A Dream to Cling To (11 page)

“They must have cost a fortune.”

Clyde shook his head vigorously. “We have a deal with Miss Winters, sir. No problem. She takes good care of my grandpop out at the Elms, y’know.” He added as an afterthought, “And we take ’em back if they die or you leave town or something.”

Sam was put in charge of carting boxes out to the dumpster behind the building and moving desks into pleasing positions. He tried to capture Brittany as she glided from room to room, tried to suggest Clyde leave and they finish their decorating in better light—like tomorrow’s sunlight.

But Clyde refused to budge as long as Brittany might
need him, and Brittany seemed again caught up in beautifying his office.

“Brittany, this can wait.…” He caught her for a brief moment, his palm gently cupping her chin.

But she ducked away from his touch and swept at the desktop. “Almost done, Sam.” When she was in his arms, she lost all reason. All she wanted was to press herself to him, to feel his body against hers, giving it life. But an affair was the last thing in the world she wanted in her life. Not with a man who would sail off into the sunset when it was over. Damn! She wanted him … she didn’t want him.… Decorating was certainly far easier to deal with! She jerked a plant from the floor and flew across the room.

“Now?” Sam asked a half hour later after he finally managed to usher Clyde back to his truck.

Brittany looked around. She’d found a few soft, comfortable chairs in the basement, some brass lamps Sam had forgotten he had, and together with the plants, the home of Creative Games looked beautiful. The outer office even had a scattering of magazines on an old oak coffee table, and she had hung several game boards along one wall in a way that suggested the place had real class.

“I can’t believe it,” Sam whispered in her ear. “You’re amazing, Miss Winters.”

She smiled, pleased at his praise. “Thank you, sir. The open-box look was nice, but I think the crew will like this too.”

“They’ll think I’ve gone off the deep end.”

He leaned closer, and his warm breath on her neck made her shiver. Her heart began its familiar racing and she felt the heat of tiny embers that would burst into flame any second. She couldn’t even trust herself anymore! Wrapping her arms tightly around her waist, she nibbled on her bottom lip and stared into the distance to try to consider Sam Lawrence objectively.

But his long hands rubbing up and down her arms
made objectivity quite difficult. She caught his fingers and tried to stop the slow, sensuous movement.

He slowly turned her around until she faced him. “You’ve made a big difference here, Brittany.”

“Thank you, Sam,” she managed to say as she concentrated on calming her heartbeat. “And now for my payment …”

“You name it, Brittany.” His voice had thickened, and she could hardly trust her own.

“Promise me … that the plants will be watered.…”

She seemed so vulnerable as she stood there, he thought, her face turned up to his. This strong, mothering woman who helped old people face the end of their lives with joy … He wanted to scoop her up, to protect her, to let her know it would be okay. That joy was okay. And loving. That they could handle it all, and it would be all right, because he’d never hurt her. No matter what it took, he wouldn’t do that. But beneath his hands he could feel her little quivers of fear.

He brushed a silken lock of hair off her forehead and smiled. “Sure, Brittany. I’ll be sure the plants are taken care of. But now I’d like to take care of you, if I may. Dinner, at least?”

She hesitated for a fraction of a second, not daring to look into his eyes. She knew the force she would see there would be beyond anything she could handle tonight. She knew she wanted Sam Lawrence desperately. She wanted to love him and to have him love her. She wanted to feel his hands on her breasts and his lips on her body. She wanted to see him naked, to slide her lips over his skin and trace his muscles with her fingers, and run her hands down the whole lovely length of him.

So many
wants
, so many deafening desires. She could barely hear herself when she looked up into his bottomless brown eyes and spoke calmly and carefully.

“Sorry, Sam. I have a family dinner tonight. It’s Sara’s birthday.”

His face was filled with a look of such boyish disappointment that it softened the painful edge of her budding passion, and she nearly took him into her arms to comfort him. Nearly, but not quite. It wasn’t the time to slip back into the quicksand.…

“You’re not going to let me thank you?”

When he smiled like that, the boyishness was swallowed up quickly in the sensuous curve of his lips, and she shifted her concentration to the slight cleft in his chin. “No thank-yous necessary, Sam.”

Sam noticed her eyes were focused on his chin and he began rubbing it. “Plant dirt? Mind wiping it off for me?”

She lifted her gaze to his laughing eyes. “You’re quite impossible, Sam. But I’m strong.” She pulled back her shoulders comically and sucked in a giant lungful of air. “See? I can weather tornadoes, even ones that walk and talk and sometimes take my breath away.”

He lifted his hand to her cheek and stroked it tenderly.

The warmth seeped all the way through her. She closed her eyes briefly and let it settle in the very center of her. When she opened them again, there was a new look shining from his own eyes, a gentle, caring look that was almost as difficult to handle as the smoldering passion she’d seen earlier.

“I’d better go, Sam.”

He nodded, and placed a soft, tender kiss on her lips before dropping his hand. “Good night. And give Sara my best birthday wishes.”

She nodded and walked over to the door, then stopped and looked back. “Are you staying here?”

He shook his head. There was plenty of work to do, but he’d get nothing done tonight, not with the sweet smell of her lingering in the air. “I’m going to find someplace to eat. And, since there will be no one around to offend, I think I’ll find the hottest, most garlicky chili in town, pile it with onions and peppers, and have a feast. Maybe that’ll keep me warm.”

She laughed and pulled open the door. “The least I can do is suggest the best. Try Hombres on North Henderson Street. They have chili that will make your ears smoke and eyes water for days. I guarantee it’ll keep you warm. Sam.”

His eyes brightened and his voice was laced with husky innuendo. “You’ll guarantee it? There’s only one thing I could guarantee would keep me warm …”

“Good night, Sam. Sweet dreams.” She hurried out into the safe aloneness of the night.

“Are you asleep?”

Brittany shook her head sleepily into the pillow and attempted to open her eyes, but the task was too great. Rolling over, she slid comfortably back into a wonderful dream.

“Brittany?”

She nodded again, smiling, her head moving in slow motion. Only then did she realize she was nodding to a telephone receiver hanging loosely from one hand.

“Are you awake?” The rumbling voice coming from the phone slowly broke into her dream and pushed it farther and farther away until finally she couldn’t see it anymore.

“Awake?” she mumbled, her eyes still closed beneath the weight of sleep. “That’s a … a rather foolish question … if … you think about it for any length of time.”

“Hmmm, perhaps you’re right.” Sam’s voice was deep and very wide-awake.

“Sam, what time is it?” She pried her eyes open and attempted to look out the window. A velvet, star-studded sky filled the opening.

“Let me see …”

“It’s somewhere between the middle of the night and dawn. Am I close?”

“Well, you might say so. Actually that’s rather a good guess for someone who sounds as sleepy as you do.”

“It’s a nasty habit. Sam. Believe it or not, I almost always sleep away these hours.”

“Pity.”

She pulled the comforter up to her chin and shivered. “You, I might guess, don’t?”

“It depends. Two things for sure could keep me up.” He held the phone close and felt her smile on the other end. “The first is the sky. It’s a perfect sky tonight, Brittany. The wintry air is moving in and cleaning up all the stuff up there, making it so pretty to look at.”

“Oh, Sam … you woke me up for a weather report?”

He ignored her remark. “The Seven Sisters winked at me, the Bear was growling in splendor. It was very special. I wish you’d been there to see it with me, Brittany.”

She smiled. Dreamy images of standing on a mountaintop with Sam at her side, the star-filled sky a backdrop behind them, floated in front of her. “Sam, am I dreaming this?”

“I hope so. I hope you’re dreaming about the two of us lost in a galaxy together, exploring the Milky Way, riding a comet—because the second thing that could keep me up till drawn breaks is being with you, Brittany.”

“Sam,” she said slowly. “Sam, have you been … drinking?”

His husky laughter swept away the icy night chill and teased another smile onto her lips.

“My darling Brittany, I’ve had only one beer, the one I used to wash down that hell-raising chili you kindly suggested I have this evening—”

“
Last
evening,” she corrected him. “And Hombres has the finest chili in Maine.”

“Ah, now I know you’re waking up, to make such a
distinction in time and offer a food critique on top of it.”

“Sam?”

“Yes, Brittany?”

“Why did you call me in the middle of the night?”

“Why did I call you? Well …”

She stirred beneath the downy quilt. She could imagine how his chocolate-colored eyes would look as they grew thoughtful, and how the laugh lines at the corners of his mouth would deepen.

“Well, Brittany, let me count the ways.…”

“Sam, take me seriously.”

“Brittany, I’ll take you any way you want.”

Her heart lurched.

“I called you without thinking, Brittany,” he went on, his voice quiet as he pushed ideas around in his head. “I just came in from looking at the heavens, and everywhere I looked, on every star, I saw you. Sometimes that means something, so I called to be sure you were all right. I … ah, seem to have take on something here I didn’t count on.”

“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.”