Dream a Little Dream

  She rose from the table. "I'm chilly. I'm going back inside now."

  "I wish you wouldn't do that."

  "Forget the two weeks' notice."

  "All right. Sorry. Go on in. You can sit with Gabe and me."

  "No. I want to dance."

  "I'll dance with you."

  "That'll be a big treat." Obviously he thought the only way he could save her from sin was to force himself to dance with her.

  "Why are you being so difficult?"

  "Because I like it!" Her heart pounded. She was never rude, but she couldn't seem to help it, and the words kept rushing out. "Because I'm tired of twisting my own life in ten directions just to make things easier for other people."

  "You mean easier for me."

  "I don't want to talk any more."

  She brushed past him and headed for the Mountaineer, even though all she wanted now was to go home and be alone.

  As Ethan watched her disappear, guilt swamped him even as he told himself he had nothing to feel guilty for. "You have a wonderful life!" he called after her. "You have the respect of everyone in the community!"

  "Well now, isn't that something cozy to cuddle up with on a cold winter night." As she shot the words back over her shoulder, she stepped into a pool of light from the street lamp. It defined her figure in a way that made his palms sweat.

  The entire world had gone crazy, he decided. Right before his eyes, Kristy Brown had turned into a babe. As the light washed over her, her dark hair seemed to have fireflies dancing in it. She wasn't beautiful; her features were too ordinary for that. Although they were pretty, they were hardly exceptional. Instead, she was… sexy.

  It bothered him to think of Kristy as sexy. There was something unnatural about it, like throwing lascivious glances at a sister. But ever since Tuesday morning he'd been thinking about those breasts.

  Pig, Oprah said. There's a lot more to Kristy Brown than big breasts.

  I know that! he shot back. It was the whole package: the small waist and rounded hips, the slender legs, that flighty hairstyle, and a new vulnerability—maybe that was the sexiest thing of all. Kristy no longer seemed so supremely competent, but like an ordinary person who had the same insecurities as everyone else.

  He shoved his hands in the pockets of his jeans and tried to figure out why he was so upset by the changes in her. Because he was losing a darned good secretary, that was why.

  Wrong, Oprah said. You are so wrong.

  All right! There was too much truth in what Kristy had said tonight. He did regard her as one of his oldest friends, but until now, he hadn't realized how selfish that friendship had been.

  She was right. Everything had been one-sided. He knew the events of her life, but nothing more. He didn't know how she spent her spare time, what made her happy, what made her sad. He tried to recall what she liked to eat, but all he could remember was the way she made sure there was always a supply of spicy brown mustard in the church refrigerator for his sandwiches.

  When he thought of Kristy, he thought of a…

  He flinched.

  He thought of an efficient doormat. Always there, always willing to extend herself to help out. Never demanding anything for herself, only for others.

  He stared off into the night. What a phony he was, calling himself a minister. This was one more example of his flawed character and why he needed to find another profession.

  Kristy was a good person, a good friend, and he'd hurt her. That meant he had to make amends. And he only had two weeks to do it before she would disappear from his life.

  Chapter Fourteen

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  The next afternoon Gabe pried open the lid of the KFC bucket and extended it toward Rachel. They were sitting in their favorite place to take a lunch break, by the concrete turtle on the playground, with the big white screen looming above them offering shade from the midday sun.

  Nine days had passed since that rainy afternoon they'd made love. The drive-in was opening a week from tonight, but instead of concentrating on that, all he'd been able to think about was having that sweet body underneath him again. Except she wasn't cooperating. First there'd been her hang-up about her period, something he was certain he could have overcome. But he hadn't pressed because he knew the money problem loomed in her mind, and he wanted her to realize how ridiculous that was.

  His patience, however, had run out. There were only so many days he could spend watching those old cotton housedresses shape themselves around her body whenever a breeze swept through the lot, so he was making his move.

  "You'll be glad to know I figured out the answer to our little dilemma."

  "Which dilemma is that?" She pulled out a drumstick. He'd noticed she was partial to drumsticks. He, on the other hand, was partial to breasts, and, as he took one from the bucket, he enjoyed what he could see of hers peeking from the open buttons of today's ugly housedress, a red calico number he could swear he remembered Annie wearing when he'd been small enough to sit in her lap.

  Rachel had pulled up the skirt and stretched her bare legs out in front of her. They were suntanned and lightly freckled. One knee sported an old scab, another a Band-Aid he'd affixed that morning after she'd ignored a scrape. Her calves seemed to get the worst of it. A bruise here, a scratch there. She worked too damned hard, but she wouldn't stick to the easier jobs he tried to give her, no matter how much he growled.

  Her calves looked slim and feminine in contrast to the heavy white sweat socks collapsed around her ankles and those clunky black shoes. She kept them polished, he'd noticed, and he could only imagine the work it took to remove the paint and grime the shoes accumulated every day. At first he hadn't understood why she bothered, and then he realized that someone with only one pair of shoes had to take care of them.

  He didn't like to think about Rachel slaving over those ugly shoes every night to keep them clean. He'd buy her a dozen pairs if he could, but she'd throw them right back in his face.

  He cleared his throat. "The dilemma about your hourly salary and what you can do or not do during those hours."

  "You're giving me a raise!"

  "Hell no, I'm not giving you a raise."

  He did his best not to smile at her look of disappointment. Although it wasn't easy, he was trying hard to keep her short of ready cash while he also made certain she had everything she really needed. The way she squeezed a dollar, he knew that if he gave her too much money, she'd save it up. And once she had enough, she'd leave town.

  Sooner or later, she'd have to accept the fact that G. Dwayne hadn't left his five million dollars hidden away in Salvation, and then she'd no longer have a reason to stay. Gabe needed to make certain she couldn't afford to go. Not yet. Although he knew this town wasn't a good place for her, he also couldn't have her taking off until he was certain she had some way to stabilize her future. Her hold on survival was so very precarious, and somehow he had to make sure that she wouldn't ever be destitute again.

  "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."

  "E
xcuse 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 the first 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."
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  Rachel suspected that came more from Kristy's mindset 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.