Love Untold

Love Untold: Chapter 40

Love Untold:  Chapter 40



“‘He dreams of you, too’,” Dena read aloud from the thick card as Chrissie stared blankly out of her window from her bed.  Dena flipped it over and looked at the envelope.  “No signature, no return address, no stamp, nothing.  Creepy.”

Yeah, creepy, Chrissie silently agreed.  What hasn’t been creepy in the last five months?

“You think it’s from that David Elliot guy?”

“I don’t know,” Chrissie mumbled.  But who else would have sent it?  Besides Dena and their mother, the only other people who knew about Chrissie’s dreams were the doctors at the rehab center and Dr. Stone.  And they had those confidentiality restrictions, right?

Dena tossed the card across the room to get it out of both their sights and flopped down on the bed next to Chrissie.  “I think I need to redo my whole dissertation.  This stuff with you dreaming of your true love and now someone thinks someone else dreams of you...”  She sighed.  “Maybe I should have majored in Divination or some crap like that.”

Chrissie rolled over and hugged a pillow as she looked at her sister.  “Am I crazy, D?  I tried looking for him, and that didn’t work, and now I’ve stopped, and see what happened?  I’m not imagining these things, right?  Would you pinch me so I know I’m still awake and not stuck in another pointless dream?”

Dena frowned.  “If you’re crazy, then so am I,” she said sincerely.  “I’m starting to think you might be the sanest person I know...pointless dreams or not.”

Chrissie shook her head.  Tears dribbled out of her eyes.  “Dena, I’ve never been so afraid,” she whispered.  “I’ve never been so unsure of anything like I am now.  I don’t know what to do.  I don’t even know who I am anymore.”

Dena scooted over and pulled her big sister into a comforting hug.  “I know the feeling, believe me, I do.  You’ve taken care of me your whole life, and sometimes I didn’t know who I was because I tried so hard to be someone you wanted me to be.”

Chrissie moaned into Dena’s shoulder.  “You’re supposed to be making me feel better.”

Her sister laughed.  “I will, if you’d shut up for a moment,” she scoffed, and Chrissie felt better already because her sister was still her sister, and only Dena could set someone straight...even if her methods were a little unconventional.  “Like I was saying, I know what’s it’s like to feel as though you don’t belong in your own skin.  I’ve lived in your shadow for so long, sometimes I wished we weren’t sisters.  But I’ve always loved you, and I always knew who you were.  You were the strong one who kept me grounded, and you were the one who pushed me to be better than I thought I could be.  And there were times, I didn’t want to wake up from my dreams because reality is so harsh.”  She leaned back and brushed the hair out of Chrissie’s eyes.  “But I learned that only I could make my dreams come true.  And I learned that from you.”

Chrissie shook her head.  “You didn’t learn that from me.”

“Yes, I did,” she smiled softly.  “You taught me to go after what I wanted, even when you were griping at me to be less enthusiastic about some of it.  So, I’m throwing that advice right back at you.  If you want the dream, then go after it.”

“I did that, remember?” Chrissie cried.  “He has no brother.  I only want one dream, and it’s not there.  How am I supposed to go after something that doesn’t exist?”

“Then you make it exist,” Dena said.

Chrissie groaned and pushed away from Dena.  “Now, you’re just being dumb.”

“Not really,” Dena said.  “Think about all the things we have today.  Did they exist before someone went after their dreams and discovered them?”

“Most of that stuff is accidental,” Chrissie argued.  “The guy that invented dynamite...it was an accident, and he regretted it.”

“Nobel,” Dena mused.

“What?”

“The guy’s name was Alfred Nobel, and yes, he hated that he invented something so destructive, so he founded the Nobel Prizes...you know, the Peace Prize, so something good came out of a disaster.  It will happen to you, too, because I believe you can make something good of all this.”

Chrissie flipped the blanket over her face, hiding from the world and her problems.  “What good could possibly come from all this?”

Dena tucked her head under the blanket, too, and looked at Chrissie through the shadows.  “You’re in love, sis,” she said gently.  “And that’s a good thing.  Hold onto that feeling because when you find him -- and I know you will -- you’ll be ready for it.”

“Okay,” Chrissie sighed, since she was too depressed to argue any more about it.

*****

Reese dumped his duffel bag onto the brass frame bed in a private cabin of Hilltop Resort and looked around.  It was cozy and nice, but not what he expected.  When he thought of a ski resort, he pictured the standard, commercial atmosphere of every other hotel he’d stayed in.  But this place...he opened the shutter windows and inhaled the fresh mountain air.  This place was like coming home.  It even smelled like his mother’s house, the pungency of cedar logs, the sweet aroma of wildflowers in the vase on the dresser, the thick layer of nostalgia...

He grinned and hopped backward on the springy bed, folding his hands behind his head.  Yeah, he could get used to a place like this.  Already, the resort upheld its reputation for the perfect get-away -- in his opinion, anyway.  They called this the Time Out House, and the name fit.  He definitely needed some time out.  There was a trail that led right out the back door of the cabin, disappearing into the wooded hillside so he could take off into the wilderness whenever he felt like it, and it was so secluded that he won’t fear reporters and marriage-hungry females if he decided to venture past his little slice of heaven -- which he didn’t.  His only neighbor was another cabin just across a small meadow, and the owner, Dolly Hill, assured him that it wouldn’t be occupied due to some kind of electrical problem.

Perfect...

When David asked if he wanted to join his family and company at the resort during the convention, he seriously considered demurring, but now, he was glad he agreed.  For the past four weeks, he tried his best to stay away from the public, but his sponsor and agent scheduled him for three talk shows and an appearance at a charity benefit for military families who lost loved ones across the seas.  He couldn’t very well decline.  The benefit, he didn’t mind so much, but the talk shows?  All the television people wanted to talk about was why he didn’t marry that girl from the reality show, and he couldn’t exactly explain that the chit was not the person they saw on TV because his contract restrictions with the show’s producers strictly forbid such a thing.  That would make the producers look bad, and then he’d be sued for slander or some crap like that.

But for a week, he could relax, toss his cell phone in a drawer and haul out his hiking boots and mountain bike.  He was supposed to have dinner with David and his wife tonight up at the main dining room, yet he thought about rescheduling for another night.  He could take a nice, long nap right now.

Unfortunately, that brotherly bond so many siblings talked about decided to poke it’s pestering finger at him.  His phone jingled, and Reese sighed as he answered.  “I just got here,” he told David.  “How about a little time to kick my shoes off before you start in on me?”

David chuckled.  “Just wanted to remind you that we’re having dinner tonight...drinks first in the bar.”

Reese groaned.  “Do we have to?”

“Hey, chill out, will you?  We’ve got the entire resort booked for my company for the whole week, and to them, you’re just an athlete I’m thinking of signing for promotional advertising.”

“Yeah, fine,” Reese said, closing his eyes, but a beautiful face smiled at him there, and he didn’t want to think about his dream woman right now.  He hoped he didn’t dream about her a single time while up on the mountain, away from other women...elligible, searching women.  “Hey, how many of your employees here are unattached and female?”

“If you’re thinking of getting lucky this week, stop thinking it,” David scorned.  “I’ll not have a harassment suit on my hands right now.  Besides, only Mindy, my assistant, fits that description, and she’s engaged, and her fiance is with her, so don’t go there.  The only other people here are the staff, and they gossip.”

“I wasn’t thinking that at all,” Reese said.  “I’m taking precautions.  I want some peace and quiet this week.”

“Well, you’ll get it,” David returned.  “Most of the people will be busy in town at the convention and in meetings during the days.  Which means me, too, so you’re not getting out of dinner tonight.  Jennifer and the kids haven’t seen you since Easter.  She’ll hunt you down if you don’t show up.”

Reese smiled up at the ceiling.  Jennifer was a kitten.  “Oooh, I’m scared.”

David grunted.  “She brought her potions,” he warned with a grin in his voice.

Reese sat straight up.  “I’ll be there!  I’ll be there!  You tell Jennifer to keep that stuff away from me, you hear?!  The last junk she poured down my throat gave me diarrhea for three days!”

“It was supposed to,” Jennifer’s voice said over the line, and Reese cringed, his whole body seizing up, and he punched the colorful quilt under him.

“Oh, hey, Jenn,” Reese said to his sister-in-law in a cool voice.  “How’re the kiddos?”

“They are just fine,” Jennifer said in that motherly, don’t-pull-any-crap-with-me voice.  “Fennel and fenugreek are natural ingredients for detoxing the body.  If you didn’t put so many toxins into your system, then maybe you wouldn’t have had the diarrhea.”

“Jenn, I drink water and eat just fine,” Reese argued, but sometimes with Jennifer he sounded like a broken record.

“Good,” she said.  “Are you still taking that vitamin powder I sent you?”

“No,” Reese said honestly.  He could lie, but Jennifer had this crazy radar and she sniffed out every fabrication, deception or untruth he and David even thought about.  And that brought on a whole other set of lectures.

“Reese William Jackson!” she squawked.

“It smells like rotten oranges,” Reese said.  “I won’t take it.”

“Fine then!  That’s just--”  She broke off.  David said, “Sorry about that.  She loves you, you know.”

“Yeah, and that love is going to kill me,” Reese joked, but he really did like Jennifer.  When she wasn’t trying to poison people, she was a sweetheart.

“I’ll let you settle in...drinks at the bar.  Say, seven?”

“Seven, it is,” Reese agreed, and tossed his cell phone in a drawer.  A warm breeze billowed the lace curtains around the window.  A trilling melody filled the calm of the woods as birds sang in the trees.  Peace and quiet...and solitude.  Not bad for a free vacation.

He sighed and closed his eyes.  Jennifer and David and their two adorable kids filled his mind for a moment.  The perfect family...the perfect marriage...the perfect love between two people.  Reese yearned for that.  That dream come true.  That feeling of being whole while holding the love of a lifetime in his arms.  Maybe, that blue-eyed angel was truly out there.  And just maybe, he’d meet her one day.  Maybe tomorrow...or today...or next week.  

As his thoughts drifted toward that dream, he imagined how he would kiss her every moment he could, how he would make her feel cherished and spoil her rotten, just because he wanted to make her happy.  How she would flare up when aggravated, and how he’d enjoy seeing the flush of her cheeks and the spark of fire in her eyes, and how he’d draw out a spark of another kind as he soothed her anger with more kissing and...

Crap.  He needed a drink.  Seven o’clock was too far away.  

Reese stuck a ball cap on his head, left the cabin and trotted down the path to the main hotel building in search of a few shots of whiskey.