by Julie Miller
But his victory was short-lived. When his feet hit the smooth linoleum, shards of pain shot through his eyes. He reeled back a step, squinting against the bright overhead light. He shielded his eyes with his hand and cursed. The remnants of torn and burned tissue contracted at the glare, an autonomic response of organs that still did everything they were supposed to do—except see.
“Sorry. I’m a nurse. I should know better.” Julia’s hasty apology registered the same time that crisp sunshine smell floated past him. He heard the tiny click of the light switch, then the gentle rasp of cotton on cotton coming toward him and circling around him. Mac dipped his head to follow the faint rustling sound. It had to be Jules herself.
He tried to anchor himself to her scent, pinpoint her heat. Though finely tuned to compensate for his blindness, he had yet to master control of his other senses. Julia’s proximity was a bombardment of sensation—warmth and scent and sound.
And touch.
Strong, supple fingers pulled his hand from his eyes and Mac froze. “I read the write-up from your doctor.”
She gently probed the tender new skin at his cheek, temple and brow. “He prescribed bandages on your eyes until the end of the week.” In his mind, the inspection of her fingertips was a timid caress against sensitized skin, a stark contrast to the confident strength with which she still held his hand. “If you wore them the way you’re supposed to, the light wouldn’t aggravate your condition.”
His condition? He was a crippled-up cop. A cop who should have seen the accident coming. Who should have seen a lot of things before he ever lost his sight.
Mac snatched her hand from his face, putting an end to the unwelcome examination. “My condition is called blindness. I can’t see your hand in front of my face. I can’t see you. I can’t see a damn thing!”
Their fingers twined together as he shook his fist to make his point. “You can push and poke and prod all you want, but I’m still a blind man.”
Unknowingly, he clung to her while he spoke. Long enough to detect the uniquely feminine combination of soft calluses inside her palm, and even softer skin on the back of her hand. Long enough to note the blunt, functional fingernails at the tips of lithe, lineal fingers.
Long enough to feel the fine tremors trembling within his grasp.
Was that Jules’s shocked reaction to his spare, unadorned words? Or the remnants of his own anger running its course?
But almost as if she sensed the instant he began to analyze the subtle movement, she freed herself. “You’re a man, Mac. Pure and simple. A man who happens to be blind. Millions of people live with that handicap every day and lead full, productive lives—”
“Spare me the inspirational speech.”
He’d heard the same lecture from his doctors, the police psychologist, his parents—even his big brother. He should be grateful he was alive. Hopeful he had a 50-50 chance of regaining sight in one eye.
But a friend was dead.
His career was finished.
His life had flashed before his sightless eyes.
He didn’t need some freckle-faced Florence Nightingale doing the neighborly thing for old times’ sake. He needed to be alone to figure out where he’d made his mistake, and devise a plan to make everything right again.
“Go home, Julia.”
There. He’d made himself perfectly clear.
He turned toward the open doorway. He hoped.
“I found a pair of sunglasses with the price tag still on them.” She started talking again without comment or argument, as if his succinct command had been an invitation to make herself at home.
Mac halted his grand exit. With his fingertips, he reached out and verified that he had found the door. The worn contours of sculpted oak reassured him. He wasn’t the one disoriented this time.
The clang of metal on metal and the suction pop of the refrigerator door opening behind him indicated she was preparing a meal. He ignored the sudden anticipation that wet his mouth and rumbled in his stomach, and concentrated on her words. “Somebody’s trying to take care of you. At least the glasses would protect your eyes from the light, if not from infection.”
The glasses had been a gift from his youngest brother, Josh. Along with some lame advice about making him look cool, and turning him into a babe magnet.
Such questionable laws of nature no longer applied to him.
“You don’t have to be here, you know.”
The racket behind him stilled, followed by a long, controlled whisper of air. “Yes, I do. For twenty-four hours.”
Twenty-four hours? What was that about?
He heard the rustling noise again. Julia was moving.
Wrapping his fingers around the doorjamb for balance, he tipped his ear toward the intriguing sound. In his mind he pictured a pair of legs, dressed in soft, snug denim, the thighs gently touching with each step.
He closed his eyes unnecessarily and envisioned her as a fifteen-year-old. She’d had a stocky, muscular build, perfect for snagging grounders and blocking base paths. He wondered what she looked like now. If she’d filled out in the right places over the years. If those muscles had turned into curves. If those long legs he heard brushing together were rounded or straight. Or…good God, what the hell was he thinking?
This was a fine time for his intellectual curiosity to rear its head. He wanted to get rid of her, not study her like some unidentified lab specimen.
Then the import behind her odd pronouncement registered through his instinct to analyze and identify. “If you don’t want to be here, then why are you?” he asked.
The pungent odor of gas catching flame told him she had gone back to the stove. “Your mother was worried about you. My mother was worried about me. Their solution was to put the two of us together.”
“They’re not matchmaking, are they?” His older brother Brett had recently married, and Martha Taylor seemed to have developed a fever now to find mates for all her brood. For Mac, her timing couldn’t be worse.
Julia laughed. “Are you kidding? Have you seen me lately?”
Her self-deprecating joke turned full circle in the dead air that followed. He knew the instant that her gaze searched his back in apology. Mac straightened. Six feet, three inches of stiff back ought to finally get rid of her.
“Can’t say as I have.”
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean—” An immediate flurry of activity covered the silence. “I’m fixing an omelette for a late breakfast. It’ll take just a few minutes. Have a seat, the chair is two steps to your left. I’ll get some coffee going, too.”
Hell. Her attempts to distract him from her apology pricked his defenses. He’d rather do battle with her than endure her pity. He already carried enough of his own to choke on.
He ignored the pangs in his stomach and the curiosity of his mind, and tramped back into the living room. He hit the trash can and kicked it aside, not giving a damn about the mess he’d inevitably made.
That enticing whisper of denim followed quickly behind him. “You don’t have to like this,” said Jules. “But we should make the best of it.”
“Fine. You make the best of it. I’m going to my room.”
“Dammit, Mac, be reasonable.” She snatched his sleeve and tugged him around. Half a turn, maybe. Or was it all the way around? He squeezed his eyes shut against the dizzying confusion. As if the complete darkness was somehow more comforting than the shadowy nothingness of his vision.
“You look like hell. You need a shave and clean clothes. This scruffy look never was you.” A second hand grasped his chin and tilted his face to one side. “At least let me bandage your eyes. We can’t risk infection.”
He jerked his chin free of her soft, firm touch. “I can risk anything I damn well please.”
“What about breakfast? I didn’t see any dirty dishes. Have you eaten at all today? What about fresh air? Sunshine? Do you ever get outside?”
The woman was relentless. “Too many damn questions!” He twisted
his arm from her grip and swatted the air, clearing the space around him, and hopefully scaring some sense into her. “Just leave me alone.”
Mac headed for the dining room, intending to leave Nurse Jules and her annoying determination behind him. On his second step he banged his shin against the coffee table and let out a stream of curses that would have made his mother grab the soap and wash out his mouth.
He spun around, planning to skirt the table. His knees butted into the sofa. He took a half turn to the right, ignoring a flare of panic, and ran into the overturned trash can.
Just like that internal clock, the compass inside him had gone haywire.
Mac choked back a frisson of fear that erupted within.
Lost in a spinning world. Trapped among the unknown terrors of his own home.
Imprisoned by his handicap.
For a man who had relied on cool, concise thinking his entire life, this continual buffeting of emotion played havoc with his sense of reason. Guilt. Fear. Anger. They were all his enemies now.
And for the first time in his life, he could think of no way to fight back.
Chapter Two
“With a cane you could tap your surroundings and find the way out.” Julia’s calm suggestion made a mockery of Mac’s own common sense.
“Shut up.”
He could control this. He could figure a way out of the maze of his own living room.
The rustle of sound barely registered as he concentrated on getting his bearings. He detected her unique scent, coming from behind him now, an instant before her hand latched onto his.
For an unthinking moment, he folded his fingers around hers, clinging to her sure grip, anchoring himself in the spinning disorientation of darkness. For all his crude words and rude behavior, he was grateful for the un-deserved patience in the gesture.
“This way.”
Her gentle voice beckoned and he followed. He allowed himself to be led a few steps, until he was free of the embarrassing hazards of his own home. He stopped when she stopped, but she tugged on his hand and pulled him forward another step.
His remaining senses buzzed into full alert as she guided his hand to the crook of her elbow. A practical gesture, he supposed. But the skin on the back of his hand and wrist bristled with acute awareness after brushing against the bountiful softness of what had to be a breast. In contrast, her strong shoulder nudged against his chest as she positioned herself to guide him. About chin height, he estimated, judging how she measured up against him. Maybe a shade taller.
The scent he had detected earlier and identified as her own pooled at nose level. It was her hair, he deduced. Her shampoo, to be more precise. Nothing perfumy. Clean, but not antiseptic. Fresh. Sassy. Just like…
Mac snatched his hand away and stepped back, shocked to realize he’d been analyzing Jules in a way that had nothing to do with science, and everything to do with the primal way a man checked out a woman.
As if he had any business checking her out.
As if she’d have any interest in being checked out by a scarred-up waste of a man like him.
“I don’t need you to be my guide dog.” His raspy voice, already ruined by the toxic fire that had destroyed his lab and killed a friend, sounded harsh in the monstrous quiet of the house.
He expected her to pack her things and run. The other nurses had refused to put up with his churlish behavior. He wanted to be alone right now. He needed his solitude.
But he’d met his match when it came to bullheaded determination.
Jules had somehow moved behind him. She touched his shoulders and turned him slightly. But she released him before he could justify any protest. “The archway’s about five steps directly in front of you.” Could he trust her guidance? He took two tentative steps, then three more. Her crisp, no-nonsense voice remained behind him. “The wall’s just to your right now. Put your hand out and use it to guide you.”
Mac reached out. The wall was there, just as she’d said. Hiding his tentative sigh of relief, he made his way through the dining room without bumping so much as a shinbone. His pulse quickened in anticipation as he entered the hallway. Close to escaping her, or close to reaching his sanctuary, he couldn’t tell. He simply knew she wouldn’t have to see him, and he wouldn’t have to deal with not seeing her. He wouldn’t have to deal with anyone or anything if he could just reach the relative security of his room.
His fingers curled around the doorjamb. An overwhelming sense of relief rushed through him, making him light-headed. He ducked inside and turned to shut the door.
“What’s with the mad scientist routine?”
Startled by her voice, he spun toward the curious question.
He heard the clunk of glass on wood, and knew she was inspecting the beakers on his dresser. “Pew! Formaldehyde isn’t exactly standard air freshener.”
“Get out of here.” He defended his makeshift lab with a hollow whisper.
She’d snuck past him somehow. Hell. How easy was it to sneak past a blind man?
Anger swelled inside him, quickly replacing the embarrassment of being caught and questioned like a little kid. He felt the same need to defend his ideas and actions as he had the day his mother caught him trashing her kitchen to perform a series of experiments as an eleven-year-old. That same indulgent curiosity, blended with a gentle reprimand, colored Julia’s voice.
“I’m guessing hydrochloric acid on this one. Alcohol.” She went down the line, correctly naming the contents of each beaker. “What are you trying do here?”
He reached for that voice. He hit her neck first, idly noting the cropped wisps of curls that indicated how short she wore her hair. His fingers glided down a swanlike arch of neck and he cursed himself for noticing anything about her at all.
Damning the fact that he could be distracted by something so unattainable as the discovery of a pretty woman, he slid his hand down to her shoulder and turned her. He clamped his fingers around her so she couldn’t escape.
“Ow!”
Despite her squirming struggles, he found the other shoulder and pushed her into the hallway. Her hands flattened against his chest and resisted, but he had superior strength and momentum on his side. He backed her up until she hit the wall.
“Get the hell out and stay out,” he ordered.
But now momentum worked against him. He cursed the law of science that carried him forward into Julia’s body. For the briefest of instants, his thighs and torso crushed into hers, giving him a fleeting impression of muscles and curves and soft spots that gave way beneath his harder body.
“Damn, damn, damn!” He jerked away from the contact and staggered back to his room, escaping the subversive distraction of discovering the tomboy-next-door from his youth had matured into a full-figured woman.
So much for intimidation. Even the ability to hold a decent argument with her frustrated him.
Breathing hard, from emotion as much as exertion, he closed the door behind him. He leaned his shoulder into the aging wood, absorbing the brunt of her furious knocks until his fingers could find the lock and turn it.
“I don’t do room service! If you want to eat, you come to the kitchen.” Mac stood where he was, savoring his victory. Let her fuss and fume. He wouldn’t have another thing to do with her.
The doorbell rang, a distant call from the outside world that made him realize he hadn’t really escaped at all.
“You want me to get that? Or should I throw them out on their backside, too?”
“Give it up, Jules.” He pushed away from the door, feeling trapped in the place where he’d sought freedom only moments ago.
“I don’t give up on people, Mac.”
Mac laughed at her vehement promise. It was a sick sound, raspy and unnatural. She’d learn soon enough about lost causes.
Six weeks ago he’d learned the hard way.
I DON’T GIVE UP on people, Mac.
Julia listened to her words echo off the closed door and backed away. She clutched her ar
ms across her middle, nearly doubling over at the hypocrisy of what she’d shouted.
I don’t know who the hell you think you are. There’s nothing between us. We had our fun. Now be an adult and move on.
The harsh, horrible words rang fresh and true inside her head, spreading salt on an age-old wound that refused to heal.
Well, maybe she’d given up on just one person.
The doorbell rang a second time, forcing her to leave the downward spiral of self-recriminations and put on a pleasant facade to greet the outside world. Still charged from the fury of doing battle with Mac, and drained by the unexpected memory of the mistake she’d made in Chicago, she wiped her damp palms on her jeans. She took a deep, steadying breath and headed for the front door, practicing different versions of a smile along the way.
She opted for a polite but distant grin. Securing the chain on the door first, she opened it a few inches and looked out at the two men in suits and ties on the front step. “Yes?”
The older one, with snowy white hair and a bulbous nose that indicated a fondness for alcohol, pulled a thick, chewy cigar from his mouth and answered. “KCPD, ma’am. I’m Sergeant Joe Niederhaus, Internal Affairs. This is my partner, Eli Masterson.”
Two decades younger and packing muscle where his partner packed fat, the dark-haired detective tipped his head in greeting. “Ma’am.”
Julia clamped down on a genuine urge to smile. These two were a real life send-up of the Dragnet-duo her father loved to watch in reruns on TV. “What can I do for you?”
Sergeant Niederhaus took charge of the visit. “We’re here to see Mac Taylor. He’s an officer in the Crime Scene Investigation unit. Is he in?”
Did they expect a blind man to be off on an afternoon drive? Her amusement at their plain, polite talk faded with a nagging sense of unease. What sort of questions did cops ask other cops? What sort of answers did they expect to get from Mac?
