Seeing Stars: A Loveswept Classic Romance (6 page)

She laughed softly, still pondering the import of what she’d witnessed and its impact on her. “Would you settle for sausage and cornmeal mush?”

Cocking his head and hooking both thumbs in the waistband of his waders, he pretended to give that serious consideration. “I might.”

Like metal shavings to a magnet, Dovie’s eyes were drawn to the opaque sunglasses he wore. She
pictured his deep blue eyes, crinkled at the corners in amusement beneath coal black brows, and wished she could see them again. Her voice drifted wistfully across the water. “I’ll even throw in a pot of coffee and let you pour.”

Nick’s laughter flowed as richly and warmly as the blackstrap molasses she was planning to serve with breakfast. “You drive a hard bargain, lady, but I sure do like your style.”

She watched him climb the bank, taking it slowly but surely, and wondered if he would kiss her this time. The thought sent chills chasing along her spine and spawned an earthy sensation somewhere below her stomach. Only when he pushed his sunglasses back onto his head did she know for certain that he would.

His nostrils flaring slightly as he inhaled her heady rose fragrance, Nick homed in on her. Her pulse racing ecstatically at the hard-muscled sight of him, Dovie dropped her fishing rod and moved into his embrace as naturally as if she’d known him for years.

Yesterday he’d told her she was beautiful; today he showed her how beautiful she really was.

Holding her as though she were fragile and precious, Nick lowered his face toward hers. His lips trailed fiery paths across her cheeks, her eyelids, her chin, burning away the December chill.

Dovie trembled feverishly in his arms, but he didn’t rush. He paid homage to each perfect feature,
that delicate bone structure; he even took the time to savor the honeyed flavor of her breath.

Every sense she had woke up and sang. She felt the imprint of his hard body against her softer one. Inhaled deeply of his lime-and-spice soap. Heard him fashion her name in low staccato sounds that echoed her heartbeat. And when his mouth finally met hers, the taste of him went straight to her head.

Intoxicating he was, like Christmas Day brandy, and she parted her lips to drain the cup.

Suddenly, so suddenly she almost lost her balance, Nick thrust her from him and turned away. In the sorry shadows cast by the naked trees, his breath tore out in ragged white clouds. “Dammit, Dovie, if I don’t stop now, I won’t be able to.”

Touching trembling fingers to lips still deliciously damp from him, she swallowed the bitter pill of his rejection and forced herself to speak calmly. “That’s funny; I thought I gave you the green light.”

His harsh laugh ripped a big hole in her heart. And a bleak wind whistled through the opening when he flipped his sunglasses back in place and turned on her. “In case you haven’t noticed, I’m color-blind!”

“Well, if you’re looking for sympathy, you can find it in the dictionary.” Dovie’s voice shook dangerously as anger flooded in to fill passion’s void.

“I’m not.” Nick’s tone held all the warmth of surgical steel. “But if I were, you can damned well bet you’d be the last one I’d look to.”

“Thank God for small favors,” she snapped. Then, stricken by guilt at what she’d just said, she spun away from him, her rubber waders slisking in the snow. Through all the years, all the crises … no one and nothing had ever rattled her as much as Nick just had!

“Listen”—he sighed heavily and reached for her arm, trying to make amends—“that remark I made about being color-blind was a real cop-out.”

From the corner of her eye she saw his hand coming at her, and stepped sideways to evade it. “Yes, it was.”

“And I really can’t believe that I was stupid enough to let a good thing end so badly.” He grabbed a fistful of freezing air and ground his teeth in frustration. Then he lashed out with his left hand.

Dovie’s conscience warred with her pride as she dodged him again. She wasn’t playing fair, of course, but she’d be hanged for a horse thief before she’d stand still for any more of his abuse! “Me either.”

“About the only excuse I can offer is that shortly after I was blinded, I was surrounded by women who thought I needed them to ‘take care’ of me.” Remembering all the nameless, faceless bodies he’d bedded during those first dark months, Nick stopped and raked an aggravated hand through his thick black hair. “I suppose they saw themselves as sexual therapists or something, and I—”

“If you think I’m interested in hearing you brag
about how many notches you’ve carved in Braille on your bedpost, you’re sadly mistaken!” she snapped over her shoulder.

“You jump to conclusions faster than a frog!” Veering toward the sound of her voice, he grabbed her arms in a steel vise of a grip and jerked her around to face him. “Now, you’re not making another move until I’ve had my say! Understand?”

Dovie stood frozen in his grasp, stunned by the anger that had erupted in him. Dimly she realized that he wasn’t angry at her as much as he was angry at the terrible fate that had robbed him of his eyesight. Nevertheless, Nick in a temper was a man to fear.

“I don’t blame you for thinking I was bragging a moment ago, but believe me, I wasn’t.” He relaxed his grip but didn’t release her, because he was sure she’d bolt if given the chance. “And I know you were mad when I stopped kissing you—”

“I wasn’t mad; I was hurt.”

Nick could feel her trembling through the nubby cotton fabric of her sweater. The way his knuckles were still digging into the sides of her breasts, he knew her courage must have cost her dearly. “I never meant to hurt you.”

Dovie heard the change in his voice, but it did nothing to calm the riotous vibrations where his hands held her captive. Her fear of him was gone, replaced by a fear of a different kind. A fear of herself. “Then let me go.”

Silently, he did as she had demanded.

It was almost full daylight now. Around them snow fell softly from laden evergreen boughs and icicles on the nearby dogwood limbs began to melt under the fleeting magic of a December sun. Between them their breaths joined in warm white clouds on the freezing air. And together they braved a whole new world of emotion.

“I don’t know about you,” he said huskily, “but I’m a hell of a lot friendlier on a full stomach.”

“Me too.” Giving in to an impulse she’d had since she first met him, she raised one hand and let her fingers sift through his windblown hair. Ah, it felt as clean and springy as it looked.

“The offer’s still open, then?” He caught her hand and brought it to his mouth, pressing his lips into the center of her palm with a light, experienced touch that made her ache with excitement deep inside.

Dovie nodded, illogically thinking he could see the motion.

Nick sensed it and, giving in to some devilish impulse of his own, murmured against her sensitized skin. “Then let’s go home. I’m starved.”

“Oh … you …” She let out a huff of laughter and snatched her hand away. “Just for that, you have to make the coffee as well as pour it.”

He laughed too. “Sounds good to me.”

They gathered up their fishing gear in companionable silence and started back. As they climbed the hill, their footsteps crunching through the
snow, she was suddenly acutely aware of winter’s beauty.

“Be my eyes,” Nick said, placing a proprietary hand at the small of her back. “Describe everything you see, starting with the sky.”

Dovie searched the sky as desperately as she scrambled for adjectives. They had to be absolutely perfect. “Polished pewter.”

“Polished pewter?” A twist of a smile touched his lips, and she felt foolish for having gotten so carried away by a gray sky. Then her tension receded and relief flowed in when he laughed triumphantly. “Beautiful! Clear as a bell!”

After that, it was a snap.

“What’s the snow look like?”

“Diamond dust.”

“The trees?”

“Straight out of a Currier and Ives Christmas scene.”

A pair of cardinals whistling in the pines … chirring chipmunks playing tag under the drooping canopy of a willow … a white-tailed doe and her spotted fawn poised for flight halfway up the hill …

The snowscape was so beautiful that Dovie wept because Nick couldn’t see it. At the top of the hill she stood next to him, his arm around her shoulders. He touched his hand to her face, where he found her tears.

“It’s that lovely, is it?”

She nodded, knowing he felt her response, and laid her cheek against his warm, wide chest.

The sharp air lashed at his face, and his lungs filled with it, clean and crisp. Winter held the world in its icy fingers, but Nick held Dovie, and something hard and cold within him began to thaw.

“No one’s ever cried for me before.” He bent his head and kissed away her tears, his mouth so tender, she thought she might swoon. “Thank you for being my eyes.”

“I should be thanking you.” Listening to the strong, steady beat of his heart, she sighed contentedly, a kind of peace stealing over her. “I’ve been so preoccupied lately, I’d almost forgotten how pretty it is around here.”

They stood in silent communion with each other and with their own emotions for a while longer.

For Dovie, who’d given up her youthful dreams to take care of her seven brothers and sisters, it was a chance to dream again. And for Nick, who had taken a little over a year to come to terms with the loss of his sight, it finally was time to look to the future.

What neither of them realized in the dawn of a new day was that this was simply the calm before the storm.

After ten rings, Dovie hung up the telephone receiver, sighed, and turned back to the stove.

“Still no answer?” Nick had paused in the midst
of setting the table, his head tilted at a listening angle. The instinct born of years of medical experience, of being aware that what patients didn’t say was often more important than what they did say, had alerted him to Dovie’s distress.

“No.” The word was softly spoken, emotionless, but he knew anxiety too well to miss it in someone else. She was worried sick because she couldn’t locate Curtis and Linda.

“Try the hospital again,” he suggested.

“I’ve already left messages with the admitting office and the maternity ward,” she said.

Dovie felt a cloak of guilt closing around her. Even though her brothers and sisters were on their own, they still depended on her in case of an emergency. And rightfully so. Remembering the way she’d snapped at Curtis when he’d called her yesterday morning, she blinked back tears of remorse and set about finishing the cooking of their breakfast.

The pungent aroma of sage and coriander trailed her to the table when she carried in a platter of hot homemade sausage patties. Napkins and silverware were unnecessarily rearranged right under Nick’s nose. A friendly, crackling fire received several unfriendly thrusts from the tip of an iron poker, provoking a snapping shower of sparks in return.

Killing time … Nick knew damn good and well what Dovie was doing. Massacring the moments until she could go back to the telephone and try her
brother’s number again. And all the while she was keeping that tightly controlled silence that people who’ve never had anyone to share their burdens with are prone to keep.

For all intents and purposes she’d forgotten he even existed. So he waited patiently while she plumped sofa pillows and straightened family photographs with a mother hen’s practiced hand. And he wondered, as she busyworked her way back to the table, how many times she’d walked these floors alone, the worries she’d inherited weighing heavy on her mind.

Compassion and the need to help her welled up strongly in Nick. He was deluged by the desire to hold her and calm her. To protect her and to provide the missing years of love and laughter that could never be made up for.

“I’ll get the mush,” she finally said.

“Forget the mush.”

“But I’ve got to call—”

“Don’t shut me out, Dovie.” He reached out and grabbed her wrist, gathering her into the comforting circle of his arms.

“No!” She resisted him fiercely at first, twisting and turning, drumming his chest with her frantic little fists. “Let … me … go!”

But he needed her as much as she needed him, so he clasped her to him all the more closely until, like a broken spring, she unwound suddenly and burrowed into his arms.

“Hold me, Nick, hold me, hold me, hold me.”

“I’m here.” He bent his head and buried his face in the soft clean silk of her hair.

Her breath was warm and labored on his neck. “I’m afraid.”

“A fear shared is a fear conquered.”

That seemed to do the trick. Her body sagged with relief and her breathing returned to normal. The fingers that had clutched handfuls of his shirtfront with such desperation began to relax.

For a long time neither spoke. Dovie slid her arms around his lean waist and let herself rest against the hard bulk of his body. Nick registered the crush of her soft breasts against his chest, the shape of himself against her stomach, but kept his thoughts to the straight and narrow. The embrace was one of sustenance rather than desire, a drawing of strength, and perhaps a prelude to tragedy.

“Something’s happened to Curtis and Linda,” she said at last. “I can’t explain it, but I can feel it in my bones.”

Dovie had never given birth; her brothers and sisters had grown in her heart, not under it. In raising them, though, she had developed that age-old intuition that is part and parcel of motherhood. And it was her maternal sense of urgency to which Nick responded.

“I’ll put the food away while you back the car out.”

“There’s a shortcut through the woods,” she said, “but we’ll have to walk.”

“Fine.” He turned her toward the table. “We’d better hurry.”

They had the food put away and were out the door in a matter of minutes. Snow fell needle-straight now from churlish clouds that seemed to make dusk of day. In the distance a lone dog howled its misery, while the wind moaned about something that hurt. The morning had lost its luster, which only added to Dovie’s dread. But even if worse came to worst, she would never forget how safe and protected she’d felt in Nick’s arms.