Handful of Dreams

by Heather Graham

  “You call me if you need anything, young lady,” he told her.

  She smiled. “I will. But I’m really a very self-sufficient person.”

  “No one alive is so self-sufficient that she or he doesn’t need someone else sometime!” He paused, then hurried on as Sam came rushing out to the car, eager for his doggie bag. “You’ll get yours in a minute, you greedy hound!” he said, affectionately scolding the dog. “And you—you should have a talk with David Lane.”

  “Jud, trust me. You don’t know the half of it! Really, we don’t get along. In truth, I barely know the man—”

  One of Jud’s shaggy white brows raised high, and a grin curled his lips. Susan flushed.

  “Seems to me you must have known him,” Jud quipped.

  “I’m going home. And you promised to keep your mouth shut.”

  “I guess I did. But remember, I’m here.”

  “I’ll remember,” Susan said softly. And she drove home smiling because she was blessed with some very special friends.

  December became hectic for her. There were presents to buy; everyone seemed to be having an open house. She prepared a dinner herself, and she had work to do at the same time. A young man from the publicity department at Puma called to give her the dates and cities on her tour on the same day that she received a large box full of presents from her cousin, Madeline, in Canada.

  She was pleased to realize that she was going to Detroit, and the publicist assured her that she was more than welcome to use her free time to hop over the border and see her cousin.

  Things really did seem to be moving well. She could really talk to Madeline, and it would be so nice to be open with someone! To express her fears, her worries—even her growing excitement.

  Lawrence hosted a party on Christmas Day. Susan went, and it was enjoyable to be with friends on such an occasion. But it was a painful day too. There was no way out of it—Christmas was a family day, and Carl was gone … she had no one who was really family anymore. She would, though, she thought, encouraging herself. Next year she would have the baby.

  She smiled and handed out her presents, and she received lovely little things in return. But when she returned home alone, it was to a miserable night. She dreamed that she and David were sitting before a fire with all the beautiful Christmas lights shining. He was telling her how very sorry he was for believing what he had about her. Then they were laughing and he was holding her as tenderly as if she were composed of Stardust, and together they were looking at all the packages they had gotten each other, all ripped open now on the floor beneath the tree. They had bought each other things for a baby. Tiny outfits, a car seat, even a box of disposable diapers…

  She woke up in the middle of the night, clenching her teeth together and fiercely reminding herself that David Lane was involved with a lovely and very pleasant model, that he had never been anything but suspicious and rude to her, and that she could not create a life out of one foolish night of passion.

  She forced herself to think of the present and reality. She had to do some clothes shopping. Her first tour date was in New York itself, and she was due there on the fifteenth for a newspaper interview and a book signing. Clothing…

  It was no good. She couldn’t fall back to sleep. David was as real in her mind as he had once been in this very house.

  Vickie Jameson had a wonderful Christmas party. She’d invited friends from the fashion industry, and for David’s sake, he was certain, she’d included a number of his employees and others from the publishing field. The food was wonderful, the eggnog perfect, and Vickie herself looked gorgeous.

  David spent the evening talking with friends, standing around the piano as they sang Christmas carols, dancing with Vickie … and feeling restless and miserable.

  There was so much warmth around him, but he felt cold and empty and irritated with himself. He couldn’t always have what he wanted! He’d told himself over and over again, but that fact didn’t mean that a man could change what he wanted. He wanted to see Susan again, start over and pretend that they’d never met the way they had. He could stand there and laugh, chat, answer questions, make dates, move along as he had for so long, except that it was all empty now.

  After the last guest left he and Vickie sat on the sofa on the elegantly carpeted raised platform in the living room of her apartment. He leaned back, sipping his Scotch, listening to her tell him about a new play that had just opened off off Broadway.

  Vickie fingered the beautiful emerald necklace that he had just given her and smiled a little sadly, a bit ruefully. She was a beautiful woman and she knew it, and everything in the world was in her favor. It was just David. He wasn’t really listening to a word she was saying, and she knew that too.

  “The actors are all purple ants,” she told him.

  “Nice,” he murmured.

  “The entire audience is asked to watch in the nude. Customary.”

  “Mmm.”

  “A large green elephant has the lead role. He dances just like a dream, but his tenor isn’t up to the polka-dotted giraffe’s.”

  “Probably not.”

  “David!”

  “What?” He jumped at the sound of her wail, and he had obviously been so lost that she laughed—and forced herself to accept the truth with a wistful pain but also with determination. She wasn’t getting any younger. And if she wasn’t for David, well, there was a man out there somewhere to love her uniquely.

  “David, you haven’t listened to a single word I’ve said!” She lifted her elegant fingers when he would have politely protested. “It’s the writer, isn’t it?” she asked suddenly. “The woman in the Japanese restaurant.”

  “What?” The question had startled him; it had also hit home. She could tell by the blue glaze that fell over his eyes.

  “You’re in love with her,” Vickie said very softly.

  He shook his head. “No.” She didn’t believe him, and at last he continued. “It’s, ah, very complicated.”

  “Why aren’t you with her?”

  “I—can’t be.”

  “Can’ts are in the mind!” Vickie sniffed, wondering if she was crazy or not. She was practically throwing a man she adored to another woman!

  He took her fingers gently, curling his own around them. “Vickie …” He hesitated, wincing. “Vick, you’re gorgeous. You’re sweet and you’re patient and you’re—”

  She laughed more easily than she thought she might. “Yes, I am, you fool! But you’re not in love with me and you never will be. Now, let’s get on with this. Why can’t you be with her?”

  “She doesn’t want me.”

  “I don’t believe it. I saw her face when she was with you.”

  David stared up at the ceiling.

  “I swore I wouldn’t … make an appearance in her life.”

  “Why?”

  “That I can’t explain.”

  “Oh,” Vickie murmured, then she chuckled softly again. “Didn’t Erica mention something about her going out on tour?”

  “Yeah. So?”

  “Go with her.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous. Salespeople go on tours.”

  “Don’t you be ridiculous! You’re the publisher and the president. You can do whatever the hell you want, David Lane.”

  She saw his eyes spark, become the piercing crystal blue that was like the sky, and for a moment she knew another sharp pain of regret. But she forced herself to smile.

  “David, I love you, but go home.”

  He didn’t try to argue with her, for which she was glad. At her door he touched her cheek and told her again that she was wonderful.

  “Give me a kiss, David, for old times’ sake.”

  He did. He tasted her tears and his own torment. “Oh, God. Vickie…”

  “Don’t, David. I’m going to cry tonight because I deserve it. But tomorrow—watch out! Thank you for the emeralds.”

  “Thank you for the watch,” he returned quietly.

  They smile
d at one another for a moment, friends. Then David turned and walked into the night.

  He was plagued by the dream again that night. It was so real that he could have sworn he was a young serviceman again. Young and in love so deeply that the sun rose and set in her smile.

  He was lying on the bed, waiting. She was there, smiling, walking toward him, reaching out her arms, sleekly crawling over him, her skin like silk, her touch like flame. They were rolling together, locked, and the love and passion in him combined to make him tremble with the wonder of it all….

  And then the blade struck, and he was, for seconds, too stunned to believe it. But his blood was everywhere, and when he saw her eyes, all he saw was remorse; remorse because she had failed, because he had moved too quickly….

  And then her remorse became fear, because he knew that she hadn’t loved him at all.

  David awoke, shaking and furious with himself Why the dream now? He’d been to bed with a dozen women since, and the dream had only started—since Susan Anderson.

  He lay for a long time beneath the skylight on that star-studded Christmas, pondering it all. And at length he understood.

  He was in love with her. With Vickie and other women he had never been tormented, because he hadn’t been in love. It was an emotion that he … feared. Face it, he thought.

  And it was frightening, really frightening. It had gotten to the point where he didn’t give a damn about the past. Or maybe he did. Maybe he wanted her to lie to him, to tell him that she’d really had no relationship with his father. And maybe he wanted it to be the truth, but he knew it couldn’t be. She had admitted things too many times. Maybe it was frightening because he cared so much that none of it mattered. Caring that deeply was … terrifying.

  David sighed and rolled over. All he knew was that he had to see her again. To hell with the decency of leaving her alone! Vickie had been right; he was the publisher and the president. He could do whatever the hell he wanted, and this time he intended to.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  THIS—THIS!—WAS A nightmare. Susan sat near the doorway, stacks of The Promised Place situated neatly before her, and not a soul stopped by for an autographed copy. People looked at her in such a way that she felt like she was a display herself. But they weren’t coming anywhere near her, and she heartily wished she could crawl away and nurse her embarrassment.

  “Things’ll pick up, don’t worry!” Jarod Malone cheerfully told her. He was the young sales representative from Puma who had graciously met her at the airport, established her back at the St. Regis, and brought her to the bookstore.

  “Will they?” She grimaced, then tried to smile, then actually laughed. “It has to pick up somewhat! My agent is coming by to buy a book.”

  “Good. The newspaper and the talk show should be a little easier. Then there’s always dinner—that’s usually painless,” Jarod told her. “Honest. I use the right silverware and I never spit things across the table.”

  “Good!”

  There were people in the bookstore. Lots and lots of them. Oh, God! She felt like a large green pickle! Never again would she subject herself to such misery.

  “Good God! This is it, isn’t it? The book I’ve been hearing all about! It’s really about Peter Lane, the publishing mogul, isn’t it? Tell me, Miss Anderson, did you know him? How well did you know him? Were there any skeletons in the family closet?”

  Her eyes widened, her throat went as dry as tinder, and her palms were suddenly damp.

  It was David. He stood before her, impeccable as always in his business suit, and stared at her with clear blue eyes that betrayed no recognition.

  Fool! She berated herself for her reaction to seeing him. She knew he lived here. And this was one of his company’s books. Besides, it was his father’s story.

  “Ah, come on! Please tell me; It is based on the Peter Lane, isn’t it?”

  “Ah…”

  Suddenly all those people who had been wandering around, making her feel like a pickle on display, were grouping around her.

  “Peter Lane?”

  “Oh, how fascinating! They say he sold apples in the street when he first came to America.”

  “And that he had a horrendous time in the old country.”

  It was as if a small miracle had occurred. David disappeared, and she was suddenly swamped, signing away, and desperately trying to fend off questions about her personal relationship with Peter.

  Only Jarod, chuckling softly behind her, gave credence to the fact that David had ever been there.

  Two hours moved by quickly; John came by and was jubilant to see how well it appeared to be going. Like David, he made his appearance and then disappeared.

  Her next stop was the newspaper, then she had an interview on a syndicated show. Driving from the bookstore to the newspaper, Jarod warned her that the questions would be probing.

  “There’s only one stop on the tour, though, where the interviewer goes for the jugular. That’s Detroit. Watch out for her. Her name is Tina Shine. We call her Tacky Tina. Other than that, you’ll be fine.”

  Her newspaper interviewer was one of the nicest men she had ever met. In his sixties, white-haired, and potbellied, he wanted to know where she had met Peter Lane, and it was, of course, a question she had expected, one she was prepared to answer. “My brother met Peter first and introduced us.”

  The questions were the same at the television station; her interviewer was an attractive young woman who used five minutes to great advantage. She touched on Susan’s other books, on the extraordinary success of Peter’s life, and on the idea of the American Dream that could, it seemed, come true.

  Jarod was completely pleased with the day. “If the rest of the tour goes this well, it will be marvelous! And this was the Big Apple—a hard place to crack!”

  The Big Apple had also been Peter’s stomping grounds, Susan thought. And David Lane had been there, ready to rescue a disastrous situation. She tried not to think about him, to pretend that he had never walked into the bookstore. But it was impossible. It had been a long time since she had seen him, but those minutes had seemed to wash away the time.

  Especially since she was pregnant with his child.

  “What’s the matter?” Jarod asked her over a meal of cracked crab at a pleasantly subdued fish house on Madison Avenue.

  “Nothing.” She smiled brightly and ate her shrimp Creole.

  He was a pleasant young man. He asked her questions about her brother and her family life rather than about the Lanes. He showed her a wallet full of pictures of his three-year-old twins and his infant daughter and pretty young wife. “We’re expecting again,” he told her with a flush and a grin. “One last try for a boy.”

  “You don’t like girls, huh?” Susan teased him.

  “Oh, I adore them!” he protested. “We both thought we’d give it one last shot. And if it should be another girl, well, that will be great too. She can inherit all the clothing we already have!”

  By nine o’clock he had her back to her hotel room. He left, reminding her to be ready early; a car would be by to collect her for a drive to the airport at eight in the morning; her next stop would be Atlanta.

  “I’ll meet you at the airport,” he assured her.

  Susan smiled, closed her door, showered, and crawled into bed. She stared at a sitcom, a cop drama series, the news, and Johnny Carson. She didn’t see a thing. She kept thinking about being in New York. There might be millions of people there, but David Lane was one of them. He’d walked into the bookstore, but he’d walked out damn quickly, not even saying hello or good-bye. Damn him. She’d vowed to make her life without him, and that was exactly what she was going to do.

  She rolled over but felt as if she didn’t sleep until five minutes before her alarm went off. Lord, was she tired! And horribly, horribly irritable—at David Lane. Thanks to him, she was going to go off to more interviews looking like a cadaver.

  She lay in bed too long and had to rush to be downstairs
by eight. Running so late, she didn’t have time for breakfast.

  But just as Jarod had promised, there was a limo waiting for her. Susan forced herself to smile pleasantly at the portly driver.

  The traffic was awful; it took almost an hour to reach Kennedy. By that time Susan was a wreck, frightened that she was going to miss the plane. She didn’t want to do that; she could just imagine Mr. David Lane’s contemptuous blue eyes when he was told that his author had missed her flight. No. She wasn’t going to mess this thing up in any way, shape, or form.

  The limo driver turned her luggage over to a porter. Susan found her gate number and started running in the right direction. She tripped on the slick pavement, turned her ankle, and got a run in her panty hose.

  She started half skipping and half limping toward the gate.

  People were already boarding the plane, and only a few remained in line. Where the hell was Jarod? she wondered. He was supposed to meet her here! Maybe he had already boarded the plane? No, surely he wouldn’t board without her.

  She had her ticket but not a seat assignment, and so she hurried to the young man at the desk.

  “Hi, I—”

  “There you are! Damn. I hate shaving things this closely!”

  Susan froze while her ticket was snatched out of her hands and passed to the young man at the desk. Chills raced along her spine; they became hot like a dancing fever, then ran like icy rivulets again.

  It was David Lane.

  “This is Miss Anderson, the ticket we discussed earlier,” David said. Stunned and furious, Susan turned slowly. As usual, he was impeccable. He didn’t appear at all rushed or harassed, just thoroughly annoyed.

  The airline employee prepared her ticket and handed it and a boarding pass back to David. “All set, Mr. Lane. Upgraded just as you wished. Uh…” He paused, clearing his throat politely. “If you could hurry a bit to board, please…”

  “Let’s go,” David said.

  His fingers were wound tightly around her elbow, and he was practically dragging her along, forcing her to put weight on her turned ankle. Pain fed on the frantic tempest she felt at seeing him, hence flaming her temper.