“If we play our cards right, we can get a good-sized settlement out of this guy, Murdock. I understand he ran into you. The bastard was negligent! Any jury would look at you and tell you’re scarred for life. What about your career? You had a good chance to go right to the top in that company, but now—“
“Eddie, stop it! There’ll be no lawsuit,” Casey said sharply. “It was just as much my fault as his. I was warned to stay off the highway. Visibility was zero. I thought I would take a chance. I was tired and wanted to get home. The man at the station where I got gas warned me that there had already been one bad accident. Besides ...” she started to say more, but in an instant decided not to reveal the other reason why the accident could have been her fault alone.
“If you were warned to stay off the highway, so was he,” Eddie said stubbornly.
“That’s true,” Casey admitted. “But it still isn’t enough reason to sue the man. He could turn around and sue me. Have you thought about that?
He could get a judgment against me and I’d be paying on it for the rest of my life.”
“You’re not being practical. A man in his position must have tons of insurance.”
“What do you mean? Have you been checking up on him? Eddie, I’ve told you before, don’t interfere in my life!” Anger flamed through her body.
“Don’t get in a snit, love. You’re in no condition to make a quick decision,” Eddie said firmly. “Dan Murdock is one of the lumber company Murdocks. I don’t know how he fits in, but 111 find out.”
“Eddie!” She wanted to shriek at him, but it came out a low, menacing snarl. “I’m perfectly able to take care of my own affairs without any help from you. Need I remind you that I’ve been doing it for quite some time. And ... by the way, I’ll be needing that five hundred I loaned you last year.”
Eddie laughed. “You look just like your mother when you’re all steamed up.”
“Don’t try to get around me by bringing up mother. She was too good for you and you know it,” Casey snapped. “I’m not kidding about needing the money. I may be out of a job.”
“All the more reason to—“
“No! I’ve got insurance, which will help, and some savings. Dan Murdock saved my life. I’m not going to repay him by dragging him through the courts.”
“It appears to me he’s taken an inordinate amount of interest in you, cookie. Maybe you have other plans for him?” he said hopefully.
“You’re making me angry,” Casey said quietly. “Go away and come back another time. And by the way, what were you doing in Seattle?”
“Business and . . . pleasure. A friend of mine has property up there and she wanted me to look it over.”
“Why? You don’t have a license to sell real estate in Washington.”
“Who said anything about selling?” Eddie answered, his laugh wide, emphasizing the tiny dimples at each corner of his perfectly groomed mustache.
“You’re hopeless!” Casey exclaimed, but there was a fondness in her eyes as she looked at him.
“What a thing to say to your father!” He got to his feet with a stricken look on his face as if he took parenting seriously.
“You should have been an actor.”
“Should have been? I am an actor. Life is a series of one-act plays and I play a part in each of them.” He touched her cheek with one finger. “But I care very much about my only offspring.”
“How do you know?”
“How do I know what? That I care—“
“No,” she interrupted. “How do you know that I’m your only offspring? Do I have brothers and sisters floating around out there?” She lifted her hand in a circling gesture.
“Who can say?” he said dramatically. “Who knows what seeds we sow as we travel life’s highways? I think John Barrymore said that.”
“It figures,” Casey said dryly. “Bye, Eddie. Thanks for the flowers.”
The nurse didn’t return to the room for quite some time after Eddie left and Casey assumed he had detained her in the hallway. She dismissed him from her thoughts as the image of Dan Murdock crowded into her mind.
She had seen nothing of him for several days, but he had called her each evening since he was away. He talked freely about himself.
His family had lumber interests near Bend. He was there, now, negotiating with a foreign buyer. Business had been slow due to the building slump and they had been forced to lay off some of the workers. The new contract would mean jobs, he told her, and they were cutting the profit built into their bid to the limit in order to provide those jobs.
He asked if her father had been to see her and if she had heard from her employer. At that time she had answered no to both questions. Last evening she told him she didn’t need the private nurse, but he insisted she keep her on for a few more days.
Casey gazed out the window as evening approached and tried to visualize his face. His features appeared vaguely in her mind’s eye, but she could clearly see wide shoulders, the strong line of his body, a firm waistline tapering to lithe hips, the chest molded to a soft white shirt, and long muscled legs which moved with assurance. He was physically in the peak of condition. As a male specimen, Casey mused, he was unquestionably superb.
During their phone conversations she was careful to speak to him with the quiet courtesy of a stranger, answering his questions and asking none of her own. Eddie was right about him showing an unusual amount of interest in her. Why? Did he feel guilty? A part of her hoped he never called again, the other part listened for the ring of the phone.
Casey had had her share of emotional entanglements during the last ten years. She had lost her virginity her first year out of high school. It shocked her into the realization that she was following her mother down the primrose path with a handsome rake who had no intentions of being true to her. After that at least three times a year some would-be seducer laid siege to her body, but Casey remained inviolate. And she was determined to make herself financially secure so she would never be forced to do the menial work her mother had done.
But she’d never met a man who’d come even close to being anything like Dan Murdock, she realized suddenly. Bits and pieces of conversation kept coming back to her. Things about reincarnation, and about him knowing she was special to him. She wished her mind had been clear that night and she could have asked him what he was talking about. Suddenly she hoped it would be a long, long time before she saw him again. She didn’t need his pity. The thought of him looking at her as if she were a caterpillar crawling out of his salad caused her to close her eyes and clench her teeth. She went cold, then hot as she imagined how she must have looked to him—black ringed eyes, face swollen beneath the bandages, her hands like chicken’s feet! And that was the part of her he could see. The doctor told her she had over fifty stitches in her right breast. She had no intention of going bare breasted on a public beach so that part of her injuries had been relegated to the back of her mind, although she was acutely aware that she would never again be able to wear a sleeveless sundress, a low-cut evening dress, or appear on the beach in a skimpy bathing suit.
The door opened and closed softly. Casey kept her face turned toward the window and blinked rapidly at the tears in her eyes. Miss Peachy-Complexion would be going off duty soon. She was sick to death of the girl hovering over her. She opened her mouth to tell her not to turn on the lights when a whiff of something masculine reached her nose. An icy hand squeezed her heart and Dan’s deep voice said, “Hello, Casey.”
She turned startled eyes toward him and at the same time burrowed her hands and arms beneath the sheet. Her eyes ran over Dan quickly before she turned her head away. The movement was too quick and she flinched from the pain as her ear and cheek pressed into the pillow. He was just as she remembered—a man totally in command of himself. Finally she remembered to return his greeting.
“Hello.”
There was silence. “May I sit down?”
“Be my guest,” she said ungraciously, keeping
her face turned away from him.
“Thanks.” He carried the chair around the end of the bed and placed it so that when he sat down his eyes were only a couple of feet from hers.
There was nowhere for Casey to look but at him. He was wearing a brown shirt with pearl snaps and tight-fitting, Western cut slacks of tan corduroy. It wasn’t his casual attire that held her attention, but the rugged planes of his tanned features, lean and strong. She had had no difficulty remembering his size or the dark glitter of his eyes, but she had forgotten about the unruliness of his thick, dark hair. She watched the straight, firm line of his mouth curve in a smile that softened the hard contours of his face.
Casey lay stiffly, all her nerve ends tingling under the scrutiny of those eyes. She knew she had never looked as unattractive as she did then. There was no artificial cause for the color that tinged her cheeks as his gaze traveled over her face, taking in the bruises beneath her eyes, the unwashed hair pulled back from her face, and the dressing that covered her cheek and ear leaving the stitches visible across her forehead.
Her gold-flecked eyes held a definite shimmer of defiance when she met his glance. All her defenses were raised. Casey didn’t fully understand this inner need to protect herself from him, it was just there and seemed to be purely instinctive. The strong mouth slanted its line, but it never made the full transition into a smile. His glance locked with hers.
“Hello again. Why are you so cross tonight? Did you have a bad day?”
She wanted to say, Hell, yes, I had a bad day. Every day from now on will be a bad day. But it would be a gross display of bad manners.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to sound cross.” Her throat felt as if it had a rock in it.
He bent forward and she imagined she felt his breath on her face. “We don’t need false politeness between us, Casey. If you had a bad day, say, Hell, yes, I had a lousy day.”
Oh, God! Can he read my mind? “Hell, yes. I had a lousy day today and expect to have a lousier one tomorrow,” she blurted out.
“That’s better. It’s natural to resent what’s happened to you. Don’t keep that resentment bottled up inside. It’ll be easier if you share it with me.”
Her retort was quick. “You don’t know anything about it. I’ve only seen you twice in my life.”
“In this life, but not in the others.” He made the statement a challenge and his eyes gleamed with amusement as the corners of his mouth lifted.
“I think you’re missing a few bricks!”
He threw his head back and laughed. “No, you don’t. Haven’t you ever felt as if you’ve done something before, known someone before, looked on something beautiful before? The feeling only lasts for an instant, but it’s very real at the time. That’s the way I feel about you. We could have rowed the Nile as Mark Anthony and Cleopatra; reveled in Camelot as Sir Lancelot and Queen Guinevere; walked the shores of the Deschutes River as an Indian brave and his maiden; or come across the great plains as man and wife on a wagon train. Think about it. Do I seem like a stranger to you?”
The question caught her off guard. She was conscious of the uneven hammering of her pulse under the steady gaze of his dark eyes. He didn’t seem like a stranger, but she wouldn’t admit it to him!
“If I knew you in another life, more than likely I was a rabbit and you were a hawk!”
“No. If you were a rabbit I was a rabbit.” The dark gray eyes danced with pure mischief. “Our life was short, but we did our share to insure the future of the species.”
Casey’s stomach churned with a violent emotion, which she interpreted as anger. The frown of disapproval she shot at him did nothing but intensify the devilish grin on his face.
A man this attractive must have someone at home, she thought, even if he wasn’t wearing a wedding ring. She had another thought on the heels of that one. With his strength and gentleness, he would be a warm and demanding lover.
She wanted to say something clever to let him know the conversation was getting too personal and that she didn’t appreciate his humor. She looked into dark friendly eyes and suddenly the matter was out of her hands. She smiled, a wobbly, halfhearted smile.
“I rather left myself wide open for that one,” she said shakily.
“You have a very beautiful mouth, Casey Farrow,” he said softly. “I’ll see to it that it smiles more often.”
Her mood instantly changed back to anger. “Don’t practice your moves on me, Sir Lancelot. I don’t know what field you think you’re playing on, or what you hope to gain by tossing out flowers. I’ve already told you I’m not going to file a legal claim against you.” The anger in her eyes was echoed in her voice.
Dan switched on the lamp on the bedside table, replacing the gloom with soft light. Although he was still lounging in his chair, an electricity emanated from him. Casey knew that she had angered him. She stared into dark eyes and desperately asked herself how things could have developed to such a point. Where was her painfully acquired discipline and self-control?
“We may just as well get this relationship started off on the right foot, Casey.” His face had a harshness that made her shiver.
“There’s no relationship between us, Mr. Mur-dock.” She felt shaken and a little out of breath, but compelled to retort caustically.
“Oh, but there is!” His voice was soft, but the measured words left no doubt as to their rock-hard meaning. “I’m very attracted to you. I’m thirty-four years old and you are the first woman I’ve ever wanted in any way other than physically, and that’s not saying that I don’t want you that way, too. After you get to know me, you’ll find that I don’t pass out compliments lightly. I meant it when I said you have a beautiful mouth and I also mean it when I say you have a hard, cynical attitude.”
“What you’re saying is ridiculous! I’m not . . . hard or cynical,” she blurted out, and moved her head so suddenly on the pillow that she winced. “You don’t know anything about me, and ... my personal life is none of your business.”
“I do know about you. I hadn’t planned on having this conversation just yet. I wanted to wait until you were stronger.” He paused and raised his brows in question, but Casey was too dumbfounded to speak. He reached over and lifted her hair from her neck and tucked it behind her head. “You have beautiful hair, too. When I was in your apartment I saw the posters of you demonstrating the cosmetic line. I stole one of them.”
“You’ve . . . you’ve been to my apartment?” Casey’s mouth remained agape after she gasped the words.
“Of course. How do you think your personal things got here?” He laughed at the vaguely puzzled look on her face.
“I thought Judy brought them up before she left on one of her flights. She’s a stewardess for an international airline and lives next ...” her voice trailed off in disbelief.
“I met Judy,” Dan said matter-of-factly. “She helped select what you’d need. She also told me your rent was due. I paid it for another month, so you needn’t worry about that.”
“You have a nerve! I’ve lived there six years. They wouldn’t have thrown me out for being a month behind in my rent.”
“I realize that under the circumstances your landlord would have waited for the rent money, but it wasn’t necessary.” He looked at her intently. “Why are your arms covered? Are you cold?”
“No! Yes!” She couldn’t think with him sitting so close to her and looking as if he knew every line and hair on her body. Consciously she willed herself to remember that this man was a stranger to her. She knew absolutely nothing about him except what he had told her.
“I like touching you,” he said softly, breaking into her thoughts. His hand slid beneath the sheet and his fingers closed around her forearm. “That’s better.” He smiled into her eyes as if it was the most natural thing in the world for him to caress her arm.
Casey felt the warmth and sense of connection that pulsed so powerfully between them. At the moment it was a quiet, yet profound feeling, but suddenly she
was jolted by an instant flash of memory: This had happened before! I’m losing my mind was her next thought. Then, overwhelmed by what she was feeling, the stiffness left her body, her eyes lost themselves in the dark, gray depths of his and she seemed to be filled with a warmth and completeness that was new to her. She was conscious of nothing except firm warm fingers on her arm holding her back. But . . . from what?
“I knew you’d relax if I could touch you.” His voice came softly through the roar in her ears. “You’ve been lying there stiff as a board.” The hand moved slowly up and down her arm. She had a mad impulse to hug it to her side, to keep the security of his touch with her. “We’ve got to get you out of here so I can take you home with me.”
A Love for All Time Page 3