Handful of Dreams

by Heather Graham

“So why didn’t you tell him the truth?” Harley demanded, his eyes narrowing so protectively toward her that she wished she hadn’t spoken.

  “Harley, to what good sense could I correct the man now? He condemned us both. Let him stew in his own juice. Besides, Harley, I’d like to do some serious damage to the man, really I would, but it would just be too awful to make, him realize that he avoided his father when Peter knew that it was the end.”

  “Oh, Sue,” Harley murmured. He pulled her head against his chest. She felt a little like a child again, protected by an elder brother. It had been like this with Carl. Comfortable.

  Not like being touched by David Lane. Touched and set afire with longing…

  “I assume he resents Peter’s terms regarding the beach house?” Harley murmured.

  “You assume right.”

  “I thought you were going to give your interest in it over to David.”

  “I was—until I met David.”

  Harley didn’t answer for a minute. He made a wide sweep to the music, which had changed; it had become a slower number.

  Susan chuckled softly. “Harley, don’t you think we ought to go back to the table now? I don’t want Nora to start thinking the worst of me!”

  “Nora never would,” he replied absently. “Susan, I don’t want you tangling with David Lane.”

  “Harley, you don’t even know him!”

  “But it seems to me that you’re set on a dangerous course. Dad has known David for years, he likes him a lot, but he thinks he’s tough as nails.” Harley hesitated a minute, as if he were doing a little soul-searching before going on. “According to Dad, David was one of the most easygoing guys you’d ever want when he was in high school and college. He fought with Peter because Peter set impossible standards for him. But he’d do anything. Jerry almost got kicked off the summer baseball team once, but David pulled him through, doing extra practice with him. If a homely girl had a crush on him, he’d be nice and gentle. If someone laughed at her, he’d be all the more gallant. He had everything and it didn’t affect him. And then…”

  Susan stared at him wonderingly. “And then what?”

  “He went away.” Harley shrugged. “Dad says he could never put his finger on it but that something had happened to David. Something you couldn’t see on the surface, but he had changed. Not that he wasn’t still courteous. Just that there seemed to be a ruthless quality to him underneath the surface. As if you’d be a fool to underestimate him.”

  “I’m sure that’s true,” Susan murmured lightly. Oh, yes, there were numerous qualities to David Lane. She wouldn’t put a damn thing past him. Not after their initial meeting. Not after she had found herself on the floor….

  But neither could she doubt the power of his charm, she thought bitterly. Not after she had felt the brush of his whisper, and then his kiss, and then fallen into his arms without a grain of sense, willing to forget everything in the heat of the desire he had so expertly kindled.

  She stiffened, remembering the night. The utter sense of magic. And then the morning, finding the check.

  She laughed and lifted her chin to Harley. “I don’t give a damn about the man’s past, Harley,” she said coolly. “If he wages war against me, he’s got a battle on his hands.”

  Harley shook his head dolefully. Lawrence tapped his shoulder, and Harley gave up his dance partner to go find his wife.

  It was a good evening. Lawrence was a nice man, tall, well dressed, pleasant in appearance, and even more pleasant in manner. He was a nice, nice break after David Lane, complimentary and polite. He suggested that Susan go to a movie with him the next week, and she hesitated. She liked Lawrence, but there was simply no chemistry between them, and even if the movie was just a casual date, she didn’t want to take chances with him, not when he was recuperating from a divorce.

  She didn’t want to hurt his feelings. She told him she had to catch up on some work and that maybe in a month or two they could get together.

  It was about two A.M. when they finally decided to leave. Lawrence offered to drive both Susan and Carrie home, and because of it, Susan got to hear about David Lane all over again from Carrie—in glowing detail.

  “I’ll never forget what he did for me once,” she said with a laugh. “It was the summer after our senior year. I’d realized by then that he wasn’t going to wake up one morning and be madly in love with me. I had a date for one of the summer dances, but my date started by spending the evening trailing after one of the town beauties. David must have noticed, because he danced the night away with me. And consequently, of course, everyone else there thought I had to be magic if David thought so! I left that place the belle of the ball. It was great.”

  They’d reached the beach house. “Let’s walk Susan in,” Lawrence told Carrie. “It’s so dark and deserted out here.”

  “Oh, yes, we should, shouldn’t we?” Carrie murmured. She looked at Susan with an unhappy grimace. “Seems our new burglar was at it again. He broke into one of the cottages just south of here.” She paused, not willing to go any farther.

  Lawrence continued, apparently assuming that it was better for Susan to be frightened and careful than unfrightened and comfortable.

  “Things got a little worse. A young college professor’s wife was assaulted.”

  “Oh!” Susan said nervously. “Then thanks—I’ll check out all the closets while you two are still here.”

  Carrie and Lawrence waited in the foyer while Susan gave the house a fleeting check. She looked into her own room, then Peter’s, but the door to David’s bedroom had been closed the morning he had left and not reentered since. Susan couldn’t open it; the whole thing was actually silly, anyway. The front door hadn’t been tampered with and neither had any of the windows. She was alone and a little gun-shy, that was all.

  “Seems to be clear,” she told the two in the foyer cheerfully. She gave them both friendly kisses on the cheek. “Thanks for a great evening.”

  “My pleasure,” Lawrence told her. “I’ll be looking forward to getting together again soon.”

  “Me too,” Carrie said with a grin and a yawn. “Umm, I think I need to get home, too, my dear escort.”

  He shook his head, looking at Susan. “She’s always been as bossy as all hell!”

  “Oh, I am not!” Carrie protested.

  Still grimacing, Lawrence prodded her out the door. “Lock up!” he called back to Susan.

  “I will!” she promised, and she did, smiling and thinking that those two friends might be just what the other needed. Maybe after all the years, after separate paths, they just might discover each other.

  She leaned against the door, reflecting that she had enjoyed the evening and that there would be many evenings ahead in her life to enjoy. On one of them the right man might come along, someone gentle and supportive and completely charming.

  Someone who could touch her with the same fire as David Lane.

  Someone who wasn’t David Lane!

  She pushed away from the door, flicked the foyer light off and the stairwell light on, and hurried up to her room, delightfully tired. Her feet even hurt. She hadn’t danced so much in ages.

  In her room she quickly changed into a nightgown and flounced onto her bed, certain that she would be sound asleep in minutes—so dead to the world that she couldn’t possibly dream.

  And she was drowsy, so much so that her eyes closed and she felt sleep begin to encompass her like a warm blanket. The wind was rustling gently and the waves were rolling onto the beach outside in a lulling cadence. Her sheets were cool and clean, and everything seemed to be deliriously comfortable.

  Suddenly she bounded from her pillow, chills cascading along her spine. There had been a sound. Not the wind and not the waves, but something totally alien to the whispers and melodies of the night.

  No, she thought, listening alertly, her heart thudding. How long she stayed there, barely daring to breathe, she didn’t know. She tried to convince herself that she had imagi
ned the sound in the parlor, and when nothing else came, she was almost certain that she had.

  Mindy had asked her once if she didn’t think that Peter would come back to haunt the place that he had loved so well. And she had laughed in return, assuring Mindy that if Peter could be a ghost, he would certainly be welcome back in his home and that he would never hurt her.

  Maybe it was Peter settling into his library, lighting his pipe, she tried to muse whimsically.

  She lay back down, but her heart continued to pound. Then she sat up, realizing that she would never sleep and that if she did sleep and someone was in the house, they could creep in on her.

  Silently she reached into her closet for her umbrella—the best weapon she could think of. On bare feet she trod across the room, slowly cracked her door, and looked out. There was nothing, only the gentle glow of the night-light on the stairwell. Hurriedly she tiptoed down the stairs, crept down to the wall, and stared into the parlor. She gave herself a little shake, breathing more easily. She had imagined the sound.

  Better make sure, she warned herself.

  She crept across the parlor to the kitchen door, wondering what she was going to do if she surprised a thief. Maybe she should have gone the other way, into the library. She could have picked up the phone and dialed the police.

  For what, goose? she charged herself. To tell them she heard bumps in the night?

  She went on into the kitchen like a wraith, keeping close to the walls, almost chuckling aloud when she saw that the kitchen, too, was just as she’d left it.

  She turned around, relieved and annoyed that her imaginings had destroyed what had promised to be a wonderful night’s rest, something she hadn’t enjoyed in a long, long time. Not since the day Peter had died.

  Halfway back across the parlor she came to a dead halt, riddled with chills, goose bumps forming all over her body.

  There was someone in the house. Someone who had been in the parlor. Someone who had been upstairs when she had been coming down. Someone who was now moving down the stairway.

  At first she couldn’t run. She couldn’t even move. What had been imagination was now real.

  And then she longed to run. With every fiber in her body she longed to make a mad dash for the door.

  But she couldn’t do that, didn’t dare to. The footsteps were nearing the bottom of the stairway, and if she raced through the parlor to the foyer and the door, she would be caught, just like a trapped hare, desperately trying to undo the bolts she had so studiously fastened before going to bed.

  How had the intruder gotten in? Oh, God! He hadn’t, she realized. He had been there all the while, hiding in David’s bedroom! And she was about to be assaulted because she’d been too disturbed to open that door while help had remained below.

  All this passed through her mind in a flash while she prayed desperately for insight on what to do now. At the last possible second she flattened herself to the parlor wall, right next to the doorway. If she was lucky, the thief would have finished with the house. He would seek a way out.

  And if she wasn’t lucky … well, she was carrying her umbrella as a weapon. Her heart began to race afresh and then to sink.

  The footsteps paused in the foyer, and then they turned, softly, stealthily, coming directly toward her.

  Susan raised her umbrella, trembling. Again the footsteps paused, right outside the doorway. She was sure he heard the pounding of her heart, leading him straight to her.

  Suddenly, too suddenly, he was inside. Looming tall and incredibly broad and completely shadowed in the darkness of the night.

  Near tears, she restrained a cry of terror, stepping forward to lash out at the intruder with all her strength, bringing the umbrella down like a club over his head.

  He ducked just in time but let out a cry of pain as the umbrella sliced over his shoulder. The umbrella was wrenched out of her hands by a ruthless power and sent soaring across the room, and before she could absorb that shock, powerful arms were around her, jerking her arm behind her back, sending her to the floor. She screamed then, loud and desperately.

  “Susan!”

  She was released so instantly that she sprawled down on the hardwood floor, face first. She didn’t know whether to laugh or start screaming all over again.

  Her “thief” was David Lane.

  She rolled, blinking against the sudden harsh glare as he flicked on the overhead light.

  David stared down at her, and for the thousandth time he wondered why he had come. What about her had been like a Circe’s call, beckoning him back, to flounder upon the rocks?

  His shoulder ached and he rubbed it absently, looking down at her incredulously. She had just clubbed him! But seeing her…

  She was flat on her back. Her hair was spread around her like waves of flame, and her features were deathly pale. She was wearing a long white nightgown with slits up the sides that left almost the entire length of one long, tanned limb exposed. And as she returned his stare her lip started to tremble.

  “David!”

  “Who were you expecting?” he asked, still confused, but certain that she hadn’t been attacking him personally. He reached a hand to her; she accepted it, dazed, and stood before him.

  “There have been a couple of break-ins,” she told him nervously. “I—I thought you were the prowler.”

  “Oh,” he said simply, then frowned despite himself. “There’s a prowler in the area and you’re still determined to stay here alone?”

  She spun around, hugging her arms across the low-cut décolletage of her nightgown. “If you’re trying to get me out of here,” she said bitterly, “forget it.”

  He caught her shoulder angrily. “I’m not trying to do anything of the kind! But what if I had been the prowler? You got your best shot at me. You missed and were at my mercy. And then what the hell would you have done way out here, alone?”

  He realized then that she was still visibly shaken, and although he rationally thought she deserved a whole lot more, he relented, releasing her. Susan hurried to the sofa, sinking into it before her knees could buckle under her. She stared at her hands.

  “What are you doing here?”

  “Other than having you crack my shoulder?”

  Her eyes were riveted to his, shimmering, moist and emerald. “I’d rather have cracked you with my palm across the face.” She stiffened with regal poise. “I certainly didn’t really mean to cause you injury.”

  “Well, you did, you know.”

  A little flicker of guilt and concern passed through her eyes. “Want some ice? A brandy or something?”

  “Yes, as a matter of fact, I do,” he told her, intrigued to see what she would be willing to do for him.

  She stood and hurried into the kitchen. David pulled his knit shirt over his head and ruefully glanced at his shoulder. It was swelling up nicely. He sat down in the spot on the sofa she had just vacated. She came back into the room carrying an ice pack and a snifter.

  “You’ve got a good batting arm,” he said, teasing her.

  She didn’t smile but handed him the brandy and set the ice pack on his shoulder, her brows knit in a frown as she did so.

  “What are you doing here?” she asked, her eyes on her task. But she was close. So close that he could inhale the subtle scent of her perfume and remember; so close that he could have moved his hand and caressed her breast.

  “I came to make you realize that it was uncomfortable to have to share a home,” he told her, watching her. But her eyes didn’t come to his. She finished adjusting the ice pack and straightened, and to his amazement she smiled.

  “I see. You were trying to disturb me.”

  He grinned wickedly in return. “Yes—maybe I was.”

  Susan laughed, sailing across the room to the door, only turning back when she reached it. “I’m sorry, Mr. Lane. I’m not disturbed. I’m thrilled to death. You may be any number of things—which I’ll restrain myself from vocalizing right now—but at least you are not a t
hief. I’m delighted with your appearance. I’ll get a good night’s sleep and you can tangle with the prowler if he should decide to show!”

  “Miss Anderson!” he said, calling her back.

  She paused, one brow delicately raised.

  “You’re not feeling … charitable this evening?”

  “Oh, I only give to any cause once, Mr. Lane. Where you’re concerned, I haven’t a charitable bone left in my body!”

  She disappeared up the stairway. David winced; his shoulder was throbbing.

  Yet, he thought miserably, it didn’t pulse with anything near the flame of desire that just seeing her brought to him.

  Why the hell was he here? What had he thought he could prove? Ah, yes! He’d wanted her to know how uncomfortable it could be to share a house, to be surprised at any time.

  And all he had achieved was a burning shoulder and something more than the misery of longing. Dear God! He wanted to believe in her! He wanted to pretend that there was no past, that the vulnerable beauty he had touched before was the truth.

  He set his mouth into a grim line. There were things of his father’s that he had a right to: memories, the house. There were things in the past that he had no right to—and she was at the top of that list.

  David sighed and rose. He’d been waging a war—and waging it against himself. She’d never really wanted to fight him; some sense of outrage had simply forced him to drive her into a corner. The whole thing was insane. His best move would be to sue for peace, relent to what had been, after all, Peter’s wishes. Maybe then he could get on with his life and forget her.

  Upstairs, he threw open the windows, grateful for the cold night air. He lay down, lacing his fingers behind his head, staring into the darkness of night, but seeing things that lay in the past. His thoughts ebbed and flowed like a tide. They wouldn’t allow him to sleep.

  He started suddenly, tensing as his bedroom door opened. A glimmer of moonlight filled the room, enough so that he could see her. In her white nightgown she looked like a Grecian goddess, as virginal as an ancient maiden doomed to be sacrificed. She moved so lightly, like a wraith, like a nymph….