Come Lie With Me - Linda Howard [2]
“Which one of his interests was he pursuing when he had his accident?” Dione asked.
“Mountain climbing. The rope above him snagged on a rock, and his movements sawed the rope in two. He fell forty-five feet to a ledge, bounced off it, then rolled or fell another two hundred feet. That’s almost the distance of a football field, but the snow must have cushioned him enough to save his life. He’s said more than once that if he’d fallen off that mountain during the summer, he wouldn’t have to spend his life as a cripple now.”
“Tell me about his injuries,” Dione said thoughtfully.
He rose to his feet. “I can do better than that. I have his file, complete with X rays, in my car. Dr. Norwood suggested that I bring it.”
“He’s a sly fox, that one,” she murmured as Mr. Dylan disappeared around the deck. Tobias Norwood knew exactly how to intrigue her, how to set a particular case before her. Already she was interested, just as he had meant her to be. She’d make up her mind after seeing the X rays and reading the case history. If she didn’t think she could help Blake Remington, she wouldn’t put him through the stress of therapy.
In just a moment Mr. Dylan returned with a thick, manila envelope in his grasp. He released it into Dione’s outthrust hand and waited expectantly. Instead of opening it, she tapped her fingernails against the envelope.
“Let me study this tonight, Mr. Dylan,” she said firmly. “I can’t just glance over it and make a decision. I’ll let you know in the morning.”
A flicker of impatience crossed his face; then he quickly mastered it and nodded. “Thank you for considering it, Miss Kelley.”
When he was gone, Dione stared out at the Gulf for a long time, watching the eternal waves washing in with a froth of turquoise and sea-green, churning white as they rushed onto the sand. It was a good thing that her vacation was ending, that she’d already enjoyed almost two full weeks of utter contentment on the Florida panhandle, doing nothing more strenuous than walking in the tide. She’d already lazily begun considering her next job, but now it looked as if her plans had been changed.
After opening the envelope she held up the X rays one by one to the sun, and she winced when she saw the damage that had been done to a strong, vital human body. It was a miracle that he hadn’t been killed outright. But the X rays taken after each successive operation revealed bones that had healed better than they should have, better than anyone could have hoped. Joints had been rebuilt; pins and plates had reconstructed his body and held it together. She went over the last set of X rays with excruciating detail. The surgeon had been a genius, or the results were a miracle, or perhaps a combination of both. She could see no physical reason why Blake couldn’t walk again, provided the nerves hadn’t been totally destroyed.
Beginning to read the surgeon’s report, she concentrated fiercely on every detail until she understood exactly what damage had been done and what repairs had been made. This man would walk again; she’d make him! The end of the report mentioned that further improvement was prevented by the patient’s lack of cooperation and depth of depression. She could almost feel the surgeon’s sense of frustration as he’d written that; after all his painstaking work, after the unhoped-for success of his techniques, the patient had refused to help!
Gathering everything together, she started to replace the contents in the envelope and noticed that something else was inside, a stiff piece of paper that she’d neglected to remove. She pulled it out and turned it over. It wasn’t just a piece of paper; it was a photograph.
Stunned, she stared into laughing blue eyes, eyes that sparkled and danced with the sheer joy of living. Richard Dylan was a sly one, too, knowing full well that few women would be able to resist the appeal of the dynamic man in the photograph.