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  As lovely as she was, though, what struck Hank hardest was her look of angelic sweetness. He’d noticed it that night—and shrugged it off. The women who frequented bars usually had a hard look. Carly’s heart shone in her eyes.

  Those eyes. So beautiful he could scarcely believe they were flawed. Even worse was the realization that his careless use of her body had possibly condemned her to months of blindness. How would she attend grad school without his help?

  A squeaking sound drew his attention. Her left forearm was shifting, the tendons from wrist to elbow distended as she turned her clenched hand on the doorknob. It was the unconscious gesture of someone rigid with tension. All his senses went on red alert. He slid his gaze slowly back to her face, noting the tautness of her facial muscles. Was that fear he saw in her expression?

  The possibility gave Hank pause. It wasn’t as if he’d forced himself on her. As he recalled, she’d melted into his arms when he kissed her, a consenting partner every step of the way.

  Maybe, he decided, that was the problem. She’d surrendered to the moment, giving herself to him without reservation. Standing back from it now and trying to see it as she must, he supposed she had reason to feel wary. She believed all your hokey lines.

  “I have things to do,” she informed him. “If there’s something more you want to say, get it said. I can’t stand here all morning.”

  He scratched behind his ear and wished for his hat. In tense moments, a Stetson always came in handy.

  “Will you go out to dinner with me?” Definitely not brilliant.

  A tiny frown puckered the smooth skin between her brows. “How can you think, even for a moment, that I’d ever consider going out with you.”

  “I don’t mean on a date. I was just thinking—well, you know—that you might feel more comfortable on neutral ground, someplace public, where we can discuss this and reach some decisions.”

  “We were on neutral ground the last time,” she reminded him.

  Hank could think of no immediate comeback to refute that point.

  “And any decisions regarding this baby are mine alone to make,” she added. “I’ll notify you when the child is born. If you want visitation privileges, I won’t deny you that right. But I want nothing more to do with you.”

  This was not going the way Hank had hoped. “Carly, please, I—”

  Those gorgeous eyes went bright with anger. “Do you know what you said to me right before you passed out?”

  Hank hadn’t a clue. Evidently, that showed on his face because she jutted her small chin and said, “It was an appropriate ejaculation, given the circumstances. Does that refresh your memory any?”

  Before he could reply, she closed the door in his face. An appropriate ejaculation? He cringed at the implications. Normally, he never used obscene language around women or children. It was a hard-and-fast rule, drilled into him by his father. He closed his eyes, feeling ashamed. She’d given him a precious gift—her virginity—and he’d said a filthy word like that to her?

  He stood there, torn between pounding on the door until she opened it again and walking away. He decided on the latter. He’d made initial contact. She was feeling hostile, and rightly so. In a couple of days, maybe she’d be more inclined to talk to him.

  When Bess got home three hours later, Carly explained how she’d awakened that morning with blurry vision. “The eye doctor here in Crystal Falls can see me at a quarter of five. Would you mind driving me?”

  “Of course not.” Bess frowned in concern. “Does Dr. Merrick think you may be losing your sight?”

  Carly avoided meeting her gaze. “He says that chances are it’s only a little inflammation. But, given the pregnancy, it could also be the lattice regaining a foothold.”

  Bess clasped Carly’s shoulder. “This fast? How can that be?”

  “He says most of the nutrients from my food are going to the baby now instead of to my eyes. Some women lose their sight rather quickly.” Carly tried to smile. “There’s no point in getting upset, Bess. If it happens, it happens. For now, I’m trying to think positively. Why worry when it may only be an infection? Chances are I’ll be able to see for months yet, maybe even until the end of my pregnancy.”

  Later that same afternoon as Carly left the medical building with Bess, she recounted everything the eye doctor had told her. “He says the matted eye problem is caused by an inflammation in my eyelids,” she said. “I need to use the antibiotic drops more often and give my eyes frequent breaks.” Carly grinned. “Eat your heart out. Frequent naps, doctor’s orders.”

  Bess unlocked the doors of her old Toyota. Over the roof of the car, she asked, “And your corneas? How are they looking?”

  Carly climbed into the vehicle and fastened her seat belt. Her stomach fluttered with nerves as she said, “He could see some deterioration, but at this point, it’s not that severe. He’ll call and confer with Dr. Merrick. One of them will call me tomorrow with more information.”

  Bess said very little during the drive back to the apartment complex. Once they were home, she went to the kitchen to pour herself some ice tea and Carly some juice. En route back to the living room, she fixed Carly with a worried look. “You think you’re going blind again, don’t you?”

  “You’re forgetting that I’ve been blind all my life. If it happens, I’ll deal with it.”

  Bess still looked worried, but she let the subject drop. Carly was relieved. If she went blind again, chances were that it wouldn’t be soon. She didn’t want to think about it until it happened. Then she would deal with it somehow. She was good at dealing with things. When you are born blind, you have to be.

  Bess canceled a job interview the following day so she could be at the apartment when Dr. Merrick phoned. When Carly ended the conversation with the physician, Bess sat rigidly on a kitchen chair, her brown eyes shadowed with concern, her mouth drawn taut with tension.

  “What did he say?” she asked.

  Carly pushed her hair back. “There’s a definite deterioration of my corneas. The local doctor could detect cracks developing.”

  Bess closed her eyes.

  “On a bright note,” Carly went on, “it’s not a sure indication that I’ll go blind during the pregnancy. Lattice is weird stuff. It may progress rapidly for a while, and then go into remission. Or, on the flip side, it sometimes causes little damage at the beginning of a pregnancy, and then runs rampant a few months later, causing blindness in a matter of days or weeks. My eyes are clear of infection. The deterioration thus far is minimal.” Carly shrugged. “It’s a wait-and-see game. Since the damage so far is slight, I’m hoping I’ll be able to see for several more months.”

  “How can you be so calm? It drives me crazy.”

  Carly rolled her eyes. “You think it might help if I screamed and pulled my hair? I have to take what comes. Just pray for me, Bess. If possible, I’d rather not go blind. It’ll be a lot easier if I remain sighted so I can go to school as planned.”

  On Monday night, Hank gathered his courage and dialed Carly’s phone number. She answered on the second ring.

  “Hi, Carly, this is Hank.”

  His lines well rehearsed, Hank took a breath to continue, and in the interim, the phone clicked and went dead.

  “Carly?”

  No answer. Hank held the phone away and stared at it. How in the hell could he communicate with her if she refused to speak to him? She clearly expected him to just walk away and forget she existed, that his child existed. Well, he had news for her. No child of his was going to grow up never knowing its father. And he’d be damned if he would abandon its mother when she needed him.

  Hank sat down at his desk and wrote Carly a long letter, apologizing profusely for his inexcusable behavior the night they met and once again offering her financial and moral support during the pregnancy. By Friday, when no reply was forthcoming, either by mail or phone, he had to accept that a passive-aggressive approach wasn’t working. As a last resort, he tried the old s
tandby, sending flowers. When all else failed, sometimes a dozen roses did the trick.

  Lying on the floor in front of the television, Carly frowned as she tried to put a puzzle together, a pastime that bored her to tears but was necessary to help train her visual cortex to recognize and learn to match different shapes. What really rankled was that a child’s puzzle was so difficult for her to master. It made her feel dumber than dirt.

  The doorbell rang just then, providing a welcome distraction. Swallowing her last bite of pickle, she sprang to her feet. For just an instant after she came erect, the room spun and the beige carpet seemed to undulate. Carly stopped and waited for her visual cortex to stop acting up before she proceeded across the floor.

  His ruddy face a swimming blur, a thin man stood on the porch. In his arms, he held a long box that Carly decided was light pink. The many different shades of pink confused her, and she was beginning to despair that she’d ever learn them all.

  “Are you Carly Adams?” the man asked.

  “Yes.”

  He stepped forward to thrust the box into her arms. As he did, his face came into clearer focus. Carly saw that he was young, with red hair and funny little brown spots all over his face. Freckles. Carly had heard of freckles but never actually seen any. He flashed a warm smile. “These are for you, Ms. Adams. A card from the sender is inside. Hope you enjoy.”

  Bewildered, Carly watched the man lope away until he was nothing but a distorted blob bouncing across the swimming green backdrop of lawn that was shared by all occupants of the apartment complex. A lovely scent wafted to her nostrils, drawing her gaze back to the box. Roses? The smell was unmistakable.

  After closing the door, Carly went to the kitchen table, opened the box, and gasped with pleasure as she peeled back the waxed green tissue paper to reveal the brilliant red buds. Roses.

  As she stared down at the flowers, a part of her wanted to lift them from the box and examine them. She’d always loved their scent, but she’d never had an opportunity to study them up close. They were far lovelier than she’d ever imagined, the furled petals velvet soft. Only who had sent them? Her dad, presently living in Arizona, was on a fixed income. He might send her a card to congratulate her about the baby, but roses were beyond his budget.

  Suddenly, Carly knew who’d sent the flowers. Hank. Her first impulse was to dump them in the trash, just as she had his letter, but somehow she couldn’t bring herself to do it. Anything so beautiful deserved to be enjoyed. She lifted the long-stemmed blossoms from the box and lightly touched her nose to the petals. She couldn’t throw them away. She just couldn’t.

  She consoled herself with the thought that Hank had probably ordered the roses over the phone and paid by credit card. He’d never actually seen the flowers, which lessened her feeling of distaste about keeping them.

  Bess came home just as Carly was sticking the last rose into an empty sauerkraut jar, the closest thing to a vase that she had.

  “How did the job interview go?”

  Bess tossed her purse on the couch. “I was one of over fifty people who applied. I didn’t even get a maybe.”

  “Next week you’ll find something,” Carly assured her.

  “Oh!” Bess cried when she saw the flowers. “How beautiful!”

  “Aren’t they, though?” Carly stood back to admire the arrangement. The jar wasn’t quite tall enough, and the buds sprawled in all directions, magnifying their presence on the table.

  “Who sent them?”

  “Don’t spoil it by asking. I almost threw them away.”

  “Hank.” Bess picked up the little gold card that Carly had left lying unread in the folds of tissue. She scanned the message, her expression turning pensive. “Hmm.”

  Carly didn’t like the sound of that. “What does it say?”

  “Nothing much, only that he’s very sorry and hopes you’ll call him.”

  “Not likely.”

  “A dozen long-stemmed roses, hand delivered by a florist, are expensive, Carly. He’s obviously doing everything he can to make peace with you.”

  “Poor Hank, is that it? Sorry. I’m not buying.”

  Bess went to the refrigerator for her afternoon glass of ice tea. “In my opinion, any guy who sends roses to apologize ought to be allowed to say it in person. What can it hurt to hear him out?”

  Carly stepped back to the table to fiddle with the flowers. When she reached for a sagging bud, she misjudged her aim and knocked over the jar. Water went everywhere.

  Bess sprang to the rescue with a towel. “Is your vision getting that bad?”

  Carly just shrugged.

  “Answer me, Carls. Has your vision become that much worse over the last week?”

  Carly didn’t want to lie, but at the same time, she found it difficult to say the words aloud. “A little worse. I’m hoping it’s due to the blepharitis.”

  “Have you called Merrick?”

  “Why? I’m using the antibiotic drops. They’ll either take care of the blurry vision or they won’t. Merrick told me, straight out, that he can do nothing if it’s from the lattice. The disease will just run its course.”

  Bess flopped on the sofa with her glass cradled in her hands. She gazed at the roses for a moment. “Oh, Carls, I really, really think you should at least talk with Hank. How can that hurt?”

  “Funny you should use the word hurt. That’s exactly what I thought a dozen times that night while I was throwing sanity to the wind. ‘What can it hurt?’ And you know what happened? He hurt me. Forget the emotional aspects. He did me physical injury. I could barely stand straight for two days.”

  “Only because he was drunk and didn’t know he needed to be careful. He’s sorry, Carly. We all make mistakes.”

  “Mine was trusting him in the first place. I don’t want to see him again. I don’t want to speak to him again. As far as I’m concerned, he doesn’t exist.”

  Bess mulled that over. “You’re still attracted to him.”

  Carly pretended to gag. “Spare me.”

  “It’s true. I see it written all over you. That’s why you’re so dead set against seeing him again. You’re afraid he’ll sweet talk you, that you’ll forget how awful it was the first time and end up in the same situation again.”

  “Never.” When Bess started to say something more, Carly threw up her hands. “Enough! How can you even think I’m attracted to him? Just because I made one stupid mistake doesn’t mean my bra size is higher than my IQ.”

  “Isn’t he entitled to make one mistake as well?”

  “Do you really believe I was his first mistake? Give me a break. I wasn’t his first barroom score. Our encounter just ended on a more sour note than most.”

  “Maybe so. But, just for the sake of argument, is there a law that says he can’t have seen the error of his ways? I think he deserves the benefit of the doubt. There aren’t many guys who’d go to such lengths to stand good on their responsibilities.”

  “I don’t want to be one of Hank Coulter’s responsibilities.”

  Carly ended the conversation with that and went to her bedroom. She sat on the edge of the mattress and buried her face in her hands. Deep down, she knew Bess was right. She was afraid of Hank Coulter. The last time she’d been alone with him, disaster had struck. She remembered how he’d looked the other morning, standing on the porch, bigger than life and exuding strength. There was something about the man that rattled her. That being the case, all her feminine instincts warned her to stay away from him.

  Chapter Eight

  Kicked back on the recliner, Hank was dozing his way through a Winnie the Pooh flick that Molly had put in the VCR to soothe Garrett back to sleep after a bad dream. When the phone rang, he vaguely registered the sound and Jake’s voice saying, “Hello.” An instant later, Hank was being shaken awake by his sister-in-law.

  “For you,” Molly whispered.

  Taking the portable, Hank kicked down the footrest and stood up. “Hello,” he said as he moved toward th
e kitchen to escape the noise.

  “Hi, Hank. This is Bess. I tried you on your cell, but you didn’t answer.”

  Hank patted his belt. “Sorry. I must have left it in my truck.” He rubbed his eyes to bring himself awake. “What’s up? Is Carly okay?”

  “No, actually, I’m afraid she may not be.”

  That brought Hank fully alert. “What’s wrong?”

  “I think she’s losing her eyesight.” Bess quickly related instances when she’d noticed Carly knocking things over and squinting to see. “I think it’s happening very fast. In addition to that and the morning sickness, she’s getting terrific headaches.”

  “Has she called her doctor?”

  “He told her there’s nothing he can do. I got on the Internet tonight and got some info about lattice during pregnancy. The prognosis is pretty grim. Some women go blind very quickly, in as little as three weeks in some cases, and judging by things I’ve observed, I’m terrified Carls will be one of them.”

  Hank passed a hand over his eyes again. “Three weeks?”

  “She’s seeing on borrowed time, Hank. She’s hoping the blurry vision and messed-up depth perception are due to the inflammation of her eyelids, but I think she’s deluding herself.”

  Hank braced a hand on the edge of the counter. “This is all my fault. I am so sorry.”

  “I’m beginning to believe you really are,” she said softly.

  “She still won’t talk to me. I’ve tried phoning. I even went to the apartment one morning. That ended with her closing the door in my face.”

  “I heard. The roses were beautiful, by the way. She’s not usually so witchy. It’s just—well, the entire situation is overwhelming for her, and I think you frighten her a little.”

  Hank could think of a number of words to describe Carly, but “witchy” wasn’t one of them. “I sensed her wariness. I’m just not sure what’s causing it. As badly as I screwed up that night, I didn’t force her into the truck with me.”