Lake of Dreams (4 page)

W
HAT LITTLE COLOR
she had drained from Thea's face. “What did you say?” she whispered.

He couldn't possibly have heard her. He was standing a good thirty yards away; she had barely been able to hear the one word he'd spoken, though somehow the sound had been perfectly clear, as if she had heard it inside herself as well as out. But the expression on his face changed subtly, to something more alert, his eyes more piercing. His outstretched hand suddenly seemed more imperious, though his tone became cajoling. “Thea. Come with me.”

Shakily she stepped back, intending to close the door. This had to be pure chance, but it was spooky.

“Don't run,” he said softly. “There's no need to. I won't hurt you.”

Thea had never considered herself a coward. Her brothers would have described her as being a touch too foolhardy for her own good, stubbornly determined to climb any tree they could climb, or to swing out on a rope as high as they did before dropping into the lake. Despite the eerie similarity between the dream and what he'd just now said, her spine stiffened, and she stared at Richard Chance as he stood under the willow tree, surrounded by a slight mist. Once again, she was letting a weird coincidence spook her, and she was tired of being afraid. She knew instinctively that the best way to conquer any fear was to face it—hence her trip to the lake—so she decided to take a good, hard look at Mr. Chance to catalog the similarities between him and her dream lover. She looked, and almost wished she hadn't.

The resemblance wasn't just in his eyes and the color of his hair. She could see it now in the powerful lines of his body, so tall and rugged. He was wearing jeans and hiking boots and a short-sleeved chambray shirt that revealed the muscularity of his arms. She noticed the thickness of his wrists, the wrists of a man who regularly did hard physical work . . . 
the wrists of a swordsman.

She gasped, shaken by the thought. Where had it come from? What did she know about swordsmen? They weren't exactly thick on the ground; she'd never even met anyone who fenced. And even as she pictured the elegant moves of fencing, she discarded that comparison. No, by
swordsman
she meant someone who used a heavy broadsword in battle, slashing and hacking. A flash of memory darted through her, and she saw Richard Chance with a huge claymore in his hand, only he had called himself Neill . . . and then he was Marcus, and it was the short Roman sword he wielded—

No. She couldn't let herself think like that. The dreams were a subconscious fantasy, nothing more. She didn't really recognize anything about Richard Chance. She had simply met him at a time when she was emotionally vulnerable and off-balance, almost as if she were on the rebound from a failed romance. She had to get a grip, because there was no way this man had anything to do with her dreams.

He was still standing there, his hand outstretched as if only a second had gone by, rather than the full minute it felt like.

And then he smiled again, those vivid eyes crinkling at the corners. “Don't you want to see the baby turtles?” he asked.

Baby turtles. The prospect was disarming, and surprisingly charmed by the idea, somehow Thea found herself taking a couple of steps forward, until she was standing at the screen door to the porch. Only then did she stop and look down at her nightgown. “I need to change clothes.”

His gaze swept down her. “You look great to me.” He didn't try to disguise the huskiness of appreciation in his tone. “Besides, they might be gone if you don't come now.”

Thea chewed her lip. The nightgown wasn't a racy number, after all; it was plain white cotton, with a modest neckline and little cap sleeves, and the hem reached her ankles. Caution warred with her desire to see the turtles. Suddenly she couldn't think of anything cuter than baby turtles. Making a quick decision, she pushed open the door and stepped out into the tall grass. She had to lift her nightgown hem to midcalf to keep it from dragging in the dew and getting wet. Carefully she picked her way across the overgrown yard to the tall man waiting for her.

She had almost reached him when she realized how close she was to the water.

She froze in midstep, unable to even glance to the right where the lake murmured so close to her feet. Instead, her panic-stricken gaze locked on his face, instinctively begging him for help.

He straightened, every muscle in his body tightening as he became alert in response to her reaction. His eyes narrowed, and his gaze swung sharply from side to side, looking for whatever had frightened her. “What is it?” he rasped as he caught her forearm and protectively pulled her nearer, into the heat and shelter of his body.

Thea shivered and opened her mouth to tell him, but the closeness of his body, at once comforting and alarming, confused her so she couldn't think what to say. She didn't know which alarmed her more, her nearness to the lake or her nearness to him. She had always loved the lake, and was very wary of him, but his automatic response to her distress jolted something inside her, and suddenly she wanted to press herself against him. The warm scent of his skin filled her nostrils, her lungs—a heady combination of soap, fresh air, clean sweat, and male muskiness. He had pulled her against his left side, leaving his right arm free, and she could feel the reassuring steadiness of his heartbeat thudding within the strong wall of his chest.

She was abruptly, acutely aware of her nakedness beneath the nightgown. Her breasts throbbed where they pressed against his side, and her thighs began trembling. My God, what was she doing out here, dressed like this? What had happened to her much-vaunted common sense? Since the dreams had begun, she didn't seem to have any sense at all. No way should she be this close to a man she'd just met the day before. She knew she should pull away from him, but from the moment he'd touched her she had felt an odd sense of intimacy, of
rightness,
as if she had merely returned to a place she'd been many times before.

His free hand threaded through her damp curls. “Thea?” he prompted, some of the alertness relaxing from his muscles. “Did something scare you?”

She cleared her throat and fought off a wave of dizziness. His hand in her hair felt so familiar, as if . . . She jerked her wayward thoughts from that impossible path. “The water,” she finally said, her voice still tight with fear. “I—I'm afraid of the water, and I just noticed how close I was to the bank.”

“Ah,” he said in a slow sound of realization. “That's understandable. But how were you going to see the turtles if you're afraid of the water?”

Dismayed, she looked up at him. “I didn't think about that.” How could she tell him that her fear of the water was so recent that she wasn't used to thinking in terms of what she could or couldn't do based on the proximity of water. Her attention splintered again, caught by the angle of his jaw when viewed from below. It was a very strong jaw, she noticed, with a stubborn chin. He had a fairly heavy beard; despite the evident fact that he had just shaved, she could see the dark whiskers that would give him a heavy five-o'clock shadow. Again that nagging sense of familiarity touched her, and she wanted to put her hand to his face. She wondered if he was always considerate enough to shave before making love, and had a sudden powerful image of that stubbled chin being gently rubbed against the curve of her breast.

She gave a startled jerk, a small motion that he controlled almost before it began, his arm tightening around her and pulling her even more solidly against him. “The turtles are just over here, about fifty feet,” he murmured, bending his head down so that his jaw just brushed her curls. “Could you look at them if I stay between you and the lake, and hold you so you know you won't fall in?”

Oh, he was good. She noticed it in a peripheral kind of way. Whenever he did something she might find alarming—something that
should
alarm her, like take her in his arms—he immediately distracted her with a diverting comment. She saw the ploy, but . . . baby turtles were so cute. She thought about his proposition. It was probably a dangerous illusion, but she felt safe in his arms, warmed by his heat and wrapped up in all that muscled power. Desire began in that moment, a delicate, delicious unfurling deep inside her . . . or maybe it had begun before, at his first touch, and had just now grown strong enough for her to recognize it. Why else had she thought about the roughness of his chin against her body? She knew she should go back inside. She had already made the logical decision that she had no time for even lightweight romance. But logic had nothing to do with the wild mixture of reactions she had felt since first seeing this man, fear, panic, compulsion, and desire all swirling together so she never knew from one minute to the next how she was going to react. She didn't like it, didn't like anything about it. She wanted to be the old Thea again, not this nervous, illogical creature she didn't recognize.

All right, so throw logic out the window. It hadn't done her much good since the dreams had begun anyway. She looked up into watchful aquamarine eyes and threw caution to the dogs, too, deciding instead to operate on pure instinct. “Maybe that would work. Let's try it.”

She thought she saw a flare of triumph in those crystalline eyes, but when she looked more closely she saw only a certain male pleasure. “Let's go a couple of steps farther away from the water,” he suggested, already steering her along with that solid arm around her waist. “We'll still be able to see the turtles. Tell me if we're still too close, okay? I don't want you to be nervous.”

She chuckled, and was surprised at herself for being able to laugh. How could she not be nervous? She was too close to the water, and way too close to him. “If I were wearing shoes, I'd be shaking in them,” she admitted.

He glanced down at her bare feet, and the way she was having to hold up her nightgown to keep it out of the wet grass. “There might be briers,” he said by way of explanation as he bent down and hooked his other arm beneath her knees. Thea gave a little cry of surprise as he lifted her, grabbing at his shirt in an effort to steady herself. He grinned as he settled her high against his chest. “How's this?”

Frightening. Exciting. Her heart was thudding wildly, and that first pressure of desire was becoming more intense. She cast a look at the ground and said, “High.”

“Are you afraid of heights, too?”

“No, just of water.”
And of you, big guy.
But far more attracted than afraid, she realized.

He carried her along the bank, taking care not to get any closer to the water, while Thea looked everywhere but at the lake. The most convenient point of focus was his throat, strong and brown, with a small vulnerable hollow beneath the solid knot of his Adam's apple. The close proximity of his bare skin made her lips tingle, as if she had just pressed them into that little hollow where his pulse throbbed so invitingly.

“We have to be quiet,” he whispered, and eased the last few steps. They had left the relative neatness of the overgrown yard and were in a tangle of bushes and weeds that probably did contain briers. Given her bare feet, she was just as glad he was carrying her. The trees grew more thickly here, greatly limiting the view of the lake. “They're still here, on a fallen log lying at the edge of the water. Don't make any sudden moves. I'm going to let you down, very slowly. Put your feet on my boots.”

Before she could ask why, now that she was perfectly comfortable in his arms, he withdrew his arm from beneath her legs and let her lower body slide downward. Though he took care not to let her nightgown get caught between them, the friction of her body moving over his could scarcely have been more enticing. She caught her breath, her breasts and thighs tingling with heat even as she sought his boot tops with her feet and let her weight come to rest on them. Nor was he unaffected; there was no mistaking the firm swelling in his groin.

He seemed more capable than she of ignoring it, however. He had both arms around her, holding her snugly against him, but his head was turned toward the lake. She could feel excitement humming through him, but it didn't seem to be sexual in nature, despite his semierection.

“There are seven of them,” he whispered, his voice the husky murmur of a lover. “They're lined up on the log like silver-dollar pancakes with legs. Just turn your head and take a peek, and I'll hold you steady so you'll feel safe.”

Thea hesitated, torn between her desire to see the little turtles and her fear of the water. Her hands were clutching his upper arms, and she could feel the hard biceps flex as he held her a little closer. “Take your time,” he said, still whispering, and she felt his lips brush her curls.

She took a deep breath and steeled herself. Half a second later she convulsively buried her face against his chest, shaking, trying to fight back the rise of nausea. He cuddled her, comforting her with a slight rocking motion of his body while he murmured reassuring noises that weren't really words.