Blind Promises (3 page)

Mrs. van der Vere came out of the living room, hands outstretched. “My, don’t you look professional,” she said. “We’ll have to spend some time together, my dear, once you’ve gotten into the routine and adjusted to Gannon.” She looked briefly uncomfortable and bit her dainty lower lip. “Dana, if I may call you Dana, you…won’t…that is, you’re used to difficult patients, aren’t you?” she asked finally.

Dana smiled. “Yes, Mrs. van der Vere…”

“Call me Lorraine, dear. We’re going to be allies, you know.”

“Lorraine,” she corrected. “I was a floor nurse at Ashton General, you know. I think I can cope with Mr. van der Vere.”

“Most people do, until they’ve met him” was the worried reply, accompanied by a wan smile. “Well”- she straightened-“shall we get it over with?”

Dana followed behind her, half puzzled. Surely the little Dutchman couldn’t be that much of a horror. She wondered if he’d have an accent. His mother didn’t seem to…

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Lorraine knocked tentatively at the door of the room next to the living room.

“Gannon?” she called hesitantly.

“Well, come in or go away! Do you need an engraved invitation?” came a deep, lightly accented voice from behind the huge mahogany door.

Lorraine opened the door and stood aside to let Dana enter the room first.

“Here’s your new nurse, darling: Miss Dana Steele. Dana, this is my stepson, Gannon.”

Dana barely heard her. She was trying to adjust to the fact that the small, mustached Dutchman she had been told was to be her patient was actually the man she saw. in front of her.

“Well?” the huge man at the desk asked harshly, his unseeing gray eyes staring straight ahead. “Is she mute, Mother? Or just weighing the advantages of silence?”

Dana found her voice and moved forward, her foot-“steps alerting the tall blond man to her approach. He stood up, towering over her, his shaggy mane of hair falling roguishly over his broad forehead.

“How do you do, Mr. van der Vere?” Dana asked with more confidence than she felt.

“I’m blind-how do you think I do, Miss Steele?” he demanded harshly, his deep voice cold and cutting, his unseeing wintery eyes glaring at her. “I trip over the furniture, I turn over glasses, and I hate being led around like a child! Did my stepmother tell you that you’re the fifth?” he added with a bitter laugh.

“Fifth what?” she asked, holding on to her nerve.

“Nurse, of course,” he replied impatiently. “I’ve gone through that many in a month. How long do you expect to last?”

“As long as I need to, Mr. van der Vere,” she replied calmly.

He cocked his head, as if straining to hear her. “Not afraid of me. miss?” he prodded.

She shifted her shoulders. “Actually, sir, I’m quite fond of wild animals,” she said with a straight face, while Lorraine gaped at her.

A faint movement in the broad face caught her attention. “Are you presuming to call me a wild animal?” he retorted.

“Oh, no, sir,” Dana assured him. “I wouldn’t flatter you on such short acquaintance.”

He threw back his head and laughed. “Nervy, aren’t you?” he murmured. “You’ll need that nerve if you stay here long.” He turned away and found the corner of the desk, easing himself back into his chair.

“Well, I’ll leave you two to…get acquainted,” Lorraine said, seizing her opportunity. She backed out the door with an apologetic smile at Dana, and closed it behind her.

“Would you like to get acquainted with me, Miss Nurse?” Gannon van der Vere asked arrogantly.

“Oh, definitely sir. I do consider it an advantage to get to know the enemy.”

He chuckled. “Is that how you see me?”

“That’s obviously how you want to be seen,” she told him. “You don’t like being nursed, do you? You’d much rather sit behind that great desk and brood about being blind.”

The smile faded and his gray eyes glittered sightlessly toward the source of her voice. “I beg your pardon?”

“Have you been out of this house since the accident?” she asked. “Have you bothered to learn braille,

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or to walk with a cane? Have you seen about getting a seeing-eye dog?”

“I don’t need crutches!” he shot back. “I’m a man, not a child. I won’t be fussed over!”

“But you must see that the only” recourse you’ve given your stepmother is to find help for you…” she said, attempting reason, “…if you won’t even make the effort to help yourself.”

He lifted his nose in what Dana immediately recognized as the prelude to an outburst of pure venom.

“Perhaps I would if I could be left alone long enough,” he replied in a voice so cold it dripped icicles. “I’ve been ‘helped’ out of my mind. The last nurse my stepmother brought here had the audacity to suggest that I might benefit from a psychiatrist. She left in the middle of the night.”

“I can see you now, flinging her out the front steps in her bedclothes,” Dana retorted, unperturbed.

“Impertinent little creature, aren’t you?” he growled.

“If you treat your employees this way, Mr. van der Vere, I’m amazed that you still have any,” she said calmly. “Now, what would you like for dinner and I’ll show you how to start feeding yourself. I assume you don’t like being spoon-fed…?”

He muttered something harsh and banged his fist down on the desk. “I’m not hungry!”

“In that case I’ll tell the cook not to bother preparing anything for you,” she said cheerfully. “When you need me, do call.”

She started out the door, trying not to hear what he was saying to her back.

“Sticks and stones, Mr. van der Vere,” she reminded him sweetly as she opened the door.

He growled something in another language and fol-

lowed it with a slam of something on the big wooden desk. Dana smiled secretly as she closed the door behind her. Challenge, was that what had been said about this job? It would certainly be that, she affirmed silently.

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Lorraine was waiting for her in the hall, wringing her hands. Her small face was heavily lined with apprehension.

“Now, dear,” she began nervously, “he’s not at all as horrible as he seems, and I don’t mind raising your salary…!”

Dana laughed heartily. “Oh, that won’t be necessary. You couldn’t pay me to leave now. It would be like retreating, and a good nurse never retreats under fire.”

The older woman was visibly relieved. “Oh” was all she managed to say.

“But I can certainly understand why my predecessors were in such a rush to get out the door,” she added with a grin. “He does have a magnificent temper, doesn’t he?”

Lorraine sighed. “Yes, he does. Blindness isn’t easy for a man like my stepson, you know. He is-was-so athletic. He especially liked water-skiing and snow skiing and aerobatics in his plane….”

The other woman was painting a picture of a man

who had enjoyed a reckless life-style, as if he hadn’t considered life precious enough to safe-guard.

She frowned. “Dangerous sports.”

“Very obviously,” Lorraine said quietly. “He’s been that way since his wife died in the automobile wreck. He was driving, you see. It was many years ago, but he’s never been the Gannon he was when I married his father.”

“How old was he when you married?” she asked quietly, sensing a kindred spirit.

“He was ten.” She sighed, smiling. “His mother died when he was born, and his father went to his own grave loving her. 1 was a substitute. He cared for me,” she said quickly. “But not in the same way he cared for Gannon’s mother.” She turned away, as if her own memories were painful. “Is your room all right, my dear?”

“It’s lovely. I’ll enjoy it very much while I’m here. Mrs. van der Vere, exactly what is the problem with your stepson’s eyes? Mrs. Pibbs was rather vague, and I’d like to know.”

“That’s the problem,” Lorraine said as she led the way into her small sitting room and took a chair overlooking the rocky coastline. “There is no medical reason for his blindness. They call it-what’s that word?- idiopathic. Gannon’s doctor said that it could very well be hysterical blindness, brought about by the sudden shock of expecting to be stabbed in the eyes by those ragged wooden beams at the shore. The woman who was driving the speedboat lost control,” she explained. “Gannon was slung toward a dock with splintered boards. How it missed his eyes was truly a miracle, but he didn’t expect it to miss, you see. He was twisted and

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his head smashed into the dock. When he came to in the hospital, he was blind.”

“And he doesn’t like the idea of admitting that it could be hysterical paralysis of the optic nerve,” Dana concluded, pursing her lips. “That’s quite understandable, of course. Was there any emotional trauma in his life at about the same time?”

“Not that I know of,” the smaller woman commented. “Of course, Gannon is a very private person.

Dana nodded. “Does he go out at all?”

“Socially, you mean? No,” she said sadly. “He stays in the living room and harasses his vice-presidents over the phone.”

“His vice-presidents?”

“At the electronics firm he owns, my dear. They manufacture all sorts of communications equipment-interfaces for computers, buffers, monitors, that kind of thing.” She shrugged and smiled apologetically. “I don’t pretend to understand; it’s far too technical for me. But the company’s introduced some revolutionary new system components, and apparently my stepson is something of an electronics genius. I’m very proud of him. But I have to admit, I have no idea exactly what he does.”

“I don’t know anything about computers,” Dana murmured. She smiled secretly. “But if I asked, he might be tempted to educate me. It might even break the ice.”

“Be careful that you don’t fall in,” Lorraine cautioned. “Gannon doesn’t particularly like women right now. He was almost engaged when the accident happened. The woman walked out on him.” She grimaced. “Perhaps some of that was guilt. She was driving the speedboat, you see.”

Dana pondered that for the rest of the day. Poor lonely man; His life hadn’t been any picnic so far, either. She smiled, just thinking about the challenge Gannon was going to present.

After letting him simmer all day, Dana took Gannon’s dinner tray in herself.

He was sitting in a deep armchair by the open window that led onto the balcony. Outside, the waves were crashing slowly against the shore.

He lifted his shaggy blond head when he heard the door open and close. “Mother?” he called shortly.

“Hardly,” Dana replied. She put the tray on the big desk, watching him stiffen at the sound of her voice.

“You again? I thought you’d gone home, Nurse.”

“And leave you all alone, Mr. van der Vere?” she exclaimed. “How cowardly!”

He lifted his chin aggressively. “I don’t need another nurse. I don’t want another nurse. I just want to be left alone.”

“Loneliness-take it from me-is bad for the soul,” she said matter-of-factly. “It shrivels it up like a prune. Why don’t you walk along the beach and listen to the waves and the sea gulls? Are you afraid of sea gulls, Mr. van der Vere? Do you have a feather phobia or something?”

He was trying not to laugh, but he lost. It rolled out of him like deep thunder, but he quickly stifled it. “Impertinent Miss Steele,” he muttered. “Your name suits you. Are you cold and hard?”

“Pure marshmallow,” she corrected, removing the lids from the dinnerware. “Just take a whiff of this delicious food. Steak and mashed potatoes and gravy, homemade rolls and buttered asparagus.”

“All my favorites,” he murmured. “What did. you

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do, bribe Mrs. Wells to fix it? She hates the smell of asparagus.”

“So she told me,” she said with a smile. “But it was her night off. I cooked it.”

“You cook?” he asked curtly.

“I used to live alone. I’d starve to death if I didn’t. Now, if you can’t manage by yourself, I’ll be glad to spoon-feed you….”

He said something unpleasant, but he got to his feet and stumbled toward the desk.

She walked around it and caught his hand. He tried to free himself but she held firm, determined not to let him dominate her.

“I’m offering to help you,” she said quietly, staring up at his scowling face. “That’s all. One human being to another. I’d do the same for man, woman, or child, and I think you would for me if our situations were reversed.”

He looked shocked for a minute, but he stopped struggling. He let her guide him to his chair behind the desk. But before he sat down, his big hands caught her thin shoulders for a minute and moved upward to her neck and her face and hair. He nodded then and let go of her to drop into the big chair, which barely contained him.

“I thought you’d be small,” he said after a minute, groping for the cup of hot black coffee she’d placed within his reach.

“In fact, I’m above average height,” she returned. The feel of his warm, strong hands had made her feel odd, and she wasn’t sure she liked it.

“Compared to me, miss, you’re small,” he said firmly. “What color is your hair, your eyes?”

“I have blond hair,” she said. “And brown eyes.”

“An unusual combination.” He picked up his fork and managed to turn over the coffee with one sudden movement. A torrent of words poured Out of him.

“Stop that,” Dana said sharply. “I’ll walk right out the door if you continue to use such language around me.”

“I must remember to search my mind for better words if it will get you out of my hair,” he said with malicious enjoyment. “Are you such a prude, little Nurse?”

“No, sir, I am not,” she assured him. “But I was always told that a repertoire of rude language disguised a pitiful lack of vocabulary. And I believe it.”