Night Dreams

by Sandra Chastain

  “How long have you been here?”

  “We came before DeeDee was born. It was a fortress, to protect her, and her mother. Later, after the accident, it became a haven as well.”

  “Does the mountain have a name?”

  “Oh, yes, but now everybody calls it Dream Mountain. Highest elevation in the South. We get snow here when nobody else does, and the rough terrain limits accessibility.”

  “How do you get out when the roads are iced in?”

  “I have a helicopter now, but sometimes even that can’t fly. Everything anyone could want is here, though. I’ve seen to that.”

  Shannon wondered if Jonathan remained isolated because he was protecting DeeDee or himself?

  She didn’t know how he’d react to her mentioning his face, but ignoring Jonathan’s scar was not the answer. It only fed the mystique.

  “Did you hear what DeeDee said about your face?”

  “Yes. I heard. I wasn’t aware that she noticed.”

  “Is it permanent?”

  Jonathan bowed his head, tightening his fingers into a white knuckled fist before letting out a long disparaging breath. “Not completely,” he said in a low voice. “I can’t bring back my eye, of course. As for the scar, I just haven’t thought about having it repaired.”

  “We all carry scars, Jonathan. Yours are just on the outside where everyone can see.”

  Shannon pulled her feet from the pool and stood. Jonathan followed. They both reached toward the stack of towels on the poolside table at the same time, accidentally touching, then pulling away.

  “Sorry,” he said.

  “That’s all right.”

  “I’ve enjoyed—”

  “So have I. We—DeeDee would enjoy your company more often.” She draped the towel around her just as DeeDee came rolling back into the room in her, wheelchair.

  “Mrs. Butter says that we can have a tea party, Kaseybelle. She’s making tea and cookies. Will you stay, Daddy?”

  “No, I’d better get back to work.” Quickly, as if he regretted what he’d done, Jonathan Dream left the room.

  Shannon had been surprised to see him. She’d expected him to follow DeeDee, but he hadn’t. He’d seemed content to talk, as if they were friends. But that time had passed. DeeDee’s face fell, and suddenly the lightness was gone from the afternoon.

  Thinking quickly, Shannon walked toward the glass wall overlooking the forest. “Wow, those are some big Christmas trees, DeeDee. I guess you must go out and cut your own, huh?”

  “I never go out,” DeeDee answered.

  “You never leave the castle?”

  “Not unless I’m going to the hospital. My daddy says I’m safe here. Going outside is too—tra-mat-ic.”

  “What about shopping for clothes?”

  “Daddy sends for them.”

  “What about school?”

  “I always have a private teacher.”

  “Don’t you ever play with other children?”

  “I can’t play, except sit-down games, and I can do that by myself.”

  Shannon persisted. “But what about—about going”—she was grasping here—“to see Santa? I mean, it will be Christmas soon.”

  “Going to see Santa is silly,” DeeDee said in a quiet little voice.

  “What do you mean, it’s silly?” Shannon still wasn’t prepared for the matter-of-fact way DeeDee answered her. When they were playing make-believe, she was free with her responses. But normal answers came as if they’d been rehearsed, and she wondered if the child were simply repeating what she’d been told.

  “Silly?”

  A slow anger rose in Shannon, an anger that wasn’t new. Adults shouldn’t make children old before their time. They should play and imagine, and anticipate. And they should have friends. Jonathan might think of the castle as a haven, but for DeeDee it was still a fortress. Even as she held Jonathan responsible for DeeDee’s isolation, she excused it, for he’d thought he was doing what was best.

  “It’s silly asking Santa to bring something.”

  “Why? Everybody has a Christmas list.”

  “Not me. It doesn’t do any good to ask for real stuff. Oh, he’ll bring you toys and candy, but not the important things.”

  “Like what?”

  “Doesn’t matter, he won’t bring it.”

  “Maybe you haven’t asked.” Shannon’s mind was working at the problem. Perhaps a visit to Santa had been impossible in the past. She gave Jonathan the benefit of the doubt. “Have you ever written a letter to Santa?”

  DeeDee considered her question for a moment, then shook her head. “Not this year.”

  She’d hit on the problem. “You wrote him a letter last year and asked for something he didn’t bring. Did your daddy write the letter for you?”

  “No, Miss Kelly, my teacher, wrote it for me. I couldn’t tell Daddy. It was ’posed to be a surprise for him.”

  Shannon was beginning to see the problem. DeeDee had asked for something very special, very secret—so secret that she couldn’t even share it with her father. Of course he hadn’t known what it was, so it hadn’t been under the tree.

  Shannon could understand that kind of disappointment. She’d given up on Santa Claus the year she was seven. That was the year her real father had been killed in a plane crash and her nana had retired to a nursing home. It had been late November when her mother had taken her to the toy shop and told her to pick out whatever she wanted for Christmas because, “There is no way I can carry Santa Claus things on Henri’s yacht.”

  “But, Mommie, couldn’t we stay home, just me and you?”

  “ ‘You and I,’ Shannon, and no. I simply can’t pass up an opportunity to spend Christmas alone with Henri. And while we’re talking, I’d appreciate it if you’d find something to occupy your time. Henri doesn’t like children. And if I play my cards right, by the time the new year arrives, I’ll be Mrs. Henri Debierne.”

  Henri had become her first stepfather. He hadn’t lasted as long as the toys she’d chosen. Oh, yes, she knew about getting toys instead of more important things.

  “Well, I bet I know what the problem was,” Shannon said, improvising as she went along. “Your letter probably didn’t arrive. I heard there was an absolutely awful snowstorm at the North Pole last year.”

  “Really?”

  “Really, and a lot of the mail got blown all the way past the pole and ended up on the Milky Way. Of course the little silver sprinkles and chocolate stars didn’t know what to do with letters. They can’t read, you know, so they cut them into tiny little pieces and used them for Stardust.”

  “Ah, I don’t believe that stuff.”

  “Well, Kaseybelle does, and she says there’s one way to be certain that Santa does get your request this year.”

  “There is? What?”

  “We’ll go into town and talk to him. You can walk right up to him and sit on his knee and tell him yourself.”

  “I can?” Then her smiled faded. “But I can’t walk.”

  “The walking part isn’t important”—Shannon hastened to correct her mistake—“it’s the telling that is. And if you can’t walk, we’ll take your wheelchair.”

  But the joy was gone. “No, thank you.”

  “All right. If you don’t want to take your chair, then you’ll just have to walk.”

  “But I can’t.”

  “Your therapist thinks you can. Maybe not the entire way, but maybe we could use your chair until we get to his magic kingdom, and then, if you try really hard, you could manage the steps to walk up and sit on his knee.”

  “Do you think I really could?”

  “I do.”

  “And he’ll bring me what I ask for?”

  “If you work very hard, I’m sure he’ll say that such a good little girl ought to have whatever her heart desires.”

  “Then I’ll work very hard.”

  Jonathan, who’d only gone as far as the balcony, realized that he’d been holding his breath. He t
hought back to the previous Christmas. DeeDee’d had a teacher for a brief time last fall, an older woman who had gone home for Thanksgiving and become ill. He remembered that before she’d left, she had mentioned something about DeeDee writing to Santa, but he’d been too caught up in finding her replacement to listen.

  Damn! He’d blown that, just as he’d blown so many important things in his life. Except for Kaseybelle. Bringing Kaseybelle here had been good. He watched as DeeDee reached up and touched Shannon’s hair. Her small fingers lost themselves in the fine gold mist that seemed to curl into a thousand little crinkles.

  Crinkles. He looked down at his hands and saw that his fingers were digging into his palms. He unclenched them, one by one, and swore. He was becoming as obsessed with the woman as his daughter had been obsessed with the fairy.

  She was so easy to be with. He wanted to touch her hair—that and more.

  Lifting DeeDee in her arms, Shannon stood and walked across the tile floor. In spite of her lithe figure he was conscious of hips, and breasts spilling over the edge of the skimpy NightDream swimsuit. He made a note to order a more modest style.

  Shannon didn’t fit the image of the swimwear that his line represented. It wasn’t that she didn’t have the figure for it—she did. But she was more subtle, softer, hinting at passion instead of assaulting a man with her appeal.

  When DeeDee laid her face against Shannon’s shoulder, Jonathan felt a painful tightening of his lungs that was more than the absence of air. He was envious of his child.

  Jonathan swung around on his heels and plunged down the steps and into the corridor that led to his suite of rooms. He hadn’t expected a stranger to ruin his peace of mind and threaten his tenuous grip on control. Where sleep had always evaded him, now it teased, promising reprise, then swept him into sensual dreams of sharing, of touching, of the Milky Way and travels through imaginary universes—of a golden-haired woman who wore fairy shoes.

  Jonathan slammed the door and turned on his stereo full blast.

  Shannon left the sun room for her own quarters, satisfied that Jonathan’s visit had been a positive move. Talking to him had been easier than she’d expected. Now, if she could just figure a way to get him to accompany them to cut down a Christmas tree.…

  The night ahead would be no different from the others, Shannon realized. After DeeDee went to bed, she would be free for the evening. At home she would have spent her leisure time reading, listening to music, or sketching. But suddenly the quiet of the castle wasn’t comforting.

  Until that afternoon Shannon had caught only an occasional glimpse of Jonathan Dream as he watched from the loft. Now she didn’t have to look up, she could feel his eyes. The sharp tingling that started behind her knees and arched upward announced his presence, and she didn’t want to acknowledge her awareness. Instead she’d forced herself to concentrate on DeeDee.

  But at night she found herself thinking of Jonathan, of walking with him in the snow, of the way her skin heated up at his touch. Her dreams were of her and Jonathan, and the memories stayed with her into the daylight.

  Only when she was with DeeDee could she shake her growing fascination with the man. More than ever Shannon could understand why the child had grown despondent. She loved her father, but he never fully let anyone through the wall he’d built around himself. If only he’d take a real part in their sessions. But he stayed away. Shannon suspected that the pain was as great for him as it was for DeeDee.

  Shannon had never suffered physical pain, but emotional pain was just as devastating. She hadn’t had a Mrs. Butter to cushion her fears. She’d been alone and before Kasey had become her protector, she’d suffered from unspeakable nightmares.

  And holidays had always been the very worst time of year for her. Now it was Christmas, and Shannon vowed that DeeDee would get what she wanted this year, if it was in her power to deliver it.

  After dinner Shannon dressed for bed, then stood at the window gazing out at the courtyard below. Perhaps it was his very absence that made his presence more vivid. It only he hadn’t left so suddenly when DeeDee had returned to the solarium. Shannon could have discussed her plan with him. She could never find a time to reach him during the day.

  But Jonathan Drew was a creature of the night. And Shannon was beginning to believe that it was this place, preying on him. It was getting to her as well. If she were ever going to talk to him privately, she’d better do it quick, before she lost her nerve. Pulling on the velvet robe that Mrs. Butter had brought her that first night, she slipped out her door and down the stairs.

  Now she heard the music she’d only sensed before, rolling up the open stairway. It grew louder as she neared his study.

  Through the open door the sound of cymbals thundered, as if the music were bouncing off the mountains and rolling down the valley.

  Shannon reached the door and paused, allowing her eyes to search the shadowy room for the source of the unrelenting wave of power that seemed forever present.

  “Come in.” His voice was low, yet it carried across the abrupt change to a violin’s eerie wail.

  “Why do you always sit in darkness?”

  “I feel more comfortable. Why do you always sleep with the light on?”

  Of course he knew about the lights. He had been the one who’d turned them off that first night, who’d unlocked her door and entered her chambers while she slept. She wondered how many other times he’d done so. Wondered and shivered.

  “It started when I was a child,” she said, drawing closer to the fire. “I’d wake and not know where I was. I learned to leave the light on—then it didn’t matter.” She shivered.

  “Do I frighten you?”

  “No. Not this afternoon in the solarium. But now, at night? Yes, I think you do,” she said, letting out an unconscious sigh. “Oh, not your—your scar. It isn’t that.”

  “Then what?”

  She heard his movement and realized that he’d stood. Half mystery, half fantasy, half desire, she felt the corresponding link between them establish itself again. “Don’t,” she whispered, and turned to gaze at the fire. “Don’t come any closer.”

  “I won’t. I have no wish to make things difficult for you. I apologize for intruding this afternoon.”

  “You should spend time with DeeDee. As for making things difficult for me, I think you do—when we’re alone. I don’t know what to do about it. There’s a kind of force that surrounds you, and it reaches out to touch me.”

  “It isn’t me,” he said, knowing that his, words were a lie. “It’s the isolation. You don’t want to be here, and I’ve made you change your environment. You’re being forced to form new barriers. It’s understandable.”

  Those were just words, words that might have described himself. He’d known that she was a very private person, that she delegated all public functions and contacts to Willie Hicks. Jonathan had been amused at the man’s name. Most advertising agencies were concerned with projecting the proper image, and a public relations representative in the South named Hicks was taking a risk. They made a good team, Willie and Shannon. Willie took on the world, and she made it secure.

  Then he’d come along and forced her out of her private haven into his volatile one and blackmailed her into staying.

  “Yes, I don’t like changes. I like my life to stay the same.” But it isn’t that, she wanted to say. It’s you, the man. You’re right about making me reform the parameters in which I exist. You’re collapsing my walls, and I feel as if I’m seeping through the cracks.

  Her few words were laced with uncertainty. He ached for her. He’d understood that she was shy, that she preferred solitude to people, and he’d justified his actions by saying that coming here would be a kind of seclusion that would be easy for her. He’d been wrong.

  “If I’ve made you unhappy, I’m sorry. But you must understand that I have to make DeeDee the most important thing in my world.”

  “Of course. DeeDee is a very brave little girl, Jonathan.
She reminds me a lot of myself when I was her age. I care about her, and that’s why I’ve come to talk to you.”

  “Oh?” He hadn’t dared to think that she’d sought his company for herself. Women had always come to him. He doubted the scars would change that. But he hadn’t been interested in women.

  Until now.

  Darkness was his friend, his protector, his self-imposed prison, and his face was his penance, until now.

  “What do you want to talk to me about?”

  “I want to take DeeDee out of the castle.”

  “Why?” He’d built the place to protect DeeDee and her mother, and now himself. He’d made it secure and separated it from prying eyes and the evil of the world. This woman was asking to take his daughter away from the sanctuary he’d created?

  “She needs to live a more normal life. Keeping her up here, away from people isn’t good for her.”

  “No!”

  “Oh, I don’t mean some grand trip, just a normal child’s outing. It’s December, Mr. Dream. December is the most wonderful month of the year for children, the anticipation of Santa Claus, decorating the tree, shopping. Up here, all that’s lost.”

  “All that was lost long ago.”

  Shannon looked away, planting her gaze on the fire. “For you perhaps. You can choose whether or not you take part in the world. But for DeeDee Christmas is important. She needs to believe she’s normal, and I want to give that belief back to her.”

  She wanted to say that she wished she could give the same to him as well. It didn’t matter so much for him, just as it didn’t matter that she’d also found a way to hide herself from the world. But, just for a moment, she allowed herself to think about the kind of relationship two ordinary people might have shared.

  He took a silent step closer. She looked so far away, so detached. He thought that she must be seeing her own ghosts in the flames. There was a sad smile on her lips.

  “I want to give her the magic of Christmas,” she whispered in a soft voice. “Please don’t refuse.”

  There was a plea for hope in what she was saying, and he wondered if it was for DeeDee or for herself. Without knowing that he was doing so, he reached out and brushed her shoulder, allowing his hand to rest there for a moment until she accepted his touch.