Bold And Brave-hearted

“One of my finest men was injured in that explosion. He’d given his helmet to a victim he was trying to get safely out of the building and some glass containers blew up on his face.”

“I’m sorry.” She was. Truly. But she was barely coping with her own disfigurement. How could she possibly help—

“The young man was blinded—the glass cut the corneas of both his eyes. We think the blindness is temporary but the doctors can’t be sure.”

Blinded. Guilt gave her a sharp jab to her conscience. She’d been so devastated by her own problems, she sometimes forgot others were far worse off. “I am truly sorry, but I don’t understand why—”

“The young man is Jay Tolliver. I think you may remember him.”

It was almost as if the fire chief had struck her. The air left her lungs; her knees went suddenly weak. Fate had played an odd trick on her to have the boy—now a full-grown man—on whom she’d had a huge crush in high school be the one to rescue her after the earthquake. She’d known as an adolescent, as she knew now, it was not a relationship she’d ever be able to explore. Not because in the past she hadn’t cared. But because he’d barely acknowledged her existence. And now it was too late.

When she didn’t respond to the chief’s revelation, he said, “Jay tends to be a little macho. He’s out of the hospital but he won’t let any of us help him. He’s got this burr under his saddle that makes him want to be independent, even if it kills him. Almost literally. He’s determined to do everything he’s always done, despite the fact he can’t see.”

“I don’t see how I could—”

“Miss Lydell, after the earthquake Jay talked about you for days—even when his buddies gave him a hard time about it. If he would accept help from anyone, it would be you.”

Panic shot through her like a thousand-volt current.

She couldn’t! The fire chief was asking too much of her. For months she’d only gone out of the house to doctors’ appointments and then only when wearing dark glasses and a scarf to cover as much of her face as possible. Not that the medical profession had done her much good. Everything else she needed, she ordered by phone to be delivered. As much as she might like to help Jay…

She began to tremble. Dear God, she couldn’t! The thought of anyone seeing her. Pitying her. Or more likely being revolted by her appearance was too much to bear.

“I’m sorry….”

“He needs someone, Miss Lydell. I’m afraid—”

She shoved open the screen door and stepped out onto the porch. Into the afternoon sunlight. It took all of the courage she possessed to lift her face so the chief could get a good look. She had to make him understand so her own guilt wouldn’t rest so heavily on her shoulders.

“Do you really think anyone who looks like I do could help anyone else?”

Unflinching, she waited while the chief studied her.

“He’s blind, Miss Lydell.” He spoke quietly, persuasively, as a father would. “I don’t think he’ll care.”

Chapter Two

What in the name of heaven was the man doing?

Shortly after noon on the day of the chief’s visit, Kim pulled her car up to the curb in front of Jay’s house. It was a small wooden structure in a neighborhood of modest homes, each one featuring a porch with a swing perfect to enjoy on a warm summer evening. The front yard boasted a postage-stamp lawn, which Jay was now mowing.

Mowing with a power mower that was spewing exhaust and cut grass out the side.

Either Chief Gray was wrong about Jay being blind, or Jay was totally crazy. Not that he didn’t look thoroughly macho in his cut-off jeans, his legs muscular and roughened by dark hair, and a cropped stenciled T-shirt that revealed a washboard stomach. Just the thought of running her palms over that hard expanse of abdomen made Kim shiver. The reflective dark glasses he wore and a few healing cuts on his cheeks took nothing away from the sexy image he created.

Her only regret might be that instead of wearing his hair long enough to curl at his nape as he had in high school, he’d trimmed it far shorter, almost military in style. But definitely attractive.

Even in high school he’d held a special appeal for all the girls, dangerously so for Kim, who’d seen him as forbidden fruit—the bad boy who would be able to tempt her too much. Which hadn’t stopped her from spending a good many hours fantasizing over the aloof adolescent who didn’t seem to know she existed.

Some things never change, she thought as she adjusted the scarf she wore in public to hide the scarred side of her face. She got out of the car and slammed the door closed. With the mower roaring, he didn’t hear her. She walked into the yard, the scent of freshly mowed grass ripe in the air, then winced as Jay proceeded to mow right on past his property line and across his neighbor’s bed of yellow daffodils that under the warmth of the late February sun had just begun to bloom.

Two steps later, he turned the mower around and cut another swath back the way he’d come, clipping the flower bed again and leaving a narrow strip of uncut grass on his own lawn.

“Jay!” she shouted, jumping out of the way so he wouldn’t mow her down, too.

Jay shoved the mower into neutral, stopped and listened. He’d heard something—or someone. God, how he hated the eye patches that covered both his eyes making him dependent on his other senses, the oppressive darkness of being blind making him less than a man. Vulnerable in ways he hadn’t thought possible.

He tensed. “Is someone there?”

“Jay, it’s me. Kim Lydell. Turn off the mower!”

The familiar smoky, blues-singer’s voice of the TV newscaster sent a message directly to his groin. He killed the mower and turned his head in the direction he thought he’d heard her voice from.

“Kim? What are you doing here?” Over the years he’d had more than a few dreams about her, but never in the bright light of day—assuming he could have seen the sun, rather than simply feeling its warmth on his skin.

“At the moment I’m trying to save your neighbor’s flower bed.”

“Huh?”

“You managed to wipe out two big chunks of daffodils with that mower of yours. You want to try for some recently bedded pansies? The neighbor ought to love that.”

Of all the things he’d dreamed of Kim saying if and when they met again, a discussion of flowers hadn’t been the topic that came immediately to mind. “What are you talking about?”

“Jay, you mowed right on through the flower bed at the edge of property.”

“No, I didn’t. I paced off every foot of the grass before I began mowing. I wouldn’t—”

She shoved a slick handful of leaves against his chest, and he caught a faint floral scent. It could have been Kim’s sweet perfume, or the flowers she said he’d inadvertently trimmed. He wished it were the former.

“I messed up, huh?” he said. Worse than that, he’d done it in front of Kim Lydell, every guy’s fantasy newscaster. For the past four days, since the explosion, he’d been desperately trying to act as though everything was normal. Dammit, his blindness was temporary! And if the lawn needed mowing, he was damn well going to—

“I hope you have an understanding neighbor.”

“Yeah, probably.” Clarence and Essie Smith were both in their eighties and kept trying to adopt him, particularly since the accident. There was yet another in a long line of casseroles molding in his refrigerator while Jay tried to relearn cooking for himself blindfolded. At least he was getting pretty good at scrambled eggs, the middles only a little runny and the edges singed. God knew what the stove top looked like though. “So, besides rescuing the local flora and fauna, what brings you to this part of town?”

“I never got around to thanking you for the flowers you sent to the hospital…or for rescuing me, for that matter.”

He shrugged, wishing he could see her. But in his mind’s eye he pictured her collar-length blond hair curving softly against her jaw and eyes that special shade of blue that reminded him of springtime wild-flowers. “All in a day’s work.”

“The bouquet, too?”

“Yeah, well, I thought you might need a pick-me-up.”

“I did, more than you could know.” Her voice dipped to a low, husky note that was little more than a warm breath of air rippling across the hairs on his bare arms. “It was very sweet of you.”

“How are you doing since Paseo del Real’s little trembler?”

“Great, great. No problems at all.”

He caught a touch of agitation in her voice as if she didn’t want to talk about the earthquake and its aftermath. “So, I haven’t seen you back on TV yet.” Or in recent days, heard her, since he couldn’t see a damn thing.

“I’m, um, on a bit of a sabbatical.”

“Oh.” He wondered what the hesitation in her voice meant.

“So, are you going to invite me in for a glass of ice tea, or something?” she asked.

“Tea?” His forehead pulled tight as he did a mental inventory of his pantry. “I’ve got beer.” A beverage he could find in the dark.

“Even better.”

She hooked her arm through his and he felt the soft swell of her breast brush against his skin. Heat simmered through him, making him ache for her. “Guess I can leave the rest of the mowing till later.”

She laughed, warm and seductive. “I’m sure the neighbors will appreciate that.”

Her shoes made clicking noises on the walkway. High heels, he concluded. And there was a subtle rustle of fabric with each step she took. A silk skirt, he thought. Or maybe soft cotton. His fingers itched to touch the material, to feel the texture and imagine the vivid color—cornflower blue to match her eyes or bright salmon to set off her honey-blond hair.

The perfume was hers, he decided, the scent lightly riding on each molecule of air he breathed, and he inhaled deeply.

He sensed by the slight lift of her arm when she reached the porch steps. A beat behind her, he followed her up the stairs without falling on his face—a significant accomplishment these days as attested to by the tender scrapes on his shins.

Thank God the doctor said the eye patches would go in three more weeks or so. By then he’d have bruises on top of his bruises. Meantime, he wasn’t willing to sit around on his behind doing nothing. He wasn’t going to be a cripple.

With a minimum of fumbling, he opened the screen door for Kim.

She stepped past Jay into the house, her eyes taking a moment to adjust from bright sunshine to the dimmer light of the living room. An overstuffed couch and chair, worn but comfortable-looking, faced a small fireplace flanked by a bookcase on one side and a big-screen TV on the other. Magazines were stacked neatly on a coffee table along with a remote tuner and a half-finished mug of coffee that looked like it had been forgotten or misplaced several days ago.

A big tiger-striped cat eyed Kim curiously from the center cushion of the couch then rose, stretched and yawned.

“Make yourself comfortable,” Jay said. “I’ll get the beer.”

“Need some help?”

“Naw, I can manage.” He walked through the arched doorway of the dining room, swerved to miss the chair at the end of the table only to bump into a second chair. He swore.

Kim winced. “You sure I can’t—”

“Don’t worry. I’ve got everything under control.”

Kim got the distinct impression Jay was among the most stubborn men she’d ever met.

The cat eased off the couch, his bulk giving him the appearance of a yellow bowling ball with stubby legs, and followed Jay toward the kitchen.

Slipping her scarf off her head and looping it around her neck, Kim dropped her purse on the couch, deciding to follow the cat.

“What’s your cat’s name?”

“Cat.” He opened the refrigerator, an older model, and unerringly took two bottles of beer from the top shelf.

“Cat? That’s it?”

“He probably has another name but I don’t know what it is. He was a stray that just sort of moved in on me and he didn’t have a collar on or anything.” Closing the refrigerator door with his elbow, he asked, “You want a glass?”

“No, the bottle’s fine.” There was already a collection of unwashed dishes on the tile counter and Kim didn’t want to add to the clutter. “How long ago did he show up?”

“Oh, I don’t know. Three or four years ago, I guess.”

She stifled a laugh. “And you still just call him Cat?”

“That’s what he answers to.” He handed her the beer.

She took it firmly in her grasp so he’d know she had hold of it, and her fingers brushed his in the process. An electric warmth skittered up her arm in the instant before he released his grip.

“Thanks,” she whispered, startled by the powerful sensation of such a brief contact. She wished she could see his eyes behind his glasses, the distinctive copper-brown she remembered so clearly. Unfathomable eyes that gave away nothing. “I was sorry to hear about your accident.”

He paused in the middle of twisting the top off his beer. “A temporary problem. No big deal.”

Assuming, according to Chief Gray, that Jay didn’t manage to kill himself before he got his eyesight back. “I’m sure that’s true.”

He finished twisting the top off and took a swig. “I guess the explosion at the plastics company made the news, huh?”

“I wouldn’t know. I haven’t been watching TV much lately.”

“Then how did you—”

“Your boss dropped by to see me. Chief Gray thought—”

“The chief? Geez, what is this? A sympathy visit?” He whirled, his demeanor angry, and he marched across the room to the counter. “I don’t need your pity, Kim.”

She could understand that. The thing Kim dreaded most was seeing pity and revulsion in someone’s eyes when they saw her scars. “I dropped by to see if I could help you in some way, not to pity you.” He was too virile, too much of a man, to be the object of anyone’s pity, certainly not Kim’s.

“I don’t need your help, either. I’m getting along fine on my own, so you can finish your beer and be on your way.”

“I see.” She twisted off the bottle cap and took a sip. The cool liquid slid down her throat; his rejection left a bitter aftertaste.

In the silent kitchen, the cat nudged his empty dish with his nose, then padded across the room to wind his way between Jay’s legs. Ignoring the cat, Jay stared at a spot a little to Kim’s right, as if he didn’t quite know where she was standing but didn’t want to let on.

“I think your cat’s hungry. His dish is empty.”

“Right. I’ll take care of it.” Setting his beer on the counter, he opened a cupboard, and grabbed a box of Cheerios from a high shelf right next to a similar box of Friskies. Feeling his way with the toe of his tennis shoe, he found the cat’s dish, bent over and filled it to overflowing.

Kim pulled her lip between her teeth. “Does your cat always eat breakfast food?”

“What?”

Sniffing disdainfully, Cat didn’t appear impressed with the menu selection.

“You just filled his dish with Cheerios.”

“I didn’t—” He picked up one of the circles, smelled it and nibbled half. “He likes variety, okay?”

“The Friskies are in the box next to—”

“I know that. I got confused. It happens when you can’t see anything.”

Her heart ached for Jay, for his enormous pride that wouldn’t allow him to bend, to accept anyone’s help. “I did a story once at the Braille Institute in town. There are ways to organize your shelves and mark boxes and cans so you’ll be able to tell which is which.”

“That seems like a helluva lot of trouble when I’m going to get these damn patches off in three or four weeks.”

“Patches?”

“Two of them.” He lifted the reflective dark glasses, propping them on his forehead. “Great, aren’t they? A real attractive addition to a man’s wardrobe.”

In spite of the pain she knew he was in emotionally and the fear of permanent blindness he must be experiencing, Kim smiled. “You look like some totally radical pirate. Very dashing.”

She wasn’t lying. With his burnished complexion, strong jaw and straight nose, he could easily be cast as a pirate hero in any Hollywood movie and scripted to steal a sweet damsel’s heart. Not that she thought of herself as a damsel, of course, but the storyline had considerable appeal.

His full lips twitched with the hint of a smile, his mood switching back to the cheerful, determined man who’d been mowing his own yard—and making a hash of it. “You think so?”

“Absolutely. Very dangerous and very attractive.”

“Maybe I ought to lose the glasses. I could start a new fad with the guys at the fire station. Everybody on the job could wear eye patches.”

“That might be stretching it a little. Hard to drive those big fire trucks when you can’t see where you’re going.”

“The more I think about it, the more I like it.” Finding the cat’s dish again, he carried it to the counter, dumped most of the contents in the sink—the rest spilled onto the counter—and refilled it with Friskies, returning the dish to its place on the floor. “How ’bout you give me a chance to change my shirt and pants, and I’ll take you down to the station. We’ll lay the idea on the—”

“No!” Panic shot through her. She didn’t go out in public, not since the earthquake. Not unless she absolutely had to.

His eyebrows shot up. “What? You’re not going to let me prove to you how well I’m getting along on my own? That doesn’t seem very fair.”

“It’s not that.” She couldn’t bear the thought of the pitying looks strangers sent in her direction and their shock when they got a good look at her scars.

“Don’t worry about a thing. I’ll drive.”

“You’ll what?” she gasped. “You can’t do that.”

“Why not?”

“Jay, you’re blind.” And possibly a lunatic.

“So? Don’t you remember that TV commercial where the blind guy was driving a classic convertible? If he can do it, so can I.” He eased past her.

“He wasn’t driving, Jay. He was being towed!”

“Come to think of it,” he said as he sauntered down the hallway to what she took to be his bedroom, “I still could use some exercise. How ’bout we walk instead? It’s only a couple of blocks.”

She was so stunned by his offer to drive, Kim forgot she didn’t want to go at all. Before she knew what was happening, he had changed into jeans and a clean shirt. He took her arm, giving her only an instant to wrap her scarf around her head and pick up the purse she’d dropped on the couch, and they were out the door walking toward the main thoroughfare running through Paseo del Real. His strides were long and confident, his attitude filled with bravado. Not unlike the way he’d been as an adolescent, she recalled.

When they were growing up, Paseo del Real had been a quiet college town with a permanent population of about thirty thousand. That number had doubled in the intervening years. Malls had replaced strip shopping centers; a second high school had been built at the north end of town. Industry in search of cheap land and the tourist business had added a new flavor and vibrancy to the community. Tracts of new homes blossomed on what used to be farmland on the out-skirts of town, a more expensive crop than any farmer could afford.

At the end of the block, Jay stepped off the curb just as a car was turning into the street. The driver hit his horn hard and shouted an obscenity.

Kim yanked Jay back to the curb, virtually spinning him around.

Visibly shaken, Jay swore. “Where did that guy come from?”

“Around the corner. I didn’t see him either.” She’d been too involved in noting everything she could about Jay, the way his shoulders had grown broader over the years, that he’d added extra weight, all of which appeared to be muscle.

“Dammit all. I listen for crossing cars, not somebody making a turn. He sneaked up on me.”

“Maybe you ought to be using a white cane so they’ll watch out for you.” At least the driver might not have sworn so loudly.

“Not a chance. I’m fine.”

She gritted her teeth. Stubborn man. “How ’bout a Seeing Eye dog?”

“I’ll put a harness on Cat, okay?” He turned, stepped off the curb and started off again. “Come on.”

“Jay!”

He halted in the middle of the residential street. “What’s wrong now?”

“If you’re trying to get to Station Six, you’re going the wrong way.” She knew the main fire station was a block over on Paseo Boulevard and assumed that’s where Jay had been heading—anything farther away and he might really have tried to drive her there.

He tilted his head, trying to get his bearings again. Damn, he’d really messed up this time and almost got Kim killed in the process.

Of all the people in the world, he hated the most for her to see him impaired. Blind. Dependent on the sympathy of others and their charity, like his mother had been.

That wasn’t going to happen to him, not in this lifetime.

The chief should have minded his own damn business and not sent Kim around to “rescue” him. Instead, she was a woman he ought to be protecting. She barely came up to his chin, so slender he’d guess a good wind would blow her over, her hands delicate, small. Feminine. The kind of hands a man wanted to feel on him, all over him.

She wouldn’t be interested in fulfilling that fantasy with any man who wasn’t whole.

Standing stock-still, he listened carefully, hearing the street traffic on the main boulevard through town. Turning towards the sound, he felt the warmth of the afternoon sun on his back. This wasn’t much different than finding his way out of a smoke-filled building, he told himself. You listen. Use all your senses.

He pointed in the direction he knew was north. “The main road’s that way, right?”

“Yes,” she said softly.

“Great. Then let’s get going. I can’t wait to have the guys on C shift see me with the prettiest woman in town on my arm. They’ll all want eye patches.”

KIM HAD NEVER thought of herself as a coward. She did now as they approached the fire station, and she pulled her scarf more securely around her head. More than anything, she wanted to turn and run away before anyone saw her.

But she owed Jay more than that. He’d stayed with her in a collapsing building when she’d needed him. She could do no less for him now. And whether he admitted it or not, he needed someone. Otherwise, his ridiculous macho determination was going to get him killed.

The three-story building was relatively new, its big doors mawing open to reveal two fire engines and a ladder truck gleaming red in the shadowed interior. One firefighter was polishing the headlights on the truck, another man was outside hoeing a recently planted bed of snapdragons, their colorful heads moving gently in a light breeze.

From the back of the station, a dog came trotting out. He stopped, cocked his head to one side, then whined, breaking into a full gallop right toward Jay.

Kim opened her mouth to warn him too late.

The dalmatian leaped onto his chest, nearly knocking him down, and licked his face like a kid with a brand-new sucker.

“Hey, Buttons.” Jay laughed, scratching and petting the dalmatian as though they were old friends. “I’m glad to see you too.”

“I gather you two know each other,” Kim said dryly.

“Sure do.” Jay give the dog another scratch behind the ears. “Kim, meet Mack Buttons, station mascot. Buttons, this is Kimberly Lydell. Be nice to her and she’ll get you on her TV show, make you a star.”

Planting himself right in front of Kim, his tail whipping back and forth, Buttons looked up expectantly with his big brown eyes.

Unable to resist, she petted his head, finding his spotted white coat like smooth velvet. The dog couldn’t be blamed for not knowing she’d been off the air for months and there was little chance she’d make him or anyone else a star anytime soon.

“I’ve never seen a dalmatian with brown spots before,” she said.

“They call this breed a chocolate dalmatian. But we figure somewhere along the way, he got into the wrong can of paint and now we can’t get the brown out.”