A Dream to Cling To (6 page)

“To hear about my father,” she said quickly.

“Right.” He shifted in his seat, amused by the sudden knowledge that he’d talk about shelling peas if it meant sitting here alongside Brittany. “Okay, Gordon Winters. There’s a lot to talk about there: Business mogul par excellence. Windemere’s Man of the Year. Listen, Brittany, I’ve been doing some reading about your dad, and I’ve pieced together a structure I’d like to run past you. Okay with you?”

She nodded.

“Good. Tell me what you think now.” He kept his one hand near her shoulder while the other moved in the air in front of them, as if parceling it out into a game board. “Except for his business, Gordon Winter’s life is project-oriented. He moves from one project to another, completing each with incredible success. It’s almost an art with him, as I see it. Whether it’s organizing events for the Children’s Hospital, or collecting those wonderful antique cars, planning things for the family, or
whatever. I’d like to formulate the game around that fact. Am I on target?”

She nodded again, more enthusiastically this time. Sam was amazing, she thought,
and
insightful. “You’re right, Sam. And even when he was younger, he’d plunge himself into things, forming clubs, or devoting himself to a friend’s political campaign.” She laughed. “And usually, the candidate he backed was the most outspoken, controversial guy around.”

Sam pulled out a long yellow pad while Brittany was talking and started to jot things down. His smile was hidden as he listened and wrote. Besides delighting him by just being beside him, Brittany was going to help him create a terrific board game. And she didn’t even seem aware that her opposition to the game had drifted out the window about two miles back.

She continued, her voice lifting and falling with humor and love as she spoke of her father. “He’s even project-oriented with us, wanting us to climb up the ranks in scouts, for example.” She laughed and her eyes sparkled happily. “Dad always says one of his concerns is that there’re two projects he’s not completed. He never became an eagle scout.”

Chuckling, Sam pulled his pipe out of a pocket and tapped down the tobacco. “And …?”

She shook her head and sunlight caught in the wavy, wayward strands of reddish-gold. “And the other he’ll
never
give up on—to see his girls ‘married and settled,’ as he puts it.”

“Well, Sara has begun that little project.”

“Yes, and Dad’s thrilled about it. He shakes his head at me, though.”

“You’re not the ‘settling’ type?” Sam watched as a thoughtful look clouded over her beautiful eyes.

“Oh, I am. I’ll marry sometime. But it needs to be just right.”

He laughed. “And what, lovely Brittany, is ‘just right’?”

She shrugged. “Oh, I don’t know. The essentials—deep
feeling, love. But in addition, I’ll only marry someone who is very solid and dependable. Always there.”

Commitment, he thought. Of course, Brittany would demand that. And deserved it. There was an unusual strength and conviction lacing her words that made it clear she’d settle for nothing less. “In other words, not a drifting dreamer, right?”

“Yes, exactly.”

His fingers tapped across her shoulder playfully. “You should have told me that before I fell beneath your spell, dear Brittany.”

His husky laughter wrapped around her and Brittany savored the wonderful feelings he spun there in the old van. She forced a light laugh. “Oh, Sam, I’m sure you’ll survive. What are your feelings on the blessed state?”

He drew on his pipe and became serious, but she noticed laughter still lingered in his eyes. “My feelings are that it
is
a blessed state. And that I’m not among the blessed. I’ll never marry.”

She shot him a quick look. Beneath his crooked smile she could see he meant each word.

“No ‘Que sera sera’?”

“Nope. Marriage means permanent address in a way that causes all my essential functions—breathing, heartbeat, and so forth—to cease. Strangles me.”

“You’ve tried it?”

“No. When Socrates told me to ‘know thyself,’ I took him seriously. And I know what a person like me would do to another person in a dependent situation like marriage. Both parties would suffer.” He smiled slowly. “But I never,
ever
talk about things like that.” His fingers pressed into the soft skin of her shoulder, kneading lightly.

“Back to the game …” she suggested wisely.

“Yes … the game.”

She shifted in the seat and sped on down the highway. They had gotten so personal, she and this man she suspected she should hold at bay. But what frightened
her the most was the growing awareness that a part of her didn’t really want to keep Sam Lawrence at bay at all.

And
that
thought was so perplexing, she almost missed the turn through the wide pillared gates of the Elms Senior Citizens Home. Only Dunkin’s barking and large paw indelicately flopping over the back of the seat saved the turn.

“Dunkin, thank you,” she said as she pulled the van to a stop in the wide drive.

“May I presume Dunkin has brought us to the Elms?” Sam teased. “We zipped through the gate so quickly, I missed the sign.”

“Yes, this is it.” She opened her door and hopped out. “And this, Sam, is my unofficial favorite among the seven or eight places we visit. I have volunteers who help with the program, but I selfishly keep this stop for myself. It was my first, and I guess I’m attached …”

He looked around at the wide porches and rolling green lawns. “It has a nice, friendly look about it.”

“It’s wonderful,” she said. “I come here twice a week—sometimes more if I have time. Most of the places we visit on a semi-monthly basis, but the Elms would have us
every
day, I think, if we could fit it in. It’s sort of a haven for me—saves me from ever needing an analyst. Come on, you’ll see!”

Her enthusiasm was fresh and contagious, and twisted its way right into Sam. “Delighted,” he said as he swung himself, from the van.

Carrying cages and with Dunkin padding excitedly beside them, they climbed the wide steps to the front door.

Inside the elegant home the excitement Petpals generated floated like a refreshing mist through the freshly scrubbed hallways.

“Ah, there she is! Hello, Brittany.” An elderly woman, her thin hands grasping the rungs of a walker and
holding her frail body straight, moved toward them. “Where is my Piggy?”

Sam watched from behind a cage of kittens as Brittany patted the elderly woman on the arm and quickly pulled from a cage a tiny dog with a black ring around one eye. The woman’s eyes grew bright.

“Piggy’s been pining away for you, Mrs. Henderson. Let’s head for the lounge and find a snug place for her to settle.”

The woman dutifully followed Brittany into a bright sunny room filled with comfortable chairs, plants, and half a dozen wheelchairs.

Sam watched as Brittany moved gracefully from one expectant resident to another, distributing dogs and cats into waiting, willing arms. The expression in her eyes was warm and caring, and her smile revealed her sincere affection for each person as she chatted with them.

Her gestures, he noticed with his photographer’s eye, were gentle but filled with strength and conviction. She moved with a relaxed, comfortable rhythm here, where she’d carved a niche for herself.

Brittany was intriguing.

She glanced over at him and caught his look. It was far too intimate for this setting, she thought.

“Come on, Sam,” she said. “We need some help with Harry and the other lop-eared rabbits.” Her hands were full of Persian cat, but she motioned with a toss of her head to the remaining two cages.

“Rabbits?”

“Certainly, young man,” a bald-headed man scolded from a corner. “Harry will eat from no other hands but mine, I tell you. Get him on over here.”

Sam grinned and did as he was bid, carrying the lumpy rabbit to the man’s chair.

“Now, sir,” an elegant-looking woman on Sam’s right said, “are you Brittany’s young man?”

He laughed. “Well, you might say so.”

Brittany glanced at him over the top of the kitten cage.

“Temporarily,” he amended quickly. “We’re doing some work together.”

“Well, that’s a fine way to get to know each other.”

“Dandy, Frances,” added a plump woman feeding a dog biscuit to one of the puppies. “I met Harold that way, working together. I was a sec—”

“We know, Bertha,” the carefully coiffed Frances said. “What we don’t know is what the young man does.” She smiled sweetly at Sam while she waited for him to pull up a chair and chat over two kittens, a black puppy, and a cup of tea that was set on the small table beside him.

Sam was enchanted. Frances Sullivan was eighty-nine, claimed to have sat on the hill at Kitty Hawk the day the Wright brothers flew their first plane, and spoke with the precise articulation of an aristocrat. She’d been at the Elms three years now, she confided to him, because living alone wasn’t a sane alternative at her age. She was fond of the way of life here, if only the library were strengthened and the activities more diverse. But she was working on that, she assured him with a twinkle in her eye.

When she had a free moment, Brittany watched Sam and Frances, noting the easy camaraderie and the charm that flowed so naturally from him, drawing in Frances and the other residents who had pulled up chairs and joined in the conversation.

That Sam Lawrence had never met a stranger shouldn’t really be a surprise, she thought. He’d wrapped her mother around his little finger, had Frank O’Malley offering her days off, had Dunkin sleeping on his shoe. But it hadn’t registered, maybe because of the thick fog that seemed to have settled around her the past twenty-four hours.

She watched him move over to Jerry Fitzgerald’s chair and bit back a grin. Mr. Fitzgerald had a heart of gold
beneath his aloof exterior, but he didn’t often show it, nor did he take well to strangers. He’d be a challenge even to Sam Lawrence. The thought somehow tickled her.

Sam settled himself on a low settee near the elderly man’s wheelchair and offered his hand. “Sam Lawrence, nice to meet you.”

“Hmph.” The other man glanced at him with sharp eyes, then turned back to stare out an empty doorway. “We’ve never met.”

Sam looked up and his gaze fell on Brittany’s smiling face. Her green eyes flashed with challenge. He lifted one brow, grinned back, then faced the elderly man with determination.

From the few words the man had said, Sam guessed that he had lived abroad for quite some time, and he could see from the still-prominent muscles in his legs that he’d played sports in his day. Putting those two observations together, he decided to take a chance that the man had played Rugby, a favorite sport of his.

“Say, what’d you think about that Milwaukee Rugby team?”

The old man’s eyes lit up. “Wonderful! And a great sport. Kept me on my feet and agile until just a while ago.” He eagerly sat forward in his chair. “I’m Jerald Fitzgerald the Third, and I’m mighty pleased to meet you.”

Brittany watched them for a moment with a touch of surprise, then shook her head and turned to rescue a tiny kitten that was burrowing beneath the chair cushion. It was silly to be troubled that Sam fit in so well, she told herself.

“Okay, Sam,” she said an hour later as she approached him and Jerry Fitzgerald. The two men were heatedly discussing the British empiricists and the best curve of a pipe stem. “We need to gather the animals.”

Sam artfully ended the conversation with a promise to continue it later, then stood and walked over to her.
One of his arms naturally encircled her shoulders. “You sound a little brusque, Brittany.”

She shook her head. “Of course not. But there are things to do, that’s all.”

He tugged gently on her pony tail and gazed into her eyes. “Something’s bothering you.”

Of course there was, she thought. And it made about as much sense as high school physics had. She liked Sam Lawrence a whole lot. Her friends here liked him a whole lot. And it bothered her enormously for reasons that circled around inside her mind but made no rational sense. “No, Sam. It’s just that—”

“That you don’t want me too close.
And
you’re surprised I like it here so much because you didn’t think my world extended much farther than winning at Monopoly.”

“I—I didn’t know you won at Monopoly,” she mumbled.

His face softened. “I don’t; I lose. Or fall asleep. I never seem to get past Go. I lose at my own games too. But I usually win at what’s important.” He moved closer, and when he spoke again his breath feathered the fine hairs on her neck. “Don’t be upset about surprises we find in each other, Brittany. Surprises are good for the soul.”

“Well that’s debatable, Sam. Some souls, maybe, but not this one.” She forced a bright smile and bent to escape the tickling breath of his words. “Here, take Hawthorne.” She thrust a tawny-colored kitten into his hands. “And this.” Piggy was tucked under his arm.

Delilah, the smallest lop-eared rabbit, was the last to be retrieved. She was sleeping soundly in the folds of Betta Marie Hopper’s purple sweater. And Betta Marie was sleeping just as soundly. Sam looked at the tiny woman who was slumped down in the chair. “Hmmm.”

“Just lift her arm and slip Delilah out,” Brittany said. “She won’t even wake up.”

He did as directed. The rabbit opened one eye, then fell back to sleep in the curve of his arm.

The van was packed and ready to go in two thumps of a rabbit’s tail, as Sam put it, and soon they were driving back to the clinic.

Brittany was completely aware of Sam as she drove, even though he didn’t say much but just scribbled on his yellow pad and puffed thoughtfully on his pipe.

“Do you think this bothers the animals?” he asked eventually, holding the pipe out in front of him.

She glanced quickly over her shoulder. The animals were quiet. “No, I don’t think so.”

“Does it bother you?”

“No.”

“Good.” He smiled and rested his head against the back of the seat. “This was a fine day, Brittany.”

She looked over at him but said nothing.

“I’d like to come along again.”

“Why?” she asked, her voice lifting in surprise.