by Tami Hoag
“Are you telling me I shouldn’t get too comfortable?” Rachel asked with forced lightness. She pulled away from him a bit, raising her head, bracing herself.
For once Bryan didn’t grin or answer with a joke. He reached up and tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. “I’m telling you I love you, Rachel. I’m telling you I’m feeling something I didn’t expect to feel again for a long, long time.” He rolled her beneath him again and stared down at her with undisguised hunger in his eyes. “I’m telling you I want to take you upstairs and make love to you until the sun comes up. What do you have to say about that?”
Say? She was supposed to say something? With her heart in her throat and her brain suddenly numb, she was supposed to think of something to say? She swallowed hard and raised her head as his mouth descended toward hers, and whispered just before their lips met. “I’m praying for an eclipse.”
Flowers. What a lovely dream. There were flowers everywhere. Rachel sighed and burrowed deeper into the soft mattress of the old bed, a smile curving her mouth. There were flowers of every kind and color, delicate wild blossoms with the softest, sweetest scents clinging to their petals. She could feel them against her, cool and dew-damp. They rained down on her and fluttered over every exposed inch of her skin like a hundred silken kisses. And Bryan was the magician responsible for this wonderful illusion.
She couldn’t see him in her dream, but Rachel knew he was the one responsible, just as she knew he was the one who had left a rose on her pillow every night since she’d come to Drake House.
Bryan. Her smile widened and she purred in almost feline appreciation as she stretched on the bed. As he’d promised, he had made love to her all night. While the rain had fallen outside the windows of her turret bedroom and the cold wind had howled, Bryan had warmed her with kisses and caresses. He had awakened in her a woman she had scarcely realized existed, a woman of uninhibited passion. He had taken her to heights she had only imagined and set her soul free from the past and the future.
The future. A cloud scudded across the surface of her dream. Now that she knew what real love was, it hurt worse to think of a future without it, but she pushed the thought aside. She had vowed to take no regrets with her when she left for San Francisco, so she concentrated instead on her dream and the flowers.
“Rachel.” His voice came to her through the soft fog of sleep. “Rachel.”
Stretching, she raised her eyelids to half mast and rolled onto her back. The light in the room was dim, but one thing was clear-it was snowing. She could see Bryan through the flakes falling down all around her. He was standing beside the bed, wearing his Jeans, his glasses, and a wickedly sexy smile. She wondered why he didn’t look cold, bare-chested in the snow.
Snow? Her drowsy brain struggled to function. They were in Drake House. It couldn’t possibly be snowing, not even in this strange place.
“Bryan?” she asked, coming more fully awake. She pushed herself up in bed, looking around, puzzlement creasing a little line between her eyebrows. “What in the…? Flowers!”
She laughed out loud in delight when she realized what he was doing. He was showering her with flowers! The petals covered the bed in multicolored drifts-pink and blue and violet and yellow and white. They clung to her skin and hair and to the ivory lace bodice of her nightgown. The cloud of fragrance rising from them was intoxicating.
Bryan dropped the last of the blooms and joined her on the bed, scooping her into his arms and rolling through the fragrant cloud, laughing as petals stuck to the lenses of his glasses. He leaned down and kissed her with enthusiasm and rising passion.
“Since you keep accusing me of bringing you flowers, I decided I might as well go all out,” he murmured, nuzzling her neck. “Mmmm… they smell almost as good as you do.”
Rachel scooped up a handful and rubbed them down his bare back. “Where did you get them?”
He smiled as he rose up above her, but his gaze was hot as he lowered the thin straps of her peachy-pink negligee, baring her breasts. “Magic,” he said, his voice turning low and velvety as desire flared anew in his eyes.
As Rachel had done, he scooped up wildflowers in his hands and caressed her with them, crushing them as he cupped her breasts. He lowered his head and took one nipple into his mouth, sucking at that tender bud of flesh and the pansy petal that clung to it. His hands swept down her hips, tugging her nightgown up out of his way.
He turned onto his side and admired the view as he showered a handful of flower petals down on the bare skin of her belly and thighs. Sliding down on the bed, he blew gently across her abdomen, sending the buds skittering. With a purposeful look on his handsome face, he parted her legs and settled himself between them, planting kisses on the petals that clung to her inner thighs.
Rachel raised herself up on her elbows, her hair tumbling around her as she watched him, wrapped in sensual fascination stronger than any narcotic. With gentle fingers Bryan parted her most tender flesh and caressed her intimately with the bud of a wild rose. She gasped at the feel of velvet brushing her, cool and damp against her heat. He caressed her again, then lowered his head and tasted her, kissing her softly at first, hesitantly, increasing the pressure slowly, opening his mouth over her and stroking her with his tongue until she was sobbing at the intensity of her pleasure.
He kneeled then, and lifted her into his arms, pulling her against him and kissing her deeply. His lips trailed to her ear, where he traced the danity shell with the tip of his tongue and whispered, “And they taste almost as good as you do too.”
Rachel purred and arched against him. A languid smile lifted one corner of her mouth as she reached between them and undid Bryan’s zipper. She tugged the denim down his lean hips, scooped up two handfuls of flowers, and encased his manhood in cool soft petals, wringing a gasp from him. She stroked him with them as she planted kisses across his chest. Then it was her turn to gasp as he lifted her against him. She dropped the flowers, her hands going up automatically to his broad shoulders as he pulled her hips to his and joined their bodies once more.
The light in the room was considerably brighter when Rachel awoke for the second time. Bryan’s tousled head was on her breast, one of his long, hairy legs was thrown across both of her considerably smoother ones. He was humming the Notre Dame fight song in his sleep.
“Bryan,” she murmured softly. “Wake up.”
He grumbled and growled, finally lifting his head and pushing his glasses up on his nose. “What time is it?”
Rachel reached to the nightstand for his wrist-watch and peered at it, shaking her head. “Three-ten, Bryan Hennessy time. Do you ever intend to set this thing correctly?”
“Oh, sure,” Bryan said, hauling himself up to lean back against the ornately carved headboard. “I’m sure I wrote myself a note to do it.” He scratched his kneecap through the sheet, looking puzzled. “I wonder what became of that note.”
“It’s quarter to seven,” Rachel said, consulting her travel alarm.
Time to get up and face the day, she thought. Her gaze roamed over the tangle of sheets and flower petals, and she smiled. With a night like this last one to remember, the day wasn’t going to be quite so hard to face.
She yawned, stretched, and scratched her arm. Snuggling against Bryan’s hard shoulder, she said coyly, “Thank you for the flowers. I loved them.”
Bryan turned his head and kissed her temple. “And I love you.”
Rachel’s heart jumped. She couldn’t get used to hearing him say that. She was afraid to say it back for fear the spell would be broken somehow, afraid she would be putting too much pressure on him, expecting too much of him.
She sifted a handful of petals through her fingers and scratched absently at her left hip. “Making love in flowers is the most romantic thing I can think of.”
“Flowers are romantic,” Bryan agreed absently. He shoved the sheet down and stared, frowning at his belly as he scratched it. “Ants aren’t.”
“Ants?” Rac
hel questioned, scratching her shoulder.
“Hmmm, yes,” he said. “It seems we have a bed full of them. They must have ridden in on the flowers,” he ventured, but his explanation was lost on Rachel, who shrieked and leapt from the bed, shaking herself like a wet dog. He watched her grab up her robe, thrust her arms into the sleeves, and bolt for the door.
“Have a nice shower!” he called, laughing, then he found a scrap of paper and a pen on the nightstand and he wrote himself a note-Beware of Ants.
NINE
Rachel stood outside the door to her mother’s bedroom, as nervous as she had been at fifteen when she had needed to ask permission to go on her first date. She was freshly showered, debugged, and looked as presentable, in her black dirndl skirt and lavender cotton blouse, as any voice teacher she had ever encountered. Her hair was secured in its knot at the back of her head and only a few tendrils had as yet escaped to frame her face.
It occurred to her that she shouldn’t have had to go to such pains to see her own mother. A mother wasn’t supposed to care about appearances. A mother was supposed to be accepting of her children whether they were in rags or designer wear. But it was that line of thinking that had caused the problems between her and Addie in the first place, so Rachel stopped that train of thought before it ran out of control.
It was a new day, a day for beginnings. She felt fresh and strong, rested despite the precious little sleep she’d had. Spending the night in Bryan’s arms had revitalized her, recharged her. She was brimming with energy and ready to take on whatever the day had in store for her. As she had showered the flower petals and ants from her skin, she had come to the conclusion that she would redouble her efforts to solve the problem with Addie.
Rachel raised her hand to knock at the door, but it suddenly fell open as if someone on the other side had jerked it back. Addie, however, was standing across the room in a yellow flowered housedress, scowling into her mirror as she struggled with the task of braiding her hair. She crossed one strand over, twisted it around again, pulled another across, then swore and let go the entire mess to start again.
It was clear to Rachel that her mother had either forgotten how to braid or the message from her brain to her hands was getting lost somewhere along the way; apraxia was the term the doctors used for it. In either case, it was sad, and it reminded Rachel yet again of how their roles were being reversed. She could easily remember Addie painstakingly plaiting her long hair on her first day of kindergarten, how she had sat very still on the wire vanity stool in her mother’s bedroom, staring wide-eyed into the mirror as her mother’s fingers had magically tamed her wild locks.
“Mother?” she asked softly, forcing herselt to step into the room before her memories could steal her courage from her. “Can I help you with that?”
Addie stared at her daughter, wondering just how much Rachel had seen. “Don’t you know how to knock?”
“It was open.”
Addie muttered, “Wimsey. Meddling old coot.”
Rachel ignored the odd remark. Taking a brush from the cluttered dresser, she went to stand behind her mother and began working on the hair that had once been as golden as her own, but had now paled to silver.
“I can do my own hair,” Addie said, staring at their reflections in the mirror.
“I know you can. I just want to help. Like you used to help me.”
Their gazes met in the glass, and Addie’s heart lurched. She had done everything for Rachel. She had been both mother and father. She had raised her daughter without help from anyone. She had held down two jobs at a time and had never run out of energy or drive. Now that daughter was standing behind her, braiding her hair because she suddenly wasn’t able to manage so simple a task herself.
“I believe I’ll wear it down today,” she said, moving away from the dresser. In the mirror she could see Rachel standing with her hands still raised, the hairbrush in one, reaching out toward her. Her daughter’s eyes were filled with hurt. Rachel let her arms fall to her sides as Addie moved another step out of reach.
She found a black sweater tying at the foot of the bed and put it on inside out. “I’m going down to breakfast. Hennessy should have the toast done by now.”
Rachel stood by the dresser, twisting the hairbrush around in her hands. Every ounce of that newfound strength had drained out of her. “Why won’t you let me help you?” she asked softly, hurting in a way that is peculiar to mother-daughter relationships-a deep, sharp hurt, like a needle piercing her heart.
“I don’t need any help,” Addie replied, squaring her bony shoulders with stubborn pride. “Not from you or Wimsey or anyone. I have managed quite well on my own for some time now, as you well know.”
With that she clomped out of the room, her boots thumping on the wood floor. Rachel closed her eyes and counted to ten, wrestling her temper and her tears under control.
“No luck?”
Startled, she looked up to find Bryan standing not two feet away. She shook her head, at a loss for words. She wasn’t sure she would have trusted herself to say them anyway. Her emotions were running dangerously close to the surface, muddied and churning like floodwaters. She had the strange feeling that if she let them out, they would swell up and drown her.
“You’ll work it out,” Bryan said gently, taking the hairbrush from her fingers and setting it aside. He gathered her into his arms and hugged her close, pressing soft kisses to her hair. “It’ll all work out. You’ll see.”
Rachel let her hands sneak inside the old cardigan he wore unbuttoned. Her arms slid around his lean waist. She nuzzled her cheek against his Chicago Cubs T-shirt, taking comfort in the solid muscle beneath the soft gray fabric. She noticed he didn’t say “give it time.” Time was not on their side. A little bit of Addie slipped away with every grain of sand in the hourglass. But he offered her his strength and his comfort, and she loved him for that.
“Here now, enough of this,” Bryan said, standing her back from him. There was a devilish twinkle in his eye. Rachel realized with a start that he was wearing a bedraggled black top hat. “I know you can’t get enough of me, but I won’t spoil you-unless you beg me to,” he added with a wicked grin.
“Conceited man,” she said, fighting back a chuckle. “I should beg you to have your head examined. Why are you wearing that ridiculous hat?”
“Ridiculous?” he questioned, highly offended. “I’ll have you know this hat was given to me by Anton Figg-Newton, master magician of England.”
He rolled the hat down his arm Fred Astaire-style and presented it to her upside down.
“Just reach in there and see what you find, girlie.”
Cautiously, Rachel leaned over and peered into the hat, narrowing her eyes in suspicion. “There’s nothing in there.”
Bryan made a great show of looking into the hat himself, turning it over, and shaking it.
“I think you got taken on that one, Merlin,” Rachel quipped.
A gleam came into Bryan’s eye. “Oh, ye of little or no faith. I merely forgot to say the magic word.”
“The magic word,” Rachel parroted flatly. She crossed her arms over her chest and tapped her foot in mock impatience.
“Marshmallows!” he intoned dramatically, and tapped the brim of the hat three times with the fingers of his left hand. This time he reached inside, and when he withdrew his hand, he was holding a brooch of intricately worked silver filigree set with a translucent stone of deep purple.
Rachel’s mouth dropped open as he handed it to her. It was an exquisite thing that looked to be very old and very valuable. The stone gleamed as it caught the morning light that streamed in through the window.
“Bryan, it’s beautiful,” she whispered reverently. “Where did you find it?”
“In my hat. Jeez, Rachel, I think your memory is worse than mine.”
“Really,” she insisted, fingering the brooch lovingly. “I’ve never seen anything like it. Is it an heirloom or something?”
He clea
red his throat and looked uncomfortable. “I came across it in a country that frowns on exporting such things. You’re probably better off not knowing.”
She gave him a suspicious look, wondering, not for the first time, just who Bryan Hennessy really was.
“Legend has it that when a man gives this brooch to the lady of his heart, shell love him into eternity,” he said, taking the gift from her and pinning it carefully to the throat of her prim blouse. The stone picked up and intensified the color of her eyes, making Bryan’s breath catch. A crooked, self-deprecating smile tugged up one corner of his mouth. “It’s a custom also known as hedging your bets.”
“Thank you,” Rachel whispered, smiling at him. She rose up on her toes and kissed his cheek. Practically in the blink of an eye he had lifted her mood out of the doldrums. He was amazing and wonderful, and if she could tell him nothing else, she could at least tell him that. “What an extraordinarily sweet, bizarre man you are.”
Remarkably, he blushed, and Rachel’s heart swelled a little more with love for him. Grinning, she plunked his magic hat upon his head, grabbed his hand, and pulled him toward the door.
“Come on, Hennessy. Let’s go get some breakfast. I’m starved.”
“What’s your hurry?” Bryan asked, patting her bottom with a loving hand. “Ants in your pants?”
“Very funny.”
They sauntered down the grand staircase together, hand in hand, smiling at each other the way only lovers do, arguing amicably over how they would spend the day. Rachel insisted there was no time for anything other than marking prices on the antiques that would be offered at the tag sale in two days. Bryan insisted there was more than enough time for a stroll along the beach. But as they neared the kitchen, he broke off in mid-rebuttal and held a finger to his lips, suddenly alert to something going on in the next room. Together they inched toward the door, listening.