Winter Dreams

by Robyn Neeley

  She looked up and focused on his nose.

  Kalin studied her a moment in the semi-darkness. “Don’t treat me like a polite stranger. Yell at me if you want to. I probably deserve it.”

  “You want me to scream at the top of my voice that I wouldn’t go with you to a crawdad race?” She got her fingers on her purse and clutched it in her lap.

  “If that’s the way you feel about it, why not?” He watched her closely.

  “I don’t feel quite that dramatic about it. The best way to phrase it is that my current list of priorities does not include dinner with you. Sorry if that isn’t dramatic enough for you.”

  Kalin laughed softly and reached for her hand. “I think it’s only fair to warn you that you’re going to have to rearrange your priorities. I’ll pick you up tomorrow night at seven.”

  Casey contemplated scurrying back to New York.

  “If you aren’t at home,” Kalin warned, “I’ll come looking for you at the hospital.”

  He would, too, which was just what Granny needed. Now Casey was doubly annoyed. “Don’t bother. I may not be there.”

  It was one thing to send Kalin impersonal Christmas cards from a distance. It was quite another to sit anywhere within touching distance of him.

  “Then I’ll wait there until you turn up, however long it takes.”

  She’d better get tough, or he’d soon know all he had to do was touch her and she’d probably melt at his feet again.

  “Kalin, I will not go to dinner with you tomorrow night or any other night. I’ll be very busy while I’m here, so don’t ask anymore, okay? I have to go.”

  Kalin didn’t seem to hear her. “How about dancing with me one more time?”

  Casey got to her feet, cramming her arms into her jacket sleeves willy-nilly. She didn’t need Kalin’s warm hands on her, even to help her on with her jacket.

  He moved to block her path. “I need to talk to you, Casey. I’d rather do it over a good dinner somewhere, but if you’re going to be like this, any place will do. Just be ready tomorrow night at seven.”

  Casey didn’t trust herself to reply. She walked around him, out of the den, and through the living room to the door.

  Bonnie caught her near the front door. “How about lunch tomorrow at Cap’n Bob’s?”

  “You’re on.” Casey caught Kalin’s approach out of the corner of her eye. She dropped her voice. “Meet you there at noon.”

  Bonnie looked over Casey’s shoulder, grinned, and stepped aside.

  Casey swept regally out the front door, deeming it a waste of time to seek out Merrick. Besides, she didn’t need another confrontation between Kalin, who seemed to think he had some sort of right to her, and Clayton Rowe, who welcomed a challenge.

  “Slow down, will you?” Kalin stayed on her heels. “If you stumble in those high heels — ”

  Casey stepped on a lump in the shell-covered, circular drive, staggered, and felt Kalin’s arms come around her, pulling her up swiftly against his hard chest. Shaken, she clutched him.

  “You shouldn’t rush around on uneven ground like this if you’re going to wear those heels. What’s your hurry? Are you afraid I’m going to steal a kiss?”

  Since he held her against him, and her pulses and nervous system raised riot up and down her body, that was precisely what she feared. “That’s the least of my worries right now. I’ve been away from the telephone too long. The hospital might have tried to call. Excuse me, please.”

  “Better put it at the top of your list.” He used one hand to turn up her chin and the other to hold her against him, with unmistakable intent. “Right along with getting a cell phone and giving me the number.”

  He kissed her, and Casey felt the entire universe shift beneath her already unsteady feet. Although he kept the kiss gentle and unhurried, he seemed intent upon marking every bit of her mouth as his own. And she felt so stunned, she stood there a moment and let him get away with it, until she suddenly snapped back into reality and realized what she was doing.

  She shoved him away, terrified that she would give herself away if she allowed the kiss to last another second, and marched to the little beige car she had rented in Houston.

  Kalin followed and stood a few feet from her while she unlocked the car door and got in, slamming the door emphatically. He tapped on the window until she rolled it down.

  “Seven tomorrow night,” he said.

  “I’m can’t go. I’ve got to start priming my brain for the LSAT.”

  Casey ground the starter, gunned the motor, and kicked up a spray of shell as she pulled out onto the highway. She had been kidding herself — she wasn’t as ready to face Kalin McBryde as she’d thought.

  But then, she had expected anything and everything other than this single-minded pursuit he’d started.

  And she’d thought she would no longer respond to him as she had when she was eighteen and had loved him with all her heart.

  Casey drove the two miles down the quiet, sparsely populated road to the old farmhouse among the rice fields where she’d grown up and remembered the way Kalin had pursued her when they’d first met at the Rice Festival. After he’d carried her cooking contest entries inside for her, she’d found him beside her all day.

  When she’d spoken of analyzing her chief rival’s entry, Kalin had braved the wrath of the cook and stole her a big chunk.

  When she’d ridden the Ferris wheel, he’d climbed into the seat beside her and wanted to know why she was ignoring him.

  He hadn’t left her side until she agreed to go out with him, and it looked as though he was using the same method again.

  The old house still had the odor of a house that had been shut up for several days. Granny’s neat kitchen was old-fashioned but functional. The ancient refrigerator made strange sounds, but it cooled to the degree a trained chef required. The stove was an elderly gas range, but it had all the functions she needed.

  Alice Gray was finding it difficult to eat since her illness. Casey set a carton of eggs out on the table, along with sugar and milk. Before she went to bed, she’d make custard cups topped with real caramel that would tempt Alice’s flagging appetite, especially when served on one of her own Blue Willow plates with a flower beside it.

  The kitchen telephone rang while she beat the eggs.

  “Casey?” It was Kalin. “I just wanted to be sure you got home safely. Are you all right?”

  “Yes, I’m fine, thank you,” she replied in her politest tones. “It was kind of you to call.”

  Kalin laughed. In the background, she could hear Christmas music and people talking.

  “It wasn’t kind, and you know it. Can I come over?”

  “I’m about to go to bed,” she said, startled.

  “No, you aren’t. You’re baking something for somebody. Get to bed, Casey. You look worn to the bone.”

  She would have to take steps, she realized, or Kalin would know she had quit her job with no intentions of returning. Trust Kalin to complicate a life she was determined to simplify.

  “Thanks a lot,” she grumbled. “It was a big hassle, getting off work and packing.”

  “Just so you aren’t too busy unpacking tomorrow night at seven,” he said, and hung up before she could refuse to go out with him.

  Casey slammed the phone down. She’d never, never been able to get the last word in on Kalin McBryde.

  One of these days, she thought furiously, sifting flour.

  She could only hope that the people eating her cooking tomorrow wouldn’t detect any residual vibrations left in the food from her emotions tonight.

  Chapter 3

  The next morning Casey found young John Broussard, a man in his mid-fifties whose father had enjoyed the same name, finishing up chores in the barn after turning the old plow horse, Cork,
and Alice Gray’s milk cow, Eloise, out into the pasture beside the barn. He was happy to accept the neatly boxed, freshly baked cake she held out to him as a thank you for all his hard work.

  “I remember that bread you used to give us when you were just a kid,” he said. “I wish my wife would take up baking like that.”

  Casey kept her gaze away from his expansive middle and said tactfully, “Not everyone enjoys cooking.”

  On her way back to the house, Casey stopped by the chicken yard and tossed the twelve hens and one large, New Hampshire Red rooster more scratch grain.

  “Your chickens miss you, Granny,” she said, as she entered her grandmother’s room at the small community hospital carrying a large box. “The rooster doesn’t know me and kept warning the hens away when I put down their feed.”

  Alice Gray focused on her granddaughter with difficulty. “Isn’t it early, yet? You should be resting from your trip. Don’t you know it’s Sunday? I didn’t raise you to work on the Sabbath.” She glared at Casey’s jeans and sweatshirt with faded blue eyes. “I want you going to church this morning. I’ll bet you haven’t been inside a church since you left.” Her voice sounded slurred and querulous. “You can tell me about the sermon afterwards.”

  “I told you I’d cook you something special. Do you want it now, or have you just had breakfast?” Casey set the box down and regarded her grandmother with concern.

  “I can’t eat the food they serve you in here. It isn’t what I’m used to,” Alice said in plaintive tones.

  “I know, Granny. That’s why I made you something I know you used to like.”

  Casey busied herself at the bedside table then pushed it around so Alice could admire the effect of the custard cup with its shiny caramel coating turned out onto one of her own china plates. An oak branch from the big oak tree in the back yard sat in a vase beside the plate.

  Alice’s face brightened, although she was careful not to sound too enthusiastic. “I believe I could eat a bite of that.”

  Casey fed her grandmother the entire custard, even scraping out the container for the remains of the caramel. When she had finished, Alice Gray drifted into the drowsy state she remained in much of the time, and Casey awaited the arrival of Dr. Jack Johnson, Merrick’s father and her grandmother’s physician, in the hall outside Alice’s room.

  “Casey Gray,” the doctor exclaimed when Casey greeted him. “My wife said you must be back in town. Her copper bowl is shining like a new penny, and my nephew is spending the weekend and behaving like he sat on a fire ant mound.”

  Jack Johnson was a short man with receding blond hair, kind brown eyes, and the weathered skin of an avid fisherman. He had been Casey’s physician all through her school years, and treated Kalin more like a son than Kalin’s own father had.

  “How is Granny, Dr. Johnson? I never saw her sick in bed all the time I lived at home.” Alice Gray’s stillness frightened Casey. She could not visualize Alice confined to a bed.

  “It was a bad stroke, I’m afraid, Casey. There will be some permanent damage to her right side, but we’re hopeful she can begin some physical therapy soon.” He went into a technical description of what the illness involved, and finished with, “You may want to transfer her to a hospital in Beaumont or Houston, where the facilities for treatment will be much greater.”

  Casey, more disturbed than ever, said slowly, “She’s already told me that if I send her away from you and all her friends here, she’ll just go ahead and die.”

  “Then keep her here,” Dr. Johnson said, eying Casey’s troubled face. “Now, tell me about yourself. When was the last time you cooked something and ate it yourself?”

  “I’m tired of my own cooking,” Casey grumbled.

  His gaze grew sharper, taking in the faint hollows beneath her cheekbones and the look of strain no amount of makeup could hide. “What’s troubling you, Casey? You look as though you haven’t rested well in some time.”

  Casey shrugged. “I had a high stress job in New York. I’ll probably feel better as soon as I’ve rested from the trip.”

  Or else, she thought with fatalistic humor. She had loved her work, but she stayed too keyed up to rest. Then when she actually achieved any rest, it was troubled by dreams of Kalin.

  “You’ve always had the worst qualities of a workaholic. You should get my nephew to take you fishing. You can use my boat.”

  “Dr. Johnson, the last thing I want to do is go fishing with Kalin McBryde. If you could find an excuse to send him back to Houston, I’ll be forever grateful.”

  “In that case, I’ll have to take you myself,” he said with aplomb. “There’s nothing like fishing to relax the nerves and rejuvenate the body. In fact, I’ll write you a prescription to that effect. Consider it preventative medicine.” He actually brought forth a prescription pad, scribbled a few words on it, and passed it to her.

  “Be ready Wednesday afternoon,” he said. “It’s my afternoon off. We’ll go to the lake.”

  Casey took the paper and attempted to decipher the scratches on it. “This could say anything.”

  “It says what I say it says.” Dr. Johnson smiled at her. “Of all the patients I see who could be cured by a fishing trip, you’re the worst. A fulminating case, my dear young lady.”

  Casey watched him enter her grandmother’s room and sit beside her bed a few moments, checking her speech, studying her chart, and making a few notations.

  Dr. Johnson, it was said, had cured more patients with fishing trips than he had with medicine, although in this case, she suspected him of matchmaking. She hoped he read her loud and clear when it came to Kalin.

  Casey drove back down the sunny highway to church after changing into one of her wool business suits. The sermon almost passed over her head, however, as memories of how Kalin had appeared beside her at the church’s harvest service the day after she met him intruded. She had thought him the handsomest man she’d ever seen.

  She brought herself back to the sermon by admonishing herself that she’d been only sixteen at the time. Her experience had been extremely limited.

  She went out to the parking lot with several old friends and was shocked to see Kalin standing beside a navy blue SUV that contained several fishing poles and an assortment of other fishing equipment.

  Casey stared, remembering the red sports car Kalin had almost driven into the ground when she knew him. “What a come-down for your image,” she said, detaching herself from the group. She had to face him some time, she lectured inwardly, studying the center of his forehead.

  “Actually, this is what I wanted all along.” Kalin smiled and came toward her. “Dad thought all college guys needed a fast sports car. Since he was buying in those days, I had to take what he gave me or walk.”

  “He could have saved a lot of money on one of these over that red Viper of yours,” she commented, and pretended to study the church building and the grounds.

  “He wasn’t interested in saving money. He was interested in bribing me to graduate at the top of my class.”

  “And did you?”

  “I made the top half,” Kalin said, grinning. He gestured at the SUV. His sleeves were rolled up to reveal tanned, muscular forearms. “Want to try it out?”

  “Sorry. I’m meeting Bonnie for lunch in five minutes, then I have to get back to the hospital.”

  She smiled coolly and unlocked the door to her car, conscious of a drumming in her ears. The sight of those arms and his long, slender hands reminded her far too vividly of the way they contrasted with her own pale skin.

  Kalin didn’t seem unduly disturbed. “Don’t you have anything to wear but those dark wool suits?”

  “Of course.” Kalin had never complained about her clothes in the old days. “How would you like it if I asked if all you had to wear were plaid flannel shirts and jeans?”

/>   Kalin laughed. “I’d reply that it was, but for you, I’ll rush out and buy one of those pinstriped success suits.”

  She opened her car door and got in, then rolled down the window when he gestured at her. “Yes?”

  “Shall I rush out and buy a suit? I’m picking you up tonight at seven, you know. If flannel shirts and jeans aren’t good enough for you — ”

  “Wear whatever you like, but don’t bother showing up at seven or at any other time. I’m busy preparing for the LSAT.”

  “You’ve had a rough morning at the hospital,” Kalin observed sympathetically.

  Casey backed her car out. One thing she didn’t need from Kalin McBryde was sympathy. Another was a dinner date.

  She shot down the highway to Cap’n Bob’s Cajun Cooking, wondering at the furious thundering of her heart. Was she actually thinking of being ready at seven? Perhaps she should make an appointment with a good psychiatrist.

  She hardened her heart. In another day or two, Kalin would decide she wasn’t worth the bother and go back to Houston. When he did, she’d find some way to celebrate. She so did not need this, when her life was already in such turmoil.

  The popular Cajun restaurant where Casey had spent her high school years working as the evening cook still occupied the same tin building, but in the space beside the back entrance where Captain Bob had once parked his old Buick a new black pickup truck shone like a diamond in the white shell parking lot.

  The new truck ought to mean the restaurant was doing well, although there weren’t nearly as many cars in the parking lot as there should have been on a Sunday after church. Casey walked to the double set of glass doors that marked the entrance and noted greasy handprints on the glass.

  Bonnie already had a table near the front window. “Isn’t this a hoot? I haven’t been here but once or twice since you left, and let me tell you, it isn’t the same.”

  Casey stood beside her chair a moment and studied the big dining room, with its red-checked tablecloths and vases of plastic flowers. The mural of a Louisiana bayou complete with Spanish moss and alligators that covered one entire wall received special consideration.