Seeing Stars: A Loveswept Classic Romance (12 page)

“Problems we’ll never solve if we don’t spend some time together.”

“What do you think we’ve been doing every day since we met?”

“Getting interrupted by phone calls and emergencies and little girls,” he answered pointedly.

She couldn’t argue with that, but she could try and make him see it from a different angle. “Those ‘interruptions’ were part of my life long before you ever pulled me out of the river.”

“I realize that.”

“And I can no more eliminate them overnight than I can let you rush me into an affair. I’m just not built that way.”

“So where does that leave us?”

“I …” Her mind went blank, and she could only look at him, mute and hurting, without being sure of the cause.

“I have to know, Dovie.”

“Why?” she asked in an agonized whisper.

“Because I want you.”

“But I love you, Nick, and there’s a difference.”

He knew what she wanted to hear, but couldn’t bring himself to say it. So he let her down as gently as he could. “Look, maybe it’s a good thing your nieces interrupted us when they did. I mean, it was nice while it lasted—we had a few laughs, weathered a couple of crises, and even got ourselves a little sexually excited. Now it’s time to go our separate ways.”

She felt as though there were a cord tightening around her throat and she could barely talk. “You don’t believe that any more than I do.”

“Don’t bet the farm on it.” Damn, how trite! The least he could do was tell her the truth. She deserved that. And so much more. “Let’s face it, Dovie, my life is over and—”

“Not according to Dr. Rodgers.”

“You talked to Joe about me?” His voice, low and ominous, reminded her of thunder in the distance.

“He said that even without your eyesight, you’re capable of practicing medicine.”

Recalling the conversation she’d had with his friend at the Christmas party, she repeated it almost verbatim. “While you’ve lost the keenest of the senses, your other senses—which are important diagnostic tools—have compensated by becoming more finely tuned. And because your brain isn’t distracted by visual impressions, you may learn things about a patient’s condition that a sighted doctor would miss.”

A bitter smile came and went on his lean, dark face. “How lucky can I get?”

“If you said that to make me feel sorry for you, it won’t work. You may not have your vision, but you’ve got your health and talent and a fine education, which is more than most people can ever hope for.”

“Tell me what else you learned during this stimulating discussion.”

She hesitated briefly before taking the plunge. “That a nurse-practitioner is required by law to work under the supervision of a licensed physician.”

Nick laughed, but there was no humor in the sound, no warmth. “I think I’m beginning to get the picture.”

“Now, just a—”

“Well, let me tell you something, Florence Nightingale,” he retorted. “You and Joe Rodgers can discuss me until hell freezes over, but neither one of you has the foggiest idea of how it feels to be blind.”

“I didn’t say we—”

“On the best days—and there aren’t many of those—it’s like being trapped in a prison from which I’ll never escape.”

“A prison of your own making, if you ask me.”

A muscle jumped along his rigid jawline. “What do you mean by that?”

Inside she was empty of everything but despair
as she turned and caught the cold bandstand railing in a pale-knuckled grip.

Across the street from the park, a little girl wearing a jacket fashioned out of old corduroy rags of various colors stood with her nose pressed to a sparkling storefront window, staring intently at a flaxen-haired doll that was displayed on a carpet of cotton batting sprinkled with stardust.

Dovie’s eyes never left that little girl. “The Christmas I was eight, I wanted a doll more than anything in the world. Not just any old doll, mind you, but one I’d seen when I detoured through Dunn’s toy department on my way to buy sewing-machine needles for Mama.”

She smiled as she relived that magical moment of discovery. “Oh, she was such a beautiful doll, with hair the color of coffee with cream in it and deep blue eyes framed by thick lashes that stared straight into my heart and begged, ‘Please, won’t
you
take me home and love me?’

“And her clothes … law, I’d never seen the likes of them! A lace-trimmed pink silk dress, black patent-leather slippers, and white ankle socks with little pink roses embroidered on the cuffs.”

A tear splashed onto her hand. Dovie bent her head and saw the shining bead through blurred eyes. More droplets fell. She wiped them away and glanced up at the cloudless winter sky. Slowly, painfully, she realized the glistening beads were her own bitter tears.

“To make a long story short,” she continued in a
shaky voice, “I didn’t get that doll. Mama was pregnant with the twins and Pop had been laid off from the sawmill since late September.

“Christmas morning I found a corn-husk doll under the tree. She had the sweetest face—Pop must have spent hours carving it—and she wore a corn-silk wig and a patchwork dress that Mama had made for her while I was in school. We were so poor, I was lucky to get anything. But I didn’t feel very lucky. Oh, I thanked them and I pretended to love her, but that night …” She took a deep breath. “… that night I cried myself to sleep.”

No matter how hard he tried, Nick couldn’t swallow the lump in his throat. Heartsick, he strode toward her, wanting to cling to her, love her, share her anguish and his. But her next words stopped him cold.

“So you see, I’ve done without before and I can do without again. Even if it means doing without the most wonderful man I’ve ever met.” Dovie drew herself up to her full five foot none and crossed to the bandstand steps. “Good-bye, Nick.”

“Where’re you going?”

She looked across the street and smiled. “To buy a little girl a flaxen-haired doll.”

“And then?”

Her smile turned upside down; her heart, inside out. “And then I’m going home … alone.”

“Damn it, Dovie—”

“Self-pity is a slow poison, Nick.” She stopped on the bottom step and looked back, watching him do
battle with himself until she could stand it no longer. “I wish I had something a bit more original to say, but the only thing that comes to mind is that old standby, ‘Physician, heal thyself.’ ”

Silent night …

Except for the fire crackling in the hearth, Dovie’s house was beastly quiet as she decorated her Christmas tree. Halfway through, she stepped back to study her handiwork.

Pretty homely.

The problem was, her tree listed. No matter which way she turned it in the three-legged stand, the scraggly little pine looked as tipsy as a sailor on shore leave.

Worse yet, the dangly old ornaments and the vintage lights, some with the color partly flaked off inside their globes and some of the migraine-inducing “winking bulb” variety, only emphasized the gaps between its branches.

Maybe icicles would help. Dovie loved icicles. As a child she’d poetically dubbed them “silver rain.”
Now she made a determined effort to separate each clinging foil ribbon from its neighbors and the cardboard it came in, planning to drape it strand by strand until it shimmered. Unfortunately, despite her careful work, the icicles looked like dense webbing.

By the time she finished topping it off with the tin-can star she’d cut out with kitchen scissors some twenty-five years before, she’d decided that her poor little pine looked like the bad dream of a proud gardener.

All is calm …

It was her own fault for waiting until Christmas Eve to buy a tree. All the good ones were gone. But when her brothers and sisters had first announced they wouldn’t be coming for Christmas dinner, she hadn’t had the heart to put one up. And after she met Nick … well, she’d put it off, hoping they could shop for one together.

So much for the power of positive thinking.

Goose bumps erupted along her arms. Again. She shivered, and settled into her sewing rocker in front of the fire. Funny, really, the way she couldn’t get warm anymore.

This morning she’d crawled out of her lonely bed and into an old pair of Pop’s long johns. They were too big for her, as were the clothes she’d pulled on over them. She’d lost her appetite the day she’d left Nick in the park, and the irony of that didn’t escape her. Sometimes it seemed she’d spent her whole life battling ten extra pounds. But now that
she was within a cranberry-nut loaf of what she considered her ideal weight, she couldn’t have cared less.

Round yon Virgin …

A log hissed in the fire and shot a tongue of blue flame sideways. Rocking slowly, she rolled her head toward the tree. There was more to that scrawny little pine than met the eye. Beyond it she saw Mama sitting at the dining-room table with a basket of Christmas cards and her pinking shears, tagging presents long after the babies were in bed.

Without warning, Nick’s image replaced her mother’s, and Dovie remembered his dark hand reaching across the table for her own, his thumb rubbing the back of her knuckles as they sat and talked after breakfast.

Forcing herself to look away, she focused on the leather wing chair positioned directly across from her rocker, picturing Pop sitting there with the youngest child on his lap and the older children clubbed around in anticipation. His deep voice traveled to her through the years as he read aloud from the family Bible. “And it came to pass in those days …”

Nick’s handsome face superimposed itself over her father’s, and Dovie recalled how he’d always claimed that chair as though by right. She found herself listening for his laughter, his next word, his declaration of love.

But the chair was empty and the sound of silence grew awesome. Why should it be that, even though
he was gone, Nick had the power to control her thoughts? Dovie turned her head toward the fire, feeling his absence keenly, knowing a bleakness more complete and sad than that which she had felt at the death of her parents.

Sleep in heavenly peace …

Peace, she thought miserably, glancing at her mantel clock and seeing that it was time to get ready for the Christmas pageant. Was it possible to mourn someone who still lived?

“What time is it?”

“A quarter to five.”

Nick groaned. “I’m running late.” But at least he wasn’t running scared anymore. And never again. He handed his houseman a big soft package wrapped in brown paper and tied with gold cord. “Will this fit in the back of the Bronco?”

“It’s already loaded to the gills, but I’ll see if I can squeeze it in there somewhere.” Harley gave a snort of laughter as he found a place for the huge square package between two of the numerous presents they were hauling back to Spicey Hill. “What’s in that, anyway? It feels like a bundle of feathers.”

“Come on.” Impatience gnawed at Nick as he climbed into the passenger seat and fastened his safety belt. He dug into his pants pocket and, using his well-honed sense of touch, fingered the faces on the different bills until he found the one
he wanted. Ben Franklin. He smiled. “I’ve got a hundred dollars that says you can’t make it in fifty minutes flat.”

“Put your money where your mouth is.” Harley chuckled as he slammed the door on the driver’s side and buckled up. “It’s as good as mine.”

Nick had lain awake in his tangled bed last night, wrestling with memories of a woman with boy-cut hair and D-cup breasts and doubting the wisdom of showing up on her doorstep out of the blue.

Talk about flying blind!

But Dovie had taught him what it meant to love. To love not because of, but in spite of. He’d been going downhill fast when she’d jerked him up out of his self-pity and made him take a good look at what he was jeopardizing. That was when the healing had begun.

Now here he was, following his dream—darkly, with neck stuck out.

“Let me out on the river road,” he instructed Harley forty-nine minutes and a hundred dollars later.

“I’d be happy to drive you up the hill.”

“No, thanks. I’ll take the shortcut.” The rushing sound of the river, always different, always the same, told him he was on the right track.

“I’ll be at the cabin if you need me.”

“See you in the morning.”

“With bells on.”

They shook hands and said good night before going their separate ways.

“Be careful!” Harley called after him.

“Don’t worry.” Nick knew his way to Dovie by heart.

What to wear?

Something with long sleeves, Dovie decided, reaching into her closet for that old standby, the black wool crepe sheath. Her bare arm brushed against the red silk dress she’d worn the night of the Rodgerses’ Christmas party. On a whim she pulled it off its padded hanger and held it up in front of her, smiling as she remembered how young and giddy and beautiful she’d felt while dancing with Nick in that softly lit hallway.

Memories.

Laughter as warm as a tropical breeze … kisses sweeter than blackberry wine … eyes as cold as the Arctic sky. Dovie shivered, her smile disappearing as she put the red dress back in her closet and slipped into the sensible black sheath. Moving to the cheval mirror, she made a moue at her reflection.

Too severe.

She heard her mantel clock strike six. The church would be crowded tonight, so she’d have to hurry if she wanted to get a good seat. Turning away from the mirror, she opened the bottom drawer of her chiffonier to look for a pair of gloves.

Well, for crying out loud …

Dovie lifted her mother’s long ivory lace scarf from its nest of tissue paper and, on impulse, tied it loosely about her neck, letting the knot lie between her breasts and wishing she had a pretty pin to hold it in place.

Law, how quickly we forget!

Standing in front of the mirror again, she fastened the scarf to the front of her dress with her grandmother’s pin of faux pearls and faceted glass. To further soften her appearance, she added matching oval-shaped earrings.

Much better.

The scarf and jewelry set off her delicate jaw and classic cheekbones. Artfully applied makeup made her dark-lashed brown eyes seem even larger than they were, as did her hair, which she’d brushed back off her face, leaving just a few tiny angel-wisps at her temples.