Come Lie With Me Read online

  Suddenly a memory of Scott flashed into her mind and she almost cried out, her hands rising in the dark to push him away. The sickness in her changed to pure nausea, and she had to swallow convulsively to control it. For a moment she wavered on the edge of a black abyss, memories rising like bats from a rancid cave to dart at her; then she clenched her teeth on the wild cry that was welling up in her and reached out a trembling hand to turn on the lamp. The light drove away the horrors, and she lay staring at the shadows.

  To combat the memories she deliberately pushed them aside and called up Blake’s face as a sort of talisman against the evils of the past. She saw his blue eyes, burning with despair, and her breath caught. Why was she lying there worrying about herself, when Blake was teetering on the edge of his own abyss? Blake was the important one, not her! If he lost interest now, it would wreck his recovery.

  She’d trained herself for years to push her personal interests and problems aside and concentrate entirely on her patient. Her patients had reaped the benefits, and the process had become a part of her inner defenses when things threatened to become too much for her. She used it now, ruthlessly locking out all thoughts except those of Blake, staring at the ceiling so intently that her gaze should have burned a hole in it.

  On the surface the problem seemed to be simple: Blake needed to know that he could still respond to a woman, still make love. She didn’t know why he couldn’t now, unless it was because of the commonsense reasons she’d given him just a few hours before. If that were the case, as his health improved and he gained strength, his sexual interest would reawaken naturally, if he had someone to interest him.

  That was a problem Dione chewed on her lower lip. Blake obviously wasn’t going to start dating now; his pride wouldn’t allow him to be helped in and out of cars and restaurants, even if Dione would allow him to disrupt his schedule so drastically, which was out of the question. No, he had to stay in therapy, and they were just now getting into the toughest part of it, which would require more time and effort, and pain, from him.

  There simply was a shortage of available women in his life right now, a necessary shortage, but there nevertheless. Besides Serena, Alberta and Angela, there was only herself, and she automatically discounted herself. How could she attract anyone? If any man made a move toward her, she reacted like a scalded cat, which wasn’t a good start.

  A frown laced her brows together. That was true with all men…except Blake. Blake touched her, and she wasn’t frightened. She had wrestled with him, romped on the floor with him…kissed him.

  The idea that bloomed was, for her, so radical that when it first entered her consciousness she dismissed it, only to have it return again and again, boomeranging in her mined. Blake needed help, and she was the only woman available to help him. If she could attract him…

  A shudder rose from her toes and flowed upward to shake her entire body, but it wasn’t from revulsion or fear, except perhaps fear at her own daring. Could she do it? How could she do it? How could she possibly manage such a thing? It wouldn’t do Blake any good if he made a pass at her and she ran screaming from the room. She didn’t think she would do that with him, but just the thought of trying to attract a man was so foreign to her that she couldn’t be sure. Could she tempt him enough to prove to him that he was a man?

  She couldn’t let the situation progress into anything concrete; she knew that not only was it something she wasn’t ready for, but an affair with a patient was totally against her professional integrity. Besides, she wasn’t Blake’s type, so there was little chance of anything serious happening. She tried to decide if he would find her so lacking in expertise that she wouldn’t appeal to him at all, or if his isolation for the past two years would blind him to her inexperience. He was fast leaving behind his morose preoccupation with his invalidism, and she knew that she wouldn’t be able to fool him for long. Every day he became more himself—the man in the photo that Richard had shown her, with a biting intellect and a driving nature that swept everyone along with him like the force of a tidal wave.

  Could she do it?

  She trembled at the thought, but she was so shaken by what he’d said that night that she didn’t push the idea away as she would have before. For the first time in her life Dione decided to try to attract a man. It had been so long since she’d cut herself off from sexual contact with anyone that she had no idea if she could do it without looking obvious and silly. She was thirty years old, and she felt as inexperienced and awkward as any young girl just entering her teens. Her brief marriage to Scott didn’t count at all; far from trying to attract Scott, after her wedding night she’d gone out of her way to avoid him. Blake was a mature, sophisticated man, used to having any woman he wanted before the accident had robbed him of the use of his legs. Her only advantage was that she was the only available woman in his life right then.

  She just didn’t know how to arouse a man.

  That unusual problem, one she’d never thought she’d face, was the reason she was standing hesitantly before the mirror the next morning, long past the time when she usually woke Blake. She hadn’t even dressed; she was staring at herself in the mirror, chewing on her lower lip and frowning. She knew that men usually liked the way she looked, but were looks enough? She wasn’t even blond, as Blake preferred his women to be. Her thick black hair swirled over her shoulders and down her back; she’d been about to braid it out of her way when she’d paused, staring at herself, and she still held the brush in her hand, forgotten, as she intensely surveyed the ripe figure of the woman in the mirror. Her breasts were full and firm, tipped with cherry nipples, but perhaps she was too bosomy for his tastes. Perhaps she was too athletic, too strong; perhaps he liked dainty, ultrafeminine women.

  She groaned aloud, twisting around to study herself from the back. So many ifs! Maybe he was a leg man; she had nice legs, long and graceful, smoothly tanned. Or maybe…Her bottom, covered only by wispy, pink silk, was curvy and definitely feminine.

  Her clothes were another problem. Her everyday wardrobe consisted mostly of things that were comfortable to work in: jeans, shorts, T-shirts. They were neat and practical, but not enticing. She did have good clothes, but nothing that could be worn while working and be practical, too. Her dresses weren’t sexy, either, and her nightgowns were straight out of a convent, despite Blake’s comment about her “running around in see-through nighties.” She needed new clothes, things that were sexy but not transparently so, and definitely a real see-through nightie.

  She was so preoccupied that she hadn’t heard the sounds of Blake in his bedroom; when his rumbling, early-morning voice broke into her thoughts with an ill-tempered, “Lazybones, you overslept this morning!” she whirled to face the door as it swung open and Blake rolled his wheelchair through the doorway.

  They both froze. Dione couldn’t even raise her arms to cover her bare breasts; she was stunned by the shock of his entrance, so lost in her thoughts that she was unable to jerk herself back to reality and take any action. Neither did Blake appear capable of moving, though good manners demanded that he leave the room. He didn’t; he sat there with his blue eyes becoming even bluer, a dark, stormy expression heating his gaze as it raked down her almost naked body, then rose to linger over her breasts.

  “Good Lord,” he whispered.

  Dione’s mouth was dry, her tongue incapable of moving. Blake’s intent look was as warm as a physical touch, and her nipples shrank into tiny points, thrusting out at him. He sucked in an audible breath, then slowly let his eyes dip lower, down the curve of her ribcage, the satiny smoothness of her stomach; his gaze probed the taut little indentation of her navel and finally settled on the juncture of her thighs.

  An unfamiliar curling sensation low in her stomach frightened her, and she was finally able to move. She whirled away from him with a low cry, belatedly raising her arms to cover herself. Standing rigidly with her back to him, she said in a voice filled with mortification, “Oh, no! Please, get out!”