Once upon a Dream by Nora Roberts Page A

mother’s to lecture her.”
    Though her pretty mouth was quite a distraction, he paid attention to her words, and the tone of them. “You lectured your mother?”
    â€œOh, yes.” She nibbled at his ear. “My beautiful, frivolous, delightful mother. How I must have irritated her. She’s been married three times, engaged double that, at least. It never works out, and she’s heartbroken about it for, oh, about an hour and a half.”
    With a laugh, Kayleen lifted her head again. “That’s not fair, of course, but she manages to shake it all off and never lose her optimism about love. She forgets to pay her bills, misses appointments, never knows the correct time, and has never been known to be able to find her keys. She’s wonderful.”
    â€œYou love her very much.”
    â€œYes, very much.” Sighing now, Kayleen pillowed her head on Flynn’s shoulder. “I decided when I was veryyoung that it was my job to take care of her. That was after her husband number two.”
    He combed his fingers through her flower-bedecked hair. “Did you lose your father?”
    â€œNo, but you could say he lost us. He left us when I was six. I suppose you could call him frivolous, too, which was yet another motivation for me to be anything but. He never settled into the family business well. Or into marriage, or into fatherhood. I hardly remember him.”
    He stroked her hair, said nothing. But he was beginning to worry. “Were you happy, in that life?”
    â€œI wasn’t unhappy. Brennan’s was important to me, maybe all the more so because it wasn’t important to my father. He shrugged off the tradition of it, the responsibility of it, as carelessly as he shrugged off his wife and his daughter.”
    â€œAnd hurt you.”
    â€œAt first. Then I stopped letting it hurt me.”
    Did you? Flynn wondered. Or is that just one more pretense?
    â€œI thought everything had to be done a certain way to be done right. If you do things right, people don’t leave,” she said softly. “And you’ll know exactly what’s going to happen next. My uncle and grandfather gradually let me take over the business because I had a knack for it, and they were proud of that. My mother let me handle things at home because, well, she’s just too good-natured not to.”
    She sighed again, snuggled into him. “She’s going to get married again next month, and she’s thrilled. One of the reasons I took this trip now is because I wanted to get away from it, from those endless plans for yet another of her happy endings. I suppose I hurt her feelings, leaving the way I did. But I’d have hurt them more if I’d stayed and spoke my mind.”
    â€œYou don’t like the man she’ll marry?”
    â€œNo, he’s perfectly nice. My mother’s fiancés are always perfectly nice. Funny, since I’ve been here I haven’t worried about her at all. And I imagine, somehow, she’s managing just fine without me picking at her. The shop’s undoubtedly running like clockwork, and the world continues to spin. Odd to realize I wasn’t indispensable after all.”
    â€œTo me you are.” He wrapped his arms around her, rolled over so he could look down at her. “You’re vital to me.”
    â€œThat’s the most wonderful thing anyone’s ever said to me.” It was better, wasn’t it? she asked herself. Even better than “I love you.” “I don’t know what time it is, or even what day. I don’t need to know. I’ve never eaten supper in bed unless I was ill. Never danced in a forest in the moonlight, never made love in a bed of flowers. I’ve never known what it was like to be so free.”
    â€œHappy, Kayleen.” He took her mouth, a little desperately. “You’re happy.”
    â€œI love you, Flynn. How could I be happier?”
    He wanted to