Authors: Emma Daniels

THE DREAM CHILD (27 page)

Emma stood there, watching him hop back on his bike. She didn’t move until he had roared away down the street. Carla calling her name finally spurred her into action. She almost stumbled over the garden bed as she returned to the path. Her legs still felt shaky as she reached the porch. The front door swung open just as she reached for the handle.

“Don’t tell me what you were doing in the bushes,” Carla began. “I don’t want to know, but please heed my warning. Girls lose their self-respect just looking at him-”

“Nothing happened,” Emma protested, but Carla grabbed her arm, propelling her into the house and up the stairs.

It wasn’t until they were inside Carla’s bedroom that either of them spoke again. It was enormous compared to Emma’s. She had a sound system and television set in an entertainment unit adjacent to her desk. An Apple computer set off to one side on it, and the rest was covered in teetering piles of study notes. Carla flopped onto the bed, and Emma sat down on the ergonomic office chair.

“Nothing happened, I swear,” Emma repeated. “He wanted to kiss me, but then you came outside.”

Carla, a short plump girl, had inherited her tendency to gain weight from her father. Jake Price was a big, burly man, with receding brown hair and hazel eyes. Carla’s wavy black hair and chocolate brown eyes, however, come courtesy of her mother. There was some Hispanic in Lydia’s ancestry, hence the olive skin and dark, exotic looks. Despite her weight problem, Carla was a pretty girl. Her outgoing nature made her popular at school, and because Emma had been included in her group, she was no longer the outsider, the weird one with the witchy grandmother.

“Dean can’t even walk past a girl without ravishing her on the spot. Don’t ever let him near you again. He doesn’t know when to stop, and it could get you into all sorts of trouble.”

“I won’t,” Emma murmured, although she was surely disappointed that Dean hadn’t kissed her.

“If I tell you why he came home perhaps you’ll understand. But promise not to tell anyone else. This is just between you and me.”

“I promise,” Emma said solemnly.

“He wanted some money, which isn’t unusual for Dean. But you won’t believe what he wanted it for.” She leant towards Emma, and her voice dropped to a barely audible whisper. “An abortion. He got a girl pregnant and wants to pay her to get rid of it. I overheard them arguing about it last night.” Raking her dark curls back from her forehead, she grimaced. “He said her parents refused to give her the money. I wouldn’t hazard a guess they warned her about him, and now that she’s gotten herself into trouble, they’ve washed their hands of the situation.”

“That’s awful,” Emma whispered. “Did your Mum and Dad give him the money?”

“I don’t know. I was afraid of being caught listening, so I left when I thought Dad might stalk out of the room in anger. I’ve never heard him so irate before, but Dean always brings the worst out in him. Consider yourself lucky you’re an only child. I don’t know what I did to deserve such an obnoxious brother. Why can’t he be like normal people? When I have sex, I’ll make sure the guy uses a condom.”

“You don’t know the full story. Maybe he thought she was on the pill or something.”

“Which tells you just how well he knew that girl. Where my brother’s concerned, I’d believe anything.”

It also told Emma to give up her dreams about Dean. If his own sister didn’t trust him, or even like him, then she should consider herself lucky he hadn’t kissed her.