“David!” She meant to protest, but she was laughing too hard.
“Susan!” he said, accusing her back and recklessly shedding his jacket, kicking off his shoes, tugging at his tie, and tossing off his socks. “My dear Miss Anderson!” His vest landed on the floor, and he plunged to the bed beside her, working on the buttons of his shirt. “No wife awaits her husband so clad, or unclad as the case may be”—he fingered the gossamer material of her teal gown—“unless she wants to be disturbed!”
He was being atrociously slow with his buttons. Susan shifted to help him. Impatiently he ignored her efforts, cradling her cheek, kissing her lips, her forehead, her throat. His mouth moved lower, over the flimsy material, hot and moist through it. He caught her nipple lightly between his teeth, and the snow’s enchantment, high above them in the velvety night, seemed to touch her whole body.
She brought her fingertips to his hair, then clutched his shoulders.
“You’re definitely disturbing me,” she murmured.
He rested his head against her swelling abdomen for a minute. And for that moment his touch was infinitely tender. But then his eyes met hers, and they were dark with passion.
“Helping you,” he told her. He rolled to sit beside her, shedding his shirt quickly. He stood to rid himself of trousers and briefs. Susan smiled slowly, sensuously, lazily, alive in every sense as she awaited him.
“Helping me?” she murmured as he came back beside her.
“Research,” he assured her, nipping her earlobe.
“Oh!” She turned into his naked chest. “Well, I admit…”
“What?”
“Feet.”
“Feet?”
“I’ve always wanted to write something erotic about feet.”
“Oh.”
He kissed her instep, proving beyond a doubt that an instep could be a highly erogenous zone.
“How about ankles?” he asked.
“Ohhh … surely.”
“Kneecaps?”
“Hmmm.”
“Thighs … hips … intimate, intimate places …”
He asked her no more questions, and she could have given him no more answers. Snowflakes continued to fall against the skylight; warmth burned below it.
At long last they were aware of the sky again, aware of the snow that fell beyond.
“It’s another anniversary, you know,” he told her.
“Is it?” she murmured, languorous and sated.
“It was exactly a year ago today that you walked into my office and threw water all over me.”
“It’s exactly a year since you first accused me of being your father’s mistress!” Susan retorted.
He smiled ruefully. “It wouldn’t have mattered if you had been. I was head over heels in love.” He rolled over, pinning her beneath him, smiling mischievously. “But I am rather glad that you did become my mistress instead.”
“Mistress?”
“Mistress, friend, lover, wife. Mother of Carl Peter or Peter Carl Lane—whichever we decide. Is that better?”
“Much! But there is one problem.”
“What’s that?”
“Carl Peter or Peter Carl just might be a girl!”
“True,” David mused. “Ah hah!”
“What?”
“Carla!”
“But what about Peter?”
“Well, that won’t really matter. Because one way or another, my love …”
“Yes?”
“He or she will be a Lane.”
“Yes,” Susan agreed.
“Well, since that’s settled…”
“Mmm?”
“Think you could handle a little more research?”
“David, one should never, never tire of research.”
A Biography of Heather Graham
Heather Graham (b. 1953) is one of the country’s most prominent authors of romance, suspense, and historical fiction. She has been writing bestselling books for nearly three decades, publishing more than 150 novels and selling more than seventy-five million copies worldwide.
Born in Florida to an Irish mother and a Scottish father, Graham attended college at the University of South Florida, where she majored in theater arts. She spent a few years making a living onstage as a back-up vocalist and dinner theater actor, but after the birth of her third child decided to seek work that would allow her to spend more time with her family.
After early efforts writing romance and horror stories, Graham sold her first novel, When Next We Love (1982). She went on to write nearly two dozen contemporary romance novels.
In 1989 Graham published Sweet Savage Eden, which initiated the Cameron family saga, an epic six-book series that sets romantic drama amid turbulent periods of American history, such as the Civil War. She revisited the nineteenth century in Runaway (1994), a story of passion, deception, and murder in Florida, which spawned five sequels of its own.
In the past decade, Graham has written romantic suspense novels such as Tall, Dark, and Deadly (1999), Long, Lean, and Lethal (2000), and Dying to Have Her (2001), as well as supernatural fiction. In 2003’s Haunted she created the Harrison Investigation service, a paranormal detective organization that she spun off into four Krewe of Hunters novels in 2011.
Graham lives in Florida, where she writes, scuba dives, and spends time with her husband and five children.
Graham (left) with her sister.
Graham with her family in New Orleans. Pictured left to right: Dennis Pozzessere; Zhenia Yeretskaya Pozzessere; Derek, Shayne, and Chynna Pozzessere; Heather Graham; Jason and Bryee-Annon Pozzessere; and Jeremy Gonzalez.
Graham at a photo shoot in Key West for the promotion of the Flynn Brothers trilogy.
Graham at the haunted Myrtles plantation, Francisville, Louisiana.
Graham and the Slushpile Band playing the Memnoch the Devil Ball at the Undead Con in New Orleans, 2010.
Graham with dear friend, actor Doug Jones.
Graham (third from left) with F. Paul Wilson, R. L. Stine, Jon Land, and other friends at the seventh annual ThrillerFest, held in New York City, 2011. The authors participated in the “Be Book Smart” campaign organized by Reading Is Fundamental, the nation’s oldest and largest children’s literacy organization.
Graham (seated center) with her local Romance Writers of America group in Broward County, Florida, 2011.
Graham (second from left) with fellow authors Stephen Jay Schwartz, F. Paul Wilson, and Barry Eisler participating in a panel at the Romantic Times Booklovers Convention, Los Angeles, 2011.
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this ebook onscreen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 1986 by Heather E. Graham
Cover design by Connie Gabbert
978-1-4804-0839-5
This edition published in 2013 by Open Road Integrated Media
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www.openroadmedia.com
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Handful of Dreams Page 27