Handful of Dreams (15 page)

“I’m sorry, Vickie,” he murmured, hanging up on her. He was sorry, but he wasn’t going to inflict her with his temperament. Not until he toned it down. Not until he could get Susan Anderson out of his mind.

The longing to rush back to Maine and strangle her…

The longing to rush back to Maine and hold her again, touch her. Stare into her eyes and discover why she was so damned special, so different…..

“I will get her out of my system!” he swore aloud, slamming his fist against the manuscript.

She had been Peter’s mistress. A woman who had seduced an old man and done well by it, used him in his final days.

David should be able to turn his back on her with no thought at all. He closed his eyes. He would, by God, he would! He would will himself to think of her as no more than a nuisance.

The buzzer sounded.

“Yes, Erica?” he asked pleasantly.

“Is Checker’s okay for lunch, David? Noon?”

“Perfect,” he replied. He glanced at his watch. Fifteen minutes from now. He stood and left his office, determined to give his secretary an assuring smile and behave in such a casual manner that she couldn’t possibly wonder anymore about his volatile reaction to a book.

“Oh, David!” She had been smiling back at him, relieved, when she suddenly seemed to remember something important. She hopped quickly to her feet, running over to him with an express courier package.

“What’s this?” he asked.

“It just arrived, marked ‘personal and urgent.’”

“Thanks.”

There was no return address or name on the envelope; the postmark was from Maine.

Something warned David to step back inside his office before he opened the envelope. Erica went back to her desk, humming softly as she returned to her typing.

David closed his doors and ripped the envelope open.

And then he was glad he had come back and closed his doors. A soft but furious oath escaped him as his own check fluttered to the floor and he read the brief, unsigned note that had been sent along with it.

“No account payment necessary; I told you—you could never pay enough for me. Consider it a charity case.”

There was a tap on his door, followed by Erica’s anxious, “David? Is something wrong?”

He crumpled the note in his hand.

“Everything is just fine, Erica. Just fine.”

He stared out his windows, fighting to regain his equilibrium. “I’ll throttle her if I ever see her again!” he murmured softly.

He turned his back to the windows, looking grim; He didn’t want to see her again; he didn’t want to throttle her. He was going to find a way to get her out of his beach house.

Outside the building on the street, he started to laugh at himself. What irony. He was about to make her famous!

T
HE HALLWAY LOOMED BEFORE
them. A miasma of decay filled the senses and Lenora was overcome by fear.

“We can’t go on,” she whispered. “Don’t you see, Raoul? They want us to panic and—” In terror she started to choke on her words. “To fall straight into the tentacles of those horrible creatures. They’ve planned this, Raoul!”

“Lenora, we can’t stay here,” Raoul told her, his hand winding tightly around hers. “We’ve got to get away.”

“We could wait for it to be light!” she pleaded. The comfort of the cave was behind them; a comfort and security they could so easily go back to.

Go back … together … alone. With so many recriminations between them. Oh, what did it matter? she asked herself. Daylight would give them a fighting chance against the terrors ahead, more so than the flames of the tapers they carried. By day, light would fall through the cracks in the earth high above them, but he didn’t seem to realize the advantages of that.

In the flickering glow of the tapers she saw his face. His rude half smile taunted her, as did the gleam in his eyes. “You want to spend the night with me, Lenora?”

She couldn’t answer. His smile faded; his hand, still scarred from the battle with the dray beast, came to her cheek. And she knew it was not just the light she craved; she longed for one more time to touch him and hold him before she had to face the darkness.

His dark eyes were suddenly gentle shadows. “Lenora!” he whispered, and the cry was a plea.

She fell against him, delighting in the strong feel of his body. She looked up at him. “Yes, Raoul, I want to spend the night with you.”

“Oh, Lenora, you ass!”

Disgusted, Susan drew her hands from her typewriter, as if the keys had burned her fingers. “Tell the man that he’s a pompous jerk and that he can sit on his side of the cave while you sit on yours!”

Susan pressed her fingers over her temples, closing her eyes. She had to remember that Commander Raoul Tierson was her own creation, that he was—beneath his granite facade—totally captivated by Lenora. Sex with her had been the next best thing to the invention of the microwave.

She felt a warm flush of color come to her cheeks as she realized—in a moment of objectivity—that this would be the absolute best time in the world for her to write a sensual love scene. She would be able to describe it all, capturing that feeling of it all being so perfect that there just had to be something there. Not love eternal, maybe, not the kind of love you’d willingly die for, but the tenderness that made it begin….

Susan stood, switching off the machine. Lenora was intelligent. She was a navigator who had been with the Intergalactic Shuttle Agency for almost a decade. She’d had her spats with Raoul, but he’d been good to her too. He’d been gentle at times. He’d been there to defend her when she’d been under attack by the ship’s lecherous second mate.

“Just because I acted like an idiot,” Susan told the typewriter and Lenora, “there’s no reason for me to turn you into a fool.” She sighed, wondering with pure malice of heart if David Lane had received his check yet. And if he had been at all wounded by her proclamation that he was a charity case.

“I will not—I will
not
think about that man!” she swore, then mentally told herself that she was talking to herself and that she wasn’t going to do that, either. But two seconds later she was staring at the typewriter again. “Lenora, you are going to have a fabulous night. Raoul is going to get on his knees and beg you to forgive him for everything. As soon as I’ve made a cup of tea, you’re going to have the most fabulous evening of your life. And, oh, Raoul! You poor, sorry SOB. You’re going to feel yourself failing apart, body and soul, for her love. But she’s going to put her lovely little nose in the air and—”

Susan paused, frowning. Raoul was going to ask Lenora to marry him, and Lenora was going to say yes. They were going to brave the tentacles of the creatures together and live happily ever after. That was the book, dammit!

With a little oath of self-disgust Susan went into the kitchen to set the kettle on, still arguing with herself.

Everyone made mistakes. It was part of living, part of aging, part of maturing. Surely every soul who had ever lived had been made an idiot and a fool at least once!

Yes, but she was too old for the type of mistake she had made. As a high-school senior, as a college coed, she had behaved with far more sense and wisdom.

Maybe she should have made a few mistakes back then. She would have been in better shape to deal with a practiced seducer like Mr. Lane.

The kettle whistled. Susan plopped a tea bag into her cup and watched while it steeped in the water. Just like getting too close to him, she thought. He had touched her in that incredibly gentle way, and the feeling had warmed through her body, coloring it with fever just as the tea filtered through the water.

She dropped the tea bag, added cool water from the spigot, and decided that she had a horrendous headache and the tea wasn’t going to help unless she swallowed an aspirin too.

Just as she swallowed the aspirin the phone began to ring. Back into service at last, she thought, and then her heart started to beat loud and hard in her chest.

It was him. It was David Lane. He had received her note, and he … he what? What could one reply to such a thing?

It was David Lane, calling to say that he needed to see her urgently; he didn’t know how on earth he could ever beg her pardon, but he wanted to do so—he knew that he had been wrong. Would she ever, ever consent to see him again, give him a chance to apologize, to say how grateful he was for the care she had given his father? Would she consider giving him a chance to take her to dinner, to convince her that he had been upset and in a bit of a turmoil and so enamored by her that he hadn’t been able to think straight?

The phone shrilled again, and Susan laughed out loud at herself. It wasn’t going to be David Lane; he would never believe that he was wrong, never apologize. And she didn’t want him to; she just wanted to get him out of her life.

Then why was she still in the beach house?

Because Peter had seen fit to leave half of it in her name. And, by God, she did deserve it more than Peter’s willful and judgmental son!

Another shrill jangling of the phone set her into motion. Susan ran back to pick it up in the library, panting a little.

“Susan? Are you all right?”

For some ridiculous reason her heart seemed to careen to the pit of her stomach. It wasn’t David Lane. She had to learn to leave her fantasizing to paper.

“Hi, John. How are you?” Usually she was thrilled to hear from her agent. When news was bad or problematic, he wrote letters. When news was good, he called.

“Fine, thanks. How are you?”

“Fine,” she replied, a little inanely. Well, why not? It was what people said. Not, “Just like hell, John. I mean, I’m in the pits!”

“How’s the sci-fi going? I need it up here next week, you know.”

“Uh, it’s going all right. Well, actually, it’s going a little slow.”

John hesitated a minute. “I know you’ve had a bit of a bad time lately, Susan. Want me to get an extension for you?”

She bit lightly into her lower lip, thinking. She knew that Joan Railey at Klayton wouldn’t mind if she asked for more time; she just didn’t like to do it.

“No. I plan to do nothing but work for the rest of the week. I don’t like to change things.”

“It wouldn’t matter—”

“I just don’t like to do it.”

“Okay, it’s up to you. Hey, I read about your storm. Bad one, huh?”

“Yes, it was something, all right,” she replied lightly. “What’s up? You didn’t call to make sure I didn’t get washed away, did you?”

John chuckled softly. “Actually I was a little concerned. But I did call for business.” His voice suddenly went very low and husky with excitement. “Susan, big things are happening with that book at Puma. There’s a rush on it; there’s going to be a truckload of publicity for it. I knew from the beginning that we were dealing with a hot property, but I wasn’t sure it would go this far. There’s just a minor amendment they want to put on your contract. I need your okay.”

Susan hesitated, still feeling John’s excitement spill into her.

“What is it?” she asked quickly.

“You haven’t got anything against using your own name, have you?”

Again she paused, reflecting. A while ago she might have felt tears prick her eyes, and she might very well have said yes. The pseudonym had been a way to hold on to Carl. But that was one of the nice things that Peter had taught her; she didn’t have to have crutches to hang on to. She would always hold on in her heart.

“No, I guess not. But why the change? It might not be anything tremendous, but the S. C. de Chance name does have a bit of a following.”

“In select circles, but you’re shooting beyond that. I don’t know exactly why; neither did the contracts department. Susan, it’s such a little thing for the windfall that’s coming! The boss man wants it, apparently.”

“The boss man?”

She heard his sigh of exasperation and quickly swallowed. “David Lane is in on it now.”

“David Lane!” She knew she shouted the word; she almost dropped the phone, and then she was screaming again. “How can David Lane have anything to do with it? This is Puma Publications!”

There was a silence at the other end; obviously John was shocked to hear her violent charge of emotion.

“Susan, Puma is a subsidiary of Lane Publications. Didn’t you read your contract? You signed it.”

She closed her eyes, winding her fingers around the phone wire, feeling a little sick and definitely dazed.

“Susan?”

“I…” She paused. She hadn’t read the contract. Peter had read it; Peter had been delighted with it. In fact, remembering back, he had been almost as ecstatic as a kid.

When she had agreed rather nervously to attempt to write it for him, she had insisted that they go through all the normal channels, that they do it completely as a work of fiction and he use none of his influence in getting it published. No wonder Peter had found it all such a delightful joke—his own company had picked it up at the best price.

“No,” she murmured weakly. “I guess I didn’t read it. I always trust you—”

“Susan! Don’t ever just trust me!” he warned her. “I’m an agent—you’re the author, and it’s your work!”

“I’ll remember that in the future,” she murmured, then added quickly, “John, can I get it back? Couldn’t we offer it elsewhere?”

“Susan, are you all right?”

“Yes!”

He sighed again, letting her hear his aggravation. “Susan, I don’t even know what your problem is. You have no just cause. What’s the problem? Have you got an enemy at Lane? I thought you talked to Stacy already; I thought the two of you got along just great.”

That was before she knew Puma was Lane, Susan thought.

“Stacy seems lovely,” she murmured aloud.

John sighed again. “Susan, I’m your agent. I can’t make your decisions for you; I can only advise you. They’re putting all their faith—everything—behind this book.” She remained silent. “Susan, I have to have an answer on this. Don’t be an idiot. Don’t mess this up! It means wonderful things for your career!”

Susan sank into Peter’s chair, staring at her typewriter. “You said that David Lane insisted on the name change.”

“Yes.”

So he knew. David Lane owned her book. She was certain he hadn’t known a thing about it when he was here, but now he seemed to know. Well, now she knew that Puma was Lane!