Scrooge and the Single Girl. Christine Rimmer

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СКАЧАТЬ eerily in the moonlight, watching her. Jilly stretched out a hand.

      And Missy vanished—or rather, she faded away, first becoming transparent and then, poof, gone. Just like that.

      Jilly pondered her cat’s Cheshire-like disappearance. All was not as it should be.

      And who was that skinny old woman standing at the foot of the bed, the one in the quilted blue bathrobe and the ruffled hairnet, the one with the face that vaguely resembled Caitlin Bravo’s? The one with Will’s blue, blue eyes?

      “Mavis?”

      The old woman nodded. Imagine that. First, her cat literally faded away. And now she was being treated to a visitation from Mad Mavis McCormack.

      “This is a dream, right?”

      Mad Mavis smiled. For such an old, wrinkled woman, she had surprisingly white, straight teeth. She stepped forward—right through the bed—and held out her hand.

      “Oh, I don’t think so,” Jilly said.

      But Mavis just went on standing there, her lower half disappearing into the bed, holding out that bony hand until Jilly looked down and discovered that she’d taken that hand, after all.

      The walls around them were melting, the bed disappearing. Jilly closed her eyes.

      When she opened them, she and Mavis still held hands, but now they stood side-by-side. There was another bed in front of them. A man lay sleeping on that bed, facing away from them. Jilly knew who the man was even before she noticed the curtain on the other side of the bed—the one that led to the living area and was printed with palm trees.

      “Mavis, I am begging you,” Jilly whispered. “Don’t do this to me. Okay, maybe for a minute or two, for a fraction of a nanosecond, I might have been attracted to him. But not anymore. It’s really over, you know? I mean, it never even got started. I don’t want anything to do with him. I just want to forget he even exists. And I most certainly don’t want him taking up space in my dreams.”

      Mavis began fading backward, her skinny old hand passing out of Jilly’s grip without either of then actually letting go. She floated toward the corner of the room, drifting past the ladder-back rocker under the window, insinuating herself between the far wall and an old dresser with a yellowed lace runner and a streaked mirror in a heavily carved frame.

      “Mavis,” Jilly hissed. “I am so not happy about this.”

      From the shadows between the dresser and the wall, Mavis gazed at Jilly, mournful reproach in those big, blue eyes.

      “Mavis. Let me make myself perfectly clear.” Jilly raised her voice to a shout. “Get me out of here!”

      But Mavis only stood there—well, hovered there, really. Her pale, bony toes—just visible behind the dark shape of the dresser—didn’t quite seem to be touching the floor.

      Jilly looked at the dream-Will, lying there on the bed, sound asleep. Her shouting hadn’t disturbed him in the least. He turned over with a sigh, but didn’t open his eyes.

      Okay. She’d admit it. With his eyes closed, not scowling, Will Bravo was a hunk and a half. In this dream of hers, he slept nude—or at least, nude from the waist up. She couldn’t tell about the rest of him. The blankets covered that. He had shoulders for days. And beautiful, muscled arms…

      “No. Not. No way.” Jilly blinked furiously in an effort to make the sleeping, too-tempting Will vanish. He didn’t. She insisted, as if anyone was listening, “I said I’m not interested, and I am a woman who says just what she means.” She whirled toward the corner where Mavis should have been hovering. “You had better get me out of—”

      But the old woman was gone.

      “Jilly.” The deep, lazy voice came from behind her.

      “Oh, no. Forget it. I am not turning around.”

      “Jilly…”

      “I am not going to look. I am not even going to…” Well, all right, maybe just one little glance.

      She sneaked a quick peek. He was sitting up, holding out his fine, long-fingered hand to her, looking at her tenderly, pleadingly. “Jilly.”

      She gave in and faced him fully. “All right, what?”

      He wiggled his fingers at her in a come-hither gesture.

      “You can’t be serious.”

      He stared deeply, meaningfully, into her eyes as the sheet, of its own accord, slithered back from his fabulous naked body. Jilly tore her gaze away from those pleading blue eyes and looked lower. Wow. Some dream.

      She looked up again, into those tender, pleading eyes and a disembodied voice from somewhere near her left ear said, “Why not?”

      “Why not?” she cried. “You’ve got to be kidding. He doesn’t like me. I don’t like him.”

      “Jilly,” said the disembodied voice. “Don’t you get it? This isn’t real. It isn’t happening. So what if you hate each other in real life? This isn’t real life. This is only a dream.”

      Jilly considered. While she did that, the dream-Will conveniently froze in place—with his hand out and the covers down to his muscular thighs, looking at her longingly, his manliest attribute pointing proudly ceiling-ward.

      “Hmm,” said Jilly. It was clear that in this dream he found her overwhelmingly attractive. And she had to admit she really did enjoy having him look at her that way.

      Why not just go with it? Why pass up a chance to have him falling all over her for one magical night? Why deny herself? This was one situation where she could do anything she wanted, let this fantasy spin out wherever it wanted to go, and suffer absolutely no consequences after the fact.

      There was no “fact.” She wasn’t here. She was upstairs, sound asleep, dreaming all this.

      “Okay,” she announced. “I’ve decided. I’m going with this.”

      Nobody answered. And Will continued to sit there, still as a statue.

      Jilly cleared her throat. “Uh. Hello? Will?”

      But he didn’t move. He didn’t even appear to be breathing. She clapped her hands. Twice.

      Nothing.

      Terrific. What fun was this going to be?

      But wait. This was her dream. There had to be some way to—

      And it came to her. She put her hand in his.

      The room faded and reformed and she found herself on the bed with him, wrapped in those big arms of his.

      “I’ve been waiting for you,” he whispered. “For so long.” Jilly thought that was carrying the fantasy a little too far, but before she could tell him so, he asked, “You’ll help me out, won’t you?”

      She pulled back a little and peered up at him. “Uh. Help you out, how?”

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