Dream Man Read online

  He was silent for several moments, then she felt him shrug. “I couldn’t let you get sealed into a cave all by yourself. I saw what just being in a lighted elevator had done to you.” And he hadn’t known whether she might actually have discovered her nephew, injured… or worse.

  “Oh.” She swallowed hard and rested her head against his chest for a moment. She loved him so much and wished she could tell him so. “Max… you are such a dear man. When I first started dreaming about you, I knew you were a hero.”

  He tilted her face up and kissed her mouth with unerring aim even in the blackness that surrounded them like a heavy blanket. “And when was it that you started dreaming about me, Ms. Leslie?”

  “Long before I met you,” she said, and embarked on the story of how he had come into her dreams when her sister had told her that she wanted a new husband, a father for her children. “I conjured you up for Sharon, or maybe my Gypsy multiple-great-grandmother did, and I ran that ad for a week, for my sister’s sake. But when you appeared long after I’d come to the conclusion that I was out of my skull for even thinking about trying to find a mate for her that way, I knew I wanted you for myself.”

  “You’ve got me, sweet. All you have to do is reach out and take me.”

  Instead, she shifted away from him, turned on his flashlight and slowly led the way back to the rock fall.

  “Jeanie …” She knew by the soft gentleness of his tone that Max was about to impart bad news. She turned from rolling a rock into the ever-enlarging pile she’d been building now for two and a half long days. At least she thought that was how long it had been. Max’s watch had been smashed when a rock had rolled over it. His face, in the dim glow cast by his dying flashlight, was pale under the dirt and lined with exhaustion. His eyes, usually so intense a blue that she could focus on them and believe she was seeing sky again, were dull with defeat.

  “There’s a rock here, honey. It must be a slab from the ceiling. I can’t dig my way around it. I’ve been trying for hours. The only way through it would be with blasting powder or a rock drill, and I’m fresh out of both. I’m sorry, Jeanie. I tried.”

  She crawled to him, and, for the first time, turned off the flashlight voluntarily. In the dark, she held him. “I know you did, Max. I know. Oh, you tried so hard! No one could have done more than you. But don’t forget. There’s the other passage we haven’t worked on yet. You rest. I’ll get started on it. It’s only little stuff. I can move it by myself.” She felt him shake his head in protest and gave him a hard squeeze.

  “This time, McKenzie, you are going to do what I tell you! Got it?”

  “Yes, ma’am,” he said, chuckling, and she felt better at once. By now they knew the cave well enough to crawl to the higher part without the light. She got him settled on a shelf above the creek, then pulled the sleeping bag out of her way, turned on the light briefly to place their food supplies in a safer location, and washed her hands. Her gloves had long since been tattered beyond being any use. That done, she fetched both of them drinks of water and small handfuls of almonds.

  After a brief stop to drink and munch the nuts, she began a careful excavation of the second rock fall, finding it just as slow going as Max had the first. For each rock she pulled out, three more rolled down to take its place. For each handful of rubble she scooped onto Max’s slicker, which they had been using as a sled for the smaller stuff, more slid in, but she kept on. When Max insisted on spelling her, she continued to work, hauling the debris out of the way. Then it was her turn again to work in the cramped confines of the tiny hole they were digging.

  When her hand poked through and met nothing but air on the other side, at first she didn’t recognize the significance of what had happened. But when she saw a faint glimmer of pale, washed-out light, she let out a cry so full of hoarse triumph that Max whirled around and staggered to where she crouched.

  “Look!” she cried, backing out to let him in. “We’re through! I can see light out there, Max! Oh, Lord, dig, Max! Dig!”

  He didn’t need her encouragement, but scrabbled at the rock, lifting out one crumbling piece after another, rolling them down toward her where she caught them and tumbled them anywhere; it no longer mattered, in minutes they’d be free! When the hole was large enough for him to fit his head and shoulders through, he squirmed in, and she heard him groan.

  “It’s just another cave,” he said, worming his way back out to where she crouched, her face alight with hope. “As far as I can see, it’s a little bigger around than this, but with no side-passages leading anywhere.”

  The hope refused to die in her eyes. “But the light?” she demanded. “Max, I could see daylight!”

  “Yes, honey, I know. There’s a small hole in the roof.” He rubbed a hand over the long stubble on his face then looked at her again as he slumped against the rough wall, exhausted and disheartened. “But the roof is at least forty feet overhead.”

  Chapter Nine

  IT WAS A DISASTER, but somehow less of a disaster than the immovable slab that blocked the way to the outside. At least, to Jeanie’s relief, her feelings of claustrophobia lessened when she could see that tiny, unreachable slit of daylight, even now beginning to fade as yet another night fell. They moved their equipment into the larger cavern, finding a wider, more level ledge there for their sleeping bag and another where they stored their dwindling supply of food. The stream that trickled through was larger in the new cave, with a deeper pool. And just before the water disappeared into a subterranean crack, there was an outcrop that permitted Jeanie to feel more private straddling the stream to take care of the call of nature.

  Standing with their heads back, facing the tiny slit of sky overhead, they took turns shouting, but no one responded, no face appeared to block the light.

  “I’m going to have a bath,” Jeanie said, fighting despair. “I’m dirty and I smell bad and I not going to spend one more night like this.”

  “Jeanie, you’ll freeze! That water’s cold.”

  “I’ll be quick, but I’m going to do it. Go sit on the other side of the cave and don’t watch me.”

  “I’d like nothing better than to watch you have a bath,” he said. “Well, almost nothing. A hot fudge sundae would beat even that. But how can I watch you? It’s dark in here, in case you hadn’t noticed.”

  “I mean, don’t turn the light on me.”

  “I promise, not unless it sounds as if the sharks have you by the feet.”

  No kidding. It was frigid water, but when she stepped out and rubbed herself with her least grimy extra T- shirt, she knew it had been worth it. “Max,” she said excitedly, zipping up her jeans as she stumbled to where he sat. He turned the flash on briefly to light her way. “We can build a fire! I saw matches in your pack. It’ll help keep us warm, and the smoke coming out of the ground will tell someone we’re here!”

  He pulled her down beside him on the sleeping bag. “I don’t think five comic books will make much smoke, Jeanie. Even if we added our backpacks and all our clothes and could get them to burn, this is a good-size cavern and it would take an awful lot of smoke to fill it enough and get it going out that little-bitty hole way up there.”

  “Max, you’re not thinking! Where are we?”

  He stared at her before he flicked off the light. “In a cave.”

  “What kind of a cave? Why are we both so dirty all the time? What turns our hands and faces so black, we look like Vaudeville performers? What about all those rocks we’ve been moving? Max, they are coal! Coal burns! We can build a fire. Coal make lots of dirty, black smoke. Surely, it will be seen!”

  He shook his head. “Jeanie, honey, you’re the one not thinking. Where is the draft coming from?” He looked up at where the slit of daylight had once been visible. “Up there, right? And that’s the only place it’s coming from. If we lit a coal fire, the fumes and gases would be driven down into the cave, and they’d kill us as surely as if the entire roof collapsed on us. That’s just one of the many ways
coal miners used to die—from gases in the mines if a fire started. I’m sorry to burst your bubble, but remember, with that little hole up there, and people out looking for us, we have a better chance of being found tomorrow than we ever had today. Tomorrow, we can holler ourselves hoarse, but not if we’re dead from coal gases.”

  “You’re right, I guess.” She swallowed her disappointment. But she wasn’t quite ready to give up. “Max… heat rises. Maybe if our fire was hot enough, the gases would go out too. Are you sure about the danger of gases?”

  He hesitated. “Not absolutely. But sure enough that I’m not willing to risk it. If there was another source of air coming in, or a place for what’s coming in to go out, then I’d go for it like a shot. But I don’t think there is.”

  “But there must be a place for it to go out. Otherwise, there wouldn’t be a draft.”

  He sighed. “You’re right about that, of course, but it’s not a very big draft. And don’t forget, there’s probably just impenetrable forest up there. Even if it was safe for us to make smoke signals, nobody would see them.”

  This time, she sighed. She knew he was right on all counts. The risks far outweighed any possible benefits to building a coal fire. She briefly considered that they start piling rocks in the middle of the cave to get to a point high enough to reach out, but recognized that as another desperate act, perfectly useless. So was damming the stream’s outlet and floating up as the cave filled. Clearly, she’d read too many comic books as a child. She patted Jason’s little pile. Lord, but she hoped he was curled up safely at home reading comic books. But if he was, why hadn’t he told anybody about his cave? Why hadn’t he suggested that his aunt might have found it and been lost inside it?

  What if he had and no one believed him? What if …

  There were too many what-ifs. She shivered and pulled her down jacket more tightly around her.

  Max turned on the light and got to his feet. “And now, since you’re so clean and pink and not suffering visibly from hypothermia, I’m going to avail myself of your bathtub too.”

  She looked down at her hands. “All I am is just a little bit cleaner and sort of dingy gray. It’ll take several hot water tanks worth of showers and five or six bars of soap to get me clean and pink again.”

  “Whatever,” he said. “It’s good enough for me.”

  That night, as they lay on the sleeping bag under the blanket, Max thought he heard Jeanie weeping softly.

  He held her, as he had every night they had spent in the cave, and said, “Are you crying, sweetheart?”

  “No. Of course not. Well, maybe just a little.” Her laugh was uncertain. “Funny, I don’t recall the last time I really cried.”

  “Why is that?”

  “Why? I don’t know. Lousy memory, I guess.”

  “Dope.” His tone and the hand that stroked her hair were both tender. “I meant, why do you cry so seldom that you can’t recall the last time? I thought tears were considered a legitimate form of female emotional release.”

  “I believe they’re considered a legitimate form of male emotional release sometimes, too.”

  He huffed with mock indignation. “That’s a filthy rumor, put about by feminists who don’t know anything at all about real men.”

  She smiled in the dark, remembering all of a sudden that it hadn’t been so long ago that she’d cried for that kind of release. It had been the night he’d walked out on her after reading that sexy letter he’d been writing. Then, she’d from disappointment, frustration, and rage. Or so she’d told herself.

  “For release of tension, I run,” she said. “What do you do?”

  “Pummel a punching bag.”

  There was a long silence before he said, “What would you most like to see right now, besides the outside of this cave?”

  “Daffodils,” she replied without hesitation. “A field full of daffodils all bright and yellow with the sun shining down on them. Green spears of leaves, the first drowsy bumblebees of the year coating their legs with golden pollen. I love daffodils so much. They speak of February, and tell me winter’s over. They’re so bright and lively and have such a delicate scent, I’d like to roll in them, only it would break them. I wish, just once more, I could see and smell a daffodil.”

  He wished that, just once, he could give her a hundred dozen daffodils. He said nothing, only held her tighter.

  “I wonder why they haven’t found the rockfall from the outside yet?”

  He had to tell her then about the tape he hadn’t had to tie to the cedar bough. After a long silence during which she simply clung to him, she asked, “We’re going to die in here, aren’t we, Max?”

  He longed to be able to lie to her about that too, but the time for lies, even lies of kindness, was over. “I think we could, honey.” Searches, he knew, couldn’t be kept up forever. The cost in time and manpower was too great. He only hoped, for her poor sister’s sake, that she hadn’t lost her son permanently as well. Jeanie rarely mentioned Jason now, but on the occasions when she did, it was with such certainty of his safety that he was touched by her faith. He wondered why she didn’t have that same blind faith in her own invincibility.

  “I’m so sorry I got you into this. If it hadn’t been for me, you’d never have been here.”

  “If I have to die, Jeanie, don’t you realize I’d rather do it with you in my arms than anyone else?”

  She lifted herself up on an elbow and found his face with her hand. His beard was growing soft now, and she liked to stroke it. “Max? Will you make love with me? I don’t want to die never having known what it’s like to love you.”

  He didn’t reply, just reached up and slowly slid the blanket back. Just as slowly, he found the tab on the zipper of her jacket and pulled it down, then laid her on her back. His hand softly encircled her throat, then he cradled her chin. Tilting her face up to his, he brought their mouths together, sweetly, seekingly, lovingly.

  “I don’t know if I can, sweetheart,” he said softly, “but I sure want to give it a try.”

  When his rough, abraded hand slid under her sweatshirt, moved gently over her bony rib cage and covered a breast that had been much fuller five—or was it six—days before, Max wanted to weep for the losses they had both sustained. If he had been a praying man, he’d have prayed for the strength to give her all the power of the physical love he had wanted to share with her for so long. But now he wasn’t certain be could do more than caress her, pleasure her with his hands and mouth. She sighed, and he knew he was succeeding at least in part.

  “Be careful,” she whispered. “Your poor hands are so sore.”

  “Never too sore to touch you,” he murmured against the soft skin of her neck, “never could I pass up an opportunity to give you pleasure. But if they’re too rough for you, I’ll just love you with my mouth.”

  Her breath caught in her throat. “With everything, Max. Everything you can. I want all of you in every way.”

  It broke his heart, but he had to warn her. “Sweetheart, I’m weak. I may not be able to—”

  She stopped him with her mouth over his, a long, deep kiss that made him doubtful that over-exertion and lack of real food for however long it had been would cause the problems he anticipated. “Max, my darling, I know that and I don’t care! Just being with you like this, holding you, kissing you, hearing your voice is enough. There are many ways of making love, and what we’re doing is just one of them. Tell me … talk to me the way you did in those letters you wrote. They drove me so crazy with wanting you, I nearly came just listening to your voice.”

  “Writing them was almost as sweet a torture as knowing what they were doing to you.” She felt the warmth of his soft laughter against her chest and rejoiced that they could still have fun together, even though it might be all they’d ever have.

  He began to speak as he had written, telling her all the things he planned to do to her, everything he wanted her to do to him, the way he would make her feel, the sensations her touch
es would arouse in him, did arouse in him, were arousing in him.

  “Max!” she gasped as her nipple peaked hard into his palm. He found the other with his lips, sucked on it, and was delighted by her moan of pleasure. She said his name in that soft, husky, sexy voice that had been one of the first things about her to attract him. Strength he’d thought long since played out with escape attempts came flooding back, and he hardened within the confines of his jeans. She moved her hips against his, and he knew she felt it, exulted in it as much as he did. She parted the front of his jacket, slipped her hands under his sweater, and ran her fingers into the hair on his chest, finding his nipples and teasing them as he teased hers.

  “Max … please, no clothes between us.” Her voice was ragged, urgent.

  “Jeanie, I don’t want you to be cold,” he protested, but she shrugged out of her jacket, peeled her sweatshirt off over her head, and even in the utter darkness, he knew exactly how lovely she must look. He felt her slither out of her jeans, and then he capitulated, stripping himself as swiftly as she had.

  When their naked bodies came together, there was no more thought of cold or worries of impotence. Heat grew, spread, sparked between them and flared. Hands explored rigid flesh, soft, moist hollows. Tongues entwined, limbs tangled, bodies strained, and two voices called out low as he lunged inside her, unable to wait, to prolong the foreplay. Her silken thighs wrapped tightly around his hips as she accepted him gladly with a little cry of welcome, drawing him deep within.

  “Ah, Jeanie, baby, beautiful!” He pulled almost out of her with tantalizing slowness that forced her to thrust her hips up to him, wordlessly begging for more. Once again, he withdrew, paused, then slowly, inch by teasing inch, reentered her pulsating folds, feeling her quivering anticipation of the moment when they would be fully joined again. It was as he had known it would be, exquisite torture for both of them and he never wanted it to stop. But she had other ideas, more urgent needs, if that were possible, and she dug her fingers hard into his taut buttocks, rocking strongly against him.