by Gayle Wilson
Blindman’s bluff. He remembered playing the game at some birthday party when he was a kid. He hadn’t liked it then. Wearing that damn blindfold. The other kids laughing and dodging away. The feeling of helplessness. And he liked those things a whole lot less now.
“Sterling,” he said. He knew his voice was too loud. He was almost shouting at her.
“You need to calm down,” she said.
She didn’t sound calm. She sounded like somebody who was upset and trying to pretend to be calm. He had turned toward the sound, estimating distance in his head. He reached for her again and heard movement She was still avoiding his hand. And she could do that all night. Play blindman’s bluff with him.
“Where’s your womanly compassion, Sterling? I’m trying to find you and you’re avoiding me. Not exactly playing fair.”
“Whatever you’re playing, Deandro, I’m not interested in signing up for the team.”
“Blindman’s bluff,” he said bitterly, and as he spoke, he lunged toward her voice again. She wasn’t there.
“Stop it, Nick,” she demanded. “Stop it right now.”
She sounded more upset than he was. Maybe she was. Maybe he was scaring her. He hadn’t meant to do that. He hadn’t meant to do anything to her, but when she had avoided his hand, leaving him groping in the dark like some damn blindfolded child…
“We both need to calm down,” she said. “This isn’t helping anything.”
“I’m not going to hurt you.”
“I know that,” she whispered.
Suddenly there were tears in her voice, and the sound of them stopped him. Stopped whatever insanity had been driving him. He wasn’t sure what he had intended when he’d begun. But he hadn’t intended this. Not what it had turned into.
His hand fell. He had made a complete fool of himself. About everything. First by trying to kiss her because she reminded him of a dream. And then this. Groping for her like some sex-starved adolescent. Groping blindly.
“We can talk some more in the morning,” she said softly. “We’ll feel…We’ll have had a chance to think it all over.”
“One good reason, Sterling,” he said, his voice as low as hers had been, working for calmness. He was begging, he supposed, reduced to that by this situation which had left him in the dark and groping for answers. “Give me one reason.”
“A reason for what?”
“Tell me why Andrews sent you out here. The real reason. One good reason for it to be you he sent instead of somebody else. And spare me the crap about being a good cop. Everybody in that unit is a good cop. Why you, damn it?”
He waited, listening again to the sound of her breathing. Trying to decide what to tell him? What he would buy?
“He thought I might be the one of us you’d remember,” she said finally.
“The one?”
“Of the unit. Rob thought meeting me again might…stimulate you to remember something.”
He damn sure had been right about that, Nick thought. Only, Andrews hadn’t had in mind exactly what she had stimulated.
“Why?” Nick asked. One good reason was all he had asked her for. He hadn’t heard it yet.
“We had words a couple of times. A personality conflict.”
“What kind of words?”
“I don’t know,” she said. “Just. .words.”
Her voice sounded as defeated as it had on the stairs that night. Tired of this confrontation. Tired of his questions he supposed, but he was going to have some answers or he was going to call Andrews and get him out here. Tonight if he had to.
“Just…arguments,” she went on hesitantly. “Nothing important. We just seemed to rub each other the wrong way. We struck sparks, Rob said. He thought…I think he was hoping maybe we would again. And that would make you remember me. Remember something.”
That was what she had meant on the porch that day He doesn’t remember me. It looks like all your maneuvering has been for nothing. Andrews had probably had to do a hell of a lot of maneuvering to get the powers-that-be to agree to a very pregnant woman as bodyguard for a government witness Even if everybody was ready to give that witness up as a lost cause.
“Is that the truth, Sterling? Are you telling me the absolute truth?”
“It’s the truth,” she said softly. “I swear that’s really why Rob sent me out here. Because we didn’t like each other worth a damn.”
He nodded. He could imagine how he would have responded to her chip-on-the-shoulder feminism. Probably just the way he had reacted tonight. With sarcasm. Smartmouth bastard. He always had been.
“What about the resting business? What was that all about? If pregnancy shouldn’t be considered a drawback to your doing this job,” he asked, the touch of sarcasm creeping back into his voice, “then why all the stuff about doing nothing strenuous? Why does Andrews think you need some kind of rest cure?”
Again she hesitated. But she told him finally. And it was something else that made sense. Something else he could believe.
“I put in a request for a new assignment. My doctor thought I needed something less demanding. Not necessarily less strenuous. That’s Rob’s interpretation. Less stressful, I guess.”
His anger was fading. Maybe because her voice was so quiet. Maybe because he had begun to believe her.
“I’ve had some problems,” she added. “Nothing…serious, but enough that my doctor was a little concerned.”
“Concerned you might lose the baby?” he asked and then wished he hadn’t. He didn’t need to know Sterling’s secrets. She had explained all that he needed to understand. Her personal life, her health, this baby, weren’t any of his business.
“Just…concerned. It’s nothing serious,” she said again.
He wondered if that was intended to convince him or her. Whichever, it changed how he felt. Maybe they had given up on him, but the decision to send Sterling out here apparently hadn’t been made for any of the motives he’d been assigning to it.
“I didn’t hurt you, did I?”
“Hurt me?” she questioned, confusion in her voice.
“When I grabbed you?”
She laughed, and he realized it was the first time he had heard her laugh. The sound was unexpected. And for some reason it moved through his body in a physical wave of sensation.
“You didn’t hurt me,” she said. “I’m not fragile, Nick. Or sick. Despite what you think.”
“I think…” he began softly and then stopped the words. He had been a bastard. It seemed to come too easily to him. Especially these days. And what Abby had said made sense. More sense than what he’d been thinking these revelations might mean.
“I think I need to apologize, Sterling,” he said softly. “For touching you. For yelling at you.”
“It doesn’t matter,” she said. “You deserved an explanation. It was wrong of us to pull this on you, but…”
He finished it for her when she hesitated. “But they need to make me remember. Any way they can get it to happen”
“They need you to remember,” she agreed.
There had been a small emphasis on the first pronoun. Not deliberate, Nick thought, but there. It was something else to think about, to figure out
“I’m going upstairs now,” she said.
Asking his permission, maybe. And why not? He’d spent the last ten minutes chasing her around the kitchen like some kind of madman. She sounded tired again.
“You okay?” he asked
He couldn’t have stopped the question if his life had depended on it. He remembered how the hard, full contour of her belly had felt under his exploring hands The reality was that that was a baby. A child who needed to be born and deserved a chance to grow up. She had already had some trouble. He didn’t want to have done anything that might cause her more.
“I’m fine,” she said. “Stop worrying.”
“I don’t worry, Sterling. It’s counterproductive.”
The quality of the silence between them suddenly changed ag
ain, and he listened to it, trying to decide why. He hadn’t figured it out before he heard her footsteps on the wooden floor of the hall and listened to them fade away into the darkness.
ABBY’S KNEES were still trembling as she climbed the stairs. Overreaction, maybe, but she had not been prepared for any of this. Certainly not prepared for the feel of Nick’s mouth over hers. Not prepared for his questions. Not prepared for the macabre game of blindman’s bluff they had played.
She had told him the truth, and she supposed that meant she should be feeling a lot better about the encounter than she did And a lot less guilty
She knew, however, that what she had told Nick tonight had been Rob Andrews’s truth and not her own. She had been sent out here to do exactly what she had said. That was not, however, why she had agreed to come.
She had come to find out if her feelings about Nick had changed. To find out if she was still m love with him. And after what had happened tonight, she was more confused than she had been before.
It was obvious that her body still wanted him. That his touch could still send shivers of need and anticipation coursing through her. And she now knew that despite the damage the bullet had done, the undeniable brilliance of the mind she had admired was still there. Still functioning Nick Deandro was still a good cop.
And it hadn’t bothered her when he had touched her face. The feel of his exploring fingers had been almost sensual Almost the way his hands had touched her before—the same tenderness, the unexpected gentleness, given their size and his strength, that she had missed.
That was one reason she had instinctively avoided his hand tonight when he had reached for her She didn’t know the angry, frustrated man who left bruises on her skin. That wasn’t the Nick who had made slow, almost endless love to her in the darkness.
What she had done in avoiding him had been worse than cruel, but it had also been unthinking Now, however, the image of his hand moving gropingly before him in a wide sweeping gesture, seeking her in the darkness had been implanted in her mind.
And it fit, of course, with all the preconceived notions she had brought out here with her. That was the problem. It fit exactly with those stereotypical images of the blind she had struggled so hard to keep away from her precious memories of Nick Deandro.
Chapter Eight
There had been no unusual noises this time to interrupt the country quietness of the night No disturbances other than those originating in Nick’s brain as he tried to fit things together.
He had gone over and over what Abby had told him about Rob’s motives in giving her this assignment. And they made more sense than Andrews sending someone out here that he suspected of having been involved with Nick before the shooting. That would be too dangerous, since they still didn’t know how Nick had been made.
So obviously, imagining that Abby Sterling was the woman he’d dreamed about had been wishful thinking. Because of the intensity of those dreams, maybe Because of the need they created in his body. The incredible longing. Or the sense of loss they always left behind.
He rolled to his side and reached out to touch the bedside clock It was after seven. Later than he normally slept. Of course, Maggie’s pot-banging was what usually woke him every morning, and Maggie was gone. It was very quiet. Maybe Sterling was still asleep. He closed his eyes again, thinking about that. And thinking, almost against his will, about what had happened between them last night. Reliving it.
Feeling her arms under the relentless, too-tight grip of his hands. Pulling her toward him for his kiss. Being aware of her response. Then Brailling her face, trying, like a fool, to imagine from the brush of his fingers what she looked like.
He tried to push his mind away from the other discovery. From the memory of his hands cupping around the baby she carried. The memory of them tracing over the tight swell of the child growing within her body But he couldn’t deny the effect that had had on him The effect it still had, he acknowledged reluctantly, feeling his body’s response to that unwanted image.
He still couldn’t imagine why he was reacting to Sterling’s pregnancy in that way, with this almost sexual excitement. He had never had a thing about pregnant women Up until now, he had avoided examining that subject too closely He wasn’t the kind of guy who was interested in rings, mortgages and babies.
That phrase suddenly reverberated. It didn’t drift through his head like the other, thoughts had. It impacted instead, seeming strangely familiar. As if he had thought it before. Déjà vu, he guessed, dismissing the feeling.
He turned over, opening his eyes and facing the windows. Ritual Meaningless ritual. At least, he realized suddenly, it had always been meaningless before. Because this morning there was a haze over the blackness. Not a light. It wasn’t even a lighter blackness It was too vague for that.
He closed his eyes and counted to twenty before he allowed himself to open them again. Whatever it was was still there A milky, translucent…lesser black. That was the best description he could come up with
And what the hell did he think that meant? he wondered, fighting the excitement that was clawing into his stomach. That sense of elation shouldn’t be there, he knew, and so he denied it, just as he’d tried to deny his reaction to Sterling.
This was something that might not mean a damn thing, he told himself again, trying to get a grip on the building emotion. It wasn’t a return of his vision. He couldn’t even distinguish the two windows. Not their shape or form. There was nothing but a subtle difference in the quality of his ever-present darkness.
He closed his eyes, ordering himself not to hope, not to even think about what this could mean. He had been told that it would take a long time for all the effects of the head injury to go away. A long, slow process of healing, the doctor had said, and one that, frankly, might not result in any improvement in his vision, depending on the condition of the optic nerve itself.
But this, whatever it was, was the first encouraging sign he’d had in six months. And in spite of the doctor’s caution, he couldn’t completely contain the spurt of hope. He had been about as far down last night as he had gotten throughout this entire ordeal. Making a fool of himself in front of Sterling. Playing blindman’s bluff. Trying to kiss her.
But she had responded to that, he remembered. Her mouth had opened under his, her tongue moving in answer. He might be blind, but he had kissed enough women that there was no doubt about what had been going on between them. It had been mutual. Until he had realized she was pregnant.
He didn’t want to think about Sterling and last night. Instead, he pushed the covers off and stood up, deliberately turning his face away from the windows. The milkiness immediately disappeared. He turned around, facing the windows above the desk, and the haze was back. He closed his eyes, a sense of relief and elation again surging through his body.
A beginning, he prayed. At least, maybe, a beginning.
BREAKFAST WASN’T going to be up to Maggie’s standards, of course. Abby had already decided that Nick would have to make do with whatever she could manage, which wasn’t all that much.
She had poured cereal into a bowl and put a small pitcher of milk on the tray, along with a banana which she had left unpeeled. She had two slices of toast in the oven and had placed a small custard cup of pear preserves on the tray. And there was coffee, of course. At least he wouldn’t starve.
She had started across the kitchen to check on the toast when she realized Nick was standing in the doorway leading from the hall. He was wearing jeans again and a navy knit shirt.
He looked fit, Abby thought in relief. Tough. Normal. Despite the glasses. He looked…good. He looked just like Nick, and her body reacted to that realization, almost exactly as it had when he had touched her last night. The quick lurch of desire in her lower body. The slow seep of moisture, hot and so incredibly sweet.
It was exactly the same effect he had had on her those steamy nights in New Orleans when she would open the back door of her apartment and find him standing t
here, nearly hidden by the darkness. He would be leaning against the railing, and as soon as he smiled at her, the same fevered faintness would move through her nerves and muscles, weakening her knees.
Then she couldn’t wait for him to push past her into the apartment. Because she knew what would happen between them. She knew how he would make her feel. Like no one in her life had ever before made her feel.
Just exactly as she had felt last night when his lips had trailed against the sensitive skin of her throat. She had been so hungry for his touch. She had thought that was simply the feel of the familiar darkness around them. Or the length of time since Nick had kissed her. Since anyone had kissed her.
She knew now that it was more than that. It was Nick. Same effect. Exactly the same effect he had always had on her. Nothing had changed physically about the way he made her feel.
And for once she was almost glad he couldn’t see her face. Those emotions would all have been revealed there, and Nick was very good at reading her. Too damn good.
“Sterling?” he asked.
Maybe even good at reading the quality of her stillness.
“Not Maggie, I’m afraid,” she said, trying for briskness, trying to banish the hungry need, if not from her body, at least from her voice “Breakfast this morning may be a little skimpy. Not up to Maggie’s standards.”
“That’s okay. I never could manage all that Maggie fixed.”
“I thought men liked that kind of meal.”
“Maybe if you’re a lumberjack,” he said.
She wondered if that were a reference to his enforced inactivity, but he was smiling. And then she realized this was the first time she had seen him smile since she’d been here. It was a real smile. Not bitter and not mocking
“I thought the same thing, but Blanchard manages. Half a dozen biscuits along with everything else.”
