Tread Softly (2 page)

Graf's low growl seemed to steady Cady's nerves. She was
grateful that Rafe had requested, through blinks, to have their chocolate-brown
Doberman pinscher with him in the nursing cottage. Even Albert Trock, the male
nurse who was Rafe's constant attendant at the nursing home, thought the dog
was good for Rafe's morale.

Both Gareth and
Gavin looked at the Doberman curled next to the bed.

"Why the
hell do you bring Graf every time you come, Cady?" Gareth asked, scowling
amusement as the large dog stretched. "He doesn't seem to like anyone but
you and Rafe."

"I like
him," Gavin announced, approaching the Doberman but not touching him.
Graf looked back at him in unblinking appraisal. "He has a dignity about
him, a sense of worth."

Cady
laughed, so relieved that the subject had been changed that she could feel the
moisture beading on her upper lip. "Yes, Dobermans seem to have that look
about them. That's why I call him Graf, meaning 'count' in German. He's a
gentle dog, but he's also very protective of Rafe, so he doesn't unbend with
anyone when he's here." Cady paused for a moment. "Though that's not
quite true. There's a nurse here named Trock, and Graf seems to like him.
Track's marvelous with Rafe—they even play chess together, with Rafe blinking
to show the moves he wants to make on the chessboard." She smiled at the
twins, not happy that she had to resist disclosing what would be happening to
Rafe that very day. But she couldn't risk Bruno Trabold or Emmett Densmore's interference.
She fully intended to tell all of them, but not until the operation began.

It was a stroke
of luck when Gavin reminded his garrulous twin of the beer blast on their dorm
floor at
Georgetown
that evening. In short order they informed their immobile brother of all the
lurid events that would no doubt take place, then took themselves off, laughing
and promising to return the next day.

The
guilty feelings that Cady experienced at keeping such a secret from the twins
lessened when Dr. Kellman called her from
Bethesda
.

"We're
ready for him, Cady. How are things at your end?"

"Good
so far. I've just heard from one of the nurses that the helicopter is standing
by. No one is too suspicious because I had informed the staff that I had a meeting
that would necessitate the use of a helicopter." Cady shuddered.
"Dr. Kellman, I'm so afraid. I know I'm doing the right thing. It's hell
for Rafe to be a prisoner in his own body, but I'm afraid of losing him,
too." She looked at Rafe when she spoke, feeling his eyes fixed on her.
There was a blue-flame message there. "Of course I'm going through with
it.. .but I'm frightened."

When she had
completed the call, she remembered now, she had walked back to Rafe's bed to
talk to him. "It won't be long now. I'm just waiting for the shift to
change. We'll go when the early-shift doctors have left and the others are
making rounds in the far wing." She had smiled down at him. "I feel
as though we're caught in the middle of a spy film." Cady had sunk into the
chair, holding Rafe's limp hand to her forehead.

Later
that day, as she had waited outside the operating room for progress reports on
Rafe, she had at last braved the face-to-face encounter with Emmett Densmore
that she'd been dreading.

Bruno
Trabold in tow, Emmett strode down the corridor to where Cady waited, his eyes
blazing with wrath. "You tricked me," he accused. "And you
enlisted the aid of that man Trock to lie to me, to stall me, so that I
wouldn't know that Rafe had been transferred here for surgery until it was too
late to do anything about it." He gave her a look of sheer hatred.
"If my son dies," he hissed menacingly, "his death will be on
your head."

Cady gasped,
closed her eyes for a moment, then forced her gaze to meet Emmett's unwaveringly.
"I'm doing what Rafe wants," she said levelly. "What we both
want. I'm sorry that deception was necessary, Emmett, but my husband's wishes
come before yours—or even my own. It's his life, after all."

"His death
will be on your head," her father-in-law repeated ominously.

"He's not
going to die! And he's not going to live out his life as a vegetable, either!
The operation will succeed, and Rafe will be reelected to the Senate in
November," Cady said, her words more a prayer than an expression of
certainty.

"Will
he?" Bruno Trabold mocked her. "What if he's not around to be
reelected in November, Acting Senator Densmore?" His voice dripped venom.
"Then I guess you'll just have to run for your late husband's seat in his
stead, won't you?"

Cady met her
enemy's eyes unflinchingly. She knew that Bruno had been furious when the
governor had appointed her interim senator a few weeks after Rafe's accident.
It had been Rafe's own wish, expressed through blinks when the state's chief
executive had visited him in the hospital shortly before Rafe's transfer to the
nursing home. What a blow to Bruno, who'd had Emmett lobbying in
Albany
for Bruno's
appointment to the position. The governor had told her of Emmett and Bruno's
machinations, and also of Rafe's insistence that Cady herself fill the office.
For brief moments she had taken heart and embraced this trust as evidence that
Rafe still loved her, despite their growing estrangement.

After
all, she was only thirty, the minimum age required by the Constitution to serve
as a
U.S.
senator, and despite having minored in political science in college, she had
no previous experience in public office. So Rafe's desire that she fulfill his
duties while he was unable to must be his way of expressing his love for her,
she reassured herself momentarily.

But
no, she told herself cynically after considering the matter, it was just that
Rafe wanted to keep the Densmore name before the voters in the event that he
recuperated sufficiently to resume his Senate seat and run for reelection. He
knew that she would yield to him more readily than Bruno Trabold would.
Ambition, not love, had dictated his actions.

"Cady?
Cady, you're daydreaming again. Come back to me. All those troubles are behind
you now. Dad and Bruno can't still be angry at you."

"That's
what you think," Cady muttered, feeling her insides flutter in pleasure
when he laughed. Every sound he made was like a pearl to her after those long
months of silence. "I've hired Albert Track to take care of you and help
you with the therapy program that you'll begin soon."

"I like him, Cady." Rafe grinned at her.
"Although here in the hospital and in the nursing home, he didn't talk
much more than I did. He's strong, though," Rafe mused. "He'd pick me
up like the sack of meal I was and toss me around as though I weighed
nothing."

"Graf
likes him, too." Cady took a deep breath. "That's why I decided to
give him the job... that and the fact that your father had him fired from the
nursing home."

Rafe
grimaced, nodding. "Emmett does not tolerate the kind of deceit Track
perpetrated against him." He looked at Cady for long moments. "He
would no doubt like to fire you as my wife."

Cady glanced
down at her clenched hands, noting the whiteness of her knuckles. "I'm
sure he would leave that to you." Her voice was as hoarse as Rafe's.

"I
hope he isn't holding his breath." Rafe's voice had a mocking lilt that
made her smile. "That's better. I was beginning to think you would never
smile for me again."

Cady erupted,
all the volcano of worry that had lain deep in her coming to the surface like
lava. "Do you think it was easy watching you all those months? Seeing you
lying there, knowing that you hated it, that you would rather have died than be
that way? Do you think it's...” She gulped air as she jumped to her feet,
pacing back and forth next to Rafe's bed. "Do you think it's easy to walk
up and down a hospital corridor counting the marks on the wall, trying to
calculate in your mind the hours it took to paint the hall, because if you
didn't do that you would start screaming? Do you know what it's like when the
doctor comes out to tell you whether your husband is alive or... or..."
Cady wrung her hands, her throat closing.

"Cady.
Cady, come here," Rafe demanded, holding out his arms.

She went to him,
her fist pressed to her mouth. "Oh, Rafe, Rafe, forgive me. I know you
went through hell. I don't know what made me say those things."

Rafe
pulled her down to the bed, cradling her in his arms. "Cady, thank you.
Thank you for giving me back my life."

Cady
took long, shuddering breaths, never wanting to move out of his arms, never
wanting to be away from him. "Isn't it wonderful, Rafe? You're
alive," she mumbled into his shoulder. "Really, really alive. They
don't even have to monitor you with all those awful needles anymore."

Rafe
nodded, his face pressed into her hair.

They
started simultaneously at the sound of the door opening. "We should set up
a schedule for visiting," Emmett growled, glaring at Cady.

"That
wouldn't work, Father. I want Cady with me all the time, so the rest of the
family can work around that."

Emmett
looked from one to the other, Bruno at his back. "Well, don't expect me—or
Bruno—to be grateful to your wife for keeping us in the dark. We didn't like
it." Her father-in-law gave Cady a heavy-browed look.

Rafe
shrugged but didn't release Cady's hand.

In
succeeding days, as Rafe continued to improve, the hospital was very
understanding about Cady visiting at odd hours. The wing where Rafe's room was
located was set apart, with an entrance of its own. After Cady obtained
permission to use that entrance, she was at the hospital almost all the time.

Many nights she
would just sit there and look at him, knowing that when he woke he would speak
and move, talk and laugh. In these quiet moments when she could look at him,
all she wanted was not to worry that someone could see the love she knew was
spilling from her eyes. She loved Rafe with an unquenchable love, a love that
had been alive from the time she met him and had not dimmed even in their estrangement.
During his illness it had burned to an even greater intensity, so that Cady
knew she would have no life without Rafe, that he was inside her, that he was
her essence.

Sometimes while
she waited for him to awaken, she would recite out loud all the business in the
Senate that day. "Bailey's environmental bill is getting more support..."
she would say.

Every time Cady
looked at him, whether Rafe was awake or asleep, she could visualize the vital
man he had been before the accident. Her pulse quickened at the thought of that
six-foot-two-inch frame moving and laughing again. Those football shoulders,
which should have looked incongruous in a silk suit, seemed sexy instead
because his narrow hips and powerful thighs had such a masculine, virile
appeal. Rafe had his mother's black Irish coloring. The other Densmore
offspring had Emmett's sandy coloring. Rafe's dark brown hair had a persistent
wave to it, including the wavy lock that fell forward on his forehead, making
Cady's fingers itch to run through it. His strong, muscular body was belied by
his supple hands with long, tapering fingers. Cady had often joked with him in
the early days of their marriage that with such hands he should have been a
pianist.

When she said
that on their honeymoon, Rafe had gone to the piano in the lounge and sat down
and played a love song, singing to her in a sure baritone that he loved her. If
only he had meant those lyrics!

Yet with all his
accomplishments, Cady could remember how Rafe had laughed when she told him
that it was his strong-hewn face she loved, the sharp-drawn cheekbones that
were almost Slavic in width, the wide-apart blue eyes with the girlishly thick
lashes, the hard mouth with the soft lower lip whose fullness was a clue to the
sensual man that Rafe was.

The
family seemed to come out of the woodwork when word of Rafe's recovery hit the
news. And hit the news it did. Even the wire services covered it. Rafe insisted
that Cady read the story to him, since, as he explained, she had always read
the news to him each day. She still visited him at the same time she had when
he was in the nursing home, but now more often than not she would run into some
other member of the family. She relaxed in the twins' company because they so
obviously loved Rafe and were happy with the outcome of the operation.

"Even
though you should have let us in on the scam, Cady," Gareth said
reproachfully. "It would have been great to tweak Bruno Trabold's tail.
The old man puts too much confidence in him, if you ask me."

Gavin,
the quiet one, nodded once emphatically.