Seeing Stars: A Loveswept Classic Romance

by Baker, Fran

  “Do you want to hear something else?” She hiccuped indelicately and laid her head against his chest. “I’ve known for a couple of years that it was time to cut the apron strings and get on with my life. Last winter, when I learned about a grant program that trains nurse-practitioners to give primary care in rural areas like Spicey Hill, I even went so far as to send for an application.”

  “Did you submit it?”

  She shook her head, and a lock of her soft, clean hair tickled his chin. “No. I was so afraid that I’d be accepted and then found wanting, I threw it away.”

  Running scared … Well, he could certainly relate to that. Hell, he’d been running at Mach Four ever since that gasoline tank had exploded in his face.

  She worked her arms out from between their bodies and slipped them around his lean waist. “It’s kind of funny, really. At the time, I told myself that the kids still needed me too much. But when you asked if I had any regrets, I suddenly realized that I was the one who was all tangled up in the apron strings.”

  “I’ve got a nice sharp pair of scissors in my medical bag.” Nick crushed her closer and they clung that way, sharing a new bond of warmth and comfort. “I’d be glad to cut you loose, if you’d like.”

  “I’d like.” Her voice was so low, it vibrated. “Do you know what else I’d like?”

  “Food, I hope.” His stomach grumbled noisily. “Sorry, but it’s a well-known fact that man does not live by excitement alone.”

  She gave a gasp of surprised laughter. “Law, this must be one for the record books! I haven’t thought about food in almost twelve hours.”

  “Well, put your thinking cap back on, because I’m buying dinner.”

  “Now that you’ve mentioned it, I’m starved!”

  He released her and grinned. “What was it you wanted to say before I so rudely interrupted you?”

  Dovie turned to look again at her newborn nephew, as pink and round and perfect as a Christmas angel. The confusion and weariness of the day, the worries and sorrows of a lifetime, fell away from her like a worn-out robe.

  When she finally turned back to Nick, she felt the fluttering of hope in her heart. “I wanted to say that if the invitation for Saturday night is still open, I’d like to try my wings.”

  Six

  * * *

  Cupping the telephone receiver between her shoulder and her ear, Dovie reached around behind her back and zipped up her new dress. “No kidding, Arie, when I looked in the mirror after that man was through with me, I said ‘This isn’t a make-over. It’s a miracle!’ ”

  Her youngest sister’s laughter caroled merrily over their long-distance connection. “Well, it’s about time you spent some money on yourself.”

  “It wasn’t that expensive, if you want to know the truth.” Perching on the edge of the bed, Dovie slipped her slender feet into black satin pumps. “All they charged me for was having my hair styled. They did my makeup for free—some sort of a sales promotion. But I’ll probably be a month of Sundays paying off the clothes I bought to complement the new me.”

  “What color is your dress?”

  “Would you believe fire-engine red?”

  Arie whistled appreciatively. “I’ll bet it’s smashing with your dark hair and doe eyes.”

  Smashing? Dovie stood and examined her reflection in the cheval mirror across the room. It was the most daring dress she’d ever owned!

  The crushed-silk halter top lifted and supported her generous breasts, while leaving her shoulders and back seductively bare. Soft torso shirring and the long, pencil-slim skirt accented her other hourglass attributes. Her only jewelry was a new pair of jet eardrops, but her sequined cardigan sweater was guaranteed to light up the night.

  Standing in front of the mirror in the boutique, her confidence buoyed by a two-hour session with the beauty consultant, she had thought she looked pretty glamorous. But now, seeing the woman in red reflected in her own mirror, she feared she’d gone too far in trying to make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear.

  “How’s Linda?” Arie asked.

  “Oh, she’s fine.” Stretching the telephone cord as far as it would go, Dovie began rummaging frantically through her closet for a different dress to wear tonight. “I stopped by the hospital before I went for my make-over this morning, and she said the doctor is going to release her tomorrow.”

  “Who does the baby look like?”

  “A clone of Curtis.” Glancing back at her bedside clock, Dovie saw that she had less than an hour to undo the damage before Nick picked her up for the party. She grabbed the first thing she found, a simple wool crepe sheath—in black, of course—then turned and took a bra and slip out of her chiffonier drawer.

  “I’ll bet Curtis is just busting his buttons over that baby.”

  “I suppose.” Remembering the way he’d snubbed her when she entered Linda’s hospital room earlier that day, Dovie felt angry and guilty at the same time. It was ridiculous! He was behaving like a spoiled brat and she was wondering where she’d failed him. She sighed and reached around behind her back again to unzip her beautiful red dress.

  “What’s the matter?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Come on, you can’t kid an old kidder. Something’s wrong and I’m not hanging up until you tell me what it is.”

  The line grew silent for a long time, with only some distant electronic beep making noises in their ears. Dovie gripped the phone with both professionally manicured hands. She desperately needed a sounding board, but she’d never dreamed it would be her little sister.

  She finally exploded. “You’re right; something is wrong! It’s the abominable way everyone in this family is acting now that I’ve started seeing Nick.”

  “Everyone?”

  Dovie never knew before that she could hear a smile. “Except you, of course.”

  “Go on, I’m listening.”

  “Well, Curtis hasn’t given me the time of day since I left him in the Intensive Care Unit. You’d think I’d abandoned him, when, in reality, he and Linda and the baby wouldn’t even be alive if Nick and I hadn’t rushed over there that morning. And Jack’s been in a snit ever since I told him I couldn’t baby-sit because I was going to a party tonight. Then yesterday, both Lon and Ray had the gall to call me up and tell me I was behaving like a teenager!”

  Dovie paused then and drew a deep breath. “Whew! Who’ve I left out?”

  “Mary and Merle.”

  “Oh, right. How could I have forgotten Mary’s reaction? When she stopped by this afternoon with a dress she wanted me to hem, she took one look at my hair and makeup and burst into tears.”

  “You haven’t gone punk, have you?”

  “Of course not.” Dovie looked closely at her reflection in the mirror. The hair at her crown had been layered to release its natural body, while the sides were smoothed behind her ears with a little styling mousse to highlight her facial features. The makeup had been done tastefully, giving her cheeks delicate hollows, her eyes luminosity and depth, and her lips a bead of light as if she’d just wet them with her tongue. “Quite frankly, I like the new me!”

  “Last but not least, there’s Merle.”

  “Oh, you know Merle … he thinks ‘Thou Shalt Preserve the Status Quo’ is the Eleventh Commandment.”

  “That may be part of the problem.”

  “Come again?”

  “Did you ever stop to think that the ‘old them’ might need some time to adjust to the ‘new you’?”

  She hadn’t, of course. Dovie mulled that over while she zipped up her red dress and hung the black one back in the closet. “I guess people grow at different rates, don’t they?”

  “Right. Even though you’re changing for the better, you have to remember that we’re a fairly conservative family, for the most part, and prepare yourself to wait it out.”

  “That could be a long siege.”

  “Maybe; maybe not.” Arie’s shrug was almost audible. “The other thing you have t
o remember is that when you change, people have to change the way they react to you. For instance, they can’t assume you’re going to baby-sit on Saturday nights; they have to ask.”

  “Which they should have been doing all along,” Dovie added a little peevishly.

  “Yes.” Arie’s pause was eloquent. “But you’ve always let them assume you were available, so—”

  “So I wear a share of the blame.”

  “If the shoe fits …”

  “Perfectly.” Dovie glanced down at her new black pumps and smiled as realization dawned.

  “See, even a small change in your physical appearance, such as wearing makeup, when you’ve never worn it before, forces people to look at you in a different light. And if they aren’t ready to do that, it can cause some resentment on their part.”

  “Hm, you may be right.”

  “I know I’m right,” Arie said with emphasis. “Take it from me, enrolling in the Art Institute of Chicago was the smartest move I ever made. It not only offered me the opportunity to develop my artistic talent; it also gave me a chance to be treated as an adult rather than the baby of the family.”

  As she’d confessed to Nick the other day, Dovie had been plagued by a smiliar sense of dissatisfaction for a couple of years now. Only her own fear of failure had prevented her from acting on it. “Are you saying that I should leave home too?”

  “Not necessarily. I know how much you love Spicey Hill. But if you stay, and if Curtis and Jack and the rest of them continue to behave the way they have been, you’ll have to confront them sooner or later.”

  “What I’d really like to do is turn each and every one of them over my knee!” Dovie burst out.

  “It’s no less than they deserve,” Arie agreed. “But since they all outweigh you by at least thirty pounds—Mary included—you’ll probably have to be satisfied with a tongue-lashing.”

  The line buzzed voicelessly for a few seconds before Dovie laughed. “How did you get so smart at the tender age of twenty?”

  “I had a good teacher … and the most wonderful surrogate mother in the whole world.”

  “Would you settle for best big sister? Surrogate mother makes me sound older than Spicey Hill.”

  “Consider it settled.”

  They chatted a while longer, mutually lamenting the fact that Arie’s part-time salary as a window dresser for Marshall Field’s wouldn’t stretch far enough to include both a trip home for the holidays and next semester’s tuition at the Art Institute.

  Before they said good-bye, Dovie mentioned that she was giving serious consideration to submitting an application for the nurse-practitioner’s program, and Arie expressed wholehearted approval.

  “You’ve certainly got the compassion and the common sense it takes to be a good nurse.”

  “Talk about your late bloomers, though. I just realized I could be the oldest living college freshman.”

  “Better late than never. The most important thing is that you never stop growing and never stop enjoying. Besides, nobody tells a rose when to bloom.”

  Dovie cleared her throat. “Thanks. I needed to hear something like that.”

  Arie laughed. “Listen, I’d better go before I have to make a choice between paying my tuition or my telephone bill.”

  “I’ll call you Christmas morning,” Dovie promised. “I’ll be here alone, because everyone else is staying home to start their own traditions, so we can talk to our hearts’ content.”

  The line went quiet again. After a long time Arie said, “I just hope Prince Charming knows how lucky he is.”

  “To tell you the truth, I’m pretty lucky myself.”

  “I love you.”

  “I love you too.”

  Only after they hung up did Dovie realize that she’d never told Arie that Nick was blind.

  “Merry Christmas,” Nick said when Dovie opened the door half an hour later. It might have been a trick of the moonlight, but his deep blue eyes seemed to hold a mischievous sparkle.

  “Merry Christmas,” she answered, smiling a small, nervous smile as soon as she saw he was wearing a black cashmere topcoat that had obviously been tailored to accommodate his broad shoulders.

  The blood leaped wildly to her face when he held a sprig of mistletoe over her head and leaned down to kiss her. He simply touched his mouth to hers, but even that brief contact had her brain short-circuiting.

  “Do you want to try for Happy New Year?” Nick asked teasingly.

  “Happy New Year,” she echoed softly.

  At that, his tongue breached her lips to flirt with the tip of hers, and Dovie could feel the titillating caress all the way down to her toes.

  “What next?” he asked.

  “Groundhog Day?” she offered.

  Laughter bubbled between their lips as he tossed the sprig of mistletoe over his shoulder and opened both his arms and topcoat to give her a brief glimpse of a black tuxedo that, combined with a snowy wing-collared shirt, gleaming onyx studs, and a silk bow tie and cummerbund, made him look like a walking ad for Gentlemen’s Quarterly. “What the hell, Happy Groundhog Day!”

  A symphony of rustling silk and rapid breathing, Dovie lost herself in warm cashmere and hot-blooded male. Nick’s tongue took its natural course, making exquisite love to her mouth, while his hands massaged her bare back with equally sure strokes. Strangling in delight, she molded her hips to the source of his wonderful heat and answered his message with trembling lips.

  “If that’s Groundhog Day,” she whispered when they finally drew apart, “I can hardly wait for the Fourth of July.”

  “Fireworks,” Nick promised, pulling away from her reluctantly. “Now, go get your coat and car keys before I turn into a Roman candle right in front of your big brown eyes.”

  Dovie handed him her spangly new sweater with a stab of apprehension. Maybe she’d mistaken flashy for formal! She stood with her back to him, scarcely able to breathe, while he slipped it over her shoulders.

  “Sequins?” He ran his hands down her arms, fingering the small flat disks as intently as if he were reading Braille.

  “Yes,” she admitted miserably, wishing now she’d done the sensible thing and worn the black wool crepe.

  He toyed with her sequin-encrusted cuff, trying to complete his mental picture. “What color?”

  Thinking she might as well get this over with, Dovie repeated the description she’d given Arie a little earlier. “Fire-engine red.”

  Everything clicked with perfect clarity in his mind’s eye. Laughing triumphantly, Nick touched his lips to the side of her neck. “I love it!”

  “Really?” She’d been so certain that he would hate it, his enthusiasm caught her completely off-guard.

  “Really.” He heard the relief in her voice and realized just how much she valued his opinion. “It’s beautiful. And besides”—his smile expanded on his words—“where else am I going to find a woman who makes me see red?”

  “Oh, you …” Spinning around, she punched him lightly on the arm. But her merriment filled the entryway as surely as it filled the long-empty hollows of his heart.

  “Where’s your coat?”

  “I’m wearing it.”

  “That’s a sweater, not a coat,” Nick argued. “And it’s only fifteen degrees above zero outside.”

  “So I’ll think warm,” Dovie said dismissively.

  He remembered the way he’d found her in the river, wearing nothing but her bra and shirt, and the truth hit him with the force of a blow.

  She didn’t have a coat.

  Instead of pressing the issue—or embarrassing her by offering her his coat—Nick simply put his arm around her shoulder and tucked her against his cashmere-clad body as they walked out to her car.

  “I’m not cold,” Dovie protested. But it felt so good to know he cared, she didn’t pull away.

  “Your metabolism must operate in overdrive.”

  “I credit the cold baths for it.”

  He opened the door on the dri
ver’s side and thought of roses in the snow when he caught a whiff of the pleasant scent threading from her. Only after he’d buckled himself into the passenger seat did he ask, “Cold baths?”

  “Pop swore by them—the colder the better.” She kicked off her satin pumps, fearing she’d catch a high heel in the hole she’d worn in the carpet, then put a nylon-encased foot on the accelerator, and started the engine. “He believed they kept a person healthy.”

  “In other words, he was practicing preventive medicine?”

  “With eight children and no doctor nearby, what else could he do?”

  Nick draped his arm across the back of the seat, not touching her, yet making her heart careen when she realized how close his hand hung to her breast. “Exactly what he did, I suppose.”

  “Right.” The road was so slick, Dovie shifted into low and drove slowly downhill. “Every Saturday night he’d line us up in the hallway according to age—yours truly in front. Then he’d say, ‘Think warm,’ and have us take turns in a bathtub of icy water.”

  For the first time he thought he understood why she had such an upbeat attitude. “It sounds like your father used a little psychology on you, too.”

  “Psychology?” At the bottom of the hill she pulled out onto the highway. The sound of the tires told her it had recently been sanded.

  “The whole time he was toughening you up physically, he was also teaching you the power of positive thinking.”

  “I never realized that before, but it must’ve worked, because we’re the most disgustingly healthy family that ever walked the face of the earth.”

  Nick let his hand drift to the side of her neck and allowed himself the luxury of stroking that smooth, slender column while he said teasingly, “And the most accident-prone.”

  “I’ll have to admit we’ve had our share of emergencies lately.” Dovie kept her eyes on the road, but every nerve in her body began dancing to the tune those clever fingers were playing on her skin.