Come Lie With Me - Linda Howard [54]
“I’ll be able to give you a ballpark figure in a week,” she said, not letting him push her. “But I’ll definitely be able to keep my promise that you’ll be walking by Christmas.”
“Six weeks,” he figured.
“With a cane,” she threw in hastily, and then he glared at her.
“Without a cane,” he insisted. She shrugged. If he set his mind to walking without a cane, he probably would.
“I’ve been thinking of going back to work,” he said, startling her. She looked up and was tangled in the web of his blue gaze; it captured her as surely as a spider caught a helpless fly. “I could do it now, but I don’t want to interfere with my therapy. What do you say about the first of the year? Will I be far enough along that working won’t interfere with my progress?”
Her throat clogged. By the first of the year she’d be gone. She swallowed and said in a low but even voice, “You’ll be out of therapy by then and can resume your normal schedule. If you want to continue your exercise program, that’s up to you; you have all of the equipment here. You won’t have to work as hard as you have, because I was building you up from a very low point. All you have to do now, if you want to continue, is maintain the level you’re at now, which won’t require such intensive training. If you’d like, I’ll draw up a program for you to follow to stay in your present shape.”
Blue lightning suddenly flashed from his eyes. “What do you mean, for me to follow?” he demanded harshly, his hand darting out to grip her wrist. Despite her strength, her bones were slender, aristocratic, and his long fingers more than circled her flesh.
Dione could feel her insides crumbling; hadn’t he realized that when his therapy was completed, she’d be leaving? Perhaps not. Patients were so involved with themselves, with their progress, that the reality of other responsibilities didn’t occur to them. She’d been living for weeks with the pain of knowing that soon she’d have to leave him; now he had to realize it, too.
“I won’t be here,” she said calmly, straightening her shoulders. “I’m a therapist; it’s what I do for a living. I’ll be on another case by then. You won’t need me anymore; you’ll be walking, working, everything you did before…though I think you should wait a while before climbing another mountain.”
“You’re my therapist,” he snapped, tightening his grip on her wrist.
She gave a sad laugh. “It’s normal to be possessive. For months we’ve been isolated in our own little world, and you’ve depended on me more than you have on any other person in your life, except your mother. Your perspective is distorted now, but when you begin working again, everything will right itself. Believe me, by the time I’ve been gone a month, you won’t even think about me.”
A dark red flush ran up under his tan. “Do you mean you’d just turn your back on me and walk away?” he asked in a disbelieving tone.
She flinched, and tears welled in her eyes. She’d gone for years without crying, having learned not to when she was a child, but Blake had shattered that particular control. She’d wept in his arms…and laughed in them. “It…it’s not that easy for me, either,” she quivered. “I get involved, too. I always…fall a little in love with my patients. But it passes…. You’ll pick up your life and I’ll move on to another patient—”
“I’ll be damned if you’re going to move in with some other man and fall in love with him!” Blake interrupted hotly, his nostrils flaring.
Despite herself, Dione laughed. “Not all of my patients are men; I have a large percentage of children.”
“That’s not the point.” His flesh was suddenly taut over his cheekbones. “I still need you.”
“Oh, Blake,” she said in a half sob, half chuckle. “I’ve been through this more times than I can remember. I’m a habit, a crutch, nothing more, and I’m a crutch that you don’t even need now. If I left today, you’d do just fine.”
“That’s a matter of opinion,” he snapped. He shifted his grasp on her wrist and brought her hand up, cradling it to his beard-roughened cheek for a moment before touching his mouth to her knuckles. “You shoved