Seeing Stars: A Loveswept Classic Romance (2 page)

Strictly by rote he rubbed her bare feet to stimulate her circulation. When he kneaded her ticklish soles, ten tiny toes curled reflexively in his palm. Amusement ripened the ironical smile on his lips as his sensitive fingers followed the pedial lines upward, to ankles so daintily boned he could have crushed them with his bare hands.

He caressed them instead. Her breath came out in a raspy sigh that played counterpoint to his rapidly escalating pulse. He dropped her feet as if they’d suddenly become too hot to handle, and her heels hit the bank with a dull thud.

Dear Lord, why had he gotten involved in this anyway? Nick raised his forearm to wipe the cold sweat off his brow, and his mouth tensed into a grim line when he remembered his missing sunglasses. It never paid to play the Good Samaritan. He should have learned that by now!

Having gone this far, though, he was determined to see it through. The zipper of her jeans parted with a frostbitten protest. He drew the wet denim down her sweetly flared hips and slender thighs, over her slightly knocked knees, shapely calves, and finely arched feet. He hesitated only an instant
before peeling off her panties and tossing them aside too.

She moaned, alerting him to the fact she was finally coming around.

Nick knew he’d better get this done before she realized she was naked from the waist down and started screaming bloody murder.

Damn! If only he could slip into her subconscious mind for a moment and … What the hell, it was worth a try.

“Listen, lady, I’m a doctor,” he stated with more confidence then he’d felt in a year. His fingers circled her slim ankle as he prodded her memory. “You fell in the river—remember?—and I pulled you out.”

She sighed as if to say she’d heard him.

“Well, I’m right in the middle of changing your clothes and …” His hand grazed her smooth calf muscle, and he wished to high heaven that she didn’t feel so good.

As though she’d divined the direction of his thoughts, she groaned and locked her legs together.

“Sorry.” Mentally cursing himself for the lapse, Nick slid his hand back to her ankle, treating it as neutral territory, and promised softly, “That won’t happen again—I swear it.”

When her muscles and the meter of her breathing relaxed, he resumed speaking in normal conversational tones. “Now, the
next
thing you’re going to feel is just me putting my jeans on you.”

There were more words. Inconsequential words. The important thing was, she didn’t fight him when he pulled his dry Levis on over her feet. Or her calves. Or her knees. But when he reached her silky thighs, she suddenly pushed his hands away and rolled sideways.

“Wait! I’m a doctor, remember?” He reached to roll her body back. “Besides, I won’t see anything I shouldn’t, because—”

Pain cracked through his head as the palm of her small hand connected smartly with his cheek.

“Well, I’ll be damned!” The aggressive side of Nick’s nature abruptly reasserted itself as he forced her down and straddled her legs. When she swung at him a second time—with both hands, no less—he sensed it coming and caught her wrists, imprisoning them above her head in his iron fists.

“Let me go!” she ordered, gasping.

“
Look
, lady”—he smiled coldly at his choice of words and spat the bitter truth at her through clenched teeth—“I’m
blind
!”

Dovie stared at him in disbelief. She was so close, she could see every line in his burnished skin, every scar that should have lessened his appeal but didn’t, and every spiky black lash defining those deep blue eyes that seemed to look into infinity.…

“How did you get me back to the bank?” The instant the words left her mouth, Dovie wanted to bite her tongue. Just because he couldn’t see didn’t mean he couldn’t do anything else!

“I’m not totally inadequate,” Nick retorted. And nothing riled him more than someone implying otherwise.

“I—I didn’t say you were.” Embarrassed to think he’d taken her question the wrong way, she tried to make amends. “I’m impressed. Really! I mean, I can’t even swim, and here you—”

“Spare me the platitudes,” he snapped.

Of all the pompous, self-pitying … Irritated that she was paying for something that was none of her doing, she shot back with, “It could be worse.”

“Oh, sure.” He breathed out a short laugh that lacked humor. “I could be a blind eunuch.”

Dovie sucked in a shocked lungful of air, suddenly aware of his heat and his hardness pinning her partially nude body to the cold ground. The tightly waffled knit of his long underwear clung so snugly to his lean torso that it left nothing to her imagination. Not even the fact that he’d begun to desire her …

When she shifted nervously beneath him Nick gritted his teeth, trying valiantly to ignore the voluptuous press of her breasts against his chest and the sweet promise of her hips against his. But after the long months of abstinence, there was a limit to what a man could take!

The silence was pregnant enough to bear twins.

She lay still, afraid to move again, sensing she’d aroused a sleeping tiger that nothing in her experience had prepared her to tame. He raised one eyebrow, as if the notion of having her at his mercy appealed to him, and a rage she’d never known she was capable of shook her from head to toe. Damn him for putting her on the defensive!

“Get off of me,” she ordered sharply.

“Gladly,” he said, and groaned.

But instead of being relieved when he released her wrists and pushed lithely to his feet, Dovie felt a perverse sense of loss. And when she saw the
dark red imprint of her fingers against his face, she really wished she hadn’t slapped him that hard. After all, he’d only been trying to help.

“I haven’t thanked you yet for saving me,” she said, remembering suddenly. Law, he must think her a real ingrate!

Doing his best to disguise the unfortunate physical effect she’d had on him, Nick shrugged off her gratitude and geared up for a lecture. Little idiot had it coming! “Why weren’t you wearing a life jacket?”

“I don’t own one.” Was it her fault that every time she had an extra dime to her name, someone in her family needed it more than she did?

“You can’t swim and you don’t own a life jacket.” His derisive expression spoke volumes. “Lady, you’re an accident looking for a place to happen.”

“No, I’m not!” Dovie jumped to her feet so fast and furiously that her jeans—his jeans, rather—fell down around her ankles with a soft
whoosh.

A mischievous smile shunted across his alluring mouth when he heard her pants drop. “Do my ears deceive me or are you trussed up tighter than a Christmas turkey right now?”

“Gobble, gobble!” she snapped, in no mood to be patronized. Least of all by him!

Like sunshine after rain, his laughter cleared the air between them, and she caught herself basking in the rich, welcome warmth of it.

“Ask a stupid question …” Dovie quipped, smiling as she reached down to pull up her pants.
The numbing air nipped at her bare backside, and she thought how cold he must be with only his long johns to protect him. “Which reminds me, the least I can do is offer the man who rescued me a cup of coffee.”

“The man who rescued you is named Nick Monroe.” He rubbed those strong but compassionate hands together briskly, trying to warm them. “And I’d give my eyeteeth for a cup of hot coffee.”

“Pleased to meet you, Nick, although I can’t say much for the circumstances.” Holding the waistband of her borrowed jeans securely in place with one hand, she squeezed icy water out of her hair with the other. “I’m Dovie Brown.”

“Dovie.” His deep voice breathed such luxuriant new life into her old-fashioned name that it melted the very marrow of her bones.

And when he reached out and caught her wrist, drawing her closer and asking, “Let me see what you look like,” she couldn’t have denied him had her life depended on it.

The blood rushed to her head, a dizzying high, as he ran his long fingers through the short, damp layers of her hair. He brushed it this way and that, seemingly fascinated by the take-it-or-leave-it simplicity of style and its tendency to wave as it dried.

“I’ll bet it’s brown.”

“How did you know?”

“Actually, it was a pretty safe bet.” Nick slid his hand around to her satiny nape, twining his
thumb in the lowest hairs. “About half of the population has hair that’s some shade of brown.”

“Do tell.” Shivers of delight winged along her spine when his fingers followed her hairline from the base of her skull to the shell of her ear.

“Mm-hmmm.” He lifted a damp tendril of hair from her cheek, marveling at its feathery-fine texture. “Light or dark?”

“Dark.” Her eyelids drifted closed as his searching fingers traced their slightly tip-tilted shape, leaving a faint erotic glow in their wake.

“And your eyes?” Pain and longing such as he’d never experienced before twisted his gut. What he wouldn’t give, just this once, to see them sparkling with laughter or smoldering with passion!

“The same, dark brown.” Dovie tensed when Nick’s hands came up to frame her face between his palms. She’d held up pretty well, considering, and she could only hope that he wasn’t disappointed by what he was “seeing.”

“Beautiful,” he murmured reverently as he contoured the classic rise of her cheekbones, the narrow slope of her nose, and the bewitching curve of her mouth.

Dovie could hardly believe her ears. Her parents had always called her “dependable,” and she’d done everything in her power to prove them right. Friends and relations generally relied on her when they needed a favor. Her nieces and nephews had gifted her with the nickname “Aunt Granny.” But neither kith nor kin had ever called her—

“Beautiful,” he repeated huskily, rubbing the tip of his forefinger back and forth across her lower lip. Feeling her breath on the top of his finger and her warm skin beneath, he was tempted … oh, so tempted.

Eyes closed and lips primed by the exquisite friction of Nick’s finger, Dovie awaited the heat of his kiss with eager dread. She barely knew him, but he’d pushed all the right buttons and opened all her secret doors.

“Look”—he dropped his hands in stringent self-denial—“I didn’t mean to embarrass you.” Touching her hadn’t been a particularly smart move. He knew himself well enough to realize that he’d gone too long without a woman. One kiss wouldn’t cut it. And something told him that this woman wasn’t into playing games.

“I—” Opening her eyes, only to encounter his frozen expression, Dovie felt chilled clean to the bone. “I don’t understand.”

“Well,
these
are my eyes now.” Nick held out his hands, palms up and fingers splayed, and hot color climbed her cheeks as she remembered that those same hands had removed all her clothing a little while ago.

“And?” Abruptly she felt her old insecurities begin to slip back into place. She was too short … too fat … too plain.

“And a lot of sighted people are uncomfortable with the idea of a blind person”—his unsmiling face looked as ominous as those storm clouds
overhead—“
feeling them up
, for lack of a better phrase.”

For long seconds she simply stared at his hands, which were as clean and steady as a surgeon’s. Then she went limp with relief when she remembered who he was.

“Why on earth should I be embarrassed?” Dovie asked, as much of herself as of him. “You’re a doctor!”

“Not anymore.”

“But—”

“But nothing!” Nick said it in a way that told her the topic was closed to further discussion. He reached down, found his socks and waders right where he’d left them, then changed the subject with a curt “Which would you rather wear?”

Dovie had more sense than to beat her head against a stone wall. Besides, the snow that had been threatening all morning had finally begun to fall, and neither one of them was exactly dressed to brave the elements.

“The socks.” She took them gingerly, trying to avoid touching him. In spite of her precaution, her fingertips grazed his. The fleeting thrill of flesh against flesh struck nerve endings she hadn’t even known she possessed.

“We’d best get a move on,” Nick said, every sensory receptor in his body suddenly going like a fire bell. Nothing could come of these feelings, of course, so the sooner he hit the road the better for both of them.

“I suppose,” she said, and sighed, knowing he was right but strangely reluctant to admit it aloud. Silence fell like a hundred-year-old oak, and they were back to square one.

He was insane to go home with her, Nick thought as he pulled on his rubber waders. Especially considering the effect she’d had on him since the first instant her Lorelei laughter had beckoned his imagination.

Belatedly he realized he had his waders on backward. Though his throat worked furiously, not a word passed his lips.

Watching him struggle to get his waders on the right feet, Dovie felt a strong urge to offer her help. It would go so much more quickly if she did! But something—a sixth sense, perhaps—warned her that this muleheaded man would probably rebuff the gesture as rudely as he’d rejected everything else about her.

She slipped on his socks and forced herself to look elsewhere while he finished dressing.

“Where do you live?” He broke the silence at the same time that his tapered fingers began fumbling with the small belt at the waistband of his waders.

“At the top of the hill.” She balled her hands into tight fists and pressed them to her sides, fighting to keep from reaching over there to buckle it for him.

“Do you have a telephone?” How the hell could a man who’d sutured thousands of serious lacerations
have so much trouble threading a strip of rubber through a piece of plastic? he wondered.

“And electricity, and indoor plumbing …” Dovie relaxed her clenched fists when he finally got his belt buckled. The hardest thing she’d ever done was to stand there and do nothing!

“Fine.” Cursing himself for a clumsy fool, Nick took a swipe at the delicate snowflake that had dared to land on his badly bent nose. “I’ll call my houseman and have him come after me.”

“Okay.” But the thought of his leaving brought an odd lump to her throat.