"If they're wrong," she said, stressing the first word, "then you learn to live with it. There are fantastic developments in computer science that deal with blindness—as I'm sure you know from your involvement in that field."
"Yes, I know," he said quietly. "In fact, one of my engineers developed a braille system that allows the blind access to other blind people through their computers."
"You see? It isn't a closed door you're facing. And will you consider one other thing?"
"What?"
"That God gives us obstacles for reasons?"
"God," he said, "did not make me blind. I did that all by myself, so why should I expect Him to help me?"
"Why shouldn't you?" she countered. "I suspect you're not a religious man."
"You suspect correctly."
"What are you doing about it?" she asked. "What do you do to justify your existence?"
"I work for myself," he said gruffly.
"And for financial gain."
"Of course. What other reason is there?" he grumbled. "I am not a philanthropist."
"Obviously,"
He shifted restlessly. “Don't try to toss a mantle of guilt over me, I give to charity."
"What do you give of yourself?"
He stopped dead. "I beg your pardon?"
"What do you give of yourself? Money is vulgar."
"So speaks one without it," he returned coldly. "It never ceases to amaze me that the people who complain the most about the way wealth is distributed are usually the very people who lack it."
"Touche," she agreed pleasantly, looking up at his windblown hair, his hard face. "I've been poor most of my life, Mr. van der Vere. I'd like to have an expensive dress once in a while, and I have a deep love for luxurious perfume. But I've lived very well without those things. The difference is that I live a life of service for God. My pleasure comes from the giving of myself."
He looked uncomfortable. "Then why did you give it up to come here?" he asked suspiciously. "I'm sure you're getting paid much more here than you make working in your hospital,'' he added sarcastically.
She glanced away from him, flushing. "That's true. But the money wasn't the reason I came."
"Then, what was?"
She straightened. "Personal reasons, Mr. van der Vere, that have nothing to do with you. Shall we go?"
"Refusing the challenge?" he prodded. "Very well, lead me back into the house. I wouldn't want the wind to dislodge your halo."
She wanted nothing more at that moment than to shake him. But that wouldn't accomplish anything. At least she'd nudged him out of his self-pity, a minor victory. Perhaps there would be others.
She walked alongside him, feeling oddly elated. She wanted to take the pins out of her long hair and let it blow free. She wanted to take off her sensible white nurse's shoes and run barefoot along the damp beach, like a child enjoying nature's beauty. Her eyes lifted to the somber man at her side. She was beginning to see a purpose in her presence there; it went much deeper than the nursing of a blind man.
Chapter Four
The next weeks were trying. Gannon van der Vere seemed to go out of his way to find fault with Dana. Nothing she did pleased him, and all the ground she seemed to have gained in the first few days abruptly slid back into the sea.
He sat behind his desk and stayed on the phone almost constantly. He refused to go out of the room except to sleep. He was irritable and unapproachable, and when Dana tried to talk to him, he found an excuse not to listen. The doctor's visit only irritated him further, and after his examination he retreated into his bedroom and wouldn't even come out to eat.
"Dr. Shane just restated his own opinion to Gannon." Lorraine sighed wearily as she and Dana sat down to supper by themselves. "It made him furious, of course. He won't accept that the condition isn't due to something surgically correctible."
"He's a stubborn man," Dana commented.
"Worse than stubborn. Just like his late father." She smiled."He was quite a man, my husband. A little mellower than Gannon, but of course he was older."
"Perhaps he'll come to admit it eventually," Dana suggested. "In the meanwhile, having people around would help him tremendously. Doesn't he have friends?"
"He had plenty of them, when he could see," his stepmother said angrily. "And girl friends by the score. People who loved for him to spend money on them. Now..." She shrugged her delicate shoulders. "This place is like the end of the earth for that kind of person, Dana. They don't like peace and solitude. They like bright lights and activity and, frankly, drugs and alcohol."
"Did he?" she asked, because she wanted to know.
"Gannon?'' she laughed. "No, he was never the type to need crutches of any kind. His late wife was the party-goer. Of course, I don't think she indulged. But all their friends do."
"No children?"
"They didn't want children," Lorraine said with a sigh. "Their lives were so full, you see."
Full. Dana doubted that, somehow, but she was too polite to state her convictions. She was getting a vivid picture of Gannon's life before the blindness, and it was an unpleasant one. She felt sorrier for him than ever.
Dana especially loved the beach at night, and when she could sneak away for a few minutes, she liked to walk along the shore and watch the whitecaps roll against the damp sand. Lorraine never minded her brief absences, but when Gannon discovered what she was doing, he made a point of seeking her out one Friday evening on the beach.
"Nurse!" he bellowed, pausing on the last step that led down from the house, his hand clenched on the railing.
She rushed back toward him, her loosened hair flying, afraid he'd tumble down in his anger.
"I'm here," she said breathlessly. "There's no need to yell."
"May I ask what you're doing down here?" he grumbled, staring in her general direction.
She studied his ferocious scowl while his hair and her soft green dress blew wildly in the cool ocean breeze. "I'm walking on the beach, Mr. van der Vere," she said calmly.
"On my time," he agreed.
"Excuse me, sir, I thought I had ten minutes a day to myself," she said with polite sarcasm.
"A live-in nurse is supposed to be within call every minute," he snapped.
"I was," she pointed out. "Didn't I come running?"
He drew in a sharp breath. "The beach is dangerous at night," he said after a minute, as if it annoyed him that he'd had to show any concern for her. "There are transients down the beach who like to party. You're not sophisticated enough to cope with drunken men, Miss Steele. Will you come in the house, please."
The concern touched her. Only her mother and Jenny had ever shown any for her over the years.
"Lost your tongue?" he growled after a minute. She shrugged. "I'm not used to people worrying about me," she said finally.
He seemed to hesitate, his hand curling slowly around the banister. "Your parents do, surely?"
The question cut in a new way. She averted her gaze to the sea and tried not to cry; tears were so close to the surface these days, the grief was so raw and unfamiliar. "My mother died in a wreck a few months ago,” she said softly.
"I'm sorry," he said quietly. "Your father?"
"We have very little contact," she admitted. "It's my fault as much as his. I'm not good at relationships, you see. I'm wary of letting people get close."
"Even family?" he burst out "My God, are you fearful of contamination?"
He made her sound odd, and she didn't like it "Fearful of being hurt, if you must know," she shot back, her eyes blazing. "I'd rather be alone than cut to ribbons emotionally, and what business is my personal life to you?"
His heavy blond brows shot straight up. "Claws," he murmured, and a corner of his mouth curved. "Well, well, you land on your feet, don't you, for all your repressed virtue."
She stared at the sand. "You irritate me," she bit off.
"We're even, because you irritate me as well. Now, will you come in, before I yield to temptation an
d toss you into the surf to cool you off?"
She drew in an angry breath and started past him, but his hand shot out at the sound of her steps on the stone and she was dragged against his powerful body.
Her tiny gasp was audible even above the thunderous surf, and she was aware of every cell that came in contact with him. He smelled of expensive cologne and soap, and the hand around her waist was big and very warm. His breath was on her forehead, his chest was rising and falling with a curious heaviness and her knees threatened to collapse.
He felt her hair blow against his face as it bent, and he brushed at long, silky strands of it with his free hand. "Such soft hair," he remarked quietly. "Blond?"
She swallowed. "Yes, sir." Why was her voice quavering like that? What was happening to her?
His hand brushed her shoulder and moved down her back to her shoulder blades. He drew her close with aching tenderness until her cheek was pressed against his warm, broad chest over his silky blue shirt.
She could feel the strength of him under her hand, the hard beat of his heart. It had been a long time since any man had held her, but never had it made her feel like this. She was vulnerable all at once, womanly, feminine in a totally new way.
"You smell of wildflowers," he said, his voice deep and quiet in the semidarkness. "And your thinness frightens me. You aren't hardy; you're very fragile."
She tried to breathe normally. "I'm not fragile," she protested weakly. Her hands pressed palm down over the warm muscles of his chest, half in protest. "Mr. van der Vere..."
"Isn't it ethical, little moralist?" he mused. "I thought comfort was your stock-in-trade."
"Comfort?"
His cheek nuzzled against hers. "I've been alone a long time," he said in a low whisper. "Without touching, or being touched. Sometimes just the scent of a woman is enough to drive me half mad...."
She jerked away from him all at once, frightened of the sensuality she could hear in his voice, feel in his warm hands on her back. She put herself a safe distance away and tried to stop shaking.
"It's getting cold out here," she murmured.
"Ice cold," he said harshly. "Little Nun, why don't you join a convent?"
"I'm not on offer as a woman, Mr. van der Vere!" she burst out, furious at his casual approach. "I'm a nurse; it's my job, it's why I'm here! If you're thinking of adding anything personal to my duties, you'd better start running ads fast: I quit!"
"Wait!"
She froze a step above him, listening as he felt for the banister and started up the steps behind her, stopping when he felt her body was just ahead of him.
"All right, I'm sorry," he said shortly. "I only meant to tease, not to run you off. I'm...getting used to you. Don't leave me."
The stiff pride got through to her when nothing else would have. She turned around and looked at his set features with softening eyes. It must indeed be hard for such a man, used to such a life-style, to endure the loneliness of this isolated beach house. Could she blame him for reacting to the first young woman he'd been near in months?
She drew in a slow breath. "I won't leave you," she said quietly. "But you've got to stop making dead sets at me if I stay. I won't be treated like a temporary amusement, especially by a patient. I take my nursing seriously: It isn't a game to me; neither is it an opportunity for a little holiday romancing on the side."
"You speak bluntly," he replied. "May I?"
"Yes, sir."
"I have been without a woman for many months, and I'm not suited to the life of a hermit." His shoulders lifted and fell. "I had no intention—have no intention," he rephrased, "of treating you like an amusement. I simply wanted a woman in my arms, for a moment. I wanted to feel like a man again." He shifted restlessly. "Lead me up, will you? I'm tired."
He seemed to slump, and tears burned her eyes. She hadn't thought of how barren his emotional life would be because of the blindness, and she felt cold at her harsh rejection of him. She'd misunderstood; now she felt guilty.
"I'm sorry I snapped," she said, taking him by the arm. "I...I didn't understand. I'm a little afraid of men, I think. My fear makes me overreact."
"Afraid?" he asked curiously,
"I've led a sheltered life," she confessed. "I don't even know how to protect myself. Men are very strong...."
"You make me sound like a potential mugger," he ground out. "I wouldn't attack you!"
"How reassuring; I was worried to death about that," she said with a teasing laugh.
All his bad humor disappeared at once. "I'll bet you were," he muttered. He found her hand and clasped it in his, and she felt a strange little shock of pleasure at the warm strength of it. "Nothing personal, Nurse; I only need to be led and I can hold on to you more easily like this. All right?"
She looked down at his brown hand holding hers. "All right," she said meekly. It wasn't professional of course. But it was...practical.
He was easier after that, more approachable, regaling her with stories of his travels while she took him walking and driving in the car and tried to ease him out of his cold shell. Some of the tales he recounted were frankly shocking, and she began to wonder at the wild-ness of the life he'd lead.
"What about your own life?" he asked while they were drinking coffee at a local restaurant. Their table overlooked the ocean, and Dana picked at her apple pie while her eyes drank in the blueness of the water, the whiteness of the beach, dotted with swimmers in their colorful bathing suits.
"Hmmmm?" she murmured dreamily.
He made an impatient sound. "Are you worshipping the view again? Lorraine said you watch the ocean as if you're afraid it may vanish any second."
"I love it," she said sheepishly. "We don't have oceans around Ashton, you know. Just open land and a lot of farms and cattle."
"How big is Ashton?"
"About five thousand people," she told him. "It isn't far south of Atlanta, but it's mostly rural. I grew up there. I know most everybody else who did too."
"Is that one of those towns where the sidewalk draws in at six and everything closes for the night?"
"Very nearly. We don't even have a bowling alley. Although," she added, "we do have a theater and a skating rink."
"How exciting," he mused. "No bars?"
"We're in a dry county," she replied.
"You don't drink, I gather."
She sighed, watching the ocean again. "Mr. van der Vere, I never have. I'm sure my life is duller than dishwater compared to yours."
He lifted his coffee to his chiseled mouth, frowning slightly. "My world was an endless round of parties, cruises, business conventions, casinos and first-class travel. It was never dull."
She tried to imagine a life-style so hectic, and failed. "Were you happy?"
He blinked, staring in her direction. "Happy?"
"I can look it up in the dictionary and read you the definitions, if you like," she murmured.
"I was busy," he corrected, idly caressing the coffee cup. "Occupied. Entertained. But happy?" He laughed shortly. "What is happiness, Nurse? Tell me."
"Being at peace inside yourself, liking yourself and the whole world all at once," she said simply. "Going about your work with your whole heart and loving what you do."
"You're talking about a feeling," he said, "not the trappings that go with it"
"Exactly. I could be just as happy working in a sewing plant or digging in a garden as I am nursing, if it fulfilled me," she told him.
"I imagine a family could provide you with the same sense of purpose," he remarked. "Have you not wanted a husband and children?"
She toyed with her pie and laid down the fork to pick up her coffee. "Mr, van der Vere," she said after a minute, "I'm a very plain woman. I have rigid views on life and the living of it. I don't have casual affairs, I work hard and I keep to myself. It's very unlikely that I'm ever going to find a man dumb enough to marry me."
He sat up straight. "You spend so much time running yourself down, Miss Steele," he said after a
minute, scowling toward her. "Is it deliberate, calculated to keep people at arm's length?"
She laughed. "I suppose so. I like my life, why change it?"
"Yet, you seem determined to change mine," he reminded her.
"That's different. Yours needs changing," she said pertly. "You were about to go into permanent hibernation, and frankly, Mr. van der Vere, you're not the best companion in the world to hibernate with. You'd have driven yourself crazy."
He burst out laughing, his voice deep and amused, the sound of it like silver bells in the darkness. "And you're sacrificing yourself to tend me, no doubt."
"Of course," she returned, joining in the game. "Think of all the other people in the world I could inflict myself on!"
He seemed about to say something, then thought better of it. He finished his coffee in one swallow. "I wish I could see you," he said surprisingly. "I wonder if you really are as plain as you like to pretend."
She thought about the scar on her cheek and lifted her eyes to his broad, hard face. "Yes," she said softly. "l am."
His mouth broke into a smile. "Beauty is only skin deep, they say, miss."
"Yes, sir," she sighed, "but ugly goes all the way to the bone, doesn't it?"
He laughed loudly, and the sound was infectious. She laughed with him, wondering at the easy comradeship of their developing relationship. He was like another man, and she felt herself changing. Despite her neat nurse's uniform, which seemed to be drawing its share of curious stares, the woman inside it was being drawn inexplicably closer to the big blond man across from her.
They passed a wreck on the way back to the beach house. Dana paled as she watched ambulance attendants drag an unconscious form from the tangle of metal and glass, but she didn't make a big thing of it. The rest of the way back she talked about the scenery and described houses and beach property to him. But inside she was reliving every minute of the wreck that had killed her mother.
That night it was inevitable that the nightmare would come. She saw the truck coming toward her, felt the impact, saw the unearthly position of her mother's body....
Someone was shaking her roughly; a deep voice was cursing as her eyes flew open. She shook her head, breathing raggedly, and found Gannon and Lorraine standing by the bed. Gannon was wearing a dark robe over his pajamas, and Lorraine was clutching a delicate pink negligee around her, her face troubled.
Books By Diana Palmer Page 218
