Always in My Dreams Read Free

petticoats rustling beneath her brushed wool skating skirt.
    Jay Mac looked at his wife. "Your daughter's a flibbertigibbet, ma'am, I'll never get used to it."
    "Our daughter," Moira said, "is a breath of fresh air. You can't harness her."
    "I'd be satisfied if she'd sit for ten minutes."
    Moira ignored his attempt to sidetrack her. "I think you'd better tell me what's really going on. I won't have Skye exposed to any danger, and I can't believe that you would, either. There's something not quite right, and I don't think it has anything to do with that inventor. You're hatching a scheme... I just know it."
    "Scheme?" he asked, with an exaggerated show of innocence. Chuckling, he took Moira's hand and bade her rise. He came to his own feet and casually rested his hands on either side of his wife's waist. He liked the way she automatically laid her palms on his arms and raised her face to him. After thirty years together, she only seemed more beautiful to him. "Let's go into the parlor."
    Moira stood on tiptoe, kissed her husband on the mouth, and let herself be led out of the dining room. Under her breath she added, "Said the spider to the fly."
    "What was that, darling?"
    "Nothing, Jay Mac. Lead on."
    * * *
    "He wants you to be a spy?"
    Skye continued to lace her skates, not bothering to spare a glance at her companion. "Don't be so melodramatic," she said, echoing her father's words. "This is Jay Mac we're talking about. My father, remember?"
    Daniel Pendergrass shook his head. "I'm not likely to forget." He brushed a bit of crusted snow from the tip of one skate. "He hates me," he said forlornly.
    "Now you're being ridiculous. He doesn't hate you. When you think about it, he hardly knows you." Skye looked up from her lacing and grinned at her friend. "He hates the idea of you." Daniel's forlorn look became morose. Skye laughed. "We wouldn't suit, Daniel. We both know that. We've known it since our very first kiss."
    Daniel's pale cheeks flushed with color. "Do you have to bring that up? I didn't know what I was doing. I'm sure I'd do it better now."
    Skye finished with her skates and thrust her hands into her ermine muff. "That's because you've been practicing with Evelyn Hardy," she said, without a trace of jealously. She stood up. The park bench wasn't comfortable enough to allow them to linger in conversation. A cold wind was blowing across the pond. The skating party they'd been invited to join was circling on the far side of the ice. Skye could hear their laughter. "Come on, Daniel. Your friends are waiting."
    Daniel watched Skye Dennehy step gingerly onto the ice. By the time he came to his feet she was already moving away, her sweep across the ice both confident and graceful. He adjusted his hat over his fair hair and tightened the scarf around his neck. Tall and lanky at twenty-two, it seemed that he hadn't yet grown into his skin. His course across the ice was much less graceful than Skye's and infinitely less confident. But he was a good sport, amiable, and humorously disparaging of his own shortcomings. Skye assured him, in spite of the fact that she wasn't interested, that he was also quite handsome. He grinned. Evelyn Hardy thought so, too.
    When Daniel reached his group of friends, Skye was skating by herself, intent upon cutting a perfect circle in the ice. Daniel's easy grin faded. It was no accident that she was alone. Skye's presence was merely suffered by most of his friends, permitted because he invariably insisted upon it. She had chosen her words deliberately earlier. The group of skaters they were about to join were his friends, not hers. Skye was skating at the pond at his invitation, not theirs. It seemed incredible to him that anyone still cared she was a bastard.
    Skye looked up as Daniel approached and promptly lost the line she had been tracing. "See what you made me do?" she said. "You took your time getting here." If she was hurt by her exclusion from the others, she didn't show it. Her