Page 30 of From the Embers
I swallowed hard. “After you, um, lost Edgar, did you ever have a…dream about someone else?”
“Oh,” she breathed before stretching her lips in the universal eek face. “Wow, you really did mean personal.”
Shit. Mayday. Mayday.
Note to self: stick to dictating correspondence to Jillian and not dissecting dreams where your husband’s best friend gave you the best orgasm of your entire life.
“You know what, don’t answer that. It was completely out of line. I’ve just had—”
“Now, hold on there, honey. You know I love working here at Prism. Rob made this my home years ago and I would hate to do or say anything inappropriate to ever risk losing that.” Using two fingers, she tucked her short, gray bob behind her ear. “But if this is just a little girl talk between two friends, then…” She lifted one shoulder in a half shrug.
“Oh, totally.” I waved a hand between us. “This would be off the record. Just two gals chatting during a break. I didn’t mean to make you feel otherwise. Your job is always safe, Jillian. Prism wouldn’t be the same without you.”
“Well, in that case.” An ornery smile stretched across her face as she leaned back in her chair, intertwined her fingers, and rested her joined hands on her stomach. “Please God tell me this was an absolutely filthy dream about that fine hunk of man Eason Maxwell.”
My mouth fell open at her brazenness—and also her alarmingly accurate guess. “Well…I mean.”
“Oh, don’t worry, child. I’ve had so many dreams about that man. We should compare notes.”
A laugh bubbled from my throat as I scolded, “Jillian!”
She shrugged. “What? I can’t believe it’s taken you this long. When you had me call him the day Madison cut her hand, the look on his face when he came flying through the door, white as a sheet and yet still nipple-tingling hot…” She tugged at the front of her white silk blouse comically—but also completely serious—fanning herself. “Lordy, I was hot and bothered for a week. I don’t know how you do it, living with him in your guesthouse, seeing him every day. If I were you, I’d wind up either in his bed or in jail for trying.”
“Oh my God.” I leaned over and buried my face in my arms on the desk.
“Nope. No getting shy on me now. Spill it. I need all the details.”
“Are you crazy? I’m not giving you details.”
She huffed. “Oh, I see how it is. You get to watch him all sweaty and doing shirtless pushups in the yard, but you won’t even share the juicy details of your imagination with a lonely old lady.”
My head popped up. “Who said he does sweaty, shirtless pushups in the yard?”
She quirked her eyebrow and shot me a glare. “Oh, please. A man does not have a body like his without pushups. If you aren’t watching, invite me over and I will.”
Another round of laughter struck me, but I finally sat up and kicked my chair back. “Okay, stop. Seriously. I can’t breathe.”
For a few seconds, she sat there staring at me with a proud smile on her plump face. “All right, now that we got the embarrassing stuff out of the way. Tell me why you’ve been in la-la land all day.”
All humor suddenly vanished, my arch nemesis reality clocking in for the day. “Ugh,” I groaned. “It is Eason.”
“Oh, I know. We covered that.”
“No, I mean it’s Eason. Rob’s best friend. Jessica’s husband. That’s a lifetime’s worth of wrong.”
“But…” she prompted.
“But…I can’t stop thinking about him.”
With a loud clap, she sat up straight. “All right. Jillian your best gal pal is gone. Time for some tough love from Mama Jill.” Another clap. “Bree, honey. Wake. Up.”
“I am awake. Though this being one big nightmare could account for why we just discussed Eason’s abs.” I pressed my palms to my eyes and then shook my head to rattle away the image of Mama Jill gawking at him beside my pool.
“You aren’t awake. You’re stuck. And given the way you lost Rob, I don’t blame you. But maybe this dream of yours is telling you something. If Eason is off-limits, fine. I respect that. Leave him for the rest of us. But it’s okay to want that kind of intimacy with someone else. You two spend a lot of time together. Maybe your brain got some wires crossed. But that doesn’t mean you have to feel embarrassed about it. You’re a young, vibrant woman with needs. No shame in that.”
But shame was exactly the emotion washing over me. “It was more than that though. In my dream, he left. And I was begging him not to go. I was so scared.” Tears welled in my eyes and I flicked my gaze out the window in an attempt to fight them off. “It was the abandonment.”
