Blind Man's Buff

by Victoria Gordon

  It was no kiss of pleasure, no kiss of friendliness, not even of need. It was brutal, demanding, taking. Her lips were parted beneath his searching mouth, her neck strained backwards as he forced her head back, his hands locked at her waist.

  ‘Is this what I’m to look ahead to?’ he demanded when the fury of the kiss was over and his lips had left her mouth sore and swollen. ‘To kissing a woman I can’t see? To touching her, not knowing what she looks like, whether she enjoys the touch or hates it? To never knowing if any woman I touch is repulsed by me, is lying to me, cheating me?’

  He laughed, a bitter, brittle laugh of pure scorn. His fingers unlocked from behind her, one hand shifting round to close against her breast, fingers stroking, caressing, rousing her nipple to firmness. Rena wanted to speak, to move, to do something. But she could only stand and endure his harsh caress.

  ‘See? Your body reacts — I don’t need eyes to know that. But do you react? Do you enjoy this ...’ and his fingers created heaven for her ... or do you simply endure, humouring the harmless lusts of a poor blind man?’

  His arms closed around again, pulling her against him, forcing her to accept the hardness of his masculinity against her soft, pliant body. Then he thrust her from him in a gesture so abrupt and violent that she stumbled and almost fell.

  Ran spun in a circle, arms outstretched like some gaunt sacrifice. ‘Harmless, see?’ he chided. ‘While I hold you, there’s something between us, but once free, you’ve nothing to fear from a man who can’t see you. Not ... one ... damned ... thing! Isn’t that something for me to look forward to?’

  Then he halted, arms suddenly listless at his side. The anger left his face, to be replaced by a bitterness Rena could almost taste.

  ‘Great advice you offer,’ he said. ‘And if I took it? What would you think then, Rena, if I took your damned advice and looked ahead? Would you care? Would you be there for me to touch, give you something live to vent your own bitterness on? Hell, maybe that’s a great idea. I’d be just right for you; you could hate me as much as you wanted to, take any advantage you liked ... because I couldn’t fight back.’

  ‘Stop it! Oh, please ... stop it she cried. It was too painful; she couldn’t listen. But he wouldn’t stop.

  ‘Why?’ he shouted back at her, his voice like acid. ‘Don’t you think it would be a great arrangement? Think how nice it would be. You could betray me without me ever even knowing; you could give me dirty looks without having to go behind my back; you could make me totally, completely, uselessly dependent on you, and when you got sick of me you could just walk away, knowing that I couldn’t see to stop you.’

  ‘No!’ She screamed it the first time, then repeated it over and over in an endless litany of shame and sorrow.

  ‘No.’ His own voice echoed her. ‘No, perhaps you wouldn’t, Rena. But she would; most women damned well would. And even if you didn’t, eventually you’d get sick of being lumbered with half a man, an overgrown baby you have to take out on a leash.’

  He paused, and when he continued it was in a voice so low that the rush of the waves nearly drowned it out. ‘It’s too bad you’re not really the man hater you pretend to be, Rena. I think it might have been a bloody good arrangement.’

  She didn’t reply. She couldn’t, short of screaming her answer over her shoulder. Ran’s final caustic words were too much for her. Eyes half blinded by her own tears, her own guilt, she fled, running up the beach and leaving him to stand alone, crying his bitter soliloquy to the seagulls and the wind.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  She ran blindly, as blindly as Ran himself might have done it. But she didn’t run far. Even in her pain, some small part of her mind refused to leave him standing there, a prisoner of his infirmity.

  Soon, too soon for her, she returned. Walking, this time, her feet digging into the hard-packed sand and her breath heaving with her earlier exertions.

  Ran knew she was there. She approached silently, but he knew! He turned as she approached, searching with blind eyes, his other senses compensating.

  ‘You might as well say it,’ he growled. ‘I’m a proper bastard and I admit it. What am I?’

  ‘You’re a proper bastard,’ said Rena, honouring the remark in a listless voice. ‘And I guess that makes two of us.’

  ‘No, one is quite enough,’ he said. ‘Will you hold my hand on the way back? I’m beginning to think I’ve had too much sun or something; I don’t feel real crash hot.’

  They were a quarter of the way back to the car before Rena spoke again, and she did it hesitantly, unsure of her ground.

  ‘You’re going to finish it, aren’t you?’ she asked. ‘If only to hear this ... this woman put in her own words why she left you when you might have needed her the most.’

  ‘I reckon. Sounds stupid, doesn’t it? But I have to hear it from her own lips, if only to clear the devils from my mind.’ His fingers squeezed Rena’s lightly.

  ‘And I am sorry for jumping on you so hard back there. I get so ... just so damned frustrated, sometimes.’

  ‘Forget it.’ Her own guilt was enough to bear, without adding to it by harassing him further.

  ‘All right. I’ll make it up to you somewhere along the line anyway,’ he said.

  They strolled along in silence for quite some time before he spoke again. ‘I’ll say one thing for you, Rena ... you may be a man hater, but at least I know where I stand with you. That sounds horribly patronising, doesn’t it? But it isn’t meant to be. I mean, you wouldn’t be bothered feeding me a whole lot of bull-dust, would you? Easier just to be straight and let the chips fall where they may. I quite like that.’

  He might have; Rena shuddered inside with every word. Her own guilt, a guilt that seemed to grow no matter how much she attempted to justify her deception of Ran, was beginning to twist itself into a permanent knot inside her.

  ‘I don’t think you should take me as any classic example,’ she replied, trying to lighten the conversation. ‘I’m just ... well, perhaps a bit weird, when you come right down to it. In fact, I’m beginning to wonder a bit about me.’

  ‘I wouldn’t if I were you. You’re a warm, caring person, despite your bitterness. One day you’ll meet the right man and the past will just ... disappear. I promise you.’

  How easy for him to say, Rena thought. But the past wouldn’t disappear, not until Ran Logan himself disappeared. And when, she wondered, would that be? Obviously not until he had confronted his dream girl and sorted out his mind on that score, but if she ... if she continued to torment him, would he ever abandon the dream for a reality? It wouldn’t matter to her, Rena thought. She couldn’t possibly recreate any form of personal relationship, not after the deceptions she had been weaving since he had turned up again in her world.

  If she were to tell him, now, that she was Catherine Conley as well as Rena Everett, what might it do to him? Bad enough that one woman had shattered his illusions ... for Rena to reveal her own deceptions would be adding insult to injury.

  Despite the certain knowledge, in recent weeks, that he might suspect, that he couldn’t fail to notice the similarities in voice, in attitude, in ... whatever, Rena simply couldn’t force herself to come clean, opening up her own situation to allow nothing but pain for them both.

  ‘You don’t really believe me, do you?’ he asked, not waiting for an answer. ‘But it will, you know. One morning when you’re older, when you’ve got your life together with just the right bloke, you’ll wake up and find you can’t even remember the twit who deserted you.’

  ‘I don’t think it’s quite that simple,’ she replied, ‘but I hope you’re right.’ Only she knew he wasn’t right. She would never be able to forget Ran Logan, now or later.

  Fortunately, he let the conversation lapse there, and for the rest of their journey back to the car he was silent. Apart from the light, almost negligible touching of their hands, they might have been walking totally apart, each lost in their own thoughts.

  Rena put it dow
n to Ran having got, as he’d suggested, a bit too much sun. But by the time they reached the house again she realised it was worse than that; he’d got a lot too much sun. His complexion, rather fairer than her own, now blazed crimson across his face, his chest and arms and on the back of his neck. Even his legs showed a touch of burn.

  And he wasn’t well. Not that he wanted to admit it, but having been raised in Queensland, Rena knew all about the vivid dangers of the deceptive sub-tropical sunshine. When they reached home, Ran’s forehead was beaded in sweat, his hair soaked with it.

  She had to help him from the car, and it took no great comprehension to realise he was unsteady on his feet; Rena had some difficulty getting him inside his own flat and finally seated in the first handy chair.

  ‘Oh, lord ... I’m really sorry,’ she said. ‘This is my fault. How could I have been so stupid?’

  ‘I found it rather easy,’ he replied in a shaky voice. ‘And it isn’t your fault, so stop complaining. I’ll be okay; I just need to rest a bit, that’s all.’

  He took several deep breaths, then swallowed convulsively. ‘Only first I think I’m going to be sick.’

  And he was, horribly sick. Rena only just managed to get him into the bathroom in time. When that was over, she embarked on a furious search for a thermometer, praying now that he was only suffering heat exhaustion and not a serious case of sunstroke.

  ‘I’m all right,’ he kept insisting, even trying to talk around the thermometer once she had located it and stuck it in his mouth.

  ‘You’re not all right,’ she countered. ‘Now shut up and let me take your temperature, or I’m going straight out to call for an ambulance. I may have to, anyway.’

  She hoped not. His symptoms were more those of the less serious heat exhaustion — skin not hot and dry, but perspiring furiously; his temperature close to the century but not the hundred and five it might be in the case of heat-stroke.

  But he must be cooled off, and reasonably quickly, if not by the severe methods recommended for heatstroke. Rena didn’t think about it too long.

  ‘Get your clothes off,’ she demanded, reaching at the same time to turn on the shower and adjust the spray so that the emerging water was cool but not at full coldness.

  ‘I will not!’ It was almost a shocked reaction, but she was in no mood to argue.

  ‘You’ll do as I say.’ But he wasn’t going to, she could tell. ‘Well, at least take your shirt off, damn it. This is serious. Ran.’

  When he still hesitated, Rena did not. She reached out and snatched at the front of the shirt, ripping downward so that buttons flew like missiles around the small room. Once the shirt was open, she yanked him around and back until she had it off, then steered him beneath the shower spray.

  He shuddered at the impact of the water on his sunburned neck. He would have got out of it, but she screamed at him, pleaded with him, abused him and physically prevented him from doing what he wanted.

  Oblivious to the soaking of her own clothing, she used her hands to sluice the cool water across his broad shoulders, cupping her fingers to hold it momentarily at the nape of his neck. Ran stood still, breathing deeply but saying nothing, until she was done.

  ‘Now come out of there and get dried off,’ she said, taking his hand and thrusting a towel into it as she turned off the shower. Suddenly nervous, she retreated to the bathroom door, calling back over her shoulder. ‘Call when you’ve done and I’ll bring you something dry to put on; then it’s bed for the rest of the day — and no arguments either!’

  But he didn’t wait until she had finished a futile search in his bedroom for pyjamas, a nightshirt, anything she could insist that he wear over a near-nakedness that she found impossibly disturbing. With the towel wrapped around his narrow waist, he padded into the room behind her, giving her a frightful start.

  ‘What are you doing?’ she cried, unable to keep from staring. ‘Couldn’t you wait until I’d found your robe or pyjamas?’

  ‘Not very likely, since I don’t own either one,’ he grinned, but it was a weak, shaky grin that revealed only his weariness. ‘As for what I’m doing, I’m doing what you said — going to bed,’ he concluded. And before she could say a word he had fumbled his way to the bedside, dropped the towel and scrambled beneath the sheets.

  ‘Can you put some cream or something on the back of my neck?’ he asked. ‘It hurts like hell.’

  ‘Well, I’m not surprised,’ she replied, her own heart racing at the unexpected proximity. It took her a minute to find some sunburn cream, and when she returned he was almost asleep.

  Almost ... not quite. At the touch of her fingers, he first flinched, then seemed to go completely boneless, relaxing as she soothed the cream into his neck, his shoulders, and the angry red upper portions of his arms.

  ‘Turn over and I’ll do your face as well,’ she said quietly. ‘It’ll make an unholy mess of the bed-linen, but that doesn’t matter now.’

  He only grunted, rolling over and lying quietly while she applied the cream first to his face, then his upper chest and down the long red V where his shirt had been open.

  ‘Now go to sleep,’ she said — only to have him reach out and grip her wrist in a trembling hand.

  ‘First you have to promise you won’t go,’ he said, ‘that you’ll be here when I wake up again.’

  ‘I ... I ... promise,’ she said. What else could she do in any event? He couldn’t be left alone, not with the possibility that he’d got even more sun than she had originally feared. She would have to check him again in an hour, ensure that he wasn’t drifting into the far more serious effects of sunstroke.

  ‘Good,’ he said muzzily. ‘I ... rather like the idea of having you here.’ And he slipped away almost immediately into a deep-breathing sleep, his fingers still locked around her wrist.

  Rena eased herself down to sit on the bed beside him, not pulling away, but letting him slide deeper into his much-needed sleep with her wrist inside the curve of his fingers. Only when he released her of his own accord did she slowly, quietly get up and leave the room.

  It took her only a few minutes to slip upstairs to her own flat and change into dry clothing, but throughout she kept her ears cocked for any sound from below.

  When she returned, wearing a light T-shirt and shorts and with her hair caught up in a ponytail. Ran lay as she had left him, his breathing deep and slow. She didn’t need the thermometer to show her that his temperature had stabilised close to normal.

  Imprisoned by her already-regretted promise to stay with him, Rena spent the next hour puttering about the flat, tidying and dusting and marvelling at how little of himself Ran had brought to Queensland.

  Except for his clothing and the small cassette player with his favourite tapes, he had brought nothing, it seemed. The flat, of course, had come furnished, but somehow it was ... sterile, impersonal.

  She made herself some coffee, snooped in the fridge to find out what he had been living on, and immediately wished she hadn’t. Except for some cheese and fruit it was empty, and the freezer section held only a broad selection of quick-and-easy one-pot meals. Acceptable, she thought, only because even a blind person could manage to fill a pot with water, add the frozen packet and wait for it to boil. But how ... how horribly isolated!

  Rena had been on her own long enough to know the difficulties of cooking for one, how easy it was to simply ignore cooking altogether, to either eat out or do without, simply to avoid the hassles of eating alone and lonely. Being a fairly self-contained person, she coped well enough, but to have to cope, as Ran did, without even seeing ... the thought shook her.

  She drank her coffee, prowled the flat, made another cup, prowled some more, and wondered how he had survived the boredom, much less the blindness.

  Despite the stimulative effects of the coffee, Rena found herself becoming sleepy, which wasn’t surprising after the day she had had. She thought first of retreating to her own flat, then shrugged off the urge and instead sprawled out
on the sofa, where she fell asleep within minutes.

  Wakefulness came less easy, but it was spurred by a weak and rather plaintive cry from the bedroom where Ran was resting. Bleary-eyed, Rena swung to her feet and entered the room, only to find that instead of sleeping, he was lying with the covers snugged up to his throat and obviously shivering.

  ‘You said you’d stay,’ he said accusingly.

  ‘Well, I did; I was just in the lounge room,’ Rena replied. ‘What’s the matter?’

  ‘I’m cold. Can’t stop ... shivering,’ he replied.

  ‘Are there any more blankets?’ she asked, already flinging open closet doors in search of some.

  ‘How the hell should I know?’ he replied shakily. And how indeed? she thought. If there were any spares, she also couldn’t find them.

  ‘I’m sorry ... would you like something hot to drink?’ she asked at the end of the fruitless search. She bent down to touch his forehead, half surprised to find that he didn’t feel cold at all. If anything, it was the opposite; his forehead was clammy, but warmer than it should have been.

  ‘I ... I just want to be warm,’ he replied, one hand going up to grasp fumblingly for her wrist. And before Rena could object he had pulled her down against him on the bed.

  ‘You’re nice and warm,’ he said accusingly. ‘Come and lie beside me.’

  She flinched away instinctively. Didn’t he realise what he was saying? What he was asking … demanding? ‘I ... I. .she stammered, trying to free herself but having trouble because now both his arms were around her,

  ‘Oh, don’t be such a priss,’ he snarled in her ear. ‘I’m not going to assault you. I just want to ...to be warm.’ And after a few seconds in which she fought a losing battle with her common sense, ‘I’ll be good — I promise.’

  This is madness, she thought, feeling her own body react to his touch, to the feel of his long legs against hers, the firmness of his chest against her breasts, the touch of his muscular back beneath her fingers. Her entire body was alive, alert, poised to repel — or was it to accept? — his advances.