A Dream to Cling To

by Sally Goldenbaum

  “What—what do you mean, Sam?”

  “I mean you, my dear Brittany. I like being with you, very much, and I find you creep into my thoughts at the damnedest times. And if you can do that to me, well, then somehow it seemed I could call you.”

  “I see.…”

  “So that’s why.” He wondered what she looked like, touched by sleep, in that wonderful old brass bed that he’d seen through her bedroom door when he’d left her carriage house. Would she be stretched out, or curved into a warm ball? Her hair would be sexily mussed, her eyes hazy and flecked with moonlight. She probably wore a long flannel nightgown that wrapped itself around her and covered her feet from the cold, the kind that would slide with feathery softness up her legs and over her thighs and the gentle curve of her hips. Her cheeks would be flushed, her lips soft and gently parted.

  “Well, Sam,” she finally said, and he could hear her shallow, quick breathing, “I guess that’s fair. Tell me … about the sky you saw.”

  He leaned his head back against the couch in his small den and kicked off his shoes. His lazy smile spilled over into his voice. “It was a wonderful sky, Brittany.”

  She gave in to the lovely cadences of his voice, sinking back into the plump pillows, closing her eyes and playing his words across the screen of her mind until they formed into images.

  “The lights in the city blinked off about the time you went to sleep, leaving the galaxy shining in all its glory. Ursa Major was so low, I nearly reached up and touched her! And there are rich fields of stars everywhere tonight.” His voice grew husky. “It’s truly beautiful, the kind of thing you share with someone special.”

  “And the Milky Way?” she asked dreamily. “Tell me about the Milky Way, Sam.”

  “It’s splashed so beautifully across the sky, you’d be sure you could walk along it to the other side.”

  She saw it clearly, two figures side by side, floating across the ebony sky on a glittering white carpet.

  “I would have ventured across if you had been with me,” he said.

  “And what would we have found on the other side?” she asked. Night had soothed her fears and Sam’s physical absence from the room left her feeling brave and daring. None of this was real anyway, it was all an enchanting dream. “Would we have found Oz, Sam?”

  “Oz would have been just the beginning, my love. There would have been wonderland and paradise and fantasyland all wrapped up together.”

  “Mmm. Sounds nice. As nice a dream as a person could have.” She burrowed deeper into the warmth of the covers and played with his words. Sam’s presence was so real there beside her, she felt she could reach out and rub her hands across his chest.

  They were both silent for a long moment, the phone line between them connecting their spirits as they frolicked as freely as children on a finely spun dream.

  “Sam …?” Her word sought him softly.

  “Hmmm?”

  “Are you falling asleep?”

  “Asleep? If that means the nice, gently drugged feeling of having a beautiful woman beside me, then maybe I am.”

  “You seem close, Sam.” She felt a gentle stirring within her.

  “It’s a strange thing, Brittany. I can feel you here, nestled right into my side with your hair rubbing against my cheek. It’s very nice.”

  “We’re a little crazy, Sam. It must have been the chili and the birthday cake.” The stirring grew without warning into a dancing fire.

  “I guess we’d better go to sleep.” His voice was strangely thick.

  “Yes. I guess we’d better.” She licked her bottom lip and wondered how firm the Milky Way was.

  “Brittany?”

  “Yes?”

  “Look out your window. And that will be my good night.”

  She didn’t hear the click but knew Sam had hung up. She couldn’t feel him there beside her anymore. Slowly she turned and looked out the window.

  The blackness was pushed back and the stars had disappeared. Brilliant rosy streaks were moving up from the horizon and painting the sky with color, heralding the new dawn.

  Seven

  “I’m exhausted, Sam,” Brittany said. “Absolutely wrung out. Why is that? A day with Petpals never used to tire me out this way.” She lifted one brow and eyed him across the small wooden table in Ralph’s Bar and Grill. The warmth of the fire in the rough stone fireplace in the corner was slowly seeping into her bones.

  Sam’s eyes were dark in the shadowy booth. He lifted one shoulder in a shrug. “Darned if I know, Brittany. “I’m not tired at all.”

  “It’s you, Sam. You’ve cast my life into confusion.”

  “Don’t let a little tea dance throw you.”

  She couldn’t help but smile as she recalled the rather unorthodox entertainment he had helped engineer at the Elms today. Actually, he said it had been all Frances’s idea. She had been complaining that the Elms needed some more lively activities, something other than bingo, and she and Sam had decided to start a play-reading group. But their first meeting, today, had been a dance in the physical therapy room.

  Brittany’s smile deepened as she remembered Sam gliding across the floor with Frances, then she shook her head. “It’s not the tea dance that’s thrown me, Sam, and you know it. It’s you.”

  He captured her hand between both of his and rubbed it gently, noticing how long and slender her fingers were. Like a piano player’s, he thought. Beautiful hands. There was so much about her he had yet to discover. Patiently he waited for her to say more.

  “This working relationship isn’t quite orthodox.”

  “Listen, Brittany, who’s to say how people should work?”

  “But half the time we don’t even talk about the game, Sam. Today, for example—”

  “Today, lovely lady, while enjoying a Strauss waltz with the director, I found out that your father has given money to build a gazebo and an exercise pool for the Elms, and that he used to go to school with the receptionist, and that once in grammar school he organized a picket line when he thought the school policy on homework was unfair to the kids.”

  Brittany’s brows shot up. “I knew about the Elms, but a picket line …?” A small, incredulous smile lifted the corners of her lips.

  “And I breakfasted with Meredith O’Leary before you were probably out of your wonderful brass bed. She’s the lady who handled your father’s campaign when he ran as a Democratic candidate in an all-Republican district for city councilman, again because he thought things needed a little shaping up.”

  “And he lost.”

  “Doesn’t matter. He should have won but the odds were against him. He knew he’d lose, but he’d wanted to make a point.”

  She nodded. “I don’t know why Dad took risks like that.…”

  “Kept him alive, Brittany.” Sam rubbed her cheek with the back of his hand. “Meredith had dozens of stories to tell. Great stories. You know, I have yet to meet him, but in a funny sort of way I’m going to miss him when this is over.”

  And she was going to miss Sam Lawrence, she thought, in a not so funny sort of way.

  “So, Brittany,” he said softly, “I am working on the game when I’m with you.”

  “But I don’t need to be there for you to do those things.”

  “That’s where you’re dead wrong. Having you by my side not only opens the doors to me—those people at the Elms love you, you know—but it’s more than that. You have a spirit about you that conditions all this, heads me in the right direction. It’s hard to explain. You are my lovely muse.”

  She studied him in the shadowed light, his handsome head bent as he spoke. When he lifted his head, the look in his eyes reached clear within her. “Is it upsetting you, Brittany?”

  “No,” she said too quickly. “I mean, not really. It’s not working with you that’s a problem, Sam.”

  “Good.”

  “It’s simply you.”

  He raised one brow but kept silent.

  “It’s you and
me.”

  “That’s better.”

  “Sam, listen.” She squeezed his fingers tightly.

  “Okay. It’s you and me and the fact that we seem to be liking each other better than expected.”

  His dramatic tone drew a smile from her.

  “You might put it that way,” she said.

  “Or”—he ran a finger over the curve of her cheek, then slowly drew it across her lips—“one might say there is a kind of magnetism between us. An animal magnetism. A sexual magnetism.” He paused. “Couldn’t one?”

  His charm wound around her until she leaned forward across the tabletop. “Yes, Sam, one could say that. One could also say that we’re a—a distraction to each other.”

  He mulled that over while he played with her fingers.

  “It’s true, Sam. And you … well, I know you can’t be getting much more sleep than I am after we talk on the phone before dawn every morning.”

  “Less.”

  “Well, there, you see? That can’t be good for work—your work, or mine. And—”

  He lifted her hand again and pressed her fingertips to his lips. His eyes were shining. She slipped her hand free and held it in her lap.

  “And where will it go from here?” he asked. “Is that what’s bothering you?”

  She lowered her head and traced a wavy line across the tabletop with one finger. She nodded slowly. “Perhaps that sounds foolish to someone like you. But, Sam, I’m different in that way. I—”

  “It doesn’t sound foolish at all, Brittany,” he said gently. “And it’s that ‘differentness’ that’s thrown me to the end of the universe here too.”

  She met his eyes. She wasn’t very good at baring her soul like this, but she had started it. She might as well plunge in all the way. “The casual part of you and me disappeared a while back, and what’s left is a problem.”

  He nodded. Lord, she was doing it again, he thought, drawing him into her with her eyes, throwing him off balance, out of touch with tomorrow. He wanted her so badly, his skin ached.

  “And,” she added so softly he could hardly hear her, “I’m not sure what to do about it. I think I need a little distance here.”

  “People make problems. I want you very badly, Brittany. That’s not a problem, it’s a pure, overwhelming desire that’s driving me crazy.”

  She snagged a breath. “I know what you mean. Maybe it’s all just physical, Sam …”

  The words were hollow when they hit the air, and they laughed together. “It sure as hell is physical,” Sam said. “I’ll grant you that. I think the ‘just’ has some problems.”

  She nodded and looked down at the table again for an answer that wasn’t there.

  Sam cupped her face gently between his hands. “Brittany. I’m not saying it’s not complicated. I’m not used to what’s going on inside me, either, but I know one thing—it’s not the kind of thing one throws away, problem or not.”

  No, she didn’t want it to go away either. Maybe that was the problem.…

  “Could we maybe settle into the feeling—whatever it means—for now?” he asked. “See what happens?”

  His eyes did her in. They were so deep and searching, and she found she lost the strength to look away. But when she didn’t look away, she felt herself sinking into a realm that wasn’t safe. Was it all just a matter of time? A matter of time before the tide of emotion swept them up in the passion they both felt? A matter of time before it ended?

  Sam’s eyes told her he cared for her deeply. But what they didn’t tell her was how he handled deep feelings. Did they turn to love? And if that, heaven forbid, was happening, how did a man sworn from permanent relationships handle love?

  She forced a smile and tried unsuccessfully to quell the mixed messages traveling up to her brain. She’d been unable to read them correctly for days now. Why should this moment be different? “You’ve done peculiar things to my powers of judgment, Sam. I think I need a cup of coffee.”

  “No champagne? I think it’s a rather auspicious occasion. I can say in absolute honesty, I’ve never before discussed calmly across a table what you and I are discussing.”

  “Which is …?”

  He tugged on a lock of her hair. “Whether or not we should give in to this incredible, passionate force that is pulling us together.”

  “I haven’t ever discussed it before either,” she said in a small voice.

  Sam stroked her hair, not sure whether to laugh or wrap her tightly in his arms and carry her off with him. Instead, he leaned over and planted a gentle kiss on her lips, then pulled back slightly and whispered, “You’re something else, Brittany Ellsbeth. And there’s not another one like you, not a single star in the universe—and that deserves a toast.”

  She smiled back and tilted her head to one side. “Coffee will be fine, Sam. It will keep me awake just long enough to drive my van home and fall into bed.” She brushed her hair back from her flushed face.

  Sam flagged down a young waitress and charmed her into producing two cups of coffee instantly. “I guess we could both use some coffee,” he said. “And sleep.”

  She cupped her hands around the hot mug and nodded. “Definitely sleep. I may even unplug the phone. Just in case, you know.”

  “Right, you never know when one of those wrong numbers is going to keep you up all night.”

  She smiled. “Or even a right number.”

  “Sometimes they’re the worst kind,” he said solemnly though there was laughter in his eyes. He pulled out a pencil and began drawing on a paper napkin.

  “What are you doing?” she asked.

  “Doodling.”

  “Oh.” She looked closer. “That’s my name.”

  “Brittany Ellsbeth Winters. Right. You’re very astute, tired as you are.”

  She peered closer, but it was hard to see in the dim, smoky light. Finally she plucked the napkin up from the table and looked at it closely. “A game? You’ve sketched a game here, Sam. With my name on it!”

  “Just imagine what the game cards would be.”

  “Sam, don’t be silly.”

  “Girl charms fella. Collect five smackers from bank. And, Girl seduces fella over phone lines. Pass Go and collect a bundle.”

  She was laughing now, the throaty sound filling the small booth. “Boy’s mind goes amuck; girl drives home and goes to bed.” She leaned across the table and kissed him gently on the forehead.

  His shoulders sagged. “Despondent boy wanders off into oblivion. Miss turn and seek help for heartache.” He looked up as she slipped out of the booth, then followed quickly. “You’re sure you don’t want to finish the game?”

  She pushed her arms into her heavy jacket and shook her head. Her lips were smiling but a soft cloud covered her eyes. “I always lose at games, Sam. ’Night.”

  He shielded her against the cold breeze that assaulted them when they left the restaurant and walked her to the old van.

  Then he went home and fell across his comfortable bed that usually crooned him to sleep in seconds.

  But Brittany’s words lingered in his mind like a heavy fog, and for yet another night sleep was long in coming.

  “Well, Sam,” Katherine Winters said gently into the phone, “she didn’t say why she was leaving for the weekend, actually. But she did say she’d be back tomorrow evening.”

  “I see.” Sam leaned back in his swivel chair, his gaze resting on the lush ficus plant near the window. What he saw instead was the tiny flicker of fear that had sparked in Brittany’s eyes the night before. She’d never once, all day or evening, mentioned being gone for the weekend. An uncomfortable, restless feeling ate away at him.

  “Is it urgent you reach her, Sam?” Katherine asked.

  “Well, we have some things ready to go to the printer, and I needed to check them with her first.” It could wait, he thought, but he couldn’t. The urgency to see her was building in him like a bonfire. “Could I call her, Mrs. Winters?”

  “That’s a trifl
e difficult. You see, Gordon used the cottage as a getaway, and he never installed a telephone.”

  “How far away is this place, Mrs. Winters?”

  “Oh, it’s not too far,” she answered quickly, as if the same thought had hit her at precisely the same moment. “Only a couple of hours the way my Gordon drives. You might be able to make it up and back before nightfall, Sam. I think that’s a wonderful idea! Besides, Brittany sounded as if she could use a friend.”

  But not this one, he thought. Simple intuition told him Brittany had purposely put distance between the two of them, and he wasn’t quite sure why. Hadn’t they made some honest headway last night? She seemed almost afraid of him at times. Yet the astounding chemistry between them was undeniable. And he knew she felt it as powerfully as he did. It had been obvious in her kisses, and in her incredible gold-flecked eyes, and in her touch.

  Suddenly, seeing her was the only option open.

  “Maybe if I could do that,” he said, “and just get her okay on this copy.”

  “Yes, dear. A very fine idea. Now, here are the directions.”

  Brittany pulled off the heavy hiking boots and knocked them hard against the back porch railing. Mud and matted leaves fell to the ground below. “That’s just what we needed, Dunkin,” she said aloud.

  Dunkin’s tail thudded happily against the wooden floor.

  She chuckled. “Oh, you’d agree with anything, wouldn’t you? But it is what we needed. We both look better.” Her gaze shifted from the dog to the woods and the winding path she’d just come from.

  She’d walked all the way down to the lake’s edge and back, and the crisp breeze and damp air had performed its magic just as it always did, cleaning out the cobwebs, pulling the threads of her life closer together. Maybe she should just move up here permanently, she thought with a half smile. She could walk, and think, and feed the birds. Brittany the recluse.