Page 7 of I Dream of Danger
Nick was frowning. Ok. That was easier to deal with than that look of pity he’d had. “Well, now there’s nothing holding you back, is there?”
Well, if you didn’t count no money and medical debts, and put like that…”No, there isn’t.”
The answer seemed to relax him. He looked around again then back at her, dark gaze penetrating.
“You’re too thin. And too pale. You need to eat more and get outside more.”
That hurt. Nick had been in her heart always, since he had first come into their lives. She’d only been seven, but she loved him the moment she laid eyes on him. She’d been a girl then, but she was a woman now, and everything womanly in her was concentrated on him…his handsome face, those broad shoulders, the outsized hands.
Every female cell in her body was quivering. And he spoke to her like an elderly aunt would.
Eat more, get out more. Don’t be so pasty-faced and thin.
Yeah.
Next thing, he’d be telling her to bundle up warmly.
“And Christ—what’s the matter with you, going out in this weather dressed like that?”
There you go.
How she’d dreamed of this moment! For years. And now here he was, sitting across from her so closely she could touch him if she simply reached out, and they were talking about her wardrobe.
“Don’t,” she said softly. “I had to get dressed in a hurry. But I don’t want to talk about this. I want to hear how you’ve been doing. Where you’ve been.”
And why you disappeared without a word.
But she couldn’t say that. He was here. Right now she wanted to fill the empty years with images. She could only do that if she could imagine where he’d been, what he’d been doing.
Once upon a time, he’d told her everything.
Nick settled more deeply in the chair, frowning. “I can’t really talk about that.”
“Because you’re in the military?”
He straightened, shocked. “How did you know that? Who told you?”
Nick sounded actually angry. It had slipped out of her mouth without her thinking about it, which went to show how tired she was. She never let slip things she shouldn’t know, but did. She’d learned that the hard way.
She’d seen him. In her dreams. Not normal dreams—that floating phantasmagoria of disconnected images most people had during the night. She had those, too, like everyone else. But she also had Dreams. She went places in her Dreams and it was like being there. Frighteningly, exactly like being there.
She’d visited Nick, without a clue as to where he was, but so real she felt she could touch him. He was exercising with a hundred other men, doing jumping jacks and climbing ropes and crawling under barbed wire. Shooting. Shooting a lot. Jumping out of planes.
And with women. That had been the worst of all. She’d watched, helplessly, as he made love to a series of women, rarely the same one two nights in a row. Elle would be looking down from the ceiling, watching the muscles of his broad back stretch and flex, his buttocks tightening and releasing as he moved in and out of the woman. Usually, he held himself above the woman du nuit on stiff arms, touching her only with his sex.
Those nights, as she watched from the ceiling, she would wake up with tears on her face.
A part of her thought she was crazy. And another part of her thought she could somehow travel outside her body.
Whichever it was—and maybe it was both—she’d said the wrong thing to Nick.
He reached across to clamp his big hand over her wrist.
“Did someone tell you something?” he demanded. “Someone spying on me?”
His grip was tight. Not painful, but definitely unbreakable. Nick had always been strong, even as a boy. Now he was a powerfully-built man.
Slowly, unsure if her touch would be welcome, Elle laid her hand over his.
