Dream a Little Dream (25 page)

“I deserve a raise, and you know it.”

Ignoring her, he said, “I don’t know why I didn’t think of this right away.” He stretched out on his side in the grass, propped himself on one elbow, and took a bite of chicken he didn’t want. “I’ve decided to put you on straight salary. That means that whether we fling or not, your paycheck won’t be affected.”

Her eyes lit up with dollar signs. “How much straight salary?”

He told her and waited for that little ripe strawberry mouth to bite his head off. Which it did.

“You are the stingiest, the most penny-pinching, tight-fisted—”

“Look who’s talking.”

“I’m not rich like you. I have to pinch pennies.”

“With a straight salary, you’ll come out ahead. I’ll still pay you overtime, but you won’t be penalized if you have to take an hour off to run an errand. Or something.” He paused and took another bite of chicken. “You should get down on your knees and thank me for my generosity.”

“I should take a crowbar to your knees.”

“Excuse me? I didn’t quite catch that.”

“Never mind.”

He’d wanted to pull her into his arms right there. But he couldn’t do it, not after the way it had been thefirst time between them. For all her talk about being a wanton woman, she deserved a bed this time, and not G. Dwayne’s bed, either.

She deserved a date, too, although that didn’t seem to have occurred to her. He wanted to take her out for a meal at a four-star restaurant just so he could watch her eat.

He loved doing that. Every day he came up with an excuse to feed her. He’d bring Egg McMuffins with him when he arrived in the morning and tell her he couldn’t stand eating breakfast alone. Around noon, he’d announce that he was so hungry he couldn’t concentrate until he had a bucket of KFC in front of him. In the middle of the afternoon, he’d haul out some fruit and cheese from the snack-bar refrigerator and make her take another break. If this kept up much longer, he wouldn’t be able to snap his jeans, but she was looking healthier by the day.

Her cheeks had filled out just enough so that her green eyes no longer seemed to be falling out of her face, and the bruises beneath her bottom lashes had disappeared. Her skin had taken on a healthy glow, and a few more freckles had popped out on her cheekbones. Her body was filling out a little, too. She’d never be plump, but she no longer looked quite so emaciated.

A shadow fell over him as he remembered how Cherry used to fret over her weight. He’d told her he’d still love her if she weighed three hundred pounds, but she’d counted calories anyway. He would have loved her fat or thin. He would have loved her crippled, old, shriveled. There was nothing that could have happened to her body that would have made him stop loving her. Not even death.

He tossed his half-eaten piece of chicken into the sack, leaned back into the grass, and threw his arm over his eyes as if he wanted to take a nap.

He felt her hand settle over his chest, and her voice was no longer angry. “Tell me about them, Gabe. Cherry and Jamie.”

His skin prickled. It had happened again. She’d said their names. Even Ethan didn’t do that anymore. His brother wanted to protect him, but Gabe was starting to feel as if they didn’t exist in anyone’s memory but his own.

The temptation to talk was almost overwhelming, but he held on to the few remnants of sanity he had left. He was crazy, but not crazy enough to have a cozy little chat about his dead wife’s virtues with a woman he planned to make love to as soon as possible. Besides, he could just imagine what fodder Rachel and her sharp tongue would find in his memories.

The muscles in his shoulders flexed. He was lying to himself. Rachel would rip him apart for many things, but not his memories. Never that. Still, he resisted.

Her hand rested over his heart, and her soft breath fanned his cheek as she spoke with a tenderness he’d never heard. “Everybody else is too kind to point this out to you, Bonner, but you’re in imminent danger of turning into one of those self-focused, self-pitying people nobody can stand.” She gave him a gentle rub. “Not that you don’t have plenty of reason for self-pity, and if you didn’t still have so much of your life left, it might even be all right.”

His blood churned, and a terrible anger rushed through him. She must have felt the constriction of his muscles because she laid her head on his chest to quiet him. A strand of her hair fell over his lips. He smelled her shampoo, and it reminded him both of sunshine and clean rain.

“Tell me how you met Cherry.”

Her name again. His anger evaporated, and he felt an urgent need to talk about her, to make her real again. Still, it took him a while to manage the words. “A Sunday-school picnic.”

He grunted as Rachel’s sharp elbow dug into his stomach. Automatically lifting his arm, he opened his eyes.

She’d propped herself comfortably on his chest as if he were a lounge chair, and instead of giving him one of those pity-filled looks he’d grown accustomed to, she was smiling. “You were kids! Teenagers?”

“Not even. We were eleven, and she’d just moved to Salvation.” He shifted into a half-sitting position, rearranging her elbow at the same time so it wasn’t aimed directly at his diaphragm. “I was running around, not watching where I was going, and I spilled a glass of purple Kool-Aid on her.”

“I’ll bet she wasn’t happy about that.”

“She did the damnedest thing. She looked up at me and smiled and said, ‘I know you’re sorry.’ Just like that. ‘I know you’re sorry.’ ”

Rachel laughed. “She sounds like a pushover.”

He found himself laughing back. “She was. She always thought the best of people, and I can’t tell you how many times that got her into trouble.”

He lay back in the grassy shade of the giant movie screen, but this time he let the happy memories in. One after another, they came back to him.

A bee droned nearby. Crickets sawed away. Rachel’s sun-scented hair blew across his lips.

His eyes grew heavy. He slept.

The next evening Rachel and Edward helped Kristy unpack. Kristy’s new one-bedroom condo was small and charming, with a tiny patio and a compact kitchen complete with a skylight. The walls sparkled with fresh white paint and everything smelled new.

Her furniture had arrived from storage that day. It was mostly made up of the family pieces Kristy’s parents hadn’t wanted when they’d moved to Florida, and now Kristy was regarding all of it with displeasure.

Keeping her voice low, so no one but Rachel could hear, she said, “I know I don’t have the money to replace this stuff, but it doesn’t . . . I don’t know. It doesn’t fit me anymore.” She gave a self-deprecating laugh. “Listen to me. Five days ago I got my hair cut and bought some new clothes. Now I think I’m a different person. I’m probably just feeling guilty about not moving to Florida like they want.”

“This past week has been hard on you.” Rachel placed the last of the glasses on a cupboard shelf that had already been lined with blue-and-lavender shelf paper. “And don’t be depressed about the furniture. They’re basic pieces. You can brighten them up with pillows, hang some museum posters. It’ll look terrific when you’re done.”

“I suppose.”

Edward strutted out of the bedroom. “We need a Phillips ’crewdriver to fix the bed. You got one?”

Kristy walked over to her small, neatly arranged tool kit, which sat open on the white counter that divided the galley kitchen from the condo’s living area. “Try this.”

With an air of self-importance that made Rachel smile, Edward took the screwdriver and swaggered off to join Ethan in the bedroom. Ethan Bonner might be at the top of Kristy’s grudge list right now, but his generosity toward Edward made it hard for Rachel to hold on to her dislike. This was the first time her son had been given a chance to do real work with an adult male, and he was reveling in it.

Kristy glared toward the bedroom and hissed under her breath, “Ethan was awful Thursday night at the Mountaineer, but he’s been acting as if nothing happened.”

“I suspect he’s having as hard a time forgetting about it as you are.”

“Ha.”

Rachel smiled and hugged her disgruntled friend. Tonight Kristy wore a bright-red T-shirt tucked into a pair of brand-new jeans. Her makeup had worn off, and she’d traded in her gold sandals for a pair of worn sneakers, so there was nothing overtly sexual about her dress, but Rachel had noticed the way Ethan’s eyes had lingered on her anyway.

“I’ve wasted all these years mooning over an immature hypocrite, but I’m not doing it any longer!”

If Kristy got much louder, Ethan would hear her, but Rachel had interfered enough, and she didn’t say anything.

“I saved most of my money while I was living at home, so I’ve got enough to go back to school. I only need a few classes to finish up my degree in early-childhood education, and I shouldn’t have any trouble getting a job as a teacher’s aide to help out with my mortgage payments until I’m finished.”

“That’s wonderful.”

“I wish I’d done this years ago.”

“Maybe you weren’t ready until now.”

“I guess.” Kristy gave her a wistful smile. “It’s nice, you know. For the first time in my life, I don’t feel invisible.”

Rachel suspected that came more from Kristy’s mind-set than her cosmetic changes, but she kept her opinion to herself.

Ethan appeared from the back bedroom with Edward at his side. “All done. Why don’t Edward and I get started on that bookcase?”

“Thanks, but I’m not ready to put it up yet.” Kristy spoke with a brusqueness that bordered on rudeness.

“All right. We can hook up the television.”

“You’ve done enough, Ethan. Thanks anyway.”

She couldn’t have been more clearly dismissing him, but Ethan refused to take the hint and leave. “Come on, Edward. Let’s see what we can do with that sticky bathroom door.”

“The builder’s sending someone to take care of it tomorrow. I don’t really have anything else, Ethan. I’ll see you at work tomorrow.”

This was too direct to ignore, and as he returned the tools to the toolbox and made his way to the door, Rachel began to feel sorry for the gorgeous Pastor Bonner.

The windows were dark. Ever since the incident with the burning cross, Gabe had known that Rachel couldn’t stay alone on Heartache Mountain. With Kristy gone, he was afraid for her.

He’d planned to get to the cottage earlier, but Ethan had stopped by, and Gabe had been forced to listen to a lengthy monologue about how rude Kristy had been to him, then ignore some none-too-subtle hints that Rachel was after his money. That was definitely true, but not in the way Ethan meant. One thing had led to another, and now it was nearly midnight.

He parked the truck by the garage and sat there in the dark for a moment, his thoughts in turmoil. Talking about Cherry this afternoon with Rachel, even so briefly, had begun to ease something inside him. If only Rachel lived in the cottage by herself, moving in might not be so complicated. But he would also have to deal with her son, and just the thought of being around that pale, silent little boy made the blackness descend all over again.

The child was an innocent, and he’d tried to argue himself out of his feelings dozens of times, but he couldn’t. Whenever he looked at Edward, he thought of Jamie, and how the worthier child had died.

He drew in a sharp breath. The thought was ugly. Unforgivable.

He pushed it away as he took his suitcase from the truck and headed toward the house. Even though the night was cloudy and none of the outside lights were on, he had no trouble making his way. He’d spent hundreds of nights at this cottage when he was a child.

How many times had he and Cal slipped through a back window after Annie had gone to bed so they could explore? Ethan had been too young to go with them, and he still complained about having missed out on some of Gabe and Cal’s best adventures.

An owl hooted in the distance as Gabe came around the side of the house. His shoes made a soft swishing sound in the grass, and his keys jingled in his hand.

“Stay where you are!”

Rachel’s shadow loomed on the front porch, tall and straight. His lips framed a wisecrack, but, as he made out his grandmother’s old shotgun pointed at his chest, he decided being a smart-ass wasn’t a good idea.

“I’ve got a gun, and I’m not afraid to use it!”

“It’s me. Damn, Rachel. You sound like a bad detective movie.”

She dropped the barrel of the shotgun. “Gabe? What are you doing out there? You scared the life out of me!”

“I came up here to defend you,” he said dryly.

“It’s the middle of the night.”

“I planned to arrive earlier, but I ran into a little trouble with Ethan.”

“Your brother is a moron.”

“He’s crazy about you, too.” He stepped up on the porch and took the shotgun away from her with his free hand.

She reached inside the screen door to flick on the yellow porch light. His mouth went dry as he saw her standing there with bare feet, bare legs, and the same blue workshirt she’d been wearing the morning the house was vandalized. Her rumpled curls looked like ancient gold in the porch light.

“What’s that?” she asked.

“As you can see, it’s a suitcase. I’m moving in for a while.”

“Did Kristy put you up to this?”

“No. Kristy’s worried, but this is my idea. As long as she was living here, I never believed the danger to you would go beyond threats, but with her gone, you’re more vulnerable.”

He walked into the living room where he set down his suitcase and checked the shotgun. It wasn’t loaded, so he gave it back. At the same time, he thought about the .38 he’d locked up before he left the house. Keeping a loaded gun next to his bed had suddenly seemed obscene. “Put that away.”

“You don’t think I can take care of myself, do you? Well, I can, so just hop back in that redneck truck of yours and go away.”

He couldn’t quite hold back a smile. She did that to him. “Save it, Rach. You’ve never been so glad to see anybody in your life, and you know it.”

She made a face. “Are you really moving in?”

“I have enough trouble sleeping as it is without worrying about what’s going on up here.”