Free Handful of Dreams by Heather Graham Page A

stroke her cheek, would stoke passion slowly, tenderly, until it was returned with ecstatic splendor, and then it would fly on silver wings to…
    “I can’t help but wonder,” he said a little huskily, “what it is about you, what you do, that made you worth everything in life. Are you really that good?”
    She snapped a letter into place, having no idea if she had spelled a word or not. She stared at him coolly.
    “I’m absolutely the best, Mr. Lane. But you’ll never know.”
    He chuckled. “I wasn’t really making the offer, Miss Anderson. I just wanted to hear your reply.” She froze; he sounded a little disappointed, as if he’d expected some protest of innocence.
    She owed him no explanations, she reminded herself. He’d made them all up for himself.
    “I suppose,” he said dryly, “that you do have other—assets—to sell too. There’s the sable, of course. That coat should draw a small fortune in itself.”
    So he had looked at her that day. At her back, anyway. Of course, the water in his face had forced him to look up.
    She smiled. “Your father just loved me in fur,” she told him in her best, most sensual drawl.
    The board jiggled as his hand moved convulsively, knocking it. “You didn’t spell a word,” he said. “ Xet is not in the English language.”
    Susan stared at the letters. David went ahead and moved them for her, tossing the T back to her and attaching the E and X to an S already on the board.
    He whistled softly. “Found you a triple-letter score on that X, Miss Anderson. ‘Sex.’ I’m amazed that you didn’t find that one yourself.”
    Susan stood up, unwinding gracefully. “Good night, Mr. Lane. It’s surely midnight or close to it by now.”
    He didn’t move, but his eyes were on her. She wondered why they could hold her with such force, why they still seemed to pin her there.
    “I believe it is,” he said, his lips curling ever so slightly, so that he might have been laughing at her inside.
    “Good night.”
    “Take the candle up the stairs.”
    “I will.”
    “Make sure you put it out.”
    “I will.”
    “And say a prayer, will you please?”
    “A prayer for what?”
    He unwound and stood, keeping his distance from her, his hands on his hips.
    Shadows played against his face, but there was something there in his taut features, something that might have been a form of anguish, as if he were a man pulled roughly in two directions.
    “Pray that the storm breaks,” he said simply, and then he turned away, disappearing through the kitchen door.

CHAPTER FOUR
    S ATURDAY DAWNED DARK. SUSAN awoke lethargically, aware that although the rain had ceased for a while, it would come again. That meant that the road would still be flooded, that the phone and electricity lines would still be down, and that David Lane would remain in the house.
    It seemed rather senseless to bother to rise.
    Susan rolled over, casting her eye on her alarm, a little relieved to discover that she had slept through the morning and that it was almost noon. There would be another afternoon, and an evening, but surely by tomorrow the rains would cease and Mr. Lane would be on his way.
    She sighed softly, hugging her pillow. She’d had a right to sleep so late. She had tossed all night long in a realm of nightmares. The water had been coming over her again, the tide so strong that she couldn’t resist it. She’d seen her brother Carl’s face in her dreams, heard his voice pleading, “My hand, Susan, take my hand….”
    And she’d seen David Lane in those nightmares, too, his eyes condemning her. She’d even felt his hands on her shoulders, shaking her … on her naked body, carrying her into the tub…
    Thank God the night was over!
    She stretched and settled back into her pillow, staring through her window to the ominous gray day beyond it. She mused that the day was really rather apropos; David Lane was just like it. Even when the storm wasn’t raging, it simmered and brewed. And one