Shadows of Yesterday

Oxygen-starved, they pulled apart. He laid his fevered cheek against hers. Her arms had long since wound around his back. Their wheezing breaths echoed through the quiet room.

Slowly he stepped away from her and brushed back a strand of her hair. Leaning forward, he dropped a chaste kiss on her lips. “Good night, Leigh. I’ll be in touch.” As an afterthought at the door, he added, “Oh, and thanks for supper.”

Chapter Three

Leigh lay in bed the next morning long after the alarm had gone off. Not that she had needed it to awaken her. She hadn’t slept well and dawn was a welcome relief from the tossing and turning that had plagued her through the night.

She had watched dumbstruck as Chad had picked up his navy blue blazer, shrugged into it, and left by the front door. As he had turned to deliver his farewell line, he had winked at her affectionately. For several moments she had stared at the door, not believing what had happened, not believing the very existence of Chad Dillon.

What kind of man was he? On first sight, she had pegged him dirty and possibly dangerous. His calm acceptance of her predicament and the sensitive manner in which he’d helped her through it had changed her mind. By the time he had left her in the hospital, she had regarded him as a diamond in the rough. Yet last night he had shown her still other facets of himself. His clothes bespoke elegance and sophistication, his manner breeding and education, not to mention charm. And his kiss…

He intrigued her and she admitted it. She still didn’t know exactly what he did for a living, where he lived. For all practical purposes, he was still the stranger who had spoken to her through her car window.

Yet she had returned his kiss with an ardor she hadn’t known she possessed. She had never considered herself a sensual being. She and Greg had enjoyed a healthy, if not often hurried, sex life, but she didn’t remember ever feeling quite as transported as she had last night when Chad had kissed her. Sharing Greg’s bed had been only an extension of the love she had for him. She strongly suspected that intimacy with Chad would take on a dimension she couldn’t even guess at. It would be an event unto itself.

Long after he had left, she experienced pangs of arousal that were unknown to her, a sinking weightiness in the pit of her stomach, a tingling in her breasts, a fluttering in her throat.

As she got into bed, she was aware of the softness of the sheets against her calves, her thighs. The scent of Chad’s woodsy cologne still clung faintly to her hair. Each time she moved, the friction of her nightgown against her breasts forced her to focus on their permanent agitation. She tried to still her restlessness by hugging her pillow to her breasts, but was dissatisfied by its yielding softness. Not at all like the hard impregnability of Chad’s chest.

She was acutely aware of each sound, sight, touch, and smell around her. Her tongue sought delicious reminders of Chad’s taste by frequently licking her kiss-swollen lips. It was as though her imprisoned senses had been freed to indulge themselves in an orgy of new and rare stimuli. Her mind wallowed in hedonistic fantasies.

She wanted a man.

Her face scarlet with shame and guilt, she buried it in the pillow she held to her chest. How long had it been? Well over a year. As embarrassing as it was for a new mother to be thinking of such things, Leigh knew that she wanted a man’s weight beside her, inside her.

No, not “a man.” She wanted Chad.

And even now, in the light of morning, the allure hadn’t worn off. “This is stupid, ridiculous,” Leigh chided herself as she flung back the covers and stepped out of the bed. “Especially for a femme fatale who doesn’t even own a coffee pot.” She pulled on a thick velour robe. During the night a classic Norther had blown in.

Sarah was just beginning to stir as Leigh leaned over the crib. “Good morning, sweetheart,” she said, turning the baby over onto her back. “I’ll get you a dry diaper and then you can eat breakfast,” Leigh cooed as she rid Sarah of her sodden diaper.

“We’ll probably never see him again, Sarah,” she told her baby. “He only came by to satisfy his curiosity that we were all right.” She pinned the new diaper on and carried Sarah into the kitchen.

“So what if he kissed your mother? He kissed like a professional. No telling how many women he practiced on to perfect that technique. He probably had a date broken at the last minute and had nothing better to do than to come see us. What do you think?”

Sarah sputtered her gastronomic delight over the cereal and peaches being spooned into her mouth.

“He’s really very attractive. Tall, lean, and… uh… hard. Sarah, when he held me against him, I wanted to dissolve. But he’s not brutal,” she clarified quickly, wiping the baby’s mouth with a damp paper towel. “I don’t want you to get that impression. He’s masterful but gentle. His mouth is… and his hands… I wonder what they feel like when… but then I know because he touched me when you were born. But that was different. It wasn’t like making…

“I can’t imagine why I’m thinking about… When you get older, you’ll understand, Sarah.”

Chad remained the topic of conversation over breakfast, but Sarah didn’t seem to mind. She splashed through her bath, listening to her mother’s surmises about him. But even when they were dressed and bundled and leaving the house, the subject of Chad Dillon hadn’t been completely exhausted.

* * *

“I want them to look like they’re suspended in air, not as though they’re hanging from the ceiling,” Leigh said to the crew of maintenance workers clustered around her. “Understand? Santa’s reindeer are supposed to fly. So let them hang, say,” she glanced up at the reflecting ceiling of the mall, “uh… say, two and a half feet from the ceiling. Minimum. That filament is guaranteed not to break.”

“What if it does and a giant reindeer falls on an unsuspecting shopper?”

The voice that spoke dangerously close to her ear was low and deep and instantly recognizable. She whirled around to see Chad standing behind her. “Hi,” he grinned. “I’ll sue if Rudolph falls on me while I’m Christmas shopping.”

“He wouldn’t hurt you,” she quipped. “He’s papier mâché and hollow.”

“So am I. Hollow I mean. How about lunch?”

He was a cowboy again. Only this time the jeans, though as tight as before, were clean and new. The blue plaid Western-cut shirt was partially covered by a shearling vest, and he was holding a black felt Stetson in his hand. Leigh couldn’t resist looking at his feet. The dusty cracked boots had been replaced by a pair of black lizard ones in perfect condition.

“Hey, Chad, how’s things?”