The Forever Dream

THE FOREVER DREAM

IRIS JOHANSEN

1985

BANTAM BOOKS TORONTO · NEW YORK · LONDON · SYDNEY · AUCKLAND

Preface

The wind-driven snow was no longer an icy scourge against her cheeks, but the gentle caress of a lover. Her arms and legs felt warmer, and that hot jolt of agony she'd experienced with every step had diminished too. Oh, God, did that mean she was freezing to death?

The fear of death brought her an agony worse than the physical torment of the extreme cold and deep exhaustion of her trek. She shook her head in a childish gesture of negation: How stupid of her even to entertain such a question. Of course she wasn't freezing. She'd almost reached the foothills of this horror of a mountain, and the flickering lights below were no figment of an imagination about to be extinguished! Those lights should be coming from the village she was looking for, the village she remembered from the map she'd studied until every line, every squiggle, had been burned into memory.

She couldn't give up now that she was almost safe. She'd known it wouldn't be easy. She'd chosen to make her escape over the mountain instead of along the more civilized valley road, in the hope that Danilov would think it unlikely she'd choose such a difficult and dangerous route and would explore the more simple avenues first. But she hadn't bargained on the snowstorm that had struck just as she'd crested the summit of the mountain.

Well, ironically, there was no question she was safe from Danilov now, she realized. Even he wouldn't venture into the Andes in a snowstorm to capture his runaway prima ballerina. Undoubtedly he'd prefer to have her caught and sent back to Russia to be imprisoned in the Lubyanka as an example to other would-be defectors. Still, she reasoned, her death on this awesome mountain would suit Danilovs purposes almost as well. Collectively and individually the dancers in the company had been warned that there would be no Baryshnikovs or Godunovs defecting to the West on this tour and further tarnishing the image of the Cultural Department.

Her feet were so numb now that it was as if they didn't exist, but she could see a trickle of blood oozing from the torn foam rubber of her left shoe. She supposed she'd better stop and wrap something around it. If only it had been safe to bribe one of the servants at the lake resort, where the company had been resting before moving on to Santiago, to buy her a pair of hiking boots. But Danilov surely would have learned of the purchase and guessed her plan. The sharp rocks and rough trail had ripped the soles of her shoes before she was even halfway up the mountain. Now, pain shooting from her lacerated feet up through her legs and into her belly and back, she wondered if avoiding the risk of getting the boots had been worth the price of fleeing without them.

She shrugged impatiently as she realized she was whimpering like a child for what might have been. There was no if, there was only the moment. She must accept that if she was going to fight her way through this storm and get off this blasted mountain. After all, it couldn't be so much farther. All she had to do was to put one foot in front of the other. But every step she took brought a

stabbing agony to her chest, and her lungs were laboring as if she were running instead of stumbling like a blind woman. She gritted her teeth. One step after another. She couldn't let this damn mountain defeat her. She was strong. Her dancer's body was strong. The pain would go away. All pain went away . . . eventually. Who should know that better than she?

She was weaving, stumbling. She paused, slumping against the trunk of a tree. Suddenly her pain did seem to be gone, replaced by a comforting drowsiness. She looked back. Her tracks in the snow revealed a dizzy succession of circles. What an intricate and beautiful pattern her dragging steps had made. A sensation of warmth suffused her, and along with it a rush of longing for sleep. Warmth. Sleep. She pulled herself to her full height.

The warmth was death, the desire to sleep was death. It was not life holding out its arms to her, but death. She forced herself to move.

Think of life. One step after another. The lights were much closer, weren't they? Life. Think of life.

Wind chimes in her mother's garden. Laughter. The final exultant grand jeté. The stuff of life. Why couldn't she think of more things to add to the list? Her mind was as sluggish as her body. It didn't matter. She had enough to go on for now.

She concentrated on the wind chimes . . . and, faintly, their tinkling music played for her.

One more step. And another . . . another.

She experienced the exuberance that always accompanied a well-executed grand jeté the joyous sensation a bird must know as it headed for the sky.

And she moved more swiftly, on a more direct course. She would not stop to sleep, when she had all that waiting for her just a little way down the path.

Path? Oh, Lord, it was a path, and there was a

cluster of cottages just ahead. Why did her knees feel so weak, when she wanted to run down that path toward those lights that were now so blessedly close? The snow was piled in soft, fleecy drifts here in the valley, and it was even harder to walk than it had been on the rougher terrain of the mountain. She mustn't stop. She doubted if she'd have the strength to get back on her feet if she fell into one of those cushiony drifts.

Then she was stumbling blindly up to a rough wooden door and her fist was pounding with a strength that was frantic with urgency.

The door was opened so abruptly, she had to grab the doorjamb to keep from falling into the room. The eyes of the plump, dark-haired woman who stood shivering in the door widened in surprise. "Madre de Dios!"

She had practiced the words in Spanish so many times. Why was her mind a complete blank now? "Me llamo Tania Orlinov." That was right, but her voice was no more than a hoarse whisper. What if the woman couldn't hear her? Her gloved hands fumbled at the money belt beneath her jacket and finally got it off. She held it out to the woman, who was staring at her with an expression approaching horror on her face. She tried again. "Forfavor. Embajada americana. Santiago." Why didn't the woman say something? She couldn't hold the darkness off much longer. Then the woman was joined at the door by a little boy, who stared at her with big dark eyes almost as frightened as his mothers.

"For favor, me Uamo Tania ..." She'd said that, hadn't she? "Embajada de los Esta . . ."

The darkness came down like a black velvet curtain as she pitched forward into the room. The woman's voice was barely audible behind the curtain as Tania's slight body was pulled into the room. It was a soothing croon,

almost as musical as a wind chime. "Pobrecita, morir tan joven."

Joven. That was young, wasn't it? She wasn't all that young. She'd be twenty-one soon. Morir—to die. The woman thought she was going to die! Tania felt a wave of indignation. Didn't that woman realize that after all she, Tania Orlinov, had gone through she wasn't about to be beaten now!

She pushed the curtain aside for a moment to open her eyes and gaze up at the woman's worried face. "No muerte" she said firmly, despite the weakness of her voice. Then, as the Spanish woman continued to stare at her with that maddeningly mournful expression, she added, "No muerte. I will not die." The woman stared at her blankly. "I will not give up. I have—" What was the word for strength in Spanish? She gave up and used the Hungarian word of her childhood. "I have er'b." Her dark eyes blazed with incandescent vitality for a moment, then the velvet curtain descended once more and her eyelids fluttered shut.

Chapter 1

“You can just stop that, Jared, Nina Bartlett said, an amused smile curving her lips. "No matter how bored you are, we're going to stay until the intermission. My committee has worked very hard to make this benefit a success, and I'll be damned if I leave after simply making an appearance."

"Hardly a simple appearance," Jared Ryker commented, his wry gaze raking the crowded auditorium. "What could be more visible than a front-row box? If we were any closer to the stage, we'd be part of the show."

"I'm head of the benefit committee. Besides, I always like to be seen in the best seat in any house," Nina said complacently. "And you shouldn't complain about giving me my own way in this. Consider yourself lucky I even consented to see you tonight. What other woman would welcome you back with open arms after such a long time without a word?"

"A benefit gala wasn't precisely what I had in mind when I called you this morning," Jared said. One long, graceful hand reached out to caress her silk-gowned thigh. "I had a rather more personal gala in mind." He watched almost objectively the slow smolder begin in her dark blue eyes. Nina had always been a woman who frankly enjoyed all aspects of her sexuality. Unless she had changed since he'd last seen her, it should be relatively simple to arouse her enough to have her consent to leave, he thought. His hand continued to tease her thigh with feather-light strokes. "And I promise you that the benefits to both of us will be considerable."

She drew a deep breath, and for a moment he could read in her expression the ambivalence she felt. Then she decisively removed his hand from her thigh. "Later," she promised, shaking the shining bell of her ash-blond hair. "Quit trying to seduce me here, Jared. You know very well you're going to get what you want, what we both want . . . but later. And it will start in private, not public." A smile quickly replaced the slight scowl on her lovely face. "There was never any question in your mind that you would have me, was there?"

It was a very generous admission, and for a moment Jared felt a flicker of affection for Nina Bartlett. "You've always been very kind to me, Nina," he murmured. "I suppose I was hoping that you'd extend that lovely kindness again tonight."

"It's the only demonstration of kindness you'll accept from any woman, isn't it, Jared? And God knows we're all willing to give you what you want." The wistfulness in the expression on her face vanished, and she was once more the sophisticate, wearing a mask of cool composure. "But at my discretion, if you please."

He shrugged. "As you like." It wasn't worth pushing it, he thought, although he knew he could make her change her mind if he was determined to do so. He was more spoiled than he'd realized by the eager women who'd catered to his every whim. But that was why he'd left the chateau, wasn't it? He was sick to death of the almost cloying subservience, the gratification of his every wish. The knowledge that a woman of Nina's honesty and independence was only a short distance away, in New York, had sent him racing out of the chateau. Yet at the first hint of resistance from her, he was reacting with an arrogance he hadn't known he possessed. He turned back to her and smiled. "Just as long as that discretion doesn't extend to our gala later."

He saw a flicker of relief cross her face the instant before she met his smile with one of her own. "You won't be disappointed," she said softly. Her gaze traveled slowly over his features. "I don't suppose you're going to tell me where you got that gorgeous tan." He shook his head, and she sighed in resignation. "I didn't think so. All you need is an eye patch and a black orchid to make you the perfect mystery man." She frowned. "What the hell is the big secret? You're always showing up unexpectedly and then disappearing just as unexpectedly. Are you working for the government?"

"You could put it that way," he said, then leaned back in the wine-velvet-upholstered chair. "Does it matter?"

"I think I'm entitled to a little curiosity," she said dryly. "Four years ago you were partners with my father in the fastest-growing pharmaceutical company on the East Coast. Suddenly you sell your shares in the company. Later you drop out of sight completely." She raised a brow. "You don't think that's a bit unusual?"

"I doubt if Phillip missed me very much or for very long. He was always the executive brainpower behind the company."

"He missed you," Nina said. "You know damn well that without you the company would never have taken off as it did. You're fantastically brilliant, Jared. A genius of your caliber comes along perhaps once in a century. What the devil can the government offer you that we can't?"

"We?" he asked. "How very proprietary of you, Nina. Do I gather that you're doing more with your time than organizing charity benefits these days?"

She nodded. "I've become a personnel manager for Bartlett's Pharmaceuticals." She shrugged. "I was bored. I needed something else in my life."

"We all do," Jared said, his eyes fixed thoughtfully on her face. "And did you find it?"

"I think so." She suddenly grinned. "It would be a very brilliant feather in my corporate cap if I lured you back to the company, however."

"Lure is such a beautifully sensuous word," he drawled, "and I've already signaled my extreme willingness to let you lure me back to my hotel suite." His clear gray eyes twinkled. "You're sure you wouldn't want to practice your wiles on me at once?"

"I can wait. And so can you, Jared. You might even find this gala quite fascinating." She tapped her program. "Tania Orlinov is dancing in The Piper tonight."

"Is that supposed to impress me?" He shrugged. "I don't recognize the name."

"Where have you been, on a deserted island, for God's sake?"

Close, very close. A smile was tugging at his lips as he replied, "You might say I've been a little out of touch. Is she the new rage, or something?*'

She shook her head in amazement. "That's putting it conservatively. You must have read about her. There were stories in all the newspapers and magazines when she defected from the USSR three years ago."

"As I said, I've been out of touch. I'm afraid I was a little too busy to keep up with the arts."

"Then you're probably the only one in the world who hasn't heard about the 'Piper.'"

His lips curved mockingly. "Is that what she calls herself? How theatrical."

"I think you'll agree she lives up to the title, when you've seen her perform. She's exceptionally colorful, to

say the least. There's a picture of her in the program. Do you think she's attractive?"

The face that gazed up at him from the program wasn't conventionally beautiful, but for almost a minute he wasn't conscious of the fact. He'd never seen anyone so totally vibrantly alive as the woman laughing out of that sterile black-and-white photo. Her large dark eyes were framed with extravagantly long lashes and blazed with a vitality so intense that it had the force of a blow; her full lips were curved and stretched in a smile of such elfin zest that it seemed to encompass all of humor and joy.