Delaney's Shadow

by Ingrid Weaver

Delaney kept her gaze on the light and strained toward the threshold.

  “That’s it.” Max’s silhouette appeared against the sunlight. He was holding out his hand. “Almost there.”

  She kicked free from the nightmare and ran through the doorway.

  He caught her in his arms.

  She was suddenly weightless. Warmth and comfort enveloped her, along with what she recognized as the familiar scent of his body. Breath rushed back into her lungs. “Max!”

  “Take it easy. You’re safe.”

  Yes, she was. She knew it with the same utter certainty that she’d known she was drowning in that blackened, muddy fire. She looped her arms around his neck and hung on, drawing from his strength to push the last of the horror away.

  Gradually, the noises dimmed. The crashing stopped. Stanford’s screams faded and broke apart like rustling leaves. Nothing remained, except for Max. He set her back on her feet and moved his hands to her waist.

  Still, she hung on. “I was having the nightmare again.”

  “I know. I heard you calling me.”

  “I didn’t mean to.”

  “You woke me up.”

  She rubbed her forehead on his shoulder. “I’m sorry. Don’t get cranky.”

  “Cranky? I came, didn’t I?”

  “I tried to take control the way you showed me, but it wouldn’t work.”

  “Don’t underestimate yourself, Deedee. You remember more than you realize.”

  “I don’t want to remember the accident.”

  “No, I meant this place.”

  She lifted her head and glanced around.

  Her bed was gone. So was her room. A sky the vibrant blue of Max’s eyes arched overhead while mist spiraled lazily around them. The ground beneath her feet was soft, like a pillow. Or maybe a cloud. “This is a dream, right?” she asked.

  Max was studying their surroundings, too. “Sort of.”

  “Where are we?”

  “You tell me. You’re making it up.”

  The wayward lock of hair had fallen over his forehead again. Delaney stroked it back. Her fingers tingled from the contact, sending a jolt of pleasure along her nerves. She curled her toes into the cloud. Yes, it was a cloud. A breeze was blowing right through it. “How?”

  “Think of something.”

  A butterfly appeared in the mist. Colors rippled over its wings like a moving rainbow. It fluttered toward her, hovered teasingly, then lighted on Max’s shoulder.

  She put out her finger. “Shh. Don’t move.”

  “Me or the bug?”

  “Oh, this is wonderful. Thank you, Max.”

  “Hey, it’s your picture.”

  “Picture?”

  “We used to do this when we were kids. Sometimes you’d build it; sometimes I would. It doesn’t exist anywhere except in our minds.”

  The butterfly inched onto her finger. She smiled. Yes, she knew where they were. It was their special place, where nothing hurt and nothing bad happened. “This is like the yellow flower you showed me last week.”

  “I only started that. You did the rest.”

  “Whatever it is, it’s better than the nightmare.”

  Max traced one of the grafts on the back of her hand. That didn’t hurt any more than the butterfly’s touch. “You used to like birds when you were little, too.”

  “Did I?”

  “Try it.”

  The butterfly pumped its wings a few times. Between one pump and the next, they became covered with feathers. Suddenly, it was a hummingbird.

  She laughed, startling it into taking flight. It buzzed past Max’s head, so she smoothed his hair again. She sighed with pleasure as it slid between her fingers. It was soft and unexpectedly silky. Sensuous. “This is some dream.”

  “It’s not really a dream, Deedee.”

  She dropped her hand to his shoulder. His skin was warm beneath her palm. He wasn’t wearing a shirt, so there was no barrier to her touch. Or her gaze. His shoulders were broad and square, his chest beautifully tapered. She rubbed her fingertips across the swirls of hair in the center.

  “You sure as hell never did that when you were little.”

  She lowered her gaze. It wasn’t only his chest that was bare. Max was totally naked.

  And, oh, he was magnificent. There was no other word to describe him. His body was like his face, honed down to the masculine basics, all angles and taut curves and blatant, unapologetic sexuality.

  The desire that rushed through her body in response to the sight of him shocked every nerve to life. Her heart thudded. Her breath caught.

  The shot of adrenaline was enough to wrench her back to full consciousness.

  Delaney blinked. The cloud was gone. So were the mist and the blue sky. She was once again in the darkness of her room, curled on the center of the bed with the sheet tangled around her ankles. The familiar chorus of bullfrogs came through the window screen. A breeze tickled her bare feet. Somewhere in the front half of the house a toilet flushed.

  It had been a dream.

  Of course it had been a dream. Her subconscious had found a different way to banish the nightmare. A very effective way. Her pulse was racing from sexual arousal instead of fear. Any woman’s would after she encountered a sight like Max in the nude.

  But no other woman would have seen him. He existed only in Delaney’s mind. He wasn’t real.

  Maybe not, but the physical effect he had on her was. Sweat dampened her forehead and her upper lip. Her nightgown clung to her skin. She kicked aside the sheet and rolled to her back. She took slow, measured breaths through her nose, trying to calm her pulse.

  It was no use. She was tingling. Everywhere.

  “Why’d you stop? It was just getting interesting.”

  She lifted her head.

  Max was sitting at the foot of her bed, his back propped against a bedpost. The moon was behind him so he was in shadow, but there was no mistaking the fact that he was still naked.

  TEN

  DELANEY REACHED FOR THE LAMP, THEN THOUGHT BETTER of it. It might be wiser to leave Max in shadow. Otherwise, she couldn’t hope to have a coherent thought. There wasn’t enough blood in her brain. It was still pumping into all the erogenous zones of her body.

  He drew up one knee and draped his arm across it, settling more comfortably against the bedpost. “I thought you told me the nightmare wasn’t bothering you anymore.”

  “It wasn’t.”

  “Then what brought it on this time?”

  She sat up and tugged the hem of her nightgown over her thighs. He sounded as if it were the most natural thing in the world to be here. As if there was nothing strange about an imaginary friend sharing her dream or materializing on her bed.

  “Deedee?”

  So much for keeping her grip on reality.

  But this must be what she’d wanted, since her mind had reached out to him again. She retrieved the sheet and pulled it over her legs. “I remembered something the other morning by the pond. After you left.”

  “It triggered the nightmare tonight?”

  “I suspect following up on it did.”

  “Why?”

  “It made me think about certain things I didn’t want to.”

  “Like what?”

  Like whether she and Stanford had really been happy. Whether her marriage had been as good as she wanted to believe.

  She glanced at Max’s foot. It was on top of the sheet and only a few inches from her toes. His ankle was sturdy and bony at the same time, as only a man’s could be. Moonlight touched the rounded bulge of his calf muscle and gleamed from the skin of his thigh. His bent leg blocked her view of his groin, but she didn’t believe he’d done that deliberately. He was too at ease with his nudity.

  He had every reason to be. God, his body was amazing.

  “See something you like?”

  She jerked her gaze to his face. “This is awkward.”

  He smiled. “Why?”

  “Well, you’re . . .” She
waved her hand.

  “I told you, I was asleep when you called me.”

  “And you sleep in the nude.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “How does this work? Do you show up straight from whatever you were doing, like a come-as-you-are party?”

  “I could smell your flesh burning. I didn’t think you’d care if I forgot about grabbing my pants first.”

  “I’m sorry. I don’t mean to be a prude. I’m grateful for your help, Max.”

  “You weren’t acting like a prude when you were rubbing my chest.”

  “I thought I was dreaming.”

  “I warned you that you weren’t.”

  “I know, but I saw the butterfly and the bird and—”

  “And you assumed you’d made me up, too?”

  “That’s because I did.”

  “Right. I’m not real. Glad you reminded me.”

  “Max . . .”

  “I’m a figment of your imagination, so you wouldn’t expect me to sleep at night. I’m at your beck and call. You wouldn’t think twice about inviting me into your bed or getting me worked up because I’m not a real man.”

  “I told you, I didn’t intend to invite you.”

  “You sure enjoyed touching me. You seem to like looking at me, too.”

  “That’s because you’re not real.”

  He thumped his head against the bedpost. The impact made no noise. “Damn, this is complicated.”

  “You have no idea how many times I’ve thought the same thing.”

  “Why don’t you want a real man in your bed, Deedee?”

  “I love my husband. I mean, I loved my husband.”

  “I wasn’t talking about love, I was talking about sex. Don’t you like it?”

  Delaney couldn’t reply. This was another one of those subjects that she preferred not to think about.

  Yet her subconscious must want her to. Otherwise, she wouldn’t be fantasizing about a naked man. She wouldn’t have made Max so attractive in the first place. The feelings he’d stirred up in her dream hadn’t faded. He was stimulating responses that had been dormant for months.

  No, it had been much longer than that. It had been years since she had experienced true desire with Stanford, and it had never been as strong as the feelings that Max evoked. Whether he was sitting naked in her bed or standing beside a pond in broad daylight, he touched parts of her that no one else could.

  She took a steadying breath. “I only want you to be my friend.”

  “Then why are your nipples puckered?”

  She didn’t need to glance down to verify what he’d said. She could feel the tingling prickle as they pushed against her nightgown. Knowing that he knew tightened them further. She pulled up her feet and wrapped her arms around her legs. Oddly enough, she didn’t give a thought to hiding her scars. “Do you really need me to answer that?”

  “Yeah, I do.”

  “Take a look in the mirror.”

  He laughed. Like all the words he’d spoken, the sound bypassed her senses and slipped straight into her mind, rumbling along her nerves in a formless caress. “Do you like the way I look?”

  “Duh.”

  “I can’t take credit for that since you believe you made me up.”

  “Quit teasing me, Max.”

  He slid his foot over the sheet until his toes nudged hers. “What did your husband look like?”

  “Nothing like you. Stanford was sixty-eight when we got married.”

  “Sixty . . . ?”

  “Eight.” She paused. Even with the honesty they’d always shared, she hesitated to go further.

  Yet as bizarre as these circumstances were, they were forcing her to face reality. The strength of her reaction to Max was indisputable. She plunged ahead. “It wasn’t so much his age, it was the demands of his business that absorbed most of his energy. Our sex life wasn’t . . . very active.”

  “Sixty-eight.”

  “You sound as if you’re having trouble grasping that.”

  “Damn right. Now I really can’t picture you married.”

  “He was seventy-three when he died.”

  “You spent five years of your life with a man who couldn’t satisfy you?”

  “I never said that. There’s more to a relationship than sex. He was good to me in other ways. He doted on me. He treated me as if I were precious. We were happy . . .” She stopped. There was that word again. It came automatically whenever she thought of her marriage, as if she’d brainwashed herself into making the response, as if she were afraid to make any other.

  “Why did you marry him, Deedee?”

  “Because I loved him.” That response had come automatically, too.

  Max withdrew his foot. “You said he was rich.”

  “I know how it appeared, but I didn’t marry him for his money.”

  “He was more than twice your age. You didn’t marry him for his looks or his sex drive, either.”

  “Age is irrelevant. I feel disloyal to Stanford even thinking about this. I’m sorry now that I told you anything.”

  Max snorted.

  “What was that for?”

  “You were married, not sentenced.”

  “Care to explain that?”

  “Just because a man’s your husband doesn’t mean you have to take what he dishes out. You had a choice. You weren’t locked up. You still had control of your life.”

  “There’s such a thing as loyalty.”

  “Not when it’s blindness.”

  “You sound angry.”

  “It’s a dangerous pattern, Deedee.”

  “I don’t understand. What pattern?”

  “Some women can be so afraid of being alone that they stay married to a monster.”

  “I’m not afraid of being alone.”

  “Then why do you keep calling me?”

  “That’s different.”

  He rubbed his face. “Right. Because I’m not real.”

  “And Stanford was not a monster. He was simply human, which meant he had flaws like the rest of us. When did you develop such a flair for the dramatic, Max?”

  “Did he know you liked yellow roses?”

  “What does that have to do with anything?”

  “Did he hold you when you were scared? Did you show him your thoughts?”

  “Max . . .”

  “Did he have any idea how powerful your mind is?”

  “Powerful?”

  “How can you doubt that? Your mind is incredible. Otherwise I wouldn’t be here.”

  “My imagination has nothing to do with the quality of a real-life relationship.”

  “You mean sex.”

  “All right, yes. That’s what I thought I wanted to talk about, but I can see it was a mistake. You’re deliberately confusing me. Sex doesn’t mean anything without love.”

  “Yeah, right. Thought you’d outgrown your fairy tales.”

  “Don’t you believe in love?”

  Rather than replying, he shoved away from the bedpost and knelt on the mattress in front of her. “How many times have you woken up in a sweat after dreaming about him?”

  Never. “Max . . .”

  “Do you enjoy imagining him naked?”

  She tried to keep her gaze on his face. She couldn’t. There was simply too much more to admire. “That’s not fair.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because no one could compare to you, Max.”

  He framed her face in his hands.

  In the one remaining rational corner of her mind, she realized he wasn’t really touching her. The sensation was too muted, yet at the same time it was too deep for a touch. She didn’t feel it on the surface, but she felt it in every quivering nerve, even the ones that should have been dead.

  “Do you want to kiss me, Deedee?”

  If she’d wanted to lie, her body wouldn’t let her. Her lips parted as she focused on his mouth. With all my heart, Max.

  But this was a fantasy. He wasn’t truly here. What wa
s wrong with her?

  His silhouette wavered. “Don’t.”

  She tipped her head into his caress. “Don’t what?”

  “Send me away. Not yet.” He traced his thumb along her cheek. “One kiss. What’s the harm in that?”

  “What’s the harm? You mean besides losing what’s left of my grip on reality?”

  He brought his lips to hers. Sweetly. Gently. Somehow, in spite of his bluster, the grown-up Max understood what she needed the same way he’d done as a boy.

  Delaney closed her eyes and surrendered to the moment.

  His tongue slid into her mouth as his thoughts pushed into her mind.

  The reaction was instantaneous. Pleasure flashed from the inside out. She felt Max’s kiss in every corner of her being as a wave of delight surged through her body. It was more intimate than a physical orgasm. More vivid than reality. It was more intense than anything she’d experienced in her life.

  And it was so achingly, undisputedly genuine . . .

  . . . that she was probably quite insane.

  ELEVEN

  MAX SLOWED TO A STOP AT THE STONE GATEPOSTS AND LET the engine idle. A red-haired teenager was mowing the grass with a lawn tractor. An old man in coveralls stood on a ladder to use a hedge trimmer on the cedars that bordered the property. Pots of purple and white petunias followed the curve of the driveway, and more flowers spilled from boxes that were attached to the veranda railing. The Wainright House was the same gleaming white he remembered, with its gingerbread trim hanging from the eaves like scrolls of icicles. A profusion of gables poked from the roof, along with a rounded spire on one corner. The house was as different from the home Max had built as a Jaguar was from the old Jeep he drove.

  Deedee had said she was rich. From the appearance of the place, her grandmother wasn’t hurting for money, either. A lot of women married for wealth. When there was an age gap of forty-three years, it was usually the major factor. He didn’t believe it had been for Deedee. She wouldn’t have sold herself for a checkbook. She was too honest with her emotions and too passionate. She must have believed that she’d loved the man she’d married. That was typical of her. In spite of the darkness that lurked in her nightmare, she still clung to the concept of love.

  He wasn’t sure why that bothered him, since her marriage wasn’t any of his business. He knew better than to get involved on an emotional level. Hearing her talk about her dead husband shouldn’t have made him jealous, either. He had no claim on her, nor did he want one.