by Diana Palmer
He drew a long breath. “So am I, honey. Blindness is hell to try and live with. But I’ve slowed down enough to get a new perspective on life. I didn’t realize how much of it I was missing.”
“Can I ask you something?”
“Fire away, Kate.”
“You mentioned once that you needed the element of danger….”
“And you want to know why, is that it, Kate?” he asked in a deceptively soft voice, as his knuckles whitened around the glass, his body tensed. “What the hell business is it of yours?” he demanded.
She flinched at the harshness she’d never heard in his deep voice before. “I…only wanted…” she faltered.
“To pry? To pump me for old memories that are better left dead? You’re just like every other damned woman, you’ve got to know everything there is to know about a man!”
She swallowed nervously. “I wasn’t trying to pry.”
“The hell you weren’t!”
“I’m sorry!” she managed in a shaky voice. “Mr. Cambridge, I’m sorry, I don’t know why I asked that!”
There was a harsh, throbbing silence between them, and she wished she could get up and run. But she sat stiffly on the edge of the chaise, her fingers gripping each other, her body rigid.
He took out a cigarette from the package in his pocket and felt for a lighter, managing easily to put the fire to it.
“I told you I had a black temper,” he said finally. “If you want out, now’s the time to say so. But I won’t have my personal life picked to pieces. Let’s get that clear between us right now.”
She pulled her pride together and wrapped it around her. “I won’t ask again,” she whispered, hating the tears that beaded on her eyelashes as she held back the muffled sound that would have told him she was crying.
“Pouting, milkmaid?” he asked in an unpleasant tone. “That won’t work with me, either. It’s been tried, by experts.”
She drew in an unsteady breath and tried to concentrate on the night sounds, the soft splash of the lake on the shore, anything but the way she felt inside.
“I’m not pouting,” she managed finally, in a voice that just barely wobbled.
He looked toward the sound of her voice, and his heavy brows made a line between his eyes. “My God, you’re not crying?” he demanded.
She drew in a long, shaky breath. “Of course not,” she replied.
“Kate…honey, come here,” he coaxed, holding out his big hand, all the anger and impatience gone out of him as if it had never existed.
She hesitated, but he called her name again, softly, and she went to stand beside him, gingerly touching that warm, callused hand. He drew her down to sit on the chaise, so that her hip touched his bare thigh.
His broad, strong fingers reached up until they found her face, and traced her eyebrows, her straight nose, the bow shape of her trembling young mouth. Then his hands swung upward to find the dampness of her long lashes and he frowned.
“Kate,” he whispered softly. “I didn’t frighten you, did I?”
“No,” she admitted. “But you…you’re such an awful bully, you walk all over people’s feelings…!”
“Do you have feelings, little innocent?” he asked in a low, sensuous tone. His fingers went back down to her mouth and traced its soft lines lazily, with a light, tantalizing pressure. “I thought you were always cool and collected.”
“Nobody can be collected when you yell at them!’ she returned with a wan display of spirit. “Please, don’t do that,” she murmured, drawing away from that maddening finger.
He chuckled softly. “Haven’t you ever let a man make love to you?”
She stiffened. “Of course I have,” she told him with an attempt at sophistication.
“I said make love, not make out,” he corrected. “You do know there’s a difference?”
She blushed to the roots of her hair. “I don’t sleep with men, if that’s what you mean,” she gulped. “Not,” she added haughtily, “that it’s any of your business.”
“Before I’m through with you,” he said in a low, menacing tone, “it may be very much my business.”
“I’m your secretary….”
“God, yes, don’t let’s forget it for a second!” he said, mocking her. His arm shot out and pulled her down on top of his broad, unyielding chest. She gasped, stiffened, and tried to pull away, careful to keep her protesting hands on the cotton of his shirt, not to let them rest on the bare, cool muscles of his chest and the mat of hair where the shirt had fallen open.
She heard him laugh, as if he found her unsuccessful efforts toward freedom some private joke.
“This,” he murmured, “is unique. I don’t think I’ve ever had a woman fight to get out of my arms. It’s always been the other way around.”
“I can’t imagine why,” she panted, still fighting, “unless they were trying to get close enough to pick your pockets.”
He laughed even harder. “You don’t think I’m attractive, milkmaid?” he asked.
“No, I don’t!” she flashed angrily. “Will you let me go?”
He laughed, folding her even closer. “God, you’re good for me,” he murmured against her ear. “Kate, how have I managed without you all these years?”
“The same way you’ve managed without a pride of sons, I imagine,” she fumed, giving way finally to lie panting breathlessly in his steely grip.
“How do you know I don’t have children?”
She considered that. “I’m sorry,” she murmured. “I didn’t think….”
He ruffled her hair. “I’m teasing, Kate. I’m not a father, to the best of my knowledge,” he added wickedly.
“No doubt. Please will you let me up? I’m dreadfully uncomfortable!”
“Are you?” There was, suddenly, a new note in his voice, a difference in the touch of his big hands against her back as he shifted her gently against him until she was lying half-against, half-beside him.
“You….” she faltered as her hand came into contact with the cool flesh of his massive chest.
His big, warm hand covered hers, pressing it against his body. “Just relax, Kate,” he said quietly. “We all need physical contact at one point or another in our lives, and it doesn’t have to have sexual overtones.”
“I didn’t mean…” she began quickly.
“I know.” He let his drawn shoulders relax back against the cushions of the chaise and lay there just holding her. “My darkness can get lonely, little girl,” he said finally, and she closed her eyes against the pain of knowing that she’d caused it. “Lonely and cold. I haven’t had anyone to hold on to. I didn’t think I needed anyone.” He laughed shortly. “Kate, have you ever stopped to think just how alone we all are? Separate, self-contained entities walking around in shells of flesh that hardly ever touch.”
“Hardly ever?” she teased gently.
“I’ve had women,” he replied, his hand idly stroking her long hair. “But never the right one. Haven’t you ever heard of being alone in a crowd, little girl? Or haven’t you ever been lonely?”
She closed her eyes, drinking in the night sounds and the fragrance of his spicy cologne. Her hand, where it lay against the hard unyielding muscles with their wiry covering of hair, could feel the steady, hard rhythm of his heart.
“Oh, yes,” she said softly. “I know what it is to be lonely. I think everyone does.”
He drew her up, shifting her in his arms. “You aren’t used to being touched, are you, Kate?” he murmured.
She frowned. “How did you know that?”
He chuckled gently. “You were so damned rigid when I caught you a minute ago. It was like holding a pine limb.”
“You don’t like being touched, either,” she murmured. “That first morning I had breakfast with you, and I grabbed your arm….”
He laughed. “I remember. But that was because of the blindness, Kate. It’s disorienting to have people clutch at you when you can’t see it coming.” He frowned. “It t
akes some getting used to, this dark world.”
“I’m sorry,” she whispered.
“Why? It’s not your fault,” he growled, and she felt the guilt all the way to her toes. His chest lifted in a heavy sigh. He spread her fingers where they rested against him and moved them in a slow, sensuous motion through that mat of curling hair. She could feel his breathing grow faster with the action.
“Mr. Cambridge…” she whispered shakily, liking the feel of his big, muscular body, the closeness that she’d never shared with any man.
“My name is Garet,” he said quietly.
“Yes, but you’re my boss,” she replied.
“Does that make me a leper?” His free hand pressed her soft cheek against his warm shoulder. “I’m part cat, Kate. I like to be touched and stroked…do you?”
She stiffened in his arms at that sensuous deep note in his voice, afraid of what he might learn about her, what she might learn about him, if this went any further.
“Please, it’s late,” she said quickly, pushing away, “and I have things to do.”
He hesitated for just an instant, as if he was weighing the sincerity in her tone against the soft young tremor of the body in his arms. Then he released his tight grip and let her jump to her feet.
“I won’t rush you, Kate,” he said as he reached for a cigarette and lit it, almost as well as a sighted person could. “You don’t have to be afraid that this is part of the job.”
“I never thought that,” she replied with as much conviction as she could muster, standing at his elbow on shaky legs. “I…I know it must be lonely for you, and without a woman…”
“I had a woman,” he replied tightly, “while I had eyes.” His big hand raked through the hair that fell across his broad forehead, and he scowled. “Celibacy isn’t one of my virtues. You knew that, I imagine?”
“Yes, sir. It’s…very hard not to know it,” she replied.
“Oh?” One dark eyebrow lifted, and the fierce black mood seemed to leave him. “How?”
She read that amused inflection, and found her temper pricked by it. “I’ve got some correspondence to catch up on. Good night, sir,” she said without answering the bald question.
“Elusive little cat,” he murmured. “I’ll catch you one day.”
And wish you hadn’t, she thought miserably. The memory of the boat colliding with that proud head haunted her as she walked back to the beach house. The woman he’d mentioned he had while he still had his sight…had the loss of her embittered him so? That would be another black mark against her if he ever found out his secretary’s real identity. And, remembering the blazing black temper she’d seen for the first time tonight, she shuddered at what the discovery would mean.
Four
It didn’t take Kate long to discover that her new boss was a lonely man. It clung to his darkness like a second skin, a fierce kind of loneliness that made deep lines in his face, narrowed his unseeing green eyes. She wondered if the mysterious woman he’d mentioned, the one who’d run out on him, had been responsible, but she wouldn’t dared to have asked. One glimpse of his temper had been enough to convince her not to pry into his personal life again.
Even though he couldn’t see, she sensed sometimes that he knew she watched him. She couldn’t help it. His dark masculinity drew her eyes like a magnet—the bigness of his husky frame, the proud carriage that didn’t falter even in blindness.
The only thing that seemed to dent his proud spirit were the headaches. They came in the night, and she’d hear him pacing his room, back and forth, in the early hours of morning. It made her guilt even worse, because more often than not he suffered in silence. Only on rare occasions would he call for her to bring him something for the pain.
“Have you told the doctor about these headaches?” Kate asked him early in the darkness of the morning while she was handing him two pain capsules.
“What the hell could he do?” he growled as he swallowed them down. “Sympathize? Give me more of these damned painkillers? If he’s such a magician, Kate, why the hell can’t he give me back my sight? Oh, God, if I could just see…!”
The anguish in his voice brought her a kind of pain she’d never experienced. Without thinking, she sat down on the bed beside him and wrapped her slender arms around him, holding him to her, rocking him in the stillness.
“I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” she whispered, crooning like a mother for a lost child. “I’m so sorry.”
He drew a deep, shuddering breath and crushed her against his husky body for just an instant before he pushed her away.
“Don’t, Kate,” he said quietly. “I might just mistake that well-placed sympathy for an invitation, and then where would you be? I don’t have to tell you how long I’ve been without a woman, and Yama’s not likely to interrupt us.”
“I only meant to offer you sympathy—not myself,” she said in a small, tight voice, hating the naivete responsible for the hot blush of her cheeks.
“I know that. But you don’t know what goes on inside a man’s head when he feels a soft young body against him,” he replied. “Light me a cigarette, honey.”
She complied with shaking hands and put it to his firm, chiseled lips with their shadow of surrounding beard. Unshaven, he had a roguish look that suited him.
“Were any of your ancestors pirates?” she asked without thinking.
He laughed, putting a hand to his temples as if the sound had aggravated the pain. “What brought that on?”
“I don’t know. Without a fresh shave, you kind of reminded me of Henry Morgan.”
One dark eyebrow went up. “I didn’t realize you were old enough to have known him.”
“I’ve seen pictures.”
“They didn’t have cameras on pirate ships.”
“There was a movie…!”
“With an actor playing a part, and it’s the actor I remind you of, not the pirate. Now, isn’t that so?” he challenged.
She sighed furiously. “It would be easier to argue with a stone wall!” she burst out.
“Damned straight, you might have a chance of winning.” He took a long draw from the cigarette and sighed. “God, it hurts.”
Her hand laid gently on his big arm, feeling the hard muscle through the silky pajama top that hung loose over his chest. It was burgundy, and emphasized the darkness of his complexion.
He covered that small, cold hand with one of his. “Stay with me for a while, Kate,” he said quietly. “Keep my ghosts at bay while these pills have a chance to work.”
Her fingers contracted against his arm. “Do you have ghosts?”
“Don’t we all? Don’t you?” he asked.
She sighed. “Oh, yes. I have one of my own.”
“How big?”
She shrugged. “I hurt someone very much,” she admitted, “because of my own stupidity. And there’s no way I can ever make it up.”
His big hand caught hers where it lay on his arm. “Don’t try to live in the past. It’s hard enough when you take one day at a time.”
“Sage words.” She smiled.
“And easier said than done, right, Kate?” he asked quietly.
“Yes, sir.”
He caught her small hand and drew it to his chest. “Light me another cigarette, honey.”
She took the finished butt from his hand and put it in the ashtray, lighting another for him. She had to do it with one hand, because he didn’t show any inclination to let go of the one he held captive. She placed the filter tip between his chiseled lips.
“You smoke too much,” she accused softly.
“Don’t lecture me.”
“Is the pain easing off any?”
He drew in a deep breath. “Somee.”
Her fingers contracted around his, feeling the warm strength in them. “I’m sorry about the headache.”
He laughed shortly as he took a draw from the cigarette. “That makes two of us. Your hands are cold, little one.”
“I’m chilly,” sh
e said quickly.
“In the middle of summer?” he teased lightly. “I don’t think so.”
“I am!”
“It’s like arguing with a wall, Kate,” he reminded her, “and you know you won’t win. Why are you so nervous near me?”
Now there, she thought miserably, was a dandy question. “Well…” she murmured.
“I’m sorry I tore into you the other night,” he told her, with genuine regret in his deep, measured voice. “I…” He took a long, slow breath. “There was a woman, Kate.” His hand contracted around hers painfully. “I suppose it was the closest I’ve ever come to loving anyone. When this happened,” he gestured toward his eyes, “she walked out on me. I told her the blindness was probably only temporary, but she wasn’t willing to take the chance. The world is too big, she said, to let herself be tied down to a cripple.” His jaw tautened with the hated word. His fingers were crushing hers now, and she grimaced and moaned with the pain. “My God, I’m sorry!” he said quickly, releasing his unconsciously cruel grip to caress the fingers his had punished. “I didn’t mean to do that, Kate. Did I hurt you badly?”
She swallowed back the tears. “It’s…all right.”
“Is it?” His blind eyes stared toward the sound of her voice, a dark, emerald green against the darkness of his face with its leonine contours. “God, I wish I could see you! I can’t even tell if you’re lying to me.”
She blanched at the thought that even the blindness was her fault. “I really am all right,” she said reassuringly.
He laid back against the pillows with a heavy sigh. “I’m not a gentle man by nature, Kate. It’s another of my faults you’ll have to adapt to.”
“Along with your green warts and your amusing temper?” she asked, tongue-in-cheek.
The black mood seemed to drop from him and he grinned reluctantly. “Think you’re cute, don’t you?”
“I have a sterling self-image, thanks,” she laughed.
He chuckled, a soft, pleasant sound in the soft light of the bedroom. “You’re good for me.”
“I won’t let you feel sorry for yourself. It goes contrary to your nature, anyway. You’re not the kind of man to turn to self-pity, no matter what happens to you.”