She laughed and flicked water in his face. “Go away. After last night, you can’t possibly be thinking about that.”
“Men think about that on an average of every three minutes.”
She threw him a startled look. “You’re kidding.”
“God’s truth, I swear. It’s a statistic. We think about it while we work, while we eat, while we talk. Then we dream about it.” He grinned and grabbed the bar of soap. “Do you know how sensuous it is to have someone wash your body with soap-slicked hands?”
“Later, cowboy. I’m all used up.”
Hank grinned and soaped his hands anyway. Just a kiss heated her up. He leaned in to grab her arm. She squeaked and swayed toward him. Her lashes fluttered when he ran a hand over her rosy-pink nipples, which hardened and peaked at the brush of his palm. God, how he loved her. She responded to him so readily, each surrender so sweet that he couldn’t get enough of her.
As he played with her nipples, rubbing and tweaking until they swelled, she moaned and let her head fall back. Every line of her slender body was perfectly formed, her skin a satiny alabaster that fascinated him. He wanted her with an insatiable need that couldn’t be slaked, no matter how many times he took her.
Later, Hank was never quite sure how it happened, but somehow he ended up in the shower with her, fully clothed, boots and all.
It was the best sex he’d ever had in his life.
“We can’t afford an eight-hundred dollar crib,” Carly protested three hours later.
Hank signaled to the floor clerk. “We’ll take it,” he said.
“Hank!” Carly clutched his shirtsleeve. “That’s way too much money.”
“It makes down into a youth bed,” he argued. “Two for the price of one.”
“Two for the price of three, don’t you mean? We can get something much less expensive.”
“Where, at the Goodwill?”
Carly gave up and let him go. And to her horror, he went. They bought sheets, bumper pads, darling little unisex sleepers, blankets, and slippers. At the end of the shopping spree, Hank had spent almost four thousand dollars, and they were the proud owners of an oak crib, a hand-tooled cradle, a bath table, a baby bureau, a high chair, a playpen, a swing, a car seat, three mobiles, assorted baby toys, and more clothing and blankets than any one baby could ever possibly need.
On the way home, he flashed her a grin and said, “When we find out if it’s a boy or a girl, we’ll go back for more outfits.”
Carly groaned. “I’m glad we’ve decided on taking a shot at forever. Paying you back for everything would take me into the next millennium.”
He lowered his brows and scowled at her. “Are you under the mistaken impression that you no longer have to pay me back?”
He was always so generous that Carly could scarcely believe her ears.
“The financial arrangement stands,” he said firmly. “You still have to pay me back.” The corners of his mouth twitched. He sent her a twinkling, purely devilish look. “The way I see it, you can work off the debt—starting tonight.”
She gave a startled laugh. “Your boots haven’t even dried out yet, and already you’re thinking about next time?”
“Yeah. You game?”
She was always game. The most wonderful thing about that was that the sex wasn’t just sex. It was sweet, beautiful lovemaking.
The next morning, Hank was at the junction store and happened to see a baby magazine in the rack. He plucked it out and started leafing through. When he came upon several pictures of babies, he wondered if Carly had ever even seen one. All the kids at the Fourth of July barbecue had been older. If she had seen an infant, it had probably been from a distance, which meant that she couldn’t have studied it and filed away the memories.
The thought that she might give birth to their child and have no clear idea of what it looked like bothered Hank. After leaving the store, instead of heading home, he drove into Crystal Falls to look around at the bookstore for baby publications. He wanted his wife to see all kinds of babies, fat ones, skinny ones, curly headed ones, and the funny-looking ones, with spikes of hair poking up. That way, when their child was born, he’d be better able to tell her how it looked.
When he left the store, Hank’s arms were laden with books. He’d even found a prenatal tome with pictures of fetuses at different stages of pregnancy. When he presented his finds to Carly an hour later, she began to cry.
“Oh, Hank.”
“What?” He bent over her where she sat at the table. “Sweetheart, I didn’t mean to make you sad.”
“I’m not sad,” she blubbered. “I’m h-happy.”
Could have fooled him.
Wiping away tears as she went through the collection, she came upon a magazine chock-full of baby pictures. “Oh, aren’t they sweet?” She laughed wetly. “Just look at him. Isn’t that the cutest little dimple you’ve ever seen?”
Hank sat with her to go through the books. They both became solemn as they perused the ultrasound photographs of fetuses in different stages of growth. “That’s ours,” she whispered, touching a fingertip to one picture. “And next month, he’ll look like this.”
“He?” Hank leaned around to steal a quick kiss. “I want a girl who looks like you.”
“Too bad. I want a boy who looks like you.”
“We’ve encountered a serious glitch then,” he said with mock sternness. “And there’s only one way to resolve the problem, having two kids, one for me, and one for you.”
She smiled dreamily and went back to looking at babies. “Next time, we’ll have to plan things much more carefully. The doctor will want me to get pregnant right before a transplant when my corneas are about shot so the lattice can do no real damage.”
Hank hadn’t thought of that. “Well, then.” He caught her chin and made her look at him. “No more babies. We’ll just have the one—or we’ll adopt. I don’t want you to be blind for nine months in order to have another child.”
“I want it to be ours.”
“An adopted child will be ours.”
Her eyes went bright with tears. He could tell she wanted to argue, but something held her back.
Hank had always hoped to have a passel of kids—and he naturally wanted them to be his biological children, if possible. But at what cost?
As Carly’s sight worsened over the next two weeks, Hank juggled his work schedule to take her on day trips. When they weren’t off somewhere playing, he helped her reorganize all the cupboards. Coffee, third cupboard, second shelf, first can on the right.
“I can do this,” he assured her. “If I have to, I’ll label the edges of the shelves so I don’t forget where things go.”
Carly couldn’t help but be touched by Hank’s efforts. She went up on her tiptoes to hug his neck. “Most importantly, don’t forget where I’m at,” she said softly. “I want to enjoy being with you as much as I can while I can still see.”
He kissed her deeply, and before Carly knew it, she was in his arms, the cupboards forgotten.
After their lovemaking, Carly stretched languidly and slipped out of bed, her destination the shower. She had taken only three steps when her foot landed on something that rocked sideways, and she almost went crashing to the floor. Hank leaped to his feet in a flash.
“Are you okay?” He grabbed her arm as if he still feared she might fall. “My boot, you stepped on my boot. I’m sorry, honey. I’ll kick them under the bed from now on.”
“I’m fine, Hank. It was only a little stumble.”
Even as she reassured him, Carly knew she wasn’t truly fine. She hadn’t seen his boot. When, she wondered, had her eyesight become so poor? She glanced down, hoping against hope that she’d be able to see the floor planks. Instead, it looked as if a dense fog had gathered around her ankles. She turned her gaze to the wall at the opposite side of the room, and it, too, was obscured by fog.
Hank touched her shoulder. “Sweetheart, what’s wrong?”
Carly gr
oped for her robe on the foot of the bed and slipped it on. “Nothing. I’m fine.” The return of her blindness shouldn’t have come as a shock. She just couldn’t quite believe it had sneaked up on her so quickly. Her throat went tight. “It’s time to start being a neat freak, though.” She forced a smile. “I can’t see the floor anymore.” She laughed and flapped her wrist. “How that happened without my noticing, I don’t know.”
He glanced down. “You can’t see it at all?”
She shook her head. Then, needing to be alone with the discovery for a few minutes, she hurried into the bathroom.
From that moment forward, Hank became a neat freak, never kicking off his boots and leaving them lie, never moving furniture and not putting it back, and always, always making sure he left the cupboards exactly as they had arranged them. Occasionally, when he slipped up, Carly couldn’t bring herself to say anything. He’d been so sweet, and he was trying so hard, how could she possibly complain?
A few days later, Hank was holding up flashcards for her when she realized he’d begun holding them much closer than in the past.
“How long have you been doing that?” she asked softly.
He didn’t pretend not to know what she meant. “I’m not sure. A while.” He returned the cards to the box. “I, um—” He cleared his throat and met her gaze. “Every time we use them, I have to hold them just a little closer.”
Looking at his face, it struck Carly like a dash of ice water that his features weren’t as clear as they’d once been. It was like looking at a photograph with brushed edges, the planes and lines indistinct.
She’d been so sure she was prepared for this—so sure she could deal with it when it happened. But it was much more difficult to accept than she’d expected. She knew what it was like to see now. She’d grown accustomed to it. Now, in too short a time, the shutters would be closed again.
In that moment, Carly knew that as much as she would miss seeing countless things, the one thing she would miss most was seeing Hank’s face.
“You okay?” he asked.
She nodded and smiled. “I’m fine. No big deal.”
Only it was a big deal. She didn’t want to be blind again. The thought of it made her want to run, but it was darkness she couldn’t escape.
As if he sensed her panic, Hank distracted her by carrying her to the bedroom and making passionate love to her. Afterward, Carly lay replete in his arms, loving him as she’d never loved anyone.
When he left a few minutes later, she stood at the window and peered out at the ranch, trying desperately to see the landscape. It was all a blur wherever she looked, but memory served her well. There were perils everywhere—unruly horses, uneven ground, irrigation ditches, ponds, and barbed wire. She could make her way safely right now if she exercised caution, but she knew that wouldn’t last for long.
The next morning Carly was awakened at six by a searing pain in her eyes. At first, she tried to go back to sleep, but the discomfort was so acute she couldn’t. Holding a hand cupped over her face to block out the light, she went to the medicine cabinet for her drops, but when she trailed her fingers over the shelf, she couldn’t find the bottle. She or Hank had evidently moved them.
Pain lanced into Carly’s eyes as she tried to read the labels on the containers in the cabinet. Blurry shapes. She could barely make out the containers, let alone the lettering.
Defeated, she closed the cabinet and rested her throbbing forehead against the cool mirror. The pain was too intense to ignore. Hank might not return to the house until lunchtime, and she couldn’t wait that long for her drops, not with her eyes hurting like this.
She stumbled to the kitchen. Closing her eyes, she dialed him on his cell phone. No answer. She got his voice mail instead. “Hi, this is Hank. I’m sorry I can’t take your call right now.”
Carly realized that he’d probably left his cell phone in the truck. She tried to call the main house to ask if Molly could come down to help her, but there was no answer. She belatedly remembered that Jake and his wife had taken an unplanned trip to Portland last night, something about a problem at the investment firm that Molly now managed with admirable diligence.
There was no help for it, Carly decided. She’d have to get dressed and walk over to the stable. Hank had to come home and find her drops.
En route to the stable a few minutes later, Carly stepped off into a hole and wished for the first time in her life that she’d learned to use a cane. She’d always managed well in the city without one. Unfortunately, the ground surfaces weren’t as even or predictable here. She staggered but managed to catch her balance before she fell.
The close call made her stop and take a long look around her. Her bubble, she realized, had shrunk to a diameter of about three feet. She couldn’t see the ground at all. If she wandered from the beaten path, there were logs and stumps everywhere.
Fixing her gaze straight ahead, she moved cautiously toward the stable, feeling ahead of her with the toes of her shoes for obstacles in her path. No problem. She had skateboarded blind, she reminded herself. She could surely walk a hundred yards over slightly uneven ground without killing herself.
As she continued walking, she tried to listen for sounds, but all she heard was the whisper of the wind in the trees. She also counted her steps, straining to see the outline of the stable up ahead. She wasn’t surprised when she saw nothing. Three feet of clearance didn’t allow for much in terms of long distance vision. Feeling her way, she kept going, confident that she was headed in the right direction.
After a while, Carly’s confidence abruptly faded. She didn’t remember the stable being this far from the house.
“Hank?” she called.
No answer.
Growing frightened, she turned in a slow circle, squinting to see through the fog. Three feet in all directions, the world was blanketed in a gray blur. Overnight, her vision had grown much worse.
Calm. She had to stay calm.
“Hank!” she screamed, hoping he might hear her.
He didn’t respond. She stood still and listened. She heard no sound to indicate which direction the stable was. Big problem. That meant she’d veered off course somehow, and she no longer knew for certain where she was.
She froze in her tracks and tried to remember exactly how many steps she’d taken. There’d been a time when she’d never taken a single step without automatically keeping count. How, in so short a time, had she come to depend so much on her eyes that she no longer did that?
Okay. Deep breaths. Stay calm. She couldn’t have walked that far. She had to be standing out in the open where people working outside could probably see her. The smart thing to do was to stand fast and yell. Sooner or later, someone would hear her, and she’d be fine.
“Hank!” she screamed. “Hank!”
Carly soon lost track of how many times she yelled her husband’s name. Nothing. Her voice went scratchy from the strain of screaming. Her eyes hurt. She needed her drops. She passed a trembling hand over her face, wondering how long she’d be left to stand there. An hour, two? She needed something for the pain in her eyes now. She’d struggled all her life to be self-sufficient. Now, in a twinkling, she’d become a needy, helpless person, someone who couldn’t manage to do the simplest things without help. If she continued in this vein, Hank would detest being married to her within a month, and she would also hate herself.
From off to her left, Carly heard a horse whinny. Hope welled within her. She listened a moment longer and was rewarded by the sound of a hoof striking metal. The stable. She turned in that direction and cautiously set off again, toeing the way in front of her so she wouldn’t stumble over something and fall. “Hank!” she yelled again. “Hank! Are you there?”
When she’d taken fifty steps, she stopped. Too far. Her heart was pounding. Her body had gone clammy with sweat. She listened for the horse again. Soon it chuffed. She corrected her direction and set off, walking more slowly now, her movements jerky with trepidation. Was
there barbed wire ahead of her? Afraid of running into something, she began patting the air in front of her as well as feeling with her feet.
“Hank! Answer me!” she cried. “Hank!”
She stepped forward again, and nothing was there. She felt herself falling and started to scream. The cry was cut short. Icy water engulfed her. The shock of it made her gasp as she went under. Up her nose, down her windpipe. Oh, God. She flailed in a panic and shot back to the surface, choking. The pond. It was her worst nightmare, a page from the past. The blind girl no one really wanted, fighting frantically not to go under.
She had to swim toward the bank, but she’d lost all sense of direction. Her water-soaked clothes weighted her down. She paddled in a panic to stay afloat, first one way, then another. Where was the damned bank?
She remembered Hank saying that the pond was ten feet deep at the outer edges, twenty at the center. She swam one way, then another, clawing at the water and open air, hoping to close her hands over something solid. Cold talons of terror squeezed her heart. Water, the thing she feared most.
She had to keep her head, she thought. Think. She’d just stepped off into the pond. If she swam in an ever-widening circle, she’d surely find the bank. She couldn’t be that far from shore. Dog-paddling, she struck off, praying she actually was swimming in a circle. In water, she grew disoriented when she couldn’t see. It diminished her ability to hear, made her feel weightless.
Circling . . . circling. Soon, she grew exhausted. Her clothing clung to her arms and legs, making them feel leaden. She would go under soon.
“Hank!” she shrieked. Water got into her mouth, nearly strangling her. After coughing to clear her windpipe, she called his name again, hoping and praying that he would hear her. “Hank!”
Dimly she realized that she’d begun to sink. The waterline lapped at her mouth. She fought to keep her chin up, but she’d never been a strong swimmer, and exhaustion made her movements sluggish.