Free What Dreams May Come by Kay Hooper Page B

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.
    He had never teased her more than she could stand, either instinct or innate kindness tellinghim how far he could go without seriously hurting her feelings. And when he and Keith had discovered girls, he had continued to treat Kelly rather like his own baby sister. Fiercely resentful of his attentions to those older girls, it hadn't occurred to Kelly until she reached her own teens that she was jealous.
    Thirteen, she reflected now rather wryly, was a melodramatic age for a girl. An age of trying so desperately to be grown-up that the results were, more often than not, ludicrous. An age of wild hairstyles cemented with hair spray, of junk jewelry, of makeup and perfume inexpertly applied. An age of fervent passions about clothing and music—and boys.
    But when Kelly was thirteen, Mitch was twenty. Not a boy, but a man in college. She had tried so intensely to make him see that she was grown-up, terrified that he wouldn't realize until too late, after some other girl had married him. Oddly enough, she had never doubted that she was the one he really loved, if he'd only just look at her.
    Some time after her fourteenth birthday, he had.
    "Stop it," Kelly muttered to herself aloud, realizing that she'd gotten lost in the past. "That doesn't matter now."
    But it did. She had known Mitch for twenty years, almost two thirds of her life, and that did make a difference.
    She refused to let herself think about it anymore. For now at least. Forcing herself, she concentrated on her work, still getting organized as she put away supplies and arranged the reference materials neatly on her desk. She kept her mind on that and managed to stay occupied for severalhours, but caught herself glancing toward the windows several times. Finally, giving in to the fidgety urge to move, she went over to one of the windows and stood looking out.
    Even with the mist still clinging wispily to some of the tree branches and settling like a giant spider's dense web into low places here and there, the view was lovely. The house was set well back from the cliffs, and the sloping grounds had been divided into a bi-level garden. Nearest the house was a flagstone terrace with wrought iron tables and chairs, heavy stone planters filled with flowering plants