Imaginary Lover

by Sandra Chastain

  Dusty could only nod. She wasn’t certain about Betty’s conviction, though she did feel different. In the mirror she could almost see an aura around her, not red as Nick had said, but a silver color.

  She shivered again, then took her lantern and, with the other storytellers, made her way toward her spot. As she entered the back door she followed the path the tour would take, up the steps, into the main corridor, and down the foyer to the parlor. There was a hush, almost as if the house were waiting.

  Standing beneath the portrait, Dusty looked up at the woman, making an instant connection with her eyes—silver-gray eyes that penetrated, that asked, that demanded something from Dusty in return.

  “All right, Aunt Hattie,” she whispered. “I feel your hand in all this. I don’t know how you did it, but it’s done. I’m standing here, wearing a dress that mysteriously appears, a net that is presented anonymously, and a broach that seems to have been here all along. What next?”

  But there was no answer. Only the penetrating glare of the woman who seemed to be watching.

  “So, Hattie isn’t involved,” Dusty went on, looking up at the picture. “So it’s you. Who are you, and what is it you want me to do?”

  Again there was no answer.

  Something was out of kilter. She’d felt it before. There was something pulling her to the hallway. She even took several steps away from the doorway and glanced around.

  Through the windows she could see the line of people at the gate. They were buying tickets and being divided into groups. The first tour started down the walk. That meant she still had some fifteen minutes before they would get to the house.

  Across the foyer was the formal dining room, set for tea instead of a meal. She stood at the rope and studied the room. The strange feeling that the house was waiting intensified. There was almost a vibration in the air, a sense of expectation humming beneath her feet.

  “Nerves!” she said, and turned back to the parlor, allowing her gaze to fall on the stairs.

  Up there.

  Dusty whirled around. “Who said that? Is there someone here?”

  There was no answer. She had an incredible urge to climb the stairs. She wanted to go up. She needed to go up. But her feet refused to move.

  That’s where Nick found her, standing at the foot of the narrow stairway, looking up as if someone were standing at the top talking to her.

  “Dusty? Dusty! Are you all right?”

  When she turned to face him, he was stunned at the pallor of her face, at the struggle in her eyes as she tried to focus on him, finally bringing the light of recognition back, recognition and life.

  “Nick,” she whispered, and came to him, laying her face against his chest. “It’s you.”

  He felt her heart beating, the trembling of her arms as she pressed herself against him. “I thought someone was up there, someone calling to me.”

  “There’s no one up there. Only two large rooms, totally empty.”

  “Are you sure there’s nothing else?”

  “Only the door at the top of the steps, but it’s padlocked and the lock is so rusty that you couldn’t get in there even if you wanted to.”

  “I don’t know what’s wrong with me.”

  “You’re just under a lot of pressure. If you don’t feel up to telling Hattie’s story, we’ll skip this spot and keep the tour moving. You tried, that ought to be enough to meet the requirements of Hattie’s will.”

  Nick’s arms tightened around her protectively. He’d never known such a surge of tenderness. She was afraid and she’d turned to him. All he wanted to do was hold her, to make things safe for her.

  Gradually she relaxed, finally letting out a long, deep sigh. “Thank you, Merlin,” she whispered. “I told you all along you have magic hands, hands that heal. I feel as if I’ve been asleep.”

  She even yawned, curling against him like a contented cat, burrowing in a warm spot of sunlight. She was rubbing his back, allowing her hands to slide lower, capturing his buttocks in her fingertips.

  “Do you feel sleepy, Nick, as if you’re dreaming?”

  “Ah, no. In fact, if you don’t stop that little body excursion you’re making, you’re going to find out what kind of dreams I have when I’m wide awake.”

  “Wouldn’t you like to take me up those stairs and ravish me, the way Clark Gable ravished Vivien Leigh in Gone With the Wind?”

  “Take a look at those stairs, Dusty. I’m not even sure your hoops will make it up. As for the ravishing, I thought we’d already decided that was a no-go.”

  “Maybe we were wrong.”

  A minor tremor raked his body at the thought of what she was suggesting. At the sudden strong urge he felt to comply, he almost took a step toward the stairs, then, blinking his eyes against the sudden flare of lantern light from beyond the front windows, he turned Dusty toward the parlor and into the corner that was always hidden in shadows.

  “Dusty, darling, are you sure you’re all right? You haven’t been dipping into the widow’s bottle of peach brandy to get into the mood, have you?”

  “Is there brandy? Fine, let’s have a toast.” Dusty heard her voice, recognized the slightly slurred speech patterns she’d suddenly adopted, then flung her head back and smiled wickedly. “What’s the matter, Clay, don’t you want me?”

  “If you don’t stop that,” he managed to say as her lips grazed his chin and nibbled on his earlobe, “we’re going to be caught behaving in a very naughty manner by the tour group.”

  “Kiss me,” she said breathlessly, “then I’ll behave.”

  He wanted to. The group wasn’t there yet. But this was no time to begin something that up to now, both had instigated, then stopped. This time he was having trouble. Heat was pooling in his loins and sizzling his thought processes. This time she was totally willing, enticing, hot. They were heading toward an explosion on the same time schedule. Neither pulled back. Neither was saying no.

  Then the back door opened. Footsteps and laughter moved toward them. Nick came back to the present with a crash.

  “Dusty!” He shook her. “Dusty, the tour is almost here. You have to tell your story. Dusty!”

  Almost like a sleepwalker coming slowly awake, she turned sleepy eyes on him, allowed her arms to fall back to her sides. Moments later she smiled, turned away, and took her place beneath the portrait.

  Nick stepped back into the shadows, wishing his heart would stop pounding, wishing the hair on the back of his neck would lie down and that whatever the hell kind of whirlwind they’d stirred up would calm itself.

  The tour group seemed to sense instantly that something was different. Their chatter hushed. Dusty cast her eyes on them, seeing yet not seeing.

  She assumed the posture of the widow and started the story again, just as before, by closing her eyes and telling the listeners to empty their minds. She set the scene, describing her plantation, her husband, and their great love. Then came the war and he’d ridden away. The servants had vanished, one by one.

  Now she was alone. They said Clay was dead, but she didn’t believe them. She had promised to wait forever and she would.

  “Eternity is a long time. But I have to stay, to wait. I promised.”

  She had them. Nobody was moving. No children tugging impatiently at the parent’s hands. No loss of interest that instigated muted conversations among the group. Every eye was glued on Dusty or the portrait under which she stood.

  As she talked Dusty seemed to grow paler, more frail, older, even. Behind her, if anybody besides Nick had noticed, the portrait seemed to come alive. From the first, he’d noticed the resemblance between the woman and Dusty, and now that resemblance intensified.

  “Listen. Do you hear it? Hoofbeats. Clay, are you there?” Dusty ran to the window, then turned back to the doorway, as if she were hearing the horse ride around the house. Her gaze directed somewhere beyond the listeners, she watched without speaking.

  Then, as before, she let out a joyous cry, then coll
apsed on the floor. As if on cue, the lantern went out and the room went dark. Nick rushed toward Dusty, his figure caught in the light through the windows like a silhouette.

  Someone screamed.

  “My goodness,” another cried out. “I believe it really is a ghost.”

  “Now let us move on,” the tour guide said hurriedly. “Through the front door to the lawn, where our last storyteller is waiting.”

  She managed to herd the group away from the parlor and outside. Nick, holding Dusty in his arms, felt her agitation, then suddenly her lips parted and her breathing came light and fast. She began to moan, not in pain, but in something like ecstasy.

  He continued to hold her, almost afraid to wake her, completely mesmerized by the vision she made in the light spraying through the window.

  Then he felt her body began to undulate. Pressing herself against him, she was asking, and some imaginary lover was responding.

  But it wasn’t him.

  Moments later she shuddered, then went limp in his arms. The smile on her face was one of total satisfaction.

  Nick Elliott was as aroused as he’d ever been in his life, and the woman who’d caused this state of anxiety was floating in what appeared to be sleepy afterglow in his arms.

  What in hell was happening?

  The answer that came to him surfaced from the depths of his mind. Don’t ask questions, Nicky, just go with the flow. But don’t wait too long. I don’t think there’s much time.

  He took her home and put her to bed. She talked to him, yet he was never certain that she was totally awake.

  “Stress,” he told himself.

  “Spirits,” she contradicted sleepily.

  “It’s just the mind’s way of handling a situation that you don’t want to face,” he said, repeating the words he’d been told when he realized that he’d lost part of his memory. Then he realized that not only was she not listening, she was sleeping soundly.

  Off came the costume. She couldn’t sleep in a hoop. The undergarments seemed uncomfortably authentic, and he removed them as well, revealing her firm breasts with full pink nipples. The scrap of lace that covered her lower body was almost nonexistent. Nothing at all like what the real widow would have worn.

  It was then that he saw it, the tattoo that he’d spoken of in such cavalier terms on her arrival. It was on her thigh, etched in blue and silver: a sliver of a moon from which was hanging a star. Trailing beneath the design was a delicate suggestion of … stardust.

  He felt himself harden once more. In fact, he was never totally free of the incredible sexual urge that flared between them. Her spell had merely intensified as she wove her ghostly tale in the darkness of the plantation parlor. He still couldn’t begin to understand where she went when she began to speak or how much she was experiencing and how much she was simply creating. But it was obvious to him that sexual climax had been the end result.

  At least for her.

  He was reduced to touching her, to feeling that breast and seeing the nipple pucker beneath his touch.

  She moaned.

  He groaned and started to move away.

  “Don’t go, Clay,” she whispered. “I’ve waited so long—so long. Stay with me.”

  “No,” he said with a groan. “I can’t. I want you—Nick—not Clay. I can’t take advantage of you if you don’t know the difference.”

  She let out a dramatic sigh. “I know. Kiss me, my magic man.”

  At that point he knew she was awake, awake and tempting him. He struggled with this idea, wondering why they continued to tempt each other, push and then pull away. As she reached up and pulled him down, he lost the battle and brushed his lips across her parted ones.

  “You know what you’re asking for, wildcat?”

  “Oh, yes,” she said, wildness surging through her veins. “Oh, Nick.”

  “Why? Why me? Why now?” But his question got lost in the heat of her touch, in the willingness of her body to mold itself to him, in the incredible pounding of two heartbeats that rumbled like a freight train skidding down a mountain incline and its echo.

  And then he was kissing her and kissing her, over and over, tasting, touching, seeking. In the moonlight she could see the lean, hard planes of his face, the scar, the incredible strength and power of the man. His eyes were closed, as if he wanted nothing to interfere with the hot sweeping caresses he was making.

  He pulled away briefly, then as she rose to follow him, he pushed her back. “I can’t stop,” he rasped out. “God knows, I tried. But the need is always there and it’s growing stronger. I can’t think about anything but plunging myself inside you. And tonight I will.”

  Then he was sprawled across her, his hard pulsating manhood caught between them. She spread her legs, opening herself to him, moaning in soft urgency. But he didn’t respond. Instead his fingers slipped down her body, seeking that place that throbbed in hot desire beneath the lace.

  In her most secret place she felt a flood of heat rising beneath his touch. Nothing had prepared her for these feelings. No place she’d ever been, nobody she’d ever known had forged such intimacy, such need.

  She gave a soft cry and put her arms around his neck, forcing him closer. But he refused to move completely over her. Everything felt so right. Her softness against his hardness, her body seeking and finding the heat that he was emitting. This was meant to be. There was no doubt in her mind now as every fiber of her being asked and reached out for this man.

  Her fingertips found scars that rippled beneath her touch, her lips found corded neck muscles. Then, as he continued to drive her mad with his hands, she slid her hand down between them, searching for that part of him he was withholding. But he was maddeningly out of reach, and she was bordering on exploding.

  “Nick! Please, Nick. Open your eyes. Look at me! I need to know that this is as real for you as it is for me.”

  His hands stilled.

  His eyes opened.

  And then she knew. He was as totally committed as she.

  “I always knew,” she whispered, “that this was an enchanted place. It was too important. I needed it too much. And it’s called me back every day that I’ve been away. I just didn’t know why.”

  “You still don’t,” he said with a growl. “This is lust, lady—pure, raw, unadulterated sex—and it’s damned good. Don’t make it more than it is.”

  He moved over her and found her aching secret place, then drove himself inside. Her body closed around him and she cried out at the exquisite wonder of his invasion.

  As he moved she felt the swell of heat increase, the quick hot response that met his passion and caught fire. She’d known instinctively that it would be like this with Nick. Now they were moving together like that sleek, powerful train in the night, building and building until at last they flew over the edge and found what they’d both fought against, longed for, and feared.

  Completion.

  Peace.

  Afterward she clung to him, her skin moist with sweat. He lay still, as if he were as stunned as she. Then he eased off her and collapsed beside her, his breathing coming deep and fast.

  She turned her head and studied him in the faint light coming from the hallway. She touched his face, instantly aware of the return of his tension.

  “Don’t touch me.” His voice was ragged and hoarse.

  She continued her light caress. “A little late for modesty, isn’t it, Merlin? Besides, I like touching you.”

  “You’re a strange woman, Dusty O’Brian. I’ll bet you brought home all the strays to care for.”

  “Except for this place,” she said carefully, “I never had a home. But yes, I looked after those who needed me.”

  “Like who?”

  “There was a woman once. Her name was Martha. She lived on the streets. I brought her food every day for a year, took her to the doctor, looked out for her. Then one day I saw her driving by in a limo.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “Her family fou
nd her and took her home. She never even said good-bye. I didn’t hear from her again.”

  In a surprising move, his arm slipped around her, drawing her head against his chest. “Not like Hattie, huh?”

  “No, not like Hattie.”

  They lay quietly for a time. Dusty was afraid to speak, afraid to break the fragile mood of belonging that seemed to have fallen over them.

  Finally he started to move away.

  “What are you doing?” she asked.

  “I’m … I don’t know. We shouldn’t have done this, Dusty,” he answered, and sat up on the side of the bed.

  “Why? You’ll never convince me that you weren’t as involved as me.”

  “I wouldn’t even try. At one time I thought we’d sleep together and that would get rid of that old sex thing that keeps getting in the way of a resolution to our problem.”

  “And it didn’t?”

  “No. I’m afraid it made things worse. We can’t share a bed, Dusty. We can’t even share this house.”

  She felt a sharp pain stab her in her chest. He meant it. They’d made the most incredible love she’d ever experienced, and he was saying that it had been a mistake. She couldn’t let him be the one to walk away. She had to do something—fast.

  “Well, I only have one thing to say, magic man. You have another life, another house. This is the only one I have. If you truly don’t want to be with me, then go.”

  He stood and looked down at her. Her face was flushed, her silver hair spread across the pillow. She was the most enchanting woman he’d ever met. In spite of her prickly outer shell, she was warm and giving. What in hell was he going to do now that she’d put it on the line?

  He shuddered. “I can’t, Dusty. And yet I know I ought not to be here in your bed. It’s not fair to you.”

  She raised herself up, unaware of the picture she made lying there in the bed still filled with the smell of their lovemaking.

  “You don’t have to worry about that. I’m already a fallen woman. I was destroyed before I got back here. You can’t do much more to me than has already been done.”

  “Nobody stays down if they want to get up, Dusty. Maybe it’s time you thought about going back to clear your name.”