Книга - When I See Your Face

When I See Your Face
Laurie Paige


HE'D SAVED HER LIFE…He was the charming neighbor who made the darkness more bearable…the sexy stranger whose fiery kisses made Shannon Bannock remember how badly she'd once wanted a husband and family…once, before she'd been temporarily blinded and lost sight of her dreams.SHE'D STOLEN HIS HEART.And Rory Daniels knew if the stubborn beauty could just find the courage to trust him with her aching heart he could show her so much more than just how to get to the mailbox and back. He could show her forever….









“If you need me, I’ll come running. Real quick, darling.”


Shannon huffed in exasperation. “You’ll do no such thing. I know how to dial 9-1-1 if I need help.”

“I’m closer. If you’ll keep making food like this, I’ll come over every night and check your place for bogeymen.”

“Ha-ha,” she said.

Rory was ten times more attractive than any man she’d ever met. And a hundred times more dangerous to her heart. Shannon thought of his kisses. When he teased and called her “darling” she couldn’t help but respond, even though she knew he didn’t mean it as an endearment.

Life with him would be fun. If he loved her. If she loved him. She froze, overwhelmed at the idea.


Dear Reader,

It’s the little things that mean so much. In fact, more than once, “little things” have fueled Myrna Temte’s Special Edition novels. One of her miniseries evolved from a newspaper article her mother sent her. The idea for her first novel was inspired by something she’d heard a DJ say on her favorite country-western radio station. And Myrna Temte’s nineteenth book, Handprints, also evolved in an interesting way. A friend received a special Mother’s Day present—a picture of her little girl with finger-painted handprints and a sweet poem entitled “Handprints.” Once the story was relayed to Myrna, the seed for another romance novel was planted. And the rest, as they say, is history….

There are plenty of special somethings this month. Bestselling author Joan Elliott Pickart delivers Single with Twins, the story of a photojournalist who travels the world in search of adventure, only to discover that family makes his life complete. In Lisa Jackson’s The McCaffertys: Matt, the rugged rancher hero feels that law enforcement is no place for a lady—but soon finds himself making a plea for passion….

Don’t miss Laurie Paige’s When I See Your Face, in which a fiercely independent officer is forced to rely on others when she’s temporarily blinded in the line of duty. Find out if there will be a Match Made in Wyoming in Patricia McLinn’s novel, when the hero and heroine find themselves snowbound on a Wyoming ranch! And The Child She Always Wanted by Jennifer Mikels tells the touching tale of a baby on the doorstep bringing two people together for a love too great for either to deny.

Asking authors where they get their ideas often proves an impossible question. However, many ideas come from little things that surround us. See what’s around you. And if you have an idea for a Special Edition novel, I’d love to hear from you. Enjoy!

Best,

Karen Taylor Richman, Senior Editor




When I See Your Face

Laurie Paige







www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)


This book is dedicated to Paul and Marci,

Steve and Andi with wishes for all the love

and happiness your hearts can hold.




LAURIE PAIGE


says, “In the interest of authenticity, most writers will try anything…once.” Along with her writing adventures, Laurie has been a NASA engineer, a past president of the Romance Writers of America (twice!), a mother and a grandmother (twice, also!). She was twice a Romance Writers of America RITA finalist for Best Traditional Romance and has won awards from Romantic Times Magazine for Best Silhouette Special Edition and Best Silhouette. Recently resettled in Northern California, Laurie is looking forward to whatever experiences her next novel will send her on.










Contents


Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen




Chapter One


Shannon Bannock waved at the children on the gaily decorated float, part of the parade assembling in the parking lot diagonally across from her. Standing at the intersection, she directed traffic away from the main street of Wind River, Wyoming, where the Parade of Lights festival took place each year on the Sunday before Christmas.

As a detective for the combined police-sheriff offices of the town and county, she normally handled domestic matters for the department, but at this hectic time of the year, every officer filled in where needed.

Noting a group of kids and an adult approaching the corner, she quickly set out the wooden road barriers, then led the children and their caretaker across the street to a good spot to view the parade.

“Merry Christmas,” she called to an old school chum’s eight-year-old daughter as the festivities began. For a second she marveled at that fact—that one of her best friends from high school had a child that age. Next year would be the tenth reunion of the class. Amazing.

Of her old pals, she was the only one not married. Friends said she shepherded everyone else into family units but was afraid to try matrimony herself. That wasn’t true at all. She just didn’t wear her heart on her sleeve. In actual fact, she’d met someone she thought was quite nice, a new attorney in town—

“Yo, lady cop,” a masculine baritone called.

Glancing over her shoulder, she gazed into light blue eyes and a face that—according to Marilee at the hair and nail shop—should have graced a monument as an example to all women of true male beauty. Rory Daniels, local heartthrob.

He was a respected veterinarian and someone she’d known all her life. He was five or six years older than she was, though, and, being an upperclassman, hadn’t been part of her particular group of friends. Dressed in a down jacket that emphasized the color of his eyes, his hair blowing attractively across his forehead, she had to admit he was the best-looking man in the county.

The fact that he irritated her no end didn’t lessen the impact. They had clashed over county land use, a street-improvement project and the use of woman police officers. He thought they should stay off the street and in the office. She thought women weren’t utilized to their full potential.

In her opinion, he was opinionated and arrogant…in a charming way. She grinned at the thought. He was certainly a man to turn a woman’s head. Some women, she corrected, not her. She had her life planned, and it didn’t include a stop at Heartbreak Hotel because of a man.

“Any possibility I can get through?” he asked.

Seeing that the parade was at last getting underway, she shook her head. “Sorry. Unless it’s an emergency?”

He stepped down from the pickup and stood beside her. “Not really. A mare being a bit slow about foaling. The family called and asked me to stop by.”

“The parade will be over in twenty minutes,” she told him. “Or you can drive down to the overpass on the highway.”

“I’ll wait.”

She shrugged as he stuck his hands in his back pockets and stood with his legs in a wide stance like a man braced for the vagaries of life. When he smiled at some kids in the marching band that led off the parade, Shannon noted admiration in their eyes.

Actually, his name was frequently mentioned in the newspaper regarding seminars he gave at the local schools on caring for pets and livestock. He also helped the 4-H kids on their projects for the county fair.

Frowning, she admitted this didn’t quite gibe with her image of him as an arrogant heartbreaker—

“Hey, Officer Bannock! Look at me! Look at me! I’m in the parade!”

Shannon grinned at the excited first-grader. When she called a greeting to a teacher, her breath appeared in long frosty plumes in front of her face.

Brrr, it was really cold tonight, below freezing according to the thermometer outside the drugstore on the corner. Storm clouds hung over the valley, capping the peaks around them. According to the weatherman, snow should be falling at this very moment. She stamped her feet and wiggled her cold toes in her boots.

“This is a night for warm slippers and hot chocolate,” Rory said unexpectedly.

Nodding, she met his gaze. His eyes, with laugh lines at the corners, weren’t arrogant at all. Instead, she saw something alluring…a speculative quality, an invitation to passion, mystery and forbidden pleasures.

Startled by this absurd fantasy, she nearly burst into laughter. Get real, she advised her heart, which had speeded up for some foolish reason. She turned sternly back to her duties. He truly was a handsome man, but so what? Handsome is as handsome does, as her aunt had once said.

Shannon knew that from firsthand experience. Her parents had divorced when she was ten. She and her mother had stayed in Wind River, close to their roots, while her father went off to find himself or something. For years, Shannon and he had only exchanged Christmas cards.

No, she definitely wasn’t attracted to the too-handsome-for-their-own-good types. Home and hearth, a man and woman building a secure future for their children—those were the important things in life.

Shaking her head, she wondered what had driven her thoughts in this direction. The season, she admitted…and for some odd reason, the man standing quietly beside her, watching the parade with a tiny smile playing at the corners of his mouth.

A single person—even one as attractive as Rory Daniels, she realized—was sort of an outsider in the midst of all the family-focused events in town.

Waving at the Christmas Queen, she felt the loneliness dip all the way down to her freezing toes. Oh, well, it was just the holiday doldrums. Everyone had them at times.

Odd, but the thought of Brad Sennet, the attorney she’d been dating for the past month, didn’t console her. Brad was smart, dedicated to his work and interesting. He didn’t make her heart pound like in songs and love poems, but so what?

Friendship, steadfastness and respect—those were the qualities she wanted from a relationship, not a delirious loss of reason to passion, emotion…or a pretty face.

“How about that cup of hot chocolate?” the handsome vet asked, gesturing toward the café where Christmas lights beckoned merrily through the deepening twilight.

One of the teachers, another old school chum, over-heard the invitation and waggled her eyebrows and clutched at her heart in a humorous display of awe.

Shannon suppressed a chuckle. An internal imp urged her to accept his offer. That would certainly set the gossip mill to turning in the small town. However, there was Brad to think of. She didn’t play games with people.

“Thanks, but I’m still on duty,” she told him.

“I’ll take a rain check,” he said equably and headed back to his truck. “Merry Christmas.”

“Merry Christmas.”

Curiosity caused her to watch him return to his pickup. Her heart actually thumped a little, which surprised her. That organ was certainly acting up tonight.

Mmm, maybe she had been hasty, turning down hot chocolate with the heartthrob of the county. Maybe this was one of those turning points in a person’s destiny that, if allowed to slip away, was gone forever. Maybe the moment would have led to a great passion….

This time she did laugh. Come on, she chided her overactive imagination.

The fire engine went by, signaling the end of the parade. Shannon waved to the firefighters, removed the traffic barriers and stored them in the back of her four-wheel-drive SUV. Returning the barriers to the equipment garage, she mused on the encounter with Rory Daniels.

His eyes and that brilliant smile made a person feel special, as if his every thought was only for her. She wondered why she’d always considered him arrogant and distant. He hadn’t seemed that way tonight.

Putting aside her musing, she finished some overdue reports, said good-night to the clerk on duty and headed for the five-thousand-acre family ranch where her grandfather and two cousins waited for her.

Checking the gauge, she realized she’d better stop for gas. It would be really stupid to get stuck out on a country road at nine-thirty at night, two days before Christmas. She pulled into the gas station-convenience market outside of town, then frowned in irritation that the ATM/credit card machine was out of order. She’d have to go inside and pay for the gas first. So much for technology.

Pulling her collar up around her chin to keep out the cold wind blowing down the valley from the Wind River mountains west of them, she lowered her head and headed for the store. Snowflakes began to fall all at once.

Great. Now the snow began—just when she had to drive five miles on an icy road.

She yanked open the door and exclaimed in exasperation. Her glasses, a newly acquired nuisance, fogged over completely. She snatched them off with a gloved hand and headed for the counter, ATM card in hand.

At that moment, she realized two things: the man behind the counter looked terrified and the man in front of the counter was holding a gun on him. She reacted instinctively as the muzzle of the gun swung her way.

Ducking to one side, she dropped the ATM card and pulled the nine-millimeter semiautomatic from her holster.

“Police!” she snapped. “Hands up!”

The man uttered a curse.

In the next second—it was as if time had gone into slow motion—she saw the flash from the gun and realized he was shooting at her. Shooting at her! No one had ever shot at her in all her twenty-seven years. She was more outraged than frightened. Her police academy training kicked in and she took evasive action.

Darting behind a row of bread and pastries, she warned him a second time. “Put the gun down and your hands behind your head.”

The man answered with another shot.

“Charley, get down!” Shannon yelled at the store owner. When he dived behind the counter, she had a clear view and squeezed the trigger.

The robber screamed as a red spot blossomed on his left shoulder. He spun away and slumped over the counter. The sudden silence was shocking.

Shannon cautiously stepped from behind the stacks of bread. “Drop the gun on the floor. Put your hands above your head. Don’t turn around,” she ordered, surprised at how calm she sounded, considering that her heart was going like a jackhammer. She’d never shot a man before.

The man slowly straightened.

“Watch it!” the owner shouted, his white face appearing beyond the cash register.

An explosion of light, white-hot and brilliant, blinded her. It seared through her head with a loud ringing noise that drowned all other sound. Through a strange rosy haze, she squeezed off another round. Her last thought was that she couldn’t die. She had work to do, a future planned….



Rory Daniels clicked off the cell phone and muttered an expletive. His father and stepmother were coming to visit him sometime in January after spending Christmas with her mother in Phoenix.

Don’t do me any favors, he’d felt like saying.

But of course he hadn’t. As a dutiful son, he’d replied that he would look forward to seeing them. Ha.

His stepmother was a flirt and a social climber. The woman had tried to seduce him the summer he’d turned fourteen and grown to six feet in a spurt of maturation that had left him feeling gangly and confused. That had been eighteen years ago.

It had taken him a while to realize females of all ages were attracted to his looks, his money and his family name, one of the oldest in the county. None of which was him, the real person.

He’d learned to keep his distance during the years he’d had to dodge his stepmother and try not to hurt his father, who doted on the woman. College had been a relief in comparison to his home life.

But he’d learned another lesson while there.

After falling for a fellow student and thinking she felt the same, he’d realized she was concerned only with appearances when he heard her tell a friend that his black hair and blue eyes were a perfect foil for her blond hair and blue eyes, and that they were by far the best-looking couple on campus. With him as her escort, she’d be the Christmas Carnival Queen easily.

Her words had made him furious at the time. Now he only spared a cynical lift of an eyebrow over the episode and put both it and his stepmother out of his mind.

Yawning as fatigue and the warmth from the pickup’s heater stole over him, he thought of a hot shower and a warm bed. He’d been through a difficult birth with a kid’s pony for the past three hours.

The little mare had been too small for the size of the foal, but he’d managed to pull both through, the anxious but trusting eyes of the ten-year-old owner on him all the while. The girl had given him a strangling hug when he’d finished and pronounced both mare and foal well and safe.

If he could find a woman who would gaze at him in adoration for his skills or something besides looks, money and name, he’d marry her in an instant.

So far, at thirty-two, he hadn’t run across that paragon. He knew what he wanted—a woman who was soft-spoken, smart and loyal, someone gentle and safe.

Safe? Now that was a weird thought.

Also, his wife would have to be a good mother. He wanted kids, at least two or three of ’em. Yeah, a librarian or teacher would do just fine.

A picture of Shannon Bannock came to mind—her smile as she led the children across the street, the way the kids in the parade had called to her. As a cop, she was sharp and competent. She was also headstrong, independent and argumentative. Not exactly the woman he had envisioned. So why had he invited her to the café?

An impulse born of illogical attraction.

The way she looked a man over as if judging his every thought and action was a challenge any red-blooded male would find hard to ignore. And she was built nicely, he added, amused by his thoughts.

Glancing at the gas gauge, he saw he had less than a quarter tank. Better fill up in case of an emergency over the holiday. Tomorrow was Christmas Eve. The whole county would close up at five so store owners could go home to their families. Nothing would be open on Christmas Day.

He wheeled into the gas station and stopped at a pump. Fishing his credit card out of his wallet, he noticed the Out-of-Order sign on the machine.

“Damn,” he muttered and headed inside to pay. “What the hell?” were his next words as he stood inside the store.

It looked like a scene from a bad movie—bodies lying in pools of fake blood, an eerie silence over the place.

Only the blood wasn’t fake. The salty, metallic scent of it filled his nostrils. It was real. And fresh. The smell of gunpowder hung in the air.

Putting his wallet away, he bent to examine the first figure on the floor.

Shannon Bannock, the cop he’d spoken to earlier at the parade, lay with a gun clutched in one hand, a pair of glasses in the other. She was on her stomach, her face to one side, her expression serene, as if she were merely napping for a moment.

Blood pooled under her head from a gunshot wound. He couldn’t see any other injuries. She opened her eyes briefly as he examined her.

“I knew…you would come,” she said cryptically, then gave a sound like a sigh and fainted again.

“Yeah,” he agreed, checking her for other injuries.

He’d just bought a small acreage bordering the Windraven Ranch owned by Shannon’s grandfather, which was probably where she was heading when she stopped at the gas station. Relieved that she wasn’t dead, he quickly examined the other two and found them breathing. After calling 911, he retrieved his medical bag from the truck and began first aid on the three wounded people.

The police officer was the most serious. It looked as if a bullet had entered her temple, then exited under her lower jaw. He thought of what a bullet could do to a person’s brain.

A few hours ago this same woman had been directing traffic, efficient and confident at her task. He wondered what her future was going to be now and experienced an odd stab of pain or pity or something under his breastbone. He looked out the plate-glass window. Where the hell was that ambulance?




Chapter Two


Shannon woke to complete darkness, totally disoriented. She put a hand up to her eyes and discovered bandages.

A hand caught hers. “Don’t disturb the bandages,” her cousin said.

“Kate?”

“Yes. Megan and I are here with you.”

“What happened? Where am I?”

Speaking was difficult, as if she hadn’t used her voice in a long time. It also hurt. She realized bandages were taped over her jaw and part of her neck, that they encircled her head and wrapped across her eyes.

Her eyes? Why were they covered?

Dizziness rolled over her, leaving her nauseated and frightened, a sensation that seemed all too familiar, although she couldn’t recall ever experiencing it prior to this moment. Clutching Kate’s hand, she realized she was terribly weak. And helpless.

“You’re in the hospital. You were lucky. A surgeon from Denver was up at the ski resort with his family. He came to the hospital when he heard the news—”

“What news?” Nothing was making sense.

“That you were shot,” Megan said from the other side of the bed. “Don’t you remember?”

“No. Wait. Yes.” Shannon paused and tried to see through the swirling fog in her brain. It even hurt to think. “I remember going in someplace and…yes, there was a guy with a gun. He shot at me. It really happened? It seems more like a nightmare than reality.”

“You relived it over and over during your coma,” Kate said in soothing tones.

“I’ve been in a coma?” This was becoming more bizarre by the minute.

There was a slight pause. Shannon imagined the other two cousins looking at each other and wondering how much to tell her. “How long?” she asked, needing to know everything, to understand what had happened to her.

“A week,” Kate said, her voice soothing and firm as if she had everything under control. “The doctors put you in a coma to allow your body time to heal. You were very agitated after the…the incident.”

Shannon tried to comprehend what the words meant, but it was hard to sort out. Struggling with an urge to fade back into the serene, foggy place she’d been for a week, she forced herself to concentrate. A scene popped into her mind. “The gas station,” she said. “Did he get away?”

“Who?”

“The robber. I walked in on a robbery. I had to stop him. He was armed. He shot at me—oh!” Her hand went once more to the bandages. “He hit me?” she asked in a disbelieving voice. “In the head?”

“Shannon…”

The hesitancy in Kate’s voice rasped across Shannon’s nerves like a file. “What is it? What’s wrong with me? Am I…am I…is it my eyes? Is something wrong with my eyes? Why are they bandaged?”

Kate gripped her hand again. “The bullet went through your temple, around the inside of your skull and out under your jaw. The bone wasn’t shattered. You were lucky.”

Lucky? Being shot in the head was lucky?

She almost laughed at the irony in that statement, but it hurt too much. She cautiously explored the gauze wrapping her head. “My eyes?”

“The doctors don’t know,” Megan said quickly. “One eye was affected, but the other—”

“Which one? Which eye?”

“The left one might be permanently injured. The bullet grazed it near the optic nerve.”

“I can’t lose my sight,” she explained to them as reasonably as she possibly could. “I have plans. My degree, the future, everything.”

There was the practice she intended to open when she got her Ph.D. in psychology. And what of her dream of helping families work through their problems?

“No,” she protested, pulling at the covering over her eyes. “No. I’ve got to see. I’ve got to!”

She heard another voice in the room. “Keep her hands still,” the new person said.

Little squeaky sounds accompanied the voice, as if the woman carried mice in her pockets. Shannon struggled with the hands that grasped hers.

“It’ll be all right,” she heard both her cousins say.

The words were a lie, meant only to soothe. “You don’t understand,” she told them. She was having trouble speaking, but she had to explain, to make them see…

Her mind went hazy. Sounds faded. She fought the darkness, then realized she’d been given a sedative.

“Don’t,” she said, her voice sounding far away. “I need to know, to find out… Oh, please, please, don’t…”

She realized she was begging, just as she had when her father had packed and left. It hadn’t done any good then, either. The tears came, helpless and despairing, then everything fell into darkness.



Shannon woke slowly, fighting her way through layer after layer of cloudy material. The room, which she somehow knew wasn’t hers, smelled of antiseptic and flowers. An odd combination. She listened carefully, every nerve alert and tensed for trouble. However, the room felt empty.

The soft clink of metal against metal and the whir of a motor alarmed her, but then she recalled she was in the hospital. The floors were cleaned and polished during the wee hours of the morning. That was the sound she heard, coming from down the hall.

So it must be after midnight but before dawn.

She’d been dreaming—dark, restless dreams that still troubled her. In them, she faced the robber again and again, always experiencing the pain anew—quick, hot and blinding in its intensity.

Then someone—an ethereal being of coolness and light, such brilliant light she couldn’t see his face—came to her, lifting her out of the hot pain and scary darkness, taking her to a secret haven, his arms strong, his embrace sweet, his scent fresh as the outdoors. She had instinctively known him. He was the one she’d been waiting for. He’d made her feel safe….

It was a foolish dream. No guardian angel had come to her rescue. An illusion, her mind’s way of coping with the reality of being shot, was all it was.

Turning her head against the pillows, she gingerly examined the bandages covering her head and half her face. Pressing her left temple, she found that to be a sore spot. Also a place under her jaw.

It hurt to move her mouth, either to talk or eat. Swallowing the liquids they’d put her on was difficult. However, it wasn’t as bad as yesterday, and tomorrow would be better than today.

Thus speaks the optimist, she mused, attempting a smile. That hurt, too.

That morning—no, this was a new day, so it was Tuesday, the first day of the New Year, she realized. The day before, when the nurse had come in, her mind had been clear for the first time as the heavy drugs left her body. Every sound had made a sharp impression.

During the day, she had listened to footsteps and tried to guess who the person was. She had known when Kate or Megan arrived before they spoke. And the hefty nurse who was always so cheerful. Her shoes made squeaky noises on the floor when she stopped or turned.

No mice in her pockets. Shannon had liked that image.

She had opened her Christmas presents yesterday, which seemed pointless, while her cousins described them to her. She’d pretended to be delighted so they wouldn’t worry about her state of mind.

Still not quite able to believe what had happened, she’d tried to check her eyes during the night to make sure they were open, but she’d encountered the bandages. Maybe she’d hoped she was waking from a bad dream and that only the night was black, but it wasn’t to be.

Everything was black to her. Day, night, it made no difference in her encapsulated world.

And never would.

Fear rolled over her in waves of nausea. She fought for control. The ophthalmologist called in on her case had been optimistic, but he had cautioned her that sometimes, when one eye was injured, the other, although medically okay, would sometimes act as if it, too, had been wounded.

Sympathetic ophthalmalia, it was called. There was a fifty-fifty possibility she would be blind, not just in the injured eye, but in both eyes.

Panic swept through her, pushing at her self-control like a log carried on a flash flood. She took deep breaths and willed it away.

The doctor had also said her right eye could be as good as ever. Or there could be a period of blindness, then the gradual regaining of her sight and that it could happen in both eyes.

So, there was nothing to fear but fear itself. Someone great had said that. President Roosevelt?

Relief eased the fear. She could remember things. People’s names. Stuff she’d learned in school. Incidents from the past. She’d pestered Megan and Kate on their visits, making them test her so that she would know her mind was functioning normally.

A mind is a terrible thing to lose.

A slogan for an anti-drug campaign, she recalled. They didn’t know the half of it. Brain damage. It was a thought that frightened her even more than blindness. However, her mind appeared okay.

It had been a week and two days since the shoot-out. If she really did lose her sight… She tried to imagine it, to see herself coping, tapping her way through life with a white cane. The blackness seemed to darken more. She would be a burden, dependent on others the rest of her life.

But it was too early to think like that, the doctor had assured her. There was a chance. Fifty-fifty. Not bad odds for a person who’d been shot in the head.

Tears filled her eyes and spilled into the bandages. She willed them away. Crying did no good whatsoever.



Hearing a man’s voice in the hall, she wondered where Brad was. He hadn’t visited, or even called.

What man in his right mind would tie himself to someone who might be blind for life? a cynical part of her asked.

The man who loved her, came the answer from her never-say-die counterpart.

A hopeless romantic, she had always believed a couple could make it through any tragedy, but it took strength and dedication from both of them. If she and Brad had married, would they have made it through this crisis?

Maybe. If he had loved her. If she had loved him.

Love was the key. She had thought that was a possibility with Brad, but now…

The expectation faded into mist, like dreams barely recalled when dawn came. She felt the loss deep within, a nostalgia for what might have been, rather than what actually was. She had longed for a great love. Without it, life would be lonely.

Inhaling carefully, as if the slightest movement might cause her to shatter, she thought of her guardian angel, the one who had comforted her and eased the fear with his cool touch. He hadn’t been real, but that didn’t stop her from clinging to the memory or the dream of him or whatever it had been. Maybe she would meet a man like that.

Riding that small raft of comfort in the troubled sea of darkness that was now her future, she drifted toward sleep once more.



Rory stood outside the door of room 212. He glanced at the pot of poinsettias he’d brought. They seemed pointless now, after he’d spoken with Shannon’s cousin in the parking lot. Shannon wouldn’t be able to see them. Both her eyes were bandaged. The doctors didn’t know the outcome yet. She might be blind.

He pictured her in her police uniform, swinging across the street with a bouncy step. Her hat had sat at a jaunty angle on her head, and she’d been leading a group of children across the street. The Pied Piper of Wind River, he’d thought in amusement at the time. The later picture, the one of her shot and bleeding, didn’t seem real.

A funny ache tapped behind his sternum as he went into the room. He wasn’t, he saw, the only one who’d thought of flowers. Vases and baskets of them covered nearly every surface and overflowed onto the floor, filling the corners of the room with lush color that reminded him of spring.

The patient was asleep.

He set the flowerpot on the windowsill, then stood beside the bed and studied her face. Beneath the massive bandages covering her head like a turban, he could see bruises along her left cheek. The rest of her face was pale.

Except for her lips. They were pink and full.

Her mouth wasn’t wide, but it had an appeal that made a man want to lean forward and experience for himself the taste of those dewy lips. For some reason he’d wanted to do the same thing at the parade that night.

Frowning, he drew back. He’d seen his share of attractive women… But there was something very appealing about this particular female—when she wasn’t arguing the opposite side of an issue with him. Maybe it was because she was asleep. A man just naturally wanted to wake her with a kiss.

Cynically amused at his own thoughts—Prince Charming he wasn’t—he stepped back from the bed and took in the whole array of medical equipment. The lady cop had been seriously wounded. If he’d been seconds later in arriving, the outcome could have been much different.

It certainly seemed to be an odd case, still of interest to the local news media, although the story hadn’t made it to national broadcasts.

The other two victims had been released from the hospital. The store owner couldn’t remember anything about the incident. The customer couldn’t identify the robber, who, he said, wore surgical gloves and a stocking over his face. Walking in on the robbery, he had struggled over a gun after the crook had shot the officer and the store owner and gotten himself shot as a reward for his efforts.

No gun or identifiable fingerprints had been found at the crime scene. There had been no trace of the perpetrator at the shoot-out, as the media had dubbed the incident due to the number of shots fired. Six in all, four from the robber’s gun, two from Shannon’s. If she ended up blind, then she wouldn’t be able to identify the perp, either, assuming the cops ever found the guy.

Rory didn’t know how much of the story was true. All his information came from the local paper.

He paused in his ruminations when Shannon shifted restlessly. Her lips moved in a murmur. Although his practice didn’t extend to the human animal, he checked her pulse anyway. It was fast. When she became more and more agitated in the grip of her nightmare, he debated ringing for the nurse and asking about a sedative.

As he hesitated, the sun emerged from a cloud. Its rays, streaming in through the window, caught in the strands of hair across the pillow. Fascinated, he stared at the luxuriant tangles. Her hair flowed from under the white gauze in long, curly tendrils. Where the sunlight hit it, the strands glinted in shades of tawny blond and auburn, like darkly burnished gold, a secret treasure waiting to be discovered.

He lifted a curl and watched it curve over his finger and cling, as if it had a mind of its own.

“Beautiful, isn’t it? And the color is natural. You can tell by the roots.” A nurse came in and checked various things—the patient’s vital signs, the level of water in a pitcher on the bedside stand. “Miss Bannock? How do you feel today? You want to sit up?”

Rory stepped back to give the nurse some space. He saw Shannon’s head turn toward the woman’s voice and tried to recall the color of her eyes. He noticed the smallness of her hand resting on the sheet.

She was on the slender side, but tall, probably five-eight, like her cousin, Kate, who had been a grade ahead of him in school from the time he started kindergarten until they’d graduated from the same state university a year apart.

He’d had a terrible crush on the “older” woman in high school, something she’d never known. After college, he’d gone on to vet school and Kate had married someone else.

“You have company today, someone other than your cousins and the sheriff and detectives,” the nurse reported to the patient in tones too cheerful to be real as she went to the other side of the bed, smoothing the covers as she did. “A handsome young man.” She cast him a playful glance.

“Hi,” he said, stepping up to the bed again. His voice came out as falsely cheerful as the nurse’s. He cleared it self-consciously. “How’re you feeling?”

Now that was a brilliant question to ask someone who’d been shot in the head. Disgusted, he tried to think of something to add, but his mind went blank. So much for social skills.

“Fine,” she said politely. “Uh, do you mind telling me who you are? I’m not good with voices yet. Except for Kate and Megan.”

“Rory Daniels. Sorry, I should have mentioned it.”

“That’s okay. Rory,” she repeated as if testing the name against some memory.

For a second, she seemed disappointed, then she smiled. Her lips tipped up at the corners and dimples appeared in her cheeks. Even with that just-begging-for-a-kiss mouth, the dimples made her look young and vulnerable beneath the pile of bandages.

“How nice of you to stop by,” she continued in a polite manner that set his teeth on edge. “Oh, and Happy New Year.”

As if they were at a tea party or some damn thing. It made his chest ache in that odd way.

The nurse pushed a button and the bed slowly rose, bringing the patient to a full sitting position.

When the bed stopped, Shannon turned toward him as if she could see. “It seems I have you to thank for saving my life. The paramedic said you called for help, then controlled the bleeding until they arrived. A very good Samaritan indeed.”

She stopped speaking. The alluring smile disappeared. The soft-looking lips trembled, then firmed as she smiled once more. He added self-control to her list of attributes.

“It was nothing. Don’t think about it if the memory bothers you,” he quickly said.

“No, I want to remember. Would you help by telling me everything you saw?”

He mulled over the scene at the mini-mart while the nurse brought a robe from the closet, deftly slipped it on the patient, then bent to put on slippers. “Why don’t you escort her down to the sunroom? The patient is tired of these four walls,” she said without checking with Shannon.

“Sure.”

Rory took hold of Shannon’s arm and steadied her as she got out of bed. The nurse, beaming with goodwill, saw them on their way, then bustled about straightening the room, her shoes making curious little noises on the tiles.

“This is the first time I’ve been out of the room since I got here. I’m sort of nervous,” Shannon admitted as they walked slowly down the broad corridor.

“So am I.”

“You? Why?”

“I want to kiss you.”

She stopped abruptly. Her head whipped around toward him, then she groaned and put a hand to her temple.

“Sorry,” he murmured, resisting an urge to put his arm around her waist and pull her closer. “I didn’t mean to startle you. I should have guarded my tongue.”

The smile fluttered over her lips. “Well, now that you have my attention, what did you really want to say?”

He laughed, relieved at her humor and sassiness. “Here we are. Turn right,” he directed.

They went into the pleasant, window-lined room. The winter sun played hide-and-seek through a thin covering of clouds. “Do you recall what the room looks like?” he asked.

“Not really. Windows and plants, I think.”

He described the potted trees and plants, the way the snow lay upon the rolling grounds of the hospital and on the peaks outlining the sky, the gleam of the sun shining on the red Mexican tiles.

“I brought you a poinsettia,” he added. “You have about a thousand baskets of flowers in your room. We should have brought some down here.”

“Good idea. I’ll tell the nurse.” She took a seat in the cane-backed rocker he directed her toward. “Now. Tell me what you saw when you went in the gas station. First, what kind of vehicles were outside?”

“That’s what Kate’s husband asked,” Rory told her. “He wanted every detail I could recall.”

Kate’s first marriage had ended in tragedy a few years ago. She’d recently married a cop. The man had a son, and the couple was adopting a little girl. When he saw them in town, they were the picture of a happy family.

For an instant, he felt the strangest emotion, then realized what it was—envy.

Not that he was still mooning over Kate, but sometimes a man felt the emptiness in his life. Like at Christmas.

Shannon nodded. “Jess is in charge of investigations for the department. He’s grilled me, too. Between him and the sheriff, I began to wonder if I had robbed the place and shot myself to cover up the crime.”

He chuckled at her wry grimace, which caused the dimples to flash in and out. “Let’s see, there was your SUV at the gas pump in front of my truck,” Rory said, picturing the gas station, its lights hazy in the falling snow. “A pickup was parked at the side of the building, where the air and water hoses are located. I think there was another one at the curb near the door. That was all I saw.”

“You didn’t see anyone driving off when you arrived?”

“No.”

“You didn’t notice any fresh tire tracks in the snow where someone might have just driven off?”

“No, sorry. Clues to a crime weren’t on my mind at the moment. I was thinking of home and bed. I didn’t notice anything until I walked in the store and saw three bodies lying on the floor.”

“I told the sheriff there wasn’t anyone else. The perp had to be the other man in the store.” She sighed and raised a hand to her bandaged temple. “No one believes me.”

Rory sensed her frustration. Lacking evidence, since the store owner didn’t remember anything at all, the sheriff had let the other man go when he was released from the hospital with only a slight flesh wound from the shooting. Without sight, Shannon couldn’t identify the man, even if he was the guilty party.

Eyeing the thick bandages, Rory considered her future. Being blinded in the line of duty was a hell of a way to end a police career. He wondered what she would do now.

“Take me back to my room, please,” she said suddenly, standing, her hands trembling as she reached out to him.

He wondered guiltily if she had somehow read his thoughts concerning her future. He took her arm and led her back the way they had come. Her cousin Kate was waiting for them. Seeing her reminded him of another reason for his visit. He removed an ATM card from his jacket pocket and handed it to Kate, along with a pair of glasses.

“The card was on the floor. I found the glasses in her hand,” he explained.

Kate gave him a hug for saving her “second favorite” cousin. Her smile was conspiratorial.

“Hey, I thought I was the favorite and Megan was second,” Shannon protested.

The lighthearted tone surprised him. Studying the lady cop and her smile, which looked rather comical, coming as it did from a head swathed with bandages, Rory felt that odd pang in his chest again. She was scrappy, this one.

Glancing at his watch, he saw it was time for him to report back to the office. “Duty calls,” he told the women. “Good to see you again, Kate. Take care, lady cop.”

He smiled for Kate and looked Shannon over once more, finding it hard to reconcile the confident, buoyant officer who’d held the world in her hands with the woman whose hands had trembled, whose steps had been hesitant, as he led her along the corridor. She’d changed yet again when she’d realized Kate was in the room, becoming cheerful and teasing. Putting on a show for her cousin.

He mentally cursed. Life, in case anyone hadn’t noticed, could be hell.

Shannon sensed Rory’s concern and recoiled. She wouldn’t accept pity from anyone. Holding on to the smile she’d assumed for Kate, she thanked him again for the plant and for stopping by.

After he’d left, she exhaled a relieved breath. Being sociable, especially with Rory, wasn’t her thing at the moment. Besides, she must look like a leftover from a Saturday-night brawl.

The irony of being concerned about her looks struck her as she climbed into bed. As if she had nothing else to worry about except combing her hair and putting on lipstick.

After handing Kate the robe and letting the fleecy slippers fall to the floor, she stretched out on the fresh sheets. She was as tired as a pilgrim returning home from a long dangerous trip to Mecca.

“Wow,” Kate said softly, “Rory Daniels. The prize catch of the county. Lucky you.”

Shannon managed a cheeky grin. “Yeah, should make local news, don’t you think?”

“It’s already gone the rounds. I heard he was here from Betty down at the bank. He’d bought a pot of poinsettias from the flower shop. Betty’s sister, who works there, told her. I suspect she’s told the rest of the town by now.”

Shannon laughed at the absurdity of the notion. Rory had never noticed she existed. Not until he walked into a convenience store and found three bodies on the floor, hers among them, she reflected, the internal darkness drawing around her once more.

The nurse bustled in. “Mail call,” she said and laid a new stack of cards in Shannon’s lap. “Well, now, it’s nice to hear you laugh. I’ll put that on your chart. The doctor will be pleased. This morning he said you could go home if you continued to improve as you have.”

Fear tightened Shannon’s throat. “I can go home?” she said, immediately worrying about where she would go.

“To the big house,” Kate said as if reading her mind. “Megan and Grandfather are expecting you. You can stay with them until the bandages come off and you decide what you want to do next.”

A beat of silence followed this announcement.

“Until we know if I’m blind or not,” Shannon said, saying what they all were thinking, making herself face the possibility. She felt again the hot flash of pain, the absurdity of being shot by some two-bit crook in a convenience store in a scene straight out of a B movie.

“Now, now, none of that,” the nurse chided. “There’s every chance you’ll be fine. You have to have faith.”

Shannon heard the little squeaks from the woman’s shoes as she arranged a lunch tray on the rolling table. After the woman left, Kate muttered in annoyance, “And a Happy New Year to you, too.”

Shannon agreed. “I know she means well, but she is the most irritating person. But I like the mice in her pockets.”

“Oh? I didn’t notice them,” Kate remarked, amusement in her tone.

Shannon explained. She was grateful for Kate’s wry humor and the fact that her cousin let her handle her lunch without help. Not that sipping a milk shake through a straw took a lot of skill. Neither did eating the paste that was supposed to be pudding.

Kate read the messages on the get-well cards out loud.

“Can you tell me who the flowers are from?” Shannon asked. “Rory said I had a roomful.”

When Kate read Brad’s name on a card attached to a vase of pink roses, Shannon perked up.

So he was busy on a case. Or maybe he’d gone to visit his folks in St. Louis this week, although he’d indicated he wasn’t going home for the holidays this year.

Reality reared its head. Some people were repulsed by those with a disability. Or scars. That was one worry she hadn’t voiced. It seemed so vain compared to everything else, but she had no idea how the wounds would look when they healed.

She would face that when the time came, she promised. Later. When she was alone and could think…

“There, done,” Kate said, finishing the cards.

“Thanks.” Shannon hesitated, then spoke. “When the doctor came in this morning, he said I’d have to wear the bandages two weeks to give my eyes a good rest. Then…”

“Then we’ll know,” Kate said quietly.

“Yes.”

“Megan and I’ll be there for you. You know that.”

Shannon nodded, not quite able to envision the future. Fear returned.

Kate kept her entertained with tales of her newly adopted daughter Amanda, Mandy to the family, and Jeremy, Kate’s stepson, for the next two hours. When Kate mentioned Jess, her husband of three months, her tone changed, going softer, huskier.

As she listened to Kate’s quiet chatter, Shannon thought of Rory Daniels. Maybe he had been the man of cool light who had made her feel safe when she’d been so strangely lost in a hot, dark fog. Or was her dream man only an illusion created out of pain and delirium? Sometimes she still needed him….

“By the way, did Rory tell you he’d bought the place next door to us?” Kate asked when she stood to leave.

“No. What place?”

“The Mulholland land.”

The land had belonged to Kate’s mother-in-law. Kate’s first husband had grown up there. Kris had been several years older than she, a Vietnam vet suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder. One minute he would be fine; the next, he would change into an angry, suspicious man lost in the jungles of his mind, sure the enemy was near and searching for him and his family. It had been eerie. The marriage had ended in Kris’s suicide. Kate deserved all the happiness she now had.

“Will Rory live in the house?” Shannon asked, curious since she’d recently had the ancient foreman’s cabin on the Windraven Ranch, across the creek from the Mulholland house, remodeled, and had planned to move in over Christmas.

Oh. She was supposed to be out of her apartment in town by the first of the year. “My apartment,” she began.

“Megan and I finished moving the last of your things and cleaned it. It’s all been taken care of. Your SUV is stored in the garage at the new place, too. Sorry. I should have told you earlier so you wouldn’t worry.”

“I’d forgotten until this moment.” Shannon lifted a hand to her temple.

Kate touched her shoulder, then gave her a kiss on the cheek. “Your mind is fine. Quit worrying.”

“It isn’t my mind I’m worried about, not really.”

“Oh, honey.” Kate hugged her fiercely, her protective, nurturing nature familiar and comforting. “We can only wait and see how things turn out. It’s hard, I know. You’ve been terribly brave.”

“Hardly. I wanted to ask, has anyone else come to visit that you know of?”

“Like a certain young attorney who’s new in town?” Kate teased. Her voice became serious. “Not that I know, but Jess said the sheriff had ordered no visitors other than immediate family. He had a deputy outside your door twenty-four hours a day during the week you were in a coma. He’s been pretty worried about you.”

“I guess he thought the robber would sneak in and smother me or something,” she scoffed, trying not to recall that Rory had somehow gotten in to see her.

Couldn’t Brad have found a way?

Maybe. If he’d loved her.

There were a lot of ifs in her life just now. She would have to take each day as it came. But she would be okay. She was sure of it.




Chapter Three


Shannon repeated that assurance to everyone who called the rest of the day and the next when Gene Thompson, the sheriff and her boss, came to visit. They discussed the case.

“There was no third man,” Shannon told the lawman. “The wounded guy was the perp.” She sensed his impatience at her stubborn denial in the silence that followed.

“According to his story, the third man was a customer who came in after you and the store owner were unconscious,” Gene said, his gruff voice gentle.

At six feet, six inches and two hundred-plus pounds, the law officer reminded her of a big, friendly bear. Under the tough exterior, he was all heart. He took it hard when one of his deputies was injured.

“They struggled, then the robber shot him and made his getaway?” she asked skeptically.

“Yes.”

Shannon mulled over the information. “Well,” she finally concluded, “I suppose the evidence shoots holes in my theory that the guy you let go was the robber, especially since the perp’s gun wasn’t on the premises. I know I shot the real crook. In the shoulder, too, just like the other guy had. The gun couldn’t have walked off by itself, and since Rory found three people on the floor, all of us unconscious, the robber must have escaped.”

“Yep. With nothing to go on, the case goes onto the back burner.”

She hit the flat of her hand on the chair arm. “I wish I could see the store, go over it…” She stopped, then shrugged impatiently, refusing to give way to despair.

“Don’t, honey,” Gene said softly. “You’re going to be fine. Everything has a way of working out.”

“Does it?”

“I have to believe that, or else I’d go crazy with the insane things people do. Like shoot people over money.” He stood. “Well, it’s back to work for me. I understand you’ll be going home today.”

“Yes, Megan is coming for me as soon as she finishes with her riding students this afternoon. Uh, the nurse said you wouldn’t allow any visitors in my room, except family,” Shannon said. “And Rory Daniels?”

Gene muttered a curse. “I told them no one other than Kate and Megan.” He snorted, then chuckled. “It’s his looks. Women melt when he glances at them. Must be nice.”

“I don’t know,” Shannon said on a lighter note. “It could be hell, having everyone fall all over you.”

“Could be. Wind River may not be heaven,” the sheriff said, abruptly changing the subject, “but it’s still a good place to live. Don’t let one incident spoil your life.”

“I won’t,” Shannon promised, thinking of the cards, flowers and candy she’d received. It had all been disposed of and her room was bare, ready for the next occupant when she left. She wanted to go. Ten days in a hospital was enough for a lifetime.

She kept smiling until the last of her visitors left at the close of visiting hours that afternoon, then she pondered the future. A week from Friday and the bandages would come off. Nine days until she knew her fate. A shaky, rather forlorn, sigh escaped her.



Shannon was surprised when the doctor and the second shift nurse came in a couple of hours later. “What’s happening?” she asked, alarmed by the sudden visit.

“We’re taking the bandages off,” replied the doctor.

Her heart lurched. “Now? I thought it was later.”

“Just the ones on your wounds, not the eyes. I don’t want any stress on them for a few more days.”

“Oh.”

When the wrappings came off, her head felt funny. She reached up to examine the injuries. Feeling a bristly stubble on the left temple, she remarked in surprise, “I’m bald on one side.”

The doctor chuckled.

“Not really,” the nurse assured her. She was a quiet, efficient person who spoke in a normal, friendly manner. “If you had bangs around your face and a layered look on the sides, the short hair would blend in with the rest in a couple of weeks.”

“Thanks. I’ll do that.”

After they left, Shannon found her brush and fussed with her hair. She wondered when she could shower. She must look terrible. On an impulse, she called the beauty shop.

Marilee said she would give her a shampoo and a cut whenever she appeared. “Don’t worry about other customers,” she said airily. “They can wait.”

Shannon felt better after hanging up the phone. She’d punched in the number without help. Her spirits lifted. It was a beginning. Today the telephone. Tomorrow the world!

She laughed until she realized she was close to tears. That wouldn’t do, not at all. She wasn’t going to get all weepy and make people worry about her when the doctor didn’t know anything yet. Besides, everything was going to be fine.

When Megan arrived, Shannon was ready to go, and they took off for home.

“Umm, the air smells so crisp and fresh,” Shannon said.

She found she could tell where they were by using her other senses. She recognized the clatter of the tires on the old trestle bridge when they went over the creek. She heard the cows at a dairy farm. The scent of incense cedar indicated the woods near the house.

When they arrived, she eagerly got out of the station wagon and waited for her cousin. She’d experienced a sense of vulnerability at leaving the known haven of the hospital, but now she wanted freedom from restrictions and routine.

“It snowed last night. The sun is out today and everything looks pristine,” Megan had told her. “Hold on. I’m coming as soon as I get myself together. It’s really cold today. It’ll be well below freezing tonight.”

Shannon waited for Megan to take her arm and lead her into the house. Lifting her face to the sun, she pictured the mountains, elegant in their coats of new snow. She loved the hills and the sense of family that came to her each time she returned to the ranch. Her roots were buried deep within the rocky soil.

With a painful lurch of her heart, she realized she might never see the place again. The hot darkness descended on her, as if someone had thrown a blanket over her head. She breathed carefully and fought for composure.

“Can you carry your personal belongings? Your gun’s inside the bag. Careful. The flagstones may be slippery.” Megan put a plastic bag into her hand and took her arm.

Shannon pulled herself back from the brink of panic. She walked through the snow to the side door of the sprawling two-story ranch house, guided by Megan’s touch and voice. “Here’re the steps. Up. Up. Let me get the door open. Okay, let’s go inside.”

“Home,” Shannon murmured when the door closed behind her. “It’s good to be here.” She inhaled the scent of fresh pine and cinnamon in the air. “Something smells good.”

“I made spiced cider before I left to pick you up. Kate sent over apple fritters. Mrs. Roddey cut some pine boughs and put them on the hearth.”

Mrs. Roddey was wife to the rancher who leased their land. “Where’s Grandfather?” Shannon stuck her gloves in her pocket, then hung her coat on the hall tree without help.

“He lay down for a nap a little bit ago. I think the worry over you has gotten to him. He’s looked sort of peaked the past few days.”

“Maybe Christmas was hard on him. It is for many people. It makes them feel lonely.”

“Go into the parlor,” Megan suggested. “I’ll take care of these bags and things.”

Shannon touched the door with her right hand, then, going on memory, walked into the parlor, which was the family gathering place.

The warmth of a fire in the fireplace reached out to her as she carefully felt for the glider rocker and took a seat. She exhaled a ragged sigh, as if she’d finally reached a safe place after an arduous trip. She hated the feeling of uncertainty, of being vulnerable—

“You did that very well,” a masculine voice commented.

Shannon gripped the arms of the chair. “Brad?”

“Sorry to disappoint you,” the man said with sardonic amusement. “Rory Daniels. I came by to check on a couple of Megan’s boarders and stayed to welcome you home.”

Shannon realized how ungracious she’d sounded. “Oh, yes, the Good Samaritan. Thank you again for your help.”

She realized Rory must be in the chair that used to be her grandfather’s. Sitting in the big leather recliner, her granddad used to read the Christmas story from the Bible every year on Christmas Eve. That was before the stroke that had left him paralyzed.

Things, times, people changed. A wise person accepted that fact. But it was hard.

“Don’t mention it. As a doctor, I’m dedicated to healing, no matter what kind of animal crosses my path.”

Was it her imagination or was his tone decidedly cooler than his earlier greeting? Had she offended him by thanking him for his help?

“That’s very commendable,” she replied with the exact inflection he’d used on her, irritated without knowing why.

There was a brief silence. “Your hair looks nice,” he commented.

Shannon’s hand flew to the bristly section at her temple. “I had it shampooed and cut before I let Megan bring me home. Marilee said it would blend okay in a few days.”

“It looks great now. You can hardly tell one side is shorter than the other.”

She didn’t want to ask, but there was something she’d worried over during the hours when she couldn’t sleep for thinking about the future. She thought he would tell her the truth. “What about the wound? Can you see where the bullet went in or…or anything?”

She hated the hesitation, as if she was afraid of his answer. She squared her shoulders and waited.

When he moved from the chair, she felt a stir of air near her face. Warmth touched her an instant before he did.

Fingers caressed the side of her jaw before sliding under her chin and lifting her face. She stared up at him, or where she imagined him to be.

She was wrong. When he spoke, she realized his face was nearly level with hers and very close. His breath caressed her cheek as he answered.

“The scar at your temple won’t be visible. Your hair will cover it completely when it grows another half inch. Now under your chin…”

She waited, her breath shallow, for his pronouncement.

“That might be noticed if someone is specifically looking for it, or if they happen to be at this level with your head tilted just so. Otherwise, it isn’t obvious. The surgeon did an excellent job of stitching it up.”

Her breath rushed out in audible relief. Feeling self-conscious, she tried to laugh. That sounded even worse.

“Nothing like being vain,” she finally managed.

“Everyone is,” he said softly, “to a certain extent. No one wants to feel like a freak.”

His tone was deep, with an unexpected huskiness that surprised and disturbed her. He’d sounded amused, cynical, maybe bitter, but also gentle and understanding. Which didn’t fit her image of him at all.

“Well, that’s one worry you’ve certainly never had,” she said, injecting wry amusement in her voice.

“Haven’t I?”

Wondering what he meant, she instinctively reached toward him, as if to check for herself that he was as she remembered. She encountered his lean cheek and chiseled jawline. He had classical good looks, the bone structure strong and masculine, his nose straight, his lips…she tried to think of a descriptive word and failed.

She traced the outline of his mouth with her fingertips. His lips were warm, firm and yet surprisingly soft. When they moved slightly under her touch, a tingle of electricity zinged up her arm.

She drew back, startled.

Her unthinking action was too intimate. She’d invaded his personal space. “I’m sorry. I don’t know what came over me, to touch you like that.”

A hand caught her wrist and brought her hand into contact with the warm flesh again. “Go ahead,” he invited. “I like being touched. By you,” he added in a very soft voice, as if it were a surprising afterthought.

Thus encouraged, she outlined his nose, ran a finger over each eyebrow, then glided over his forehead to his hair. The strands felt crisp and clean under her hand.

She knew it was inky black. So were his eyebrows and lashes. His eyes were a light, pure blue. It was a startling combination and extremely attractive.

The scent of shampoo and aftershave came to her. His cheek was smooth to her touch as if he’d showered and shaved recently. She thought how it might be if they kissed—

“You’re as handsome as ever,” she reported, dropping her hands to her lap, feeling foolish and inept in a way she hadn’t felt since her first date.

He stood and moved away.

Toward the fireplace, she surmised. His tall—six-two or so—frame blocked its warmth. Odd, but she sensed something was bothering him. She couldn’t imagine what.

Rory was a man who had it all—looks, money, respect, the career he’d chosen even though she’d heard his father had wanted him to go into law. What was his problem?

It occurred to her that he’d never married. He’d dated various women, none of them for long, according to local gossip. Why settle for one when so many were available?

The black depression returned. Hearing Megan’s footsteps, she was glad he’d moved away. An odd picture they would have made, her exploring his face as if she’d never seen the man before.

And him letting her…even encouraging it.

Well, weirder things had probably happened. She clasped her hands tightly in her lap and felt the tingle lightly play over her fingertips and up her arm again. She’d never felt that before, not just from touching someone.

“Why don’t you stay for dinner?” Megan said to Rory, coming into the room. “Grandfather would love to have a man to talk to for a change. He and I rattle around the house like two lost souls most nights. That’s why I’m delighted Shannon’s here. She can entertain us now with wild exciting tales of her work.”

“Thanks, I’d like that. I imagine Shannon’s had some interesting experiences,” Rory said.

“Well, nothing else as exciting as the robbery and ‘shoot-out,’” she said, using the media’s term with a large dollop of droll humor.

Megan and Rory laughed at her stories as she recounted some of the odd things people did in unexpected situations—like the man who carried the cash register out of his burning store and set it on the hood of his burning car.

To her surprise, the next hour passed quickly. She even began to relax as Rory took up the conversational reins and amused them with stories of pets and their owners.

She found herself listening intently. There were nuances in people’s voices she hadn’t noticed before…such as the husky, sexy quality in the masculine baritone. A tingle raced along her scalp and down her neck.

A noise came from down the hall. “Here’s Grandfather,” Megan announced, rising. “Rory is staying for dinner with us,” she told the older man. “I told him you would be glad of some male company.”

Shannon felt her grandfather’s kiss on her cheek, then heard him greet Rory in a guttural tone, the words indistinct.

Rory chatted easily, relating news of the ranches around the valley and the people on them, all known to the Windoms for years and years. He’d always been a polite person when they met, even when they argued over local issues, but now she saw—realized, she corrected—that he was a considerate one, too.

He told of his plans to breed an Olympic champion. “Big pie-in-the-sky plans,” he admitted with a self-deprecating chuckle. “But if you’re going to dream, it might as well be a big dream as a small one.”

“I agree,” Megan put in.

“What’s your dream?” Shannon asked. She and her cousin, only a year younger and her best friend, had shared everything as teenagers. As adults, they had put aside long, heart-searching discussions for the realities of living.

Megan laughed. “I want to ride that Olympic champion for Rory.”

Shannon pictured the other two working together on their common goal. They would probably fall in love and marry. Their children would be beautiful….

Loneliness swept over her with no warning, a terrible desolate sense of isolation. No one would want her—

With an effort, she pulled herself back from the brink of morbid self-pity. That wouldn’t do, not at all.

For the rest of the evening, the conversation flowed among the three of them. Her grandfather surprised her by managing to make a few comments, an improvement over his usual silent presence.

He’d been through ten years of living in a wheelchair, barely able to communicate during that time, all without a whimper. She’d never seen him cry over his fate. Clenching her hand into a fist, she vowed to be as brave, no matter what happened nine days from now.

A hand touched her clenched one, lightly, briefly.

She realized it was Rory’s, seated at her left. Turning towards him, she smiled to show him she was fine.

“Atta girl,” he murmured next to her ear, startling her at how close he was.

After dinner, their guest insisted on helping Megan clean up. While they had someone come in occasionally to clean the house and watch after Grandfather, they couldn’t afford full-time help.

A five-thousand acre ranch was expensive to run but brought in little money. Thanks to Kate, the place was solvent, but for a while after her Uncle Sean’s death, the cousins had thought they might lose it.

Shannon worried that she would now be an added expense on the household budget. She needed to find a way to make a living. Others managed, she reminded herself, as she mentally cringed at the idea of facing people without being able to see their gestures and expressions.

Besides, she’d be able to see with her right eye at the very least. She was sure of it.

But just in case, what could she do?

While the conversation ebbed and flowed around her, she contemplated the future. As a psychologist, she didn’t have to have sight. She could record her sessions and dictate her notes. It would be more difficult but not impossible.

“Don’t you think so, Shannon?” Megan asked.

“What? I’m sorry. I wasn’t listening.”

From her left came the sound of a deep chuckle. Rory said, “We were discussing a partnership, Megan and I. We think it makes sense to combine our efforts on a horse-breeding program.”

“To produce an Olympic champ?” she asked.

“Right,” he said, not at all embarrassed about revealing his dreams of the future.

Shannon put aside her own worries and considered. Rory might be good for Megan. Her cousin spent way too much of her time alone or with the kids in the riding classes she taught or with their grandfather.

“It makes sense. I mean, you’re both experts with horses. Besides, it would save you an enormous amount of money in vet bills,” she told her cousin, then realized how crass that sounded.

He laughed as if delighted with this practical observation. “Well, then, that settles it. We have official endorsement from the sheriff’s department.”

A wisp of memory floated into her mind. A voice. Deep. Soothing. Reassuring. Someone—a man, she knew that—had examined her with hands so gentle she’d longed to see his face. His touch had been cool on her hot forehead and at her temple. When she’d opened her eyes and tried to see him, she’d been blinded by the brilliant light that had surrounded him like a halo.

“The weather is supposed to be nice tomorrow,” Rory continued. “Let’s go riding. The mare that had the inflamed leg needs some light exercise, and I want to see how she handles herself with other horses.”

Silence ensued after the invitation.

Shannon assumed Megan was thinking it over. A hand nudged her arm.

“Hey, you gone to sleep?” he asked.

“Are you talking to me?”

“Yeah. I know Megan wants to go. How about you?”

Fear rushed over her. “I—I don’t know. I hadn’t thought about it.”

“You need to get out,” he said decisively. “Don’t worry. We’ll watch out so you don’t fall down a gopher hole.”

Shannon heard Megan gasp. “Rory,” she scolded.

“I wanted her to know it won’t be a case of the blind leading the blind,” he said blandly. “Unless she’s scared, or doesn’t trust us to watch after her.”

Shannon’s hackles rose. “I’ve been riding horses since I could sit up by myself. I’d hardly be afraid of one. Especially if Megan is with me.”

There, that would let him know her faith was in her cousin, not a handsome charmer like him.

“Good. I’ll be over around noon or whenever I finish at the clinic.” He paused. “It is okay for her to ride, isn’t it?”

“Well, the doctor didn’t say she was under any restrictions on activities,” Megan told him. “At least, not to me.”

“Nor to me,” Shannon informed them briskly, determined to speak for herself. After all, she wasn’t an invalid.

The clock on the mantel chimed ten times. Shannon hadn’t realized it was so late. Fatigue rolled over her. It had been a very long day. Her emotions had gyrated through several ups and downs.

“Grandfather is ready to go to his room,” Megan announced. “I’ll make us some cocoa and be back shortly.”

Shannon kissed her grandfather’s cheek when he stopped by the rocker and patted her knee. “Good night,” she murmured to the patriarch, again experiencing a fierce protective love for her family.

“What makes you sad?” Rory asked when the other two were gone.

“I was thinking of my grandfather. He’s outlived his wife and all three of his children. That must be a terribly lonely thing for a person. Then to have a stroke and be confined in a wheelchair seems so unfair.”

“Yeah, it’s tough. But so is he. And you.”

She smoothed the hair over her temple and managed a smile. “I’m not so sure—”

“I am.”

“Listen, about tomorrow.” She paused, trying to figure out how to say what she was thinking. “You don’t have to…to keep an eye on me. I mean, you’re under no obligation to watch after me—”

“I never thought I was.”

“What I’m trying to say is that…well, I know you found me and saved my life and all, but you don’t have to feel responsible for me. You don’t have to check on me. After all, I’m not your patient,” she ended stoically.

He snorted, made a strangling sound, then burst into unabashed laughter.

She realized how stupid she’d sounded. “Okay, so I made a donkey of myself. You know what I meant.”

He stifled the chortles. “Yes, I know. I don’t feel I have to look after you.”

She heard him move, then felt his touch on her cheek. She held very still while her heart set up a heavy, alarmed pounding. Fear, unlike that experienced during the past ten days, fluttered through her chest.

“But you do have the most kissable mouth of any woman I’ve ever met,” he murmured in an oddly quiet tone, almost as if he spoke to himself.

Her breath hung in her throat, then she laughed. “You suddenly noticed this? That’s a bit hard to swallow when we’ve lived in the same town all our lives.”

“Yeah,” he agreed. “Sometimes it takes an incident to change fate, so to speak. Like seeing a person on a snowy night with Christmas lights sparkling in her eyes.”

He touched her temple next to the patch over her left eye. When she felt warmth near her mouth, she gasped, unable to believe what she thought was about to happen.

Then his mouth was there, increasing the warmth to heat, then fire.

Stunned, she couldn’t move, couldn’t think. Except for one question. Why had she ever thought of him as a person of coolness? His touch was that of the sun, radiating warmth clear down to her toes.

Confusion swept over her.

Now he was one with the dark, swirling fog that had haunted her the week of the coma, with the longing that had invaded her soul as she’d searched for a way out of the hot darkness, with the awful need for another person that frightened her because it felt too dangerous.

“Don’t,” she whispered.

He drew back slightly. “I can’t help it. Your lips are too tempting.”

His mouth touched hers again. His hands stroked through her hair. She hesitated, then, unable to stop, leaned into the kiss, letting it take her, needing the healing touch—

“No,” she said and jerked away.

He didn’t insist, but she could sense his gaze on her. “That was an experiment,” he said finally.





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