Come Lie With Me - Linda Howard [22]
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