Forbidden Dreams Read online

  Then suffocation, feeling trapped. His leg had been caught, his foot pinned. He’d struggled to get free, to breathe, feeling pain and confusion, then blessed air. Cold, so cold and wet, he’d walked, fallen, got up and walked again. Trees crashed and branches slammed to the ground all around him, as the wind howled and water smashed into rocks, threatening to reach out and snatch him. He saw a dim light that he sometimes thought was his imagination but followed it anyway, not knowing where it would lead but knowing it was his only hope. Then, finally, warmth, a voice, comfort, and those hands on his naked body.

  His naked body? He clenched his fists and teeth and opened his eyes.

  A woman bent over him, a woman with sleek, shining pale hair that clung to her head, flowed past her shoulders, effectively screening her face from him. He lay on a bed, head and shoulders elevated against thick, soft pillows, in a room all dark except for the intimate glow of an oil lamp standing on a chair next to the woman. He was half-covered by a quilt, and not fully naked after all. He still wore his blue briefs. Intent on her job of bathing his thigh, the woman didn’t look at him. That gash …

  Yes. He had it now. His Jeep and the washout on the road, the road to … He frowned, wishing he could think. Ah, yes. The road to Shell Landry’s house. Of course.

  He was in her house. He’d knocked on the door. Pounded. He remembered a woman snatching it open. Remembered a laughing face turned up to his as she said something. Remembered that laughter dying as she’d stared at him blankly, seeing a stranger.

  Then there was nothing. Until now.

  His gaze wandered around through the pool of yellow light. His pill bottle. He squinted. Yes. She’d given him his medication. That was why the pain was fading, why he was adrift within his head. He tried to focus on his surroundings.

  Just within the outer edge of the lamp’s glow sat a black Labrador with a broad forehead and intelligent eyes, eyes that watched him with wary intensity. Beyond, through a doorway, he saw the source of the poignant aroma—a Christmas tree standing in one corner of a room. An old-fashioned rocking chair sat near it, complete with patchwork cushions that reminded him of his grandmother, and on a table was another lamp like the one that lit this room. It was as if he’d stepped through a time warp, he thought, into a much further past than the one that included the child Shell Landry.

  It was the adult Shell who bent over him now. Of that he was certain. As she turned to rummage in the first-aid kit at the foot of the bed, her long hair draped itself across his ankle, producing a tremor of pleasure that approached pain.

  She was oblivious to his response, giving her total concentration to taking care of his wound. She deftly strapped tapes across it to pull it closed, her fingers soft on his skin. She was treating him, for the love of Mike, not caressing him! What the hell was wrong with him, letting his libido get the upper hand like that? Dammit, where was his control?

  She moved again, and the glow of the oil lamp sent golden flames dancing across her impossibly sleek hair. It was so pale, draping down around her face and shoulders in a thick curtain. And straight, dead straight. He remembered it as being golden, yes, but curly—tight, bouncy curls that had circled her laughing, elfin face.

  Had he ever touched her hair then? He thought not. Now, though, he wanted very badly to touch it, to see if it felt as silky as it looked. He wanted to speak to her, to see if the slightly tilted light green eyes he recalled would turn to him with eagerness, as they once had. He wanted to discover if the mercurial sprite he remembered from childhood remained within the depths of the woman Shell had become.

  He lay still and floated in and out of the past and while she worked on his leg, taping the thick dressing in place.

  Summertime, and a little girl named Shirley, who’d called herself Shell. He’d played on a beach with a Shell, and the two of them had giggled about it. Fun. Fairy tales. She had seemed like a character out of a fairy tale to him then, soft and golden, with little freckles all over her like a dusting of sunlight, so different from him with his dark hair and sun-dark skin.

  As she continued her ministrations, working on his feet now, dabbing, cleaning, bandaging, he worried about his scars, wishing she didn’t have to see them. But there was nothing he could do about it while this drug filled his head with fluff, slowed his thoughts, sent his memories skipping like flat stones on still water.

  Big girls hated his scars.

  She poured some kind of liquid over a laceration on his foot, and he stiffened, gritting his teeth so as not to make a sound. But his breath drew in sharply despite his good intentions, and she lifted her head, looking directly at him. “I’m sorry,” she murmured.

  Her eyes were still green, still almond-shaped, but instead of laughter, they held contrition. She didn’t like hurting him.

  Absurdly, he wanted to comfort her. With great effort and concentration he raised a hand and tucked her hair behind her ear, draping it over her shoulder. It felt as silky as he’d fantasized, but much heavier, richer.

  He smiled. “You’re a hard lady track down,” he said, fighting to enunciate clearly. “Shirley Elizabeth Landry, all growed up.”

  As he spoke, a loud crash sounded elsewhere in the house; everything in the structure shuddered and trembled. Dishes rattled, a large pink spiral shell on the window sill danced, then dropped to the top of a dressing table. In the shock-frozen seconds following, she gaped at him as if he were somehow responsible, her hand clapping to her moth to muffle a cry. Then, spinning around, she fled, running toward the source of the noise, the dog scrabbling after her.

  Jase tried to heave himself upright, the instinct to protect screaming inside him like a siren. The effort was too much as an unseen horse kicked him in the ribs, and he flopped back down, blinding pain stabbing through his chest as darkness flooded into his head.

  His last sensation was one of impotent fury at his own weakness before he swirled away into the loud roar of the December storm.

  Chapter Two

  SHELL’S FIRST, CONFUSED THOUGHT was who’d plastered all those wet, shiny green leaves against the living-room window? In the next instant she realized that her favorite arbutus tree had fallen, no doubt wiping out her sun deck. Another foot or two to the right, and it would have taken out the bay window. She supposed she should feel fortunate. She didn’t. She felt devastated, as shattered as the trunk of the big, twisted old tree must be.

  Her swing! Where would she hang her swing, with the tree gone? It would take a hundred years or more to grow another one that size, and she didn’t have a hundred years. She had … She had an incipient case of hysteria on her hands, she decided. She also had an unexpected visitor who knew her full name, who remembered her from the past—the past before her tenth year—and whom she couldn’t fully place.

  What more could go wrong?

  She soon found out. The wind whipped up and over the roof. Its pattern changed drastically by the absence of the big old tree, it blew smoke down the chimney, forcing it out around the door of the wood stove and filling the room with an acrid, eye-stinging cloud that set off the smoke detector.

  Skeena cowered and put her front legs over her ears, her howls adding to the din. Shell stood on a chair and waved a book catalog at the screaming meemie on her ceiling, clearing the air around it long enough to stop its frantic shrieking.

  For a moment she considered pulling out the battery of the device, but good sense prevailed. On a night like this anything, it seemed, could happen, and probably would.

  She tiptoed back to the guest room. The man was asleep, apparently undisturbed by all the noise. She quickly bandaged the cut on his foot, covered him completely with the quilt, cleaned up her first-aid supplies, then went to bed.

  Once in bed, though, sleep eluded her. She was too aware of the man’s presence in her home. What did he want? Why had he blown in with the storm? She’d thought she’d got over distrusting strangers simply because they were strangers. Paranoia, her father often called it. Justi
fiable reticence, her grandmother insisted, given the kind of childhood she’d suffered. Lil said she’d been painfully shy as a child too.

  A sound from the guest room brought her erect, listening, and a moan whipped her out of bed. Still sleeping, the man tossed restlessly, and she wondered if she should waken him and give him more of his medication. The bottle simply said, “Take with food or milk as directed, for pain.” What kind of pain was he being treated for? Since he carried pills, it must be something chronic. Had it to do with the scars she’d seen on his legs and torso, deep, puckered purplish and white lines that bespoke terrible wounds? The scars appeared to be of different ages. What kind of man lived the sort of life where such damage could happen repeatedly to his body?

  She wasn’t sure she wanted to know. Especially if he had come looking for her, because that meant he was in reality looking for Lilianne.

  Lilianne … whose dark, intense beauty had captivated the world for that fleeting, scintillating time, beauty that many said would never be equaled. Lilianne … that brief, bright flame … Like Elvis, like Marilyn, she was “seen” frequently in the oddest places. At a mission in Africa, a convent in France, on a cruise ship in the Caribbean. Too many fans still flatly denied that Lilianne could be dead, especially without a body as proof. So, even after nearly twenty years, the questions were asked in tabloids, on newscasts on the anniversaries of her disappearance, at cocktail parties and on the street—wherever people gathered and gossiped.

  Why? How? Where? And sometimes even, ominously, who? There were those who believed that, body or not, Lilianne had been murdered by some unknown person who had hidden her away along with her little daughter, who had also disappeared. But never, not once, had one of those tabloid writers speculated in print that it could have been them and their blood lust for intimate details of a woman’s life, their veritable feeding frenzy as they sought what they considered their due, that might have driven her away.

  Dread settled over Shell like a wet fog. Had this man come to try to answer those questions? Dammit, where had she seen his face? And since she knew she had, why couldn’t she fix it firmly in either time or place?

  As if sensing her presence, he opened his eyes, his gaze swinging to her in the doorway.

  “Are you feeling a little better?” she asked, picking up the lamp and taking a step closer.

  “Yeah.” The way he squinted told her it was a lie. He was in pain, but she couldn’t let herself care about that. She needed to know who he was; what threat, if any, he presented.

  “Who are you?” she asked.

  “Don’t … ’member?”

  His words startled her until she realized they had been a question, not a statement.

  “No, dammit, I don’t remember! Tell me your name! Tell me what you want.”

  “Name’s Jase … O’Keefe,” he said weakly, his words slurred. He licked his lips. “Thirsty. Want … drink.”

  Idiot, that wasn’t what I meant, she wanted to shout, but he looked so pathetic, she had to take pity on him. O’Keefe? she thought, as she slipped into the kitchen for a glass of water. That fit the missing letters on his pill bottle, but it didn’t turn on any bright illumination in her brain. Returning to the bedroom, she slid a hand under his head and held the glass to his lips. He moaned with pain but managed a sip or two.

  “Thanks,” he said. It seemed to take a lot of effort for him to force out the word.

  “Do you want more pills for pain?”

  His eyes rolled crazily as he tried to look at her. “How … long?”

  “Since you had some? A couple of hours.”

  “Too … soon. More water.” He licked his lips again. “So dry.”

  His bare back felt hot, and she wondered if he was starting a fever. His muscles, hard and sleek, moved under her hand as he shifted, trying to find a more comfortable position. She quickly pulled away, pushing a pillow behind him. He gulped down several long swallows, draining the glass, then closed his eyes, leaning back against the pillows.

  “Good,” he said with a grateful sigh.

  “Would you like more?”

  He nodded, not opening his eyes. When she returned with a fresh glass, he was asleep again, his breathing shallow and labored. She set the glass beside him. “Good night,” she whispered, neither expecting nor receiving a reply.

  “I’m scared,” she said to Skeena, who had followed her into the man’s room and now padded after her back to her own bedroom. Simply saying it took the edge off the fear, and she slid back under her covers, pulling them up to her chin. The dog turned around several times, then lay down on the mat beside Shell’s bed. She sighed once, then began to breathe deeply almost at once, oblivious to the raging storm outside and the weight of worry in her mistress’s heart.

  “Lucky you,” Shell murmured, reaching a hand over the side of the bed to make contact with a familiar, living, breathing creature. She wished she could sleep but knew she wouldn’t, not until morning came and she could turn this entire problem over to Ned. As soon as it was even a little bit light, just enough so she could see if a falling tree or branch was aimed at her, she’d get up and go to Ned’s house. He’d come back with her and take … care of … everything …

  She was deep in a dream of Lilianne berating a dark-haired photographer who needed a shave, telling him, “You leave Shirl alone! She’s only a little girl!” when the horrifying sound of a man’s scream jolted her awake.

  She knew at once who it was. She flung back the covers and leaped to her feet, groping for the flashlight. With its unsteady beam leading the way, she tore done the hall to where the lamp guttered now, nearly out of fuel and producing evil-smelling black smoke. She blew it out on her way by and flung open the door to O’Keefe’s room.

  Outside, the storm had dwindled to a faint drizzle, a few halfhearted gusts of wind, and the continued crash of surf on the beach, but inside O’Keefe a greater storm raged. He lay tangled in his bedding, thrashing, his head rolling from side to side as he shouted at someone to get back, to douse that light, to keep down. The sight of his injured leg oozing blood through the bandage was frightening, and she didn’t need to touch him to know that his temperature was dangerously high.

  If he kept thrashing like that, he’d undo any good she’d done for him.

  Aspirin, she thought. That fever had to come down. She darted to the bathroom, got aspirin, rubbing alcohol, and towels, then returned to perch on the side of his bed and force the pills down his throat. He fought her, flailing angrily and muttering dire threats, but swallowed when she told him to, his teeth chattering against the rim of the glass.

  While she tried to hold him down, to keep him from hurting himself, he shouted warnings, his voice high and hoarse. She caught his hands and spoke to him in what she hoped was a calming tone, though it wobbled with the fear she couldn’t hide from herself. What if he died here with her?

  He wouldn’t. She wasn’t going to let him. Just as she wasn’t going to let herself panic. She was an adult and as competent as anybody she knew—with the possible exception of Ned. Lord, but she wished she had some way of getting hold of Ned right this minute.

  But she didn’t, and she had to deal with this man and his problems herself.

  Carefully, mindful of his terrible bruising, she placed one hand on his shoulder to hold him still and began sponging him down with a wet cloth, hoping the evaporating alcohol would cool his burning skin the way it was supposed to. All the while, she spoke in a soothing voice, which seemed to get through to him. He lay quietly as long as she spoke to him, allowing her to work more easily.

  When his eyes opened, she thought he was lucid. She smiled and asked, “Feeling better?”

  “Oh, yeah,” he said gutturally, and clamped hard fingers around the hand resting on his shoulder. “Better than better.” Flattening her hand onto his chest, he rubbed it over one of his pebble-like nipples. “Feel real good, honey.”

  Shell jumped. The feel of that nipple under her pa
lm sent an unwelcome shaft of sensation stabbing through her. She snatched her hand away, but he caught it again and clamped it to him. “Don’t stop,” he said thickly. “Feels … great. Cool. So cool. Makes me … hot.” So quickly that she didn’t at first realize what he intended, he dragged her splayed hand down his chest and over his stomach, carrying it directly toward the distinct bulge she could see growing within the confines of his blue briefs.

  “Stop that,” she said sharply, wresting her hand out of his control and slopping the wet cloth across his mouth and nose. “I’m trying to help you, for heaven’s sake.” He let go of her hand so he could remove the smothering washcloth.

  “You’re sick, O’Keefe,” she added. And he could take that any way he wanted to.

  Suddenly, he laughed, a low, sexy laugh that startled her with its potent ability to charm her. “And you’re a prude,” he said. His voice was husky, and his eyes glittered challengingly. “Too much of a prude to kiss me?” His tongue passed over his lips with blatant eroticism as he clamped his hands around her back and pulled her closer. “Don’t tease, honey,” he said cajolingly. “You owe me a kiss.”

  “I owe you nothing! I’m trying to help you, so just knock it off, buster, or you’re on your own here. You can lie in this bed and burn for all I care.”

  He looked wounded for a moment, like a child who’d been unjustly smacked; then his eyes fell shut again, and his head lolled sideways. His chest heaved with his short, tortured breaths. “I just want …” he murmured, but she wasn’t to learn what he wanted. His voice trailed away into a shaky sigh, and he appeared to sleep.

  She swallowed hard as she continued to fight his fever with the cool sponging. What would it have felt like, under other circumstances, to have responded to his request, to have leaned against him, covered his sculpted lips with her own, and tasted him? For Pete’s sake! she told herself. You’re as sick as he is!