Blind Promises Read Online Free PDF Page A

I cooked it.”
    “You cook?” he asked curtly.
    “I used to live alone. I’d starve to death if I didn’t. Now, if you can’t manage by yourself, I’ll be glad to spoon-feed you….”
    He said something unpleasant, but he got to his feet and stumbled toward the desk.
    She walked around it and caught his hand. He tried to free himself but she held firm, determined not to let him dominate her.
    “I’m offering to help you,” she said quietly, staring up at his scowling face. “That’s all. One human being to another. I’d do the same for man, woman, or child, and I think you would for me if our situations were reversed.”
    He looked shocked for a minute, but he stopped struggling. He let her guide him to his chair behind the desk. But before he sat down, his big hands caught her thin shoulders for a minute and moved upward to her neck and her face and hair. He nodded then and let go of her to drop into the big chair, which barely contained him.
    “I thought you’d be small,” he said after a minute, groping for the cup of hot black coffee she’d placed within his reach.
    “In fact, I’m above average height,” she returned. The feel of his warm, strong hands had made her feel odd, and she wasn’t sure she liked it.
    “Compared to me, miss, you’re small,” he said firmly. “What color is your hair, your eyes?”
    “I have blond hair,” she said. “And brown eyes.”
     
    “An unusual combination.” He picked up his fork and managed to turn over the coffee with one sudden movement. A torrent of words poured Out of him.
    “Stop that,” Dana said sharply. “I’ll walk right out the door if you continue to use such language around me.”
    “I must remember to search my mind for better words if it will get you out of my hair,” he said with malicious enjoyment. “Are you such a prude, little Nurse?”
    “No, sir, I am not,” she assured him. “But I was always told that a repertoire of rude language disguised a pitiful lack of vocabulary. And I believe it.”
    He appeared to be taken aback by the comment. “I’m a man, Miss Steele, not a monk. The occasional word does slip out.”
    “I’ve never understood why men consider it a mark of masculinity to use shocking language,” she replied. “I don’t consider it so. Not that, nor getting drunk, nor driving recklessly….”
    “You should have joined a nunnery, miss,” he observed. “Because you are obviously not prepared to function in the real world.”
    “I find the real world incredibly brutal, Mr. van der Vere,” she said quietly. “People slaughtering other people, abusing little children, finding new ways to kill, making heroes of villains, using sensationalism as a substitute for good drama in motion pictures…. Am I boring you? I don’t find cruelty in the least pleasurable. If that makes me unrealistic, then I suppose that I am one.”
    “It amazes me that you can stand the company of poor weak mortals, Nurse, when you are so obviously
     
    38Blind Promises
    superior to the rest of us,” he said, leaning back in his chair.
    She felt the shock go all the way to her toes. “Superior?” she echoed.
    “You do feel superior?” he mocked. “Have you never made a mistake, I wonder? Have you never been tempted by love or desire, greed or ambition?”
    She flushed wildly and finished mopping up the coffee. “I’m hardly a beauty contest candidate,” she said curtly. “And even if I were, men frankly don’t interest me at all.”
    He raised a curious eyebrow. “Venom.from the little nun? Someone has hurt you badly.”
    “I’m not here to be mentally dissected,” she said, regaining her lost composure. “I’ll get you another cup of coffee.”
    “And I thought you didn’t run from the enemy,” he mused as she left him.
    But she didn’t answer. She couldn’t
    The new environment and sparring with her patient had kept Dana’s mind occupied during the day, but the night brought memories. And the memories