Time After Time (14 page)

But today it felt different. The atmosphere around him seemed to have a vibrant life of its own. Perhaps because his thoughts were so full, they spilled over and filled the house, too.

He walked into the bedroom and lay on the bed, his hands behind his head as he stared at the ceiling. For a long time he maintained his carefully blank expression; then suddenly he began to laugh.

What a crazy, unbelievable development, he thought. He couldn't even gauge his reaction to it. He was still too stunned, still too incredulous. While he knew there had to be a sane, logical explanation for what had happened, he couldn't forget the way she had looked when he mentioned the daisy. She
knew.
Leah had known exactly what he was thinking about. Because she had been there in that field with him.

He closed his eyes and instantly saw again the two of them lying before the fireplace in the little dream cabin. The smooth satin of her bare flesh was once again beneath his fingers. The sweetness of her mouth lay on his tongue. The warm woman scent of her filled the air, making him dizzy.

Inhaling harshly, he opened his eyes. Definitely a bad idea, he told himself ruefully.

It was difficult for Paul to recall the days when he hadn't dreamed about Leah. Since he had first met her, four years ago, she had been there at night in his dreams. And strangely, even in the beginning, when Diane was alive, he had never felt guilty about those dreams. They were beyond his control and had taken nothing from his wife.

Then, shortly after his wife's death the dreams had changed. They become sizzling scenarios—bits and pieces of blatant erotica. Leah—naked and kneeling beside him... leaning close to him so that her hair fell

in a golden curtain that enclosed them both... her slender hands on his naked flesh... his lips on the fullness of her breasts... the moans of pleasure that told him she was hot and ready.

When they had first begun, the X-rated fantasies had embarrassed him on wakening. Then he had accepted them as one of the quirks the mind delighted in springing on human beings. There had been no substance to those dreams. Leah hadn't been a personality; she had been unadulterated sexuality.

Then, suddenly, the Roman dream had appeared, and there was Leah. Vital and alive, the real Leah. And in each dream she had become more real to him. She was no longer the cool Miss French who breezed in and out of his office, efficiently taking care of business; she was an exciting individual whose personality had been hidden from him until he had found her in his dreams.

The memory of their ride home in the cab last night was a fuzzy one at best. He couldn't call up actual events, but sensations came through loud and clear. His imagination wasn't that good. Something had definitely happened between them.

He shook his head restlessly. Paul was not a man to give in to weaknesses of any kind, particularly alcohol. But last night, while he had watched her opening up and coming alive for everyone in the conference room except him, resentment had suddenly grown in him. Unreasonably he felt that the dreams had given him rights over her. The vitality and sparkle should have been his alone.

He drew a rough breath, feeling his impatience grow. Sooner or later she would calm down, and they would talk. They had to. He didn't understand what had happened any more than she did, but he knew without a doubt that it was something neither of them could afford to ignore.

Leah sat at her desk, checking through the ads that would run for the next month in financial newspapers and trade magazines. On this level, her job was completely different. There was no ad agency, no creative geniuses to smooth the rough edges. In these ads there were no whispers of exotic locations and exciting wishes fulfilled. These were for the executives who used airplanes the way most people used cars. The purpose of the advertisements was to show that in terms of time and money, it was simply more efficient to fly Universal.

She glanced up as the door opened and Charlotte walked in. She hid a smile. It had been four days since the celebration party, and the brunette's personal crisis had been resolved in the way Leah had predicted, but she could never have predicted the subtle change that had taken place in her secretary. For a reason known only to Charlotte, the sweet, myopic mouse had blossomed. Her expression and posture, even her speech pattern, reflected her new confidence.

"Leah," Charlotte said, "he's called three times already this morning. I told him you were in a meeting, but I don't know how much longer I can put him off. He's getting a little hostile."

"If you think that's hostile, Miss Smith," Paul said as he stepped into the room behind Charlotte, "you've obviously never seen me in action."

Leah stared at him, letting out a slow breath. "It's okay, Charlotte. You can go now."

When the door closed behind Leah's secretary, he

said, "You've had more than enough time___My

patience has died a natural death. Are you ready to talk now?"

"No," she said wryly. "But it looks as though I don't have much choice." She leaned back in her chair. "Why don't you sit down, Mr. Gregory?"

When she saw his features tighten, Leah knew she had made a tactical error. Of course he would resent her tone. He wasn't used to receiving even subtle orders, especially from her.

"I'm sorry," she said, biting her lip. "I didn't mean to sound—"

"Hostile?" he suggested as he sat down in the chair across the desk from her.

She smiled slightly. "Yes, I guess that's exactly how I sounded, isn't it? I—" She broke off, placing her hands flat on the desk. "The truth is, this...this
thing
threw me. I handled it badly. Luckily, I'm back on track now."

She wasn't going to mention the sleepless nights she had spent, the hours of confused thought, more hours of reading everything she could get her hands on that had to do with dreams and alternate reality and psychic phenomena, all the trash she had waded through just to get herself back on track.

"I think," she continued, "that because I didn't want to acknowledge that something... well, that something a little strange happened, I let the situation grow out of proportion in my own mind. I made too much of it. Rather than accepting it as a weird coincidence, I saw it as something magic or supernatural—something that doesn't happen in real life."

He listened calmly as she spoke, his expression as steady as always. "But it does happen," he said quietly.

She curled her fingers into tight fists. "Not to me."

Leaning back casually, he studied her face. "'Something a little strange...a weird coincidence'?" he murmured, then shook his head. "You've not only been avoiding me, you've apparently been avoiding the truth as well."

"Whose truth!" she shouted, abandoning her assumed composure. "Are you talking about Jung's truth? Freud's truth? Or maybe you mean Madame Jerinsky the Miracle Medium's truth?"

"Simultaneous occurrences of the same dream are a matter of scientific record," he said, his voice still infuriatingly calm. "They are a fact."

She pushed herself away from her desk and abruptly rose to her feet. "Oh, yes, I know all about it," she said tightly. "I checked out a double arm load of books from the library—probably the same ones you've obviously been reading. But you see—" she placed her hands on her desk and leaned toward him, her slender nostrils flaring with anger "—they don't mean a thing to me. I don't care that twins who live

across the world from each other buy identical cars on the same day. I don't want to know about out-of-body, out-of-mind, out-of-pocket or out-of-sheer-bad-temper experiences."

She paused, sucking in a harsh breath. "And I don't want to hear stupid questions like 'When is reality real?' Don't you understand what I'm saying? What I've been saying from the very beginning? None of that garbage means anything to me. I know what's real, and what you're trying to make me admit
is not real.
I refuse to go off making daisy chains in never-never land. I didn't ask for this, and I don't want it," she finished miserably.

He folded his arms, staring at her thoughtfully. "So with a snap of your fingers it disappears... simply because Leah French can't handle it."

"Yes!" She grabbed her purse and walked toward the door. "Yes, that's it exactly. I'm glad we finally understand each other." She jerked open the door. Then, without glancing back, she shouted, "And stay the hell out of my dreams!"

That evening Leah sat on the couch, staring with unseeing eyes at the bookcase. She shivered slightly and pulled the folds of her dusky-blue robe more closely around her. For hours she had sat in the same position, calling herself all kinds of a fool for blowing up at Paul. She had intended to be so cool, to discuss the situation like a calm, sane adult. Then, the minute he pressed her, her good intentions had gone up in a cloud of smoke.

He would probably fire her, she told herself in resignation. And it was exactly what she deserved. Where was the professionalism that she took such pride in? How could she have screamed like a fishwife at him?

When she heard the knock on her front door, she knew immediately who it was. But it was only when he had knocked for the third time that she stood and walked to the door, standing aside silently as he entered her apartment.

He looked around the room, studying it the same way he studied everything, as though each piece of furniture, each book and painting, was a clue to an unresolved puzzle. When he was seated in an armchair, Leah resumed her place on the couch, curling her bare feet beneath her.

"I'm sorry I acted like such an idiot," she said, breaking the heavy silence. She stared down at her hands. "I don't usually avoid things I don't want to face—I'm not that kind of person." Her lips twisted in a self-mocking smile. "But then, I've never had to face anything like this, so maybe I
am
that kind of person, after all." Bracing herself, she met his gaze squarely. "I'm ready to be reasonable. What exactly do you want to do about this?"

He nodded, as though it was simply another in a long line of predictable reactions and no more than he had expected of her. "I think the first step should be to discuss it openly. Compare notes. Find out what in our separate dreams corresponds." He paused, watching her thoughtfully. "I hate to mention it, but I think we're actually dealing with three dreams."

She let her eyes close briefly, then opened them again, raising her chin in determination. "Yes, I was afraid of that. It started with the Roman dream."

"And then the twenties dream, then the Western one," he said, confirming a fear she hadn't allowed herself to think about. "I've come to some conclusions on my own, but I'd like to hear what you think. Since the first one happened almost five months ago, you must have tried to analyze them before you knew I was having the same dreams."

Pushing her hair back, she stood and walked to the bookcase. She pulled out the three tapes and handed them to him. "Every dream came on a night when I worked late...with one of these running. I didn't pay any attention to the movies, so it took a while for me to realize that the dreams were a replay of the movies."

He examined the tapes, then laughed softly. "I wondered why they were so corny." He glanced up at her and grinned. "Roman soldiers with British accents?"

Leah almost groaned aloud. It was an invasion of privacy beyond comparison. Her instinctive resistance to discussing the situation had been right all along, she told herself angrily. This was much worse than someone reading her mind or peeping through the window while she bathed. The place into which he had intruded was supposed to be inviolable. According to Carl Jung, dreams were the hidden door to the soul. No one—absolutely no one—had the right to invade another human being's soul.

"You're embarrassed," he said, his voice matter-of-fact. "That's perfectly understandable—" He broke off and stared at her hip with a curiosity he didn't even try to hide. "Do you have—"

She jerked her hand to her hip as though he could see her birthmark through the robe. "Yes, I do," she snapped in irritation. "I resent this, Mr. Gregory. I resent it very much." Suddenly her eyes widened in accusation. "And you...you... In the twenties dream—" she sputtered, inarticulate in her anger. "'It's only a dream, Leah. Go with it,'" she mimicked, gritting her teeth. "That was low. That was really low."

"If you'll remember, at that point I thought it was only my dream," he said logically. "And, if it makes you feel any better, I also said and did things that make me uncomfortable to remember."

Slowly, as she recalled the things he had said in the cabin, her anger ebbed. Unwittingly, he had let her see too much of what was beneath the cool mask and, even though he now seemed composed, she knew the whispered words were in the air between them.
My soul was a house where no one lived anymore.
Yes, that would definitely make a man like Paul uncomfortable.

"I think we could say we have enough confirmation to consider the dreams duplicates," he said dryly.

"And where does that get us?"

He was silent for a moment; then he stood and walked to the window that looked out over the park,

his face thoughtful. "The dreams were leading us toward something."

Leah moistened her lips nervously. Deep down, she knew what was coming next, but it was another thing she had put off thinking about. "Toward what?"

He glanced back over his shoulder. "Several things—the easiest for me to accept at this time is that they were leading us toward a sexual relationship."