A Kiss to Dream On

by Neesa Hart

  Watching her anguished expression, Cammy felt a knot of anxiety begin to untwist in her soul. She smoothed a lock of silver hair off her mother’s forehead. For years, she realized, she’d feared this moment, but she’d never stopped to wonder how much, or how deeply, Laura feared it.

  The confusion, Cammy knew from experience, was terrifying.

  Countless nights during her childhood, she’d lain in her own bed confused, alone, terrified. As her parents’ relationship had declined into a hellish pit of bitterness and resentment, her fear of abandonment and desolation had exponentially increased. She’d spent hours curled up in her bed, sobbing into a pillow. Then, she’d have given anything for a comforting touch, or the soothing stroke of her mother’s hand.

  Unbidden, a memory slid its way past her grief. She’d been very young. In the memory, she was in her bedroom in the small house they lived in before her father’s election to the Senate. She could not have been older than three or four. She was ill. It seemed like she’d been ill forever. She awakened, late in the night, to find Laura sitting on the bed with her, reading a story. Cammy wasn’t able to hear the story, but the vibrations of her mother’s voice comforted her. The cool feel of Laura’s hand on her heated flesh eased the torment of her fever. When she awakened in the morning, Laura was gone.

  Cammy replayed the memory, wondering why it should have stayed with her, or why its impact seemed so profound. It was the only time that she remembered Laura offering her comfort. And, she realized, she’d never forgiven her for that. Now, Laura faced the last hours of her life, and Cammy feared she would carry to her grave the knowledge that first Durstan, and then Cammy, had never forgiven her for her inability to be what they wanted. The idea filled her with a bone-deep regret.

  Laura’s weeping tore at Cammy’s heart as she considered with unfathomable sadness all that they had lost. And in her anger, she’d refused to offer her mother what small solace she could. With an aching heart and trembling hands, Cammy shifted slightly in the bed so she could ease her mother’s frail figure into her arms. Laura sobbed uncontrollably. Cammy felt the glide of tears on her own face. “I’m sorry, Mother,” she whispered. “I’m so sorry.”

  She waited long moments. Laura moaned several times, but seemed to quiet. Cammy brushed the damp tendrils of hair from her face. “It’s going to be all right,” she told her. “I’m going to stay here with you.”

  “I don’t want to die,” Laura said.

  “I know.”

  “Promise you won’t leave.”

  “I promise.”

  Laura exhaled a tortured breath. “I’m afraid.”

  “Don’t be. I’ll stay with you.” Cammy drew a deep breath. “I’ll tell you a story.”

  And from the corner of her eye, she saw Jackson’s eyes drift shut as he leaned his head back against the window frame.

  “Now you, know,” she told him two hours later as she left her mother’s room for the last time.

  He studied her drawn features with concern. “Let me take you home, Cammy. Philpott can handle this from here.”

  She shook her head. “I’ll take a cab.”

  “Like hell.” If she thought he was going to let her get away with that, she was deranged. She looked exhausted, mentally and physically, and he had the distinct feeling that they’d reached a turning point this morning. “I’m not letting you leave here alone.”

  “I’ll be fine.”

  “I know you’ll be fine, Cam.” He linked his fingers beneath her elbow. “That’s not the point.”

  “There’s nothing else you can do, now.”

  “I can be with you. I can listen to you.” He looked at her through narrow eyes. “I can love you.”

  Cammy shook her head. The sadness in her gaze threatened to overwhelm him. “No. You can’t.”

  “Cammy—”

  She pressed a hand to his mouth. “You’ve seen it all now, Jackson. You saw what happened in there.”

  He kissed her palm, then enfolded her hand in his. “What I saw was an extraordinary woman doing an extraordinary thing. Do you have any idea how much I admire you?”

  “Then let me handle this my way.”

  “Alone?”

  “It’s the only way I know.”

  He scrutinized every aspect of her expression. How could he love her so much and be so inept at reading her moods? He wondered if it would always be like this. Would she always catch him a little off balance, keep him slightly off guard? “Honey—”

  “I mean it, Jackson. I need time. This was a lot for me.”

  “Are you telling me the truth?”

  “Yes.”

  She wasn’t. He could see it in the careful way she averted her gaze. “I don’t want to leave you.”

  “You have to.”

  He heard the double meaning implicit in the phrase. “If I give you your way right now, are you going to understand that it’s just for today?”

  “You’re relentless, aren’t you?”

  “And you’re in no shape to be making major life choices.” He dragged a hand over his face. “I was there, too.” He indicated her mother’s room with a tilt of his head. “I saw what went on.”

  “Then you should understand.”

  “Yeah, well, I’m a little thickheaded in that department.” They reached the elevator.

  She punched the down button, then lifted a weary hand to straighten her glasses. “You don’t say.”

  Frustrated, he pinned her to the wall with a hand on either side of her face. “Honey, I do not want to argue with you.”

  “Then let me go home.”

  “I think that’s a mistake.”

  Her eyes drifted shut. “Please.”

  He exhaled a long breath. “All right. This time. Do you want me to drive you?”

  She shook her head.

  He glided painfully gentle fingertips over the planes of her face. “Do you want me to call anyone? Macon, maybe?”

  “No.” Her voice was just above a whisper.

  Jackson pressed a soft kiss to her forehead. The elevator doors slid open. He guided her inside, where he pulled her into his arms. He was having a terrible time keeping his panic at bay. She was slipping away from him—he sensed it as surely as he sensed the ironlike grip she had on her self-control. Frustrated and angry at his helplessness, he held her close to him, wishing he could simply absorb her.

  When the elevator reached the ground floor, she stepped away from him. “Thank you for coming,” she said in the same detached tone a stranger would use in a receiving line.

  He resisted, barely, the urge to swear. Instead, he pressed a hand to her back and guided her toward the door. “I’ll call you a cab,” he promised.

  “Okay.”

  “I’ll call you later this afternoon.”

  “You don’t have to.”

  He couldn’t resist any longer. He turned her into his arms and buried his mouth on hers. She stood, motionless, within the circle of his embrace. His hands cradled her face. His lips glided over hers as he drank, desperately, of the taste and feel of her. “I won’t lose you,” he whispered when he raised his head.

  She pulled away from him. “Not tonight,” she told him. “Please not tonight.”

  He hesitated a second longer, then nodded. “All right. But if you want me—’’

  “I know. I know. Whistle. You told me.”

  He hailed her a cab. She slid into the rear seat with a mumbled “thank you.” The door shut between them, and Jackson stared, dismally, at the window. He couldn’t fight the feeling this was wrong, but he didn’t have a better plan, either. Feeling unaccustomedly lost, and ripped bare, he raised his fingers in the sign for “I love you.”

  Cammy didn’t acknowledge him as the cab sped away.

  Macon, laid another stack of papers in front of her the following afternoon. “And this is the series of press releases I plan to issue tomorrow.” She leaned back against the edge of her desk. “Cammy, are you sure you feel up to
this today?”

  Cammy nodded absently. “Yes. It’s fine.”

  Macon hesitated, then slapped the folder shut. “No, it’s not. This is ludicrous. I don’t give a rip what Anita Meyerson says, or how effective she thinks this is going to be for her campaign. You don’t need this right now.”

  “It’s not just about me, Macon. Gordon’s not going to come out of this unscathed, either.”

  Macon made a frustrated noise in the back of her throat. “Yes, he is. You both are. Look, why don’t you let Jacob and me go with you today? You could come home with us afterward. We’ll have dinner. Trevor and Natalie would love to see you.”

  Cammy shook her head. “It’s really okay, Macon. It’s not as if I’m having a funeral for her. My father is buried at Arlington Cemetery, and since she can’t be interred there—well, this seemed better.” At Bruce Philpott’s recommendation, she’d agreed to have her mother’s ashes interred at the Memorial Garden. There had seemed little point in holding a funeral. The woman her mother had been, Cammy had realized, had really died years before. “I think she would have wanted it this way.”

  “Did anyone tell Jackson?”

  She shook her head. “He doesn’t need to know.”

  “Cammy—”

  She met Macon’s gaze. “Please. You can start lecturing me tomorrow, but not today. Please not today.”

  “He’d want to be there for you.”

  “He was there,” she whispered.

  Macon’s eyes widened. “When she died?”

  “Yes.”

  “You didn’t tell me.”

  “I didn’t tell anyone.”

  Macon studied her for a minute. “Why can’t I figure out what’s going on in your head? I’ve known you for five years, and I don’t have a clue how to read you, sometimes.”

  “Join the club of people I frustrate to death. Jackson Puller is the honorary chairman.”

  “Do you want him, Cammy?”

  She frowned. “Want him to what?”

  “Do you want him?”

  “Oh.” She carefully considered the question. “I haven’t thought about it. I can’t think about it.”

  Macon’s expression turned stubborn. “You know, for the most part, I try to keep my mouth shut about this.”

  “But today’s the exception?”

  “I think you’re throwing away the best thing in your life.”

  “When did you join Jackson Puller’s fan club?”

  “I didn’t. I joined Cammy Glynn’s fan club, and I don’t want to see one of my best friends toss away a chance at happiness.”

  “It’s complicated.”

  “And you are probably the single most stubborn person I’ve ever known.”

  Cammy flashed her a slight smile. “Next to you?”

  “Next to me.”

  “Then you haven’t really known Jackson Puller for long. He’s worse.”

  “Good. More evidence that the two of you deserve each other.”

  With a weary sigh, Cammy leaned back in her chair. “I don’t know, Macon. I don’t think I’m in the best possible position to be objective about this.”

  “Love is like that. Jacob turned me into a complete wreck.”

  The picture made Cammy smile. Macon was one of those women who managed to look perfect despite high humidity, hurricane-force winds, or drenching rains. “I doubt you were ever a wreck.”

  Macon laughed. “You have no idea. I cried for days. I had stooped to pining over a picture of him I cut out of the newspaper. It got ugly.”

  “What did you do?”

  “I quit listening to my head for once. Cammy,” she squeezed her hand, “nobody has ever been more concerned about risk management than I was. I threw Jacob out of my life because he couldn’t offer me a sure thing. I just wasn’t going to step out on a ledge unless I knew, for sure, that I couldn’t fall.”

  “But you changed your mind?”

  “Don’t you have some professional nomenclature for that?”

  “Changing your mind? It’s called flakiness, I think.”

  “Is that a technical term?”

  “Sure.”

  Macon shook her head. “That’s not what I meant, and you know it. I mean, isn’t there some psychological principle about people who can’t commit to relationships because of fear?”

  “Chronic disassociation,” Cammy said quietly.

  “That’s it. I had that. I didn’t let anyone get close to me. I was too afraid of getting hurt again.”

  “It’s not like a cold, Macon. You don’t get it, and then just decide not to let it bother you anymore.”

  “I didn’t. Don’t get me wrong. The thought of losing Jacob scares me to death. I’m not sure how I’d handle it.”

  Cammy frowned. “Then why—”

  “Because I figured out one day that I was more afraid of not having him in my life at all than I was of eventually losing him.” She tilted her head to one side. “Jacob’s a demanding kind of guy. Puller reminds me a lot of him. Jacob wasn’t going to settle for half of me. It was an all or nothing kind of deal.”

  “But you weren’t entering into the relationship with the same kind of baggage I am. I’d be asking Jackson to carry an unbearable burden.”

  “I don’t think you can decide that for him. He’s the only one who can make that call.” She hesitated. “Have you told him you can’t have children?”

  “Yes.”

  “And he said? . . .”

  “What I thought he would. He was disappointed, but he thinks he’ll get over it—that we’d work it out.”

  “And you don’t trust him.”

  “Forever is a long time.”

  “Sure is. Do you want to think about the consequences of spending forever without him in it?”

  Cammy frowned. “It feels selfish to want so much. Somehow, I can’t get past that. I’ve known for years that my father believed our lives were supposed to revolve around his.”

  Macon shook her head. “Durstan was a very effective and powerful man. I can admire a lot of what he did while he was in the Senate, but what he did to you, well, that’s another story.”

  “He was angry. He saw my mother’s illness as a political liability. That’s a big enough character flaw alone to put the man in the jerk hall of fame.” She flashed Macon a slight smile. “Believe me, I know that.”

  “I’ve never understood politicians who aren’t willing to simply tell the truth. They’re human. They have flaws. Their families have flaws. They’re better people if they can simply admit that.”

  “My father worried that my mother might embarrass him in public.”

  Macon shrugged. “What if she did?”

  “He didn’t think his political career could survive. I’ve never understood that. If she were epileptic and had a seizure, would anyone be embarrassed? Or if she had a heart problem and suffered an attack during some fund-raising banquet, do you think anyone would have condemned my father for that? I know people have a harder time accepting mental disability than physical disability, but my father had the chance to raise the bar.” She had a brief memory of Laura calling for Durstan during the final hours of her life. “Instead, he hid behind his own cowardice and weakness.”

  Macon made a disgusted sound in the back of her throat. “And, unfortunately, he vented that anger and frustration on you.” She narrowed her gaze. “Are you going to keep paying for that forever?”

  “That doesn’t mean—” The insistent ring of Macon’s beeper interrupted Cammy’s sentence. They both looked at the small black box on Macon’s belt.

  She switched it off. “Jacob,” she explained.

  Cammy indicated the phone with a wave of her hand. “Call him.”

  “It can wait.”

  “No. Really, call him.”

  Macon reached for the phone. “I’m not through talking about this.”

  “I didn’t even dare to hope that you were.”

  She stared thoughtfully at the stack
of phone messages on her desk while Macon spoke to her husband. Most pertained to Jeffrey Herrington’s hot pursuit of her professional reputation. How in the world, she wondered, had she let things become such a mess?

  “You’re kidding?” Macon said. “All right, I’ll tell her.” She paused. “No later than six. Okay. Thanks.” She hung up the phone, then looked at Cammy. “Turn on the TV. Jacob said there’s something we should see.”

  Cammy reached for the remote. She kept the TV in her office for use during the sessions she held with her Wishing Star children. “What channel?”

  “Pick a network. It’s a press conference.”

  “Is Anita Meyerson announcing my public execution?” She punched the button. “I’m not sure I want to watch this.”

  “No. It’s something else.”

  “You mean the press has found something else to talk about besides the way I’m—?” She found the station, then froze.

  Jackson stood in front of a bank of microphones. The sight of him made her heart ache. He looked like a sea of calm in the midst of a hurricane. He had on a green shirt and the same suspenders he’d worn the day she’d met him. With his dark hair and intent eyes, he still had that slightly old-fashioned look that made him look like the most trustworthy man alive.

  He was glaring at a room full of reporters—his colleagues—and speaking in a clipped tone as he told them in no uncertain terms what he thought of them.

  “For years,” he was saying, “I believed that you and I belonged to one of the most honorable professions in the world. We were responsible for ensuring public attention on key issues, things that affect lives and change history. We are charged with telling the truth, even when we don’t like it, and putting the good of the whole above the good of our careers and personal lives.”

  He drew a deep breath. “It wasn’t until several weeks ago that I even began to question whether or not I’d gotten so caught up in keeping my job that I’d forgotten to do my job. There’s not a person in this room who is unaware of what happened to me in Bosnia while I was pursuing a story. The death of Leo Svetlani was a tragedy in every sense of the word.

  “And the truth is, I probably couldn’t have prevented Leo’s death, but neither did I have to profit from it. Did the story of Leo’s death really need to be told? Was anyone’s interest but my own advanced because I wrote the last chapter of that story? I don’t think so. I don’t think Leo’s mother felt better knowing I’d shared her grief with the rest of the world, or that Leo’s life meant more because I thrust him into the public eye.