What Dreams May Come (8 page)

Love without trust.
The difference between holding a hand and chaining a soul.

His father must have been a lonely man.

Mitch leaned his forehead against the cold glass and stared out at the bleak, alien landscape. How close he'd come to repeating his father's mistakes. And he would have, had not fate intervened.

I
was alone, and I didn't know how to be.

But she had learned how to be.
After her brief marriage.
There was, Mitch thought, more to that than she'd told him. He'd heard it in her voice, but hadn't been willing to probe because it had been like a knife inside him to hear her say she'd needed another man. But he'd have to hear it sooner or later; he'd have to listen and deal with his own feelings. That was part of the past he had to accept, part of who Kelly was now. Another man had been her first lover.
Her husband.

He had no right to be jealous, but he was. No right to feel bitter and betrayed, but he did. He still was enough of the possessive, willful man he had been to feel the violence of those emotions even while he recognized them as unreasoning. And because she
was
the last tie to all he'd been, he had to fight an even more desperate urge to hold on too tight, to demand of her how she could have given herself to another man. To blame her for the pain he felt.

The emotions were raw inside him, a jumble composed of past and present. He didn't know where one left off and the other began, or if there could even be, in the end, a division between the
two. The only thing he was certain of was that his need for Kelly was far greater and infinitely more complicated than it had been ten years earlier, and that if he were able to win her love this time, it would happen only once he mastered his own innate possessiveness.

And that was going to be very difficult for him. He had accepted that control was an illusion, but he had lost so much that the fear of losing her was something he couldn't bring himself to contemplate.

Yet he had to let go. Let go of the past. Let go of Kelly. He had tried to chain her then, and fate had stopped him. He had to stop himself from trying to chain her now. If she could learn to love him again ... he had to learn to trust that love enough to hold only a hand.

Not a soul.

It was three in the morning when he roused himself and glanced toward the waiting bed. But he didn't move toward it, and after a moment he returned his gaze to the wind-tossed trees that teased him with glimpses of the ocean.

He wasn't ready. Not yet.

"Good morning."

Mitch looked up from his work to see her standing just inside the kitchen. Wearing jeans and a dark blue cowl-neck sweater, her bright coppery hair pulled back away from her face and tied with a ribbon, she was lovely and a little wary, but less strained than she had been the night before.

Perhaps it was her sudden appearance, or the demons he had wrestled with in the night, but for one fleeting instant he saw her clearly, without
the blurring of past images. He saw intelligence in her violet eyes, sensitivity and vulnerability in the curve of her lips, stubbornness in the delicate line of her jaw. He saw the slender figure of a woman who moved slowly and gracefully, shoulders almost unconsciously
braced,
something of vigilance in the tilt of her head.

He saw a woman who had lost a great deal, perhaps much more than he knew. No girl now, but a woman who had survived.

And in that brief moment he felt a desire for her so strong it was almost like a blow. It was a feeling of stark necessity, a shattering tangle of physical and emotional needs. He wanted her not the way he had ten years earlier with a passion tempered both by her youth and by the arrogant certainty that she belonged to him; this was a need far more complex than anything he'd ever felt before—deeper, and grinding inside him. Not the male urge for possession, but a compulsive realization that she was half of himself and that without her he'd never be whole again.

"Mitch?" Faint color bloomed across her cheekbones, and her eyes skittered nervously away. "Is—is something wrong?"

With an effort that tore at him jaggedly, he pulled his gaze from her and looked down to watch idly as the spatula in his hand bent under the tightening force of his grip.
Too much,
he thought,
I'm feeling too
much. She'd seen it, and the apprehension in her eyes was plain.

Dear Lord, was she afraid of him? Afraid he'd resort to force, that he would attempt to overwhelm her with his own feelings?

He cleared his throat and carefully loosened his grip on the spatula, concentrating on reining his
wild emotions. "Good morning.
Ready for breakfast?"
His voice held steady, somewhat to his surprise.

Kelly slid her hands into the pockets of her jeans, shaken by what she'd seen in his intense gaze and by her own instant response. These strange sensations, heat and tightness and a wordless yearning . . . they unnerved her.

"I usually don't eat breakfast," she murmured.

He glanced back up at her, the intensity shuttered now, and where the old Mitch might have told her she was too thin and needed to eat more, this one merely said, with a faint smile, "Humor the cook."

She nodded and went to pour juice and coffee while he transferred golden pancakes from the griddle to plates. Kelly couldn't think of anything casual to say as they began eating, but she couldn't stop glancing up at him. He seemed different this morning, at least after that first oddly naked, searing scrutiny of her.
More . . . what?
More withdrawn.
As if his focus had turned inward.

And she felt peculiar, unable to stop herself from remembering her surprising dreams. She rarely remembered dreams, yet she vividly recalled those of last night. Some had been stunningly erotic, filled with shapes and images and colors and throbbing feelings. But the dream she remembered most clearly had been different. It had been unnerving, threaded with tension that had built to a nightmare ending.

She had dreamed of Mitch as he was now, quieter and yet more compelling than he had been all those years before. He had been wandering through the house and grounds, walking along the beach at the base of the cliffs, and she thought he was
looking for something he couldn't find. She'd wanted to tell him where it was, but hadn't been able to utter a word. Following him because she had to, because a misty bond connected them and it pulled at her irresistibly, she'd felt tense and restless, her heart thudding, needing to look over her shoulder but afraid to see what was behind her.

She had known somehow that if she could only catch up to Mitch and talk to him, whatever was behind her would go away and stop troubling her. But there seemed to be a measured distance between them, pulling the bond taut without snapping it, and all she could do was try not to lose sight of him. She wanted to walk faster, and couldn't, yet she could hear what was behind her getting closer, like her own shadow at her heels.

Breathless, troubled, longing, anxious for reasons she didn't understand, she had followed Mitch through the night, never able to close the distance between them. She'd heard quiet music that throbbed and a soft little chuckle that might have been the wind behind her, had seen the eerie shapes of trees bending and swaying, reaching out for her.

Then, as the stark gray light of dawn spread heavily through the air, Mitch had stopped on the edge of the cliffs, gazing out on the ocean, and she'd felt a jarring sense of urgency. She had to get to him, reach
him,
it would be her last chance. Behind her, hot breath on her neck, no, just the wind, it had to be the wind, and as long as she didn't look she was safe. Hurrying toward Mitch, seeing him turn and smile and hold out his hand. The lean, hard face and black eye patch, so dangerous, but not like the other one, he couldn't be.

She'd reached him at last, his hand touching hers, and then, behind her, the rushing of angry steps, the shadow overtaking, pushing.

Kelly had awakened with a cry trapped in her throat, her heart pounding, remembering vividly the sickening feeling of slamming into Mitch, both of them falling, the jagged rocks below spinning crazily as she closed her eyes.

"Does it bother you?" he asked suddenly, looking up from his plate.

"What?" she
asked,
startled, trying to push the stark images out of her mind.

Mitch made a slight gesture with his left hand toward the eye patch.

She wondered if he'd felt her glances, if her own restless anxiety had somehow touched him. "No. I—I got used to it in the hospital. It must have been rough on you though.
Waking up."

"A shock at first."
He shrugged. "It was the easiest thing to accept, really. I don't think about it much anymore."

Kelly smiled a little, forcing herself to be casual. "The patch makes you look piratical. Dangerous."

He considered that opinion for a moment, watching her with a faint smile but an unreadable expression. "Other men hardly notice it, as far as I can tell. Women definitely do. I just figured the interest came from a kind of maternal instinct. You know—a bird with a broken wing."

"It may be partly that," she said dryly, "but not all. Like I said, it makes you look dangerous, and a lot of women are drawn to that look.
Pirates and rakes.
Heartbreakers."

"Including you?" The question was light, but his gaze remained watchful.

She should have expected it, but she was nonetheless caught off guard. Compelled by something in him or by her own innate honesty, she said slowly, "I don't know. When I look at you, it isn't the patch I see. You're more impressive somehow than I remember.
More complex.
There's
a stillness
in you, a quiet that wasn't there before. Maybe I'm drawn to that."

Her own admission surprised her, but she didn't try to take it back. She was drawn to him, and for her own peace of mind she needed to understand why.
Past,
or present? Was it remnants of her guilt over having left him, or a deeper connection that had lain dormant inside her until she had been able to look at him through a woman's eyes?

Mitch seemed to hesitate,
then
said, "If that's what you see, it's deceptive.
And elusive."

"Is that a warning?" She held her voice steady, even though something in his made her heart thud unevenly.

He half nodded, still looking at her. "I'm trying, Kelly. I'm trying to work through all this, I promise you. I don't want to be the kind of man my father was, holding on so tightly to someone I care about that I strangle them. But I've lost too much not to be afraid of losing again. It's something I have to fight all the
time, that
fear. I think that's why I haven't touched you."

She wanted to tell him that he
had
touched
her, that
she felt every glance, but her throat had closed up. She was aware of her pulse throbbing, of a strange, restless heat inside her, and the force of her own feelings bewildered her. And even though she'd never felt this way before, some instinct deeper than knowledge warned her that all the strength she'd fought so hard to gain would never be enough to fight this.

If she wanted to fight it.

Without a single physical touch he had made her aware of him, had made her feel the stirrings of longing. New, unfamiliar feelings that made what she had once felt for him seem like dim and distant echoes.

She was afraid. The fear had more than one level, like steps going down into darkness, and she couldn't make herself move from the topmost tread. She stood on the top step now, shaken by her own yearnings—and frozen by memories of pain. She hadn't felt these longings then, but she couldn't forget the pain and helplessness another man had taught her, couldn't make herself believe it would be different, because she could feel the intensity in Mitch, and the danger.

His low voice roughened. "I might not be able to let go once I touch you. I've wanted to hold you for so long that I'm afraid I'll hold too tight."

Kelly didn't think he meant that literally. Then again, perhaps he did. Either way, she wasn't ready to find out. And she knew that his feelings were still unresolved; she'd heard that in his voice last night.

Did you love him?

After a long moment, holding on to every scrap of control she could manage, she said, "I'm glad you're trying not to be like your father.
For your own sake."
She couldn't bring herself to refer to the far more personal note he'd finished with, too wary to invite any discussion about touching.

Mitch didn't press her; he merely nodded and said, "I wanted you to know."

After breakfast Kelly retreated to her office with a cup of coffee and tried to concentrate on work. But she found herself distracted, sitting at her desk and gazing often through the big windows. It was overcast, chilly but not cold, and the morning mist seemed reluctant to retreat so that the very air had a leaden, gray look.

Like something pressing down insistently. That was probably it, she told herself. There was probably a low pressure front draped over them, and that was why she felt so jittery. She'd always been like a cat in her sensitivity to weather. Mitch had once told her he could always tell when a storm was coming because she'd get restless.

He'd known so well the girl she had been. He had seen her at her best, and at her worst. Long before she'd known what to do with makeup, he'd had ample time to study her unadorned features, and it had been Mitch—and only Mitch—she had believed when he'd told her she looked just fine in braces.

He had seen her in ratty jeans and flannel nightgowns, with curlers in her hair and a greenish mudpack on her face—and, she remembered, had withstood the shocks rather well. He had humorously endured all the wild fashion swings of her teens, his only demand that she leave her hair long and its natural color.

And before that, before he'd made up his mind to marry her, he'd been a part of her life. He had been fifteen when Keith had first brought him to the house, and Kelly had been eight. Since Keith had never minded his baby sister tagging along, and Mitch hadn't either, she had spent a great deal of time with them. She could remember Saturdays filled with learning to bait a hook or hit a curve ball or catch a long pass. She could remember Mitch reading to her when she was sick with the flu, and teaching her to play card games when she'd been miserable after having wisdom teeth extracted.