Come Lie With Me (9 page)

“Blake!” Serena didn't stop to interpret the scene before her. She saw her brother on the floor, she heard Dione screaming and she immediately assumed that a terrible accident had happened. She added her despairing cry to the din and dove for him, her desperate hands catching him and rolling him to her.

Though Serena wasn't supposed to be there during the day, Dione was grateful to her for the interruption. Shakily she rolled away from Blake and sat up, only then realizing that Serena was almost hysterical.

“Serena! There's nothing wrong,” Blake was saying strongly, deliberately, having sensed his sister's state of mind before Dione had. “We were just playing around. I'm not hurt. I'm not hurt,” he repeated.

Serena calmed down, her white face regaining some of its color. Blake pushed himself to a sitting position and reached for the blanket that usually covered his legs. As he covered himself, he demanded harshly, “What're you doing here? You know you're not supposed to come during the day.”

She looked as if he'd slapped her, drawing back sharply and staring at him with a stunned look in her eyes. Dione bit her lip. She knew why he'd spoken so
sharply. He'd become used to her seeing him, and in her presence he could sit around wearing nothing but a pair of briefs or gym shorts, but he was still sensitive about his body with everyone else, Serena most of all.

Serena recovered, lifting her chin proudly. “I thought this was supposed to be therapy, not play period.” She lashed out as sharply as he had, and rose to her feet. “Excuse me for interrupting; I had a reason for seeing you, but it can wait.”

Her outraged temper was evident in every line of her straight back as she marched out the door, ignoring Blake's rueful call.

“Damn!” he said softly. “Now I'll have to apologize. It's just so awkward explaining….”

Dione chuckled. “She's definitely your sister, isn't she?”

He eyed her warningly. “Don't be acting so cocky, young lady. I've found the weakness in your fortress, now. You're as ticklish as a baby!”

She prudently scooted out of his reach. “If you tickle me again I'll sneak up on you when you're asleep and pour ice water on you.”

“You would, too, you wretch,” he snorted, and glared at her. “I want a rematch in two weeks.”

“You're a glutton for punishment, aren't you?” she asked gleefully, getting to her feet and contemplating the problem of getting him from the floor to the table.

“Don't even try it,” he ordered, seeing the speculative look on her face as she looked at him. She smiled sheepishly, because she'd been about to try lifting him herself. “Call Miguel to help you.”

Miguel was Blake's chauffeur, handyman and, Dione suspected, bodyguard. He was short and lean, as hard as rock, and his dark face was marred by a scar that
puckered his left cheek. No one had said how Blake had acquired his services, and Dione wasn't sure she wanted to know. She didn't even know where Miguel was from; it could have been any Latin nation. She did know that he spoke Portuguese as well as Spanish and English, so she suspected that he was from South America, but again, no one volunteered the information and she didn't ask. It was enough that he was dedicated to Blake.

Miguel wasn't one for asking questions, either. If he was surprised to find his employer on the floor, none of that surprise was reflected on his face. Together he and Dione lifted Blake and put him on the table.

“Miguel, I need another contraption rigged for me in here like the one by the pool,” Blake instructed. “We can bolt a bar across the ceiling, this way,” he said, indicating the length of the room. “With the pulley arm swinging in any direction we want, and running the length of the bar, I can get myself up and down as I please.”

Miguel studied the ceiling, getting in his mind exactly what Blake wanted. “No problem,” he finally allowed. “Will tomorrow be soon enough?”

“If you can't do it any faster than that, I suppose it will.”

“You're a brutal slave driver,” Dione told him as she was massaging his back with the warm oil.

“I've been taking lessons from you,” he murmured sleepily, burrowing his head deeper into the cradle of his arm. The comment earned him a pinch on his side, and he laughed. “One thing about it,” he continued. “I haven't been bored since you bulldozed into my life.”

H
e was already awake the next morning when she went into his room; he was bending from the waist and rubbing his thighs and calves. She regarded him with satisfaction, glad that he was taking an active part in his recovery.

“I had a long talk with Serena last night,” he grunted, not looking up from what he was doing.

“Good. I expect the apology was good for your soul,” she said, slipping behind him and kneading his back and shoulders.

“She was upset. It seems Richard has been leaving again as soon as he takes her home at night, and she thinks he's seeing another woman.”

Dione's fingers stilled. Was it possible? She hadn't thought him the type to sneak around. It seemed so tawdry, and Richard wasn't a tawdry man.

Blake swiveled his head around to look at her. “Serena thinks he's seeing you,” he said bluntly.

She resumed the motion of her fingers. “What did you tell her?” she asked, trying to stay calm. She concentrated on the feel of his flesh under her hands, noting that he didn't feel as bony as he had at first.

“I told her that I'd find out and stop it if he was,” he replied. “Don't look so innocent, because we both know that Richard's attracted to you. Hell, he'd have to be dead not to be. You're the type of woman who has
men swarming around her like bees around a honey pot.”

Richard had said much the same thing about Blake, she thought, and smiled sadly at how far they both were from the truth.

“I'm not seeing Richard,” she said quietly. “Aside from the fact that he's married, when would I have time? I'm with you all day long, and I'm too tired at night to put forth the energy that sneaking around would take.”

“Serena said that she saw you on the patio one night.”

“She did. We were talking about you, not making love. I know that Richard's unhappy with Serena—”

“How do you know that?”

“I'm not blind. She's devoted the last two years to you and virtually ignored her husband, and naturally he resents it. Why do you think he was so determined to find a therapist for you? He wants you walking again so he can have his wife back.” Perhaps she shouldn't have told him that, but it was time Blake realized that he'd been dominating their lives with his physical condition.

He sighed. “All right, I believe you. But just in case you start thinking how attractive Richard is, let me tell you now that the one thing I won't tolerate is for Serena to be hurt.”

“She's a big girl, Blake. You can't run interference for her for the rest of her life.”

“I can do it as long as she needs me, and as long as I'm able. When I think of how she was after our mother died…I swear, Dee, I think I'd kill to keep her from ever looking like that again.”

At least she'd had a mother who loved her. The
words were on Dione's lips, but she bit them back. It wasn't Serena's fault that Dione's mother hadn't been loving. Her burden of bitterness was her own, not something to be loaded onto someone else's shoulders.

She pushed it away. “Do you think he really is seeing someone else? In a way, I can't see it. He's so besotted with Serena that no one else registers.”

“
You
register with him,” Blake insisted.

“He's never said anything to me,” Dione replied honestly, though she was still stretching the truth a little. “How do you know? Male intuition?”

“If you want to call it that,” he murmured, leaning back against her as he tired. Her soft breasts supported his weight. “I'm still a man, even if I couldn't chase a turtle and catch it. I can look at you and see the same thing he sees. You're so damned beautiful, so soft and strong at the same time. If I could chase you, lady, you'd have the race of your life.”

The soft words alarmed her in a way that was different from the panic she normally felt when faced with a prowling, hunting male. Her hands were still on his shoulders, and his weight was resting on her; his body was as familiar to her as her own, the texture of his skin, even the smell of him. It was as if he were a part of her, because she was building him, remaking him, shaping him into the gorgeous man he'd been before the accident. He was her creation.

She suddenly wanted to rest her cheek on his shaggy head, feel the silky texture of his hair. Instead she denied the impulse, because it was so foreign to her. Yet his head beckoned, and she moved her hand from his shoulder to touch the dark strands.

“You're beginning to look like a sheepdog,” she told
him, her voice a little breathless and tinged with the laughter that they shared so often now.

“Then cut it for me,” he said lazily, letting his head find a comfortable position on her shoulder.

“You'd trust me to cut your hair?” she asked, startled.

“Of course. If I can trust you with my body, why not my hair?” he reasoned.

“Then let's do it now,” she said, slapping his shoulder. “I'd like to see if you have ears. Come on, get off me.”

A shudder rippled down him, and he turned his eyes to her, eyes as blue as the deepest sea, and as primal. She knew what he was thinking, but she turned her gaze away and refused to let the moment linger.

A nameless intimacy had enfolded them. She was jittery, yet she couldn't say that she was really frightened. It was…
odd
, and her forehead was furrowed with a pensive frown as she plied the scissors on his thick hair. He was a patient, and she'd learned not to be afraid of her patients. He'd gotten closer to her than she'd ever allowed anyone else to get, even the children who had tugged the most strongly at her heartstrings. He was the challenge of her career; he'd become so much to her, but he was still a man, and she couldn't understand why she didn't get that icy, sick feeling she normally got when a man got close to her. Blake could touch her, and she couldn't tolerate the touch of any other man.

Perhaps, she decided, it was because she knew that she was safe with him. As he'd pointed out, he wasn't in any condition to do any chasing. Sexually, he was as harmless as the children she'd hugged and comforted.

“You look like Michelangelo, agonizing over the fi
nal touches to a statue,” he said provokingly. “Have you cut a big gap in my hair?”

“Of course not!” she protested, running her fingers through the unruly pelt. “I'm a very good barber, for your information. Would you like a mirror?”

He sighed blissfully. “No, I trust you. You can shave me now.”

“Like heck I will!” With mock wrath she practically slapped the loose hair off his shoulders. “It's time for your session on the rack, so stop trying to stall!”

In the days that followed nothing else was said about the situation between Serena and Richard, and though the couple continued to have dinner with Blake and Dione, the coolness between them was obvious. Richard treated Dione with a warmth that never progressed beyond friendliness, though Dione was certain that Serena wasn't convinced that the situation between them was innocent. Blake watched everything with an eagle eye and kept Dione close by his side.

She understood his reasons for doing so, and as it suited her to be with him, she let him be as demanding of her company as he wanted. She liked being with him. As he grew stronger his rather devilish personality was coming out, and it took all her concentration to stay one step ahead of him. She had to play poker with him; she had to play chess with him; she had to watch football games with him. There were a million and one things that took his interest, and he demanded that she share them all. It was as if he'd been in a coma for two years and had come out of it determined to catch up on everything he'd missed.

He pushed himself harder than she ever would have. Because she could lift more weigh than he could, he worked for hours with the weights. Because she could
swim longer and faster than he could, he pushed himself to do lap after lap, though he still couldn't use his legs. And every week they had a rematch at arm wrestling. It was their fifth match before he finally defeated her, and he was so jubilant that she let him have blueberry waffles for breakfast.

Still, she was nervous when she decided that it was time for him to begin using his legs. This was the crux of the entire program. If he couldn't see some progress now in his legs, she knew that he'd lose hope and sink into depression again.

She didn't tell him what she had planned. After he'd done his sets on the weight bench she got him back into the wheelchair and guided the chair over to the parallel bars that he would use to support himself while she reeducated his legs in what they were expected to do. He looked at the bars, then at her, his brows lifted in question.

“It's time for you to stop being so lazy,” she said as casually as possible, though her heart was pounding so loudly it was a miracle he couldn't hear it. “On your feet.”

He swallowed, his eyes moving from her to the bars, then back to her.

“This is it, huh? D day.”

“That's right. It's no big deal. Just stand. No trying to walk. Let your legs get accustomed to holding your weight.”

He set his jaw and reached out for the bars. Bracing his hands on them, he pulled himself out of the wheelchair.

The weight lifting came in handy as he pulled himself up, using only the strength in his shoulders and arms. Watching him, Dione noted the way his muscles
bunched and played. He had real muscles now, not just skin over bone. He was still thin, too thin, but no longer did he have the physique of a famine victim. Even his legs had responded to the forced exercises she gave him every day by forming a layer of muscle.

He was pale, and sweat dripped down his face as Dione positioned his feet firmly under him. “Now,” she said softly, “let your weight off your hands. Let your legs hold you. You may fall; don't worry about it. Everyone falls when he reaches this phase of therapy.”

“I won't fall,” he said grimly, throwing his head back and clenching his teeth. He was balancing himself with his hands, but his weight was on his feet. He groaned aloud. “You didn't say it would hurt!” he protested through his teeth.

Dione's head jerked up, her golden eyes firing with excitement. “Does it hurt?”

“Like hell! Hot needles—”

She let out a whoop of joy and reached for him, drawing back as she remembered his precarious balance. Unbidden, her eyes moistened. She hadn't cried since she was a child, but now she was so proud she was helpless against the tears that formed. Still, she blinked them back, though they shimmered like liquid gold between her black lashes as she offered him a tremulous smile. “You know what that means, don't you?”

“No, what?”

“That the nerves are working! It's all working! The massages, the exercises, the whirlpool…
your legs!
Don't you understand?” she shrieked, practically jumping up and down.

His head jerked around to her. All the color washed
out of his face, leaving his eyes glowing like blue coals. “Say it!” he whispered. “Spell it out!”

“You're going to walk!” she screamed at him. Then she couldn't control the tears any longer and they trickled down her face, blurring her vision. She brushed them away with the back of her hand and gave a watery chuckle. “You're going to walk,” she said again.

His face twisted, contorted by an agony of joy; he let go of the bars and reached for her, falling forward as his body pitched off-balance. Dione caught him, wrapping her arms tightly around him, but he was too heavy for her now, and she staggered and went down under his weight. He had both arms around her, and he buried his face in her neck. Her heart gave an enormous leap, her blood turned by icy terror into a sluggish river that barely moved. “No,” she whispered, her mind suddenly blanking, and her hands moved to his shoulders to push him off.

There was an odd quivering to his shoulders. And there was a sound…it wasn't the same sound of her nightmares.

Then, like someone throwing a light switch and changing a room from dark to light, she knew that this was Blake, not Scott. Scott had hurt her; Blake never would. And the strange sound was the sound of his weeping.

He was crying. He couldn't stop the tears of joy any more than she'd been able to a moment before; the heaving sobs that tore out of him released two long years of torment and despair. “My God,” he said brokenly. “My God.”

It was like a dam bursting inside her. A lifetime of holding her hurts inside, of having no one to turn to for comfort, no one to hold her while
she
cried, was sud
denly too much. A great searing pain in her chest rose into her throat and burst out in a choked, anguished cry.

Her body shuddered with the force of her sobs, and her enormous golden eyes flooded with tears. For the first time in her life she was being held close in someone's arms while she cried, and it was too much. She couldn't bear the bittersweet pain and joy of it, yet at the same time she felt as if something had changed inside her. The simple act of weeping together had torn down the wall that kept her isolated from the rest of the world. She had existed on only a surface level, never letting anything get too close to her, never letting herself feel too deeply, never letting anyone know the woman behind the mask, because the woman had been hurt so badly and feared that it could happen again. She'd developed quite a defense mechanism, but Blake had somehow managed to short circuit it.