A Dream to Cling To Read Online Free PDF Page B

in them. “Of course not,” he said soothingly. “I wouldn’t expect that. You shouldn’t shortchange
your
job for my job.”
    “Yes. I mean no, I shouldn’t. And I won’t. That’s firm.”
    “Right, firm.” He nodded again. “And it’s no problem, Brittany, because the only equipment I need in the beginning stages of a game is a yellow pad and plenty of pencils. I’ll just tag along—”
    “Tag along?”
    “Sure. We can talk as you work. When does your day start?”
    “Oh,
early
. Very, very early.”
Tag along?
She looked down at Dunkin for help. He was sound asleep, his head dropped comfortably on Sam’s left boot. “Much too early for a businessman, I’m afraid.”
    “Try me. How early?”
    “I usually begin the day at the veterinarian clinic about seven.” Her concentration began to falter as her gaze fell on the shadow of a beard shading his strong, square chin. He was a … very … sexy … man. Only great effort kept her hand from moving of its own volition to stroke the dark dusting of whiskers.
    “Seven o’clock is perfect,” he said. “I can get a short run in before breakfast and meet you at the clinic.” He stood and rotated his shoulders slowly. “This is great. See, Brittany, it wasn’t so difficult, was it? We’ve laiddown the rules, and now we’re off and running. You’ll share your life—your father’s life—with me, I’ll help you, and in between everything else, maybe you and I can become friends. Who knows, maybe we’ll come up with a game about a beautiful woman named Britt—”
    “You’re a dreamer, Sam Lawrence.” She laughed now and found it fenced off the more unmanageable emotions. “Don’t push your luck.”
    He shook his head and held her still with the intensity of his look. “I don’t push luck, Brittany. It simply saunters right along with me, usually. If not, I go out and find it. But today, I’d have to say, it seems to have swept me directly off my feet.”
    He didn’t touch her, but the husky richness beneath his words was more intimate than an embrace. Brittany held her smile steady. “Good night, Sam. I guess I’ll see you in the morning. But let me warn you, I won’t have time to concentrate. You’ll have to take what you can get. And it might not be much.”
    He laughed, undeterred. “My whole life’s a risk, Brittany. Don’t you worry about a thing.” He shrugged back into the jacket and headed for the door.
    “Sam?”
    With one hand on the doorknob he looked back into the softly lit room. “Yes, Brittany?”
    “Those rules … I mean it. I’m not comfortable with this whole thing, with someone looking into our lives. It’s not like that, you know. Life. It’s not really a game.”
    She was wrong there, he thought. Life
was
a game in a way. You played it hard, explored all its wonderful facets. But he knew this wasn’t the time to get philosophical with Brittany Winters. He nodded, touched two fingers to his forehead in a friendly salute as he said good night, and stepped out into the cold.
    The sky was inky black, studded with starlight. He stood there for a minute, his hands stuffed into the pockets of his jacket. He picked out the Pleiades andcounted its stars slowly. It was a perfect night for getting his telescope out.
    His gaze shifted to Orion and the two tiny pinpoints of light that blinked off the Hunter’s shoulders. Then he noticed it, the moon hanging against the velvety blackness, clearly visible in the winter night, with only a thin illumination circling its muted blue surface. A clear, bigger-than-life blue moon, its wrinkled face looking back at him quizzically. Sam pulled his collar up to his ears and stared back for a minute, then matched the moon’s creviced smile with one of his own.
    Peering out the tiny window beside the door, Brittany could see Sam standing against the blackness, his breath rising in feathery swirls in the cold air. His broad shoulders were pushed back. And for a minute she