Dream a Little Dream (Chicago Stars, #4)(215)

The most Rachel could manage was a small nod.

“I’ll try to talk to him again,” Jane said.

“It won’t do any good.” She spotted Gabe’s keys on the table, and she scooped them up. “I’m not feeling well. I’m sure Ethan won’t mind driving Gabe back to the cottage. Come on, Edward, we have to go.”

Edward protested Rachel’s announcement, and Rosie fell apart when she realized she was losing her play companion. Her small face crumpled as Edward disengaged Horse from her hands. She reached out her arms for him or for the rabbit, Rachel wasn’t sure which, and began to howl.

Edward gave her a clumsy pat on the head. “It’s okay, Rosie. You’re just having a bad day.”

Rosie stopped crying, but her blue eyes brimmed with tears, and she regarded him with an expression so pitiful it could have melted stone.

Edward looked down at Horse. And then, to Rachel’s astonishment, he handed the stuffed rabbit back to her.

Rosie clutched it to her tiny, heaving chest and gazed up at Edward with grateful eyes.

Rachel regarded her son with concern. “Are you sure about this, Edward?”

He hesitated for only a moment before he nodded. “I’m all grown-up now, Mom. Rosie needs Horse more than I do.”

She smiled, squeezed his hand, and tried not to cry.



Gabe leaped out of Ethan’s Camry before the car had even stopped and charged toward the front porch where Edward was constructing a lopsided log cabin from sticks he’d gathered. “Where’s your mother?”

“I don’t know. Inside, I guess.” His gaze moved past Gabe to Ethan and Kristy, who were just getting out of the car.

Gabe began to walk toward the door only to stop as he saw the boy make a small gesture to the side, as if he were trying to pick up something that wasn’t there. Then his arm fell back into his lap, and he gave a sigh that seemed to come from his toes.

Gabe wished he didn’t understand the gesture. “You’re missing that rabbit of yours, aren’t you?”

Edward bent his head over his log cabin and scratched his knee.

“I heard you gave it to Rosie, but everybody’ll understand if you want it back.” He tried to contain the gruffness in his voice, but couldn’t quite manage.

“Rosie won’t understand.”

“She’s only a baby. She’ll forget about it.”

“Horse isn’t the kind of thing a kid forgets about.”

He spoke with such absolute certainty that Gabe knew there was no use arguing with him. In that way, he was exactly like his mother.

“Pastor Ethan! Kristy!” The boy smiled as they stepped up onto the porch. “You want to see my log cabin?” He was too young to sense the tension between them, but Gabe had felt it.


“You bet we do,” Kristy said.

Gabe turned away and walked into the cottage. “Rachel?”

There was no answer. He made a quick search of the rooms, then found her outside where she was bent over a rogue tomato plant in the weedy garden.

She was wearing the orange dress she painted in. Sunlight dappled her hair and danced along those slender, golden-brown arms. Her feet were bare, and she’d buried her toes in the soft dirt. She looked timeless and sensual, made up of earth and fire, and he wanted to take her right there in that imperfect garden. He wanted to cover her body with his body, forget who he was, who she was. He wanted to go to her without a past or future, with no thoughts beyond this single moment.

She looked up. A light sheen of perspiration glistened along her cheekbones, and her lips parted in surprise. “I didn’t hear you.”

She gave no smile of greeting, no sign that she was glad to see him. “Why did you take off like that?” he snapped.

“I wasn’t feeling well.”

“You seem to be feeling fine now.”

She didn’t reply. Instead, she bent her head and began working a clump of chickweed free.

“If you wanted to leave, you should have told me. You know I don’t like it when you’re here by yourself.”

“You can’t be with me every minute. And why should you try?”

“What does that mean?”

“It means I’m not your responsibility.”

The snippy note in her voice annoyed him. She was the one in the wrong, not him. He was doing everything he could to keep her safe, but she wouldn’t cooperate. “You’re my responsibility while you’re under this roof,” he found himself saying.

But she wasn’t impressed by his bluster. “If you want to be useful, get a shovel and start digging a trench around those shrubs instead of growling at me.”

“I’m not growling.”

“Could have fooled me.”

“Damn it, Rachel, you ran off without telling me! I didn’t know what had happened. I was worried.”

“Were you?” She cocked her head to the side and gave him a slow smile that melted his bones.

He determinedly shook off the spell she was weaving around him. “You don’t have to look so pleased about it. I’m not exactly happy with you at the moment, and not just because of the way you ran off.” He knew he should let it go at that, but he couldn’t. “From now on, I’d appreciate it if you didn’t try to psychoanalyze me in front of my family.”