blind—how do you think I do, Miss Steele?” he demanded harshly, his deep voice cold and cutting, his unseeing wintery eyes glaring at her. “I trip over the furniture, I turn over glasses, and I hate being led around like a child! Did my stepmother tell you that you’re the fifth?” he added with a bitter laugh.
“Fifth what?” she asked, holding on to her nerve.
“Nurse, of course,” he replied impatiently. “I’ve gone through that many in a month. How long do you expect to last?”
“As long as I need to, Mr. van der Vere,” she replied calmly.
He cocked his head, as if straining to hear her. “Not afraid of me, miss?” he prodded.
She shifted her shoulders. “Actually, sir, I’m quite fond of wild animals,” she said with a straight face, while Lorraine gaped at her.
A faint movement in the broad face caught her attention. “Are you presuming to call me a wild animal?” he retorted.
“Oh, no, sir,” Dana assured him. “I wouldn’t flatter you on such short acquaintance.”
He threw back his head and laughed. “Nervy, aren’t you?” he murmured. “You’ll need that nerve if you stay here long.” He turned away and found the corner of the desk, easing himself back into his chair.
“Well, I’ll leave you two to…get acquainted,” Lorraine said, seizing her opportunity. She backed out the door with an apologetic smile at Dana, and closed it behind her.
“Would you like to get acquainted with me, Miss Nurse?” Gannon van der Vere asked arrogantly.
“Oh, definitely sir. I do consider it an advantage to get to know the enemy.”
He chuckled. “Is that how you see me?”
“That’s obviously how you want to be seen,” she told him. “You don’t like being nursed, do you? You’d much rather sit behind that great desk and brood about being blind.”
The smile faded and his gray eyes glittered sightlessly toward the source of her voice. “I beg your pardon?”
“Have you been out of this house since the accident?” she asked. “Have you bothered to learn braille, or to walk with a cane? Have you seen about getting a Seeing Eye dog?”
“I don’t need crutches!” he shot back. “I’m a man, not a child. I won’t be fussed over!”
“But you must see that the only recourse you’ve given your stepmother is to find help for you…” she said, attempting reason “…if you won’t even make the effort to help yourself.”
He lifted his nose in what Dana immediately recognized as the prelude to an outburst of pure venom.
“Perhaps I would if I could be left alone long enough,” he replied in a voice so cold it dripped icicles. “I’ve been ‘helped’ out of my mind. The last nurse my stepmother brought here had the audacity to suggest that I might benefit from a psychiatrist. She left in the middle of the night.”
“I can see you now, flinging her out the front steps in her bedclothes,” Dana retorted, unperturbed.
“Impertinent little creature, aren’t you?” he growled.
“If you treat your employees this way, Mr. van der Vere, I’m amazed that you still have any,” she said calmly. “Now, what would you like for dinner and I’ll show you how to start feeding yourself. I assume you don’t like being spoon-fed…?”
He muttered something harsh and banged his fist down on the desk. “I’m not hungry!”
“In that case I’ll tell the cook not to bother preparing anything for you,” she said cheerfully. “When you need me, do call.”
She started out the door, trying not to hear what he was saying to her back.
“Sticks and stones, Mr. van der Vere,” she reminded him sweetly as she opened the door.
He growled something in another language and followed it with a slam of something on the big wooden desk. Dana smiled secretly as she closed the door behind her. Challenge, was that what had been said about this job? It would certainly be that, she affirmed silently.
Lorraine was waiting for her in the hall, wringing her hands. Her small face was heavily lined with apprehension.
“Now, dear,” she began nervously, “he’s not at all as horrible as he seems, and I don’t mind raising your salary…!”
Dana laughed heartily. “Oh, that won’t be necessary. You couldn’t pay me to leave now. It would be like retreating, and a good nurse never retreats under fire.”
The older woman was visibly relieved. “Oh” was all she managed to say.
“But I can certainly understand why my predecessors were in such a rush to get out the door,” she added with a grin. “He does have a magnificent temper, doesn’t he?”
Lorraine sighed. “Yes, he does. Blindness isn’t easy for a man like my stepson, you know. He is—was—so athletic. He especially liked water-skiing and snow skiing and aerobatics in his plane….”
The other woman was painting a picture of a man who had enjoyed a reckless life-style, as if he hadn’t considered life precious enough to safe-guard.
She frowned. “Dangerous sports.”
“Very obviously,” Lorraine said quietly. “He’s been that way since his wife died in the automobile wreck. He was driving, you see. It was many years ago, but he’s never been the Gannon he was when I married his father.”
“How old was he when you married?” she asked quietly, sensing a kindred spirit.
“He was ten.” She sighed, smiling. “His mother died when he was born, and his father went to his own grave loving her. I was a substitute. He cared for me,” she said quickly. “But not in the same way he cared for Gannon’s mother.” She turned away, as if her own memories were painful. “Is your room all right, my dear?”
“It’s lovely. I’ll enjoy it very much while I’m here. Mrs. van der Vere, exactly what is the problem with your stepson’s eyes? Mrs. Pibbs was rather vague, and I’d like to know.”
“That’s the problem,” Lorraine said as she led the way into her small sitting room and took a chair overlooking the rocky coastline. “There is no medical reason for his blindness. They call it—what’s that word?—idiopathic. Gannon’s doctor said that it could very well be hysterical blindness, brought about by the sudden shock of expecting to be stabbed in the eyes by those ragged wooden beams at the shore. The woman who was driving the speedboat lost control,” she explained. “Gannon was slung toward a dock with splintered boards. How it missed his eyes was truly a miracle, but he didn’t expect it to miss, you see. He was twisted and his head smashed into the dock. When
