Night Dreams

by Sandra Chastain

  But most of all, she’d had Jonathan for one magic moment. She’d thought it was enough.

  Except that she hadn’t had him. Nobody had Jonathan, because he wasn’t free. He was still haunted by his past, just as she was by hers.

  The water cooled. The bubbles disappeared. Finally, her hair hanging in damp, curly wisps, she climbed out of the tub, dried herself with a soft pink towel, and reached for her robe. It was late. Her Chinese food was cold and she didn’t have the desire to reheat it. And the thought of watching a movie alone was suddenly too depressing.

  She pulled on her old familiar robe and thought of the burgundy one she’d left behind, leaning her face against her shoulder, freeing a quick, unwelcome fantasy. Jonathan was holding her, lifting her in his arms, and carrying her to his bed. She could feel the strong, hard planes of his body, the ruffle of his hair against her cheek, the touch of his lips on her forehead.

  He’d thought he was so empty, and yet he was a man with so much to give. He’d thought that he was displeasing to the eye, when his scarred exterior only added to his powerful mystique. His dark sensuality was fueled by such energy that the very air was heated in his presence. Yet he was good and caring. And he’d thought he had his life under control, until his daughter had asked him for a future.

  He’d been undone by her request. She’d asked for the one thing he could never give her.

  Would Shannon ever be able to forget?

  Could she ever get past what had happened? Could she go back to the simple, protected life she’d made for herself—and survive?

  From the bathroom she wandered into the small living room that had always been her haven. She’d planned every piece of furniture, every picture—placed it, loved it, treasured the security it brought. But tonight it was just furniture. The music ended and the clock began to chime. The year was ending too.

  On the stroke of midnight the doorbell rang.

  “Willie.” She sighed. “Dear Willie. I told you not to come.” But she was glad he had. He’d have his latest lover with him, a woman who’d be bewildered that her date had chosen to visit another woman on New Year’s Eve. Shannon would reassure him and send him away. She couldn’t let him sacrifice his life for hers, not anymore.

  But suddenly she didn’t want to be alone. She needed someone. Willie and whoever he brought along would fill the emptiness for one night.

  She opened the door and gasped.

  “Shannon.”

  “Jonathan!”

  “I had to come. May I come in?”

  “Why?”

  “I don’t know. I need to be here, Shannon. With you.”

  “Why?”

  “Dammit, Shannon, let me in!”

  His voice was tight and threatening. He was angry. She’d never heard this kind of desperation before. She couldn’t turn him away. Slowly she stepped back, making a space for him to come in.

  A space, a space in her home, in her life. She was inviting him into her world now, into the empty place he’d made her see.

  “I know that I have no right to be here. I have no right to mess up your life with my pain. You’re kind and good, and you don’t deserve this. But I didn’t know what else to do.”

  Jonathan strode into the room and stood in the center, dwarfing the small space with his size. He was bareheaded. His scarred face and black eye patch were exposed. He was wearing jeans and the familiar heavy jacket. His feet were covered with fur-lined boots, and his hair was falling free across his shoulders.

  He looked … untamed.

  “What’s wrong, Jonathan?” She closed the door and walked closer, hesitant, yet drawn by his need.

  “Everything. Everything in my life is wrong. You took the magic out of my life, out of DeeDee’s life. She doesn’t understand why you left.”

  “I couldn’t stay, Jonathan. Give her time and your love. She’s strong now. She’ll survive.”

  “I don’t know. I thought so. Even after she didn’t get what she asked Santa for, once she opened your gift, she seemed happy. She said she understood what you wanted her to do.”

  “Understood what?”

  “That you would come back. She sleeps with that magic wand every night, and she waits. I wait too.”

  “Oh, dear. I’m so sorry, Jonathan.”

  Shannon’s soft voice cut through Jonathan’s anguish. He allowed himself to look at her. She was so very beautiful. Standing there in the soft light, her fine golden hair turning into a halo around her face. It was obvious that she’d just come from her bath. Face flushed, eyes full of concern, she was magnificent.

  And he’d lost her.

  All because he’d been such a fool. But he’d had no choice.

  “I want to tell you about my wife. Mona’s dead now, Shannon, but she didn’t die in the accident. For the past three years she hasn’t known who she was or where she was. For me she was already dead, but her body lived, as a constant reminder of what I’d done. Three weeks ago the hospital called. She’d started to fade.”

  That was when Mrs. Butter had been so worried, when Shannon had found him in the study, when he’d tried desperately to send her away.

  “She finally stopped breathing,” he went on. “I buried her, privately, two days ago. I never loved her, Shannon, but she was my wife. And I kept the world from learning the truth, and DeeDee from hating her mother.”

  “Oh, Jonathan.”

  “I’ll explain the truth someday to DeeDee, when she’s older.”

  “And what will you tell her?”

  “That her birth mother loved her very much.”

  “Her birth mother?”

  “Shannon, DeeDee is a little girl. She doesn’t need to carry around my emotional baggage. She deserves a normal life, with a father and a mother. You know what she asked Santa to bring her.”

  Shannon didn’t answer. She couldn’t. What was he saying? Why was he here? She wondered. Whatever the reason, it was tied up in his grief and his guilt.

  “She asked for you, Shannon.”

  She still didn’t answer.

  “She wants you to be her mother. Didn’t you want the same thing?”

  “I did say that, but I didn’t know what DeeDee had asked Santa for—not then.”

  “I see.”

  Jonathan unzipped his jacket and let it fall to the floor. He walked over to the mantle and studied the painting hanging over it, the painting of Kaseybelle and her imaginary Milky Way Land. “I thought that’s why you ran away, that you didn’t want me.”

  Shannon could hear her heart pounding in the silence. She was glad that Jonathan had turned his head. She didn’t want him to see her face, read it, see how badly she was trembling.

  “She wants you, Shannon, and I,” he said in a tight, raspy voice, “I want to marry you.”

  “No, Jonathan. I can’t go back. I can’t take the pain again. No matter how much I care about DeeDee, I won’t compound the problem by marrying you.”

  “I want you, Shannon. I need you.”

  But you don’t love me, she thought. You won’t allow yourself to love anybody. “Why?”

  “What happened at the mall showed me that I’m ready to leave the castle, come back to the world. But I don’t think I can do it alone. For so long I’ve felt empty, as if everything was dead inside me. Then you came into my life and I dared to believe that I was alive.”

  “I’m the wrong woman. I’m more private than you are. I have no courage. I can’t function in the limelight.”

  “You don’t have to. We’ll stay in the castle, if that’s what you want. You have your office there. It’ll work. We’ll make it work.”

  “No, Jonathan. You’re right. DeeDee needs a regular home, in a regular neighborhood with friends and neighbors. I don’t think I can provide that.”

  “I’ll help you, Shannon. We’ll help each other. I love you, Shannon Summers.”

  But his confession of love had come too late. She couldn’t believe it. “No, that’s wrong. Don’t
you see, Jonathan, we’re both flawed. We’re using each other to be strong. It won’t work for me, but you have a chance to change. You’re free.”

  “And you? Where are your chains? What’s holding you back? I love you, Shannon Summers. I left the castle, flew here on a commercial flight under my own name, and took a taxi to your apartment, all without a single thought of hiding myself from view. Doesn’t that tell you anything?”

  Perhaps he honestly believed he loved her. Could it be possible? No, she’d learned long ago not to trust anybody who professed love, not even herself.

  “Jonathan, I’m going to try to explain why I can never be who you want. I can’t be depended on. I’ve never told anybody this, not even Willie. I’ll let you down, just as I let my mother down. Love means that a person is there for you. I won’t be.”

  “That’s nonsense. You’re the most trustworthy person I’ve ever known.”

  “No, there’s something wrong with me, Jonathan. No matter how bad things were for my mother, she always came back to me. She depended on me. But the one time she needed me most, I left her. And she killed herself because of my weakness.”

  “Shannon, I know about your mother. I had Lawrence check on her. Sofia was a boozed-up has-been who played on the sympathy of the last person on this earth who’d allow her abuse, her daughter. You had nothing to do with her killing herself. She’d been doing that for years.”

  “Yes, but if I’d been there, it wouldn’t have happened. I left. I told her that I’d had enough and I wasn’t going to watch her destroy herself. I wanted a life of my own. And I ran away. I was a coward. I let her die, Jonathan.”

  “No, walking away was strength. Staying would have been weak. I know, Shannon. I just walked away from my guilt, and I’ve come for you. We need each other.”

  “You’re wrong. Didn’t I just walk away from DeeDee?”

  “Shannon, stop punishing yourself. Please don’t turn me away.”

  As he waited for her answer, Shannon felt an invisible weight shift inside her. He was right. It wasn’t protection from hurt that had forced her to seal herself away from the world, it was guilt. The fantasy she’d created for a little girl had protected the child, but she wasn’t a little girl anymore. Kaseybelle had been passed on to another child who needed an anchor in an uncertain world. But Shannon had retreated to the safety of her old life.

  “Ever since I left you,” Shannon said, “I’ve felt as if I’m drifting. I’ve lost my focus somehow, and nothing seems quite right.”

  “I know.” Jonathan took a step toward her, caught sight of her panicky expression, and stopped.

  “I never asked for anything in my life, except for someone to care about me. That’s why I created Kasey, my imaginary friend.”

  “And I created the DreamGirls. Not because I was lonely, but because I’d been hurt. The company and my lifestyle were the proof of my success, my armor against failure. But we were only fooling ourselves, Shannon.”

  He was right. She didn’t need an imaginary fairy. Life had its own rewards, if she were willing to reach for them. And she wasn’t alone, unless she chose to be. Looking at Jonathan’s stern face, lined with worry, she understood that he was hurting for her now.

  And he’d come for her, offering to be her strength, asking her to be his strength.

  “Yes. We were deluding ourselves,” she answered. “And if I reach out for you now, Jonathan, I’ll be using you, just as I used Kasey. And you’ll be using me too.”

  “You won’t come back with me?”

  “No, I can’t.”

  “Don’t you care that I love you?”

  “Oh, yes. Never think I don’t. But love isn’t enough. Love only gives us the power to hurt. To survive that hurt, we have to find our own strength.”

  Jonathan let out a low curse and gritted his teeth. “And you think you have a monopoly on martyrdom. Well, you don’t. I’ve carried my own load. But the difference between you and me is that eventually I got smart.”

  “I’m happy for you, Jonathan.”

  “Yeah, that and a buck will buy a cheap beer. Thanks, Shannon. If you change your mind, let me know. DeeDee set her mind on having a wedding on the mountain. She made Lawrence leave the Christmas star. It’s going to be the first one on the Milky Way. All the Chocolate Sprinkles will be there.”

  Shannon couldn’t speak.

  “Too bad,” he whispered, “too bad the bride won’t be there.”

  Shannon heard the door slam. She felt the emptiness pressing against her like a physical presence, forcing the air from her lungs and enlarging the lump in her throat until she could barely breathe.

  He’d come for her, and she’d let him leave.

  This time the pain was unbearable.

  “What did she say, Daddy? Did you ask her to marry us?”

  “She said no, DeeDee.”

  The child’s face fell, her lower lip began to quiver as she bravely held back the tears.

  “But I did everything she said. I worked hard and I walked right up to Santa’s North Pole. I sat on his knee and I told him what I wanted for Christmas, more than anything else in the world.”

  “I know, punkin. Santa Claus can bring us things, but sometimes he can’t change people. They have to make their own choices, and no matter how hard we might want something, it doesn’t always work out.”

  “Then I held Kaseybelle and wished with the magic wand. What else can we do?”

  “Nothing, punkin.”

  “Maybe I could ask her? I’m sure if I asked her, she’d change her mind. Will you take me to Atlanta, Daddy, to see Shannon?”

  “No, DeeDee. If Shannon wants us, she’ll come. But we can’t wait for her, we have to get on with our lives. Would you like to take a trip someplace?”

  “No, I don’t think so, Daddy. I think I’ll go to bed now. Tell Lawrence that I guess he can take down the star.”

  DeeDee slipped out of Jonathan’s lap and stood, balancing herself carefully before she began to walk slowly out the door. There was still a noticeable limp, but that would lessen in time.

  His daughter was walking, and that was all he’d started out to accomplish. But along the way a lithe, golden-haired beauty had touched their lives with fairy dust, just for a moment, and the world had become bright.

  He turned his chair to the window and gazed out at the silver star hanging in the trees, his mind shifting back to another afternoon, when they’d donned Russian costumes and created a fantasy world in which they could love without regret.

  Jonathan touched the scar on his face.

  He’d fallen in love with the fantasy, and there was no way he could make it real.

  Ten

  For the next few days Shannon dragged herself to her desk, but Kaseybelle, the Kissy Chocolate Fairy, had lost her charm.

  The cartoon episode dealing with Kaseybelle’s fear in spending the night in a strange place aired, but Shannon knew the writers had missed the point. It wasn’t meant to focus on Kaseybelle’s conquering her fear of the dark because she was a fairy, it was to have centered on Kasey’s finding the strength inside herself to do it without fairy magic.

  The strength she wished she could find.

  Willie flung himself into the NightDream account—literally. He even suggested that his newly hired staff members surround themselves with the products at home and in the office.

  If the world had thought Willie bizarre before, Shannon wondered what they’d think about secretaries and a creative staff who wore the garments to work?

  The next Kaseybelle television story idea was due Monday, and Shannon had no idea what she’d suggest. It was Saturday morning when she ripped the last printout into shreds and added it to the others in the wastepaper basket beside her computer.

  Happy thoughts and magic refused to flow. Instead she allowed herself to type the blackness that had smothered Kaseybelle’s joy. Perhaps if she could get through her own darkness, she could erase the dark mood of the fairy.

/>   Kaseybelle was to meet her new friend, Deanna, by the castle bridge. They were going to capture starfish for the new pond Deanna’s father was building behind the castle. But Kaseybelle was late. First she stopped to help the chocolate ants who were gathering nutmeats for the winter. Then she happened on a mint leaf scheduled to flavor the latest batch of after-dinner candies. It had been caught up in a starstorm of fairy dust and blown out of the kitchen. Kaseybelle took the time to return the mint.

  When she finally arrived at the castle bridge, Deanna was gone. But she’d cried so many tears that the pond had overflowed, washing all the fish they’d already captured over the side and leaving them to wither on the ground.

  “Kaseybelle, you’re just like me,” Shannon snapped, “never there when you should be.”

  But that’s not true, Kaseybelle argued back. I helped the ants and the mint leaves, just like you helped DeeDee.

  “But—but—”

  No more buts, Kaseybelle admonished sternly. Sometimes we can’t know that we’re right. We just have to do what we think we ought to and believe in the magic. You’ve let yourself stop believing, Shannon.

  “There is no magic. Magic is an illusion, meant to deceive.”

  Kaseybelle was persistent. What about Jonathan? What you two shared was magic, wasn’t it?

  “Oh, yes, that was magic,” Shannon typed. “But magic isn’t real. Sofia found that out.”

  Sofia stopped believing too. But you can change things, if you believe that magic is the love in your heart.

  Shannon sprang to her feet.

  Magic is the love in your heart.

  She was carrying on a conversation with her alter ego, and Kaseybelle was making more sense than her creator. So she had punished herself for her mistakes; she didn’t have to repeat them. Just as Jonathan didn’t have to repeat his.

  Listen to what’s in your heart.

  Believe.

  Quickly Shannon began to pack, then abandoned that idea. All she had to do was hurry. She suddenly felt a great sense of urgency. Grabbing her coat and her purse, she made plans. She’d hail a cab and catch the next flight to North Carolina.

  She heard the phone ringing as she closed the door. But she didn’t go back. Whatever it was could wait. Nothing was as important as getting to the mountain.