“I can’t. I’m not sure I want to go through the pain again.”
“But there are some things that are worth the risk.”
“You mean like going back to the operating room, Doc? I think the problem is that the part of us that’s here is safe and secure. The part that ought to leave isn’t nearly as tough as we’d like it to be.”
She was too close to the truth. How in hell could he talk her into doing something that he couldn’t?
“Philosophy?” he said, his voice sharp with recriminations. “Is that how you finish off a good roll in the hay, wildcat?”
His question was intentionally cruel, bringing the lovemaking back to what it had to be, pure hot sex, nothing more. He didn’t want her to force him to face issues, to answer questions, to doubt.
And he knew that no matter how rough he was, the reason he couldn’t go had nothing to do with medicine. It was because he didn’t want to leave her.
“I’m flexible, Merlin. And I’m cold. Stop beating yourself up. Come back to bed with me. What’s done is done. We can’t go back and we can’t change it. Why not enjoy whatever it is that we can give to each other for as long as it lasts?”
He looked at her for a long time. Then he forced himself to leave. He’d used Lois, he couldn’t do that again.
“Coward!”
He closed his ears to the soft sound of her laughter as he closed the door.
“Hattie,” he said with a growl, “if you’re doing this, you’ve got to stop. I can’t deal with her and all the rest. All I wanted to do was put the past behind me. She’s making it fall all over me. You started it, you’ve got to stop it.”
“I can’t, Nicky.” Hattie’s voice answered as clearly as if she were standing beside him. He almost reached out to touch her, so sure was he that she was there. “You’re on your own. I can’t change what is going to happen.”
“Why?”
“It really is up to you,” she whispered. “It always has been. I’m only allowed to help. That’s why I brought Siggy back. Though,” she said with a chuckle, “at this stage of the game, maybe I ought to look up Rudolph Valentino. She’s right, Nicky, what you need, you already have.”
Nick rubbed his arms and shivered and paced back and forth down the corridor.
“What’s wrong now?” Hattie asked.
“Aside from every other interfering you’ve done, I’m cold.”
“Well, it is a bit cool for nudity.”
Nick glanced down at his bare body. “Damn!” He strode down the corridor to his room. “You’re a Peeping Tom, Hattie. Though I suppose that’s the nature of ghosts. Not that I believe in ghosts. Are you going to be here from now on? Is this house going to remain haunted?”
“No. I’m only here as long as I’m needed. Once you send me away, I’ll be gone.”
“That can’t be too soon for me,” Nick said, pulling on a pair of briefs. “First I’ve got an angel tempting me twenty-four hours a day. And now there’s a nosy spirit following me around. I ought to move back home and leave both of you. What do you think of that, Hattie Lanier?”
But there was no answer.
He was alone, and being alone now was different. He knew what he could have had, a woman in his arms who was willing and a friend who refused to let him fool himself anymore.
For one wistful moment he wished he were a wizard. A magic spell might be the only answer to the dilemma he was facing.
TEN
The next morning Nick decided that Dusty’s ghost box was living quarters for an entire colony of spirits. There was no other logical explanation.
Logic? For a no-nonsense man, he was turning as squirrelly as Hattie and Dusty.
Dusty. He had spent the early hours of the morning trying not to think about Dusty, about what had happened between them, about how he’d feel if he’d woken and found her body entwined with his. Instead, he’d forced himself to concentrate on convincing himself that Hattie’s voice was a figment of his imagination, an unexplained phenomenon associated with his accident, another weird memory quirk.
In the end, Nick was ready to concede that, imagined or otherwise, if Hattie had managed to call up Sigmund Freud in some kind of misguided attempt to help Nick regain his memory, her efforts were paying off. For in his effort not to think about Dusty, he seemed to free his mind, and like water pouring down a mountain in a snow melt, his medical knowledge came pouring back.
The process was overwhelming.
As a doctor, Nick had heard his professors and associates talk about a higher power, about miracles that came from some place beyond their expertise, but he’d never consciously experienced it. If a patient unexpectedly recovered, or if something happened he couldn’t explain, he’d simply accepted it and taken the credit.
He didn’t understand spiritual things, but something remarkable was happening, something that defied explanation. The question was, if he could see a man in a dark suit with gray whiskers named Siggy, why couldn’t he see Hattie, in whose presence he was much more ready to believe?
Somehow she’d managed to bring him and Dusty together. Hattie had set the stage, but it had been they, Dr. Nicholas Elliott and Ms. Desirée O’Brian, who’d made the final connection. He’d tried to stop what he now recognized as the inevitable. But in the end, he’d made love to Dusty, linking them, forging a bond that even now tugged at him with such force that it was all he could do to sit at the kitchen table and try to analyze his desire.
The telephone rang. It was Bill Lewis pleading with Nick to come down to the hospital and sit in on the planning session for the surgery they were going to attempt on the fetus.
“I’m not ready,” Nick argued. “I won’t do it.”
That’s when the trouble began. The top shot off the coffeepot and the lights started switching themselves off and on. Finally, in self-defense, he recanted his refusal. “All right. I’ll come in the morning, just to observe, Bill. Nothing more.”
The kitchen arsenal grew quiet.
“Thanks, Nick. I’m glad to hear it. This baby needs a miracle to live. And I’m convinced that you’re part of that miracle.” Bill signed off, leaving Nick to reflect on that profound statement. An unborn child needed a miracle, a miracle he might contribute some small measure of expertise to ensure.
Maybe it’s time you go back to the operating room. Doc. Dusty’s words came back to him. Dusty, who never questioned his claim to have lost his medical memory. She hadn’t shamed him for his refusal to practice medicine. In some strange way, she seemed to understand. Her only suggestion was, finally, that he should take back his life.
Did she know what that would mean? Could she possibly know the pressure, the addictive high that the power of healing gave him? It was frightening, yet the pull was powerful. Did he dare return after what had happened?
Yes. She was right. It was time. Looking back, he knew that he’d already begun. The Heimlich maneuver. Treating Dusty’s wound. Examining the little boy at the Children’s Center and recognizing his bruises as abuse. Reading the X rays in Bill’s office. From the moment Dusty had come into his life, he’d started down a road he’d thought impassable.
Then, the night before, he’d opened himself up to a personal relationship which pushed him toward the possibility of tomorrow.
All the barriers weren’t down, but he’d made a start. In loving Dusty, for the first time in a long time, he’d reached for something personal, something that had nothing to do with being a doctor.
Nick poured the rest of his coffee into the sink and rinsed his cup. There was a lot of pretty heavy stuff rolling around inside his head. It was time to take his usual Sunday morning walk around the lake. As he slipped out the back door, he stopped, inclined his head as he thought about the woman sleeping upstairs, then closed the door and locked it behind him.
He’d managed to fill his mind with ghosts and the return of his memory, avoiding any speculation over what a future with Dusty might mean. Nothing about their being toge
ther had promised a long-term relationship. Was she even interested in one?
He’d have to think about that. All he was certain of was that she was important to him. He wanted her in ways that he couldn’t begin to define. The physical need was only a part of why he was drawn to Dusty. More than that, there was a connection of spirit that transcended all this ghost business.
A feeling of hope.
First he had to think about Bill and the surgery. The child didn’t have much time. He and Dusty had the rest of their lives. The baby and the surgery would take his full concentration, then he and Dusty would talk about Hattie’s ghosts.
Nick had come full circle, back to Hattie and her crazy suggestion she’d be back. The spiritual vortex swirling around him and Dusty was somehow connected to both Hattie and the tour. Dusty’s presence and her storytelling blackouts were a part of the storm, an unsettling part.
Nick could deal with mental aberrations on his own, for he’d learned to accept that the mind could play strange tricks. But he was acutely uncomfortable with the signs he was seeing in Dusty. She seemed to become the woman in the ghost story, absorbing unseen messages of some kind as she spoke. The people on the tour thought she was very good, but Nick was convinced that once she started telling the story, she became Danielle. At the end, Dusty still insisted that her swoon was part of her presentation, but he wasn’t convinced.
Then there were the dreams, the one she seemed to be having while he held her after the last rehearsal and his own imagined reincarnations of the woman in the hip bath. It was becoming far too easy to see himself in the picture with Dusty.
All his dreams were different. Before Dusty came he’d dreamed about the wreck, about Lois, and about dark caverns of pure nothingness. Everything in his dreams had been still and dead, no sound, no color, only pain. But everything had changed. Slashes of color, turmoil, waves of flame and heat and passion had changed the darkness into pleasure beyond description.
Dear God, the passion was like a raging inferno, carrying him into physical release even in his dreams. The people in the reverie weren’t him and Dusty, and yet they were. It was all such a wild, uncontrolled fantasy. He might as well be fourteen instead of thirty-four.
So, he rationalized, he had the hots for Dusty. But he’d made love to her and it hadn’t changed anything—except to fan the fragile ray of hope that kept nudging him forward. It was all he could do to keep himself from turning around and climbing those stairs and loving her again.
Even at the height of their passion, he knew that his need was more than just lust. He liked the woman. He liked being with her. She didn’t expect anything except honesty, and she gave that same honesty in return. More, beneath all that street-smart savvy and lush beauty, she was fragile. She’d been hurt, and she’d struck out.
He’d been hurt, and he’d turned the hurt inside.
Now they’d come together, seeking solace from a kindred spirit. Would it be possible for two people so totally different to find a common ground?
He groaned. They’d already found a common ground. What they needed was a normal one. What he needed was an emotional textbook, a procedural manual, some kind of instructions that told him how to blow away the smoke and help him see the sunlight.
Nick drove to the place he normally parked his car and began to jog. He let out a bitter laugh. Even Bill would smirk at his clumsy attempt at running. Still, he was growing stronger and his legs were steadier than before. Even now as he moved down the sidewalk, beneath the crown of autumn leaves and chirping birds, he felt a curious peace settle over him.
Reaching down, he drew on an inner strength that had always seen him through times of fear and exhaustion. It was still there, feeding the needs of his soul. His steps became surer, stronger, and the sunlight warmed him.
If Bill were watching, he might not see the smoothness of Nick’s stride, but Nick felt it. He was running slowly but surely toward the lake, the sound of the carillon bells drawing him along.
Maybe, just maybe, he was coming back to life.
Tomorrow called to him, challenged him. Tomorrow would bring the first test of his medical skills in more than a year.
Dr. Nick Elliott would spend the next few days preparing, then he’d go to surgery and assist in a miracle.
Desirée stood before the mirror and studied the woman looking back at her. Gone was Officer O’Brian. Gone was Dusty, the protective street kid. Gone was the rebellious teenager who’d run away in the middle of the night and the resigned woman who’d hitched a ride from Florida to Georgia.
The person she saw was simply a woman, a woman who’d been made love to by a man. Her hair was tousled. Her nude body was flushed and aching. Under her gaze, her nipples hardened and moved up and down as her breathing came faster. She didn’t recognize the woman she was seeing, and that scared her.
Always before, she’d been sure of what and who she was. She might never know where she was going, or allow herself to feel any regret about what she’d left behind, but she knew at any given moment in her life who she was at that time.
Now she was all new. The woman with the big blue-gray eyes was a stranger, a new entity reforming herself within the invisible framework of the past. For the first time in her life there was a weak but valiant light struggling to survive out there in the dark future.
All because of Hattie.
No, it went deeper than that. Because of Nick.
Dusty ran her fingertips across her swollen lips, parting them instinctively, allowing the quick hot breath she’d been holding to escape.
“Thank you, Hattie, for sending me my own wizard.”
There was no answer, only a kind of waiting. She was alone. There was no one in the house but Dusty, not even an errant spirit ready to tease or to interfere.
When she’d awakened and found Nick gone, she’d felt sudden fear. Then she wondered what she would have felt if he’d still been there. It would have been awkward. What did one say to a lover who had to be a one-night stand? “It was a nice start to the rest of my life. How about one more for the road?”
She’d wanted the man’s body, been intensely drawn to him from the first. It had been her decision to sleep with him and get past that attraction so that they could deal with Hattie’s strange bequests.
Now she’d done it. Now reality could set in. But he’d been the one to get up and go home, back to his own room—wherever. That saved embarrassment for them both. Now, as soon as she got a shower and washed the powerful smell of him from her body, she’d formulate a way to get on with the rest of her life.
Dusty walked naked out of the bedroom and down the corridor to the bathroom. There were water marks on the shower stall. Unlike his usual neat self, Nick had flung a wet towel carelessly over the rack. He’d showered before he went wherever he’d gone.
As she stepped beneath the hot spray, she wondered if he smelled her on his skin, if he’d stood before the mirror in wonder at the change one night had made in his life? No, that was a woman thing, she decided. Soaping her body, she forced herself to replay the events of the night. Closing them off only allowed them to grow in potency. Only by examining them could she take away the mystery, the wonder.
Only this time it didn’t work that way. With every swipe of the washcloth her body responded, not to her touch, but to the memory of Nick’s. She wasn’t removing memories; she was anticipating new ones.
“Sweet heaven, this isn’t helping, Dusty. You’re not taking charge of your future, you’re just turning yourself on.”
Future. The one thing she’d vowed never to acknowledge. Her future had always been decimated in one way or another by those she thought cared about her, beginning with the father who left before she’d been born. If her mother knew who he was, she would never talk about him, only that he never said good-bye. Her mother had never said good-bye either. Neither had Martha.
Hattie had loved her unconditionally. Dusty had always known that, even when she’d hated her adoptive
aunt for her plan to send her away to boarding school. It wasn’t that Dusty didn’t want to go to the school, it was that she refused to let Hattie leave her.
Dusty had decided early on that if Desirée O’Brian was going to be left alone again, she’d be the one to go first, before someone else did the leaving.
Poor Hattie. Dear Hattie who never gave up, who, in the end, found a way to force Dusty to come back and face the truth. Hattie, who’d sent Nick to make it easier for Dusty to face her past.
Now Nick had gone.
Dear Nick. Dusty would never, could never, be the kind of woman for a man like him. Sooner or later he’d get back to the life he was meant to live, she couldn’t change that.
Nick hadn’t said good-bye either.
She ought to get out of there. Yes, that’s the thing to do. Pack up and hit the road. Now, before he comes back. If he comes back.
She turned off the shower, dried herself, and dressed. Throwing her few possessions into her backpack, she dashed down the stairs and out the kitchen door.
Moments later she was riding her bicycle toward the village, coming to a stop as a car pulled into the parking lot beside the ART Station.
“Dusty?”
David Thomas’s voice stopped her. “Where are you heading?” he asked.
“I—I’m just out for a Sunday ride. What are you doing here? Do you work seven days a week?”
“Nope, came down to help get our art teacher’s van loaded up for Monday’s class at the Children’s Center, since Nick can’t go with her.”
“Nick’s not going?”
“No. He called a while ago and asked me if I’d fill in. And since there will be so many things going on tomorrow, I thought I’d better get ready this afternoon.”
Dusty felt the breath rush out of her lungs. She knew that until this moment she hadn’t really believed that Nick was leaving. But he was. He’d even called David to find a replacement for him.
So, he wasn’t bound by Hattie’s will to continue his work with the Station. He could pack up and go home, if that was what he wanted.
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