Summer of Dreams Read Online Free

He gingerly lowered himself onto the bench in the front hall, wincing as though every muscle in his body had taken a pounding . . . which it probably had.
    “Stay right there while I fetch the ice.” There was an icehouse out back, and her hands shook as she wielded the ice pick to knock a chunk free.
    It wouldn’t be the first time she’d tended Romulus after a bout in the boxing ring. Why a man of his intelligence and effusive charm enjoyed leaping into a boxing ring was beyond her, but Romulus was now captain of Harvard’s boxing team and loved challenging the West Point officers to impromptu matches whenever he was home.
    After wrapping a chunk of ice in a towel, she sat beside Romulus on the bench, wincing along with him as she pressed the ice to the side of his face. Although one side of his face was bruised and swollen, the other side looked as though it had been sculpted by a Renaissance artist seeking to create the perfection of a fallen angel. With chiseled cheekbones, a strong jaw, and flashing black eyes that matched his ebony hair, Romulus was appallingly handsome—and he knew it, too.
    “You’ve spent three years stuffing your head with arcane knowledge, then you come home and let some stranger at West Point pummel it all out of you.”
    He grinned. “There is always more where it came from. Lugging all this brilliance around is my burden in life.”
    But he wasn’t brilliant enough to get that hydraulic pump working. In short order, she told him of Clyde’s visit this afternoon and the prospect of a new and better waterfall. She feared he might fuss over the noise of a generator and had been marshalling her arguments in support of it all afternoon. To her surprise, Romulus not only endorsed the idea of the generator, his flamboyant mind already had additional plans for it.
    “Moon lighting,” he said. “I saw it at a public garden in Boston. We can string light bulbs in the trees. When turned on at night, they emulate the moonlight streaming through the leaves. It will be as if Monet himself has designed the garden.”
    Honestly, sometimes Evelyn suspected she had been put on this earth to reel in Romulus from his excessive ambitions. “Let’s not get carried away again,” Evelyn said. “All we need is to create a suitable environment until the baby hummingbirds are hatched and weaned. Then we can dismantle it.”
    Romulus looked appalled. “Did King Arthur destroy the Round Table after he assembled his knights? Will Paris dismantle the Eiffel Tower after the World’s Fair? If we are to install electricity, I want a waterfall and moon lighting and landscaping to rival the gardens of Versailles. And for once, I want you to snap out of that hidebound practicality that sucks all the joy out of life. Were you an Indian, your spirit name would be Dream Killer.”
    She lifted a brow, giving her best General White impersonation. “Because I don’t believe a greenhouse needs simulated moonlight, it makes me a dream killer?”
    Although now that he had planted the idea in her head, it did seem rather appealing. Already she could imagine the sound of water trickling over rocks while the lighting created dappled patches of moonlight on the ground. It would be both a technological and artistic challenge, but a fun one.
    In a perfect world, she would be allowed to go to college andhave the chance to participate in the burgeoning technological revolution. That dream was already fading and disappearing into the horizon, but that wouldn’t stop her from experimenting in her own backyard. Her greenhouse would never earn her fame or fortune, but that was okay. She didn’t hunger for that sort of acclaim, she did it for the sheer joy of discovery.
    Dreams had always been hard for her. In the still of night, she’d harbored spectacular dreams, only to watch them wither in the practical realities of daylight. But this summer she would savor working alongside Clyde Brixton and learn all she could from him.