Free If Only in My Dreams by Wendy Markham Page B

plate-glass window and a wistful feeling falls over him.
    You don’t have to go, you know
, he reminds himself.
You can always stay right here in Glenhaven Park. Forever
.
    Unless, of course, he’s drafted.
    Which he will be, sooner or later—he knows it in his gut, the way he knew that his father’s health was failing long before Doc Wilson delivered the dreadful verdict back in the spring of ’39.
    Anyway, he doesn’t want to stay here and bide his time waiting for war to hit home and the government to decidehis fate. He’ll enlist in May, right after Gilbert gets home, just as he planned.
    “I’ll be seeing you later, then, Jed,” Mrs. Bouvier says, and departs into the swirl of white flakes.
    Jed returns his attention to his visitor, who can’t really be called a customer because she isn’t shopping. She’s just sitting, and staring. Not at him, but into space, which gives him another opportunity to surreptitiously look her over from head to toe, with renewed appreciation.
    She sure is classy.
    Much too classy for a small-town fella like me
, Jed can’t help thinking.
Still
…
    She looks up, suddenly, and catches him staring at her.
    He is alarmed to see that the bump above her eyebrow is so much more pronounced, in size and color, that he can easily see it from where he stands several yards way.
    “You really do need to keep ice on that,” he advises, quickly covering the ground between them.
    “I know… but it’s cold.”
    “It’s supposed to be cold. It’s ice.” He picks up the towel, now sopping wet, and secures it better around the clump of melting ice. He offers it to her. When she doesn’t take it, he gently presses it against the bump himself.
    She flinches when it makes contact with her skin, but to his surprise, she lets him hold it there. It’s an oddly intimate situation, to be standing so close to her that he can, if he lowers his eyes to her legs, easily see that she is wearing the real thing. Silk stockings. If Mrs. Robertson were here she might offer to buy them from her on the spot.
    Standing this near to Clara, Jed can smell the delicate scent that wafts deliciously in the air between them. Hewants to ask her what fragrance it is, so much lighter than the heavy floral aroma of that Evening in Paris perfume he’s been selling like hotcakes.
    Betty Godfrey bathes herself in it, as far as he can tell. It’s all he can do not to sneeze whenever she’s cozying up to him.
    He inhales again and is seized by a momentary—and wholly inappropriate—fantasy that involves burying his face in Clara’s fragrant neck.
    He can’t do that.
    But he can ask her what scent she’s wearing.
    No, he can’t, either.
    That would be much too forward of him… wouldn’t it?
    Of course it would, Jed! You barely know her. Wait, you don’t know her at all
.
    “You’re shivering,” he notes. “I’m sorry… I know it’s cold, and this isn’t comfortable for you, but if you don’t ice that bump—”
    “It’s okay. It’s not just that I’m cold, I’m…” She trails off, but he has the strangest sensation that he can read her mind… and that she was about to say
scared
.
    He provides the word for her, but as a question, and isn’t surprised when she nods.
    “What are you scared of?” he asks.
    She hesitates. “A lot of things. But… I don’t want to talk about them.”
    Jed frowns, running his thoughts over a list of possibilities. He settles on the most likely and most frightening scenario he can conjure. “Is somebody after you? Did somebody hit you? Is that why you have that bruise?”
    “No!” she says quickly… so quickly that he’s certain she must be lying.
    Jed is instantly infused with the same brand of anger he experienced as an overprotective older brother called in to disperse Waldie Smith and his cronies with a few well-thrown punches.
    If some goon did this to an innocent woman… well, Jed would love to get his hands on him and give him a taste of his own