Forbidden Dreams

by Gill, Judy Griffith

  “We scared us,” he said. “But sometimes things that are scary in the night aren’t so threatening in the light of day.”

  She wasn’t so sure of that. Simply being close to him made her insides all loose and hot and needful. “Aren’t they?”

  He ran the broad pad of his thumb over her lips. “Do I make you feel threatened, Shell?”

  Her awareness of herself, her body, her heart, her lungs, her skin, was total. “A bit,” she whispered. Staring into his eyes, she wished she knew him better, well enough to read him, wished he’d touch her hair again, or her lips. Her breasts or her aching nipples. What did a person do with this kind of wanting, except …? She drew a shuddering breath and held it. A smart person fought it until she knew where it was going.

  This time, his rough-edged finger outlined her ear. “What is it about me that scares you, Shell?”

  All the things you can make me want, simply by being here, by looking at me, touching me. Before she could articulate the emotions swelling and surging and roiling within, he asked, “Want to know what it is about you that scares me?”

  She swallowed hard. “Sure, if you want to tell me.”

  “Your eyes, to start with. I’m afraid of drowning when I look into them.” He brushed the tips of her lashes and she closed her eyes. “And your mouth.” He traced it shape with a finger again. “It could capture me, hold me, make me crazy with wanting to kiss you.” His hands encircled her waist around the deep green cable-knit sweater she wore with her jeans, then slid down to curve over her hips. “Your mouth could keep a man busy exploring its mysteries so long he might forget there were other … places he wanted to explore.”

  She opened her eyes to see the smile she’d heard in his voice. “I remember,” she said, “when we were children, you used to carve little boats and set them afloat with masts made of sticks and sails of leaves. You told me they were going to China, or India, or Argentina and that someday you’d go there, too. Did you?” And did you meet a woman somewhere in your travels, a woman who became so important you still dream about her? A woman named Sharba?

  He smiled widely. “You remember that?” She nodded. “I went to all those places,” he said. “And then some.”

  “And did a lot of … exploring?”

  His hands tightened on her hips and he drew her closer. “Yes.”

  “Yet you still have exploring to do?”

  “Lots more.” His mouth stroked over her face and settled briefly under her chin, then he lifted his head. Brushing her hair back, he curved his hand around her nape. “Like I said, there’s a lot of you I haven’t seen yet.”

  Shell shuddered at the sensation his lips and fingers left behind, and burned with the need they engendered in her. She wouldn’t think about Sharba or any other woman he might have known. He was thirty-three years old. Of course he’d known plenty of women. And she’d known a man or two as well.

  “Lord,” he breathed against her neck. “I could probably explore you and find things even you didn’t know existed.”

  “That’s … what scares me about you.”

  He lifted his head. “You don’t have to be afraid, Shell.”

  “But if you are,” a man’s voice intruded, “you know you need only to holler. Right, Shell?” They both whirled, Jase more slowly than Shell, his hand trailing off her butt to rise to her shoulder. Ned was leaning against a tree trunk not three feet away, and Shell realized she had never seen him finish pulling the Jeep out of the creek bed, never heard him shut off the tractor, never been aware of his approach.

  She glared at him. “Jase and I were having a private conversation, Ned.”

  “Pretty damned public place for a private talk, if you ask me.”

  “I don’t recall doing so.”

  Ned shrugged. “Maybe not. Just remember, falling in love’s like getting drunk. The first thing to go’s the judgment.”

  Shell stared at him, her coffee mug dangling from one hand, dripping. Her “I’m not—” and Jase’s “We aren’t—” were overridden by Ned’s snort, composed of equal parts derision and amusement. “How would you know? Like I said, judgment’s the first thing to go.”

  “Now,” he added briskly, “if you want a ride to work, and your buddy here wants to get into town to find somebody to haul this hunk of junk off our property, I suggest you go get ready. I’ll be leaving in twenty minutes.”

  He turned and mounted his tractor, then roared away down the road toward home.

  Neither Jase nor Shell moved for several moments. After the sound of the unmuffled engine had dwindled, the sudden and raucous call of a Steller’s jay split the silence. Out over the ocean, gulls wheeled and mewed. Nearby, a squirrel executed a rapid spiral up a fir tree, barking a shrill warning as it ran.

  Jase touched her cheek again. “You look as if you’re about to run into the woods and hide.” She tried to smile, wanting to deny it. Was she that transparent? She felt as if she were about to run into the woods and hide, as if she should. Ned’s words echoed in her mind: Falling in love … She wasn’t falling in love. She wasn’t! Of course she wasn’t.

  “I think we’ll take it slow and easy from here on,” Jase said, then added, “That is, if there’s going to be a ‘from here on.’ ”

  She searched his eyes. “I don’t know.”

  “Fair enough. Neither do I. But it would be nice to find out, wouldn’t it?”

  Slowly, reluctantly, she nodded. Her heart was beating so fast she felt it might explode. She didn’t know if it was from excitement or fear. “It would be … nice.” Yet the idea was fraught with terror for her. Obstacles … So many obstacles stood in their way. Two totally different lives. Two totally different geographical locations. He wasn’t a country person. She knew that from things he’d said yesterday—and she was. She had to be. There was no choice. Lil needed her and had to come first. Shell wanted to weep. And yes, she wanted to run away and hide the way she had as a little girl when fans and reporters had screamed their incessant questions, popped their myriad flashes, reached with impatient, grasping hands, but …

  She squared her shoulder. She was an adult now, and if there were difficulties ahead, she could face them as one. She would deal with them, meet each one as it occurred and beat it down.

  “You look determined enough to dig your way to China,” Jase said a soft laugh. He slid his fingers into her hair but only for a moment before snatching them away and jamming them into the back pockets of his jeans. “I think that’s exactly the way you’d look if a firing squad took aim at your heart.”

  “It is?” It wasn’t a firing squad she was worried about. It was that little fat pink guy with his bow and arrow, and she suspected he might be lurking in the branches of the trees, aiming right at her. It was time to get out of here, to get to work in her store and let reality take over her life again. Whatever this was, lust maybe, a crush at best, she couldn’t allow it to dominate her thoughts. She wasn’t going to fall in love with a man she didn’t know. Love took a long time to grow between two people who had known each other for months, even years.

  It didn’t spring into full being in thirty-six hours.

  Still, when Jase linked their fingers together and turned her toward where Ned was returning with the tractor, she didn’t pull away. The feel of their two palms together, fingers entwined, was a pleasure she refused to deny herself. It, at least, was an innocuous pleasure, a reassuringly safe one, one she was sure wouldn’t lead to something she didn’t want to deal with today.

  When Ned and the tractor drew closer, though, she pulled her hand free. She and Jase crowed into the small cab, hanging on tight, and reached the other side of the creek and Ned’s truck, with dry feet.

  “Very nice,” Jase said. He stood at the back of Shell’s bookstore, looking around, his hands in the pockets of his water-stained suede jacket. She made sure the back door was securely locked, turned on the banks of lights that illuminated everything. They bounced a sheen off his hair. She pull
ed the cash drawer out of its hiding place where Carrie had left it and led the way forward. Jase followed slowly. He riffled a hand through a spinning rack of paperback romances, gave it a gentle nudge and spun it to reveal yet another face. Next, he checked out a wooden pagoda filled with science fiction and fantasy novels then circled it to survey a wide selection of historicals.

  Farther into the store, he stopped a hefted a large dictionary, opened it and buried his nose in it. “New books always have a wonderful smell.”

  As she set up her till, watched him from the corner of one eye. She thought he looked out of place in her quiet little shop. He was too large, too vital, too forceful, as if he’d be too busy having adventures to sit quietly and read about other people having them. None of that sat well with his supposedly preferring a city life and conveniences. He was, most definitely, an enigma. If he found life in the country lacking, when did he do his exploring? She turned off that thought before she could consider how it would feel if he’d continued to “explore” her body. He came along the center aisle, between thrillers and self-help books, to the front of the store. “This is a great place. I really like it.”

  “What do you like about it?” she asked as she slid the wide glass doors open to the mall, letting in the strains of piped in music. Roger Whittaker singing Past Three O’clock.

  Jase had to smile at the faint note of anxiety he heard in Shell’s question, touched that she seemed to want his approval, which she had, without reservations. “It’s a warm and welcoming place.” The walls, as much as he could see above the walnut stained bookshelves lining them, were painted a restful peach shade. Above the travel section she’d hung posters of places as diverse as Greece, Niagara Falls and Rio, surrounding a large map of the earth. He could picture Shell standing on a teetering step ladder snapping in staple to hold the posters.

  A three-foot long set of wooden salad serves hung suspended on invisible strings over the cookbook section, and the books on nature were marked by realistic-looking stuffed animals, including a giant starfish and a prawn. An outsized rake and hoe set, carved from the same wood as the salad servers indicated the location of gardening books, while huge alphabet blocks twirled gently in the breeze from a fan over the children’s books. The whimsy of it pleased him and told him even more about her than her home had.

  The store, too, was as much a place for friends to meet as it was a place of business. Throughout, comfortable wicker chairs invited people to sit and browse. A small table at the back left corner, under the slowly spinning blocks, had six small chairs placed around it and a dozen or so well-fingered picture books scattered across its top. Beside that, colorful wooden and plastic toys spilled from an amply-stocked toy box. Obviously, Shell liked children and went out of her way to make them welcome.

  The display windows were a further revelation. A manger scene filled one, beautifully arranged with carved wooden figures and a star that twinkled brightly when she turned a spotlight on it. The other window held a selection of cookbooks, each with a bright cover featuring a festive meal. They were flanked by several oversized storybooks opened to illustrations of families surrounding their tree, or reading together by a fireplace, or playing a game. Family, Jase mused. Oh yes, she knew what it was all about. He sighed. He did not.

  Three women came in, one pushing a stroller with a baby inside and a small girl clinging to the handle. The child darted away to the table of books in the children’s corner. The mother browsed in the science fiction area. A pair of laughing teenaged boys jostled each other as they roughhoused through the door then steadied up to let an elderly man with a walker pass between them. The telephone rang, and Shell darted behind the counter to answer it, saying “Good morning. Legacy. Shell Landry speaking.” Behind her, a fax machine hummed to life and pinged an electronic note, sending a sheet of paper fluttering into a basket. As she listened to whoever was on the other end of the phone line, she lifted the fax, scanned it, set it down, leaned over and switched on a computer that stood beside the cash register.

  Talk about multi-tasking! The woman seemed to flow from one job to another and never showed a moment’s confusion or hesitation. She hung up the phone as Jase sank into a gaily cushioned wicker chair near her desk and watched her business day warm up and get moving.

  A secret part of him he’d scarcely known existed mourned the intrusion of the modern world, regretted the silent closing of the time warp he’d slipped through to find a miracle on a stormy night.

  “Why did you name the store ‘Legacy’?” he asked an hour later when there was a lull between Christmas shoppers. “Because you bought it with one?”

  Perched on a stood, behind the counter, she paged through a website so fast he wondered how she could possibly be reading the titles as she searched for one a customer had asked her to order. She glanced at him and laughed. “No.” She made a notation on a slip of paper and said “The store’s full name is ‘Gutenberg’s Legacy’.”

  “Very good,” he said. “Because if it hadn’t been for Gutenberg …”

  “That’s right.” She turned back to the computer, searching for yet another title. He wondered if she had already ordered When Angels Fall, by J.P. Calhoun, which should be on the shelves now, though he hadn’t noticed it on any of hers. Instead of asking, he held his words back. There’d be a time and place to discuss that, and this was not it.

  “Every time I see a mass-produced book,” she continued, “I mentally thank him for his movable type. I thought it only right that he be honored.”

  Another crowd of shoppers came in and it wasn’t until Shell’s assistant, Carrie, arrived to relieve her for lunch that he had a chance to talk to her again. He’d filled the time by calling his insurance agency and arranging for a tow truck to bring his jeep to an automotive mechanic. He met Shell around the corner from the south end of the mall, at a small restaurant she’d recommended.

  Dipping into his bowl of Manhattan clam chowder, he said, “Your store looks very successful. You must be proud.”

  “It’s coming along.” The brilliance of her smile and the eager light in her eyes belied her modesty. “The first couple of years were dicey, but I’m holding my own now, managing not only to pay the rent and buy stock, but to pay down the principal on the mortgage even faster than I’d hoped.”

  Mortgage? Jase repeated silently. The daughter of Elwin Landry had a mortgage?

  He realized he was staring at her, a spoonful of chowder halfway to his mouth. He put the spoon back into his bowl and closed his mouth, biting back the impulse to ask why her father hadn’t helped her financially. His face heated uncomfortably when her mildly derisive laugh told him she’d all-too-accurately read his mind.

  “Really, Jase! Did you think my Gutenberg’s Legacy was a toy my rich daddy had bought for me to play with?”

  “I … well …” He crumbled a cracker into his chowder, frowning down at his hands.

  Shell had to laugh again at Jase’s obvious discomfort. Clearly, she’d been right on the mark. He looked up, contrite but confused. She let him off the hook.

  “Sorry to disappoint you, but I’ve done it all on my own, by choice. I’ve saved like Scrooge, cutting corners wherever I could, wearing the same clothes for season after season, taking very little personal pay so I could pay back my business loan, just like regular folks. I wanted to prove to myself and anybody else who doubted me that I could do it.”

  Something in her tone prompted him to ask, “Who else might have doubted you?”

  Her mouth twisted. “My father, for one.” She ate half a slice of toast, then licked her lips before patting them with her napkin. It made Jase’s own lips tingle as he watched her. “As soon as he knew I wanted a bookstore,” she went on, “he was all for buying me one. But he’d have also bought me a manager to run the place and hired a pile of accountants to make sure his money was well spent and that I was in no danger of wasting it. I wanted it to be mine.”

  She tilted up her chin. “All mine
. So I did it alone.”

  “Good for you. It can’t have been easy.”

  It hadn’t been, and she was grateful to him for recognizing that. Tears stung her eyes, and she had to blink rapidly and look away from him. Dammit, what was the matter with her? Why was Jase’s approval so important to her?

  It wasn’t, of course. It was simply that it was nice to have her hard work acknowledged. She took another bite of her thick, ham-laden pea soup and forced herself to glance up at him again. “Of course, I pay very low rent for my home, and that helped a lot, as did the fact that I have … uh, well, expectations. Bank managers find that … comforting.”

  Jase reached across the table and touched the back of her hand. He slid his fingers the length of hers, lingering for a moment on her nails, then repeated the gesture. “I’m sure you got your loan because you had a sound business proposition to show them. I don’t suppose ‘expectations’ would carry much weight, since your parents aren’t exactly ready for the nursing home.”

  She picked up a crumb from her toast and dropped it back onto her plate, purely to regain control of her hand.

  She couldn’t think, couldn’t reason, while he touched her.

  Should she tell him? Would it make a difference? It was one thing to be thought of as an heiress who wouldn’t inherit for many years until her parents passed on. It was another to be known as a woman of not inconsiderable means in her own right. She liked Jase. She knew she could learn, and quickly, to more than merely like him. It was his feelings that kept her off balance—or, more accurately, her not knowing what his feelings were. He wanted her. There was no way she could pretend not to know that. But how much more would he want her if he knew?

  Instinct told her that Jase O’Keefe was not like that. But could instincts always be trusted? Drawing in a deep breath, she met his gaze and took an enormous leap of faith.