What Dreams May Come (16 page)

She pushed it aside for now. She wanted to be happy today, to delight in the closeness between them. Conjuring a smile, she said, "Well, you didn't have to try to make me laugh over your worry that you were—"

He kissed her quickly. "Don't say it. I wouldn't even let myself say that word."

"All right, I won't say it. Besides, you're fine now."

Mitch eyed her.
"Fine?"

She studied him with a mock frown. "Are we dealing with a fragile ego here?"

"I just thought that fine was sort of a lackluster word to use," he explained in a pained tone.

Kelly bit her lip, then said, "I suppose from your point of view it might have been."

"Naturally.
If you'd said magnificent, now, or stupendous, I might have felt a bit more secure. But fine? Fine is what you are when you've gotten over a cold. Fine is not what you are after experiencing major emotional trauma."

She rested her forehead against his chest and allowed the pent-up giggles to escape. It felt wonderful.

"Now she's laughing at me," Mitch said in a depressed tone with a thread of amusement woven through it. "The woman is running amok over my ego. If I had any arrogance left, it is writhing in the dust."

"I'd forgotten you could be so funny," she murmured into his shirt.

"Funny? Light of my life, years from now, when they speak of this, and they will, they'll say—"

"They?"

"Quiet, I'm being lyrical."

"Pardon me, I'm sure."

"They'll say . . . what will they say? Oh, yes. They'll say, 'She trod carelessly upon the dark insecurity of her man, laying bare with a single four-letter word that consuming fear every male hides deep in his ego. She said fine, and his very soul quivered under the blow.' "

Kelly lifted a solemn face from the front of his shirt. "Will they let me have a second chance?" she asked meekly.

"If you grovel."

Reflectively, she said, "I'd rather just stand here proudly and correct this sad misapprehension you seem to be laboring under."

Mitch linked his fingers together at the small of her back and looked magnanimous. "I'm listening."

"Then I'll say, in all truth, that these last hours—" She looked at her watch and remarked in mild surprise, "It's almost noon. Did you know that?"

He gave her a little shake and growled.

Kelly cleared her throat hastily. "As I was saying, these last hours have been so utterly wonderful that mere words are hopelessly inadequate to describe them."

Mitch waited a beat,
then
frowned at her.

"Well, they are." She sobered abruptly and stood on tiptoe to curve her arms around his neck.
"Even magnificent and stupendous fall short of the mark."

He hugged her. "Hey, if you're going to get serious, we'd better go downstairs and rustle up some food. Obviously, you're in a weakened condition."

She kissed his chin, knowing that he was fully aware of the pleasure she'd found in his arms.
"Obviously."

Mitch chuckled and held her hand firmly as they left the bedroom and started downstairs. "Are you going to insist on working today?"

Kelly felt a stab of guilt, and gave him a slightly worried look. "I really should, at least for a couple of hours. I need to call Mr. Fortune and check a few things with him."

"I'm not going to kick and scream about it," Mitch told her dryly. "But I do think you've been working too hard the last few days. To avoid me, I know."

She smiled. "It showed, huh?"

"Around the edges.
I probably learned a valuable lesson in patience."

They had reached the kitchen by then, and as she went to look in the refrigerator she said lightly, "A useful virtue to cultivate. Should I be listening for the other shoe to drop?"

He had no difficulty
In
understanding the mild question. In the same tone she'd used, he said, "It's obviously going to take time for you to believe it, but no. I can't be the same man I used to be, Kelly.
Even if I wanted to.
If I try to hold on to you too tightly, it won't be out of domination or arrogance—but out of fear."

She turned to look at him, but he gestured slightly before she could speak.

"I know
,
that motive's hardly a better one. But I can't pretend it isn't there. The fear of loss is something—something I may never overcome." His matter-of-fact voice didn't quite conceal the emotions beneath. "But it is something I'm aware of, something I can consciously control. Kelly, if I've learned anything through all this, it's that you can't build walls around the people you care about. You can't do it to keep them near or to keep them safe. Even if they could stand the prison, that kind of control is still an illusion. To fate, the walls are made of air."

Kelly crossed the space between them and slid her arms around his waist. "You are different," she murmured against his chest as his arms closed about her. "Before, you never talked about your
feelings. You just—well, seemed to think I should understand without being told."

"I was a silly bastard," he said calmly, and kissed the tip of her nose as she looked up at him. "But I'm all grown-up now, and quite delighted with the woman you are. So stop listening for that other shoe; I've thrown it out the window. You may catch me in an odd moment trying to get my own way, but I think we can both deal with that."

She smiled. "I think so too."

"Good." He patted her bottom and then released her.

After lunch Kelly reluctantly went into her study to work. She admitted to herself that she would have preferred to spend the rest of the day with Mitch; after what had happened to them before, she was aware of a superstitious urge to remain as close to him as possible. But, just as he knew he couldn't hold on too tightly to her because of fear of loss, she knew the same was true for her. Still, knowing it did little to make her feel better.

It was so easy to mock fate.
At least, as Mitch had more colorfully stated, until it kicked you where you hurt.
With so much beyond any individual's control, it was almost terrifying to realize that control over even one's own future was very much in doubt.

A fact, however, was a fact, and had to be accepted. Kelly knew that wasn't the reason she had been unable to tell Mitch she loved him. It was because she wasn't yet whole. There was still, at the core of herself, some wavering uncertainty she hadn't been prepared to examine closely until now. She loved him, and she wanted them to be together.
If he could forgive her for leaving him.

Was that it? She wasn't sure.
Maybe.
Partly, at
least.
And partly because she was in a kind of limbo.

The thought stopped abruptly in her head, but Kelly made herself look at it squarely. She
was
in a kind of limbo, because Brad was still out there somewhere and a part of her was waiting for him to make a move. That, too, was something unfinished—and had to be handled.

She'd almost forgotten about him.
Had forgotten about him for a while.
Mitch had said very little about the possibility of her ex-husband showing up, but she knew it wasn't something he was ignoring. He had believed her, had accepted her belief that Brad meant to kill her if he could. But it struck her for the first time that Mitch
had
been unnaturally quiet about that possibility. He had changed, yes, but the man he was today was a stronger, tougher man in many ways—and hardly likely to sit and twiddle his thumbs if even the possibility of danger lurked nearby.

After a long, thoughtful moment, Kelly turned on her computer and prepared to work. She had a question to ask him, but there was no hurry.

Mitch held the receiver to his ear and frowned unseeingly across the kitchen as he listened to Evan Boyd's voice.

"Nothing was happening. I started getting the feeling that somebody was toying with us," the investigator was saying. "So I got a friend of mine in Texas to do a bit more checking on that out-of-the-country trip West was supposed to be on."

"And?"
Mitch asked.

"It wasn't easy. Since West is in the travel business, he knows all the tricks. As far as we could
determine, he didn't leave the country. But he didn't come here either."

"Where is he now?"

"That's the kicker. My friend hasn't actually seen him, but there have been at least two notices in the town's newspaper during the past three days that put him at charity functions right there.
Nowhere near California or here.
So I called his office, and was told that he was in a meeting. It could be the standard secretary's excuse, of course."

Mitch was silent for a moment,
then
he said, "What does your gut say?"

Sighing, Boyd replied, "My gut isn't saying a damned thing. Would the bastard be this devious?"

"I don't know. Maybe he hasn't tracked
her this
far yet. She told me that after moving to a new place it was usually weeks—even months—before he showed up. It could be that he doesn't know she's here."

The investigator sighed again. "The two guys I hired think we're both crazy, and they're bored; they aren't as good as I'd hoped. The cops told me to yell if something happened, but otherwise aren't interested. Look—maybe he
was
here and realized we were waiting for him. He could have decided to back off until the odds were better."

Flatly, Mitch said, "I won't look over my shoulder for the rest of my life, and I don't want Kelly to have to.
If we can find out for certain where West is, I'll have
him
watched, twenty-four hours a day if necessary, until I can find a way to get him out of our lives for good."

"All right," Boyd said. "Then I'll fly down to Texas and eyeball him myself. I can probably get a flight sometime tomorrow. Do you want the other two to stay on watch?"

"How effective are they?" Mitch asked bluntly.

"Not very," the investigator admitted. "If West drives up to the front door in a tank, they'd probably spot him. They're good men—it's just that they don't feel a threat and that makes them slack."

"Then they're useless to me. Pay them off and send me the bill. I'll try to keep Kelly inside the house with the security system activated, at least until I hear from you again."

"I'll be as quick as I can."

"Fine.
If he's in Texas, either watch him yourself or hire someone you trust to do it."

"You've got it."

Mitch cradled the receiver and turned around. She was leaning back against the doorjamb, her empty coffee cup dangling from one finger, face calm and eyes unreadable.

"Isn't it handy there are two phone lines into the house?" she asked.

He cleared his throat. "Are you mad at me?"

The direct question was curiously boyish, and Kelly was tempted
to
let him believe she was angry just to see how he'd react. But she shook her head. "No. It just occurred to me that you were being a bit too quiet about a possible threat, and I was going to ask you about that. I gather that was your investigator you were talking to? And that you've had the house watched for some time now?"

"It seemed . . . prudent," Mitch said cautiously.

"You should have told me."

He moved to stand in front of her, his hands lifting to rest on her shoulders. "I'm sorry. I think I didn't because ... I didn't want to talk about him. I still don't, but I guess we have to." He drew a short breath. "I want him out of our lives, Kelly, for good. I don't want you to be afraid anymore.

That is part of the problem, isn't it? Between us, I mean. You can't think of the future because he's a threat."

Since she had just faced that fact herself, Kelly could hardly deny it. "It's . . . something I can't forget.
Something that isn't finished."

His hands tightened gently on her shoulders. "We can stop him, sweetheart. Well find a way. But right now I just want to make sure he's nowhere near you. Boyd is flying to Texas to make sure he's there, and he'll be watched."

She looked up at him,
then
nodded. "Just don't try to wrap me in cotton, all right, Mitch? That kind of protectiveness feels wonderful, but it's a crutch too. I have to stand on my own two feet."

He chuckled. "The instincts are old, you know.
Stamped in the genes.
But I'll do my best."

Kelly extended her free hand to touch his cheek as she returned his smile. "I can't ask for more, can I?"

"You can ask for anything." He kissed her lightly, adding, "Finished work for the day?"

She accepted the changed subject. "I have to call Mr. Fortune. It shouldn't take long."

The rest of the day was spent quietly, and the tentative moments between them gradually vanished as the barriers came down. Kelly realized that she was finally seeing Mitch clearly as the man he was today; her occasional comparisons between then and now became fewer and virtually unimportant. And she knew that he had also found a merging of past and present in her. Maybe the fact that they had become lovers had provided the bridge, or perhaps it was simply that they had at
last worked their way across the distance between them, carefully, a step at a time.

Kelly had never before known true intimacy with a man; the months with Brad, even in the beginning, had made her feel anxious and unsure of herself, and since she'd been unable to respond to him physically—something he had adamantly insisted was her fault—she had felt like a failure as a woman. Her response to Mitch, so instant and powerful, gave her a new confidence that brought her out of herself.

She wasn't fully aware of her own sensual blooming until that night. During the hours before they had climbed the stairs together, Mitch had touched her a great deal, not casually but without demand, and she had loved that closeness.
Kissing her, stroking her back, holding her hand.
His obvious pleasure in just touching her allowed her the freedom to explore and enjoy the intimacy between lovers.