Dream a Little Dream

by Sue Moorcroft

  His grey eyes were steady. ‘You’re the wrong one to give it to him.’

  She swallowed. ‘But what if he tries to commit suicide again?’

  Slowly, he covered one of her hands with his, thumb moving absently on the underside of her wrist. He breathed a sigh. ‘That would be terrible. But running after him still isn’t the right thing to do. The only thing you can do to make him happy is carry through a phoney change of heart, live with a man you don’t want, give up your whole life to a lie. Take the expected place within his family. Are you that good at faking? It would make you miserable and, in the end, him, too.’

  Liza almost staggered under a wave of clammy dismay. Endless relatives calling, Ursula interfering, Adam being gently manipulative until he got his own way in everything. ‘I can’t do that,’ she agreed, hopelessly. ‘But there must be something I can do. It’s my—’

  ‘If you say it’s your fault,’ he snapped, hand tightening uncomfortably, ‘I’m going to tell your sister you need help and she’ll check up on you eight times a day.’

  ‘She would, too,’ she agreed, gloomily. Somehow, instead of pushing him away she’d sunk against him. Again. Taking strength from him. Again. Listening to the regular thud of his heart, feeling secure. Maybe it was habit-forming and she’d need a stronger and stronger fix – last time she’d been wearing two coats, this time he was half-naked and she had on the stupidest tiny dress. So next time …

  He shifted, and she realised that he was easing his hips away. Oh …! Hastily, she straightened, so that the embrace slackened, gave him the distance he evidently needed for comfort. ‘There must be something I can do,’ she repeated, to get her mind off the likely reason for Dominic not wanting her to be aware of what was going on in his pelvic area. Fighting the – at this moment inappropriate – instinct to check it out.

  ‘What about his brother, the one who took you to hospital?’

  ‘Ben.’ She ran through Ben’s probable reaction without much pleasure. He’d been a condemnatory supercilious snot when Adam had hurt himself. But, ‘Better than ringing his mother,’ she acknowledged. ‘I’ve left my bag in your car and my phone’s in it.’

  ‘I’ve got my phone.’

  ‘Really?’ Once again, she fought the urge to let her gaze skim over him. There didn’t seem many places to put a phone in his costume. She forced herself to deal with the crisis of the moment. ‘But I need Ben’s number. It’s in my contacts.’

  ‘Let’s call him from the Jag, then.’ He fished around behind himself and produced the key fob for his car.

  ‘Where was that?’

  He laughed. ‘There’s a pocket inside the waistband, like you get in cycling shorts. Come on, let’s get this over with.’ In a minute he’d bundled up her clothes from Rochelle’s room, draped her coat over her as best he could for her wings, checked out the Kenny situation and discovered he’d already left, probably with Undead Barbie, although Angie wasn’t sure, reassured her and Rochelle that the Adam situation was under control, then towed Liza to the door.

  Outside, the wind pounced on them like an ice demon, making them gasp as its icy fingers fastened gleefully on their exposed flesh. Liza grabbed fruitlessly at the two sides of her coat. ‘I can’t believe I came downstairs dressed like this. It’s f-freezing!’

  Dominic huddled himself into his thin and inadequate cloak, bleeping the car open as they scurried across the pavement. The driver’s door was closest so Liza had it open before Dominic had run around to the passenger side, but then discovered the challenges in entering a car in wings and a stinger. She finally managed to perch uncomfortably on the padded hornet’s abdomen with the stinger sticking out coquettishly beside the gear stick. Which wasn’t a proper gear stick, because Dominic’s great tanky car was an automatic. The wire frame of her wings dug viciously into her shoulder blades so that she had to lean forward whilst she fished her phone out of the side pocket of her bag, wincing.

  The screen lit up, and in moments she had selected Ben from her contacts list and could hear the ringtone in her ear.

  ‘Yes?’ Ben’s voice.

  ‘It’s Liza.’

  ‘Yes.’

  She hesitated. He didn’t sound surprised and he didn’t sound encouraging. A terror of saying the wrong thing, of doing something to invoke disaster, engulfed her. She swallowed hard, twice, trying to force sound past the stiffness of her throat.

  Ben sounded bored. ‘Are you still there?’

  On a gasp, she managed, ‘I’m worried about Adam.’

  His voice hardened. ‘Bit late for that.’

  Liza flinched. ‘I saw him tonight and he—he got upset.’

  ‘Shit! What did you do this time?’

  She gripped the phone harder, reliving the grief in Adam’s eyes. She blurted, wretchedly, ‘He was at this party and wanted to talk, but I couldn’t see any point because nothing’s changed. He ran out—’

  ‘—and now you want me to talk him down from the ledge,’ he finished for her, voice vibrating with anger.

  Then Dominic twitched the phone away from her fingers and began speaking in unemotional, clear sentences. ‘Look, mate, your brother obviously needs help. Liza’s not responsible for him but is worried he might self-harm. She’s been good enough to notify you of the unusual situation. Whether you act on the information is up to you.’ And ended the call.

  Liza sat, numbly. ‘His family all hate me.’

  He turned in his seat, the scarlet of his cloak washing out to a strange orange under the streetlights, the horns still poking roguishly through his hair, his eyes glittering. ‘They’re projecting their fears for Adam onto you. It’s not fair, but it is understandable. When people are scared, they lash out. They blame. And if they can’t find someone to blame with just cause, they find a scapegoat.’

  ‘Oh.’ She sniffed, wondering if he was right.

  He still held the car remote and he flicked the key part out and, reaching across her as if perfectly familiar with her personal space, located the ignition by feel, turned the key one click, watched the dash readout, then turned it again and the engine burbled into life. Huddling into his cloak, he stabbed the red buttons of the climate control unit. ‘This outfit isn’t designed for an English October night.’

  ‘Neither’s mine.’ Her bare legs glowed ghostily in the dashboard light and she briefly considered whether she could get back into the jeans and coat she’d arrived in, but an excursion into the biting wind back to Rochelle’s bedroom didn’t appeal. Sighing, she dragged on the seatbelt, wincing as the wings dug deeper into her shoulders. ‘So, how do you drive an automatic, then?’

  ‘You seriously never have? And here was me trying to console myself with the thought that if I have to be driven around, at least I get a slutty hornet chauffeur, tonight.’

  ‘The slutty hornet only passed her test a couple of years ago. And has never driven an auto, nor anything bigger than a Corsa, so she needs to be told how.’ Cautiously, she blipped the accelerator, listening as the car went from a whispered, rrrrummmm, to a throaty, RRRUMMMMMMMMM. Actually … quite nice. RRRRAAAOWWWWMMMM.

  His breath caught, as if in pain, but his voice remained even and reassuring. ‘It’s straightforward. There’s no clutch and you don’t have the bother of changing gears, once you’ve put the car in drive. Put your foot on the brake, and move the shift to where it says D.’

  She did that. The stick shifted, as if through greased ball bearings, sinuous and satisfying.

  ‘And when you’re ready, let the brake off and do everything but change gear.’

  Checking behind her and indicating, she moved cautiously out from the kerb, took the first left and left again, checking her mirrors, creeping through the near-empty streets. She felt somehow lost inside such a big vehicle, as if it had swallowed her. But once she’d glided onto the dual carriageway and found the car responsive to her foot on the accelerator, began to enjoy flying through the night. ‘This is easy,’ she marvelled. ‘Like steering a gia
nt leather armchair.’

  He laughed. ‘My poor Jag. Emasculation in one sentence.’

  ‘But I thought it would be difficult.’

  ‘A big car isn’t any harder to drive than a little car. It might be trickier to park, though. We’ll leave it outside your house. I’ll run back to Miranda’s and Kenny can pick it up tomorrow. Or whenever he reappears.’ He raised his hands against her argument that she could drop him at Miranda’s or change to the Smart and drive him back there. ‘Liza, I used to move hundreds of aircraft in and out of a busy London airport every week. Trust me to supervise the parking of my car.’

  They took to the dark country roads towards Middledip. The car’s interior had warmed nicely and a half moon was edging the breaks in the ragged clouds with silver in a satisfyingly spooky way. ‘I love your car. Even driving in possibly the least comfortable Halloween costume in the world.’

  Dominic stared through the windscreen. ‘I hate being chauffeured.’

  She bristled. ‘By me?’

  ‘By anyone. You. Kenny. Jenson Button. Angelina Jolie. I just want my licence back.’

  ‘Oh.’ That was OK, then. ‘When will that be?’

  ‘When my consultant and the DVLA agree that I’m fit for it. Then I’ll probably never let anybody else in the driving seat ever again, so enjoy it while you can.’ In her peripheral vision, she saw his horns illuminated for a moment by passing headlights.

  She changed the subject. ‘Tell me about you and Kenny. You seem an unlikely pairing.’

  ‘We are.’ He stretched and yawned. ‘At school, I was good at academic stuff and Ken thought it was torture. He was unpredictable and anti-authority, probably because he learns differently, being severely dyslexic. If he wants to know something he treats you like a live reference book – questions, questions, questions, committing your answers to memory, in the same way you or I might learn a poem. In a huge comprehensive school, that need couldn’t always be met.

  ‘He comes from a big family with not much money, whereas I’m an only child and both my parents are in reasonably well-paid professions. I think we each envied the other what he had. I wanted siblings, he wanted privacy and clothes that were new.

  ‘Our common interest was sport. We kept ending up on the same teams for athletics, footie and rugby. Then Mr Pryor arrived, a sports teacher who was interested in adventurous stuff like kayaking and climbing, and Ken suddenly found a use for school. We built our own kayak on a project Mr Pryor masterminded and he encouraged Kenny to do the stuff he excelled at. He also persuaded him to take a couple of exams and I helped him as much as I could. We were brothers-in-arms in everything except girls, because we liked the same ones. We adopted the “All’s fair in love and war” code. He took Tanya Rowlands off me, I stole Melanie Smith from him.’ He laughed. ‘Ken’s always so alive. It’s going to be great to have him around. You didn’t see him at his best, getting drunk and hitting on you.’

  She guided the Jag around a long curve. ‘And now I’ve kind of been cornered into dinner with him and you and Rochelle. I was hoping you’d object.’

  He made a balancing-the-scales movement with his hands. ‘I thought a foursome left us all with the most options. It’s light and non-committal. If I’d headed Kenny’s foursome idea off he would have pushed to take you out alone.’

  ‘Good point.’ Checking her mirror and slowing as the lanes delivered them to the lights of Middledip, Liza took Main Road then Ladies Lane to Port Road, passing Cleo and Justin’s house with all its windows dark, to The Cross. She managed to position the Jag tolerably close to the pavement without scraping the wheels. There was just about room for it without overlapping the Gatehouse frontage. Mrs Snelling had put a note through her door when Rochelle had dared to intrude her car bonnet into what Mrs Snelling saw as her air space. ‘There.’ She was surprised at her own satisfaction. Cars, usually, were just cars, but driving Dominic’s Jag had aroused her latent girlracer.

  Dominic gazed out as garden shrubs tossed their wild hairdos in a surly autumn wind and spatters of rain crackled against the windows. The flimsy satiny fabric wrapped around his body didn’t look weatherproof. He grimaced. ‘I can’t believe I didn’t think of stashing a jumper or a coat in the car. That’s a criminal lack of forward planning.’

  She shifted around uncomfortably on the rubber abdomen to face him. ‘Are you literally going to run back to Miranda’s? What if you meet someone? The village will seethe with tales of the devil riding out on Halloween. Babies born to Middledip women next July will be suspiciously examined for horns, tails and cloven hoofs.

  ‘I don’t have any clothes to fit you but I could lend you something to wrap up in, as I haven’t thanked you for helping me out, tonight. With Adam. I mean.’ She hesitated. ‘I’m conscious of the fact that, twice, when I’ve been upset, you’ve been a good friend. Even though we’re in direct competition for The Stables. And we’ve argued a bit. You helped me with Ben, too. You always seem to be there at the right time, for some reason.’

  He turned his head her way. The streetlamps threw half his face in shadow, emphasising the line of his jaw and set of his mouth. He let several heartbeats pass.

  ‘C’mon, Liza. You really don’t know how much I want you?’

  Chapter Twenty

  ‘Oh!’ Liza felt as if his words were warm honey, pouring slowly down her body. Every nerve ending awoke and the old her, the pre-Adam Liza, was suddenly bursting to supply a smooth and reciprocally interested response – designed to get her into bed with Dominic. Soon.

  But New Liza had completely forgotten the script. Too scary! Too sudden! Too much potential for disaster. She couldn’t vanquish New Liza’s demon of guilt that had possessed her for over a year. ‘I … um.’

  Silently, he waited.

  New Liza busied herself with her bag, flipped off her seatbelt and fumbled to open the unfamiliar door. Then, ‘OW!’, came to a sudden stop.

  Dominic was holding on to her stinger.

  ‘Forget I said that, if it makes you uncomfortable.’ His voice was low, non-threatening. He kept to his own side of the car, apart from the hand that had the stinger. ‘But you’re not going to let Adam guilt you into never making love again, are you? Run away from sex for the rest of your life?’

  ‘Let go!’ She yanked the stinger resentfully from his hand. But she let the wind slam the door, closing them back in again, safe from the rain. ‘Making “love”?’ She tried to laugh but it was an angry sound. ‘Love. The L word’s a weapon, supposed to make you forget what you want. Make you want what they want. And if you don’t, well then “love” makes a handy lever.’

  Gently, he took her hand, his expression intent in the harsh relief of lamplight. His skin was smooth, warm, his voice husky. ‘Love’s not the only route to great sex. It might not even be the best route. Sex is something other. An intimacy all to itself. Something fantastic. I think sex between us would be the best. If you’re letting what Adam did stop you enjoying a healthy physical life, you really are letting “love” be used against you. Make the “L” word “lust” instead.’

  It seemed to sizzle through the air. Lusssssst … She looked down at their hands. His was warm. Scalding. Old Liza prickled with heat. Awarenessssss. Promisssssse.

  Perhapssssss …

  ‘The thought of going back to trying to be what a man wants me to be makes my throat close up,’ she said, stubbornly.

  ‘You don’t need to be anyone but Liza. Reality check: I’m a man. I don’t need to love you to want you. I’m interested in sex.’

  She laughed, unwillingly. ‘That’s an unusual seduction technique.’

  ‘Yeah, well. Call me Mr Truthful. Your self-imposed baggage and the whole Liza’s-the-only-person-on-the-planet-to-find-love-painful thing is crazy.’

  ‘Self-imposed!’

  ‘Totally. What happens between you and me, happens between you and me. What happened between you and Adam, happened between you and Adam. It was a terrible experience, but
you don’t have to suffer pointless self-discipline to atone.’

  She snatched her hand from under his. ‘Sorry if I’m being boring.’

  He threw back his head and laughed, the sound loud in the confines of the car. ‘That’s one thing you never are.’ He took her hand back, lacing her fingers through the spaces between his. ‘It’s about time you started trusting your instincts.’

  ‘What? The ones that made me think I could be what Adam wanted? That he’d be good for me? Or the ones that made me say “no” when he proposed?’

  ‘Yes, those. That made you run from something that was obviously wrong for you.

  ‘You’re giving him the power, letting him make you miserable and take your sex life off you. You’re eaten up by your guilt and he’s using that. He probably doesn’t even realise it. He’s a poor, lovesick guy who’s having trouble moving on. And you,’ there was a note of apology in his voice, ‘you’re making it possible. You’re playing his game.’

  Outrage began to bubble up behind her breastbone. ‘So, by going to bed with you for this “best ever” sex, I prove to myself that I’m not controlled by Adam? Another original seduction technique.’

  He kissed her fingers and then let them drop. ‘It’s not as cynical as seduction.’

  ‘So if I suggested we go up to my bedroom now, you’d refuse?’

  ‘No way.’ He laughed softly, a rich, dark sound that trickled over her skin. ‘I’d sprint up there. But even if that’s not going to happen it doesn’t mean I’m wrong about Adam controlling you.’

  ‘When I resume my sex life, it’s going to be my decision, my call, and in my control, OK?’ she snapped.

  ‘OK.’ There was laughter in his voice. ‘Can I give you my number and hope it’s me you call?’

  She snorted as she dragged her coat around her wings and stinger as best she could and flung open the driver’s door. ‘I’ll get you the sofa throw so you don’t get hypothermia.’

  He still sounded amused. ‘I appreciate it. Though it doesn’t rate high as a consolation prize.’