“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 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 brought a gnawing ache. It was hard to believe that Mandy was gone. Sweet little Mandy, who could be maddening and endearing all at once.
She sat by the darkened window of her room and stared blankly down to where the whitecaps were visible even at night. Why did people have to die? she asked silently. Why did it all have to end so suddenly? All her life her mother had been there when she needed someone to talk to, to confide in, to be advised by.
The divorce had been no surprise when it came. The only unexpected thing was that it had taken so many years for her parents to admit that the marriage was a failure. Dana’s earliest memories were of arguments that seemed to last for days, interspersed with frozen silences. Fortunately she had had grandparents who kept her each summer, and their small farm became a refuge for the young girl who felt neither wanted nor loved by her parents. Even now, with her mother dead, nothing had changed between Dana and her father. She sighed bitterly. Perhaps it would have been different if she’d been the son her father really wanted. Or perhaps it wouldn’t have been.
She got up and dressed for bed. One thing was for certain, she thought as tears welled up in her eyes and spilled over: she was an orphan now. She might as well give them both up, because it was perfectly obvious that her father had no place for her in his life anymore. Her father’s remarriage hadn’t been such a trauma, because they hardly communicated in the first place. But to lose her mother so soon afterward, with the shock of Mandy’s confession that she was going to end it all because of her husband’s remarriage, was more than she could bear. There had been no time to adjust to either change in her life. No time at all.
She put out the light and crawled between the covers. Oh, Mandy. She wept silently. Mandy, why did you have to go and leave me alone? Now I have no one!
Tears soaked the pillow. She wept for the mother she didn’t have anymore; for the father she’d never had. For the future, all bleak and painful and empty. But there was no one to hold her while she cried.
* * *
The next morning Gannon was sitting on the balcony when she carried in his breakfast. The wind was ruffling his blond hair, lifting it, teasing it, and she wondered suddenly how many women had done that. He had wonderful hair, thick and pale and slightly wavy.
“Breakfast,” she called cheerfully, placing the tray on the table beside his chair at the edge of the balcony. The outdoor furniture was white wrought iron, and it fit the isolation and the rustic charm of the place.
Gannon half turned, and his pale gray eyes stared blankly toward her. His shirt, worn with tan slacks, had in its multicolored pattern a shade of gray that exactly matched his pale eyes.
“Must you sound so disgustingly cheerful?” he asked curtly, scowling. “It’s just past dawn, I haven’t had my coffee and right now I hate the whole world.”
“And a cup of coffee will help you love it?” She laughed softly. “My, my, you’re easy to please.”
“Don’t get cute, Joan of Arc,” he returned harshly. He propped his long legs on another chair and sighed heavily. “Put some cream and sugar in that coffee. And how about a sweet roll?”
“How about that,” she murmured, casting an amused glance at his dark face. “I brought you bacon and eggs. More civilized. More protein.”
“I want a sweet roll.”
“I want a house on the Riviera and a Labrador retriever named Johnston, but we don’t always get what we want, do we?” she asked, and placed the plate in front of him, rattling the utensils against it loudly.
His chiseled lips pursed angrily. “Who’s the boss here, honey, you or me?”
“I am, of course, and don’t call me honey. Would you like me to direct you around the plate?” she asked politely.
“Go ahead. I won’t promise to listen,” he added darkly. He leaned forward, easing toward the coffee cup, and picked it up while she told him what was located where on his plate.
“Why can’t I call you honey?” he asked when she started to go back into the house.
She stopped, staring down at him. “Well, because it isn’t professional,” she said finally.
He laughed mirthlessly. “No, it isn’t. But if you’re blond, I imagine your hair looks like honey, doesn’t it? Or is it pale?”
“It’s quite pale,” she said involuntarily.
“Long?”
“Yes, but I keep it put up.”
“Afraid some man might mistake loosened hair for loosened morals, Joan?” he mocked.
“Don’t make fun of morality, if you please,” she said starchily. “Some of us are old-fashioned enough to take offense.”
With that she marched back into the house, while he made a sound like muffled laughter.
That afternoon he told her he wanted to walk along the beach, a pronouncement so profound that his stepmother caught her breath when she overheard it. Dana only grinned as she took his arm to lead him down the steps to the water. She was just beginning to enjoy this job.
“What changed your mind?” she asked as she guided him along the beach by his sleeve.
“I decided