Blind Promises (13 page)

“You might consider fighting for him,” he reminded her.

“With what?” She laughed. “I don’t have potent weapons, and even if I did, I wouldn’t use them. I’m not the type. No, he’d have to love me. And he’s already admitted that he doesn’t. It would be a very empty kind of relationship-don’t you think?-if all the love was on one side.”

He nodded solemnly. “I suppose so. Dana, if you do go home, I’d like to see you again.”

She smiled. “I’d like that too.”

He grinned. “Now we’re getting somewhere. Tell me about your work.”

They started discussing the advances in medicine when Lorraine joined them, and then the talk switched to flowers and gardens for the rest of the meal.

Gannon was alone when they returned to the house; he was preoccupied. He let Dana bring his meal and they sat in a cool silence for a long time while he finished it and asked her to pour him a second cup of coffee.

“Did you have a nice day?” he asked absently.

“Oh, it was lovely. Katy and Maude send their love.”

He laughed bitterly. “Just what I need.”

She paled, turning her attention to the coffee cup. “Did you get your business straightened out?”

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He leaned back in the chair with the cup in his hands. “Yes. Layn’s very lovely, isn’t she?”

“Very,” she agreed.

“Poised, sophisticated…with an excellent business head. The kind of wife a businessman could depend on to help him accomplish his goals,” he added; his point seemed to have been made deliberately. He sipped his coffee. “What was she wearing?”

“Blue,” she said, staring into her own cup. “Sea blue.”

He chuckled. “One of her favorite colors. I remember a bathing suit she used to have, when I took her to Nassau….” His face clouded and he stopped abruptly, swinging forward in the chair. “Can you take dictation?” he asked suddenly. “I need to write some letters, and I’m not fast enough with the computer yet. Can you type?”

“Yes to both,” she said agreeably. “I’ll be glad to help you.”

“Yes, I know,” he said under his breath, and looked as if he were hurting inside. He leaned back wearily in his chair and closed his eyes. “It doesn’t help the situation.”

She moved closer to the desk, studying his lined face. “Gannon, is your sight returning?”

He made a curt movement, his sightless eyes opening on darkness. “What?”

“Are you beginning to see again?” she persisted. “I know something’s happened-I can feel it. You’re… you’re very distant lately.”

He laughed harshly. “Am I? And why do you suppose I am?”

She studied her feet. “Layn’s very beautiful,” she said quietly.

He sat breathing steadily, deliberately. “Yes.”

“And you…you cared for her before you were blinded,”

“That too.” He cocked his head, listening. When she didn’t say anything more, he seemed to slump. “She blamed herself, you know,” he said finally. “She was driving the speedboat It’s taken her all this time to come to grips with it and realize that I didn’t blame her.”

Dana didn’t believe that for a minute, but she kept quiet. More than likely, the knowledge that Gannon’s sight was returning had a great deal to do with Layn’s sudden interest in him.

“We’re very different, aren’t we?” she asked softly. “You and I, I mean. From different backgrounds, different worlds.”

He was listening intently, his face shuttered. “Yes, we are,” he said. “And I hate to say it, Dana, but when I…regain my sight, that difference is going to become even more apparent. I travel in circles you’ve never touched, full of wild living and unconventional people.”

She watched him with a heart that felt near breaking. “And, too, there’s Layn, isn’t there?” she prodded. “Layn, who would fit very well-does fit very well-in that kind of world?”

His face tautened. “Yes.”

She lifted her hands to her waist and clasped them there, very tightly. “Gannon, about the engagement…”

“Not today,” he said curtly, as if the words were being dragged out of him, as if he hadn’t meant to say them. “We’ll discuss it some other time. Get that pad, please. Layn’s driving me down to Savannah the day after tomorrow for a meeting about that expansion I

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mentioned at the shipyard. I’ll be gone most of the day, and I need to have this correspondence out of the way before we get there.”

“Yes,” she said quickly.

She turned and almost ran from the room, feeling as if something inside her had died. He wanted out. If she’d been blind herself, she’d have sensed it today, when he spoke so lovingly of Layn and seemed to hate the very thought of regaining his sight because he was tied to a woman he only needed because he was blind. And when he could see, he’d only want Layn….

By the morning Gannon was about to go off with Layn, Dana was more than ready to have the luxury of a day without his company. He was taciturn and curt and he began to pick at her as he had in the early days of their acquaintance. The engagement, while still apparently in force, was never referred to, and he treated her as his nurse, not his wife-to-be.

“I asked you to get Al Pratt on” the phone half an hour ago,” he snarled at her just before Layn arrived. “Have you even tried?”

“Yes, I have,” she said coldly. “He wasn’t in. I am not a miracle worker; I can’t produce people at a second’s notice.”

“You might be a little more diligent,” he accused.

“I took my training in medicine, not business,” she reminded him coldly.

“You have a sharp tongue,” he growled.

“Yours is sharper, and you have no patience anymore,” she shot back. She felt herself begin to slump. “It’s a good thing you’re going out,” she said wearily. “Perhaps being with Miss Dalmont will improve your temper. “

His nostrils flared. “Perhaps it will. At least she tries to please me once in a while, miss.”

So might I, if I knew what you wanted of me, she thought miserably. She moved away from him, her nurse’s uniform making clean, crisp sounds in the silent room. She’d started wearing it again, because it made her feel more comfortable. He was treating her like his nurse, not his fiancee, after all, so what did it matter?

His head rose suddenly. “What’s that noise?” he asked sharply.

“Sir?”

“That rustling sound….”

“My uniform,” she said coldly.

He actually seemed to blanche. “I thought you were wearing street clothes now.”

“I came here as, and still am, your nurse,” she reminded him with dignity. “Is it surprising that I feel more secure dressed to fit the part?”

He stood quietly, breathing deliberately. “We’re engaged,” he said.

‘ She laughed softly, bitterly. “No, sir,” she told him. “That was a bit of fiction. An impulsive, quickly regretted and impossibly answered proposal that would be best forgotten by both of us.”

“You don’t want to marry me?” he asked, something odd in his tone.

“No, sir, I don’t,” she lied, her voice carrying a conviction that was not in her heart. “As we’ve already agreed, our worlds are too different ever to mix. And when you have your sight again, the last thing you’ll want or need is a scarred, plain little…”

“Stop it!” he burst out, white in the face.

She caught her breath at the violence in the harsh words, at the expression in his blank eyes. But before

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she could say a word or question him, there was a loud knock at the door, and she went quietly to answer it.

Layn gave her a lazy, cool appraisal. “Back in chains, I see,” she said pleasantly, chic in a white linen suit with a pale pink silk blouse. “Where’s Gannon?”

“In his study, of course. He’s expecting you,” Dana said quietly.

“Do show me in,” came the amused reply.

As if she needed showing. But Dana complied. There was no fight left in her.

“Miss Dalmont is here,” Dana said to Gannon’s rigid back.

He turned, staring toward the sound of her voice. “Layn?”

“Right here, darling,” she cooed, going to him. She reached up and kissed him, and to Dana’s amazement his arms went around her and he returned the kiss with a hungry fervor that was faintly embarrassing.

“What a nice greeting,” Layn gasped when he let go. “Just like old times!”

“You smell delicious-just like old times,” he murmured. “Ready to go?”

“Whenever you are.”

Gannon took Layn’s slender hand while Dana stood and watched them, hurting all the way to the heels of her comfortable shoes.

“You aren’t taking your little nurse, I hope?” Layn asked.

Gannon flushed darkly and seemed about, to say something, but stifled it. “No, Dana isn’t coming with us,” he said instead.

“Thank goodness,” Layn murmured fervently. “Come, Gannon, the car’s just outside. I hope we won’t

need an umbrella, because I didn’t bring one. It’s getting very dark and stormy-looking out.”

“Dana?” Gannon hesitated.

She swallowed, full of hurt pride and rejection. “Yes?”

He seemed to flinch. “Don’t go out on the beach alone, will you? There are storm warnings out today.”

“I won’t,” she promised quietly.

“I wish I could believe you,” he said under his breath.

She didn’t bother to reply, standing aside as he went out the door with Layn. Dana closed it behind them, just before she burst into tears.

“You’re very quiet this afternoon,” Lorraine remarked just before dinner that night as they sat together in the living room while thunder and lightning raged outside. “Does the storm bother you?”

Dana shook her head. “Not at all.”

“Gannon’s going out with Layn does, though, doesn’t it?” the older woman probed gently. “Oh, Dana, if I only understood my stepson…”

“It’s all very simple,” Dana told her. She looked up with sad, quiet eyes. “He wants me to break off the engagement. He’s done everything but toss me out the window to get his point across.”

“But why?”

“His sight is coming back,” she said, sure of it now. “He told me quite bluntly that I wouldn’t fit into his world-the world he lives in when he has his sight. I could only belong in a world we made together, out of darkness. Layn is back and he wants her. And who could blame him?” she added bitterly. “She’s perfect, so sophisticated and worldly…”

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“So selfish and shallow,” Lorraine countered angrily. “Your exact opposite in every way. It isn’t like Gannon to succumb to that woman after the way she’s treated him. He’s much too proud. And he cares for you. It’s in the way he speaks to you, the way he listens for your step and the way his face lights up when you walk into a room. No, there’s something else, I’m sure of it.”

But Dana wasn’t convinced. Gannon’s hunger for Layn had been all too obvious in the kiss she’d seen them share, and his manner with Dana had convinced her that all he wanted now was to be rid of her.

“When he comes back tonight,” Dana said quietly, “I’m going to break off the engagement. It’s what he wants, and now it’s what I want too. If I’m right, he’ll get back on his feet that much faster because he has Layn to look forward to.”

“Dana, I wish you’d wait-just a little longer,” Lorraine said softly.

“There’s no point. If he felt as I did, it would be different. But I have no right to build my happiness on his sorrow. I won’t.”

“You must love him very much, my dear, to care so much about his happiness.”

Dana’s eyes clouded. “I’ll never love anyone else. Not as long as I live. But I can’t marry him, knowing how he really feels.”

Lorraine looked as if she wanted badly to say something else, but she smiled sadly and went back to her needlepoint. There was no use.

• •

It didn’t help Dana’s already damaged pride when Gannon called an hour later to tell Lorraine that he and Layn were going to spend the night in Savannah.

“He said Layn’s afraid to drive back with the weather so bad,” Lorraine related irritably. “If you want my opinion, she just wants Gannon all to herself.”

“That’s very likely,” Dana said wearily. “Can you blame her?”

“For more than you know, I can blame her,” the older woman said curtly. “Dirk’s coming in the morning. Perhaps he can make some sense of all this. Heaven knows, I can’t!”

But Dana could. Not that it eased the hurt. It made it worse.

The night was horrible. The thunder and lightning seemed to go on forever, and Dana couldn’t sleep for its crash and roar. The ocean was boiling with the force of the storm, like the one raging inside Dana.

It seemed such a long time since she’d come there from Ashton, full of guilt and grief and despair. And while she was still aching from Gannon’s rejection, she

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felt that she’d begun to cope very well with her personal problems. The sharp edge of grief was beginning to numb.

She went to stand at the window and watched the lightning flash down toward the water. Death was, after all, as natural as lightning, as the rain. It was the routine progression of things-birth, life, and death; a cycle that everything human had to follow. And somewhere in that natural progression was God’s master plan. Even Mandy had had a part in that, and so did her death and the manner of it. It wasn’t for Dana to question why. It was her part to do as God directed.

She wrapped her arms tightly around her thin nightgown with a ragged sigh. Perhaps her presence here had helped Gannon in some small way to rethink his own life. Even if she lost him forever, she felt that she’d helped him see a sense of purpose and meaning in his existence. And wasn’t that worth a few tears? After all, love in its ideal form was an unselfish thing. If she loved him, she had to want what was best for him, didn’t she?