Blind Promises by Diana Palmer Read Free Book Online Page B

only need to be led and I can hold on to you more easily like this. All right?”
    She looked down at his brown hand holding hers. “All right,” she said meekly. It wasn’t professional of course. But it was…practical.
    He was easier after that, more approachable, regaling her with stories of his travels while she took him walking and driving in the car and tried to ease him out of his cold shell. Some of the tales he recounted were frankly shocking, and she began to wonder at the wild-ness of the life he’d lead.
    “What about your own life?” he asked while they were drinking coffee at a local restaurant. Their table overlooked the ocean, and Dana picked at her apple pie while her eyes drank in the blueness of the water, the whiteness of the beach, dotted with swimmers in their colorful bathing suits.
     
    “Hmmmm?” she murmured dreamily.
    He made an impatient sound. “Are you worshipping the view again? Lorraine said you watch the ocean as if you’re afraid it may vanish any second.”
    “I love it,” she said sheepishly. “We don’t have oceans around Ashton, you know. Just open land and a lot of farms and cattle.”
    “How big is Ashton?”
    “About five thousand people,” she told him. “It isn’t far south of Atlanta, but it’s mostly rural. I grew up there. I know most everybody else who did too.”
    “Is that one of those towns where the sidewalk draws in at six and everything closes for the night?”
    “Very nearly. We don’t even have a bowling alley. Although,” she added, “we do have a theater and a skating rink.”
    “How exciting,” he mused. “No bars?”
    “We’re in a dry county,” she replied.
    “You don’t drink, I gather.”
    She sighed, watching the ocean again. “Mr. van der Vere, I never have. I’m sure my life is duller than dishwater compared to yours.”
    He lifted his coffee to his chiseled mouth, frowning slightly. “My world was an endless round of parties, cruises, business conventions, casinos and first-class travel. It was never dull.”
    She tried to imagine a life-style so hectic, and failed. “Were you happy?”
    He blinked, staring in her direction. “Happy?”
    “I can look it up in the dictionary and read you the definitions, if you like,” she murmured.
    “I was busy,” he corrected, idly caressing the coffee cup. “Occupied. Entertained. But happy?” He laughed shortly. “What is happiness, Nurse? Tell me.”
     
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    Blind Promises
     
    Diana Palmer
     
    59
     
    “Being at peace inside yourself, liking yourself and the whole world all at once,” she said simply. “Going about your work with your whole heart and loving what you do.”
    “You’re talking about a feeling,” he said, “not the trappings that go with it”
    “Exactly. I could be just as happy working in a sewing plant or digging in a garden as I am nursing, if it fulfilled me,” she told him.
    “I imagine a family could provide you with the same sense of purpose,” he remarked. “Have you not wanted a husband and children?”
    She toyed with her pie and laid down the fork to pick up her coffee. “Mr, van der Vere,” she said after a minute, “I’m a very plain woman. I have rigid views on life and the living of it. I don’t have casual affairs, I work hard and I keep to myself. It’s very unlikely that I’m ever going to find a man dumb enough to marry me.”
    He sat up straight. “You spend so much time running yourself down, Miss Steele,” he said after a minute, scowling toward her. “Is it deliberate, calculated to keep people at arm’s length?”
    She laughed. “I suppose so. I like my life, why change it?”
    “Yet, you seem determined to change mine,” he reminded her.
    “That’s different. Yours needs changing,” she said pertly. “You were about to go into permanent hibernation, and frankly, Mr. van der Vere, you’re not the best companion in the world to hibernate with. You’d have driven yourself crazy.”
    He burst out