Handful of Dreams Read online

  She stared at her plate, pushing potato salad around with her fork. It did matter. She was still consumed with that furious urge to taunt him with his own despicable misconceptions.

  “Yes, it’s mine,” she said curtly. Then she smiled at him winningly. “But you are wrong, you know. Your father read everything. He always said that—”

  “Good writing was good writing; it didn’t matter the topic, the category, or the style.”

  “Precisely.” She pushed more potato salad around. “Do you write, Mr. Lane?”

  “Not a word, Miss Anderson. I love the business, but I’m hopeless at the quest myself. You’re not eating.”

  “I told you,” she murmured uneasily, “I’m really not hungry.” And before he could press her, she quickly asked, “How long am I supposed to stay awake?”

  David was busy pulling apart a piece of cold chicken. “I’m not really sure. The line went dead when we were in the middle of that conversation. I guess midnight would be all right.”

  Midnight. How far away was that? She tried unobtrusively to lean over and look at his watch. He noticed her effort and offered up his wrist.

  “Eight P.M., Miss Anderson.”

  Four more hours in his company. They stretched out like an eternity. She’d rather be in a hospital!

  “You’d get a few minutes reprieve if you ate,” he told her.

  Startled, she noted that there was a teasing gleam around his eyes, as if he did have a sense of humor. A pleasant sense of humor—quite possibly—if she were anyone else in the world.

  “Then I’ll have a piece of chicken,” she muttered, and he laughed.

  There was silence for a moment, then to her surprise he pushed back his chair a bit, and she gazed up, aware that he was watching her. “I want to apologize—”

  “You’re going to apologize to me?” she said incredulously, and couldn’t help but add a sweet, “Will wonders never cease!”

  She should have left it alone. His mouth stretched out tightly, taking on a grim, white hue.

  “Not for my opinion of the situation—or anything I said to you about it, or yourself. I’m apologizing because I called a truce for the evening and broke it. If we’re going to survive it, though, the truce needs be put back in place.”

  “Why the hell don’t you just let me go to bed?”

  He shook his head. “I really can’t. Jerry was insistent that I watch you.”

  “For what? If I did fall over, there would be nothing to do, anyway!”

  “Yes, there would. I’ve got a list of instructions.”

  “This really is ridiculous.”

  “Maybe, Miss Anderson, but you’re right about one thing: I really don’t want your injury on my conscience. So that’s the way it is.”

  Her jaw was solidly locked; her eyes snapped with more fire than the candle’s flame. He laughed.

  “Poor, poor Miss Anderson! It really is a hell of a situation, isn’t it? You’re accustomed to calling the shots, ruling the old manor. It’s unthinkable for you to be trapped into taking orders. And there’s not a damned thing you can do about it. No police to call, no way out.”

  “I’m sure there will be a way eventually,” she said pleasantly. “I’ll just get past you and lock myself up somewhere!”

  He laughed, and she sensed that humor in his eyes again. “But you won’t do that, will you? Because, of course, I’d just come after you and haul you back.”

  “Oh, but, Mr. Lane!” she proclaimed, her eyes very wide and sweetly naive, “You wouldn’t want to do that! You’d have to touch me and you might get your elegant little fingers tainted and grimy.”

  “My fingers are neither elegant nor little, and sometimes I like to play in the mud, Miss Anderson.”

  “I’m quite sure, Mr. Lane, that you’ve played in truck-loads of it!”

  To her surprise he chuckled softly again, then lifted his tea glass to her, eyes studying her in an appraising fashion. “Perhaps, Miss Anderson, I should have made your acquaintance earlier. I might have been more understanding. You’ve got an angel’s beauty and a devil’s wit. I can see how you managed to garner his heart and soul—and his mind.”

  “I did love his mind,” Susan replied pleasantly. “And his soul and his heart and just … every little thing about him.”

  “I’m glad to hear it,” David muttered. He pushed back his chair and picked up his plate, methodically scraping chicken bones into the trash, then filling the sink with dish detergent. “Do you play Scrabble?” he asked over his shoulder.

  “I do. But I’m not sure I care to play with you.”

  “Don’t you think it would be better than baiting one another for the next four hours?”

  “I think it would be better if you let me go to bed.”

  He hesitated. “You’re not going anywhere alone.”

  “I’ll get the Scrabble board.”

  She stood, delved into a side drawer for another candle, lit it from the first, and returned to the parlor.

  The board didn’t fit on the coffee table. She set it up before the fire and brought two of the throw pillows down from the couch for seats. She glanced at the setup a little uneasily. It looked very intimate and cozy. Maybe she should have taken it back to the kitchen.

  “Want some hot chocolate out there?” he called suddenly.

  “Ah—I guess.”

  Susan grimaced, looking out at the storm. She was in an intolerable position, and it seemed as if the weather were laughing at her on top of everything else. The rain hadn’t abated at all. With a sigh she sank down to her pillow and began turning all the letters over in the box.

  Bringing the hot chocolate out on a small silver tray, David paused involuntarily in the doorway. His fingers tightened around the tray; his muscles seemed to quiver, then contract.

  Yes, he could see so clearly how she could seduce and lay claim to a man. Her head was slightly lowered as she sat there, and the fire touched her hair, making glittering gems of the red highlights. It had dried now; it streamed over her shoulders like a satin cloak, contrasting beautifully with the white terry robe. She looked so soft, so feminine, her long elegant fingers with their red nails moving over the letters in the box. Very feminine … the V of that robe not at all too low but falling just a shadowed half inch from her flesh as she moved. Maybe the shadows were so alluring to him because he knew what lay beneath. And maybe, if he’d never seen her before, he would be every bit as beguiled.

  More so. If he didn’t know her, he would be compelled to go to her, to touch her, to talk to her and whisper gentle words. He would want her, want to seduce her, to feel the brush of her hair against his shoulders, the slim length of her thighs against his own.

  He closed his eyes and a new image rose before him: this woman, with her deep russet hair, standing slowly, shedding the robe. Stretching like a cat before the sultry flames, her breasts rising high and taut, the smooth line of her stomach flattening even further, enhancing the narrow curve of her waist, the flare of her hips…. She would smile, that slow, taunting smile, and a man would step forward. His hand would slide along her bare side to her hip and rest there, pulling her against him….

  A man. He gritted his teeth and opened his eyes, fighting dizziness. The man had been his father, and her sensuous smiles and liquid beauty and talent had been for sale.

  He gave himself a little shake. What the hell was the matter with him? He wasn’t exactly starved. He was no kid dragged out of a jungle after months of abstinence. Sexual play was easy to come by these days. Maybe too easy. He didn’t remember what it was like to want a woman and not find her equally enthused. Or to be wanted himself and smile and play the game. Only the kid he had once been felt like he did now; so entranced, so shaky, so hot and on fire, as if having her were the most important thing on earth.

  Ass! He thought self-accusingly. Just like he had been that one fool time when he had learned how badly it could hurt and destroy to fall in love.

  She had bee
n his father’s mistress. She hadn’t tried once to defend her mercenary position. She had bled Peter, and she was still here, gloating over her earnings.

  Why the hell didn’t he just let her go lock herself away? She was all right, he was certain of it. Precautionary measures weren’t really necessary. She’d bumped her head and passed out. She’d been waterlogged and frozen, but now she was dry and warm, and her eyes were bright and her pulse was strong.

  He stepped into the room, setting the chocolate on the coffee table. He got down on the floor on his own side of the Scrabble board, leaning on an elbow, his legs stretched out beyond him.

  “Pick your letters,” she told him.

  He did. They played in silence for a while, the game moving swiftly. Her prowess with words surprised him a little, then he wondered why it should. She was obviously very smart. Bright, challenging, mocking. He could tell by the tilt of her head, the glint of her eyes, that she had decided to do battle with him. She would never cringe or apologize for her actions; she would flaunt them in his face. Taunt him, bait him…

  It was his turn. He formed a word.

  “What are you planning on doing now?” he asked, offering a crooked grin.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Well, you are off the payroll. We only pay for services while they’re still being rendered. And you have been living with champagne tastes. What will you do for money?”

  He saw her tighten; her fingers twitched, as if she longed to set them around his throat. But she spelled out her word, commenting that it was a triple score, then smiled directly at him.

  “I’m quite sure I’ll get by,” she purred.

  “I’m sure you will. You could get by a little better if you sold me your half of the beach house.”

  “I have other things to sell, Mr. Lane.”

  He chuckled a little too harshly. “Is that an offer, Miss Anderson? Maintain the status quo? You keep up the beach house and I keep writing out payroll checks. You just transfer the services to a different Lane?”

  One of the little wooden letters went snapping out of her fingers, but she managed to smile at him. “I don’t think so, Mr. Lane.” Her eyes moved over his reclined length in an unimpressed assessment. “You just don’t …” She hesitated, as if she were trying desperately to speak gently. Then she shrugged, as if it were useless. “You just don’t compare, Mr. Lane.”

  Somehow he managed to laugh. “Ah, but what if it meant a tremendous increase in salary?”

  “You couldn’t pay me enough. Besides,” she reminded him very nicely, “you condemned both your father and me for what you’re now offering yourself. You consider me more grating than the sand on the beach. Why on earth would you want to suggest such a thing?”

  “Curiosity,” he told her very quietly.

  Susan found her eyes drawn to his, although she was trying very hard to maintain control over her temper and return his humiliating taunts with digs guaranteed to draw blood from his male ego.

  She couldn’t help but stare at him and quiver inside. Curiosity. It was his word, but despite her rational mind, all her good sense—and her absolute fury—she felt it too. Something, something about him … His eyes, so blue. His ironic smile. His hands…

  Something inside her ached. It had nothing to do with thought, the natural assessment she gave any person in regard to becoming friends—much less lovers. Some small part of her, some instinct, wanted him. Wanted to know how his hands would feel on her, how his mouth would touch hers in a kiss. The wanting swept over her like a tide made hot by the sun. Like a storm taking root inside of her, whirling into a reckless wind.

  He’s an insolent, dominating idiot, she reminded herself harshly. No self-respecting human being would ever forgive his words or treatment of her.

  She picked up the letter she had dropped.

  “Curiosity?” she returned idly.

  “Curiosity,” he said softly again, and though she didn’t look at him, she could feel that strangely speculative look in his eyes. The crooked smile ruefully turning up his lips. For all the violence he had shown her, she could imagine that he could be gentle. That he would stroke her cheek, would stoke passion slowly, tenderly, until it was returned with ecstatic splendor, and then it would fly on silver wings to…

  “I can’t help but wonder,” he said a little huskily, “what it is about you, what you do, that made you worth everything in life. Are you really that good?”

  She snapped a letter into place, having no idea if she had spelled a word or not. She stared at him coolly.

  “I’m absolutely the best, Mr. Lane. But you’ll never know.”

  He chuckled. “I wasn’t really making the offer, Miss Anderson. I just wanted to hear your reply.” She froze; he sounded a little disappointed, as if he’d expected some protest of innocence.

  She owed him no explanations, she reminded herself. He’d made them all up for himself.

  “I suppose,” he said dryly, “that you do have other—assets—to sell too. There’s the sable, of course. That coat should draw a small fortune in itself.”

  So he had looked at her that day. At her back, anyway. Of course, the water in his face had forced him to look up.

  She smiled. “Your father just loved me in fur,” she told him in her best, most sensual drawl.

  The board jiggled as his hand moved convulsively, knocking it. “You didn’t spell a word,” he said. “Xet is not in the English language.”

  Susan stared at the letters. David went ahead and moved them for her, tossing the T back to her and attaching the E and X to an S already on the board.

  He whistled softly. “Found you a triple-letter score on that X, Miss Anderson. ‘Sex.’ I’m amazed that you didn’t find that one yourself.”

  Susan stood up, unwinding gracefully. “Good night, Mr. Lane. It’s surely midnight or close to it by now.”

  He didn’t move, but his eyes were on her. She wondered why they could hold her with such force, why they still seemed to pin her there.

  “I believe it is,” he said, his lips curling ever so slightly, so that he might have been laughing at her inside.

  “Good night.”

  “Take the candle up the stairs.”

  “I will.”

  “Make sure you put it out.”

  “I will.”

  “And say a prayer, will you please?”

  “A prayer for what?”

  He unwound and stood, keeping his distance from her, his hands on his hips.

  Shadows played against his face, but there was something there in his taut features, something that might have been a form of anguish, as if he were a man pulled roughly in two directions.

  “Pray that the storm breaks,” he said simply, and then he turned away, disappearing through the kitchen door.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  SATURDAY DAWNED DARK. SUSAN awoke lethargically, aware that although the rain had ceased for a while, it would come again. That meant that the road would still be flooded, that the phone and electricity lines would still be down, and that David Lane would remain in the house.

  It seemed rather senseless to bother to rise.

  Susan rolled over, casting her eye on her alarm, a little relieved to discover that she had slept through the morning and that it was almost noon. There would be another afternoon, and an evening, but surely by tomorrow the rains would cease and Mr. Lane would be on his way.

  She sighed softly, hugging her pillow. She’d had a right to sleep so late. She had tossed all night long in a realm of nightmares. The water had been coming over her again, the tide so strong that she couldn’t resist it. She’d seen her brother Carl’s face in her dreams, heard his voice pleading, “My hand, Susan, take my hand….”

  And she’d seen David Lane in those nightmares, too, his eyes condemning her. She’d even felt his hands on her shoulders, shaking her … on her naked body, carrying her into the tub…

  Thank God the night was over!

  She stretched
and settled back into her pillow, staring through her window to the ominous gray day beyond it. She mused that the day was really rather apropos; David Lane was just like it. Even when the storm wasn’t raging, it simmered and brewed. And one always had to be wary because the calm would cease and the wind would rail once again.

  She started, chills racing instantly down her spine, when a tap sounded at the door. She didn’t answer, and it came more insistently.

  “Miss Anderson, are you all right?”

  There was a touch of anxiety to his voice, and impatience. If she didn’t answer, he would probably knock the door down.

  “I’m fine!” she rasped out quickly.

  There was a slight pause, then, “Sorry I disturbed you. I was concerned.”

  She heard a soft tread of footsteps as he moved away, and she wondered irritably why her heart continued to pound with such a nervous fervor.

  He meant nothing to her. Nothing. He was dangerously presumptuous, concerned for her life, perhaps, but little more. She’d learned the hard way that he didn’t intend to tolerate her temper, yet he was adept at igniting it with ease. She knew exactly what he thought of her and she hated him for it.

  And she was still nervous around him. Amazed that when he chose to be pleasant, he could be arrestingly so. Attractive and compelling; a little too beguiling by candlelight.

  Ah, and why not? He was Peter’s son. With his father’s dark Gaelic looks and crystal-blue eyes. Sharp as a tack, young, a handsome man. He was a disturbing presence, and he would have been no matter when or how she had met him. If he were to enter a crowded room, he would be noticed right away.

  She should just stay locked in here all day, she thought, but even as she did so, she rolled off the bed. It was impossible to lie there any longer. She was too restless, too confined. If the rain stopped at all, she was going to get outside.

  Susan dressed in jeans and a red cardigan and came down the stairs. David was in the parlor, clad in a mackintosh, straightening a new supply of logs by the fire. Apparently he’d been out in the shed to bring in more wood.

  He gazed up at her entrance, his eyes roaming lightly over her, a slight smile curving his lips.