by Diana Palmer
“I’m twenty-four,” she said breathlessly.
“Do you know how old I am?” he asked.
She shook her head before she realized that he couldn’t see the motion. “No.”
“I’m thirty-seven. Nearly thirteen years your senior.”
“Don’t let that worry you, sir. I’ve had geriatrics training,” she managed to say pertly.
The hard lines in his face relaxed. He smiled, genuinely, for the first time since she’d been around him. It changed his whole face, and she began to realize the kind of charm such a man might be able to effect.
“Have you, Saint Joan?” he murmured. He chuckled. “Have you ever been married?”
“No, sir,” she said, aware of the primness of her own soft voice.
His head tilted up and an eyebrow arched. “No opportunities?” he murmured.
She flushed. “As you accused me, Mr. van der Vere, I’m rather prudish in my outlook. I don’t feel superior, I just don’t believe in shallow relationships. That isn’t a popular viewpoint these days.”
“In other words you said no and the word got around, is that what you mean, miss?” he asked quietly.
It was so near the truth that she gaped up at him. “Well, yes,” she blurted out.
He only nodded. “Virtue is a lonely companion, is it not?” he murmured. He let go of her arms, and before she realized what he was doing, he framed her face with his big, warm hands. “I want to know the shape of your face. Don’t panic,” he said.
But she didn’t want him to feel that long, ugly scar down her cheek, and she drew away as if he’d struck her sharply.
His face hardened. “Is it so intimate, the touch of hands on a face?” he asked curtly. “Pardon me, then, if I offend you.”
“I’m not offended,” she said stiffly, standing apart from him on legs that threatened to buckle. His touch had affected her in an odd way. “I just don’t like being touched, Mr. van der Vere.”
His heavy brows arched up. “Indeed? May I suggest, miss, that you have more inhibitions than would be considered normal for a woman of your years?”
She stiffened even more. “May I suggest that I’d rather have my inhibitions than your ill temper?”
He made a rough sound and turned away. “At any rate you flatter yourself if you think there was more than curiosity in that appraisal. I can hardly lose my head over a figure I can’t even see.”
The flat statement cruelly reminded them of his blindness. She felt angry with herself for denying him the shape of her face, but she hadn’t wanted him to feel the scar. It had made her less than perfect and much more sensitive than usual to her lack of looks.
He started along the beach, faltering. “Are you coming, Nurse, or would you like to see me fall flat on my face in the surf?” he asked sharply.
“Don’t try to make me feel guilty, Mr. van der Vere,” she said, taking his arm. “I won’t apologize for being myself.”
“Did I ask you to?” He sighed heavily. “I hate being blind.”
“Yes, I know.”
“Do you?” His voice was harsh with sarcasm. “But then, you think I’m having hysterics, don’t you, Nurse, so why the sympathy in your voice?”
“You won’t try to understand what the term means, will you?” she shot back. “Would you rather enjoy your temporary affliction, Mr. van der Vere? Does it please you to hurt other people out of your own refusal to help yourself?”
He seemed to grow taller, and his face became rigid, like stone. “If you were a man…” he began hotly.
“If I were a man, I’d be an archaeologist,” she said pleasantly, “out digging up old bones. I wouldn’t be a nurse, so I wouldn’t be here, and you’d have no one to yell at then, would you?”
He said a rough word under his breath and his chiseled lips made a thin line. At his sides his powerful hands clenched convulsively.
“Would you like to go swimming with me, Miss Steele?” he said after a minute.
“No, sir, I would not. And shame on you for what you’re thinking. The shark would only get indigestion.”
He seemed to be muffling a laugh, but he couldn’t stop the sound from his throat. It was a delightful sound, full of rich humor and love of life. It was like music to Dana’s ears.
“Lead me home, if you please,” he chuckled. “The sea is too tempting, I confess.”
“It’s for your own good that I prod you, sir,” she said as they walked along the beach. “Self-pity is self-defeating, you know.”
“Was I feeling sorry for myself?” he mused. He stumbled, cursed and pulled himself erect. “Stop leading me into rocks.”
“That was a piece of driftwood, and if you’d pick up your feet instead of shuffling along, disturbing sand crabs, you wouldn’t trip,” she returned with a grin.
“Witch,” he accused.
“No wonder you wanted to get me in the water,” she mumbled. “You wanted to find out if I’d float, right?”
He shook his head. “I think I’ve met my match,” he murmured. “Tell me something, miss. If you and the doctors are wrong, and the blindness is not hysterical, what then? Do you move in to lead me around for the rest of my life?”
She was convinced that the doctors wouldn’t have made such a mistake, not with the battery of tests that had been done. But she was weary of arguing the point.
“If they’re wrong,” she said, stressing the first word, “then you learn to live with it. There are fantastic developments in computer science that deal with blindness—as I’m sure you know from your involvement in that field.”
“Yes, I know,” he said quietly. “In fact, there is a braille system that allows the blind access to other blind people through their computers.”
“You see? It isn’t a closed door you’re facing. And will you consider one other thing?”
“What?”
“That God gives us obstacles for reasons?”
“God,” he said, “did not make me blind. I did that all by myself, so why should I expect Him to help me?”
“Why shouldn’t you?” she countered. “I suspect you’re not a religious man.”
“You suspect correctly.”
“What are you doing about it?” she asked. “What do you do to justify your existence?”
“I work for myself,” he said gruffly.
“And for financial gain.”
“Of course. What other reason is there?” he grumbled. “I am not a philanthropist.”
“Obviously.”
He shifted restlessly. “Don’t try to toss a mantle of guilt over me. I give to charity.”
“What do you give of yourself?”
He stopped dead. “I beg your pardon?”
“What do you give of yourself? Money is vulgar.”
“So speaks one without it,” he returned coldly. “It never ceases to amaze me that the people who complain the most about the way wealth is distributed are usually the very people who lack it.”
“Touché,” she agreed pleasantly, looking up at his windblown hair, his hard face. “I’ve been poor most of my life, Mr. van der Vere. I’d like to have an expensive dress once in a while, and I have a deep love for luxurious perfume. But I’ve lived very well without those things. The difference is that I live a life of service for God. My pleasure comes from the giving of myself.”
He looked uncomfortable. “Then why did you give it up to come here?” he asked suspiciously. “I’m sure you’re getting paid much more here than you make working in your hospital,” he added sarcastically.
She glanced away from him, flushing. “That’s true. But the money wasn’t the reason I came.”
“Then, what was?”
She straightened. “Personal reasons, Mr. van der Vere, that have nothing to do with you. Shall we go?”
“Refusing the challenge?” he prodded. “Very well, lead me back into the house. I wouldn’t want the wind to dislodge your halo.”
She wanted nothing more at that moment tha
n to shake him. But that wouldn’t accomplish anything. At least she’d nudged him out of his self-pity, a minor victory. Perhaps there would be others.
She walked alongside him, feeling oddly elated. She wanted to take the pins out of her long hair and let it blow free. She wanted to take off her sensible white nurse’s shoes and run barefoot along the damp beach, like a child enjoying nature’s beauty. Her eyes lifted to the somber man at her side. She was beginning to see a purpose in her presence there; it went much deeper than the nursing of a blind man.
Chapter Four
The next weeks were trying. Gannon van der Vere seemed to go out of his way to find fault with Dana. Nothing she did pleased him, and all the ground she seemed to have gained in the first few days abruptly slid back into the sea.
He sat behind his desk and stayed on the phone almost constantly. He refused to go out of the room except to sleep. He was irritable and unapproachable, and when Dana tried to talk to him, he found an excuse not to listen. The doctor’s visit only irritated him further, and after his examination he retreated into his bedroom and wouldn’t even come out to eat.
“Dr. Shane just restated his own opinion to Gannon.” Lorraine sighed wearily as she and Dana sat down to supper by themselves. “It made him furious, of course. He won’t accept that the condition isn’t due to something surgically correctible.”
“He’s a stubborn man,” Dana commented.
“Worse than stubborn. Just like his late father.” She smiled. “He was quite a man, my husband. A little mellower than Gannon, but of course he was older.”
“Perhaps he’ll come to admit it eventually,” Dana suggested. “In the meanwhile, having people around would help him tremendously. Doesn’t he have friends?”
“He had plenty of them, when he could see,” his stepmother said angrily. “And girlfriends by the score. People who loved for him to spend money on them. Now…” She shrugged her delicate shoulders. “This place is like the end of the earth for that kind of person, Dana. They don’t like peace and solitude. They like bright lights and activity and, frankly, drugs and alcohol.”
“Did he?” she asked, because she wanted to know.
“Gannon?” she laughed. “No, he was never the type to need crutches of any kind. His late wife was the party-goer. Of course, I don’t think she indulged. But all their friends do.”
“No children?”
“They didn’t want children,” Lorraine said with a sigh. “Their lives were so full, you see.”
Full. Dana doubted that, somehow, but she was too polite to state her convictions. She was getting a vivid picture of Gannon’s life before the blindness, and it was an unpleasant one. She felt sorrier for him than ever.
Dana especially loved the beach at night, and when she could sneak away for a few minutes, she liked to walk along the shore and watch the whitecaps roll against the damp sand. Lorraine never minded her brief absences, but when Gannon discovered what she was doing, he made a point of seeking her out one Friday evening on the beach.
“Nurse!” he bellowed, pausing on the last step that led down from the house, his hand clenched on the railing.
She rushed back toward him, her loosened hair flying, afraid he’d tumble down in his anger.
“I’m here,” she said breathlessly. “There’s no need to yell.”
“May I ask what you’re doing down here?” he grumbled, staring in her general direction.
She studied his ferocious scowl while his hair and her soft green dress blew wildly in the cool ocean breeze. “I’m walking on the beach, Mr. van der Vere,” she said calmly.
“On my time,” he agreed.
“Excuse me, sir, I thought I had ten minutes a day to myself,” she said with polite sarcasm.
“A live-in nurse is supposed to be within call every minute,” he snapped.
“I was,” she pointed out. “Didn’t I come running?”
He drew in a sharp breath. “The beach is dangerous at night,” he said after a minute, as if it annoyed him that he’d had to show any concern for her. “There are transients down the beach who like to party. You’re not sophisticated enough to cope with drunken men, Miss Steele. Will you come in the house, please.”
The concern touched her. Only her mother and Jenny had ever shown any for her over the years.
“Lost your tongue?” he growled after a minute.
She shrugged. “I’m not used to people worrying about me,” she said finally.
He seemed to hesitate, his hand curling slowly around the banister. “Your parents do, surely?”
The question cut in a new way. She averted her gaze to the sea and tried not to cry; tears were so close to the surface these days, the grief was so raw and unfamiliar. “My mother died in a wreck a few months ago,” she said softly.
“I’m sorry,” he said quietly. “Your father?”
“We have very little contact,” she admitted. “It’s my fault as much as his. I’m not good at relationships, you see. I’m wary of letting people get close.”
“Even family?” he burst out. “Are you so fearful of contamination as that?”
He made her sound odd, and she didn’t like it. “Fearful of being hurt, if you must know,” she shot back, her eyes blazing. “I’d rather be alone than cut to ribbons emotionally, and what business is my personal life to you?”
His heavy blond brows shot straight up. “Claws,” he murmured, and a corner of his mouth curved. “Well, well, you land on your feet, don’t you, for all your repressed virtue.”
She stared at the sand. “You irritate me,” she bit off.
“We’re even, because you irritate me as well. Now, will you come in, before I yield to temptation and toss you into the surf to cool you off?”
She drew in an angry breath and started past him, but his hand shot out at the sound of her steps on the stone and she was dragged against his powerful body.
Her tiny gasp was audible even above the thunderous surf, and she was aware of every cell that came in contact with him. He smelled of expensive cologne and soap, and the hand around her waist was big and very warm. His breath was on her forehead, his chest was rising and falling with a curious heaviness and her knees threatened to collapse.
He felt her hair blow against his face as it bent, and he brushed at long, silky strands of it with his free hand. “Such soft hair,” he remarked quietly. “Blond?”
She swallowed. “Yes, sir.” Why was her voice quavering like that? What was happening to her?
His hand brushed her shoulder and moved down her back to her shoulder blades. He drew her close with aching tenderness until her cheek was pressed against his warm, broad chest over his silky blue shirt.
She could feel the strength of him under her hand, the hard beat of his heart. It had been a long time since any man had held her, but never had it made her feel like this. She was vulnerable all at once, womanly, feminine in a totally new way.
“You smell of wildflowers,” he said, his voice deep and quiet in the semidarkness. “And your thinness frightens me. You aren’t hardy; you’re very fragile.”
She tried to breathe normally. “I’m not fragile,” she protested weakly. Her hands pressed palm down over the warm muscles of his chest, half in protest. “Mr. van der Vere…”
“Isn’t it ethical, little moralist?” he mused. “I thought comfort was your stock-in-trade.”
“Comfort?”
His cheek nuzzled against hers. “I’ve been alone a long time,” he said in a low whisper. “Without touching, or being touched. Sometimes just the scent of a woman is enough to drive me half mad….”
She jerked away from him all at once, frightened of the sensuality she could hear in his voice, feel in his warm hands on her back. She put herself a safe distance away and tried to stop shaking.
“It’s getting cold out here,” she murmured.
“Ice cold,” he said harshly. “Little Nun, why don’t you join a convent?”
“I’m not on of
fer as a woman, Mr. van der Vere!” she burst out, furious at his casual approach. “I’m a nurse; it’s my job, it’s why I’m here! If you’re thinking of adding anything personal to my duties, you’d better start running ads fast: I quit!”
“Wait!”
She froze a step above him, listening as he felt for the banister and started up the steps behind her, stopping when he felt her body was just ahead of him.
“All right, I’m sorry,” he said shortly. “I only meant to tease, not to run you off. I’m…getting used to you. Don’t leave me.”
The stiff pride got through to her when nothing else would have. She turned around and looked at his set features with softening eyes. It must indeed be hard for such a man, used to such a life-style, to endure the loneliness of this isolated beach house. Could she blame him for reacting to the first young woman he’d been near in months?
She drew in a slow breath. “I won’t leave you,” she said quietly. “But you’ve got to stop making dead sets at me if I stay. I won’t be treated like a temporary amusement, especially by a patient. I take my nursing seriously: it isn’t a game to me; neither is it an opportunity for a little holiday romancing on the side.”
“You speak bluntly,” he replied. “May I?”
“Yes, sir.”
“I have been without a woman for many months, and I’m not suited to the life of a hermit.” His shoulders lifted and fell. “I had no intention—have no intention,” he rephrased, “of treating you like an amusement. I simply wanted a woman in my arms, for a moment. I wanted to feel like a man again.” He shifted restlessly. “Lead me up, will you? I’m tired.”
He seemed to slump, and tears burned her eyes. She hadn’t thought of how barren his emotional life would be because of the blindness, and she felt cold at her harsh rejection of him. She’d misunderstood; now she felt guilty.
“I’m sorry I snapped,” she said, taking him by the arm. “I…I didn’t understand. I’m a little afraid of men, I think. My fear makes me overreact.”
“Afraid?” he asked curiously.
“I’ve led a sheltered life,” she confessed. “I don’t even know how to protect myself. Men are very strong….”