Handful of Dreams

by Heather Graham

  Like a lover coming to him in the night in sweet secrecy. Sleek, shimmering white, passionate red, the flame of her hair catching the moonlight to cloak her with an innocent sensuality…

  It wasn’t true, of course. Fantasy—it was her business.

  “David!” Her voice was anxious and hushed.

  “What?” he answered, not moving. “Have you decided to be charitable after all?”

  “David, stop!” she pleaded. “I think there really is someone downstairs!”

  “What?” He bolted up. How could anyone be downstairs? Since he’d been in the service, he’d learned to listen, to hear any unusual sound. “You’re imagining things.”

  “No, I swear, I’m not!”

  He threw his feet over the bed, mindless of his nudity. She stood silently aside, and whatever she was thinking was hidden from him in the darkness. He grabbed for his robe, then rummaged in his top desk drawer, finding his service revolver. “Stay here,” he told her.

  She shook her head vehemently, and in the muted light her eyes did indeed seem to glow like gems, making him ache all over again with the desire for things to be different. For her to be … his, in truth. He wanted to wrap her in his arms, assure her like a lover, swear to protect and defend…

  “I’m not staying here!” she protested in a hushed but vehement whisper. “David…” There was the slightest plea to the words, and then she was nervously teasing, “Don’t you ever watch horror movies? The heroine gets left behind—and then attacked! I’ll be right behind you!”

  “Behind!” he persisted gruffly.

  “I’ll stay where I’m supposed to,” she promised. Her eyes fell on the revolver. “Is that thing real?”

  “Of course, it’s real,” he whispered back impatiently.

  He didn’t touch her; he silently started out of his room, then down the stairway. In the light there he could see the front door; the locks and bolts were all still in place, and he frowned. It had been her imagination.

  He didn’t say so. He turned to her and motioned that he was going into the darkened parlor. She nodded and stood in the foyer, watching him.

  There was nothing in the parlor. David went on in to the kitchen and began to smile to himself. She had been imagining things. Hearing about the prowler, convincing herself that he would surely come after her.

  But then, just as his muscles relaxed and he exhaled a long breath, he heard her scream. It was quick, sharp sound. Instantly cut off as if someone had—

  “Susan!”

  He had his gun out before him, his finger on the trigger. He drew up short, seeing her in the foyer, held in the powerful grasp of a man who seemed to be half monster. The guy was unshaven, muscle-bound and burly, and clad in jeans and a khaki jacket that added to his height and breadth.

  His left arm was locked around Susan, his grimy fingers clamped over her mouth. In his right hand he carried a knife—one set closely against her rib cage.

  David paused and swallowed, sickly aware that he couldn’t show his fear. He spoke quietly. “Let her go.”

  The prowler laughed, showing yellow teeth. “No way, buddy. That thing’s probably a kid’s water pistol! Now you come over here and open the door for me—nicely. Throw the gun down and open the door, and as soon as I get into the woods, I’ll let your little girlfriend go.”

  Like hell he’d let her go! God alone knew what he would do to her—David didn’t dare think about it—but when he was through, it was more than possible that he’d slit her throat and leave her in the pines.

  David shook his head slowly. “No way,” he said very softly. “I assure you this isn’t a water pistol. I had to shoot a lot of decent men who happened to be on the other side of the line with this thing. I wouldn’t think twice about shooting garbage who preys on innocent women. And I promise you, the bullets fly fast from this baby. Real fast. I can aim right between your eyes or I can aim at your kneecap. There’s nothing like a shattered kneecap for real pain.”

  Tension seemed to riddle the air like a tangible vapor. David felt as if he screamed inside, loud enough to be heard: I’m not bluffing, buddy, I’m not bluffing. Touch her and I don’t think I’ll feel human anymore….

  “Look, I don’t want to kill you. I’ll get off, but there will be all kinds of messy paperwork first, you know. But I will. Trust me, I’ll do it.”

  The man didn’t release her. David took careful aim at his eyes. At the last second he twisted his hand; his bullet sank into the door. The man jerked, shoving Susan down to her knees; a startled scream escaped from her.

  “Don’t shoot! Don’t shoot again!” the thief pleaded.

  “Susan, can you call the police?”

  He was terrified that she would faint, that she would pass out on the floor.

  Her head rose slowly. He saw her beautiful eyes, moist and brilliant against her pale cheeks, the waves of fiery red hair falling around them.

  She nodded slowly.

  “Move back!” David commanded the intruder, determined that Susan wouldn’t have to brush by him to reach the phone. She crawled up from her knees and raced into the library. He heard her voice, trembling but coherent as she talked to the police.

  “Open the bolts,” he told the intruder. The man did so, eyeing David uncertainly all the while. “What are you going to do to me? Hey, you’ve called the cops—”

  “Yeah, and I don’t want you in the house while we’re waiting for them to get here,” David said flatly. “Get out. I’ll be right behind you.”

  Susan came back into the foyer, anxiously watching him as he started to follow the thief.

  “David?”

  “Stay inside!” he snapped. “Lock the doors behind me!”

  She closed the door, and then he sighed with relief. He could already hear the screech of sirens.

  CHAPTER NINE

  THE THIEF’S NAME WAS Harry Bloggs; he was thirty-nine, a drifter with a record who was last incarcerated in Massachusetts, which would surely please the northern Maine natives, since they felt they were too peaceful and civilized to produce criminals.

  Sheriff Grodin asked David all kinds of questions, and then he asked Susan all kinds of questions, which David didn’t mind, because Susan’s nightgown was by then hidden beneath her forest-green floor-length robe; he idly wondered what had happened to the white one. Harry Bloggs was handcuffed in the back of the patrol wagon, and Ed Beaufort, the deputy sheriff, was staring at him.

  Susan was very calm and seemingly unaffected by the incident, which pleased David. What hadn’t pleased him had been a few of Bloggs’s comments.

  Once the sheriff had arrived, Bloggs had apparently decided that David wasn’t going to shoot him—not in front of the law, at any rate. He’d come up with a vicious line of bravado.

  “Hey, tough guy, they can’t hold me. No one’s ever gonna really hold me. And, buddy, when I get out this time, I’m coming back. You’d better watch out. You’d just better watch out.” And then he’d smiled as if he could read David’s mind. “And when I get my hands on her a second time—”

  “There ain’t gonna be no second time for you!” Sheriff Grodin had warned Bloggs curtly. “We’re going to lock you up until you’re so old, you wouldn’t even be able to attack a baby!”

  And Sheriff Grodin—a lawman with twenty years at his post—had assured David that it was true. Bloggs was a drifter with no money and no relatives willing to claim him. There would be no chance of his getting out on bail before his trial. He would go up for numerous accounts of armed robbery and assault, and the state would find little sympathy for such a man.

  It was all over except for the paperwork, the hearing, and the trial. David assured Grodin that he would gladly come back to town if they needed him.

  It was long past dawn by the time the sheriff left with his prisoner. Susan was sitting at the breakfast table, sipping coffee. David, having locked up again after showing the sheriff out, came back in to find her there, flushing a little as she glance
d at him, staring at her coffee cup again.

  “How are you?” he asked. Susan held her breath and swallowed as he came to her and lifted her chin, his thumb lightly stroking her throat.

  “I’m fine,” she said a little too huskily. He released her quickly.

  David poured himself more coffee, leaned against the counter, and gazed at her. “You really shouldn’t stay here, you know,” he said softly.

  He saw her color deepen further. “David, if that’s another ruse—”

  “Ruse? What would have happened if I hadn’t been here?”

  “Well, I wouldn’t have gone downstairs. I would have hid in a closet. I would have been robbed, of course, but nothing else.”

  David emitted an inarticulate oath and pulled out the chair opposite hers. “Susan—”

  “David, really. I could get mugged just as easily somewhere else.”

  “You might have gotten a hell of a lot more than mugged by Bloggs,” he warned her sharply. “Unless, of course”—he paused, sipping his coffee and staring at her pointedly over the rim of the cup—“your charity extends to people such as Bloggs.”

  “Damn you!” Susan gasped.

  He winced, raising a hand in the air. “Sorry. Really. But don’t you get my point?”

  She was still sitting very stiffly, but she lowered her eyes and spoke quietly. “I get your point, but I don’t think you get mine. There’s virtually no crime here. Bloggs was a freak incident for these parts. And he’s been arrested. If this is another of your tricks to get me to leave—”

  “No trick, Susan. I’ve decided that I haven’t been terribly fair or moral or ethical—or something.” He hesitated, alarmed again by his feelings when he was near her; aching to reach out and touch her and beg her to tell him that her previous existence was all a lie.

  David pushed his chair back hard, jerking a chair leg so that it scratched over the floor like nails over a blackboard. “My father owned the house; he wanted you to have half of it. I’m never even here. You’re welcome to it.” A distance away from her, he grinned ruefully. “I’m warning you, though, that I’m going to have it wired for security. Bloggs apparently came in through the library window. We can prevent something like that happening again if you’re determined to stay here. You might want to think about it, though.”

  She gazed at him suspiciously. David noticed that her nail polish was different this week. It was a tawny color. He was tempted to look beneath the table at her toes. He was sure that they matched.

  He smiled with his thoughts, and her eyes narrowed. “Why don’t I trust you?” she murmured.

  David chuckled, bowing his head courteously to her. “I haven’t the faintest idea, Miss Anderson. If I do pat myself on the back a bit, I would claim to have been extremely beneficial to your health. Anyway, I’m not terribly worried at the moment. You can think about it while you’re in New York.”

  Her head jerked to an even more suspicious angle. “And how do you know, Mr. Lane, that I’m going to New York?”

  “Because you’re meeting with my publicity department on Tuesday at noon, Miss Anderson.”

  She smiled rigidly. “And you told me, Mr. Lane, that writers rarely deal with publishers.”

  “You won’t be dealing with me, you’ll be dealing with publicity. But, as the publisher, I am aware of what is going on. And since you planned to be in the city by Monday afternoon, there’s no real worry for the present, is there? You can fly back with me tomorrow.”

  “What? Wait! How do you know I was supposed to be in on Monday?”

  “Your agent mentioned it, Miss Anderson.”

  “John? I don’t believe he’d give away—”

  David interrupted her with a laugh. “To mention the date that a client is coming into town is hardly comparable to divulging state secrets, Miss Anderson!”

  He was mocking her, Susan thought furiously. She was angry, confused, exasperated—and ridiculously pleased.

  If nothing else, he definitely didn’t want to see her injured But so what? she thought, scolding herself. It was more than likely that he took care not to run over stray animals too!

  She stood up, pushing in her chair impatiently. “I’ll think about it, Mr. Lane. If you’ll excuse me, I’m exhausted. I do suppose this means there’s no hope of you leaving today?”

  “I just got here!” He seemed to be laughing again. Why the hell shouldn’t he? After the ridiculous culmination of the last hours they had spent together…

  “Good night.”

  “Good night.”

  Susan squared her shoulders and tried to depart the kitchen regally. She tripped over the floorboard into the parlor, though, and was further irritated to hear his soft chuckle follow her.

  But it seemed like a gentle laugh! she cried inwardly. Tinged with … affection. No! He was the one to consider the account paid in full! What in heaven’s name was his game?

  In the kitchen, David sat back down at the table, stared blankly at his coffee cup, and miserably wondered the same thing.

  Susan awoke at three in the afternoon. The house was disturbingly silent as she dressed. Curiously she hurried downstairs, but David was nowhere to be seen. She made herself a ham and cheese sandwich and, generously, considering the circumstances, made him one, too, wrapped it, and set it on the refrigerator shelf. She’d been all set for her trip to New York before David’s arrival, completely packed, but there had been one minor revision she’d been thinking of doing on her sci-fi manuscript. With him out of the house, it seemed a wonderful opportunity. Trying not to let thoughts of him plague her, she hurried into the library, pulled out the typewriter, and set to work.

  It was only a matter of adding a few lines of dialogue, but she retyped three pages, and in rereading and repecking out her own words, she became absorbed in it. So much so that she gave a stunned little scream when he spoke to her from the doorway.

  “It’s me! The doors were locked—so were the windows. Or didn’t you notice?”

  Susan clenched her teeth and willed herself not to flush. He was wearing dark bathing trunks that displayed too much flesh and muscle to her way of thinking. He was still wet from the surf; his hair was slicked back, and his eyes were the color of the crest of a wave caught by the sun.

  “What do you want?” Susan snapped irritably. The damn fool, she thought silently, only masochists swam in the Maine waters this late in the season.

  He arched a brow and smiled like a subtle demon. “Merely to let you know I was back in the house.”

  “Oh, okay. I know you’re back.”

  “Working?”

  “Obviously!”

  “Not feeling in the least charitable, I take it?”

  “Not in the least.”

  “What a pity.” He moved into the room, looking over her shoulder. Susan reflexively covered her manuscript, and he chuckled, bracing an arm against the chair to lean over her.

  “You know, Miss Anderson, I made it a point last week to read all those lovely little novelettes by S. C. de Chance.”

  “Did you?” Susan muttered uneasily. “Whatever for?”

  “Curiosity, of course. And to think that just last week I thought you were reading all those delightful scenes. Then I discovered that you wrote them.”

  “Well, that’s just fascinating, Mr. Lane, but as we’ve discussed, I’m working. Do you mind?”

  He smiled, pushed away from her, and slowly ambled back to the door. He turned to her, though, flashing one last, taunting smile her way. “You should consider being charitable again, Miss Anderson. After all, you won’t be able to write on memory forever, you know.”

  There was a thesaurus beneath her hand. Quite naturally she threw it after him. He ducked, chuckling pleasantly.

  “I’ll keep your great words of wisdom in mind, Mr. Lane. Now get out of here!”

  He left, not at all daunted. Susan was extremely grateful that she was retyping material. She wouldn’t have been able to concentrate on writing.
<
br />   He was back about an hour later, dressed in worn jeans that hugged his hips nicely and a tailored denim work shirt. Susan shot him a nasty glance as she covered her typewriter, but he didn’t seem to notice. He bit into an apple, then suggested, “I think we should get out of here tonight. Really call it a truce and stay away from dangerous territory. There’s an old Bela Lugosi classic at the movie theater in the village. We can stop by the lobster house for dinner, watch the flick, and have none of the evening left to irritate one another. What do you think?”

  No—capitalized—is what she should have said. But he was right. Since they were both in residence, as it seemed, the most intelligent thing to do was get out of the house and avoid firelight, intimate meals … being alone, being too close.

  “All right,” Susan murmured. “What time is the movie?”

  “Eight.”

  “What time is it now?”

  “Six.”

  “We’ll never make it! If we change—”

  “The lobster house is casual, and no one here dresses for movies. You should have learned that. You’re fine.”

  Well, she matched him, at least. Her jeans were worn and faded, and her shirt was an old one. Susan shrugged. “Let’s go, then.”

  Outside, she offered to drive; David said that his rented Porsche would be more fun, but he didn’t seem to pick up on Susan’s soft sigh that should have indicated she would have loved to have driven. She wondered, settling in the deep bucket seat beside him, if he was the type who didn’t like to sit in the passenger’s seat or if he just didn’t like to be chauffeured by a woman. They sped along, both seeming to enjoy their silence for the majority of the drive into town. Susan commented on the cold snap and asked David how he’d possibly decided on a swim. He’d flashed her one of his rare open smiles and laughed, reminding her that he had spent years swimming in cold water.

  A pleasantly polite repartee was kept up until they were inside the rustic restaurant, until they’d both been served chilled white wine, until the waiter had taken their food order and moved away. And then, to her discomfort, Susan found that he was staring at her and that his eyes weren’t mocking or taunting but dark blue and sharp with an emotion that seemed to be churning dangerously. He took a sip of wine, then asked quite suddenly, “What happened to your brother, Susan? The other half of S. C. de Chance?”