“Your favorite meal,” Dylan murmured. “And yes. You’re right. That’s what the gong was used for. It called you to dinner every night.”
“And I heard his voice,” she panted. “But I couldn’t see him.”
His soothing motions slowed. “Alan’s?”
“Daddy’s,” she whispered. She flinched. “I wish I could have seen him,” she cried out in frustration. Intense longing and grief flooded her. She paused to repress a powerful urge to sob. “But I heard his voice, and it was so real. And then Mommy was telling me to run and hide again, and there was blood on her ear and neck. Dylan, are you sure she wasn’t there when I was taken in the woods? Are you sure those men didn’t hurt her, too?”
She felt Dylan shift behind her. The bedside lamp clicked on. He urged her with his hands to face him. Alice scooted onto her side. She was naked. They’d made love before falling asleep, she recalled dazedly. Her skin was sheened with perspiration, but she was cold. She shivered, and Dylan pulled the sheet and comforter securely around her neck. She searched every detail of his tense, handsome face.
“It was a dream, Alice,” he assured quietly.
“But his voice . . . I think it was real.” She wanted that part to be real.
He nodded. “That might have been a real memory, or memory of emotions mixing with a dream. Not the part about the blood, though. You never saw Lynn like that. Never. She was up at the house when you were kidnapped.”
“It’s the first time I’ve ever had any memory of him. It’s always been her,” she mumbled, determinedly reliving that portion of her dream again. She didn’t want to dwell on the expression of stark fear and panic on the woman’s face.
Or the blood.
“He sounded so strong and warm. He liked to laugh, didn’t he?”
“Yes. Especially with you. All of his thoughts about his business, every worry or problem that needed to be solved: All that melted away the minute you ran into the room. He became lighter with you there. Happier.”
“He told me he was right beside me, and that he always would be. And . . . and he liked chocolate ice cream as much as me.” This time, she couldn’t restrain her sob. She turned her face into the pillow, embarrassed by the raggedness of her emotions. How was it possible that so much feeling could be embedded in a brief flash of a dream and a few words?
Dylan rubbed her back. “I know it must hurt. But isn’t it better to have the memory, as painful as it is? You’re right about the ice cream. It was Alan’s favorite. You really did have a memory of him. Your father adored you, Alice. I never knew a man could love a child so much and without a shred of reservation. It was a revelation to me, to see his devotion to you and Lynn.”
“I’m never going to know him.” She gasped and curled up her legs. The realization had felt like a knife going through her belly. “Those bastards took him from me. I wish I could kill them.”
“I know. I know, baby.”
After a moment of Dylan holding her and kissing her cheek and the side of her head, the acuteness of her pain eased to an ache. “I’m never going to know them,” she repeated dully, as if she were teaching herself a lesson she instinctively didn’t want to learn, but knew she must. “Never.”
“You do know them,” Dylan said, his fierceness making her blink and rise out of her misery. “Feelings like they had for you, and you once had for them, don’t disappear, Alice. Who they were is a part of you. It’s like Alan said in your dream: He’ll always be beside you.”
Another shudder of grief went through her. It was too big for her to absorb, that dream. “I can’t do this, Dylan.”
“You can. Your mind knows what you can handle and what you can’t. That’s the natural way of things,” he soothed, stroking her with long, reassuring caresses. “And I’m right here with you. Do you understand?”
“Yes,” she sniffed. Dylan is here. She nodded her head against the pillow, fortified by that solid, wonderful truth.
*
ALICE awoke several minutes before the dawn. The dream about the dinner gong and Alan Durand still clung to her. Moving carefully so as not to rob Dylan of those precious extra moments of sleep, she eased off the bed. He was up, however, when she exited the bathroom. The bedside light was on. He stood by his dresser, wearing a pair of jeans and pulling on a dark blue T-shirt. She smiled as she walked toward him. She liked him best this way: mussed and warm from bed, his jaw shadowed with whiskers.
“What are you smiling about?” he asked, pulling the edge of his shirt down over his taut abdomen. She reached out and touched a patch of his naked skin before it disappeared.
“You. I like you in the morning, when you look like this.”
He cupped her shoulder with one hand. “Then I guess that after camp is over, you’ll have to get up every morning with me to ride, won’t you?” he asked, a grin tilting his sexy lips. She went up on her tiptoes and kissed him.