DREAM LOVER (5 page)

“Because there is.  I’m just not sure I know what to make of it.”

“You’re making this all sound very mysterious, Dr. Covelli.”

“I’ll make a deal with you; call me Nic and I’ll tell you all about it over breakfast.”

“Are you paying?”

“I’ll even pick up the tip.”

“In that case…Nic, I’d be honored to join you for breakfast.”

                       ***

Nic couldn’t take his eyes off of her.  He peered over the top of his menu as Rachel tried to decide what she wanted, drinking in her beauty and fighting the urge to reach across the table to take her hand in his.  He didn’t mind the distraction because it kept him from thinking about the disk and the rather unsettling things he’d discovered.  Nic had a scientific mind and he liked being able to neatly categorize everything in a tidy fashion. But what happened last night was beyond his realm of orderly thinking, and it disturbed him a great deal.  Looking at Rachel helped.

“I don’t normally have an appetite for breakfast,” she told him as she set the menu aside, “but for some reason I’m famished this morning.”

Nic’s own appetite was ravenous but it wasn’t food he was craving.  He wanted to kiss her again.  He wanted to take her straight from the restaurant to his apartment and spend the whole day making love to her and he wanted to spend the night with Rachel tucked safely in his arms.  No doubt she’d be shocked if he told her what was going through his mind right now.  Hell, he was shocking himself with the way he was allowing his physical reaction to her override everything else.  Or maybe the real shocker was that it wasn’t all physical.

“Nic…your order?”

“What?”  He gave her a blank stare then laughed when she nodded towards the waitress.  “Sorry, my mind was elsewhere.”  He rattled off his order and waited for the waitress to leave before plunging in.  “Something strange happened last night, Rachel, something I can’t explain or even begin to understand.”

“Mistaking my gibberish for French you mean?”

“No…well, that was part of it.  Everything seemed pretty normal until around eleven o’clock when the equipment malfunctioned; except I’m not really sure now weather it
was
a malfunction.”  He told her about the monitors and how the readings indicated her body was shutting down.  “But when I went into the room to check on you there didn’t seem to be anything wrong with you.”

“Is that when I woke up?”

“I thought you’d woken up, but maybe you were still dreaming.  Rachel…the electrodes had been removed.”

“I must have pulled them off in my sleep…”

“You couldn’t have.  There wasn’t enough time for you to have done it in the few seconds it took me to get to you.  But that wasn’t the only thing strange that happened.  You opened your eyes and asked me where I’d been and said you were afraid you wouldn’t be able to find me.”

Rachel was puzzled.  “But you said I spoke in French.”

“You did.  The accent was perfect, as if you’d spoken it all your life, and the thing is…I understood what you were saying.”

“I must have been talking to
him
in my dream and you only thought I was awake.  I remember I was lying in bed waiting for him to come to me…” Rachel stopped abruptly, her mind drifting for a moment as she tried to sort out fantasy from reality. 

“What is it, Rachel?”

“That’s what was different,” she said slowly.  “I always go to him, but last night I was waiting for
him
to come to me.  I remember…” she touched her lips, her eyes widening in shock when she realized what she’d done.  “It was
you
I kissed, wasn’t it?  I
knew
I shouldn’t have done the sleep study,” she groaned.  “I told Monica I didn’t want to do it but she just kept at me until I gave in and now I’ve gone made a complete fool of myself and oh God, you must have been mortified when I threw myself at you…”

“Rachel, it’s all right.”  Nic reached across the table and covered her hand with his.  “Believe me,” he grinned, “mortification is
not
the word I would use for how I felt.”  After seeing what was on that disk, spooked would have been a better word but he refrained from saying anything.

Rachel’s cheeks were burning.  She was so embarrassed she could have crawled under the table and might actually have done it if the waitress hadn’t shown up with their food.  As soon as her plate was placed in front of her, she shoveled in a bit of her omelet to keep herself from running off at the mouth again.  Thank God Nic seemed amused by what happened, but then maybe this sort of thing was a common occurrence and he was used to being kissed by his women patients.  Rachel frowned.  She didn’t like the idea of other women kissing him, which was absurd because she certainly had no claim on him.  Still, the question was gnawing at her and she couldn’t stop herself from asking.

“Does that happen often?”

Nic nearly choked on the sliver of steak he was chewing.  “No, I can honestly say you’re my first,” he replied after washing the steak down with a sip of coffee.

“Oh.”  She played with her food for a few minutes before sneaking a glance at him.  “I’m sorry if…if I embarrassed you.”

“I think maybe I should be the one to apologize.  Obviously it’s still a little sketchy for you right now otherwise you would have remembered that I kissed you back.  I suppose I could try to make up a good excuse as to why I did it but the truth is, I
wanted
to kiss you.”

Rachel’s breath caught in her throat.  “Really?  I mean, you’re not just saying that to make me feel better?”

“I could prove it right now if you want.”

The blush on her face deepened.  “I’ll take your word for it,” she murmured, taking a sudden interest in her food.

Nic cut into his steak and pretended to be as absorbed in eating as she was.  How could a woman as sexually appealing as Rachel was seem so incredibly innocent at the same time?  He tried to remind himself that she was his patient and it was wrong to allow himself to feel such a strong attraction to her, but it would have been easier to rope the wind at that moment than to reel in his emotions.  There was an undeniable connection between them and he was beginning to think that something far greater than just chance had brought them together.  His colleagues would undoubtedly frown on him getting personally involved with Rachel, but he wasn’t going to let her walk out of his life now no matter what the consequences.

They ate in silence for several minutes before Nic finally got up the nerve to tell her what he’d discovered.  “I viewed part of the video while you were getting dressed.”

Rachel’s head shot up.  “You’re not going to show that to anyone are you?”

“It wouldn’t matter if I did.  Rachel…there’s nothing to see.  At first I thought the disk must have stalled when the equipment malfunctioned but there’s a time display that runs for the duration of the video and there wasn’t a lapse, not even for a few seconds.  When I went to check on you, it was a little after eleven.  I replayed the video from about five minutes to eleven until almost a quarter after and the only thing it recorded was you sleeping.”

“But that doesn’t make any sense.  If there was no time lapse then it
had
to have recorded us kissing.”

“It didn’t.  The video doesn’t even show me entering the room and since it’s an internal clock even if it did stop and start up again, it would have automatically reset to the right time.  Another thing that has me puzzled is how you removed the electrodes and how they got back into place.”

“You mean you didn’t put them back on me?”

Nic shrugged.  “If I did, I don’t remember doing it.  As a matter of fact, I don’t remember anything after I kissed you.  I woke up with my head on my desk and no memory of how I’d gotten there.”

“Is it possible that it didn’t happen at all, that we both just had the same dream?”

Nic thought about it for a moment.  “Up until a year ago I would have given you an unequivocal no, but now I’m not so sure.”

“What happened a year ago?”

Peering into her luminous green eyes, he wondered if maybe she was right and it had just been a dream like the ones he’d had of her nearly every night for the past year.  But it had been so much more intense than any of his dreams, and despite the overwhelming evidence that substantiated it hadn’t been real, Nic refused to believe it.  Whatever mysterious forces had been in play last night that caused it to be erased from the disk hadn’t been strong enough to erase it from his memory.  He’d held her in arms and kissed her and nothing could persuade him otherwise.

“I’ll tell you everything,” he finally replied, “but I need to ask you a few things first.”

“You don’t believe we both had the same dream, do you?”

“No, I don’t.”

“Neither do I,” she breathed out.  “I don’t understand what’s happening, Nic.  Am I losing my mind?”

“If you are then I must be losing mine too.”

A smile tugged at the corner of her mouth.  “Well, at least I’ll have company when I go stark raving mad.”

“We’ll work through this,” he promised.  “It may take a little time to figure out what’s going on, but I believe there’s a logical explanation for everything if you just dig deep enough to find it.”

“I hope so, because this whole thing is really starting to rattle me.”

“Rachel…I need to know about the dream.”

She took a bite of her omelet, chewing thoughtfully for a moment while she tried to figure out the least embarrassing way to relay what happened every night with her dream lover.  It hadn’t been as difficult to tell Dr. Agostino as she’d thought but maybe that was because she didn’t feel this
connection
as she did with Nic.  Just thinking about the kiss they’d shared melted her bones.

“It’s not like the nightmare,” she told him.  “The nightmare never varies. Although lately it’s become more vivid, as if I’m more aware of everything even though nothing has changed.”

“More aware of your surroundings you mean?”

“Yes…like how cold the floor is and the burning pain in my shoulder.  But my dreams of him are different each time.  Sometimes it’s fast and furious, full of passion and desire, and other times it’s slow and tender, lasting for hours.  At least it seems like it lasts that long.”

“But you never see his face?”

“No, it’s always too dark, but I’ve explored his face with my hands so I know he has a strong jaw line and a mouth that’s firm though his lips are soft.” 
Like yours
.

“Do you ever talk to each other?”

“Not exactly,” Rachel said, feeling the heat of a blush as it crept up her neck.  “We…uh…say things but it’s not like we carry on a conversation.”

“And you’re sure you’ve never met this man before?”

A soft smile curved her lips.  “He’s not the type of man I’d forget.  He has this aura of power
and strength and yet he’s so careful not to hurt me.  I’ve never had a man make me feel so desirable, so
feminine.
  No offense, Nic, but no
real
man could be that perfect.”

“Or maybe you’ve just never been with a man who was capable of making you feel that way.”

“That’s entirely possible,” Rachel laughed.  “I’m afraid my education and career have always taken precedence over my love life.  To tell the truth I never really gave it much thought until the dream started.  I know this sounds silly but being with him made it impossible for me feel any sort of an attraction for another man.”

“Does that mean you don’t date much?”

“Oh I’ve had a dinner date here and there but I always felt uncomfortable, as if I was betraying him by being with another man.  So tell me, Dr. Covelli, do you still think I have all my wits about me or am I completely off my rocker?”

Nic chuckled.  “I’m hardly in a position to make that call.  Listen, Rachel, I have a few things I need to tell you but I’d rather not do it here.  If you have the time, there’s a nice park just around the corner where we can talk a little more freely.”

“Well…I
was
planning on cleaning my house today, but I’m sure the dust will still be there tomorrow.”

Nic motioned to the waitress for the bill.  “Somehow you don’t strike me as the kind of woman who’d allow dust to collect in her house.”

“So you’ve already labeled me as a compulsive neat freak?”

“I think it’s in my best interest to refrain from answering that,” he said with a grin.

“Smart man.”

                        ***

They made the short walk to the park in less than ten minutes and found an empty bench beneath the shade of an oak tree.  It was too early in the day for there to be many people about and for that Rachel was grateful.  It was difficult enough to talk about her erotic dreams with Nic but she’d just die if someone else overheard her.  A warm summer breeze carried the smell of freshly cut grass mingled with the faint aroma of flowers, and it suddenly occurred to her that it had been ages since she’d been to a park or anywhere else that wasn’t work related.