Slowly, she drew closer to the house. The music seemed to increase its momentum with each step. The sound of voices and laughter drifted out from open windows where curtains billowed softly with the breeze.
Hope passed the last towering oak lining the drive, and ran for the front door. The tempo of the music increased until it sounded like the player within was no longer trickling over the notes but punching each ivory key with unnecessary force. A surge of laughter—Luke’s laughter—rippled through the air as she neared the front door. Her feet flew over the steps sandwiched between long white columns. As the laughter subsided, the sound of a woman’s chatter and the insistent chirp of crickets prevailed.
The music softened as Hope hesitated on the porch, her ears alerted to the voices coming from inside. Mama. That was her mother’s voice, Hope was sure of it. Her father’s voice was there as well, and Old Joe’s.
Pain tightened around Hope’s hears as she reached for the doorknob that glistened in the moonlight. A sob escaped her lips as she grasped the metal and started to turn it.
Pain shot up her arm, surging from the hand wrapped around the door knob. She pulled away with a gasp, looking down in horror at the flesh of her palm. It was black and bubbled, burned beyond recognition.
The music stopped abruptly as Hope’s scream cut the night.
Hope? Hope, wake up.
“No! Let me go! I have to help them!”
Stop it, Hope. You keep fighting like this and you’ll rip those stitches wide open. Neither of us needs that. Now wake up, dammit!
The voice was stern. It echoed from the inky black sky and not from the man who had forcefully carried her away from the certain death of a fiery inferno.
“Go away!” she yelled, thrashing out. Her fist collided with something solid and warm. Something that grunted.
Hope awoke from the nightmare with a blood-curdling scream. Her lungs burned, as though the misty smoke of her dreams had really cut her throat. Her fingers were trembling. Slowly, she willed herself to focus, and found herself looking into Drake’s face. Her eyes still wide with horror.
“Let me go!” she demanded, trying to turn from the steely grip encircling her upper arms as she lashed out with a fist. It collided with his jaw, and the stubble there scratched the back of her hand. “Let me go! I have to help them!”
“Killing yourself isn’t going to help anyone.” Drake forced her back to the mattress. She arched against him, tears pouring down her cheeks. “Stop it, Hope. There’s no one to help. Listen to me! There’s no one to help anymore but yourself.”
“No!” she shook her head vigorously, straining against the weight that crossed her waist, pinning her to the bed. “No, I don’t believe you. I want Luke. Where’s Lu—?”
The words caught in her throat as pain shot through her like a knife. The fire. Papa, Luke, even Old Joe. They were dead now, and Drake was right. She couldn’t help them anymore.
With a sob, she collapsed back on the mattress. Drake’s body still weighed her down, but she no longer pushed him away.
“It was so real,” she whimpered. Instinctively, her hands reached up around Drake’s back, clutching his shirt. She bunched the smooth cloth in her fists and pulled him closer. Her nose filled with the scent of sweat and trail dirt.
“I know,” he whispered soothingly in her ear, as his fingers stroked her tear-dampened cheek. “It was only a dream, Hope, a nightmare. It wasn’t real.”
“But it was!” she cried. Burying her face in his shoulder, she let the soft flannel soak up the tears that refused to stop. “It was real. I could see the house, and—”
“Shhh.” Drake’s breath was like a warm caress against her cheek. “You don’t have to talk about it.”
Hope nodded and swallowed hard. Her throat still felt rough and scratchy, but the pain had eased. The agony that sliced through her heart, however, had not. Her tears continued to fall. She clutched his back, his shoulder muffling her heart-wrenching sobs.
Drake comforted her as best he could. He wasn’t used to hysterical women, though, and his words and actions were stiff and stilted.
Carefully, he rolled his weight to the inside of the mattress, bringing Hope’s trembling body along with him. His movements were gentle so as not to put any pressure on her injured shoulder. Instinctively, she burrowed against his side, her sobs muffled by his shoulder. Drake rested his cheek against the top of her head. One hand stroked her upper arm while the other ran soothingly down the dampness of her cheek. She smelled fresh and soapy, an enticing aroma that lingered from her noontime bath.
He let her cry, feeling no repulsion as her tears soaked into his shirt. She clung to him desperately at first, giving free rein to the emotions the dream had evoked.
To Drake, it was the sound of bittersweet music. He had worried when she seemed to accept her family’s death so easily. The emotions such pain brought had been buried, and buried well. Now, at long last, they were being resurrected. Although he died a little with each ragged sob that escaped her lips, he knew the pain was necessary. It was the only way for her to come to terms with the tragedy.
What he couldn’t understand was why her pain sliced through his heart like a knife, why he felt her loss as though it was his own. What was it about her tears that twisted unmercifully at his gut?
In slow degrees, her grip loosened. Eventually, all that remained of her panic-stricken cries and demanding clinging were ragged gasps of breath and a gentle caress against his torso.
As Hope relaxed, so did Drake. And as the sobs ceased to rack her body, he became more aware of the gentle curves pressing intimately against him.
The skin that glided beneath his palms felt like a bolt of rich satin. His thoughts were inundated with the wonderfully fresh scent clinging to the chestnut tresses that tickled his cheek and neck. Earlier, he’d helped her into a clean chemise, but the crisp cotton was now a barrier between his flesh and hers. For that matter, the thickness of his flannel shirt and tough denim trousers might as well have been cast aside along with the comforter she had thrust from her body during the nightmare. His memory served him well enough to know how perfectly the generous curves would fit against his naked side.