Ann Cristy (Helen Mittermeyer) Read online

  "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.

  One afternoon, when Cady had had a particularly tough day at the Senate and was telling Rafe how pompous she thought a thirty-year member of that august body was, Rafe's two sisters swept through the door, looking every inch the wealthy Maryland society ladies they were.

  "My dear Rafe," Aileen cried, bestowing a vague smile on Cady. "I just talked to our dear friend Hugo Billings, you know who I mean, don't you? He was at Harvard with Dave, a terribly successful surgeon. He says that the operation I described to him is very revo­lutionary and not positively safe." She turned her gaze full on Cady. "I can understand poor Daddy's reserva­tions." She blinked. "It was a bit high-handed and thoughtless of you, Cady."

  "High-handed and thoughtless," Aveen parroted, pushing aside the reading material that Cady had just brought Rafe and putting in its place a bouquet of flowers in a Wedgwood vase.

  "I'm delighted that you're so glad to have me back among the living," Rafe pronounced, his dry tone not all due to his still-hoarse throat.

  Aileen looked at him down her long, aristocratic nose. "Your welfare is not the issue here. Rafe. dear.'"

  "Yes, Rafe. Don’t cloud the issue by talking about your health, dear." Aveen's smile was indulgent. 'You don't want to be thought a hypochondriac. Very tacky."

  "I'll try not to be tacky.' Rafe assured his sisters ironically.

  "Good." .Aiken said, frowning as if already having forgotten who she was censuring and why.

  "He always took discipline well," Aveen assured her sister. She turned to Cady, a pained look on her face. "Cady, dear, I do so wish you wouldn't sit around with your mouth open. So declasse, don't you see?" The lines between her eyes deepened. "I'm surprised that Rafe hasn't said anything to yo
u about it." She pursed her lips at her brother. "I'm sure people know that Cady's related to us. You should say something."

  "Cady, make a note that I'm to tell you that you mustn't sit around with your mouth open, no matter what my sisters say." Rafe smiled at his sisters in a bland way, ignoring their suspicious stares. Neither Aileen nor Aveen was known for having a sense of humor.

  When her sisters-in-law left, Cady gave a huge sigh, not wanting to look at Rafe for fear she would laugh. But when she heard him chuckling, she let her own smile loose.

  "Lord, they're incredible. Cady, you have my per­mission to shoot me if I ever get as pompous as my sisters." Rafe's blue eyes shone merrily into hers.

  Cady giggled, loving the feeling of intimacy they were sharing. "I won't ask your permission. I'll just do it."

  They laughed together. Then, as Cady watched, Rafe's smile seemed to harden. "Lying trapped in a tilted bed, I learned more about my own family than I ever did when we all occupied the same house. Lord, Cady, have they always acted toward you as if you're totally brainless? Don't they know about the great job you've done in the Senate?" His lips tightened even more. "Was I so damn blind that I didn't see the cavalier way they treated you? Damn it, Cady, why didn't you tell me I was a bigger ass than either of my sisters?"

  Cady felt lighthearted and would willingly have let Rafe's sisters have another go at her without flying at them if it made Rafe so tender. She chuckled again.

  "Share the joke."

  "I was just thinking how much I've changed. When we first got married, I was so in awe of your sisters.

  They were so tall, so imposing, so much the women in command. Now..." She shrugged. "Now what, Cady?"

  "Sometimes I'm afraid I'll laugh in their faces."

  "Only sometimes?" Rafe flashed her the impish look that Cady loved so much, had so missed seeing.

  She laughed, feeling weightless, treasuring these close moments with Rafe, moments that she hadn't shared with him in a long time, moments that had marked the early days of their marriage. Hope snowballed inside her that he wouldn't want to divorce her, that he might suggest they try again.

  They were still laughing together when Bruno entered the room. "Your father is attending the rally for Con­gressman Sykes, but he wanted me to bring these figures that the Greeley people compiled on the nuclear power plant." Bruno barely nodded to Cady as he leaned over the end of the bed to hand Rafe a manila folder.

  "Another plan on how to rape the planet, Bruno?" Cady queried, her voice mild, her pulse jumping when Rafe chuckled.

  Bruno looked at her, his polar ice cap smile making her shiver. "No. Another plan to make the country richer."

  "The country?" Cady scoffed. "Or a few vested in­terests whose under-the-table boss happens to be Mr. Greeley?"

  "You're beginning to talk like Congressman Ardmore, that left-wing buddy of yours, Cady." The frigid display of teeth widened, reminding Cady of a shark. No one could call that a smile. Cady shuddered to herself.

  "What are you saying, Bruno?" Rafe demanded, his voice expressionless.

  "Nothing." He pulled a package of cigarettes from his pocket, then frowned at the No Smoking sign and re­turned them to his pocket. "We all thought Cady was having all those meetings with Rob Ardmore because they were both interested in archaeology." His glance slid off Cady's face, taking note of the two coin-size spots of color she felt burning in each cheek. "I can see now that they had more to... discuss than that. No won­der you met him so often, Cady."

  He left, a satisfied look on his face.

  Cady could feel the change. The closeness was gone. There was a chill in the air instead of laughter.

  The balloon of hope burst palpably when she turned to look at her white-faced husband, his eyes leaping in cobalt fury.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Rafe stayed in the hospital longer than anticipated be­cause he had to be introduced to his recuperation program under the aegis of his physical therapists and his doctors. Often after these sessions Rafe would be exhausted, and upon returning to his room he fell into a deep sleep.

  It seemed to Cady that relations between them grew increasingly strained. She had tried to talk to Rafe about Rob Ardmore and how grateful she was to him for helping her through two rough periods, her adjustment to Rafe's debility and her work in the Senate. She couldn't bring herself to tell Rafe how lonely she had been, before and after his accident, how she had needed both a friend and a diversion to keep her sane. She had begun her studies in archaeology at Rob's instigation after they had talked one day about their majors in college.

  "With your scientific background, Cady, I'll bet you'd enjoy these classes I'm auditing. Why don't you come with me one evening?" Rob had urged her.

  To Cady, the classes had become a lifeline. It seemed to her it was at that point that she had really begun to take hold of her life.

  She shook herself out of her reverie and glanced at her slumbering husband. How boyish he looked in sleep! All the pain lines smoothed away, all the anger at Cady softened out of that firm mouth.

  She sighed, trying to implant the image of that face on her mind against the time when she might be separated from him. "You've never known how much I love you, have you, Rafe? To you, I was just a star-struck school­girl you happened to marry. Oh, Rafe, don't you know that I willingly settled for anything you could give me, not because I was a silly college girl, but because even then, twelve years ago, at the age of eighteen, I loved you." She could feel her body tighten as though because she was saying the words, even in a whisper, she had to protect herself against Rafe's derision. "Not that you ever made overt fun of me, love. You didn't. But it always seemed as though you would reach a point where you would regret that I was your wife. It seems from the moment we married, I've been trying to harden myself against the day you would want to be free of me." She could feel her lips twist at the sound of her words. "Feel­ing sorry for yourself, Cady Densmore?" she quizzed herself. "No!" Cady almost shouted. Then she looked at the somnolent Rafe, afraid she might have wakened him. No, his lips were still parted in low snoring as sleep held him in its grip.

  Her critical gaze took note that he seemed to have gained weight despite the arduous and often painful ther­apy sessions. Rafe was a fighter, too. They were both fighters. She had always known it about Rafe. She had only found it out about herself after Rafe's accident.

  "I wasn't a fighter when you first met me, was I, Rafe? Otherwise I would have gone back to the dorm and punched Todd and Marina in the eye that day instead of running home and crying alone in my room. But then if I hadn't done that, maybe you wouldn't have met me. Just maybe if I hadn't kept you talking so long, you wouldn't have stayed at our house overnight." Cady yawned, her long day in the Senate office beginning to have its effect on her. She didn't want to sleep when she only had a short stay with Rafe. Perhaps if she just closed her eyes for a minute, she would be fresh and alert when he woke up.

  As she fell into a half-doze, the memory came cours­ing back.

  She was Cathleen Dyan Nesbitt, and she was eighteen and already a sophomore at Cornell, and she was in love with Todd Leacock, a twenty-year-old junior. At least that was what she thought was between them, until she had hotfooted it to her best friend's dorm room and found Todd in bed with Marina. He had laughed at her and told her to grow up, that shocked little virgins were out of style.

  She had left the dorm and stumbled across campus and down the hill to the house she shared with her father, a professor of political science. She had heard him laugh­ing with someone in the study, but she had gone right to her room to lie across the bed, wide-eyed, staring at the ceiling. "You won't die from this, Cady," she had muttered to herself. "It just feels like you're dying." She'd flopped over on her stomach and moaned into her pillow. She hadn't heard the bedroom door open.

  "Your father thought you were home, and since his housekeeper is at the store, he told me to come and fetch you." The baritone voice had a sandpaper quality to i
t, making Cady assume that the speaker was a smoker. "Shall I tell him that you'd like to stay in your room for a while?"

  Cady turned over and pushed herself to a sitting po­sition on the bed. She started to say yes, she would prefer to remain in her room until dinner, when her eyes filled with tears once again, blinding her. She sat there seeing only the blurred outline of the man, not able to stanch the flow of her tears or articulate a word. She knew he was next to her when she felt the bed sag beneath his weight. He was a big man, and without thinking she moved to make more room for him.

  "Don't cry. It can't be that bad. Did you get a bad grade? That happened to me, too, many times, but I survived. So will you." The coarse silk voice was com­forting to Cady.

  She had no idea how it happened, but all at once she was held against a worsted suit that had the softness of silk, the faint aroma of woodsy aftershave in her nostrils. "It wasn't my grades." She sobbed a sigh. "It was my boyfriend, Todd. I thought he loved me. He said he did." She lifted her head. "No wonder he wanted me to sleep with him. He wanted another scalp on his totem pole. If not mine, he'd take my best friend's." She glared at the man looking down at her, her eyes like wet amethysts.

  "You found him with another woman." His hand pressed her head down again, stroking her honey-color hair that looked streaky blond in the summer. It was as thick and straight as rope.

  "In bed with Marina," she gritted into the custom-tailored jacket. The stranger let his breath out in a long sigh. She felt it under her cheek. "Men do that some­times. So do women. It's the chance you take in a re­lationship." He leaned back from her. "All the men who come into your life won't be like that."

  "Would you be like that?" Cady snuffled, taking the fine linen handkerchief he offered her and blowing into it. "I'll wash this and send it to you," she muttered, pushing the hankie up the sleeve of her sweater.

  "Thank you, but there's no need. You can keep it." He smiled at her and she almost gasped at the thickness of his lashes and the deep sky blue of his eyes.