Dream On (Stories of Serendipity #2) (12 page)

Alyssa shrugged her shoulders and picked up a box to take to Jackie’s truck, which was waiting in the nearest parking area, two blocks away.  “That’s okay, Summer.  It’s probably nothing.”

As she turned with the box, she ran smack into a solid wall of muscle, sending the box full of clothes dropping to her feet.  She was so unsettled by the sudden lack of motion, she tripped on her own feet and started to fall forward, into the broad chest standing in her way.  A pair of strong hands gripped her arms to steady her, and she looked up into a steely pair of gray eyes.  Alyssa’s heart did a flip-flop as she looked up, and noticed the auburn tousles, then the streamlined nose over full, wide lips that were parted in surprise.  The man gaped at her, apparently as much at a loss for words as she was.

She gasped.

“Dalton?”  She sputtered.  His steely eyes softened into molten pools and widened in surprise.

“You know me?”  He whispered.  His face so close to hers, she could feel his breath.  It smelled like lemonade.
  His hands relaxed on her arms but didn’t move.  The heat from his touch spread through Alyssa’s body, like molten lava, settling into a pool at the bottom of her tummy.

“Y-yes.”  She struggled to say that one word.  Her heart was hammering so fast, she couldn’t breathe, much less form words.

Summer had witnessed the episode with a knowing smirk, and she gave Alyssa a wink.  “I’ll call you later, girlfriend.  We probably need to talk.”  She melted into the crowd and disappeared.

Dalton’s eyes were still glued to hers.  “But we’ve never met, have we?”

She wondered briefly, why he kept asking her questions.  She was having such a hard time talking, answering, thinking with his lips so close to hers. 

“No.  I-I don’t think so.”  She answered, and then licked her lips and swallowed hard past the lump that had formed in her throat.  Her mouth was so dry, suddenly.

His hands, which had been holding her arms, moved upward, towards her shoulders.  One hand grasped a lock of hair and rubbed the tendril between the fingertips.  Dalton sighed, blowing his sweet breath across her face.

Her breath caught
at the tenderness of his touch.  His hands on her were unbelievably warm.  She could feel his calloused fingertips on her bare shoulders, and tingles shot through her body, causing a tremble to rush through her.  She shuddered.

“Are you alright?” 

He must have felt her shaking, and she shook her head at him.  “N-no.”

His fingers tightened on her shoulders, squeezing reassuringly.  “I’m not, either.  I didn’t think you were real.”  He shook his head.  “In fact, I’m not sure this isn’t a dream.”

Alyssa didn’t know what to say.  Her lips parted to tell him something, but no words came out.  Nothing else existed except for the two of them.  All other noises stopped, except for the sound of the blood rushing through her veins.  The smells of the festival were gone, and she was enveloped in the warm, citrusy, manly scent of Dalton.  She couldn’t see anything except the darkened, gunmetal gray of his eyes, which were getting impossibly close to her face.  Her eyes swept down his body, to see his sculpted chest through the tee shirt he had on, down his chiseled abdomen, and lower.  Her mind flashed to images of him in the shower, water droplets streaming down those planes.

“In fact, since this is a dream…”  He closed his eyes and lowered his mouth to hers in a gentle, sweeping kiss, which she had no choice but to surrender to.

As soon as his lips touched hers, a fire ignited deep in her belly, melting all of her muscles and tendons, relinquishing Alyssa of her ability to support herself.  Her arms snaked around his neck, in an effort to hold herself up.  His hands came down to her waist, pulling her towards him.  She sighed against him, as his tongue came out of his mouth and swept across her bottom lip.  Their bodies, torso to torso, chest to chest, fit together perfectly, as his hands on her lower back began to move in slow, sweeping strokes up her back, into her hair.

Alyssa could hear her heart pounding in her ears, the blood rushing around inside her body.  She grasped tightly at the hair at the nape of his neck, and heard a soft groan come from the back of his throat.  His arms tightened around her waist, pulling her impossibly closer.

She relished the feel of him against her body, and was completely oblivious to all else around them, concentrating instead on the sensations of need Dalton’s body was broadcasting. His strong fingers at her waist, his lips insistent on her mouth, his hardness pressed against her belly, the growls coming from his chest, the pulse point pounding in his neck, his heartbeat.  This was all she was aware of. 

Until, she heard shrieking laughter behind her.

And then she realized where she was.

She was kissing a total stranger in a crowd of hundreds of people, most of which she knew, at the Pepper Festival.

Pushing Dalton away, she struggled to catch her breath.

Wiping the back of her hand on her mouth, she looked at him.  He was standing there, as dazed and breathless as she was.

“I can’t do this.”  She mumbled.  “I’m sorry.”  She bent to pick up spilled clothing on the ground at their feet.  He bent to help.

“No.  I’m sorry.  I…I shouldn’t have done that.”  He looked at her squarely, as if trying to decide if she was real or not, blindly putting clothes into the box.

Alyssa couldn’t say anything, so she continued to throw clothes into the carton. 

Dalton’s hands had stopped moving.  “Can we meet somewhere?  To talk?  I need to see you again.”

She looked into his eyes, which looked desperate.  “Like, a date?”

“I need to see you.  We’ve got to talk about this.  Us.”  He looked down, at the clothes at his feet.  “Don’t you think we need to?”  He ran his fingers through his hair.

“I guess so.  I mean…”

“Can you meet me tonight?”  His voice was laced with tones of anxiety.

“No.”  She answered him quickly, putting the last articles of clothing into the box and standing.  “I have my kids with me.  Monday at the Serendipity Bakery.  Four o’clock.  Can you be there?”

“I wouldn’t miss it.”  For the first time, since they had seen each other, he smiled at her, a devastating smile that weakened her knees.  Unable to control herself, she blushed furiously.

“Okay.  I’ll see you then.”  She turned to see four teenaged girls giggling furiously behind her.  Kelly was not even trying to hide her amusement, and Alyssa suspected she was behind the shriek that had interrupted the kiss.

Wow.  What a kiss it had been.

As she walked towards the truck, she hardly noticed Dalton had grabbed two boxes of clothes and was walking next to her, not saying anything.  She turned and looked at him, and he broke his gaze at her, sheepishly looking away.  But he kept walking next to her, silently.

After a while, she heard him mumble something silently.

“What?”  She asked, as they reached Jackie’s truck.

“Um…I was just saying this is weird…”  He was looking at his feet.

Dalton didn’t have a clue what to say to her.  After that kiss, he knew she was real, and he had probably made her feel like a fool for kissing her like that in front of everybody.

“Um…I’m sorry.  About kissing you like that.  I shouldn’t have done it…here.”  He
ran his hands through his hair because he was still having a hard time looking at her.  He had never had a woman make him breathless like she did.  So he didn’t look at her.  He just stood there and stared at her cute little feet, wrapped up in tennis shoes like little gray packages.

“It’s okay.”  She sounded just as nervous as he was.  “Thanks for helping with the boxes.”

“I don’t mind.  You have more?  I can help you carry all of them.”  He ventured a glance up at her, to see her studying him intently.  Her unwavering gaze sent tingles up his spine.  “What?”

“What’s weird?”

“I don’t know.  What?”

She laughed, making him feel a little stupid.  “You said this was weird.  I was wondering what’s weird?”

“Oh!  Just all of this…Us.”  He gestured his hands between them, careful not to touch her and elicit the spark that happened before, that sent his control spiraling into oblivion.

Kelly and two other girls came up behind them with the rest of the boxes, and Dalton and Alyssa put them all into the back of the pick-up truck.  Alyssa thanked e
verybody profusely for the help and looked at Dalton one last time before turning to walk back to the festival.

“Wait!  Alyssa.”  Dalton jogged to catch up to her and walked next to her as she went back.

“I can’t do this here.  I’m sorry, Dalton.  I’m supervising students, my kids are here somewhere, I…”  She suddenly looked panicked.

“I know.  It’s okay.  I just wanted to tell you that I’ll see you Monday.  Okay?”  He tentatively touched her elbow, and sure enough, the sparks flew again, and he suppressed a shiver in the warm October sunshine.

“Um…Okay.  ‘Bye Dalton,” she said, before turning to join the girls at the booth. 

Dalton grabbed Kelly and they walked into the crowd, Dalton craning his neck to watch Alyssa until she was out of sight.

“Um…Okay.  Uncle Dobby?”  Kelly started in on him.

“Don’t start Kels, please?”  Dalton gave her a warning growl.  He felt like Alyssa was too precious to let Kelly rib him about her.

Dalton and Kelly continued walking around the Festival, Kelly looking at the booths, tugging him here and there.  His heart continued to pound until they were well away from Alyssa.  He couldn’t get the deep blue pools of her eyes out of his mind, nor her windblown hair.  Wow.  She had been stunning in his dreams, but in real life, she was nothing short of exquisite.  Alyssa Fuller was enchanting.

Honestly, Dalton thought he was dreaming, until the kiss.  There was no way that could have been a dream, it was too real.  Her softness against him, mixed with the scent of her made him wonder why he had spent so much time in Dallas, when what he’d been looking for had been here all along.

Rememberin
g the freckles on her shoulders and imagining himself kissing each and every one of them, Dalton didn’t realize his niece was speaking to him until she punched him in the stomach.  “Ouch!”

“Well, where are you?  I asked you for a corn dog!”

“Jeez.  You don’t have to hit me!  Sure you can have a corn dog.”  He let her lead him to a crowd of people and stood in line to get her a gigantic corn dog. 

 Finally, he had to ask her, “Ms. Fuller is your English teacher?”

“Yeah, she’s real cool
and pretty, too.  I guess you noticed, though.”

Dalton pointedly ignored the comment.  “So, you failed her class?”

“Yeah.”

“Did you go to tutorials?
 She’s there almost every day after school, you know.”  They had gotten to the front of the line, and Dalton ordered two corn dogs with mustard and paid the cashier.

Kelly looked at her feet.
 “Um. No.  I didn’t turn in some homework, and then I forgot about one of the last test grades and didn’t turn that in either.  I just forgot stuff.  My fault.”  Trying to change the subject, she looked up at Dalton.  “How do you know Ms. Fuller anyway?”

Dalton
realized in his own confusion he had given away too much.  He couldn’t tell his sixteen-year old niece he had never actually met her English teacher but had been dreaming about her for almost a month.  So he took a bite, and chewed thoughtfully.

“I just know her.”
 Trying to drop the subject, he looked around.  “You wanna do that bungee thing?  I’ll pay for it.”

Squealing in uncontrolled ecstasy, Kelly hopped up and down, holding out her hand for the money before running off to stand in line.
 Dalton breathed a sigh of relief to have dodged that bullet.

Chapter 11

Dalton awoke from a dreamless sleep, feeling empty inside.
 Not sure how he was going to make it through the thirty-six hours or so until he could talk to Alyssa, he filled his day with his family.  Church with Mom, afternoon visit with Dad in the hospital, dinner with Renae and Kelly.

His family noticed he was quiet, and everybody except Richard commented on it at some point during the day.

At the hospital, while they were sitting in the chairs by Richard’s bedside, Mary looked at him.  “I’m not too distracted to notice something’s got you in a tizzy, Dalton.  What’s wrong?”

He smiled at her wanly.
 “Nothing’s wrong, Mom.  I promise.”

She stared at him squarely.
 “You may not want to tell me, but I can see something’s going on with you.  You seem like you’re about to jump out of your skin.  Look at your leg bouncing.  You’ve been bouncing your leg all morning.  It about drove me crazy during church.”  She looked at him appraisingly, making him slightly uncomfortable.

“Um...It’s really nothing I can talk about, Mom.
 It’s not bad, I swear.”

A knowing look came across Mary’s face.
 “Alright then.  When you want to talk, I’ll be here.  You know that, don’t you?”