Dream A Little Dream

9

An icy prickle slid down Rachel's spine. She whispered, "They've burned a cross to scare me away."

Gabe threw open the door of the truck and leaped out. In the glare of the headlights, Rachel watched him kick the cross down in a shower of sparks. Weak-kneed, she got out. Her hands felt clammy as she watched him take a shovel from the back of the truck and break apart the smoldering remains.

"I like it better when they welcome you to the neighborhood with a chocolate cake," she said faintly.

"This isn't anything to joke about." He began scooping up the charred pieces and moving them to the side of the road.

She bit down on her bottom lip. "I've got to joke, Bonner. The alternative doesn't bear thinking about."

His hands stilled on the shovel, and his expression was deeply troubled. When he spoke, his voice was soft and dark as the night that lay just outside the headlights. "How do you do it, Rachel? How do you keep going?"

She gripped her arms over her chest. Maybe it was the night and the shock of the cross burning, but the question didn't seem strange to her. "I don't think. And I don't rely on anybody but myself."

"God…" He shook his head and sighed.

"God's dead, Bonner." She gave a bitter laugh. "Haven't you figured that out yet?"

"Do you really believe that?"

Something snapped inside her. "I did everything right! I lived by the Word! I went to church twice a week, got down on my knees and prayed every morning and every evening. I cared for the sick, gave to the poor! I didn't screw over my neighbors, and all I got for my efforts was nothing."

"Maybe you have God mixed up with Santa Claus."

"Don't you preach to me! Don't you dare goddamn preach to me!"

She stood before him in the blue-white glare of the headlights with her fists knotted at her sides, and he thought he'd never seen anyone look so fierce and primitive. For a tall woman, she was almost delicate, with fragile bones and green eyes that seemed to devour her face. Her mouth was small and her lips as ripe as bruised fruit. Her tangled hair, lit from behind, formed a fiery pagan's halo around her face.

She should have appeared ridiculous. The ragged paint-smeared dress hung on her thin frame, and her big, cumbersome shoes looked obscene against such small, trim ankles. But she held herself with a ferocious dignity, and he was drawn to her by something so elemental-maybe the pain that lived in his bones-that he couldn't fight it any longer. He wanted her as he hadn't wanted anything except death since he'd lost his family.

He didn't remember moving, but the next thing he knew, she was in his arms and he felt her body beneath his palms. She was thin and frail, but not broken the way he was. He wanted to protect her and fuck her and comfort her and destroy her all at once. The chaos of his emotions coiled around his pain, deepening the agony.

She sank her fingers into the muscles of his upper arm, digging them in, hurting. He gripped her bottom and hauled her against him. He brushed his lips over hers. They were soft and sweet. He jerked his head back.

"I want you," he said.

Her head moved, and he realized she'd nodded. Her easy acquiescence infuriated him. He clasped her chin and hauled it up so that he was staring down into those tortured green eyes.

"Once again the noble Widow Snopes sacrifices herself for her child," he spat out. "Well, forget it."

She regarded him stonily as he released her. He grabbed the shovel and set to work clearing the road. He'd said he wouldn't do this to her again. After that dark night of his soul when he'd tried to destroy her, he'd promised himself he'd never touch her again.

"Maybe it wouldn't be a sacrifice."

He stopped moving. "What are you talking about?"

She shrugged. "That killer body of yours. I couldn't help but notice."

"Don't do this, Rachel. Don't keep trying to protect yourself by being a wiseass. Just say what you mean."

The bottom lip of that ripe little strawberry mouth trembled, but she was too tough to give into it. Her small breasts rose beneath the bodice of that awful dress as she took a breath. "Maybe I need to know what it's like to be with a man who isn't interested in having a saint in his. bed."

So that was it.

"I'm twenty-seven years old, and I've only been with one man. He never even gave me an orgasm. Pretty funny, huh."

He didn't feel like laughing. Instead, he felt an illogical anger. "Now you want to go exploring, is that it? I'm supposed to be the guinea pig in your sexual development?"

Her redhead's temper sparked. "You're the one who came on to me, buster!"

"Momentary insanity."

He watched her marshal her forces to attack and wasn't surprised when she came up with her most obnoxious, simpery smile. "Gee, I hope not. As long as the room is dark and you don't talk, I could pretend you're someone else. It might be fun having my personal stud."

All the anger left him as abruptly as it had come. Good for her. She was a piece of work, determined not to give an inch, and for no reason he could think of beyond the fact that he hadn't hurt her after all, his mood lifted.

He tossed the shovel in the back of the truck. Later, he'd return and remove the charred wood. "Let's go."

Russ Scudder watched the headlights move away as Gabe Bonner's truck headed toward the Glide cottage.

"He was kissing her," Donny Bragelman said, shifting at his side.

"Yeah, I saw."

Both men sat in the grove of trees, thirty yards back from the road, too far to hear what Gabe and the Widow Snopes had been discussing, but close enough to have caught a few glimpses of what they were doing when they'd stepped in front of the headlights.

After Russ had set fire to the cross, he and Donny had hidden to watch it burn while they drank their second six-pack of the night. They'd just about been ready to leave when Gabe's truck had pulled up, and they'd had the satisfaction of seeing how upset Rachel Snopes had been.

"She's a slut," Russ said. "I knew she was a slut first time I met her."

He didn't know any such thing. In his days working security at the Temple, he'd mainly seen her with her kid. She'd always been nice to him, and he'd even liked her. But that was before it had all fallen apart.

At the beginning, everything had been great for Russ. The man who was in charge of security at the Temple had hired Russ to be his second-in-command. As Russ had guarded G. Dwayne and supervised building security, he'd felt as if he were finally doing something important, and the people of Salvation had stopped looking at him as if he was a loser.

But when G. Dwayne had fallen, he'd taken Russ down with him. Nobody would hire him because he'd been associated with the Temple, but Russ had family here, and he couldn't move away, so he was stuck. Eventually, his wife kicked him out-these days she barely even let him see his kid-and his life had turned to shit.

"Boy, I guess we showed her," Donny said.

Donny Bragelman was the only friend Russ had left, and he was a bigger loser than Russ. Donny had a habit of laughing at the wrong times and grabbing his crotch in public, but he had a regular job at the Amoco, and Russ could borrow money from him. He could also talk Donny into just about anything, including helping him with the cross tonight.

Russ wanted Rachel Snopes out of here, and he hoped the sight of that burned cross would scare her away. She'd been a big part of what had happened at the Temple, and he couldn't stand having her come back as if she hadn't done anything wrong, not after what had happened to Russ. The fact that Gabe Bonner had given her Russ's old job had been the final straw. For the last week, he hadn't been able to think of anything else.

Russ had gone to work for Gabe right after he'd bought the drive-in. It had been a shit job, and Gabe had been a prick to work for. He'd fired him after the first couple of weeks just because he'd been late a few times. Bastard.

"We sure showed her," Donny repeated, scratching his crotch. "Do you think that slut'll go away now that she knows nobody wants her here?"

"If she doesn't," Russ said, "she'll be sorry."

Three days later as Rachel applied a coat of royal-blue rust-resistant paint to the jungle gym, her gaze kept straying to the roof of the snack shop where Gabe was putting down tar paper. He'd taken off his shirt and wrapped a red bandanna around his forehead. His chest glistened with sweat and sun.

Her mouth felt dry as she observed the strong muscles of his back and arms: well-defined, tightly roped. She wanted to run her hands over them, sweat and all.

Maybe it was the food. Since she'd started eating well, her body had come alive again. That must be why she couldn't seem to get enough of looking at him. It was the food.

She dipped her brush in the paint can and decided to stop lying to herself. That dark embrace they'd shared in the road had changed something between them. Now the air was charged with sexual awareness whenever they were together. They did their best to avoid each other, but the awareness was still there.

She was hot, and she unfastened another button at the neck of her dark-green housedress. Kristy had found several boxes of old-fashioned housedresses stuck away in the sewing-room closet and passed them over to Rachel, who had gratefully accepted them. Accessorized with her clunky black oxfords, they looked almost trendy, and she was delighted to replenish her meager wardrobe without spending a penny. Still, she couldn't help wondering what Annie Glide would think about the infamous Widow Snopes wearing her old dresses.

Right now, though, the dress felt as if it were suffocating her. Or maybe it was the sight of Gabe's muscles bunching as he moved a heavy roll of tar paper. He paused from his work, and her hands stilled on the paintbrush. She watched as he rubbed the back of his hand across his chest and looked over at her. He was too far away for her to see those eyes, but she felt as if they were stroking her body like silver smoke.

Her skin prickled. Both of them looked away.

With grim determination, she returned her attention to her work. For the rest of the afternoon, she forced herself to think less about lust and more about how she was going to get back into her old house and find the chest.

Rachel's hand stilled on the wooden spoon she'd been using to stir the pot of homemade marinara for tonight's dinner. She'd known it would be bad, but not this bad.

"They were killed instantly." Kristy looked up from the lettuce she'd been breaking into a pale-pink Tupperware bowl. "It was terrible."

Rachel's vision blurred as tears filled her eyes. No wonder Gabe was bitter.

"Jamie was only five," Kristy said unsteadily. "He was a perfect miniature of Gabe; the two of them were inseparable. And Cherry was wonderful. Gabe hasn't been the same since."

For a moment it was hard for Rachel to breathe. She couldn't imagine the kind of pain Gabe was enduring, and she ached with pity for him. At the same time, some deep instinct warned her that pity had become his enemy.

"Anybody home?"

At the sound of Ethan Bonner's voice, Kristy dropped the paring knife. She drew in her breath, fumbled for the knife, and dropped it again.

Rachel was so shaken by what she had just learned that it took her a moment to register how strangely Kristy was behaving. Ethan was her boss, and she saw him nearly every day. Why was she so rattled?

Her housemate remained an enigma. Edward adored her, and the feeling was mutual, but Kristy was so reserved otherwise that Rachel didn't have a clear picture of the person beneath that plain, efficient exterior.

She still hadn't responded to Ethan's knock, so Rachel called out for him to come in. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Kristy take a deep breath and turn back into the calm, reserved woman who did everything so well. It was as if the moment of surprise had never happened.

"We're just getting ready to eat, Ethan," Kristy said as he appeared in the kitchen doorway. "Would you like something?"

"Um. I shouldn't." He gave Rachel a chilly nod.

She took in his light-blue oxford shut, which was neatly tucked into a pair of khaki trousers that bore a knife-sharp crease down the center. His blond hair was perfectly cut, neither too long nor too short, and with his height, those blue eyes, and his finely balanced features, he might have been a GQ model instead of a member of the clergy.

"I just stopped by to drop off material for the newsletter," he told Kristy. "You said you'd be putting it together in the morning, but I won't be in until two."

Kristy took the folder of papers he handed her and set it aside. "Wash up while we put the food on the table. Rachel's fixed a wonderful homemade marinara."

Ethan didn't bother with much more than a token protest, and they were soon seated. As he ate, he confined his remarks to Edward and Kristy. Edward gave a detailed account of his experience that day feeding Snuggles, the class guinea pig, and Rachel realized he had a relationship with Ethan that she knew nothing about. She was glad that Ethan hadn't projected his hostility toward her onto her son.

Kristy, she noticed, treated Ethan as if she were his mother, and he, a slightly backward ten-year-old. She chose his salad dressing, shook Parmesan on his spaghetti, and, in general, did everything for him except cut his food.

He, in turn, barely seemed to notice her attention, and he certainly didn't notice the hungry yearning in her eyes when she looked at him.

So, Rachel thought. That's the way it is.

Kristy refused to let him help clean up, something Rachel wouldn't have had any qualms about, and Ethan left soon after. Rachel sent Edward outside to catch fireflies while she and Kristy washed dishes.

As Rachel dried the plate Kristy handed her, she decided to meddle. "Have you known Ethan for long?"

"Nearly all my life."

"Um… And I'll bet you've been in love with him most of that time."

The bowl Kristy was holding slipped from her fingers and dropped to the linoleum floor, where it split into two precise pieces.

Rachel looked down. "Jeez. You even drop things neatly."

"Why did you say that? About Ethan? What did you mean?"

Rachel bent over to pick up the broken bowl. "Never mind. I'm too nosy, and your love life is none of my business."

"My love life." Kristy gave an unladylike snort and slapped the dishcloth into the sink. "As if I have one."

"So why don't you do something about it?"

"Do something?" Kristy took the broken pieces of bowl from Rachel and dropped them in the trash can under the sink.

"It's obvious you care about him."

Kristy was such a private person that Rachel expected her to deny it, but she didn't.

"It's not that simple. Ethan Bonner is the best-looking man in Salvation, maybe the entire state of North Carolina, and he has a weakness for beautiful women in rhinestones and Spandex skirts."

"Put on some rhinestones and Spandex. At least he'd notice."

Kristy's delicately arched eyebrows shot up. "Me?"

"Why not?"

She actually sputtered. "Me? Me! You expect a-a woman like me-A-a church secretary… I'm-I'm plain."

"Says who?"

"I'd never do something like that. Never."

"All right."

She shook her head determinedly. "I'd look like an absolute fool."

Rachel propped one hip on the kitchen table. "You're not exactly dog meat, Kristy, despite your boring wardrobe." Rachel smiled and glanced down at her 1950s Sears and Roebuck housedress. "Not that I have room to cast stones."

"You don't think I'm dog meat?"

Kristy looked so hopeful that Rachel's heart went out to her. Maybe she finally had a way to repay this intelligent, insecure woman for her kindness. "Come on." She guided her into the living room, where she seated them both on the couch. "I definitely don't think you're dog meat. You have beautiful features. You're petite, which is something men seem to go for, not that I'd know anything about it. And you seem to have fairly nice breasts hidden away under that blouse, not that I'd know about that either."

"You really think I have breasts?"

Rachel couldn't hold back a smile. "I guess you're a better judge of that than I am. What I think, Kristy, is that you decided a long time ago that you weren't attractive, and you've never bothered to reassess yourself."

Kristy sagged back into the couch. Disbelief, hope, confusion played over her face. Rachel let her take her time, and while she waited, she gazed around at the simple, rustic living room and thought how much she liked it. The breeze coming in through the screen door smelled of pine, faintly overlaid with the sweet scent of honeysuckle. Outside she saw Edward chasing after a firefly, and she wondered if Gabe had ever sat here and watched his son do the same thing. The image was too painful, and she shook it off.

"So what should I do about it?" Kristy finally said.

"I don't know. Maybe a makeover?"

"Makeover?"

"Go to a good salon and have them do your hair and makeup. Visit a trendy little boutique for a wardrobe update."

For a moment she looked hopeful, and then her expression clouded. "What's the point. I could walk into Ethan's office stark-naked and he wouldn't notice."

"We can try that, too." Rachel smiled. "But let's do the makeover part first."

Kristy looked shocked, and then she laughed.

Rachel decided that she might as well go all the way.

"One more thing. You have to stop fussing over him."

"What do you mean?"

"How can he look at you like a lover when you treat him as if you're his mother?"

"I do not!"

"You put the dressing on his salad!"

"Sometimes he forgets."

"Then let him forget. You baby him, Kristy. He won't die if he has to eat his salad plain."

"That's not fair. I work for him. Looking after him is my job."

"How many years have you done this job?"

"Eight. Ever since he took over as pastor."

"And you've done it well, right? Unless I miss my guess, you've been about the best secretary anyone could find. You can read his mind and predict what he wants even before he wants it."

She nodded.

"But what has it gotten you, other than a paycheck?"

Her mouth tightened with resentment. "Nothing. It hasn't gotten me anything. I don't even like the job. Lately I've been thinking I should go to Florida like my parents want. They went down there to retire, but they got bored, so they opened this little gift shop in Clearwater. They've been nagging at me to come down and help them run it."

"What do you want to do?"

"I want to work with children."

"Then do it."

Her resentment turned to frustration. "It's not that easy. At least this way I can be around him."

"Is that all you want your life to be about? Staying around Ethan Bonner?"

"You don't understand!"

"I might understand more than you think." She drew a deep breath. "Dwayne dressed me up like a hooker and expected me to behave like a saint. I tried to be everything he wanted, but it never was enough." Kristy placed a sympathetic hand on her knee. Rachel lowered her voice. "Instead of thinking about living for Ethan Bonner, maybe it's time you started to think about living for yourself."

Kristy's expression was an endearing combination of yearning and disappointment. "No makeover?"

"A makeover only if you're not happy with the way you are."

"I'm not." She sighed.

"Makeover, then. But do it for yourself, Kristy. Not for Ethan."

Kristy took a nibble on her bottom lip. "I guess that means no Spandex."

"Do you want to wear Spandex?"

"I'd look silly."

"You do want to!"

"I'll think about it. Not just that, but everything."

They smiled at each other, and Rachel realized that something had changed between them. Until tonight, they had been polite acquaintances. Now they were friends.

During the next few days, Rachel's body came back to life with a vengeance. She felt young and erotically charged. The late-June weather was beautiful, with low humidity and temperatures that only occasionally reached eighty, but she always felt as if she were burning up.

As she worked, she kept the buttons of her cotton house-dresses unfastened at the throat and let the bodices fall open so the breeze could touch her skin. The damp, worn cotton molded to her breasts, defining their small, high shape in a way that made her feel voluptuous and sexy. She piled her hair on top of her head and fanned her thighs with her lifted skirts, trying to cool herself. And no matter what she did, she felt his eyes stroking her.

He'd look up from wherever he was working, wipe his hands on his jeans, and gaze at her. Her skin seemed to hum. It was crazy. She felt languid and tense at the same time.

Sometimes he'd bark out an order or a veiled insult, but she barely listened because her senses transformed whatever brusque words he was speaking into the ones he really meant.

I want you.

And she wanted him back. For sex, she told herself. Only for sex. Nothing more. No intimate entanglement, no exchange of feelings, only sex.

When her body grew so hot she feared it would burst into flame, she made herself think of other things: her growing friendship with Kristy, Edward's excitement as he told her about his day, and the Kennedy chest.

Each night she walked to the notch at the top of Heartache Mountain and gazed down at the house where she had once lived. She had to get inside so she could resume her search for the chest, but she couldn't take the chance that he'd be there. He hadn't said a word about the missing key, and, with the drive-in opening just two weeks away, she could only hope he'd forgotten about it. Surely he would have said something if he hadn't. She wanted to scream in frustration. If only he'd go away so she could get inside.

Nine days after the night she'd first broken into his brother's house, she finally got the opportunity she'd been waiting for.

He came up to her as she was fastening new chrome knobs to the storage cabinets in the snack shop. Even before she heard his footsteps, she caught the scent of pine and laundry detergent and wondered how someone who did manual labor always managed to smell so clean.

"Ethan and I have business to take care of. I'll be away for the rest of the afternoon, so lock up when you're done."

She nodded and her heart raced. While he was occupied with his brother, she could finally get into the house.

She finished her job in record time, then drove to Annie's cottage where she fetched the key from its hiding place in the back of her dresser drawer and set off down the mountain. By the time she reached the bottom, a light drizzle had started to fall.

The full skirt of the housedress she was wearing that day, a worn pink cotton printed with turquoise squiggles, grew damp, along with her heavy shoes and the tops of her socks. She took them off in the laundry room so she didn't leave any telltale tracks and proceeded barefoot up the stairs of the silent house.

She searched the nursery first, firmly repressing all those nostalgic pangs that made her want to curl up in the old rocker that still sat by the window and remember the feel of Edward's downy little head at her breast. When she didn't find the chest there, she headed for her former bedroom.

This room had changed more than any other, and as she gazed at the high-tech equipment positioned on a modern, L-shaped work station near the window, she wondered about Dr. Jane Darlington Bonner, Gabe's physicist sister-in-law. Was she as happy with her marriage as she'd looked in the magazine photo?

She made a quick search of the room's closet and bureau, but found nothing. The large bottom drawer set into one end of the work station was the only other place to look, but the idea of going through a stranger's desk seemed more an invasion of privacy than anything else she'd done. Still, she had to know, so she slid the drawer open, then drew in her breath as she saw the chest tucked inside.

She felt its contents shift as she took it out. Her breath quickened as she lifted the small hinge and saw a stack of multicolored computer diskettes lying inside. She withdrew them and placed them in the bottom drawer, then tucked the chest under her arm and rushed for the stairs. She felt light-headed with relief. As soon as she got the chest back to the cottage, she could search it, even take it apart if she had to.

Just as she hit the top step, Ethan Bonner pushed open the front door. She froze, but it was too late. He spotted her immediately.

His expression grew stony. "Adding larceny to your other sins?"

"Hi, Ethan. Gabe sent me over to pick this up."

"Did he?"

She forced herself to smile as she came down the steps, her feet bare and her damp skirt clammy against her legs. Nothing was going to make her give up this chest. "Don't ask me why he wants it. I'm just the hired help, and he doesn't tell me anything."

"Maybe he'd explain if I asked him."

"Oh, that's not necess-"

"Gabe!" Ethan tilted his head toward the front door, which he'd left open. "Come in here, will you?"

Panic rushed through her. "That's all right. I can talk to him when I get back to work." With a jaunty wave, she tucked the chest higher under her arm and made a dash across the cold marble floor for the back of the house.

Ethan caught her before she crossed the foyer and grabbed her by the arm with more force than was necessary for a man of God. "Not so fast."

Gabe appeared in the doorway. "Eth? What's going-Rachel?" For a moment, he stood frozen. Then he came inside and closed the door behind him. "I wondered when you were going to use that key."

"You gave her a key?" Ethan said.

"Not exactly. Let's just say I knew she had a spare."

He had set her up, and that made her furious. "If you knew I had it, why didn't you say something? And what are you doing here, anyway?"

The fact that she'd gone on the attack when she was clearly in the wrong seemed to rob Ethan of speech, but Gabe simply shrugged. "Cal said Ethan could take the dining-room table for the community room at church. We were loading it into the truck."

His eyes drifted downward over her damp pink dress, mud-splattered calves, and bare feet. She told herself it was the chill that turned her skin to gooseflesh. She regarded him accusingly. "You said you had business. This isn't business. This is moving furniture!"

Gabe said nothing, but Ethan had finally recovered. "I don't believe it. Are you actually going to stand there and let her attack you? She's the one who broke into the house!"

"Sometimes it's easier to give Rachel a chance to unwind before you try to talk to her," he said in his low, toneless voice.

"What's going on between you two?" Ethan's face grew redder. "Why are you even listening to her? She's a liar and a con artist."

"And those are her good points." Gabe gestured toward her feet. "Lose those sexy shoes of yours?"

"I didn't want to track mud."

"Considerate."

Ethan broke away and headed for the phone. "That's the box Jane uses to store her computer diskettes. I'm calling the police. There's been something strange about Rachel showing up here right from the beginning."

"Don't bother. I'll take care of her. Hand over the chest, Rachel."

"Stuff it."

He arched one dark eyebrow. "Take the truck, Eth. I've got the tarp over the table so it won't get wet."

"I'm not leaving. After everything you've been through you shouldn't have to put up with this, too. I'll take care of her."

Once again little brother had jumped in to shelter big brother. Rachel gave a snort of disgust.

Ethan heard and whirled to confront her, his expression indignant. "What?"

"Tragedy doesn't make people helpless," she pointed out. "Stop coddling him."

That seemed to shock even Gabe. He had never spoken to her about his loses, although he must have known Kristy would have said something to her by now.

Ethan's hostility had developed a cold edge. "What right do you have to comment on anything between my brother and me? Gabe, I don't understand this. I thought she was just working for you, but…"

"Go on, Eth."

"I can't do that."

"You have to. Remember you're on the town council, and, if you actually witnessed someone getting murdered, you'd need to report it."

"I don't think you should be alone with her," he said flatly.

"I won't be alone." Gabe gave her a thin smile. "I'll have Rachel's screams to keep me company."