Impossible Dreams, page 4
A few bars of “Dream the Impossible Dream” spilled forth and a hush fell over the audience.
W.L. took a breath so deep his eyes bulged. “There they are on the screen, people; the two entrants the judges have chosen.”
Mr. Blue Eyes darted a glance toward the screen and his mouth fell open.
“Lori Hayes and Chance Dawson!” W.L. called out.
The contest coordinator’s face wasn’t the least bit red after seeing someone else’s picture and her face, and Lori was so flustered when Chance took her hand, and kissed it, she didn’t care whose picture he’d seen. Mr. Blue Eyes was her date.
Lori couldn’t tell W.L. what he didn’t want to hear anyway. If he could pretend, so could she, and with a clear conscience. Just looking into Chance Dawson’s blue eyes, she grew breathless. “Hello, Chance,” she said softly.
His eyes widened as if she’d said something surprising. “Hello, Lori.” His voice sounded husky, sexy, and mysteriously familiar.
* * * *
Kait was waiting on Lori’s patio when she got home. Kait had a bottle of sparkling grape juice in her hand. She’d brought stemmed wine glasses along and even pushed the table into the shade.
“What are we celebrating?” Lori teased. The show was taped before a live audience but wouldn’t be aired, she learned when she arrived at the studio, until after she and Chance returned from their Dream Date. “You don’t know what happened.”
“Just showing up at the station was major, after you were railroaded into it.” Kait spoke nonchalantly, and Lori felt like hugging her for understanding how hard it was for her to go. Kait was a great transitional care nurse because she was empathetic.
“So?” Kait filled their glasses, eyes sparkling, tiny body bouncing.
Kait was always enthusiastic and curious, and Lori, sitting opposite her, couldn’t make her wait any longer. Besides, she was fairly bubbling with excitement herself. “Ta-da.” She pretended to blow a trumpet. “I am half of the winning couple, and you ought to see the other half.”
Kait cheered, toasted Lori’s success, and demanded all the details. When Lori got to Chance’s description and found herself sighing, she remembered how Lynne used to sigh over guys she met.
“You sound like a lovesick cow,” Lori would complain. “Just wait. You’ll fall in love someday,” was Lynne’s answer.
Lori wasn’t in love, but Chance Dawson’s good looks dazzled her. Her old boyfriend, Bradley, who thought he was God’s gift to women, didn’t compare.
“You don’t act like a woman who hates handsome men,” Kait said, grinning.
Lori took a slow sip from the crystal glass her neighbor provided. Kait was a romanticist who collected such things. Soft afghans. Velvet pillows. Lori set her glass down and fingered its delicate stem. “I still don’t know how I got on the Dream show, but I’m glad I did,” she confessed. I just hope I won’t be sorry later.
* * * *
When Lynne’s boyfriend brought her by to pick up her Lexus and Lori gave her the news, she was as excited as Kait. “You make that Risk guy sound like quite a catch.”
“Chance,” Lori corrected, shuddering at her sister’s choice of words. Risk sounded more negative than Chance, and “catch” sounded like she’d been actively looking for a man. “All I said was that he’s good-looking.”
“Of course—Chance.” Lynne’s color rose and she turned to look out the door at her boyfriend du jour, who was smoking a cigarette on the patio. Lynne’s apartment was decorated in brass and glass. She was the sophisticate. I wonder how others see me, Lori thought.
“It’s not what you said,” Lynne pointed out. “It’s the way your eyes shone when you said it.”
* * * *
Chance sat on the patio and thought about his upcoming weekend with Lori Hayes. She’d caught his eye with her naiveté before the judges matched them up. The other two women studied the male contestants calculatingly. Lori sat on her stool, looking scared, but when she caught him looking her way, she’d met his gaze boldly. Her eyes were the color of the grass that grew around the springhouse back home. Greener than green. And her hair looked like an autumn leaf, burnished gold. She was slim and tall, like a reed that would sway in a breeze but wouldn’t break. When he saw her “before” picture on the screen, she looked like someone he’d seen, but Lori was clearly no one he’d ever met.
Chance chuckled softly, remembering the moments after they were chosen. Photographers were popping flashes all around them when Graham stuck his head between theirs, grinning like he’d discovered a two-headed calf.
“Smile,” the contest coordinator snapped, and thanks to years of posing for cameras, Chance’s muscles reacted. Lori seemed to have developed facial paralysis, so he threaded his arm around Graham and tickled her in the ribs. She laughed—a chuckle that sounded delightfully feminine and spontaneous. But when they broke away, Lori shook her finger at Chance. “Don’t do that again.”
She’d shown spunk in the face of near disaster.
The other women went from casual in their “before” pictures to glamorous in their after shots. Lori went from puffed and polished to naturally lovely. Her “before” picture looked as if she’d already had a makeover, and he preferred her after.
Suddenly aware of someone on the patio next to his, Chance sat forward in his chair, and elbows on his knees, listened. Whoever it was sat quietly. “That you?” he asked, wondering if it was Red.
“It’s according to who you is,” a guy with a deep voice said.
“Sorry,” Chance said. Damn. If it was her blind date, she was probably sitting there ready to kill him for acting like they knew one another.
“Nice night,” the guy said.
“Yes. It is.”
The night was so still, you could have heard an ant cross the patio. Chance leaned his head against the high back of his chair. The stars looked farther away than they did in Kentucky. When he was a kid, he used to stretch out on their front stoop and look up at the sky. On a bright night, he felt he could reach for a star and touch it. But stars in the sky weren’t what he was looking for when he grew older and decided to move to the city in search of success.
He’d planned to live in St. Louis, but he let that realtor talk him into thinking he’d feel more comfortable in Eastview, ‘with its small town amenities and the city’s advantages close at hand’. He’d even let her sell him on moving into Will o’ wisp Apartments where she had ‘a charming little vacancy’. He scrubbed his eyes with his hands, imagining her boasting to her boss. This guy from the sticks took my bait and I unloaded an apartment without air conditioning. In the hottest June on record.
He grew up without even a fan, so he figured he could live without an air conditioner, and he’d needed a place fast. All his worldly belongings were stashed in the trunk of his car, and his job with the Winifred Heights branch of Consolidated started the following day.
Thin walls, the only other possible complaint about his apartment, led to interesting conversations with Red. And it was in the laundry room at the apartment house that he discovered the entry blank for the contest.
There was a pad of them on the folding table, and with the closing date for entries the next day, he’d been fortunate to have photos from his modeling portfolio. He’d driven to the post office to mail his entry. Seventy-two hours later, he received a letter saying he’d been selected as a finalist. It was hard to believe it all came about so fast.
Smoke drifted over the redwood divider. The guy was smoking a cigarette. The patio door slid open and he heard footsteps. Red had been inside and was coming out and didn’t know Chance was on his patio. “Sorry I kept you waiting, darling,” she said.
The smoker rose and Chance heard them kiss. Damn. His red-haired neighbor warmed up to a blind date fast.
* * * *
Lori sat on the patio after Lynne and her new love left. She’d heard Calvin slam his patio door about the same time and thought he might have been coming out. But it was quiet next door and she wondered if he’d left too, going out the other way. He probably wouldn’t care to hear about the TV show anyway, but she didn’t care to hear his tapes and didn’t have a choice. It helped to talk about what was on her mind. She sneezed and no one spoke up from the other patio.
A breeze picked up, stirring Kait’s wind chimes. They were tuned and the melody soothed Lori. Yawning, she went inside where she raised a window, hoping she’d be able to sleep. Calvin’s apartment remained quiet except for an occasional whine. Had he gone out and left his dog alone? Or was her neighbor trying to fall asleep in a quiet apartment?
Whatever, it was just as well. If she started talking to him, she might get wound up again. Appearing on TV and meeting Chance was the most exciting event in her entire life. Lori punched her pillow and thought about Chance Dawson’s dreamy blue eyes and black hair. She knew better than to fall for a guy so handsome, but it couldn’t hurt to entertain a few illusions, knowing a weekend together would dispel them.
He’d act conceited, she’d be turned off, and that would be the end of anything that might have developed, but they’d each get a Corvette. If she and Chance convinced W.L. they were falling in love. Whatever it took to do that.
“Did you have fun on your blind date?”
Calvin sounded surly, and she wondered if he’d been home all the time and was ticked about something. He might not be able to sleep without listening to music or tapes and blamed her for his insomnia. Gazing at the wall, she tried to think what blind date he was talking about.
“Oh, you mean my Drea...uh...dreamy date.” Was he still worried about her contracting a disease? If so, he’d freak if he learned she was spending an entire weekend with Chance. Or Risk, as Lynne mistakenly called him. Lori, who never left home without an umbrella if there was a dark cloud in the sky, should take that slip of the tongue to heart. It was a good thing Calvin hadn’t been home when she’d thought of confiding in him. “It was okay.”
Calvin groaned. “I hope you took my advice.”
She rolled her eyes toward the ceiling. She didn’t plan to have sex with Chance but would buy some condoms, in case his blue eyes proved irresistible. However, she didn’t need anyone else telling her what to do. Least of all, a neighbor. Her own mother wouldn’t have openly approached the subject. Even gutsy Lynne butted out when it came to intimate relations. “If you’re asking if I had safe sex, it’s none of your business.”
“Fine. Screw around with a stranger who smokes and will probably die of cancer.”
Lori stared at the wall. How would he know if Chance smoked? And why was Calvin so angry? It was none of his business, and she lay quietly, hoping he’d think she’d gone to sleep.
The quiet was more than she could stand. He was only looking out for her well-being, and it would be better to tell a fib than lose a friend. “Did I say dreamy? If I did, it’s because I was half asleep. I meant to say it was a dreary date.”
Calvin turned on his stereo full blast.
* * * *
W.L. Graham met Chance and Lori at the TV studio Friday afternoon and told them to have a wonderful weekend. He’d see them back there next week, on Saturday’s live broadcast, when they’d learn if they qualified for the house or cars.
Then he handed them over to his henchmen who rushed the “lucky dream couple” down a narrow deserted hall, out a side door, and into a black limo with one white door. Graham’s men climbed in the front seat and left Chance to open the back door for his date.
“Some manners,” he muttered.
“Some limo,” Lori whispered, tossing a Big Mac wrapper off the seat.
A TV crew was taping their departure, selectively, Chance imagined. A breeze from the open door caught the wrapper and carried it away, just missing the driver’s head.
“I’m Pierre, your chauffeur,” he said, tipping his cap. Chance knew a Kentucky accent when he heard one, but who was he to say his mother hadn’t named him Pierre?
The other guy slipped in a CD and organ music filled the air, along with a fragrance that smelled like the Evening in Paris cologne his grandma wore to church on Sunday mornings. Chance folded his hands in his lap without thinking and almost reached for a hymnbook. “Mac’s my handle,” the ambiance guy said. “I’m your chaperone.” His chuckle grated like fingernails on a washboard.
Lori sat with her back as stiff as starch. “Where are we going, Mr. Mac?”
Chance fought to control his laughter, but she felt him shaking and elbowed his ribs fiercely. “It doesn’t hurt to make a good impression.”
He didn’t think Mac held that much clout but didn’t dispute the point. She looked so cute when she got her feathers up, he rather enjoyed it.
Mac took so long to answer, Lori repeated her question without calling him by name. “To the airport,” he replied finally.
“Air?” Lori choked on the word. “Why?”
“That’s where people catch planes,” Mac said, tossing a grin over his shoulder as Pierre squealed the tires, stopping the limousine a horseshoe’s throw from an airstrip. A prop plane stood ready, propeller whirring, body trembling.
“No.” Lori buried her head against Chance’s chest. “I don’t fly. I won’t. I’m afraid of heights.” She felt fragile, and he slipped his arms around her and held her close.
“It’s a short trip. No sooner will we be up than we’ll go down,” Mac said.
“In a million pieces in someone’s field.”
Mac laughed heartily.
“Please don’t let them make me,” she whispered, raising her face to whisper in Chance’s ear. Her breath was warm and tickly and smelled like peppermint.
He rubbed her back and held her close, enjoying the smell and feel of her in his arms. He hated to let her down, but how in hell could they reach an island unless they flew? He asked her politely and she said it was his fault. “You kept looking at me and I was distracted. I just heard ‘weekend together’.”
Chance found it flattering that she was so flustered by his gaze, and the prospect of spending a weekend with him, she’d missed the fact that the exotic spot they’d been promised was a tropical island. But he didn’t believe they had a choice, unless they wanted to give up their opportunity to win a house. Lori looked pale and her clenched knuckles appeared bloodless. “I’ll keep you safe,” he said, folding her closer.
“Right,” she shot back, pulling away from him. “I suppose you have a life raft on you.”
Chance looked out the limo window closest to him. It wasn’t a life raft nudging her. Damn. He must be some kind of weirdo to be turned on by a woman who was a trembling mass of jelly one moment and a spitfire the next.
Photographers jumped from a car and stood poised, waiting for a shot. Graham wormed his way out of the front seat of a Mercedes and approached the runway. Mac threw open the door on Chance’s side and motioned him and Lori out. “Had a little run-in with a fireplug the other day,” he apologized. “Gotta get that passenger-side door fixed.”
Lori stood frozen while flashes popped. “Look happy,” W.L. shouted, and she curled her lip like a rabid dog. Chance smiled naturally and when the camera crew drove away, she shot him a dirty look.
“Show-off.”
“Let’s go,” Mac yelled over the sound of the plane’s engine. Pierre left the limo and ran for the plane. When he saw Chance and Lori weren’t coming, he came back for them. Lori planted her feet firmly on the ground and hung onto Chance’s arm. “I’m not going in that death trap.”
Mac tried to nudge Chance out of the way, and he wrapped his arms around her protectively. “Give us a minute, will you?”
