When She Dreams (Burning Cove #6)(69)

Keep your mouth shut, Sage.

But people rarely take good advice, even when they give it to themselves, he thought then. Why be the exception to the rule?

“What did you mean when you said this is so real?” he asked. “You hadn’t even finished yet.”

“I didn’t need to finish to know it was real.” She threaded her fingertips through the hair of his chest and tugged gently. “It felt real. That was all that mattered.”

He thought about that for a moment and then abandoned the effort to decipher what the hell she was saying. He pulled his arm out from under the pillow and turned onto his side to face her.

“What does real mean?” he said.

“It felt like real passion. Shared passion.”

“As opposed to?”

“Being assaulted by a vampire.”

He sat up fast. “I may not be the most exciting man you’ve ever met, but I hope to hell that going to bed with me was better than being attacked by a vampire.”

“Sorry.” She lay back against the pillows and looked up at him. “I probably used the wrong visual image.”

“Think so?”

“You’re getting mad, aren’t you?”

“No.”

Not mad, he thought. Hurt. Probably just his pride. Okay, mad.

“Yes,” he said.

The sensual warmth faded from her eyes. The serious, watchful expression returned.

“When I refer to a vampire, I’m talking about the kind of man who is attracted to a woman like me because he thinks that if he has sex with her he can somehow control her, and that if he controls her he can use her.”

“A woman like you?”

“An extreme lucid dreamer,” she explained.

“You’re talking about men like Oxlade and Guilfoyle?”

“Oxlade isn’t interested in having sex with me. He just wants to run experiments on me. Arthur Guilfoyle would be happy to seduce me if he thought that would get him what he wants, but it would just be business as usual. Make no mistake, both men are extremely annoying, but I wouldn’t classify them as vampires.”

“You seem to know a lot about men like Oxlade and Guilfoyle.”

“I’ve spent years booking appointments with therapists and doctors and analysts who claim to be experts in dreams. Some tried to be helpful. Others were frauds and cons. Several took a genuinely scientific or medical approach. A few were delusional. But there is another category.”

“The vampires?”

She touched his jaw with the tip of a finger. “You are a very smart detective.”

“I told you, I keep up with the literature of the profession.”

“Yes, you did mention that.”

“You’re going to tell me about your close brush with marriage, aren’t you?”

“Only if you want to hear the gory details,” she said.

“I’m not sure I want to hear them, but I need to know what happened to you that left you so gun-shy when it comes to marriage.”

“Nearly two years ago I walked into the office of Dr. Brighton Forrester. He was the first man I had ever met who truly understood me when I explained my dreams and why I wanted to get better control of them. He was—is—a lucid dreamer himself.”

“He dreams the way you do.”

Maggie smiled, but it wasn’t the smile that made him catch his breath. This smile made him want to pound Dr. Brighton Forrester into the ground.

“Yes,” she said. “It was such a relief to be able to talk to someone who didn’t think I was delusional or that I suffered from weak nerves or was prone to hysteria.”

“You fell in love with him?” he asked.

Maggie scrunched up her nose. “I told myself that what I felt was love. I was certainly attracted to Brighton, and he was attracted to me, at least at the beginning. We had so much in common.”

Unlike, say, you and me, Sam thought. He decided he would not dwell on that unwelcome thought, not now.

“Go on,” he said.

“It didn’t hurt that he was handsome, well-educated, and intelligent,” Maggie said. “He was a doctor with a distinguished reputation. My family loved him.”

“What went wrong?”

She winced. “I told you the gossip that circulated after the disaster was not accurate. I did not leave Brighton standing alone at the altar on the day of the wedding.”

“Noted.”

“Yes, Brighton and I were engaged, and yes, all the arrangements had been made, and yes, I suppose everyone had bought the gifts, and yes, I’d had the final fitting for the dress, but I called off the wedding seventeen whole days before the ceremony—not at the last minute.”

In spite of himself, Sam could not suppress a quick grin. “Sounds like a good idea to me. Keep talking.”

“It was generally assumed I had suffered a severe attack of bridal nerves. The stress of the wedding preparation had induced a fit of hysteria. There was talk of sending me back to Sweet Creek for a rest cure. I decided it was past time I left home. So I did. In the middle of the night. Turns out it’s a lot harder to have someone committed when the adult in question is not living under the same roof as those who believe she ought to be committed, especially if that individual can’t be found.”