The words slipped out even as Saunders thought them, thinking to herself and only aware she’d spoken aloud when she saw the warning flashes in those black eyes.
But when he replied, with hardly any perceptible hesitation, it was only to say, again too casually. ‘Well, you’re half-right, anyway.’
And if you think I’m going to ask which half, then think again, Mr Fordon Landell, Saunders thought to herself, keeping her mouth firmly shut in case she might again let something slip out.
He ignored her discomfort, if he even noticed it.
‘It does present an interesting problem, though,’ he mused, almost as if he was speaking to himself. ‘I mean, at what point in a relationship do you tell somebody you’ve got a hereditary defect? The real significance of which you have no way of knowing but, “just in case you do want children, my dear” ’
His tone was casual, but his eyes mocked her.
Saunders refused to be baited.
‘If it were me, I’d be more worried just now with—’ she began, only to be interrupted.
‘If it were you? Let us assume it is. Miss White,’ he said, and there was that hint of mockery in his voice now, that undertone of warning. ‘Let us assume it is you with this … this geriatric onset diabetes.’ And now his voice was clearly mocking, although she couldn’t be sure if the mockery was aimed at her or at himself. ‘At what point in a relationship would you bring up the subject, and how would you do it?’
‘You really are making much too much of this,’ she began, but he shook his head, raising a finger to his nose in admonishment.
‘And you are being evasive.’
Evasive? If only he knew, Saunders thought. And then, suddenly, almost terrifyingly, realised that he would know, and almost certainly he would know in the next few minutes. Because she was going to tell him. She didn’t know why she knew it, and she certainly didn’t know why she would tell him, but she would!
‘It’s not a matter of being evasive.’
‘Well…?’
‘It’s just that you are making far too much of it,’ she insisted.
‘Which, of course, is the only reason you refuse just to give me a plain and simple answer to a plain and simple question.’
‘I’m not refusing,’ she denied. ‘I merely said that there are other, more important priorities you should be thinking about just now.’
‘How do you know?’
‘I ... Well ... I’m just assuming…’
‘Just assuming I haven’t got a particular girl in mind right this very minute?’ he countered. ‘That, it seems to me, is quite an assumption, Miss White. For all you know I’m on the very threshold of becoming engaged, or married. On the very lip of the abyss, so to speak … yea and verily doomed to domesticity.’
Which would have been a perfectly acceptable counter if only he hadn’t suddenly started looking at her in that way. Whatever that way was, she thought, half-angry, but not sure if it was with herself or this insufferably arrogant, far too perceptive man.
‘Being a diabetic does not mean you can’t, or shouldn’t, have children!’ she snapped. ‘Non-insulin-dependent diabetes does not miraculously transform to insulin-dependent diabetes through heredity; they are two markedly different conditions.’
‘But now that I have it, the heredity factor rears its ugly head, does it not?’
‘Now that you know you have it — yes! But still, all you would — might — pass on is the propensity for the same type of diabetes you yourself have. And there is no guarantee that you would, anyway. You’ve read the books; surely you already know that?’
‘I know only that, for all I know, it could run like a chain through the last fifteen generations of my family on both sides,’ he retorted, and for the first time she detected a note of definite, undeniable anger.
‘And you also know, or so I presume, that anybody can get diabetes. Anybody!’
She was getting angry herself now, angry at how this man could so easily get under her skin.
‘And the two types of diabetes are clinically and genetically distinct. Even if you married a girl with Type 1 diabetes, it wouldn’t increase your children’s chances of developing the type you have.’
Saunders fought to keep her voice from rising, fought to keep Fordon Landell from realising just how stirred up she had become.
‘If the girl you marry has insulin-dependent diabetes, you’ll almost certainly know it beforehand; if she’s going to develop Type 2, as you have, pregnancy could bring it on, or not; age could bring it on, or not; any combination of factors could affect the situation. The point is, she might end up with diabetes anyway, and have no more idea where it came from than you do.’
‘Absolutely none of which alters the fact that I shall have to discuss the matter with any girl I might decide to marry,’ he insisted, eyes bleak, attitude implacable.
‘Well, so what? I can think of a thousand worse things to find out about a prospective husband, and so could any other woman with half the brains God gave a brown dog.’
Saunders shook her head, then, and abruptly looked up and smiled in surprise at her own over-reaction.
‘How on earth did this discussion get so heated?’ she asked, the question aimed more at herself than at Fordon Landell. ‘It just isn’t that big an issue; it really isn’t!’
‘Easy enough for you to say,’ was the reply, in a voice still alive with tension. ‘Even discounting the fact that diabetes presents some very specific risks in pregnancy — and yes, Miss white, I have read about that too — you still haven’t answered my original question. How would you fancy having to tell your husband-to-be that you suffered from diabetes?’
‘It wouldn’t be a problem, Mr Landell,’ she replied in a voice now equally caustic. ‘It wouldn’t be any problem at all, because, Mr Landell, I don’t suffer from diabetes. I control my diabetes.
‘And that,’ she said, with eyes as narrow with anger as his were wide with surprise, ‘is what you should be worrying about — controlling your diabetes instead of fretting over the trivialities of potential hereditary problems.
‘I pity the girl you do marry, Mr Landell, because if she has hair the colour of yours and your children turn out to be redheads, they — and she — will be more likely to suffer from your misplaced logic and probable insane jealousy than they will from having to worry about getting diabetes when they’re older.’
~~~
Consider yourself told, boy, Ford thought, and well and truly told, at that.
He sat immobile, determined not to reveal to this astonishing woman how effective her outburst had really been.
Certainly, he thought, it was too late by half to reveal that he had only been stirring, that he had no immediate objective in mind, no woman whose future would be affected in the slightest by his thoughts on the genetics of the situation.
Until now — and there was no way he’d dare tell her that!
He knew himself, perhaps only too well. Which, of course, meant that he knew she was consistent and correct in her assessment of him. He wasn’t looking at the problem of his diabetes as a lifelong situation that would require lifelong control; he was, had been, looking at it as a problem to be solved, something he could fix.
And, worse, just the thought of having to face it her way was … difficult. It wasn’t his way; it demanded an acceptance he wasn’t sure at this point in time he could manage, although already he was adjusting to the fact that accept it he must.
And with that acceptance came another, the acceptance, and this one was easy, perhaps too easy — that this was a woman he might want to mother his children, to share his life. The knowledge of this struck at him virtually without warning. One moment he was rationally aware of her attractiveness, which had struck him so visibly during their first encounter in the city, the next he was quite irrationally aware of her subtle strength, her gentle but now obvious resilience, her ... completeness.
Ford Landell took a slow, deep breath and eas
ed back slightly in his chair, forcing an illusion of calm despite the sudden emotions that raged through him, forcing, he thought with grim irreverence, his blood sugar to what were probably alarming readings.
CHAPTER THREE
Saunders watched as those midnight eyes, impossible as it seemed, grew even darker. Watched them darken and at the same time flare in flecks of colour, reminding her of a fabulous black opal she’d once seen and lusted after.
Lusted after… That thought did nothing to improve her awe at being so provocatively outspoken. Neither did Fordon Landell’s implacable silence, a silence so profound she fancied she could hear both their hearts beating in the stillness of the room.
Fordon Landell had shifted back in his chair at her outburst, almost as if she had physically slapped his face, and now whatever empathetic link she had held with him was gone; she couldn’t read those eyes, could discover nothing in his deliberately blank expression. But at least there was no question about his paying attention. She fancied she could almost hear his mind churning over what she had said and what reply he would — eventually — make.
‘I must apologise; I don’t usually get quite so carried away,’ she finally said. Meaning it, of course, but also desperate for anything to break the torture of the silence in the small room. It was like being caged with a lion and watching it silently deciding whether to be hungry or not.
‘I can’t imagine why,’ was the surprising reply, ‘I’m the one who should be apologising, if anyone should. You actually showed remarkable restraint, considering the way I was pushing.’
One powerful hand ruffled through the coarse shock of frosted ink hair, while at the same time his eyes softened, lost that sharp edge of … of what? Defensiveness? Wariness? Hostility? Saunders found she was no longer sure, if she ever had been.
‘It’s just that … well … having found out about this diabetes, and the almost certainty in my case that it’s hereditary, I guess I’ve been letting my imagination run riot a bit about what else there might be, lurking in my unknown genetics…’
His voice ran down, and as it did so Saunders began once again to pick up his emotional vibes. She was again amazed at how strongly this happened, at how attuned she became to him — so quickly — once he let down his guard.
‘That’s a natural enough reaction,’ she said, moved to compassion by how worried he had let himself become, at how fiercely he felt about the potential problems his past might provide for his future — and for his children’s.
‘But really, Mr Landell, it’s … it’s just not something you can worry about. Not that way. You just can’t accomplish anything but more worry — unnecessary worry — and when it comes to controlling your diabetes, you must consider that avoiding stress and unnecessary worry is very, very important.’
Saunders paused, but he made no attempt to interject.
‘The point is,’ she finally continued, ‘that you haven’t got a disease. Diabetes, especially our sort of diabetes, isn’t a disease, exactly. It’s a condition; it can’t be cured, like most diseases, or not cured, like those they haven’t found a cure for yet. But it can be managed, controlled.
‘I like to think of it as a lifestyle condition,’ she said then, and brightened her tone, not deliberately, but as if in some response to … to what? Something in this man’s attitude, she was certain, but just exactly what, she couldn’t determine. She went on, wondering if she was reacting to the shifting light in his expression at her earlier use of the term ‘our’. Or just to the man himself.
‘Because the major factors in managing diabetes, in controlling the condition, are essentially the same as those required for any healthy lifestyle: get fit and stay fit, eat the right kinds of food at the right times. Diet and exercise. Those are the two keys to control. Diet and exercise.’
Now it was her turn to run down. To her own ears, Saunders was starting to sound like a used-car salesman extolling the virtues of a questionable bargain. It was no real surprise to see a glint of humour in Fordon Landell’s dark eyes, although when he finally spoke, one dark eyebrow raised in tune with his attitude, she was a bit surprised at his astuteness.
‘Have you ever considered a career in politics, Miss White? You have all the makings of a mighty snake-oil salesman.’
But he was smiling now. And there had been no acid in his words, no air of hostility or resentment. He was laughing with her now. not at her.
And also, she realised, laughing at himself. Although she could not be certain, at first, if it was the healthy laughter of a balanced individual or if there was still that tinge of acid bitterness she had earlier found in his words.
‘That is what my job is all about,’ she finally replied. ‘Selling people a new lifestyle and the tools to make it work: information, knowledge, sometimes a bit of reassurance. You could say, I suppose, that I’m something of a power-broker, Mr Landell, because with diabetes, knowledge is certainly power!’
He smiled at that, then asked, ‘And does having the … lifestyle yourself make the job easier, or harder?’
‘Easier, I guess, I was diagnosed at thirty-one, which is rather young, but it certainly wasn’t as surprising to me as I expect your diagnosis was for you. My nursing training helped, of course, but heredity in my case was definitely a known factor. Both my parents had late-onset diabetes, and there is a long history of it on both sides of my family.’
She paused then, thoughtful. ‘Both my parents died last year from the complications of their diabetes and both of them suffered greatly throughout their later lives because of it. Which is why I take rather great pride and pleasure in trying to help other diabetics to avoid that suffering.’
Something changed in his smoky eyes, something that reacted to the sadness she still felt at her parents’ deaths, a sadness that existed even though she was more angry about their deaths than sad.
‘That must have been a bit traumatic, if you had to go through their deaths and then come in here and reassure people the way you’ve tried to do with me. Or have you been using your own grief as a tool?’
The perceptiveness startled her. Of course she’d used her grief as a tool, but more than her grief she had used her anger, the rage she had felt every time either of her parents refused to face up to their responsibilities to themselves, to her, to … everything.
Fordon Landell was the first client she had ever told about having diabetes herself; even his doctor, her friend, didn’t know. She was so used to living with the condition that she hardly noticed it any more. Until now. What, she wondered, had prompted her to reveal herself so readily to this stranger?
‘More my anger than my grief,’ she said. ‘My parents were fools, the both of them. They simply would not make any attempt to control their diabetes as they should have, or to listen to me, or anybody else, for that matter. My father lost two toes to gangrene because he wouldn’t stop smoking, wouldn’t take proper care of himself, and my mother … my mother…’
She didn’t realise the intensity of her own emotions until she noticed through her burgeoning tears the startled expression on Fordon Landell’s face, until his long, strong fingers reached across her desk to take her hand, leaving her with only one hand free now to swipe at the tears as they welled out.
But she felt his empathy, felt his genuine warmth and compassion as if it was being transmitted through the fingers that now stroked her wrist in a silent communication that did more for her than any words could.
He remained silent throughout her sobbing, trembling catharsis, but his touch was soothing, steadying, strangely comforting. As was his silence; as reason returned she found herself thinking it was unusual, but nice, to meet a man who knew when not to try and use words to comfort.
‘I ... I must have needed that,’ she finally said, tugging free her wrist as her emotions came under control, and she suddenly realised that his touch was having other effects than comfort, that she was responding now to the gentle stroking of his fingers with a fluttery fee
ling in her tummy, a definite stirring of her pulse.
And he was aware of that, too! He released her wrist, but only to hold her with his eyes as she looked up at him, his glance creating an almost tangible chain between them. Saunders couldn’t continue to meet those molten black eyes. She had to look away, tried to, couldn’t, then didn’t want to.
‘I’d say you must have,’ he replied, voice calm, gentle, still as reassuring as his touch had been earlier. And then, with an accuracy that for some reason didn’t surprise her, added, ‘And I suppose you spent until last year in a continuous battle with your parents, trying to get them to mend their ways?’
‘For all the good it did any of us,’ she said, not bothering now to try and hide the bitterness. ‘I had originally intended to take up medicine; I’d always fancied being a doctor, or at least I did until I actually started working with doctors all the time and came to realise… Well… Anyway, that idea got rather sidetracked when I got into university and realised I was going to end up being the family bread-winner before I could ever think of getting through med school.’
‘Nursing a second-best option?’ And there was more to the question than just the words, but how much more Saunders couldn’t quite determine.
‘A best option, as it turned out. I’d have made a lousy doctor,’ she replied with a half-smile. ‘Actually, I now realise with the benefit of hindsight that I should have taken up teaching; on my better days 1 fancy I’ve actually got a flair for it. Or maybe it’s just because I’m involved here in teaching about something I understand, something that’s very important to me both personally and professionally. Speaking of which, I’m running out of time here and we still have a lot to cover, so if you don’t mind…?’
‘I am entirely at your command,’ he said, inclining his silvery head in a gesture that would have seemed ludicrous in most men, but which he managed to carry off with a unique mixture of dignity and humour.
Saunders spent the rest of the appointment time explaining about blood glucose monitoring, fighting throughout to maintain her professional detachment and ignore the simple physical effect just touching him seemed to create.
An Irresistible Flirtation Page 3