize there’s enough caffeine in that drink to reanimate the dead.“

  She fumbled under his jacket for the minuscule purse she had slung over her shoulder. Before she could get it open, Mark had his wallet out.

  “God forgive me,” he muttered as he fished out a five, “I’m enabling an addict.”

  She let him pay, too far gone to object. Wending her way through the tables arranged around the counter, she found a spot at the far edge of the seating area.

  Maybe Mark would just go away now. He’d escorted her here, he’d bought her a latte with a near-illegal caffeine content, maybe she could convince him to order her a cab and send her on home.

  Except, of course, she didn’t want him to leave. She wanted to climb into his lap and squirm, tongue his ear and touch him where it wasn’t polite to touch in public. The heat was so overwhelming she thought she’d explode with it, start tearing off her clothes as she ran like a madwoman through the hotel lobby.

  With a quaking hand, she set down the latte. She looked up to see Mark standing over the table and her heart sank when she thought he might be leaving after all.

  But then he pulled out a chair opposite her and lowered himself into it and a terrible mix of gratitude and outright horniness assailed her. God, she was a mess.

  He stared at her a long time in silence, then said finally, “You drink that, you won’t be able to sleep for a week.”

  She slammed down a long, rebellious slug of coffee, then another, nearly half the cup. Foam smeared her nose, her poor tongue whimpered at the scalding and her heart lurched with the caffeine overload.

  A powerful hiccup jostled her hand and she sloshed a bit of latte on his jacket. “Sorry.” She took another sip, but another hiccup hit before she could finish swallowing and she nearly choked.

  Mark pried the cup from her hand. “What is going on?” Caffeine screamed along her veins, loosening her beleaguered tongue. “I am so damned hot.”

  He nudged the cup farther out of her reach. “I don’t doubt it, gulping all that coffee.”

  “You don’t understand.” She grabbed his hands and tugged them closer. “You were supposed to stay gone. Why the hell won’t you get out of my life?”

  “Kandy for Kids wasn’t my idea.”

  “No-no-no-no-no...” She shook her head until she was dizzy. “See, you never left. You’re jumping up when I least expect it. Some guy who looks like you, but isn’t you. Sometimes it is you, but then I think maybe it isn’t, that I’m just imagining...”

  Now she was dizzy without the head-shaking. “So now here you are, big as life. Bigger.” A broad gesture of her hands nearly swept the half-full latte cup from the table. Mark rescued it just in time.

  He set the cup on another table. “You want me to leave?”

  “Of course I do! But I don’t want you to leave here.” She pointed an emphatic finger on the table in front of him. “I want you to leave here.” Her fingertip tapped her temple.

  She leaned toward the latte, but he captured her wrist before she could get her mitts on the cup. “I don’t control your thoughts, Kat.”

  “Neither do I,” she said mournfully. “Or my mouth, for that matter.” A twist of her wrist loosened his grip, then she took his hand in both of hers, yanked it toward her. “I want you. I’m burning for you. I am so hot for you, I can’t sleep, I can’t eat...anything but chocolate, anyway. I can’t think of anything but scht—” She cut off the pithy Yiddish word. “Anything but sleeping with you. Many times. All night long.”

  “Okay,” he said slowly, drawing out the syllables. “This is the caffeine talking. You’ll be thinking more clearly tomorrow, once you’ve slept this off.”

  “I’ll still want to jump your bones.” Her nerves jittered in syncopation with her stuttering heartbeat. “This can’t be a complete surprise.”

  “We’re not married anymore, Kat. We don’t love each other anymore.”

  Damn. Why did that feel like a knife plunged in her chest? “It’s sex, Mark. Just sex.”

  He disentangled his hand from hers. “So do we get a room?” A proposition like that ought to sound inviting and sexy. But he might as well have suggested they go purchase a socket wrench for all the sensuality in his tone.

  “Not necessarily,” she hedged. “Why tell me this, Katarina?”

  He was mad at her. He always used her full name when he was mad. That had been the first clue they were heading into argument territory.

  Sudden exhaustion slumped her shoulders. “I don’t know.” Now she felt on the edge of tears again. “I want to go home.”

  He reached across the table, laid his warm palm against her cheek. “I know you’re hot for me, Kat. Sometimes I want you so bad I can’t stand it. But that’s all there is
between us anymore.”

  She squeezed her eyes shut as the stones of his words crashed on her in an uncontrollable landslide. Grief welled up inside her, and like a drunk who gets sappy when the alcohol wears off, she wallowed in a post-caffeine nosedive.

  She chanced a quick look up at him and saw something flickering behind the bland neutrality of his face. His expressive blue eyes held a question and she wanted to answer it, but she was simply too tired to think.

  He rose and took her hand. Kat dumped the rest of the latte on their way out of the lobby, then walked outside with Mark. The downtown streets seemed deserted and lonely and Kat felt a crying jag coming on. Gritting her teeth, she smothered the impulse.

  The short walk down Union Street seemed to stretch into a silent eternity, although it couldn’t have taken more than a few minutes to reach the parking structure and his BMW. If there was a sense of purpose to her life anymore, she didn’t know what it was. Once it had been Roth Confectionery, once it had even been her life with Mark. Now her foundation seemed as porous as chocolate-covered honeycomb.

  The leather seat in Mark’s BMW seemed impossibly soft and comfortable. She nestled into it, his jacket pulled around the front of her, her cheek resting against the seat belt. “Could you just drive all night? I could sleep here forever.”

  “I’d have to fill the tank first.”

  He sounded perfectly serious. She turned her head to look at him. “I was kidding.”

  “Yeah,” he said with a sigh as he started the car. “I know.” The drive to her condo wasn’t nearly long enough. He pulled up to the garage and used her keycard to open the gate. The BMW made its way through the rows of cars to the elevator.

  She didn’t want to leave. Not because she didn’t want to leave him, although she still fought the urgency to touch him, to kiss him. She didn’t want to step from the car because then she’d be walking back into her life and all the disasters lurking there.

  She unsnapped the seat belt and the jacket slithered into her lap. He was watching her, his blue gaze intense with those same secret messages that had begged for translation earlier. Damn him, why couldn’t he just say them out loud?

  “We’re in trouble,” she blurted, without realizing she was going to.

  His brow furrowed. “You and I?”

  “Roth. The company. We’re in trouble.”

  She shoved the car door open and ran for the elevator. Punching the button, she prayed it would come before Mark thought to press her for more information. He was the enemy, damn it, the competition. How could she have said such a thing to him?

  He was half out of the roadster. “Kat—”

  Salvation arrived in the form of the elevator and she stepped inside before he could catch her. The doors slid shut as he rounded the front of his car. With a lurch, the elevator rose.

  She stumbled along the corridor to her condo, then fumbled the keys before she got the door unlocked. Fritz was not in residence; just as well, she’d had enough of those damn Denham blue eyes staring at her. Shimmying out of the glitzy blue dress, she raced through her evening routine so she could hide in bed that much quicker.

  Zapping the television on with the remote, she paced her room, channel flipping while she contemplated which was the worst cataclysmic misfortune. That she’d admitted to Mark her lust for him? That she’d let slip Roth was tanking? Or the fact that the company she’d invested her life’s blood, her entire being, into was quickly going down in flames under her stewardship?

  You can cry now, she thought. No one will see.

  But her eyes were dry and her grief had faded to numbness. Good Lord, she was so inept, she not only couldn’t manage the corporation entrusted to her, she couldn’t even muster a decent catharsis.

  Digging in her nightstand, she unearthed a bar of bittersweet chocolate and climbed into bed. A truly awful movie on the satellite, pillows plumped up behind her, she munched chocolate and winced over bad dialogue until the less-than-stellar third act when she drifted off to sleep.

  * * * * *

  Fritz snoring softly on her shoulder, Norma glanced at the clock on the DVD player and saw it was nearly eleven. The benefit concert was long over and with any luck, Kat and Mark had spent some quality time together tonight. If not, she and Fritz still had the ace in the hole he’d found at the cabin.

  Turning her head slightly, she looked down at his slight body nestled beside her. She ought to wake him and send him home, but he felt so wonderful snuggled against her neck. His hair brushed her ear and it took everything in her to resist burying her face in the soft sandy curls. One slender hand lay against her arm and she wanted so badly to link her fingers in his.

  She tried to tell herself Fritz reminded her of her grandson, Travis, when the youngster lost the valiant fight to stay awake during a late movie. It had happened often enough when she’d had six-year-old Travis and his older sister, Brittany, over for the weekend. It was an inside joke between eight-year-old Brittany and her, how long before Travis slumped against her, snoring.

  But the feelings bubbling up inside her were anything but grandmotherly. The temptation to brush aside one sandy curl that had fallen across Fritz’s brow had nothing to do with keeping him tidy. She longed for the sensation of that dark honey-colored lock of hair sweeping against her fingertips. Would it be silky or crisp? Would it tickle her palm or stroke it?

  Heat rose in her face at her wandering thoughts. This was entirely inappropriate. Fritz was younger than both her daughters and should be nothing more than a friend to her. She had no business mooning over him the way she did. But when he was, oh, so near, his hand so intimate on her arm, the most improper images danced in her head, images that just wouldn’t go away, no matter how often she scolded herself.

  Her long, heavy sigh must have roused him because he stirred, shifting against her shoulder. His hand flexed, then his fingers curled, his thumb stroking her arm through the sleeve of her cotton knit sweater. Norma froze as his hand moved up, palm against her upper arm, the back of his hand alarmingly close to her breast. Sensation shot through her as his face turned and his mouth pressed against the point of her shoulder.

  If she didn’t know better, she’d think he was kissing her, caressing her. But he had to still be asleep, still lost in some dream of a cute little twenty-something girl in his arms. Any second now he’d wake and be completely mortified that he was touching matronly old Norma instead of that sweet young thing in his dream.

  “Norma...” Her whispered name shot through her like a jolt of electricity. “Oh, Norma...”

  Okay, his dream girl had the same name as her; that was the only explanation. In his sleep-befuddled brain, he held taut young flesh, not forty-eight-year-old flab. And she had to put a stop to it, to save them both horrible embarrassment.

  Then his hand on her arm moved higher, his knuckles grazing ever so slightly against her breast on the way to her shoulder, then her throat, before his fingers curved around her jaw. Before she could so much as take another breath, he’d turned her head toward his and pressed his mouth against hers.

  He was kissing her! Oh, dear heavens, he was kissing her! She had to push him away, had to shake him awake. This couldn’t go on another moment. Not another second. Not another...

  His tongue flicked lightly against her lower lip and her heart just up and stopped beating. Thankfully, it started right up again, although it beat about a million times a minute and would probably fly out of her chest anytime now. But, oh, heavens, what a way to go.

  He only tasted her that little bit before he slowly pulled away, his hand still curved around her cheek. Now she’d see the mortification, the horror that the sexy little sylph of his dream had transmogrified into dumpy old Norma. She’d see it in his eyes anytime now.

  But she saw nothing of the kind in his clear blue eyes. What she did see, heat and smoldering sensuality, she could barely understand, although it warmed her from toes to thudding heart.

  He smiled slowly. �
�Hey.”

  “Hey.” The word squeaked out. “You kissed me.”

  His smile broadened. “Yeah.”

  “I know you didn’t mean to.”

  He laughed. “The hell I didn’t.”

  She blinked at his emphatic statement. “I mean, you must have been dreaming and you thought you were kissing someone else.”

  “I was dreaming of you.”

  Shock stunned her into silence. She shook her head. Fritz’s thumb skimmed along her cheek. “Yes.”

  “No!” She jumped to her feet. “You can’t.”

  “Can’t dream about you? Why not?”

  “Because...because...” It should be obvious, shouldn’t it? “I’m old. You’re not.”

  “You’re forty-eight, Norma. That’s not old.”

  This was crazy. Yes, she’d been longing for exactly this kind of thing, but that had been a fantasy and a wrongheaded one to boot. She had to squash this looniness before it went any further. “Fritz...” His sharp blue eyes fixed on her, and emotions muddled inside her. Yearning, hope, wanting and down-and- dirty desire. She had to nip all of it in the bud. “You are simply too young for me. You...you...remind me of my grandson.”

  It was a terrible lie and she saw its impact in his face. She spent enough time around Fritz to know how fragile his ego was and how easily it would be to wound him. Color stained his cheeks a moment before he turned away, then pushed to his feet.

  “I’d better go.” He grabbed his worn denim jacket from the hall tree by the front door. “Call you later.”

  “Fritz! Wait!”

  But he didn’t. He had the door open and hurried through it before Norma could so much as make her way around the sofa. By the time she got her door open, he’d reached the sidewalk and was jogging up the street.

  “Fritz!” she shouted.

  She thought she saw him hunch his shoulders when he heard her call his name, but he didn’t slow his pace. In another moment, he’d disappeared around the corner, headed for the nearest Metro bus stop.