A Lady Under Siege(96)

“Hurray for me.”

“Exactly, Hurray for you.”

IN THE MORNING SHE woke up and nudged him awake. Her smile reminded him of what needed to be asked.

“Well?”

“I saw them. Faintly, and from a new place, not inside Sylvanne’s mind, but outside, more like an-out-of-body experience. Sylvanne is going to have a baby. She’s thrilled, Thomas is thrilled, and I was happy for them too. Daphne looks great. I saw it all in a glance, and that’s all I needed. It was like I was waving goodbye, being carried somewhere else. And I had another dream—you and Betsy in bright sunshine, you were trying to ride unicycles on a sandy beach and got all bogged down. But you were laughing about it, and then there was something about an orange juice maker, the old fashioned kind where you pull a big lever to squish the orange.”

“I have one of those, somewhere.”

“It was mounted on your handlebars. You were making glasses and glasses of it and passing them around.”

“Unicycles don’t have handlebars.”

“Yours did. Hey, I dreamt about you!”

“And then you woke up, and here I was.”

“Kiss me.”

And he did.





ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Here’s to The Editorial Department, a sunny bunch down in Tucson, Arizona. Morgana Gallaway designed this book, and Kelly Leslie did the cover. Karinya Funsett-Topping and especially the indomitable Jane Ryder helped me straighten up the mess and reminded me which kind of endings make for happier readers.