speeding car bent upon her total destruction. When it happened the next time, she wouldn’t be able to see it coming.
IN THE LOBBY of her doctor’s building where he’d been waiting, Graham was relieved to see Casey finally emerge from the elevator. She wasn’t alone.
Graham nodded at the nurse then focused on Casey.
“Hey, babe.” He swallowed. “How’d it go?” He had heard the tap of her white cane before he actually saw her, but he could tell by her face that she’d had bad news. Casey didn’t hide her emotions as well as Graham did these days. She hadn’t walled them up inside.
Startled by his voice so near, Casey missed a step and Graham cursed himself. He hadn’t meant to surprise her. Briefly, her head tilted in his direction. Then she kept walking, the cane that had become an extension of her right hand in the past few weeks rhythmically tapping the Carrara marble floor.
“It’s a miracle,” she murmured in the too-light tone she sometimes used to downplay a problem, as she walked right past him. “I can see, I can see.”
Obviously, she couldn’t, and sudden anger swept through him. Graham glanced again around the busy lobby of the professional building, making sure it remained secure. For the past half hour, after his quick stop at home to shower away the smell of smoke and change clothes, he’d made regular checks of the area from his leaning stance against the marble wall. But, like Jackie Miles’s earlier blunder, he couldn’t quell his own uneasiness about Casey.
Graham peeled himself away from the wall. “I’ll take care of her,” he said to the nurse after introducing himself. When Casey didn’t object, he waited again while she thanked her doctor’s nurse, who gave Graham a crisp goodbye. And another thorough once-over as if to reassure herself that she was leaving Casey in good hands.
Graham watched the woman disappear into the elevator.
Casey wouldn’t welcome him fussing over her, either. Yet she needed someone right now—in this case, him.
He stepped in front of her, forcing Casey to halt when she would have struck off on her own.
“Tell me what he said.”
She gazed sightlessly at the floor between them.
“He said, ‘be patient.’”
Her sleek blond bob had slipped like silk around her pale cheeks, creating a heavy curtain that hid her smooth, even features. Her straight little nose. Her beautiful green eyes were hooded by her lids now, and she didn’t try to look at him, which made him all the more angry. With her, with himself. They might not be married any longer but…
“Casey. Don’t. It’s me.”
And he watched her crumple. Just like that.
She didn’t want to, he guessed, but she flowed like warm honey into his waiting arms.
To his surprise, Graham felt a flash of familiar but unwelcome desire run through his body. With their first touch, he had caught fire—like that run-down apartment building for the team exercise. Graham tried to tamp it down, but Casey, slender yet curvy in all the right places, her skin warm and as soft as down, felt like home in his embrace. Hell. What was he doing, lusting over a broken woman? A woman who didn’t belong to him now?
“It’s over,” she said against the front of his dress shirt. He felt wetness seep through the blue cotton. “I’m trapped inside myself. I’ve never liked small, enclosed spaces, but now that’s all I have. I’ll never be able to run an art gallery of my own again. Never see the paintings on the walls. The colors. Never know if something is good, or bad. How could I now?”
Graham shut his eyes, sharing the darkness with her for a moment. “You’ll find a way. You know you will.”
He had to remind himself that they were quits. Over, as she’d said of her gallery.
His remark seemed to stiffen her spine, but he hated seeing her like this, hated knowing what someone else had done to her in that lonely parking garage. To Casey, her career, her life, her future had been snatched away along with her vision.
And her accident still troubled him, too.
That was natural.
She had nearly been killed.
But why in hell had the accident happened in the first place? Mere steps from his own office at Hearthline?
He took another look around the lobby. When he saw nothing suspicious, Graham tipped up her chin so he could look into her eyes, and the pain ripped through him all over again. Her gorgeous green eyes. Hell, he could do this much for her if nothing more.
“Let me take you home. My car’s outside.”
Casey pulled away, then set her shoulders. “I may be blind. I’m not crippled. I am fully capable of leaving this lobby and raising a hand to call a cab.” She stepped back a few inches. “You have no responsibility for me, Graham, remember? Our marriage is over.”
“We’re divorced, not mortal enemies.” Which only made Graham angrier at himself. “Frankly, if you ask me, you could use not only a lift—you could use a friend.”
“You are not my friend.”
Ouch, he thought, but he knew he hadn’t acted like a pal, much less a husband. He couldn’t fault her for not trusting him, for walking out. He’d driven her to it.
Yet Graham would be the first to admit that things weren’t always what they seemed. Including him. Too bad he couldn’t tell Casey anything—for now—but lies.
He double-checked the lobby, finding only the normal flow of passersby intent upon their errands. It didn’t soothe him. He forced his tone to sound lazy, nonthreatening. He wanted to get her out of here.
“Listen, friend or not, I’ve got a great car. Leather seats. Air conditioning. I haven’t had a speeding ticket in, oh, three or four weeks.” Since before Casey was hurt, the last time he’d felt able to unwind. “Take a chance, babe. Sit back and enjoy. I’ll have you home in fifteen minutes. Less, if we hit the lights right.”
Safe, he thought. If only, as he’d planned, he could have kept her safe….
Casey raised her face to his.
“Thank you very much, but I can find my own way home.”
Graham’s mouth tightened. Like hell you will. When she started to tap-tap her way toward the revolving doors, he stood there for a moment, staring, before he went after her. He couldn’t help feeling thwarted—and for some niggling reason he couldn’t define, still afraid for her.
He took one step before he felt the very air around him grow thick, heavy, with an ominous portent that seemed to smother him—and at the same time to shout a warning.
“Casey!”
Too late. Helpless, Graham watched it happen. One second she was making her way to the revolving doors, probably guided to their location by the constant swish of movement she heard as people came and went. In the next instant Casey had been shoved into a moving door. From the sidewalk, a man in dark clothes
