When Dreams Cross (9 page)

The intensity of the restrained grief and fear in her eyes broke his heart. He couldn’t remember ever having seen such vulnerability seep through her strong constitution before.

“I thought he was going to wake up,” she whispered. “I thought he’d come out of it one day, and see what I’d done with Promised Land, and—”

In that moment, Justin abandoned his agreement not to touch her. This wasn’t business, and Andi needed to be held. “Shhh,” he whispered, pulling her into his arms. “It’ll be all right. Everything’ll be fine.”

Her arms tightened around his waist as her tears soaked straight through to his heart. In that instant, he thought he would do anything in his power to spare her another moment of pain.

Chapter Twelve

T
he sterile hospital smell invaded even the elevator, making the reality of pain and dying more immediate, more of a monster from which Justin yearned to protect Andi.

Her tears had dried, and as the elevator made its ascent, she held her head in stubborn defiance of the most likely possibility. “He’ll be all right,” she said with that desperate bravado he had heard in her before. “I’m sure of it. By now he’s fine.”

Justin prayed for her sake that she was right. More than anything, he wanted to take her home where he could shield her from this place. Whatever the outcome, he decided, he would be there for her.

When the elevator door opened, he felt Andi bracing herself with a deep breath that seemed to harden her muscles. Slowly, the two stepped onto the floor and started up the corridor leading to her father’s room, but the sight of her mother in a lobby chair, her hands covering her face, stopped them.

“M-Mom,” Andi stuttered in a hoarse, broken voice.

Her mother looked up at them. “Honey.” Her pale, drawn face looked at least fifteen years older than it had just yesterday. Her eyes were bloodshot and red-rimmed, and standing seemed to take all the energy she still contained. She smiled wanly at Justin. “It’s good to see you again, Justin,” she said quietly. Then, taking Andi’s shoulders, she forced her to look at her. “We lost him,” she said in a racked voice, as if the end would not come until the words were spoken.

“No!” The word came out in an angry cry, Andi’s head shaking wildly to parry the words. “He’ll be okay. He …” She looked at her mother, then fell into her arms. “Oh, Mom!”

“He’s been gone a long time, honey,” her mother said softly, rocking her gently back and forth and touching her hair, as her own tears traveled down her face. “We were the ones who were hanging on. We have to let go now.”

“No!” Andi cried. “He might have come to. He might have lived!”

“But he didn’t,” her mother said in a wooden voice.

Justin watched, helpless, as Andi tried to pull the crumbling pieces of herself back together. At any moment, he thought, the thin filament of her control would snap completely. Taking a deep breath, she stepped away from her mother. “I have to see him,” she said.

“You can’t, honey. He’s not in his room anymore.”

Andi lost whatever strength she still harbored. “No!” she cried, dropping her hands to her sides in helpless abandonment. “I never said good-bye.”

Her mother closed her arms around Andi’s frail body, her own tears wetting Andi’s shirt as she quaked against her. Then she stepped back and offered her to Justin. “Take her home,” her mother said quietly. “And don’t leave her alone. I’ll stay and take care of the … the arrangements.”

The word immediately brought Andi erect and rigid. “No,” she said flatly. “I’ll help. He’s my father.”

“And he was my husband,” her mother countered, her adamant eyes making Andi back down. “He was my best friend. I insist, honey. I want to.”

Andi nodded dumbly. Looking small and helpless, she turned to Justin. Gently, he took her arm and wrapped it through his. “I’ll take care of her, Mrs. Sherman,” Justin promised.

Andi’s mother nodded, her eyes bright with tears.

“I know you will, Justin,” she said quietly.

J
ustin had considered taking her to his house. Instead, he took her to her own home and made up his mind to stay no matter how strong she pretended to be. He tried to tell himself that she needed him, but in his heart he didn’t know if the need he felt was hers or his. There was something about her now, something soft and sweet, something too close to the woman he remembered, the one who had plagued his memories for eight long years.

Andi’s apartment was not what he expected. He had prepared himself for plush white carpeting, velvet upholstered furniture, elaborate chandeliers. Instead he found a room with bare parquet floors and red throw rugs, bright red printed furniture with black tables, and Oriental prints on the walls. The simplicity of the apartment sent a warm surge through him as he led her in.

When he had set her on the sofa and gotten her a glass of tea, he lowered himself next to her and watched her sip it. He sensed that false bravado seeping back into her shoulders as she lifted her chin, and he knew what was coming.

“I appreciate your taking me to the hospital, Justin,” she said softly. “And helping me home. I’m all right now, though, and …” Tears sprang to her eyes again and she choked them back. “You don’t have to stay. I really just need some rest and then—”

“I’m not going anywhere right now,” Justin declared softly, leaning back on the couch and pulling her with him. “If you want me to, I’ll call your date and tell him what happened.”

“My date?” She wiped at her eyes and gave him a puzzled look. “Oh, you mean for dinner. There’s no need. It was my mother.”

Unaccountable relief surged through him that there wasn’t some other man in the wings who had more right to comfort her than he. With great gentleness he pulled her head against his chest.

“Really,” she tried again, forcing her voice to stop quivering. “I’d rather be alone. It was a shock at first and I kind of fell apart, but I’m okay now.”

“I’m staying,” he said again, his deep baritone vibrating against her face.

His persistence seemed to shake her, and she pulled out of his arms and stood up. Going to the fireplace, she leaned against the black mantel. “Justin, please. I really want to be alone.”

“The last thing you need tonight is to be alone,” he said as if it was a fundamental fact that could not be argued.

Something about his stubborn insistence seemed to rankle her. “Being alone is something I’m quite familiar with,” she bit out. “I prefer it. Especially right now. Please.”

“I’m not leaving,” he said, rising quietly and facing her off with his hands hung at his sides.

“Why?” The word came out as an exasperated cry that reached the dusty chambers of his heart. “You hated my father!”

He didn’t answer for a long time, for he wasn’t certain why himself. Was it because he knew that if he left her now he’d never see past that icy casing again?

“But I care for you.” The raw honesty in his answer left him strangely warm and bewildered, but it inscribed itself on his heart like temporary salve that would hurt worse when the comfort wore off. He stepped toward her as she turned her back to him, leaning her head into the mantel, her shoulders shaking with the intensity of her sobs. He slid his arms around her from the back, pulling her against him until she turned in his arms and clasped him around the neck, her face buried against his shoulders. “You can call me names, tell me I’m invading on a private moment, slap me and abuse me,” he whispered, closing his eyes and kissing her hair. “But I won’t leave you right now.”

He lifted her in his arms, sat down on the couch, and held her against him for what seemed to be hours as she cried herself to exhaustion. And just before she drifted into her restless cocoon of sleep, he heard her mumble feverishly against his chest, “I miss him.”

Instinctively, his arms tightened around her, and he buried his face in her hair. An enormous sense of his own loss was growing inside him, seeking out all the dark, cold corners that had lain empty since he’d left her. He knew what it was to miss someone he loved.

When her hand fell limply onto her stomach, he shifted her off of his lap. With a soft murmur, she curled up on one end of the couch and pulled her knees to her chest, a pained expression on her face. Justin gazed down at her, gently stroking back the hair over her ear until her face relaxed in distracted rest.

But it was only momentary. As soon as he lifted his fingers, the frown on her forehead clefted again. Even in her dreams, she was grieving.

Her torment made his heart ache, for he had no idea how to intrude on her dreams and order the torturous monsters of mourning to leave her. He pulled off the afghan lying over the back of her couch and covered her gently.

“Shhh. It’s just me,” he said, his voice reassuring her with tenderness he didn’t know he had. And as if the words were all she needed to defy the shadows taunting her mind, he watched her relax and resume her sleep.

The emotion coursing through him alarmed him.
Neither of us can win when we’re together.
The words stabbed his heart as he realized he had gone to great lengths to convince her of that. His foolish pride, always at battle with hers, turned all his victories into self-defeats.

But he had forgotten how strong his love for her had been.

Frightened by the strength of those feelings renewing themselves in his heart, he slipped out of her apartment and raced home, where he knew he could isolate himself from the kind of pain that came with loving someone that deeply.

A
ndi’s eyelashes fluttered, then closed again. A strange feeling of security enveloped her, and she opened them again, struggling to orient herself.

She had fallen asleep on the couch, in Justin’s arms. He had covered her up with an afghan, but now he was gone. Had her stupid vulnerability frightened him away? Her neediness? Her weakness?

She sat up, and suddenly she remembered why she had cried so much in his arms, why she had fallen asleep the way she had …

Her father was dead …

She raced to the phone, dialed her mother’s number, but got a busy signal. She had to get over there, she thought. She had to help her. There was so much to do.

She went to the door, intent on hurrying out, but Justin was just getting off the elevator, his eyes tired and his face covered with stubble. He had never looked better.

“Justin!”

He brandished the bags that smelled of coffee and Egg McMuffins. “I thought I’d bring you breakfast. Where were you going?”

“To my mother’s,” she said. “I have to help her. I have to—”

“I’ve already spoken to your mother, Andi. She called me a little while ago. She said that most of the details of the funeral were taken care of months ago. She said she had been awake most of the night, but thought she could sleep now. She was going to take the phone off the hook. She’s okay, Andi.”

Andi wilted back from the door, and suddenly realized how bad she must look. Her hair had not been brushed, and her eyes were swollen …

Justin came in and closed the door behind him.

“Thank you for … what you did last night, Justin. Bringing me home, listening, putting up with me.”

“I wouldn’t have done it if I hadn’t wanted to.”

“But you have to get ready for your trip to New York.”

“I’m not going. At least, not when I planned. I’m staying until after the funeral.”

She didn’t even try to hide the gratitude in her eyes. And he didn’t try to hide the emotions coursing through his. He gazed down at her, his eyes eloqent with unspoken words that she couldn’t interpret. She had been wrong when she’d told him neither of them could win, she thought as her heart ached for his touch. Right now, he was letting her be the winner, sacrificing whatever victory of his own he might have found in New York.

Maybe it wasn’t about winning, she thought. Maybe that wasn’t the most important thing to him anymore.

“What would I have done without you last night?” she asked.

“What you always do, Andi. You would have been fine. You would have pulled together, and taken over the funeral arrangements, and made sure everything was done just right.”

She sighed. “That’s probably what I should have done.”

“No,” he said. “Your mother wanted to do it. He was her husband. It seemed important to her. Maybe it was her way of saying good-bye to him.”

She thought that over for a moment. She had never been good at good-byes. It was her downfall. Did Justin know how she had grieved over their good-bye? Had he grieved for her?

She had to know if what she’d seen in his eyes, felt in his attention, was something real, or something that had evolved out of tragedy. Was it sympathy? Just kindness to help her through a rough time?

As she followed him quietly into the kitchen, she realized that her father had once come between them. Now, through the grace of God, he was the means by which they were being brought together.

J
ustin postponed his trip to New York and stayed by Andi’s side for the next three days as she fulfilled the mechanical obligations of being her father’s only daughter. Distant relatives, friends, and acquaintances trickled in from all over the country for what was fast becoming a press event. Because he had lain unconscious for so long prior to his death, few of the “mourners” were sensitized to Andi’s and her mother’s suffering. No one looked past the smile on her face or the numb expression in her eyes, and talk was much the same as it would have been at a family reunion.

But later when he was alone with her, Justin saw those ice walls melt as she leaned on him as she had never leaned on anyone before. Together, they had long earnest discussions on how to best handle the business during this time. And together they devised a strategy for dealing with the press, which had descended on them like vultures.