Seeing Stars: A Loveswept Classic Romance (3 page)

The blustery wind tore at his thick black hair, whipping it about his austerely handsome face as he swallowed his pride and sought her help. “Can you point me toward my fly rod?”

“Here—” She started forward, only too glad to get it for him.

“No!”
Nick’s command thundered to the hills and back again, stopping her cold. “Just tell me where it is,” he said, “and I’ll get it myself.”

“Behind you,” she whispered, wounded as surely as if he’d slapped her hard. “And a little to your left.”

“Thank you.” Turning in the direction she’d indicated, he found his fly rod. Damn! He hadn’t meant to hurt her feelings, but he’d had his fill of meddlesome strangers.

Seeing as how he was so bent on doing for himself, Dovie pulled back. “You’re welcome.”

It was more than pride that made him as independent
as a hog on ice, she realized as she watched him take his tackle down. He seemed to think he had to justify his existence and prove his worth to every sighted person he met. Maybe all he really needed, she mused, was to be treated normally.

Holding that thought, she turned the tables on him. “Where do
you
live?”

“Richmond.” After removing the leader he’d used with his lure, Nick tied the end of his fishing line to the eye at the tip of his fly rod. Soft jubilance lifted his heavy spirit as he made a perfect surgeon’s knot. At least he could still do that right!

“Gosh, you sure came far out of your way just to catch a trout and turn it loose.” Desperate for something to do with
her
hands, Dovie knelt and began wringing out her wet clothes.

“Sure did,” he agreed smoothly, cautious. Some things were better left unsaid. If he told this pint-sized mother hen about that cabin he’d rented a half mile west of here, he’d probably find her camped on his doorstep tomorrow morning oozing chicken soup and sympathy from every pore!

What the heck, Dovie decided, she might as well shoot the works. “Are you married?”

His taciturn profile told her she’d pushed him too far.

She sighed dismally. “I didn’t mean to pry.”

If she had pressed him, Nick would have remained obdurately silent. But on hearing that
sigh followed by the note of regret in her voice, he opened up a little. “I’m divorced.”

“I’m sorry.” Her apology was no less sincere for its brevity.

“I’m not.” The terse denial was rude, and he tried to soften his words. “It happened a couple of years before I went blind, so there’s no sense in your thinking I was abandoned in my hour of need.”

He took up the slack in his line, then locked his reel, so it wouldn’t spin loose. “Are you—”

“No,” she interrupted rashly. “I’ve never been married.”

“—ready to go?”
he finished wryly.

“Oh …” Realizing she’d jumped the gun, she blushed beet red. “Just about.”

Hurrying now, she stuffed her damp underwear into the pockets of her jeans—his jeans, that is. If they ran into any of her neighbors along the way, she’d lots rather explain why she was wearing Nick’s clothes than why she
wasn’t
wearing her bra and panties.

Dovie scrambled to her feet then and took a last look around, trying to see if she’d forgotten anything. “Darn!”

“What’s the matter?” Nick spun around, surprised by the vehemence in her voice.

“I dropped my fly rod in the river!”

“That makes us even, then.”

“What do you mean?”

The winter wind riveted the icy snow into his face, stinging it, but his smile rippled teasingly,
like a summer stream, across his lips. “If that trout’s got a lick of sense, it grabbed your fly rod and my sunglasses and headed stright for the Caribbean.”

“Your sunglasses!” She whirled toward the river, foolishly bent on jumping in after them, since it was her fault that he’d lost them.

His strong hand shot out to stay her, in a firm grip just above the elbow. “Forget it—they’re long gone.”

“I’ll buy you another pair.” Even if it meant a hard-candy Christmas, she’d come up with the money somehow!

“There’s an extra pair in the glove compartment of my car.” His sinewy fingers squeezed her upper arm in gentle assurance. “My houseman will have them when he comes after me.”

Dovie shivered, helpless against the tides of desolation that suddenly swamped her. Oh, dear God, she didn’t want him to go!

“You’re cold.” It wasn’t a question; Nick could feel her trembling.

Her teeth had begun to chatter, but it had little to do with the cold.

Without further ado he steered her away from the river, marching her, as if hell-bent, through a barren tangle of wild blackberry brambles and straight up Spicey Hill. The way he moved, sidestepping thorny vines and ducking under snow-laden dogwood and tulip tree limbs, she could hardly believe he was blind.

“Wh—where are we going?” she asked, panting, too rattled even to recognize the path she’d walked alone a million times or more.

Nick didn’t miss a beat as he spoke the words that Dovie Brown had never dreamed a man would say to her. “We’re going home!”

“I hung your waders in the entryway.”

“Thanks.”

A fire of pungent cedar and peach wood leaped obediently when Dovie knelt and touched a match to the kindling under the logs she’d laid earlier that morning. “And I stood your fly rod by the front door.”

“Fine.”

“Sit down and make yourself at home.” Rocking back on her heels, she thanked her lucky stars she’d kept that big old fireside chair when she’d divided Pop’s things with her brothers and sisters.

“Don’t mind if I do,” Nick said, and sat.

Not that
she
ever used the chair. With all due apologies to women’s lib, it was made for a man, constructed as it was of solid walnut and upholstered in a deep wine leather that wore the patina
of paternal love as proudly as it bore the stains and scratches that were inevitable where eight healthy children were involved.

Just seeing how comfortable Nick looked now, his dark head lolling against the tufted back, his tanned hands resting easily on the hobnailed arms, and one bare foot crossed casually over his knee, Dovie felt her heart dance a wild jig of welcome.

The fire grew, its orange-and-crimson light caressing his features as gently as a lover’s hand.

From her position on the floor she studied his profile, following the rugged lines of his forehead, nose, and lips, which were lit a burning yellow-red. Scars and all, Nick Monroe was the most attractive man she’d ever laid eyes on.

Enough dawdling, though; she had things to do.

“After I’ve changed,” Dovie said as she stood, “I’ll throw our clothes in the dryer and make us some coffee.”

“No hurry.” Nick sprawled lazily in the cushiony chair, letting the warmth from the fire seep into his bones. In all honesty, he couldn’t remember the last time he’d felt this relaxed.

Still, she hovered as nervously as a hummingbird in her bedroom doorway, which opened off the living room. “Maybe I should make the coffee first.”

On that note, he sat up straighter and started to stand. “Tell you what: I’ll put the coffeepot on while you change clothes.”

“But you’re—”

Half-sitting, half-standing, he tensed.

“—company!”

And the fire punctuated her concern with a pop.

“Why, so I am.”

Then the fire breathed a sigh of relief as he bowed to the tradition of Southern hospitality and resumed his seat.

A covey of goose bumps raced up Dovie’s arms when he braced his broad shoulders against the leather cushion and stretched out his lean, athletic legs. “I could raise the thermostat if you’re chilly.”

“Suit yourself,” he said smoothly, “but I’ll take a fireplace over a furnace any old time.”

“Promise you’ll stay put?” she asked.

“Where would I go?” He swiveled his head as if looking for the door, then shot a devilish grin in her direction and had the pleasure of hearing her laugh. “You’ve got my pants.”

Her smile wavered as, once again, she hesitated. “Holler if you need anything.”

Something in her tentative tone struck a deeply responsive chord in Nick. Having spent the last twelve months learning how to deal with rejection, he could no more refuse her offer than he could climb behind the wheel of his Bronco and drive himself home. “I will.”

Dovie left her bedroom door slightly ajar while she rummaged through the drawers in her chiffonier for something to wear. As regularly as clockwork
she stuck her head out the opening to make sure she hadn’t missed his call.

“Cuckoo!” he teased the third time she checked on him.

Feeling like the biggest fool on two legs, Dovie ducked back into the bedroom and shut the door firmly behind her. Calm, cool, and collected—those were the bywords from here on out! she promised herself. And with that in mind, she took her sweet time about changing clothes.

Nick sat there listening to the sounds that the walls couldn’t quite muffle. He heard the rustle of denim and chamois cloth being dropped to the floor. The twang of bedsprings as she sat down to remove his socks. And when all fell quiet again, he pictured a beguiling little vest-pocket Venus in the nude.

Hair and skin so invitingly touchable, it made his fingers tingle … opulent breasts that would fill his hands, and then some … that wand of a waist, and hips that were nicely rounded but not overdeveloped …

Those images, and others, burned holes in Nick’s mind as he stared into the darkness at where the door would be if he could see it.
If
he hadn’t stopped to help at the scene of that automobile accident that fateful night.
If
he hadn’t started back to the tangle of metal and glass to make sure he’d gotten everybody safely out.
If
the damned gasoline tank hadn’t exploded in his face.

If, if, if!
He clenched his teeth as strongly as he clenched the fist that loudly thumped the chair
arm, fighting to keep from sinking back into a black pit of self-pity.

“What was that?” Dovie threw open her bedroom door and peered anxiously around the jamb.

He practically jumped out of his skin. “What was what?”

“I heard a noise, and I thought …” Truth was, she’d thought she heard him slam the front door on his way out and she’d panicked.

Ruefully, he relaxed his fist.

For no logical reason, Dovie’s skin rippled sweetly when Nick uncurled those long bronze fingers. She looked away, wetting her lips nervously. “Sorry if I disturbed you.”

He smelled her attar of roses drifting across the room and lied through his teeth. “You didn’t.”

“Ah, good.” She told herself that her jittery nerves were the natural aftermath of her accident. But she knew that some of her tenseness had to do with standing in her dry bra and panties only a few feet and a partially open door away from Nick. She drew back. “Well—”

“Don’t shut the door.” He hadn’t planned to say that. It’d just popped out.

She was half-dressed; he was all man. Keeping the door open while she finished putting on her clothes would invite a new and potentially hazardous intimacy between them. But closing the door when he’d asked her not to would be tantamount to slamming it in his face.

“I thought maybe we could visit.” Suppressed
emotion roughened Nick’s voice as he tried to make light of his request. “Besides, it’s nothing I haven’t seen before.”

Sensing the enormity of his need, Dovie acted on impulse. She puffed up her chest, propped her hands on her hips, and adopted a comic Mae West drawl. “I hate to tell you this, Doc, but you ain’t seen nothin’ yet!”

From the living room came the heartiest laugh she’d ever heard. “Cheeky little broad, aren’t you?”

“So I’ve been told.” Warming to the game, she gave her cotton-covered bottom a resounding
whack
with the flat of her hand.

As naturally as night follows day, so compromise flowed from camaraderie. Dovie left the door open but carried her clothes into the half-bath off her bedroom. Nick agreed to speak up loud and clear, something he did almost immediately.

“I like your house.” Stiffly starched curtains at the windows and oil-soaped oak floors made it aromatic, while the crackling fire and this comfortable chair he was sitting in made it cozy. All told, he felt a sense of home here—a feeling that had been missing from his life for a long, long time.

“Thanks.” She smiled, thinking it was a good thing she’d gone ahead with her annual Christmas cleaning even though she wasn’t expecting company for the holidays. “I call it ‘the house that hope built.’ ”

“Why is that?”

“Because Pop built it hoping that three bedrooms
would be enough to sleep his family.” Dovie slipped on the black scrap-wool pullover she’d knitted during a long rainy spell the past fall. Pushing the sleeves of her sweater back to her elbows she added, “Eight kids later, he finally abandoned hope of keeping up with the birthrate around here.”

He gave a low whistle. “Eight?”

“It got so I was afraid to ask, ‘What’s new?’ when I came home from school!”

He laughed. “All grown and gone?”

She paused in the midst of zipping up the matching black pants she’d made on Mama’s old treadle-operated sewing machine, a faraway look on her face as she answered, “All gone … except for me.”

The hint of sadness in her admission hit Nick squarely in the solar plexus. Somehow he knew the answer to his next question even before he asked it. “And your parents?”

“Mama died of childbed fever after Arie, our youngest, was born.” She’d forgotten socks. Padding barefoot into the bedroom, Dovie finished telling him about her parents. “Pop died four years later, in a sawmill accident.”

“Who raised you kids?”

She swallowed, her heart threatening to explode, her eyes to flood. “I did.”

Of course. People from these parts traditionally took care of their own. In the relatively short time
he’d known her, Nick had had no reason to think Dovie would do any less.

“And I did a darn good job of it, if I do say so myself!” Tossing her head proudly, she reached into the far corner of her top drawer for that pair of metallic-gold-and-cardinal-red sport socks that her little sister in Chicago had sent her for Christmas last year.