When Dreams Cross (13 page)

Chapter Eighteen

W
e did agree, didn’t we?” Andi exulted, crossing her feet Indian-style on the sofa and facing Justin as she munched on the pizza that had been delivered moments earlier. It was amazing how hungry she suddenly was, when earlier she’d had no appetite at all. “And without casualties.”

“Yes, we did.” The lines at the corners of his eyes webbed with his grin.

“Should I send out a press release?” she teased.

He chuckled. “Somehow I don’t think the press could appreciate the significance.”

“Well,” she said, leaning her head back against the tall sofa arm. “We’d just have to make it interesting enough.” Sighing, she studied the ceiling, as if reading the headlines there. “‘Sherman and Pierce Reach Detente.’”

Justin laughed. “A little too strong, I think. How about ‘Pierce Admits to Being Jerk?’”

She looked at him with a question on her face. “Why would you say that?”

He looked down at the rough lines on his palms. “I saw the inscription on the statue,” he said. “It was sweet, and there’s no other word for me but ‘jerk.’”

Andi almost choked on her pizza. “I’ve called you that under my breath a few times. But I’m sure that’s no worse than what you would say about me.”

“Well, let’s see.” Justin glanced at the same spot on the ceiling where she’d just found her headlines. “Twenty-nine-year-old creative genius who knows what she wants and has the uncanny ability to make others want it, too.” Her pleased smile urged him on, and he brought his sparkling eyes back to her. “Her strength is staggering, her will is unwavering, her drive is …”

“Dreadful,” Andi provided.

Justin gave her that one and continued, the ticklish edge of laughter lacing his voice. “She’s unpredictable, unforgettable, indecipherable …” Her wide-eyed, surprised expression stopped his heart, making his smile dissolve over a long sigh as his eyes riveted deeply into hers, “ … and she has eyes that could either freeze or melt your heart, depending on her mood.”

Andi tried to still the pounding in her chest and countered the compliment with drollery. “Do you think they’d print that?”

“Well,” he said with a lazy shrug. “Maybe if it came as a direct quote.”

“No.” She studied the pattern of pepperonis on her pizza. “I doubt you could ever make yourself say that in public. And without sheer exhaustion, I’m certain I wouldn’t be hearing it now.” She grinned and stretched her feet out on the couch until her arches almost touched Justin’s thighs. “Besides,” she said, quirking her brows, “the press has forgotten all about me. It’s that new animator on the premises that has them all talking.”

“And have you been talking back?” he probed with a grin that seemed to bring sunlight into the shadowed room.

“Of course,” she teased. “You know me. Always happy to cooperate with the media.”

“What sort of things did they want to know?” he asked, knowing he shouldn’t.

“The usual,” she said with a mischievous curve of her lips. “Your phone number, your clothing size, whether you sleep in pajamas …”

Justin’s eyes danced with laughter. “As if you’d know. And what did you tell them?”

“I told them that you rarely sleep at all.” She brought her soda to her lips to hide her devilish grin. “But that when you do, it’s usually fully clothed and sitting up straight.”

“Well, at least I dress comfortably. T-shirts and jeans aren’t so tough to sleep in, sitting up straight or not.” He looked down at the dress shirt he’d worn today because of all his meetings. “I thought I did pretty good today, keeping my shirttail tucked in for most of the day.”

“The fact that you’re wearing shirts that
have
tails now is a major accomplishment.”

He grinned. “It is, isn’t it?”

Their eyes locked across the distance of the couch as their laughter ebbed into smiling sighs.

When the quiet became too tense, too awkward, Andi pulled herself off of the couch and went back to the pizza box. “So we’re friends again?” she asked, turning back to Justin.

“For a while,” he conceded, watching her with unyielding regard as she refilled both glasses with the canned Cokes they’d gotten from the machine downstairs.

Trying to steady her hand under his careful scrutiny, Andi set the can back down and took her place on the sofa again. “Incredible,” she said with open honesty. “I’d almost forgotten what it was like to be either in a state of war or a temporary cease-fire all the time. Until the accident, Daddy kept me going, but it’s been relatively boring around here since.”

Justin feigned a hurt look. “You mean I’m not the only one who’s ever gotten your temper to the boiling point?”

Andi smiled. “You know better than that. Dad was almost as insufferable as you sometimes.” Another moment of quiet settled between them as they drank, watching each other over their glasses. “I’ve been curious,” Andi said finally. “I went eight years without hearing your name, and then all of a sudden you were here. Where have you been? What have you been doing?”

Justin shrugged and studied the fizz in his soda. “I’ve been planning my strategy all this time. Perfecting my craft, I guess, and deciding exactly how I was going to spring my talent on the world.” He took a drink and offered an indolent grin as if remembering foolish days. “Trouble was, not everybody saw what I had as talent. And I sometimes wondered if it wasn’t more of a curse than a gift, because no matter how bad things got, they never got bad enough to quit.”

Andi nodded, clearly understanding that kind of stubbornness. “Even when your best characters were stolen?”

Surprise skittered across his eyes, instantly making her regret her question. “You knew about that?”

She shrugged and gave an apologetic nod. “I found out when we were trying to buy your characters. It proved to me that I’d have to give more than I wanted, because I knew you’d never risk that again.”

Justin breathed a laugh. “You were right. Those were bad times.”

“But you came through it.”

Justin leaned his head back, letting the past flit through his mind as if it were the first time he’d considered it objectively. “It was revenge, I think,” he admitted. “When the jerk hired my animators out from under me to continue my series, all I wanted to do was get even, make them all eat their hearts out. Funny thing was, when the series failed, I was crushed and satisfied at the same time. I hated to see my creation bite the dust, but I was glad that God had taken care of things for me. The whole thing gave me new motivation.”

Narrowing her eyes, Andi sought bitterness in his expression, but there was none. “Motivation to get even?”

Justin contemplated the question with a twinkle of surprise in his eyes. “You know, it hasn’t even crossed my mind since I’ve been here. I guess I have other motivation now.”

Andi laid her head against the cushion and smiled at his frank self-appraisal. He was happy, she thought, and that lent her a fragile bit of joy.

“Madeline’s partially responsible for my getting back on my feet,” he said, sending her spirits crashing to earth as his eyes softened with the thought of his assistant. “She’s been with me for five years. She’s the only animator who didn’t abandon me, even though they offered her more than I could pay her. She had to take a lot of freelance work to supplement her income while she kept working for me, but she never complained. I’ll never forget that.” His eyes were soft as he spoke of her, and Andi would have sacrificed everything she owned to have him speak as tenderly of her.

Closing her eyes against the pain of too much honesty, Andi leaned her head back and clutched her glass until her knuckles whitened. No wonder he cared for Madeline. She offered no threat, no demands.

Relaxing, he went on with his quiet rambling. “When I get a big enough staff and enough money, I’m going to start work on the feature film Madeline and I have been planning for years. It’s my biggest dream. It’ll take a few years to get it to the stage I want it since it’ll be fully animated, but it’ll be worth it.” His voice warmed through the chill in her heart, and his new belief in dreams he’d shunned when she’d known him before gave her a glimmer of hope, though it had little to do with her.

“That shouldn’t be too far off, should it?”

A wry laugh contradicted her. “The budget for a high-quality film like that’s in the millions. I couldn’t even borrow that much right now.”

“How about investors?” she asked.

Justin found that amusing. “Who? I’m the new kid on the block. No one really knows who I am yet.”

“I would invest,” Andi said. “I know the depth of your imagination, and I believe you could do whatever you wanted.” Even if Madeline was part of it, she thought miserably. Sitting up straight, she leaned toward him with more conviction. “I mean it, Justin. I’d like to invest.”

The gradual hardening of his features told her she’d made a grave error in judgment. “Our agreement excluded the feature film,” he said as though offended. “If you invest in it, that will change things. I had that clause put into our agreement for a reason. I don’t want you having a stake in everything I do. I can do it without you.”

Andi sank back onto the couch and brought a hand to her forehead to hide the mist of self-deprecation filling her eyes. “Of course you can,” she whispered. Forcing a smile, she breathed a laugh. “You’d think I’d know better by now.” Her smile faded into regret, and she asked, “Why is it so hard for us to get along, Justin?” She knew the honest question would require an honest answer.

“Sometimes we’ve gotten along real well,” he said, as if he’d given the matter a great deal of thought. “But I guess those times are few and far between. Mostly because we’re both stubborn and creative people. And because of our past.”

“But we’ve both changed,” she breathed out earnestly. Pulling her feet up, she bent her knees and folded her elbows across them. “Everything’s on a larger scale here.” Her eyes sparkled as she glanced out the window at the darkness that she saw as an empty slate, waiting to be filled in. “We’re making history with dreams. God’s using us both. We’re working toward the same goal, even if we have different ways of going about reaching it.”

Justin rubbed his eyes ruefully. “It’s easy to lose focus of that goal,” he said. “Other things can get in the way …”

“What other things?”

Before he could answer, a blaring, screeching alarm cut off her words, startling them both. Andi bolted off of the couch and flew to the computer on her desk. “Oh, no! It’s a fire,” she muttered, urgently punching buttons to discover the source.

Justin fled to the window, where he could see the hazy light of flames and the small Promised Land fire engines’ lights at the scene. “Looks like the Hands Across the Sea area,” he said, but Andi was already out the door, shoes in hand.

“Come on! We’ve got to get over there!”

Justin followed her onto the elevator and punched the first-floor button. The ride down was agonizingly slow, giving an open view of dark floors. “If the fire has reached the robots, we’re in trouble,” she said when they reached the first floor and rushed out across the lobby floor.

The moment they reached the humid night air, Andi knew that whatever hope she’d had was futile. The vicinity was lit in a yellow haze as flames danced from the roof of the structure. Without looking for an electric car, she took off on foot, running as if her park depended on her speed.

Behind her, she heard the wailing sirens of the fire department, and thanked God that her security guards had called them in time to keep the other buildings from going up. The trucks whisked past her and screeched to a halt in front of the building, and a dozen firemen dispersed and began to work efficiently to help the Promised Land fire fighters stifle the blaze.

Chapter Nineteen

W
hen she reached the burning building, Andi grabbed one of her security guards. “What happened?”

“I don’t know,” the man shouted over the noise. “I can’t even figure out who set off the alarm.”

Justin couldn’t hear the exchange of words, but when Andi darted off through the men, stopping at each security guard and shooting questions that most answered with a shake of the head or a helpless shrug, he went after her.

Scurrying activity and stretched hoses slowed his progress, and an instant of panic welled within him as he saw Andi move dangerously close to the entrance, peering anxiously inside as if she could stop the flames with sheer will.

“Keep her out of there!” one of the firemen shouted, his hands clamped on a nozzle as Justin pushed past him. “It may not look bad in there, but that roof is about to go any minute!”

Andi moved closer to the building. Still trying to reach her, Justin screamed, “Andi!” But his voice didn’t penetrate the dazed, horrified look on her face. Violent in his efforts to reach her, Justin pushed people out of his way, watching, dismayed, as she shouted something he couldn’t hear, then tore insanely into the building, the gray haze of smoke swallowing her. “ANDI!” His grated voice pierced the night, but it was too late for her to hear.

The men around him seemed to freeze, the flames seemed to stop in their heavenward reaches, the smoke seemed to become a drawn curtain between Andi and him. Fear stampeded through him, and he had but one panic-stricken thought. Andi was going to die in those flames. He shot through the men and into the building, tearing off his shirt as he ran.

The only sounds inside were those of crackling, popping flames overhead and along the walls. The wide open space of the center—waiting to be filled with water before the park’s opening—was without flames, but the smoke was quickly reaching suffocating proportions. The automated figures built on the sides of the room were melting masses of machinery slowly shrinking in flames that pranced regally around them. Were they what Andi had run in here for?

“Andi!” The word choked him, and he coughed the smoke out of his lungs as he went deeper into the building, pressing his shirt against his nose to filter the polluted air.

A muffled sound drew his eyes toward the back of the building where the flames were already the victors. Against the blinding red glow, he saw Andi’s silhouette, staggering as she struggled to drag something behind her.

“Let it go!” he blared as he careened toward her.

She didn’t have to answer, for when he reached her, he saw that she was dragging Madeline, limp and unconscious, behind her.

Squatting down, Justin pulled the woman’s limp weight onto his shoulders and caught Andi, wavering with dizziness before she doubled over in a fit of coughing. “Hold this against your face,” he ordered, thrusting his shirt into her hands. “Now stay low and get out of here!”

Keeping an eye on the unsteady ceiling, he ran behind her. Boards smashed and walls crumbled behind them as they ran through the hell-like chamber, the furnace heat of the blaze pursuing them, until finally they ran into the spraying water and were grabbed by the firemen who had come in after them.

Madeline was loaded into an ambulance that had pulled up while they were inside, and she began to come to as they began to administer oxygen. There were no apparent burns on her body. It was the smoke that had almost killed her.

Andi and Justin, strangled and coughing at the sudden rush of oxygen in polluted lungs, were immediately treated by the paramedics.

Andi’s face was dark with black smoke and water, and her wet hair fell from its pins to tumble wildly around her shoulders. When they could both breathe without the oxygen masks, Justin took her by the arms, shaking her gently as his mist-filled eyes raked over her with furious relief. “You stupid thing,” he raged softly through his teeth, emotion racking his voice. “How could you do that?”

“I’m sorry, Justin,” she said, her voice raw and hoarse. “I saw her moving near the back of the building, just before she collapsed, and there wasn’t any time to waste.”

“You both could have been killed,” he moaned, crushing her against him, his arms trembling with the aftermath of fear.

She leaned into his bare wet chest, closing her arms around his waist, only beginning to feel the terror seep into her now that she knew they were safe. “So could you.”

He rocked back and forth, holding her as if his arms could keep her from being swallowed into the flames again. “What if I had lost you? What if—?”

“I’m okay,” she whispered, tears burning down her cheeks. His heart was slamming against her, and she looked up at him to see painful tears making paths through the soot on his face.

“Don’t ever do that again,” he whispered, still rocking her back and forth. His swallow came with great effort when she moved her hands up to frame his face. Tears still welled in the blue depths of his eyes, and his breathing was deep and labored. Without thinking, she pressed a kiss to his dry lips, and his arms closed tighter around her. “Andi, I love you,” he murmured against her ear.

Although one of the most important buildings in her park was crashing and consuming into glowing embers, with flames threatening to conquer the beloved buildings nearby, and the men were yelling and the machinery screaming and sirens blaring, Andi felt strangely at peace.

Justin’s voice was all she heard.