Dream Lover Read online

  He removed his wallet from his inner coat pocket. He placed a hundred dollar bill on the counter. “Very well, if you are certain that you will not barter the ticket for the herbs, this should more than cover the cost.”

  “Oh dear. I’m not open for business officially yet. I have limited money in the till. I cannot change that.”

  “I fear that I have nothing smaller. Will you take a charge plate?”

  She shook her head negatively. “My authorization to do so does not begin until tomorrow. So, please have the herbs as a gift,” she offered, quite eager to have this disturbing man gone from the shop. “Or take enough of the herbs so that you have a large supply. Flea season will be upon us in earnest soon. You will need these things for your dog.”

  He smiled at her. “Do I make you nervous?” he asked.

  “That’s a stupid question. Of course you make me nervous. Only a fool wouldn’t be nervous. And I’ve seldom—accurately—been called a fool.”

  He smiled. “You are truthful. Know this, Edwina. I will never harm you, or allow any harm to come to you. You are absolutely as safe with me as you want to be. Always.”

  “I have no doubt of that.”

  “I gently care for the people who are dear to me.”

  “I’ve been taking care of myself for a very long time. Here. Take back your money. Accept the pennyroyal as a gift.”

  “Take the money. Open an account for the excess. I am quite certain that we have not done our final business with one another. Lock the door after me. Anyone could have walked in on you.” Then he gathered his things and was out the door before she could ask him his last name.

  Quickly, securely, she triple locked the door behind him once he was outside. Then she lifted the edge of the window shade and looked out. She stood there and watched him climb into the back of his big black limousine. She watched the luxury car with the dark windows drive away.

  Chills ran down her spine. The man knew her name. And she didn’t know whom he was or where to find him.

  She wasn’t sure she liked having any part of her dreams about him confirmed. In fact, she was completely certain that she didn’t like it. Nor, did she like the fact that she had let him leave without getting his full name. But one thing she was sure of, he had purposefully not introduced himself. It was part of some grandiose plan of his. She wasn’t sure that she liked that either. After he was gone, she locked down the bars on the front window and door. Then she quickly went back to work.

  The shop was slated to open in the morning. Yet the shop wasn’t yet quite ready for the public. There was still quite a bit of work to be done. She didn’t have time to think about that man. She could not get him out of her mind.

  Who was he? Why had he come here, tonight of all nights? Had he simply seen the lights on and decided to stop on the odd chance that the shop would carry herbs? Nothing about that scenario seemed in keeping with the man’s personality. He seemed to be far too organized and driven to be doing anything on the spur of the moment. He had planned this meeting.

  “Yeah, right,” she argued with herself. “So that invitation to the Opera was planned?”

  The more she thought about the man, the more confused she became. She couldn’t deny the fact that she found him both exciting and appealing. All Edwina knew, for certain, was the man utterly fascinated her. He had fascinated her for a very long time. Who was he, really? What did he want? Why did she find him so interesting?

  She’d been around handsome and forceful men all her life. None of them had made her heart flutter the way this man did. None of them had made her want to abandon a lifetime’s training in ethics as this man had. She had wanted, had felt nearly compelled, to leave everything and go with him. She had wanted to say ‘yes’ to his dinner invitation. She had wanted to spend the evening with him at the Opera. If truth were to be known, she wanted to spend more than just the evening with him. His idea of taking her to bed and keeping her there for days or weeks sounded awfully good to her.

  Catherine’s form materialized out of nothing in front of her in the shop. The ambient temperature in the room went down by exactly ten degrees. Edwina had forbidden the shade to enter her greenhouses for that reason. The plants could not tolerate the sudden temperature changes.

  “As a matter of fact, that’s one creature who doesn’t do anything without planning it out well ahead of time,” the shade said. “He has plans for you, my dear.”

  “What sort of plans?”

  “I can’t tell you more than that, except to warn you that seduction is the least of his designs for you.”

  “Why can’t you say more than that?”

  “It would be against the rules. I can’t interfere in the ways of the living,” the shade said. “I have already come perilously close to the line. I will not cross it.”

  “Convenient rules you have there, Catherine,” Edwina replied.

  “Not especially,” the shade acknowledged wryly. “I can tell you this. You must be extremely careful around him. He wants to possess you—body, mind, and soul. And he’ll use any method he has to use to get that job done. He’s dangerous to you, Edwina.”

  “How so?”

  The shade shook her head. “I have told you more than I should have. I can tell you nothing more.”

  “I’ve got work to do. Go away.”

  Catherine faded out.

  Edwina shook her head negatively. “I’ve gone completely over the edge talking with a figment of my imagination.”

  The shade faded in again. Edwina felt the temperature drop once more. She turned around and faced the shade.

  “I am not a figment of your imagination, Edwina. I am very real,” the shade said.

  “I’m not quite certain I believe that.”

  The apparition smiled softly. “I know that you are still uncertain. This is part and parcel of all that academic training of yours. You have been trained to question everything. Some things, Edwina, you must simply accept because they are.”

  “I don’t question everything.”

  “Don’t you?” Catherine demanded.

  “Maybe I do. So tell me about the gentleman who was just here?”

  The shade shuddered. “That one is no gentleman, believe me. He’s ruthless going after what he wants. At this time, you are what he wants. Be careful. Be very careful around him. Don’t trust him. He’s dangerous. And that’s all I’m going to say about him.”

  “Who is he?”

  “That, my dear, is precisely the wrong question,” the shade said as she faded.

  Chapter Two

  Edwina didn’t have time to wonder what the right question would be. Very quickly, she returned to work finalizing stocking and making sure that everything would be ready for the opening.

  She could not quite get him off her mind. She had known him intimately in her dreams for so many years that she could not help comparing her dreams to the reality of his existence. There was one thing that she knew without a shadow of a doubt. She found him fascinating. Make that two things—he wasn’t going to disappear. He wanted something from her, something important to him. Now that he had made his presence known to her, she would be seeing him often. There was no doubt of that.

  Edwina wasn’t at all sure how she felt about any of this. On one hand, she was excited. On the other hand, she was afraid. Overall, she was suspicious.

  He’d called her beautiful. She was under no illusions that she was beautiful, not at least in any classical sense of that word. Several of her cousins were classically beautiful. Yet Edwina had always been and still was too tall, too freckled, and too angular in her figure to be considered particularly beautiful.

  Oh she wasn’t ugly. Small children never had run screaming from her. While her female cousins and friends had boyfriends, Edwina had always had boys who were friends. When she had been beyond the stage of keeping company with boys, she had men friends. Very few of those men over the years had expressed a desire for the friendship to progress into so
mething more intimate.

  She had always been comparing those friends to the lover she had always embraced in her dreams. Compared to the man of her dreams, her male friends had faded into insignificance. She realized that whether she had wanted to do so or not, she had spent most of her life waiting for this man to make himself known to her.

  Now Klaus, her dream lover, had appeared unexpectedly on her doorstep. What she was going to do about him was another matter entirely. He had called her beautiful. Every woman was entitled to the fantasy that a fine man thought her beautiful.

  Was he a fine man? That was the question. If he were pouring on the charm in order to achieve another goal, to wrest some advantage from the relationship, then clearly he was not a fine man. There was something very strange about this meeting—something that she didn’t care for at all. Yet she couldn’t quite define it, other than her unease at having her dream lover suddenly appear.

  Edwina gave the shop one final look-over at midnight before she shut off the lights and went upstairs to her apartment. She had bought this building simply because she could put the shop downstairs in the one empty street level shop space and easily live upstairs above the shops, having plenty of room for her experimental greenhouse.

  Heather the cat walked up to her and rubbed herself against Edwina’s leg. Picking up the sleek Siamese cat, Edwina walked over to the window seat in the front window of her upstairs apartment and sat down.

  The phone rang. She answered the phone by reciting the number.

  “Edwina Johnson?” Klaus asked. His voice was unmistakable as she had heard it often enough in her dreams.

  “Who wants to know?”

  He laughed, then spoke in rapid German, “Fraulein, I wish that you would consent to having dinner with me at a restaurant of your choice this evening.”

  “To whom am I speaking?” Edwina demanded, answering him in equally rapid German.

  He laughed again. “My name is Klaus von Bruner. You sold me some pennyroyal a few hours ago. Do you recall?”

  A shiver ran down her spine. She hadn’t ever heard his last name, in spite of the years of the dreams. Von Bruner. That name sounded vaguely familiar. There was a family connection to some von Bruner family of Bavaria. But how they were connected was vague in her mind. She’d have to ask her grandmother for more details on that. She had only been half listening all those times that her grandmother had seemingly endlessly lectured her on the family history.

  “My memory is unimpaired, Herr von Bruner,” Edwina said quietly.

  “Don Giovanni was excellent. You would have enjoyed it greatly.”

  “Indeed, I expected nothing less from the performance, since the dress rehearsal was so very good. I am glad that you enjoyed the Opera.”

  “I would have enjoyed it more with you beside me.”

  “No, I don’t think so. I think we would have been all too absorbed with one another to even hear the music. At least this way, one of us had the chance to enjoy it. That’s better than both of us being there, and neither of us enjoying the music because our minds were absorbed with fantasies about the other.”

  She could hear the masculine satisfaction in his voice, as he answered, “You may be correct in that, Liebling. You may well be correct. Do you fantasize about me?”

  Edwina wondered why was she being so up-front with him. Was it because he had stated a preference for straightforwardness? Or was it because she—deep down—trusted him, as she had never trusted anyone else? She didn’t want to think about this too deeply.

  “Edwina? Are you still there?”

  “Yes.”

  “Have dinner with me after your shop closes today?”

  “I have given you my answer once, Herr von Bruner. It remains a resolute no.”

  “Dare I ask why you hesitate?”

  “I am certain that you would dare to ask any question that crosses your mind. I have not seen any lack of boldness in your manner. If anything, perhaps you could use instruction in not speaking your mind quite so bluntly.”

  He laughed in genuine amusement. “I am a blunt man.”

  “I had noticed.”

  “Would you kindly explain yourself as to why you will not dine with me?”

  “I am under no obligation to give you any answers. I’ve already told you why I had turned down your earlier invitation. You are a stranger. I do not know you. I do not know people who have told me that they know you. I do not socialize with strangers. It’s just that simple.”

  “You don’t socialize with strangers, but you would have gone anywhere this stranger led you,” he stated smoothly. “Had I not backed away, you would have given your virginity to me without reservation, would you not have?”

  “My behavior was an aberration. I’m not particularly proud of it.”

  “No, my dearest, it was not an aberration,” he said sharply. “Were I with you right now, you would respond exactly the same way to me, and you know it.”

  “I assure you that I have never displayed that degree of wantonness before in my life!”

  He offered softly, “That should tell you something rather important about the attraction between us, Edwina. Should it not?”

  “It tells me that being alone with you is not a safe action to take at the moment, and may never be a safe action. And that I should probably avoid it at all costs.”

  “You are as safe with me as you want to be, Edwina. I will never take anything from you that you do not freely give.”

  “That, Herr von Bruner is the problem,” she replied. “You touch me and I forget about a lifetime of habits of caution. I don’t know you. I don’t know anything really about you. Where do you come from? What do you value? How do you spend your time, aside from seducing women and attending operas? We’re clearly compatible physically. There’s no denying that. I wouldn’t even try to. Still, sex, love, and commitment are inviolably tied together in my mind. I don’t know enough about you to commit. Yet you own my body. It’s all very confusing.”

  “I know it is confusing for you. My body, my soul, are yours as well, Edwina. I am your devoted servant.”

  “Are you?”

  “Of course I am. I will give you anything that you want. What do you want?”

  “A proper introduction and reference would be a beginning.”

  “You are an old-fashioned lady,” he observed. “It seems I shall simply have to secure an introduction and references from one of your close personal acquaintances. Then you would no longer have an excuse—I would be known, to you and yours. I am certain it would be no difficulty to secure an introduction. We do have mutual friends.”

  “Who?”

  “You might be quite surprised.”

  “That would still be no guarantee I would socialize with you,” she warned dryly, in German. “I know a great many men with whom I will not date. And frankly, you frighten me.”

  “Now, Edwina, you said earlier that you weren’t frightened of me.”

  “Upon further reflection, I’ve changed my mind.”

  “Ah, Liebling, are you frightened of me, or of your reaction to me?”

  “I don’t know, Klaus. I just don’t know. I’ve been trying to decide that myself.”

  “Fair enough, Edwina. We have given each other much to think about this night.”

  “Above everything else, you are a fair man,” she added in English.

  “I always try to be so. Very well,” he said, not at all perturbed by her switch of languages or by her answer, “I stand suitably warned. By the way, did you think of me?”

  “What do you believe?”

  “I believe I have been very much on your mind, my dear.”

  “That’s what you wanted, isn’t it?”

  “Only the very beginning of the desire,” Klaus answered. “Shall I tell you what else I desire?”

  “I’d be most interested in knowing what you really want from me,” Edwina said firmly. “I’m not exactly a woman who inspires any large degree of passion in
men. So what do you really want from me and why are you trying to manipulate me with sex in order to get it?”

  He was quiet for a long moment. “That is blunt speaking indeed. And it is incredibly wrong. Who made you doubt your beauty or desirability, Edwina?”

  “I do want an answer to my question. What do you really want from me? Besides sex?”

  “I will leave you to make up your own mind as to what forces compel me to seek you as we grow to know one another. Yet, know this—I am determined to win your heart.”

  “There are those who would say that I have no heart to win, or if I do that my heart—like a winter road—is ice covered and hazardous.”

  “You are purposefully attempting to discourage me. Why?”

  “Why don’t I let you figure that one out? I’m sure that I’m not the only one who is a habitual analyzer of events and people.”

  He laughed. She wished that she didn’t love the sound of his laughter so. “Very well, Edwina. I shall think about it.”

  “It is late, or rather quite early,” she replied in German.

  “It is.”

  “Why are you calling me now?”

  “You were on my mind, Edwina.”

  “You are aware, of course, that this is an incredibly inconvenient hour at which to call anyone.”

  “You were up. I suspect you have not been long out of your shop after putting the last minute before opening touches on it.”

  “You suspect? Or are you having me watched?”

  “You are suspicious, aren’t you?”

  “Just answer the question. Are you having me watched?”

  “I’ve not hired surveillance.”

  There was something about the way he said that. Edwina couldn’t quite put her finger on it, but it made her profoundly suspicious.

  “Who is paying for the surveillance, then?” Edwina demanded. “And how did you get the report in real time?”

  Klaus was quiet for a long moment. “Are you always this suspicious?”

  “Not always,” she admitted.

  “Then I make you uneasy?”

  “Don’t flatter yourself.”