When Dreams Cross (14 page)

Chapter Twenty

A
ndi washed the lather from her hair, closing her eyes and letting warm jets of water beat down on her face. Had the evening been a bad nightmare or a poignant dream? Had Hands Across the Sea really burned down while she stood helplessly watching? Had Justin really said he loved her?

No dream, she thought with a confusing twang of pain throbbing in her heart. Those things had happened. But she mustn’t take them out of perspective. Justin had just seen her run into a den of flames, and as her friend, he had been frightened. Of course he loved her. Friends always did. And they had restated that friendship in her office tonight. His fear and relief had made him say things that he might regret later, unless she took the words the way they were meant.

But the fact that he’d clung to her, not Madeline, had been confusing. He had been worried about his assistant, had even insisted on rushing to the hospital behind the ambulance to make sure she was all right. But it had been Andi’s hand he held as they stood over Madeline’s bed, and he’d made no attempt to hide his affection for Andi from Madeline.

“You saved my life,” Madeline had told her in a raspy voice. “I can’t believe you saw me. I was so stupid. I was in one of the other buildings critiquing the robot designs so the engineers could have my report first thing tomorrow, when I smelled smoke. When I realized it was in Hands Across the Sea, I set off the alarm and was trying to save the robots. But I couldn’t get them out, and the smoke was so thick. If you hadn’t come, I’d be dead, Andi. You’re a real hero.”

She reached out to take Andi’s hand, and Andi squeezed hers. “I couldn’t have done it without Justin.”

“Yeah, I know. But you’re the one who rushed in. I don’t know how to repay you. Is eternal friendship enough, you think?”

Andi smiled. “Sure, it is.”

Later, as she stepped out of the shower, she asked herself how she could have ever disliked a woman like that. And she was confused now … confused about what Madeline meant to Justin … whether he had ever been involved with her or not … whether she was Andi’s biggest threat or greatest ally. She just didn’t know anymore.

After she was dressed, Andi towel-dried her hair and ran a comb through it, postponing the moment of facing Justin now that things were calm. He was out there in her living room, waiting for her. He seemed to want to comfort her, to help her through her second catastrophe in a matter of days. She hated being so needy, yet she couldn’t deny that she loved having Justin fill those needs.

Going into her living room, she saw that Justin was on her couch. “Come here,” he said. She went and sat down next to him, and he gazed at her, tracing a finger down her hairline and over her ear, pushing back the long, damp strands. “Feel better?”

“I guess,” she whispered. “Until tomorrow, when I have to face the damage in broad daylight, and answer all the questions, and make plans to start all over …” Tears sprang to her eyes, and she closed them and touched her forehead with trembling fingertips. “Oh, Justin, I don’t want to be your enemy tomorrow. I want to be your friend, even when there’s no catastrophe hanging over us.”

“We aren’t really enemies,” Justin said quietly. “Rivals, maybe, but not enemies.”

Closing her eyes, Andi lay her head on the back of the sofa. “What on earth would we be rivaling for?”

Justin’s eyes seemed to grow distant as he thought that over. Finally, he looked at her with a look of deep sadness in his eyes. “Our hearts,” he said quietly.

Andi opened her eyes and pulled herself partially up, a soft frown transforming her face. “Justin, I’ve never tried to take your heart from you.”

“You never had to try.”

The words stopped her heart and paralyzed her limbs. His eyes were eloquent with blatant emotion and painful honesty, and she had to force herself to remember she wasn’t the only woman in his life.

“It’s ironic,” he added, in that soft, hypnotic voice. “You’re the one human being in my life that I can truly say has given me the greatest joy and the deepest sadness. And so many of the lessons God has taught me in my life have been somehow taught through my relationship with you.”

Her heart threatened to explode. “I’m sorry for the sadness, Justin.”

“Yeah, me, too,” he whispered.

“My mother told me I needed to ask for your forgiveness,” she said, desperately trying to hold back the tears, “and I think she’s right. I never apologized for believing you had taken money to break up with me. But you can’t know how much I’ve regretted it. I’m so sorry.”

He nodded. “What hurt the most is that you thought I could be capable of that.”

“I wasn’t thinking clearly. I was angry and hurt that you’d left, and my father offered a quick explanation that made sense. I didn’t think it through.”

“I know,” he said. “And you trusted your father. That’s how it’s supposed to be.”

“Fathers aren’t supposed to lie.”

“No, they aren’t.”

“But he changed, Justin. And if he had been able to, he would have asked for your forgiveness. Just like I’m doing.”

Justin’s smile was fragile with emotion. “You’ve got it, Andi. And he’s got it, too.”

A tear spilled over her lashes, and she reached up to wipe it away.

Justin took her hand away from her face, laced his fingers through hers, and gazed down into her wet eyes that held such deep longing.

Slowly, he lowered his face to hers. As their lips touched, the past became present, with eight long, haunting years of collected dreams to heighten it. The power they had used against each other melded into the power of that one kiss, as they each left indelible prints on the other’s heart.

She broke the kiss and dropped her forehead against his neck.

“What’s wrong?” he asked.

“This,” she whispered. “It’s the way we come together. I don’t want you to care for me only when I’ve been through an ordeal.”

“You know it’s more than that,” Justin said, pushing a frustrated hand through his hair. “It’s just that I fight it, and it’s just when you need me that I can’t seem to fight anymore. It’s only then that it doesn’t scare me so much.”

Still, her doubts lingered. Hot tears welled in her eyes, and she whispered in a broken voice, “I have to ask you about Madeline.”

His head came up, those expressive eyes harboring no sign of deceit. “What do you mean?”

“Who is she to you, Justin?” She lowered her face to spare herself the pain of seeing the truth.

But when his hands framed her face and drew it back to his, she saw only a gentle, bewildered expression. “She’s one of my closest friends,” he whispered. “Has been for years. But that’s all.”

“But … I overheard a conversation. I shouldn’t have. I should have just turned the other way, but it happened. I heard her telling you that she didn’t want you ruining what you had built together for the sake of some overblown sense of obligation to me.”

Justin’s fingers closed her mouth, his eyes becoming luminous with conviction. “Andi, she was talking about our work. I had told her that I wanted to put off the trip to New York, that I wasn’t ready to leave you yet. Plus I’d had a change of heart about sticking around and working with you on the robotics. I was thinking of sending someone else in my place. Madeline was afraid I was risking the ABC deal if I didn’t go, and she said I had a false sense of obligation. She wasn’t talking about our relationship, Andi. She was talking about business. And the truth is, I
was
using business as an excuse not to leave you.”

“Then you and Madeline are not an item?”

He laughed aloud. “No! We never have been. She’s like a sister in a lot of ways. I could never think of Madeline that way.”

A soft “oh” whispered through her lips, and Justin studied the relief in her face as understanding crept into his eyes.

“That was why you denied what had been happening between us,” he said in an amazed voice, as if the pieces were finally coming together. “It was wounded pride, and I thought it was business.”

“I’m sorry,” she whispered, “I’m so sorry.”

“But do you believe me?” he whispered.

“I believe you.” The words came on a breath of gratitude.

They stared at each other for a long moment, and finally Justin said, “You have to know something, Andi. I love you. I think I always have.”

Uninhibited joy burst inside her. “I have too, Justin,” she whispered. “I’ve never stopped.”

He reached up to touch a fallen strand of hair, twirled it around a finger, used it to pull her face closer to his. His lips touched hers again, then retreated. His eyes were full of turmoil, full of surrender, and she yearned to trust what she read there.

His voice quivered when he asked, “Remember when we were in college, and we’d get dangerously close to losing control?”

She swallowed. “Yes.”

“What did we do then?”

“We tried stupid distractions,” she whispered, “like ice cream sundaes and jogs around the track.”

“I don’t want ice cream, and I’m too tired to jog. So what are we gonna do now?”

“I don’t know,” she whispered.

He pressed his forehead against hers and whispered, “I have an idea.”

“What?”

“We could get married. Tonight. Surely there’s a twenty-four-hour preacher around somewhere.”

She smiled and reached up to touch the stubble on his jaw. “Are you proposing to me?”

His grin matched hers. “Depends. Would you accept if I did?”

Her smile faded slightly. “If I thought you were serious, I might consider considering it.”

His eyes began to mist with emotion. “I am serious, Andi. In New York, I was more miserable than I’ve ever been, even though I was signing a deal for something I’ve worked years for. The thought that it wasn’t a possibility that you would be a permanent part of my life … It was a little much to take …”

“Me, too,” she whispered. “I was sick that it hadn’t worked. That I had just been an obligation to you.”

“Then let’s stop playing games and do this thing right,” he whispered. “Marry me, Andi.”

She couldn’t fight the tears streaming down her face. “There’s nothing in the world I want more,” she whispered.

“Tonight?” he asked.

“No. Not tonight. I want to do it right.”

He looked a little helpless. “Then I guess it’s time we went for a jog.”

She smiled. “I’ll get my running shoes.”

Chapter Twenty-One

C
old arms of reality embraced Andi and Justin the next morning as they stood amid the ruins of Hands Across the Sea. An electrical flaw, the fireman’s report had said when they’d finished their investigation this morning. The press was already having a field day with it, screaming that it was only a matter of time before something else started a fire. And what if there had been children inside, Givens was quoted as asking. To “save” the state from the horrors that could occur as a result of opening this park, he was taking action to make certain it remained closed.

“It’ll be all right,” Justin said from the destroyed entrance of the building. Andi stood in the center of the black, roofless structure, staring at the charred remains of her dream. Stepping over the sooty rubble, he slid his arms around her from the back. “It’s just a setback.”

Justin’s touch reminded her that she was transparent, so she straightened her posture and forced a smile. “I know,” she said, crossing her arms over his. “It’ll be better when we rebuild it. We still have the plans, and the choreography for the automated figures is still composed on disk, so that’s not entirely lost. It’ll be fine.” Her voice cracked with the last words, and she stepped out of his embrace. He watched her walk to one of the concrete sides and reach up to touch a melted mass of rubber that had been a child dressed in Dutch native dress. “I mean, I’ve overcome obstacles before,” she said in a voice that lacked conviction. “This isn’t going to get me down.”

“Of course it won’t,” Justin said softly, wishing from his heart that he could make her discard that brave, positive facade and share her feelings with him. Stepping behind her again, he pulled her into his arms. For a moment she leaned her head against his broad shoulder in silent acceptance of his helping to carry the burden, but then, as if she thought better of it, she stiffened and stepped away again.

“Don’t shut me out,” Justin said.

Turning around, Andi tried to blink back her tears. “I’m not,” she said, knowing her guard was slipping further with each passing moment and each gentle touch. “It’s just that it’s easier when no one understands how I feel. When everyone thinks I’m undaunted and ready to bounce back, I even believe it myself then.”

“But I’m not everyone,” he said.

“No, you’re not,” she agreed, swallowing back the tears blocking her throat. “And your understanding means … everything. It’s just that I don’t have time to cry right now. There’s too much to do, and I have to think.” Her mouth trembled as she spoke, and the unshed tears blurred her eyes.

Justin set his hand on her shoulder, his face only inches from hers. Cupping her chin with his fingers, he ran a thumb over her bottom lip. “It’s the press, isn’t it? And that Givens maniac. You aren’t afraid he’ll carry out his threats to keep the park closed, are you?”

Andi heaved a deep sigh. “Justin, they aren’t threats. He means it. He’s been trying to close us down since the first groundbreaking.”

“Why?” Justin asked, thinking it was despair talking rather than reason.

Andi bent down to pick up the metallic remains of a robot’s hand. She fondled the smut-covered thing as if it were some personal object that brought back a memory. “Because this was his land before my father bought it, and he doesn’t think we paid him enough for it.”

“Well, he sold it to you, didn’t he?”

Andi nodded. “Yes, and he got much more than it was worth. No one else would have ever bought it. It was all bayous, and he went through the whole deal as if he were getting away with something. But when he found out it was going to be the site of Promised Land, he felt he had been cheated.”

“Why? Didn’t he know who your father was?”

Andi shook her head. “He never saw him. My father had other men who scouted the area, and they in turn hired real estate agents to buy up all the land. None of them even knew who the buyer was. Dad knew that if word got out, the owners would jack the prices so high that it wouldn’t even be feasible to put Promised Land here. It was perfectly legal, and he was fair with the prices he paid. But Givens owned most of it, and he thinks he was tricked somehow.”

“Still,” Justin said, “why would he deliberately set out to hurt Promised Land? That man owns a lot of the town. The revenues the park brings to this area could be worth a fortune to him.”

Andi breathed a dry laugh. “It’s gone beyond animosity, Justin. It’s revenge now.” Stepping closer to Justin, she glanced out the entrance to make certain that no one was listening. “After Dad’s accident, he started rumors that Promised Land would fail without him. When he saw that I was going to prove him wrong, he approached me, insisting that I pay him an annual ‘protection fee’ to make sure that none of the townspeople set out to hurt Promised Land. I assured him that we could ‘protect’ ourselves.”

Justin wasn’t sure he understood. “Protection fee?” he asked. “Protection from whom? Givens himself?”

The question didn’t require an answer. “I wasn’t intimidated by his threats,” Andi said. “I’m not big on being pushed around.”

Justin almost smiled. “The man had a lot to learn about Andi Sherman, didn’t he?”

“I thought so.” She shrugged and looked around her, opening her arms helplessly. “But this is all he needs. This fire and the idea that it was an electrical problem are perfect ammunition for scaring the state into closing us down completely.” Throwing down the metal hand, she raked her fingers through her hair in frazzled frustration. “Do you know what that would mean, Justin?” she asked, fresh emotion giving her haunted eyes new depth. “It would mean that I was ruined. There would be nothing left. Nothing. I put some of my Sherman Enterprises stock up as collateral to buy Promised Land stock when the investors wanted to pull out after Daddy’s accident. And I used the rest to buy into your company because I believed in this park. I knew that I could see it through.”

“You still believe in it,” Justin said, his eyes intense. “I believe in it. You can do it, Andi. All you have to do is go and face the press. Answer their questions. Prove you have nothing to hide. By the time the park opens this will have died down and no one will even remember it.”

Andi dropped her hands to her sides in helplessness. “You just don’t understand, Justin,” she whispered.

Justin wanted to hold her, but her stiffness and the wobbly edge in her voice warned him away. “I do understand,” he said. “It seems like a terrible blow right now, but a few months from now it’ll just be one more obstacle that you’ve overcome. You’re a special woman, Andi, and I’ve seen you get around worse problems than this. It could have been so much worse. You might not have seen Madeline in time to save her. She would have died if she’d been in there a few minutes longer. And if we had gone in there just minutes later, the toxic fumes from the melted plastic might have killed us. But everyone’s all right. We lost a building. Just a building, Andi! And God knows you’ve dealt with bad press before.”

Knowing his words were steeped in truth, Andi heaved a long sigh and made her features relax. “I know you’re right,” she said. “I’ll get through it. Give me an hour, and I’ll be a pillar of strength. I always fall apart right at first, but my reconstruction usually makes me stronger.” Setting her hands on her hips, she looked around her. “I’ll call a press conference as soon as I meet with my animatronics engineers to discuss the rebuilding. And Press Preview Day is in just a few weeks. They’ll see it firsthand and love it, even though all the rides aren’t quite finished.” She faltered, then took a deep breath. Walking into his outstretched arms and embracing him as if it were a way to absorb some of his strength, she said, “It’s going to be all right, Justin. Now, I’ve got work to do.”

“You go ahead,” Justin said, hanging back. “I want to look around for a little while.”

“All right,” she said softly, pressing a kiss on his lips.

Justin watched her leave, noting the weary slump in her shoulders and her slow, hopeless gait. If only he could do more for her than offer her a strong embrace.

Kicking a charred beam out of his way, Justin walked to the back of the building where he remembered seeing Andi’s silhouette against a wall of flames. His pulse raced anew as the picture snagged his mind, bringing back the fear that had screeched through him when he’d thought he had come too late. The fire had a better hold back there, he thought, and it seemed odd since the electrical work was only along the sides. Stepping closer, he kicked some of the debris from the fallen ceiling out of his way and found the place in the wall where an outlet had been. The firemen had chopped the area around it in their overhaul, leaving little evidence of the char patterns or melted aluminum. Something was wrong. Though the area around the outlet was still standing, it had burned to the ground just a few feet away. That was impossible if the fire had sprung from that outlet, for the point of origin was usually burned more thoroughly than any other area. Walking down the wall, he mentally measured the lowest level of burning. The wall had burned out in a V pattern with the lowest point almost in the center. That meant that the point of origin was probably just a few inches above the floor in a place where there had been no outlet. He’d have to check the blueprints when he got back to the office to make absolutely sure, but if he was right, the firemen who had done the investigation had been wrong. But what
had
started the fire?

Stepping over the wall into the bright sunlight that mocked such disaster, he looked at the back of the gutted building. This wall was the one that had sustained the most damage, for the other ones were still standing. Obviously it had not been the robots that had a defect in the wiring. Maybe it had been an extension cord plugged into the outlet and run along the length of the wall. Maybe the crew had walked on it so much that the wires had become bared and a fire started away from the outlet. But that was doubtful, since the construction had been finished in that part of the building and the robots had been hooked to their own electrical sources.

Brushing off his hands, Justin paced the length of the burned structure. Charred remains of the wall were scattered at his feet, and it seemed no clues had survived. Turning away from the building in frustration, he let his eyes sweep the ground.

An oblong pool of something white several yards from the debris caught his eye, and he walked toward it and stooped down for closer assessment. He ran his finger across it and realized that it was dried wax. Pulling his knife out of his pocket, Justin snapped out the blade and scraped up the dried substance until he came to an unburned wick stretched the length of it.
A melted candle,
he thought as a flash of lightning sparked something in his mind. In light of the fire and questionable point of origin, it seemed too much of a coincidence.

Closing his eyes, he strained to bring together fragments of memory—a criminal justice professor in college, a chapter on arson detection, a list of common methods. “One undetectable method,” the professor had said, “is to soak the area in diesel fuel so that the fumes won’t rise before the arsonist can get out of the building. He’ll then set a candle in the middle of wadded paper, light it, and leave. By the time the candle burns out, the arsonist is gone, and the paper will catch fire, in turn setting off the fuel.”

Could it be, Justin thought now, tracing the oblong circle of wax with his fingers, that the fire
was
the result of arson, and that the arsonist had dropped an extra candle on his way out of the building? Maybe Madeline had frightened the arsonist into making a careless escape.

Impossible, Justin thought, standing up. No one could have gotten onto the grounds without clearance, and the construction crews had gone home. There were no other signs of arson. At least none that he’d seen.

Running back over the rubble, Justin stepped over the wall and stood on the inside of the building again. Other clues to arson, he thought, racking his brain, were the smell of fumes in the charred wood. Picking up a piece that was charred less deeply than some of the others, he brought it to his nose. Nothing unusual. Moving the debris until he could reach the bottom layer that would have come from the wall instead of the ceiling, he picked up a more charred piece. Closing his eyes, he brought it to his nose, trying to block out the smell of burned wood and concentrate on any foreign vapor. His heart accelerated when the faintest smell of diesel fuel reached his nostrils. Ignoring the soot that coated his clothes, he began to clear away the debris closest to where he believed the fire had started. When he’d cleared a wide area, he peeled his shirt off his damp back and used it to sweep back the soot that blanketed the concrete.

A victorious smile captured his face as he found a line of char burned into the concrete in front of the lowest level of burning. Following the line on his hands and knees, continuously brushing the soot out of his way with his shirt, Justin saw that it led along the wall and toward the robots on both sides of the structure before it stopped. That was why the robots had not burned immediately. They had been free of the fire until the fuel-invoked flames had taken firm hold of the walls and spread toward the front of the building. And the center of the back wall had probably been splashed with diesel to ensure that the fire got a good start before the fire fighters could reach the scene.

Anticipation flooded through him as he stepped back over the shambles, realizing that all this combined evidence proved beyond a doubt that the fire was the result of arson. This would clear Promised Land of its responsibility. This would prove that it was not an electrical flaw that had caused the fire.

And it would give Andi back the drive and determination that had seemed wilting in her this morning. That alone was worth anything he could do.

I
n spite of her melancholy, Andi stifled a laugh when she saw Justin dart off the elevator covered with soot and perspiration, heading toward her office as if he had no time to waste.