She could feel his gaze burning into the top of her bowed head, so she raised her eyes slowly. He was standing in front of her, his silence and his waiting a question. She knew he was leaving it ultimately up to her, that right at that moment she was being asked to choose which course of action she would take. But she also knew that along with her basically undisputed right of action, he had undisputedly his, and he wouldn’t just give up and go away. If she gave him his chance and put up with his presence for a week or so, or however long it took, if she could prove to him once and for all that he was wrong, then he would leave and she would be left to build what fragile peace she might.
“All right,” she said, for the simple reason that she knew it wouldn’t work.
Chapter Four
Ryan watched as she picked with a delicate listlessness at her hot meal. The air was awash with summer warmth and sunlit haze. From somewhere outside came the roar of Gary’s Tarzan imitation, and Janie’s shrieking reply. Helen was rattling around upstairs, no doubt cleaning the house. Devan could feel Ryan watching, almost in a physical touch, but she couldn’t bring herself to care. He had arrived without warning and had thrown her off balance from the very beginning. She didn’t have the energy to try to erect walls around herself. He could read in her what he would.
“Why the coffee maker?” she asked then, putting a forkful of egg into her mouth and chewing it. She swallowed without enthusiasm; she didn’t care for runny, slimy yolks, and he’d fried her eggs a definite over-easy. “I mean, I can see you wanting to take the liquor if I’d been a reeking alcoholic or something, but why the coffee? Half the population in America is hooked on caffeine.”
He moved, lithe and nearly silent, over to a kitchen chair and sat down, the furniture creaking under his weight. She wasn’t a particularly small woman, but she felt small in comparison to him. It wasn’t that he was abnormally tall, being perhaps just under six feet, but he was big and solid, with powerful, thick shoulders and muscled thighs. Even his torso, which was lean and trim in comparison to his shoulders, was full of tight solidity. “But then other people aren’t making coffee a substitute for nutritious meals like you are. You look about as starved as an alley cat,” he replied dispassionately, leaning his elbows on the table. She looked at his bare, thick forearms. “If I have my guess, your system must be on pretty shaky ground right now.”
His guess was right, and they both knew it. She looked down at her plateful of food and felt appalled. She couldn’t remember getting to such a state, and was shocked to suddenly look at herself and see what she’d done. Helen’s unexpected support of Ryan was more understandable to her now. While her sister hadn’t nagged, she must have been watching Devan with silent worry for months now. It had taken the fresh eyes of a stranger to shake herself out of her preoccupation. Devan bent her head, a characteristic gesture of hers, and rubbed at the bridge of her nose with thumb and forefinger. The shakiness she had felt after waking and chasing Gary was getting more pronounced, and a dull throb was making itself known at the back of her left eye.
Ryan’s attention had never wavered. His voice came to her quietly, “Why don’t you finish your meal while you still feel capable of it? Your head is starting to bother you, isn’t it?”
She dropped her hand and in her face there was a rejection of the sympathy in his voice as she said briefly, with a snap, “Yeah.” She didn’t want sympathy. She didn’t want this man, or anyone else, reaching out to her, rejecting the half-acknowledged need in herself along with his overtures. All she wanted was for him to go away, so that she could free herself of this sneaking gratitude that was creeping up on her.
Then he stood up and went silently to the sink to start running the dishwater and set the things he had dirtied in it. She watched dully as he briskly set to work, and then her eyes swivelled to her plate, and she felt her stomach churn. She took the food and angrily shovelled it into Paris’s dish, calling the cat who appeared at a dead run just a moment later. The cat settled himself neatly and then began a dainty nibbling at the unexpected meal, and Devan petted his purring back lightly. Then, with a quick glance at the back of Ryan’s light brown head, she turned and made her way to the downstairs bathroom to find the aspirin bottle.
She couldn’t shake off her feeling of unsteadiness and imbalance, or the stunned sense of intrusion he had invoked. Forget it, Devan, she tried to tell herself, as she took four aspirins and popped them in her mouth, swallowing them without water. As she tasted the chalky bitterness, she stared at her thin, bleak expression in the mirror. Let it run off you like rain.
But it wasn’t running off her, it was seeping into her skin as though she were a greedy dry sponge, all the feelings he had brought to life again, all the pain and insecurities, and the emptiness.
The pain behind her left eye was worsening until she began to wonder if the throbbing would push the ball right out of its socket. It was spreading to her other eye, making the light seem to pierce directly into her brain like hot needles. She thought about calling to Ryan to tell him she intended to go to bed but, with another surge of resentment, she thought, to hell with him. To hell with the world. As lousy as she was feeling, she wouldn’t care if she were to disappear off the face of the planet. She stepped gingerly out of the bathroom.
And right into the path of a pelting Gary, who slammed into her torso with enough force to send them both spinning around in a circle. Devan’s arms had automatically encircled his hot, wriggly body to keep him from falling, but found herself clinging to him to keep herself from losing her balance. Her mouth hung open with the surprise of his impact and her own dizzy reaction.
Gary’s head raised as he found himself caught. His eyes narrowed in suspicion on Devan’s white face; he hadn’t a doubt that she was about to wreak vengeance on him for that afternoon, but when she leaned on him, he said, “Hey, what’s wrong with you?”
She replied through thin lips, as she tried to smile at him, “I’m not feeling very well.”
The tow-headed urchin blinked at that. “Oh,” he said, and then, uncharacteristically, “I’m sorry.”
That did prompt a smile from her, and she ruffled his head as she carefully let go of him and found she could still stand on her own two feet. Then he was gone, and Devan was left to make her own way up the stairs. She was practically creeping by the time she reached her bed. She didn’t bother undressing, or even dragging the covers off the floor where they’d been left since that morning; instead she fell on the sheeted mattress and buried her head under her two pillows, hoping she would never have to see the light of day again. She had time to find it simply amazing, considering her earlier nap outside, that she was quite exhausted, and then she closed her weary eyes and fell asleep.
At first it was deep and good, but then everything began to whirl on her sickeningly, and she awoke with a start, feeling sweat drying to coldness on her body, feeling the acute nausea that had brought her out of her sleep, feeling the headache which now throbbed so badly she could hardly see. Trembling, she thrust herself away from the bed, her stomach churning and twisting, and the urge to vomit grew quickly strong until she was rushing out of her room like a bullet, barely making it to the bathroom just down the hall to empty her guts, gaspingly. Dimly through her retching she heard swift, heavy footsteps sounding on the hardwood in the hall, and Ryan burst through the door she hadn’t had time to latch, much less lock.
Her head came up briefly on an open-mouthed gasp, and she turned her sweat-streamed face away from him as tremors shook violently through her body. “For God’s sake, get the hell out of here!” she rasped, her arms wrapped around herself.
“Don’t argue,” he said in a low voice, and he put his hand to her forehead bracingly, the other to her back. “Damn it, I should have realised how sick this might make you, especially after tasting that strong brew last night!” There was a taut self-accusation in his voice.
It surprised her into looking at him briefly, her eyes hard brown, impenetr
able bullets. Then she shook his hands off with a jerk. “Don’t worry about it,” she said thinly, through stiff lips, as nausea swept through her in a shudder. “I can handle it.” He didn’t move, just staring at her as though she were something inhuman, and then she felt the need to retch overpowering her again, and she choked out, mortified, “Will you just get out of here?”
Her eyes had filmed over with blinding tears from the sickness, as involuntary as the saliva that filled her mouth with a rush just before she bent over the toilet again. She didn’t see the sympathetic understanding that filled his light eyes, or the wincing pity as he took in her body, which was curled upon itself like a wounded creature. The spasms shook her so violently, making great sweeps through her entire frame, that she didn’t have the strength to push him away a second time as his firm, strong hands came out to hold her hard against his supporting thigh. She vomited silently, as neat as a cat, the bones of her shoulders and back feeling like breakable sticks underneath her sweater. His hands tightened encouragingly on her as he felt her shake again, and her shoulders hunched in response, moving under his grip.
When the wet blindness had cleared from her eyes, the tears spilling over to run down her face and neck, when she had calmed down again, she carefully wiped her mouth, totally ignoring the man her body was so dependent on. After a moment, he reached over and flushed the toilet, and then asked her gently, “Are you finished now, or do you still feel nauseous?”
She whispered, teeth chattering, “I’m going to sit here for a while.” She didn’t look at him when he gently set her back on the floor and then left the bathroom without a word. For a moment all she could feel was a blank uncomprehending abandonment, not in any condition to question her own emotions. He had left without an explanation, or any word at all to her. Then she understood as he returned almost immediately, holding a thick blanket from her bed which he wrapped carefully around her chilled and sweating body. She curled her trembling hands into the corners and then huddled against the wall, her face and eyes closed in on her misery.
She felt hard fingers thrusting through the hair on her forehead, pushing it back. Then they trailed down the side of her face, gently. He said in a hard, reassuring tone, “I’ll be right back. You hanging on?”
Stupid, to feel reassured, to feel a pitiful rise of responding warmth at his insistent, relentless concern, but she did. She found her lips parting, found herself whispering an acknowledgment of his help at last, “Yeah. Thanks.”
His voice audibly softened. “OK.” He was gone, and she let her weakness take over her body at the solitude, slipping from the wall’s support like a puddle of jelly, just curling uncaringly on the bare, hard-tiled floor.
She heard low voices from the hall. Helen was asking, concernedly, “How is she? Gary just came down to the kitchen and told me she was sick.”
“She’s feeling pretty miserable,” said Ryan, quietly. “But she’ll be all right. This is the worst of it.” Devan could have sworn she heard a smile in his voice then as he said, simply, “She’s got a lot of spunk. She was mad enough when I was in there with her. She won’t let me see her that wretched again, if I read things right.”
She then heard Helen’s low laugh, and found herself grinning too, albeit rather weakly. Then an uncontrollable darkness swept her into its domain. Incredibly, and very quickly, she was asleep, dead to the world within one minute at the outside.
But all too soon, she felt a disturbance in that dark woolliness of her mind, and the impression of something big and dark came bending over her. She felt long, strong arms slide under her body carefully, and then she was being hoisted, slowly and gently, into Ryan’s arms. She slitted her eyes. He was holding her against his chest as though she were as fragile as blown glass. He strode along the hall to her bedroom as she let her head settle in the warm hollow between his neck and shoulder, pretending, for pride’s sake at her weakness, to be asleep. She could sense him looking at her thoughtfully, his bent head a dark blur through her long curling lashes, and then he was lowering her, as carefully as he’d picked her up, on to her bed.
At that she opened her eyes. He took her blanket from her after a brief and silent struggle; she had refused to give it up since she was still cold and trembling. But the exchange was more than fair, she found, as he was pulling the top sheet along with the other blankets over her, and then draping the one she’d been wrapped in over the lot, so she was content enough to slip down to her pillows.
Her face turned from him, for she expected him to leave, but he didn’t. Instead, he sat down on the edge of her bed and tilted the mattress his way, so that her body rolled against his waist before she could catch herself. After a moment, he asked, “Did you know you’d be this sick?”
She sighed, and then shrugged uninterestedly. In order to get comfortable, she turned to her side and pulled her knees up, and found that he fitted quite neatly into the hollow she’d created as she curled around him. “It was my fault,” she said then, as his head angled to look at her. “I took several aspirin on a near empty stomach when I wasn’t feeling steady to begin with.”
Another silence, while he digested that. Then he said, musingly, “No complaints from you, no calls for help, no admittance of weakness, not even any more rejection. Just this stoic attitude. I’d have expected anything, certainly resentment, even a little hate, but not this.” He waited. No answer. Ryan tried one more time to reach her. “It’s like,” he said, very gently, “seeing something that’s been mortally wounded and knows it, and has gone past all the anger and outrage and frustration to lie waiting for death with nothing left but a numb acceptance. Is that what you’re feeling, Devan? Who or what has hurt you that badly, I wonder?”
Eyes tightly closed. No answer.
After he had eased off the bed and walked out of her room, her eyes opened and she lay for a very long time, staring at nothing.
Then she slept refreshingly, and when she next opened her eyes, darkness was beginning to creep through the open curtains of her window to settle in shadows at the corners of her bedroom. Dusk, another day gone by, a total and irrevocable waste. She stretched and lay quietly for a time, feeling her body’s weakness, feeling her head pound, feeling her heart thudding far too fast. Everything felt leaden and weary; though she had slept most of the day away, it seemed that it wasn’t enough, and she still felt exhausted.
She forced her quivering limbs to propel herself off the bed, and, as she still felt quite cold, she took a cardigan from the cupboard and dragged it over her sweater, buttoning it halfway up. Then she eased gingerly out of her room and down the stairs, feeling better once she was up. Helen and the children were playing a table game in the dining room, and the trio looked up interestedly at Devan’s appearance.
“Gary said you up-chucked,” commented Janie dispassionately, as she juggled with a gambler’s skill two dice in her hand.
Her aunt regarded her with a jaundiced eye as she marvelled, “Tell me, Helen, were we ever so vulgar when we were their age?”
“There she goes again, calling me names I can’t understand,” gloomed Janie as she threw the dice in a fit of pique, glaring at Devan. As Helen was also looking away, Devan was the only one to see Gary’s hand, quick as a snake, dart out to flip one of the dice over.
“We’ve already eaten supper,” said Helen, “but there’s plenty left over. I’ll be glad to heat you some, if you’d like.”
“Don’t bother yourself, Helen,” said Ryan, from Devan’s right. She turned. He had come from one of the two rooms used as a library, and he held a paperback tucked in one hand. It looked oddly small in his grip. Her eyes slid over the book incuriously and then came back to it with a sense of shock. It was her first story. She had been so infatuated with the idea of it being on the shelves in public view, she had bought a copy and then tucked it into her bookcase. As Helen had received her own copy months before, the paperback had never been read, to all intents virtually brand new.
Ryan had not
ed her gaze and was smiling. “I thought I’d take a refresher course on what you’ve written thus far,” he said casually, with those sharp, sharp eyes. She shrugged jerkily and didn’t answer. Then he asked carefully, as though expecting a snappy retort or rebuff, “How are you feeling? Any steadier?”
She shrugged again, and said briefly, to the point of terseness, “Head hurts. That’s only to be expected.”
“Do you think you could keep something down, if you were to eat?” he asked.
She was well aware that they had three interested pairs of eyes watching them, and she snapped, “I don’t know. Maybe.”
He grinned, amused, and said, “Why don’t you relax, then, while I heat you up something?”
At that, Helen protested, “Ryan, you don’t have to do that. I can, very easily.”
Devan watched him turn to her sister and smile. A strange feeling invaded her at that, noting his easy friendliness with Helen. She turned herself and noticed, as though for the first time, how very pretty her older sister was, looking far younger than her thirty-two years. Ryan was saying, firmly, “You’ve got enough to take care of with those two, without having to look after Devan, too. I’ll do it.”
Devan exploded. “For God’s sake! I’m not a damned imbecilic invalid! I’m not hungry, so quit haggling over who’s going to do what for me!” Then she turned to stalk out of the room and hesitated. She swung back and marched over to the table to flip the disregarded dice back. “That was a six, not a one.” She shook her finger under Gary’s chagrined nose. “Cheat again, and I’ll tan your hide.”
Helen and Janie looked at him, Janie quite indignant, and Helen warned darkly, “And when she’s finished, young man, I’ll take my turn.”
Rose-Coloured Love Page 5