by Diana Palmer
“I hope you don’t expect me to buy that,” he replied. He drew a cigarette from his pocket and lighted it as smoothly as a sighted person; he was hardly fumbling at all, Maggie thought.
“You do that...very well,” she remarked.
“The first time, I set fire to my sleeve,” he recalled with a bitter laugh. “But eventually I got the hang of it.”
“If there’s anything I can do...” she began helplessly.
“Oh, there is,” he replied smoothly. “Very definitely there is. You can stay for a few weeks, Miss Sterline. You can share this travesty of living with me until I’m convinced you’re genuinely repentant.”
She chewed on her lower lip. “A whipping boy?” she asked with dignity.
“A companion,” he growled. “I need someone to lead me around, haven’t you noticed?”
“You had a nurse...”
“Had is right. Yes or no? But if you say no,” he added darkly, “I’ll forbid the marriage and cut Randy off without a single dime. That wouldn’t endear you to your sister, would it?”
“What will it accomplish to keep me here?” she asked uncertainly.
“Quite a lot,” he said, his tawny eyes glittering menacingly across the few feet in her direction. “I owe you, honey. You can’t imagine how much I owe you until you see how I have to live from day to day, through the endless nights, with my mind on fire with pain. I want you to see what you accomplished with that damned story you betrayed me for!”
“I didn’t betray you!” she cried.
“Can’t you even tell the truth when you’re caught red-handed?” he asked with disgust in his tone. “My God, why hide behind excuses that won’t hold water? Don’t you think I checked? They said there was no mix-up—that the picture was yours, and the byline. The man you accused of writing the damned story was the one who denied it to my face.”
“Because you probably went storming into the office and backed him up against a wall,” she accused. “Kerry was just a boy!”
“More like a rabbit,” he scoffed. “He could barely talk at all.”
“If you hate me so much, why do you want me here?” she asked wearily.
“Maybe I’m lonely,” he said curtly. “Trapped. Tired of being patronized and pacified and pandered to. Tired of nurses who are too nervous or too belligerent to do me any good.” He shifted restlessly, and his eyes closed momentarily. “When Randy told me his fiancée’s last name was Sterline, I asked about her family. He mentioned you. It was Christmas, so it was a simple matter to lead him into inviting you with Lisa. I want you with me. You’re going to be my eyes for a few weeks. Apart from everything else you might consider that you owe me at least that much—regardless of where the blame lies,” he added when she started to speak. His huge shoulders lifted and fell. “I was stupid enough to believe I was the subject of a feature, not a character assassination.”
Her eyes washed over him like rain, drinking him. Could she bear being in the same house with this man even for that short time? she wondered. Watching him, seeing him like this, hating his blindness and blaming herself for her small part in it...
“I’ll be your eyes,” she said finally, in her soft quiet voice, and she saw him visibly relax. “For a while. But I may do you more harm than good, the way you feel about me.”
“You don’t know how I feel, honey,” he returned quietly, crossing one long leg over the other. “If it comes right down to it, I’m not all that sure myself. I’ve spent months blaming you for everything that’s happened, because hatred is a powerful motivation for survival and I needed it. I still need it, in a sense. But I’ll try to keep my resentments under control. It’s...hard for me,” he said hesitantly, “being like this. I’m not used to feeling...vulnerable.”
He meant helpless, she knew, but he couldn’t manage the word. It was like weakness, to admit it.
“At least two nurses would testify in court that you aren’t vulnerable,” she reminded him with a smile he couldn’t see.
His dark, heavy eyebrows went straight up. “The night runner and the drill sergeant?” he asked innocently.
She laughed out loud, in spite of herself. “Is that what you called them?”
He shook his head. “I had Randy describe the runaway. He said it was pure conceit on her part if she thought I’d brave her bed, even out of desperation. And the drill sergeant...my God, I got tired of being ordered to drink my split-pea soup! Have you ever eaten hospital split-pea soup? That’s what hers tasted like—no salt, no seasoning, no peas. Just thick, hot water with a drop of flavoring.”
“How about the others?” she asked.
“A few assorted spinsters with Jane Eyre complexes,” he said, dismissing them. “How can any woman expect a blind man to fall in love with her on sight? I’d have to feel them to do that, and I don’t know many who’d take to being Brailled physically by a stranger. Would you?” he asked suddenly.
She flushed. “You know what I look like,” she hedged.
“It’s been eight months,” he reminded her. “You may have gained weight, or lost it.”
He’d teased her like this once before, when she’d been doing the interview, and it had promoted a closeness between them that she had had hopes for. But now she couldn’t help but be wary of him after what he’d said. He might be trying to make her vulnerable just to get even with her for what he believed she’d done, and she didn’t dare drop her guard.
“I might contaminate you,” she returned with a sting in her voice.
“Temper, temper,” he said with a maddening smile.
“You’re a pirate,” she grumbled.
“With patches over both eyes?” he baited.
“I don’t want to stay here!” she burst out suddenly, as she realized the predicament she might find herself in with him.
“But you’re going to,” he said calmly. He shifted in the big chair, uncrossing his legs. “Would you like to go on salary?” he added. “We can call you a nurse-companion and I’ll pay you what the nurses got. You can tell your father I’m hiring you.”
“I have a job too,” she said quickly, “with our local newspaper.”
“You’re taking a leave of absence for the next two weeks,” he replied.
“My boss won’t give me a leave of absence...” she began.
“He will if I tell him to,” he replied with biting confidence, his whole look arrogant. “If he says no, I’ll pay off the mortgage on his paper and fire him.”
“How do you know he’s got one to pay off?” she returned hotly.
One corner of his mouth went up. “Times are hard, honey, and unless he’s thrown in with a combine, he probably has hell keeping the doors open. There’s a mortgage.”
She couldn’t believe that he’d go to those lengths, but it was in every ruthless line of his broad face. He’d decided that he wanted her company, and he was going to get it no matter what lengths he had to go to. She understood now why he was so rich. It had been inevitable, with that raw, driving force in him.
“I’d rather you let me go back home and sent me letter bombs and threatening notes,” she replied quietly.
“And I’d rather you stayed. So would your sister, I imagine,” he added, reminding her of what he’d threatened earlier.
“Mr. Tremayne—”
“Go and tell the others they can come back in now,” he said, ignoring the thought she was trying to voice. He looked weary all of a sudden, and one big hand rubbed at his eyes, as if they pained him.
“I’ll have to call my father, and my boss,” she began.
“Go ahead.”
“Are you sure this is a good idea?” she asked very gently.
“I’d like to meet your sister, if you’d ever go and bring her here,” he said impatiently. “And put this out for me,” he added, holding the half-finished cigarette out in
front of him.
“You don’t want a companion, you want slave labor,” she grumbled. But she took the cigarette and crushed it out in the ashtray beside his chair. “And to think, before I knew who you were, I actually felt sorry for you. Sorry! I might as well weep for a hungry lion!” she muttered.
He laughed softly, as if the words delighted him. “Go on.”
“Yes, sir, Mr. Tremayne,” she grumbled on her way out.
All three of them were sitting on the long sofa in the front entrance, as if they were afraid to move too far away because they might miss hearing her scream for help.
“It’s all right,” Maggie told them, watching with hidden amusement the way they got to their feet.
“You’re still in one piece,” Randy said, breathing a sigh of relief. “My gosh, I’m sorry I let you walk into that, but I had no idea who you were. I didn’t even connect it.”
“Lisa hadn’t told us that you wrote, dear,” Sandra Tremayne added gently, her eyes compassionate, not resentful as Maggie had feared they would be after her identity was revealed.
“I’m so sorry about Saxon—Mr. Tremayne,” Maggie said earnestly, and the guilt was in her whole look. “It was a mix-up in the bylines. What I did was a feature story, but the bylines were switched, and I got the blame for what one of the new reporters had done on brown lung. I had too much respect for Mr. Tremayne to pull an underhanded stunt like that on him. I’m aware that some journalists don’t think twice about how they get a story, but I’m not one of them. I hope you believe that, even if he won’t.”
“I do,” Lisa said gently, moving forward to hug her older sister. “I’ve known you all my life, remember?”
Maggie smiled, her voice wavering as she replied, “Yes, love, I know.”
“Nobody’s blaming you,” Randy said quietly. “Hawk’s had a rough time, and he can’t come to grips with what’s happened. But I know, too, that it could have happened anytime. He could have just as well been on his way to buy gas, or eat out. And for what it’s worth, I think Lisa knows you well enough to vouch for you.”
“Has he thrown you out?” Sandra asked, genuinely concerned. “I really won’t stand for that, you know, it is still my home, and you’re very welcome to stay.”
“No, he didn’t throw me out,” Maggie said with a quiet smile. “Quite the opposite. I’m going to be his eyes for a few weeks.”
“Or... ?” Randy asked knowingly.
Maggie smiled back in spite of herself. “Or he’ll buy my employer’s newspaper and fire him, he said.”
“He probably meant it,” Randy agreed with a heavy sigh. “He’s paying you for the dubious honor, I hope? I imagine you have bills to handle just like everyone else.”
“I have, and he is,” Maggie agreed, stretching wearily. “At least he isn’t having me stuffed and mounted. That’s something. And I think I truly understand how he feels.” Her eyes grew sad. “What a tragic thing to have happened. It hasn’t been easy for him, I’m sure, as active and involved as he was. And to never get out at all... Why won’t he?” she asked.
Randy’s lips made a thin line. “He won’t be led around like a dumb animal, he says,” he told her. “That’s the excuse I get anyway. We’ve both offered. He won’t let us help him.”
“He may let me,” Maggie said thoughtfully. “As long as he thinks I’m being ordered to, at least,” she added with a grin.
“And that,” Sandra Tremayne told her son, “is why women will rule the world someday. We let you believe you have the ideas, but actually they’re all ours. Right, girls?”
“Right,” Maggie and Lisa chorused.
Randy only sighed. “Shall we go back in?”
“He wants to meet Lisa,” Maggie murmured as Randy opened the door, and Lisa hesitated, but her sister grabbed her hand and dragged her over to the big high-backed chair.
“Mr. Tremayne, this is Lisa,” Maggie said, placing her sister’s hand in his big one.
He could be charming when he wanted to—and this, Maggie thought, was one of those times, “I’m very pleased to meet my future sister-in-law,” he said with a voice like velvet, and a smile. “What does she look like, Maggie? Like you? Or is she fair?”
“She has short green hair and freckles,” Maggie said helpfully. “Oh, and a wart on her left cheek.”
He scowled, looking more intimidating than ever in his darkness, his bigness. “There went your Christmas bonus, Snow White,” he told Maggie.
She laughed in spite of herself. He looked so ferocious. “She’s very fair,” she said relenting. “Not quite as tall as I am, much better figure than mine, with green eyes and delicate features. All right?”
“You’re insolent, miss,” he accused.
“Yes, sir,” she agreed, winking at Lisa.
“Now I understand why Lisa is an airline hostess,” he remarked. “She does it to get away from you.”
“That was unkind,” Maggie murmured.
“And probably true. You’re both probably tired from the trip. Why don’t you rest for a while?” he added courteously. “Mother, are the rooms ready?”
“Yes, Saxon,” Sandra assured him, relief showing in every soft line of her face. “Come with me and I’ll show you upstairs. Can I have the maids bring you anything, dear?” she added.
Saxon shook his head. “No, thank you,” he said quietly. “I’ll sit here for a while longer. Maggie!”
She turned from the doorway. “Yes, sir?”
He hesitated. “When you feel up to it, come back and talk to me.”
“Yes, sir,” she murmured.
They said the longest journey began with a single step. And that invitation was the first for Maggie. She was smiling when she followed her sister and Mrs. Tremayne up the staircase.
CHAPTER THREE
“IT’S GOING TO be just lovely having some women in the house.” Sandra Tremayne sighed as she lifted her coffee cup to her lips after the elegant china had been cleared from the table.
“Reverse chauvinism,” Randy remarked, lifting the remainder of his wine in a mock toast.
“You don’t know how lonely it is for me,” the older woman accused.
“It wouldn’t be so bad if Saxon would stop chasing nurses out into the night,” Randy remarked dryly, with a glance at his somber stepbrother, who was sipping his coffee at the head of the table without, to Maggie’s amazement, spilling a drop.
“I don’t think Maggie would run,” Saxon remarked with a faint smile. “Fate has a way of tossing her back to me when she tries, doesn’t it, Maggie?” he added with cynical amusement.
Maggie picked at her crumpled linen napkin. There was a bite in his voice, and if she hadn’t realized it, before, it was beginning to dawn on her that he hadn’t forgotten his resentments, as he’d called them. They were simply tucked beneath the surface of his abrasive personality, ready to manifest themselves at a moment’s notice.
“I came under my own power,” she reminded him.
“And if you’d known who I was?” he demanded coolly, his eyes faintly cruel. “Would you still have come to see about the blind man?”
“Don’t look to me for pity, you black-hearted beast,” Maggie shot back. “You aren’t helpless!”
He threw back his head and roared with laughter, while his stepmother and stepbrother stared, started, and began to smile. So that was how the lion had to be handled! And they’d been sympathetic, almost pandering to him.
“You hard-nosed little cat,” Saxon chuckled. “I’ll bet you bleed ink.”
“Coffee,” she corrected.
He leaned back in his chair with a sigh. “I know. I live on it too.”
“You drink far too much of it, dear,” Sandra noted. “It’s a miracle your skin hasn’t turned. I read about a man who drank and ate only carrot juice and carrots,” she added. “He died,
and his skin was orange...”
“I’m not surprised.” Randy laughed. “But, Mother, what about the time you went on that grapefruit diet? You didn’t develop an acid personality.”
“Cute, Randy.” Lisa laughed.
“That’s why you’re marrying me, surely?” he returned.
“By the way, have you set a date?” Sandra asked seriously. “We have to decide on a gown for Lisa, and sent out invitations and arrange about the flowers....”
“How about Christmas Eve?” Randy asked Lisa. “I’ve always wanted to be married then.”
“It would have to be in the morning,” Mrs. Tremayne reminded them, “because of the midnight service. We’re Presbyterian, you know,” she added.
“So are we,” Lisa said, laughing. “How’s that for a nice coincidence?”
“Lovely!” Sandra burst out, and smiled. “Oh, it will be the most beautiful wedding. Let me tell you what I think about flowers. Since it will be Christmas, we could—”
“Just a minute, Sandra,” Saxon said, pushing his chair back from the table. “Maggie, let’s go into the living room. Talking about weddings gives me indigestion.”
“Yes, go ahead, dear,” Sandra said, subdued, watching them leave the room, the big man allowing himself to be guided by the slender woman. There was something akin to pity in her eyes.
Maggie positioned Saxon in front of his big chair before the hearth and took the seat beside it as he eased down into the soft cushions.
“Well, you’ve charmed my family,” he murmured when he’d lighted his cigarette and crossed his legs to get comfortable.
“It’s mutual,” she answered quietly. The flames were hypnotic, their heat cozy and pleasant. To sit there in that room with him was like coming home, Maggie thought. She didn’t understand why, but she found pleasure in it.
He shifted restlessly, his eyes staring straight ahead. “I wish to God I could see you,” he muttered. “Have you changed? Are you thinner, heavier? Is your hair still long or have you had it cut? Come here!”
The whip in his voice startled her into movement. She stood up uncertainly.