Handful of Dreams Read Online Free PDF

with no one to hear her but the whipping wind and the rain. Ruefully she realized that she was dripping wet, that not only her shoes, but also her entire outfit was probably ruined. And that she—like an idiot!—was standing in the water while lightning coursed the sky.
    But still she stood there, such a sizzle of pain and anger and outrage that her mind seemed too overcrowded to function correctly. She couldn’t shake the image of the man—not the father but the son. She had lied; he was a great deal like his father. His eyes were so much the same, such a sharp, keen blue, seeming to assess so much more than what was seen by the naked eye.
    “The man is blind!” she said raggedly.
    She closed her eyes against the rain, hating him savagely, remembering the way he had spoken to her, the way he had touched her. How dare he judge what he knew nothing about? And, once, she had been so eager to meet him. Peter had always talked about his son and shown her pictures. David at sixteen, soot-smeared face, helmet in his hand, grinning away on the high school football field. David in his Air Force uniform, clean-cropped, solemn, and beautiful as only a handsome young man could be. David a few years later, in what Peter jokingly called his Bohemian years, a man with overly long dark hair, his arm around a beautiful blond, scowling at the photographer.
    David as a chubby, angelic baby, naked on a bearskin rug, his dark hair a riot of curls, his toothless smile a mile wide.
    “Bearskin rugs were ‘in’ in those days!” Peter had told her ruefully, his eyes sparkling. “David hates this picture. He always warns me that he’ll box my ears if I show it to anyone!”
    And then there was the portrait of David on the sailboat, standing tall as he held the rigging, his broad shoulders covered in a red turtleneck, muscled thighs arresting in jeans. He was looking out to sea in that picture, framed by the sail and the sky and the water beyond, and something about the photo denoted a man of pride, of vital interest in the world around him. All of the fine breeding of his father’s features were in his own high cheekbones, square and level jaw, long straight nose, dark jutting brows, and eyes as deep and as endless as the sea. There was a slight smile on his lips; it gave him the look of an adventurer of old. It spoke of humor and sensuality and even tenderness, and it had made Susan long to meet such a man. He would be Peter’s son, as fascinating as the father….
    Or so she had envisioned—until she had been shown into his elegant office and informed that she should go to Peter for money since she was his father’s mistress—not his!
    “I tried!” Susan muttered. “You despicable bastard! You can take your beach house and—”
    She broke off as a wave rose like a blanket of gray darkness, smacking her in the face and filling her mouth and throat with seawater. Her hand slipped from the rock with the force of the water, and as the wave receded, the sand was washed out from beneath her feet. She fell, flailing, but in no panic. She knew this shore. The wave would rush out and she would find her footing again. She berated herself for not paying attention to the storm, to the force of the wind and rain that had cascaded against her. It was that horrible David Lane! She’d never known such absolute fury in her life, and it had completely stripped her of wit and good sense.
    Susan staggered to her knees, teeth chattering suddenly, as if her body had just realized how cold the sea and rain and wind were. She planted a foot in the sand but it slipped, and she was thrown into the next wave that ravaged the shore. This time the water filled not only her nose and mouth but also her lungs, and as the wave receded, it carried her body with it. She was picked up as easily as a feather, buffeted, dragged, and buffeted again. The water had closed around her like an icy shroud.
    Then she did panic. She could swim; she knew the treacherous