Until I Die Again [On The Way To Heaven] (Soul Change Novel) (26 page)

“Alan?”

Jamie was stretched out beside her, his head propped up by his hand. The white sheet was twisted around his waist, making him look more modest than he actually was. All she wanted to do was crawl up next to him and wish away the question he’d just asked. And the reason he knew Alan’s name at all.

“You screamed out his name in your sleep.”

She licked her lips and swallowed harder than she had intended. “I don’t remember doing that.”

“You were asleep.”

“I mean, I don’t remember having a dream about an Alan. I don’t know any Alans.” She touched his cheek. “Are you sure I wasn’t screaming out your name?”

“Yes.”

His blue eyes looked frosty, his mouth a thin line. Her heart dropped a few inches. How could she tell him about Alan? Surely she wasn’t having a sexual dream about him. She hadn’t even slept with the guy. Thank goodness. She remembered the dream where Alan pleaded, “Please…” It made her shiver.

Jamie suddenly yanked her close and kissed her fiercely. Gone was the gentleness. Was he testing her? When he rolled her onto her back and crouched over her, she saw no love or trust in his eyes. Only anger. She placed her palms against his hard chest and held him at bay.

“No, Jamie.”

He leaned down as close as her hands would allow. “What’s wrong?”

“Not this way.”

He fell away and sat cross-legged on the bed next to her, glaring at her in a way harsher than before. His voice took on that flat tone that made her heart feel pinched.

“Because of your dream?” he asked.

“No, because of your reaction to it. Don’t use sex to make a point.”

“Is that all it is to you? Sex? Sex?”

She tried to hide the smallest smile that threatened to creep in at the wrong time. “Was it more to you?”

“What was it to you, Hallie?”

“We did not have sex, we made love. You’ve been holding back. You still don’t trust me.”

“No.”

His blatant admission prickled her. “I don’t want to make love with you anymore. Until you’re sure.”

He narrowed his eyes at her. “How can I be sure when you’re calling out some guy’s name in your sleep?”

She leaned forward into his face. “Because you have to trust
me
, not the woman you married, but me. Until you’re able to give all of yourself and not just the parts that don’t carry a risk, I don’t want to make love with you.”

She yanked the sheets away and, covering herself, walked into the bathroom.

He flopped onto his back and muttered, “Cover hog.”

Well, at least Jamie had taken her up on one offer. She spent the day in his office logging a mountain of paid bills into the computer. He had made himself scarce all day, making repairs on a few of the bungalows down by the beach. She turned off the PC, feeling good for pulling her weight at Caterina. Would Jamie be home, or would he make himself scarce until bedtime like the last two nights?

The fragrance of orchids mixed with the woodsy cologne of someone recently in the area. The sound of a squawking parrot clashed with the soft calypso music. The eastern sky was a violet blue, long abandoned by the sun. She followed the lighted path until it became sand and led the way home. The house was dark, causing her heart to falter. Another evening alone wondering where Jamie was.

She was greeted by a seductive beat as music drifted through the darkened rooms. She stepped through the walkway that led to the bedroom. Her heartbeat quickened when she saw the flicker of candlelight against the far wall. But the bedroom was empty.

She walked quietly into the bathroom and turned the corner. She opened her mouth to say something, but all she could do was smile. Twenty candles flickered around the huge marble tub, where Jamie sat—in a tubful of green M&M’s! A bottle of champagne sat in a wooden bucket of ice, and next to that two glasses filled with more green M&M’s. He grinned, then grabbed one of the glasses and held it up.

“Get the hint?”

She bit her bottom lip and walked toward the tub. Her gaze swept from the champagne glasses to the hundreds of green M&M’s that covered everything but his head, chest and knees. She wanted to laugh; she wanted to cry. But most of all, she wanted to get into that tub with him.

She slipped out of her clothes and walked up to the tub. He pulled her in, and she fell into his lap. Before she could say anything, he gave her an M&M kiss. Then he leaned forward and popped the top off the champagne.

“Where in the world did you come up…” She merely looked at the tub.

“They say if you want to let someone know you trust them and want them without a shadow of a doubt, you give them green M&M’s. Or maybe it’s for making them horny. I don’t know, but I figured, either way, you’d get the idea.”

“Oh, Jamie…”

He kissed the words right out of her mouth. Then he handed her a glass with enough M&M’s in it to make the champagne green.

Clink!
“Here’s to you and me and the green monster.” He growled into her neck, then took a swig of champagne. She drank and accidentally swallowed an M&M, barely containing the cough that threatened to erupt. She straddled his waist, and he leaned her backward and kissed down her neck, collarbone, and then her breast.

“You know we’re going to be all green after this,” she said.

“Yeah, like finger painting.” He demonstrated by rubbing a champagne moistened candy into a smile face on her chest. “But just think how much fun we’ll have trying to wash the color off each other later.

“Mm, you’re right.” She glanced wickedly down, then started kissing down the middle of his chest, down his stomach to the fine hairline pointing south. She lifted her glass in toast again, then dribbled it down his stomach. Leaning to lick it off, she said, “Here’s to the green monster.”

Hallie woke a few hours later on the bed, intertwined with Jamie’s warm body. The candles had died down while they napped. She didn’t need light to know that he had a green smudge across his cheek and a lot of other places. They had scrubbed most of it off in the shower, but she’d put more on him afterward.

“Are you hungry?” His voice startled her.

“How did you know I was awake?”

“I just knew. I’m starved.”

“Me, too. We could eat some of those M&M’s in the tub.”

“Nah. Let’s grab a bite at BooNooNoos.”

She rolled over and yawned. “If I have the energy to drag myself to the closet.”

Fifteen minutes later, they sat at a table next to a trellis crawling with purple bougainvillea. The waiter came over and greeted them.

“Lobster pizza, please,” Jamie said.

Hallie looked at him. “Lobster pizza?” She tried to imagine such a thing.

“Save room for dessert,” the waiter told them. “We have chocolate cake covered with M&M’s, an M&M sundae, or M&M cookies.”

She felt her cheeks warm. When the waiter left, she nudged Jamie.

He reached over and grabbed a bowl sitting on the table, holding it out for her. “Want an M&M?”

She glanced into the bowl. “I don’t see any green ones in there.”

He looked. “Hmm, you’re right. I wonder what happened to them.”

“Do you mean to tell me…”

“How do you think I got all those green ones? I had an emergency shipment of M&M’s flown to the island yesterday and spent all day sorting out the green ones. Now we have thousands of red, orange and brown ones left, so I gave them to the chef and told him to be creative.”

She was laughing so hard, she thought her stomach might explode. “Jamie, you’re crazy!”

He took her hand and placed it against his lips. “You’ve made me a fool for love again. I hope you accept the consequences.”

Her smile faded, and she met his eyes. Did that mean he loved her? Her heart jumped around inside, and the touch of his lips against her palm made her toes curl.

“Here are your drinks,” the waiter said, breaking into their moment before she’d mustered the guts to tell Jamie she loved him. “Two Hallie’s Comets. Mrs. D, you have a phone call. You can take it up by the waiter’s station.”

She glanced at Jamie, then back at the waiter. “Are you sure it’s for me?”

“He said Hallie Parker, but I assumed it was you. You’re the only Hallie around.”

She shrugged. “Maybe it’s Velvet’s—I mean, my mother’s boyfriend.”

“I hope everything’s all right.”

She walked to the phone and picked it up.

“Hello?” She waited. “This is Hallie.”

The silence made her quiver and feel cold even as a warm breeze floated by. She hung up, then confirmed with the waiter that she had the right phone. Jamie watched her with concern as she walked back to the table.

“What’s wrong?”

“There wasn’t anybody there. Well, there was someone there, but they—he didn’t say anything.” Her heart tightened as she remembered Mick’s warning about giving her marriage another try.

“Hallie, what’s wrong? Why are you looking at me like that?”

She clenched the arms of her wicker chair. Should she tell him about Mick’s threat? Surely he wouldn’t come all the way out there to bother them. It was probably a bad connection.

She brightened. “I was just trying to figure out who it might be.”

Jamie’s voice remained normal, with a forced lightness. “It wouldn’t be Alan, would it?”

She looked him in the eye. “I told you, I don’t know anyone named Alan.”

“Just checking.”

She tried to act normal and relaxed throughout dinner, but that cold nagging feeling continued to hold her in its grip. Her gaze kept drifting to the shadows beyond the lights, and she hoped that it was only an irrational fear, nothing else.

The sun brightened her outlook the next morning, chasing away the shadows.

“When I see you out here with George,” Jamie said as he moved up behind her pool-side chair, “I can’t help but imagine you’re out here with our baby.”

George chattered as he swung from one outstretched finger to another. She reached up and pulled Jamie’s head down to nuzzle his cheek.

“He’s a bit of a preemie, don’t you think? And those eyes—he must take after your side of the family.”

George’s vivid brown eyes, so human-like, darted from Hallie’s face to Jamie’s. His tiny hands reached up to scratch his tufted ears.

Jamie crouched down at her side, his hands resting on the arm of her chair. The sunlight lit the blond hairs on his legs to golden, and her gaze trailed up past his white shorts, broad, bare chest to a face far more serious than her quip warranted. He reached up and stroked her cheek.

“Do you think we’ll have more to our family than the lizard and George?”

She leaned into his hand, closing her eyes at the warmth of it against her cheek.

“Are you asking me if we’ll ever have a baby?”

“Not now, not in the nearish future. Just sometime.”

She leaned over and touched her lips to his, letting them linger for a few seconds. When she opened her eyes, she found him looking at her.

“I would love to have your baby, Jamie.”

Curiosity filled his blue eyes. “God, how you’ve changed. It’s like I’m married to another woman.”

She felt a twang in her heart. How she would love to tell him the truth. Yet, despite his words, what would he really think if he knew she
was
another woman? Maybe she would try somehow. She trailed a finger across the smooth-shaven skin of his chin, realizing he was testing her with the question.

“What would I have said before, if you’d asked me that?”

“You would have whined about getting fat and stretch marks, and you weren’t ready to even discuss the possibility.”

“Guess that’s changed, too.” She pulled him close. “Do you have to leave just yet?”

“I wish I didn’t. Miguel’s waiting for me. Remember, we promised Ruby we’d go over to Contigua and do some patchwork on her mother’s house.”

“Oh, right.” Only once had Hallie been to the small village on the other side of the island, population three hundred. “You’ll be home before dark?”

“Absolutely.” He punctuated his promise with a kiss and touched the top of George’s head. “Keep her company, buddy.”

Jamie had only been gone five minutes when the phone rang. She hesitantly walked to the bedroom and answered it. Silence. She placed the phone carefully back in the cradle, holding back her anxiety and anger. It probably wasn’t anything at all, but why did the calls cause her hands to get clammy?

That night the dreams came again. In her trembling hand she held a crumbled newspaper. She could only read the word, “
Missing
—”

Her heart pounded as the bridge neared, and she knew what would happen if she crossed it. She knew, yet she couldn’t stop. The black semi appeared like a menace in the rear-view mirror, then beside her, pushing her off the bridge.

Her hand slapped over her mouth as she lurched up in bed, staring with bulging eyes into the darkness. She gasped for breath, pressing her hand against her heart to still it before its pounding woke Jamie.

Who was missing? Everyone in her life had been present. Then, like so many other times, she reached down beside the bed for her Sheltie.

Her eyes flew open. This time there was something down there. Her fingers touched fur. She jerked her hand back, staring at the dark nothingness on the floor. Something moved down there! She reached over and turned on the light, hoping the feeling of fur was still part of her dream.

She blinked, slowly reaching down to see if what she saw was real. The fuzzy Sheltie pup watched her with dazed eyes, blinking. He sat nestled in a basket topped with a big blue ribbon.

“Jamie.” She turned to see him lying on his side, his head propped up by his hand. He was smiling with anticipation. “Oh, Jamie.”

She scooped up the ball of brown, white and black fuzz and set him on the bed. Her eyes watered, and she rubbed them before turning to Jamie.

“His name is Phoenix,” he said.

“How did you get this puppy here? And when?”

“Well, let’s just say I have connections. And I lied about going to Contigua. I was waiting for Phoenix’s plane.”

“But how…why?”

“Every time you have one of those nightmares, you reach down for the floor and call for Phoenix. I wanted to give you something to touch next time.”