Dream a Little Dream (Chicago Stars, #4)(38)

“And you’ve done it well, right? Unless I miss my guess, you’ve been about the best secretary anyone could find. You can read his mind and predict what he wants even before he wants it.”

She nodded.

“But what has it gotten you, other than a paycheck?”

Her mouth tightened with resentment. “Nothing. It hasn’t gotten me anything. I don’t even like the job. Lately I’ve been thinking I should go to Florida like my parents want. They went down there to retire, but they got bored, so they opened this little gift shop in Clearwater. They’ve been nagging at me to come down and help them run it.”

“What do you want to do?”

“I want to work with children.”

“Then do it.”

Her resentment turned to frustration. “It’s not that easy. At least this way I can be around him.”

“Is that all you want your life to be about? Staying around Ethan Bonner?”

“You don’t understand!”

“I might understand more than you think.” She drew a deep breath. “Dwayne dressed me up like a hooker and expected me to behave like a saint. I tried to be everything he wanted, but it never was enough.” Kristy placed a sympathetic hand on her knee. Rachel lowered her voice. “Instead of thinking about living for Ethan Bonner, maybe it’s time you started to think about living for yourself.”

Kristy’s expression was an endearing combination of yearning and disappointment. “No makeover?”

“A makeover only if you’re not happy with the way you are.”

“I’m not.” She sighed.

“Makeover, then. But do it for yourself, Kristy. Not for Ethan.”

Kristy took a nibble on her bottom lip. “I guess that means no Spandex.”

“Do you want to wear Spandex?”

“I’d look silly.”

“You do want to!”

“I’ll think about it. Not just that, but everything.”

They smiled at each other, and Rachel realized that something had changed between them. Until tonight, they had been polite acquaintances. Now they were friends.



During the next few days, Rachel’s body came back to life with a vengeance. She felt young and erotically charged. The late-June weather was beautiful, with low humidity and temperatures that only occasionally reached eighty, but she always felt as if she were burning up.

As she worked, she kept the buttons of her cotton housedresses unfastened at the throat and let the bodices fall open so the breeze could touch her skin. The damp, worn cotton molded to her breasts, defining their small, high shape in a way that made her feel voluptuous and sexy. She piled her hair on top of her head and fanned her thighs with her lifted skirts, trying to cool herself. And no matter what she did, she felt his eyes stroking her.

He’d look up from wherever he was working, wipe his hands on his jeans, and gaze at her. Her skin seemed to hum. It was crazy. She felt languid and tense at the same time.

Sometimes he’d bark out an order or a veiled insult, but she barely listened because her senses transformed whatever brusque words he was speaking into the ones he really meant.

I want you.

And she wanted him back. For sex, she told herself. Only for sex. Nothing more. No intimate entanglement, no exchange of feelings, only sex.

When her body grew so hot she feared it would burst into flame, she made herself think of other things: her growing friendship with Kristy, Edward’s excitement as he told her about his day, and the Kennedy chest.


Each night she walked to the notch at the top of Heartache Mountain and gazed down at the house where she had once lived. She had to get inside so she could resume her search for the chest, but she couldn’t take the chance that he’d be there. He hadn’t said a word about the missing key, and, with the drive-in opening just two weeks away, she could only hope he’d forgotten about it. Surely he would have said something if he hadn’t. She wanted to scream in frustration. If only he’d go away so she could get inside.

Nine days after the night she’d first broken into his brother’s house, she finally got the opportunity she’d been waiting for.

He came up to her as she was fastening new chrome knobs to the storage cabinets in the snack shop. Even before she heard his footsteps, she caught the scent of pine and laundry detergent and wondered how someone who did manual labor always managed to smell so clean.

“Ethan and I have business to take care of. I’ll be away for the rest of the afternoon, so lock up when you’re done.”

She nodded and her heart raced. While he was occupied with his brother, she could finally get into the house.

She finished her job in record time, then drove to Annie’s cottage where she fetched the key from its hiding place in the back of her dresser drawer and set off down the mountain. By the time she reached the bottom, a light drizzle had started to fall.

The full skirt of the housedress she was wearing that day, a worn pink cotton printed with turquoise squiggles, grew damp, along with her heavy shoes and the tops of her socks. She took them off in the laundry room so she didn’t leave any telltale tracks and proceeded barefoot up the stairs of the silent house.

She searched the nursery first, firmly repressing all those nostalgic pangs that made her want to curl up in the old rocker that still sat by the window and remember the feel of Edward’s downy little head at her breast. When she didn’t find the chest there, she headed for her former bedroom.