What Dreams May Come (3 page)

The streets of Baltimore were busy. Mitch stood gazing out for a few moments, then turned and slowly went back to his desk.
His desk.
That still felt strange to him. He had made no changes in his father's office, and the executive board had made no change even though this room had gone unoccupied for years.

The old bastard had had the final word after all.

Hugh Mitchell's will had been a curious document. Dated just a few months before his death, it had clearly been written in the unshakable belief that his only son would survive to control the family holdings—no matter how long it took. The company had been set up meticulously, temporary control granted to the executive board and a group of trustees composed of accountants, lawyers, and financial advisers who had been required to work within a set of clear and unbreakable rules.

The result of all the care and forethought had been that Mitch had been able to step into his inheritance so smoothly it had caused hardly a ripple.

The bequest to Kelly had been a surprise, and since his father had left behind no remarks on the subject, Mitch couldn't guess what the intent had been, though he doubted it had been a positive one. At any rate, that promising lead had fizzled out quickly when it dead-ended with Kelly's lawyer; the man claimed he'd had no direct contact with her in years, and had no idea where she was. The realty company in charge of the property in Oregon had been just as useless.

Mitch sat down behind the desk, his gaze fixed on the folded newsletter lying on the blotter. His initial problems with depth perception due to the lost eye were virtually past now, and months of hard work had repaired the other results of his coma. He'd had literally to relearn many things, but there had been no brain damage to slow his progress, and at least he had the satisfaction of knowing that he was actually in better shape physically now than he had been ten years earlier.

Emotionally was something else.

He had discovered that the small shocks were, curiously enough, the ones that stayed with him. During the months of physical therapy at the hospital, Mitch had pored over magazines and newspapers in an effort to catch up with the world. The number of events he'd slept through was mind-boggling; some were minor, some major, and all of them made the world different.

Cars looked subtly different. Computers were everywhere, it seemed, as were satellite dishes and video stores. There were space shuttles now, making routine flights. Mount St. Helens had erupted. John Lennon was dead. There was a woman on the Supreme Court, and one had finally made it into space; England had a new princess and two new princes; a president had been elected, had survived an assassination attempt, and had served two terms. Baby boomers had come of age, and were making their presence felt
in a number of ways. There had been a devastatingly long famine in Ethiopia, an earthquake in Mexico City, a tragic shuttle explosion, and terrorist insanity. The Statue of Liberty had gotten a face-lift, AIDS had become a terrifying epidemic, a Soviet leader named Gorbachev was charming the West, and they'd found the
Titanic.

Mitch had had more than a year to begin absorbing the changes, but he still felt disoriented sometimes, out of step. It was one of the reasons he'd followed his father's wishes and taken his place in the company. At least he felt a sense of roots here, a sense of belonging, though he hadn't wanted any part of the company or his family's wealth.

What he wanted, more than anything, was to find Kelly. He didn't know what would happen then. He had loved her since she was fourteen years old, had planned his entire future around her, and now—
And
now. While he had slept she had lived through the days, and weeks, and years. He'd been told that she had lost her brother, her parents, and had given up on him.

He watched his hands reach out and slowly unfold the newsletter, then turn the pages until he saw her picture. An unposed shot, he thought, Kelly looking up from a computer keyboard as if she'd been startled. Her hair was shorter than he remembered, her face finer-featured, with adolescence well behind her. And there was something haunted in her eyes.

Why didn't you wait for me?
He knew it was unreasonable, but the question echoed painfully in his mind, even though some part of him understood what her reasons must have been. She had been so
young,
and forced to bear so many
shocks and griefs piled one on top of the other. It was natural, he told himself, that she turn to someone else eventually. She had been briefly married; Boyd had found that out quickly. Married five years after his accident, and divorced less than two years later.

Mitch didn't know—or want to know—about her ex-husband. The marriage had been registered in Texas, but if they had lived together there, Boyd hadn't been able to discover where. Since divorcing her husband, Kelly had been constantly on the move, living nowhere more than a few months at a time.

Was Boyd right? Was she running from something or someone? Or had Kelly simply lost so much that she was rootless, drifting through life? He didn't know, couldn't know, because he remembered only an eighteen-year-old girl; he was very much afraid the woman of twenty-eight would be a stranger to him.

The only thing Mitch was certain of was that he had to find her, had to see her and talk to her. She was all that was left of the future he had planned, the only link with the years that had been stolen from him. His mind told him she'd be different, changed by the life she had lived without him, but he had no emotional sense of those years passing, and his heart couldn't accept that she wouldn't still be the Kelly he had loved.

He had to find out. He didn't think he could bear it if he lost her too.

Two days later Boyd called, the satisfaction in his voice still mixed with a thread of doubt. "I finally got somewhere," he reported. "Her next-door neighbors in the apartment building are an old couple, very talkative. According to them, she's moved somewhere near Portland, Oregon."

"Find her," Mitch ordered, holding his voice steady with an effort. "Don't approach her at
all,
just find out where she is. Then call me."

"You've got it."

The house was more than a surprise. She didn't know quite what she had expected, but certainly not this huge, beautiful old house perched near the edge of a high cliff overlooking the Pacific. It was more than seventy years old, the realtor had told her, puzzled by her lack of knowledge, and they'd had no trouble renting it for weeks or months at a time during the past seven years.

Kelly could see why. The house was built of weathered stone, the style vaguely reminiscent of an English manor, with well-kept grounds and a spectacular view of the ocean. It had been built during an era when wealthy families had lived in luxury—and the Mitchells had been very wealthy. This "vacation retreat" was not a mansion by the standards of its day, but it was a large house on very valuable property and worth a fortune.

Before Kelly had inherited it, the house had been closed up and virtually abandoned for more than a decade. A year before his death, however, Hugh Mitchell had thrown an army of workmen into renovating and restoring it—apparently with the intention of leaving the property to Kelly.

The realtor, who had, as it turned out, been a very responsible and thoughtful caretaker, had presented her with an inventory of the contents of the house as well as a yearly appraisal from the insurance company. He had also hired a landscape service to take care of the gardening, a cleaning service to take care of housekeeping, installed a very good security system, and had been selective about who he rented the place to.

Kelly certainly had nothing to complain about there. She'd told her lawyer that she wanted no income from the property, and that if there had been a profit from the rentals, it should be put back into the property. According to the realtor's itemized accounting, her wishes had been followed scrupulously.

But she didn't understand why Hugh Mitchell had left her the property at all. And the
way
he had, restoring the house and grounds, repairing or replacing all the furnishings, leaving the place ready to be occupied. It was as if he had fully expected her to live there, and that just didn't make sense. She had spent her few days wandering around the house and grounds, increasingly bothered by the situation.

Even the master bedroom had been decorated with a woman in mind.

Kelly was in the conservatory at the back of the house, gazing at white wicker furniture and lush green plants, when the doorbell sounded distantly. Since she was expecting the delivery, via her new boss, of a computer system, she wasn't surprised by the alien sound. She made her way back through the house, struck again by the quiet elegance of gleaming wood floors and antiques and beautiful old rugs.

She opened the heavy paneled oak door, expecting to see a delivery man with clipboard in hand and an inquiring look. And even though the newspaper article had at least prepared her for the possibility, she could feel the color drain from her face.

It was Mitch.

Taller than she remembered, his shoulders wider and heavier with maturity, a new look of strength and power in his stance.
The gleaming dark sable hair had gone silver at the temples, but rather than making him look older, it, along with the black patch over his left eye, gave him an almost piratical air of danger.

"May I come in?" His voice was deeper than she remembered, slightly husky, and despite the prosaic request, she could hear the note of strain.

She stepped back wordlessly and opened the door wider, holding on so tightly to the ornate brass handle that she felt her nails biting into her palm.
Strangers,
she thought with the detachment that comes of total shock.
We're strangers.

She pushed the door closed behind him as he came in, then led the way into the den, where a fire burned brightly in the stone fireplace. She didn't know what to say to him. Her legs felt shaky, and she sank down in a comfortable chair near the fire, watching as he slowly crossed the room and stood just a few feet away near the hearth.

"You knew I had come out of the coma." It wasn't a question.

Kelly answered anyway, her own voice holding tension. "I saw a newspaper article." She didn't mention that it had been only a week before.

Mitch slid his hands into the pockets of his dark slacks and looked at her steadily, giving no clue to his thoughts. He was wearing a black leather jacket over a dark gray shirt, and the somber colors made him look even more dangerous.

"I'm sorry," she said suddenly, almost blurting it out. There was a flash in the dark, watching eye, as if some emotion had surged inside him, but his face remained expressionless.

"Sorry for what, Kelly? That you didn't wait for me? I've seen all the medical records; I know what they told you." But there was something in his voice that didn't jibe with the words, something that might have been bitterness.

She gestured helplessly,
then
let her hands fall back into her lap. "The weeks turned into months.
Years."
Her voice was toneless now. "The only thing I could think of doing was to keep going, the way we'd planned. Finish college, get a job. And wait. But they told me you'd never wake up. The doctors seemed so sure of that."

"When did you give up on me?" he
asked,
the question somehow very important.

Kelly didn't want to relive that period of her life, but she had to answer him. "It was after Dad died. He outlived Mom by only a few months. Neither of them was the same after the accident. When he died, I realized I was alone. You'd been in the coma nearly four years. Everyone else was gone. And it hurt so much to keep hoping."

She drew a deep breath and met his gaze as steadily as she could. "It's easy enough to say that I would have waited if I could have known you'd come out of it. But I can't even tell you that's true. I don't know, Mitch. I don't even know if that would have made a difference. You had been so much of my life for so long, and when you weren't there anymore—"

"Someone else was."

Kelly could feel a new tension seep into her, and tried to keep calm. She didn't know if he knew of her marriage or was just guessing, but whichever it was, she wasn't willing to talk about that. Not to him.

She was increasingly aware of the strain of this,
the danger of exposing too many raw emotions. They were virtual strangers, but they shared too much pain, too many remembered dreams of the life they should have had.
A large part of her shied away, urging her to cut whatever ties remained between them and finally end it, put it behind her once and for all.
She was used to being alone now, and she knew all too well that she and Mitch could never go back to what they had been.

She rose to her feet, and somehow managed a distant, polite tone. "I just made fresh coffee; would you like some?"

After a moment he nodded slowly. He followed her as she went through the house to the kitchen, but it wasn't until she was pouring coffee that he made a comment.

"This place is different."

Kelly was standing on one side of a narrow, neat counter dividing the kitchen from a breakfast nook, and he was on the other side. She set his cup down near him, realizing only then that she had automatically fixed his coffee with cream and no sugar, as he used to drink it.
Unwilling to think about that, she responded to his comment in the same polite tone.

"I was told your father had the house renovated before he died.
Any idea why he left it to me?"

"No." Mitch lifted his cup, watching her over the rim as he sipped the coffee. He chose not to mention that he noticed how she'd fixed it. "I went through some of his papers a couple of months ago, but whatever his motive was, he didn't write it down anywhere."

"You're running the business now?" She was determined to keep to unemotional topics.

"Yes. It seemed to be where I belonged—if anywhere."

Her cup clattered as she set it down on the counter. The tension inside her was winding tighter. There were too many emotions between them to be strangers, too much time between them to be anything else. Ignoring it wasn't going to help, she realized tautly. She was too aware of him, too conscious of all the things they had both lost. The distant echoes of pain and regret and bitterness were growing stronger, the limbo of numbness receding.