Come Lie With Me Read online

  It was even earlier than it had been the morning before when she gave in to her enthusiasm and bounded into his room, snapping on the light as she did, because it was still dark.

  “Good morning,” she chirped.

  He was still on his side; he opened one blue eye, surveyed her with an expression of horror, then uttered an explicit word that would have gotten his mouth washed out with soap if he’d been younger. Dione grinned at him.

  “Are you ready to start?” she asked innocently.

  “Hell, no!” he barked. “Lady, it’s the middle of the night!”

  “Not quite. It’s almost dawn.”

  “Almost? How close to almost?”

  “In just a few minutes,” she soothed, then ruined it by laughing as she threw the covers off him. “Don’t you want to see the sunrise?”

  “No!”

  “Don’t be such a spoilsport,” she coaxed, swinging his legs off the bed. “Watch the sunrise with me.”

  “I don’t want to watch the sunrise, with you or anyone else,” he snarled. “I want to sleep!”

  “You’ve been asleep for hours, and you don’t want to pass this sunrise up; it’s going to be a special one.”

  “What makes this sunrise so special? Does it mark the beginning of the day you’re going to torture me to death?”

  “Only if you don’t watch it with me,” she promised him cheerfully, catching his hand and urging him upright. She helped him into the wheelchair and covered him with a blanket, knowing that the air would feel cool to him. “Where’s the best place to watch it from?” she asked.

  “By the pool,” he grunted, rubbing his face with both hands and mumbling the words through his fingers. “You’re crazy, lady; a certified lunatic if I’ve ever seen one.”

  She smoothed his tousled hair with her fingers, smiling down at him tenderly. “Oh, I don’t know about that,” she murmured. “Didn’t you sleep well last night?”

  “Of course I did!” he snapped. “You had me so tired I couldn’t hold my head up!” As soon as the words left his mouth a sheepish expression crossed his face. “All right, so it was the best night I’ve had in two years,” he admitted, grudgingly, it was true, but at least he said it.

  “See what a little therapy can do for you?” she teased, then changed the subject before he could flare up at her again. “You’ll have to lead the way to the pool; I don’t want to go through the courtyard, since the workers have put so much of their equipment there. It could be tricky in the dark.”

  He wasn’t enthusiastic, but he put the chair in motion and led her through the silent house to the rear entrance. As they circled around the back to the pool, a bird chirped a single, liquid note in greeting of the new day, and his head lifted at the sound.

  Had it been two years since he’d heard a bird sing?

  Sitting beside the pool, with the quiet ripple of the water making its own music, they silently watched the first graying of dawn; then at last the first piercing ray of the sun shot over the rim of the mountains. There were no clouds to paint the sky in numberless hues of pink and gold, only the clear, clear blue sky and the white-gold sun, but the utter serenity of the new day made the scene as precious as the most glamorous sunrise she’d ever seen. As fast as that, the day began to warm, and he pushed the blanket down from his shoulders.

  “I’m hungry,” he announced, a prosaic concern after the long silence they had shared.

  She looked at him and chuckled, then rose from her cross-legged position on the concrete. “I can see how much you appreciate the finer things in life,” she said lightly.

  “If you insist on getting me up at midnight, naturally I’m hungry by the time dawn rolls around! Am I getting the same slop today that I had yesterday morning?”

  “You are,” she said serenely. “A nutritious, high-protein breakfast, just what you need to put weight on you.”

  “Which you then try your damnedest to beat off of me,” he retorted.

  She laughed at him, enjoying their running argument. “You just wait,” she promised. “By this time next week you’re going to think that yesterday was nothing!”

  Chapter Four

  Dione lay awake, watching the patterns of light that the new moon was casting on the white ceiling. Richard had worked miracles and informed her at dinner that night that the gym was now ready for use, but her problem was with Blake. Unaccountably he’d become withdrawn and depressed again. He ate what Alberta put before him, and he lay silent and uncomplaining while Dione exercised his legs, and that was all wrong. Therapy wasn’t something for a patient to passively accept, as Blake was doing. He could lie there and let her move his legs, but when they started working in the gym and in the pool, he’d have to actively participate.

  He wouldn’t talk to her about what was bothering him. She knew exactly when it had happened, but she couldn’t begin to guess what had triggered it. They had been sniping at each other while she gave him a massage before beginning the exercises, and all of a sudden his eyes had gotten that blank, empty look, and he’d been unresponsive to any of her gibes since then. She didn’t think it was anything she’d said; her teasing that day had been lighthearted, because of his greatly improved spirits.

  Turning her head to read the luminous dial of the clock, she saw that it was after midnight. As she had done every night, she got up to check on Blake. She hadn’t heard the sounds that he usually made when he tried to turn over, but she’d been preoccupied with her thoughts.

  As soon as she entered his room she saw that his legs had that awkward, slightly twisted look that meant he’d already tried to shift his position. Gently she put her left hand on his shoulder and her right on his legs, ready to move him.

  “Dione?”

  His quiet, uncertain voice startled her, and she leaped back. She’d been so intent on his legs that she hadn’t noticed his open eyes, though the moonlight that played across the bed was bright enough for her to see him.

  “I thought you were asleep,” she murmured.

  “What were you doing?”

  “Helping you to roll over on your side. I do this every night; this is the first time you’ve been disturbed by it.”

  “No, I was already awake.” Curiosity entered his tone as he shifted his shoulders restlessly. “Do you mean you come in here in the middle of every night and roll me around?”

  “You seem to sleep better on your side,” she said by way of explanation.

  He gave a short, bitter laugh. “I sleep better on my stomach, or at least I did before. I haven’t slept on my stomach in two years now.”

  The quiet intimacy of the night, the moonlit room, made it seem as if they were the only two people on earth, and she was aware of a deep despair in him. Perhaps he felt a special closeness with her, too; perhaps now, with the darkness as a partial shield, he would talk to her and tell her what was bothering him. Without hesitation she sat down on the edge of the bed and pulled her nightgown snugly around her legs.

  “Blake, what’s wrong? Something’s bothering you,” she said softly.

  “Bingo,” he muttered. “Did you take psychology, too, when you were in training to be Superwoman?”

  She ignored the cut and put her hand on his arm. “Please tell me. Whatever it is, it’s interfering with your therapy. The gym is ready for you, but you aren’t ready for it.”

  “I could’ve told you that. Look, this whole thing is a waste of time,” he said, and she could almost feel the weariness in him, like a great stone weighing him down. “You may feed me vitamins and rev up my circulation, but can you promise that I’ll ever be exactly like I was before? Don’t you understand? I don’t want just ‘improvement,’ or any other compromise. If I can’t be back, one hundred percent, the way I was before, then I’m not interested.”

  She was silent. No, she couldn’t honestly promise him that there wouldn’t always be some impairment, a limp, difficulties that would be with him for the rest of his life. In her experience, the human body