Come Lie With Me - Linda Howard [51]
Much sooner than she’d expected, he stood alone, not using his hands. He swayed for a moment, but his legs held and he regained his balance. He worked harder than any patient she’d had before, determined to end his dependency on the wheelchair. He paid for his determination every night with the torturous cramps that he suffered, but he didn’t let up the killing pace he’d set for himself. Dione no longer organized his therapy; he pushed himself. All she could do was try to prevent him from doing so much that he harmed himself, and soothe his muscles at the end of every workout with massages and sessions in the whirlpool.
Sometimes she got a lump in her throat as she watched him straining himself to the limit, his teeth clenched, his neck corded with effort. It would soon be over, and she’d move on to another patient. He was already an entirely different man from the one she’d first seen almost five months before. He was as hard as a rock, tanned the color of teak, his body rippling with lean muscles. He’d regained all of his weight, and possibly more, but it was all muscle, and he was as fit as any professional athlete. She couldn’t analyze the emotions that quivered through her when she watched him. Pride, of course, even some possessiveness. But there was also something else, something that made her feel warm and languid; yet at the same time she was more alive now than she’d ever been. She watched him, and she let him touch her, and she felt closer to him than she’d ever thought possible. She knew this man, knew his fierce pride, the daredevil in him that thumbed his nose at danger and laughingly accepted any challenge. She knew his swift, cutting intelligence, the blast of his temper, his tenderness. She knew the way he tasted, the strength of his mouth, the texture of his hair and skin beneath her hesitant fingers.
He was becoming so much a part of her that, when she allowed herself to think about it, it frightened her. She couldn’t let that happen. Already he needed her less and less, and one day in the near future he would return to his work and she would be gone. For the first time the thought of moving on was painful. She loved the huge, cool hacienda, the smooth tiles underfoot, the serene expanses of white wall. The long summer days she’d spent in the pool with him, the laughter they’d shared, the hours of work, even the sweat and tears, had forged a bond that linked him to her in a way she didn’t think she could bear.
It wasn’t easy admitting that she loved him, but as the gilded fall days slipped past, she stopped trying to hide it from herself. She’d faced too much in the past to practice self-deception for long. The knowledge that at last she loved a man was bittersweet, because she didn’t expect anything to come of it. Loving him was one thing; allowing him to love her was quite another. Her golden eyes were haunted as she watched him, but she threw herself into their remaining time together with a single-minded determination to gather all the memories she could, to let no shadows darken the time she had left. Like pieces of gold, she treasured his deep chuckles, the blistering curses he used whenever his legs wouldn’t do as he wanted, the way the virile groove in his cheek deepened into a dimple when he would look up at her, elated, at every triumph.
He was so vitally alive, so masculine, that he deserved a woman in every sense of the word. She might love him, but she knew that she wouldn’t be able to satisfy him in the way that was most important to him. Blake was a very physical man; that was a part of his character that became more and more evident with each passing day as he regained command of his body. She wouldn’t burden him with the tangle of somber memories that lay just under the calm exterior she presented to the world; she wouldn’t make him feel guilty that she’d come to love him. If it killed her, if it tore her to pieces inside, she’d keep their relationship on an even keel, guide him through the last weeks of his therapy, celebrate with him when he finally took