In the Blink of an Eye

“I didn’t raise a quitter.”

Julia halted at the sound of her mother’s voice. On a deep breath, she turned and pleaded with those eyes, part gold, part green, just like her own. “Someone else can help Mac. There must be hundreds, thousands, of qualified nurses in the Kansas City area. Reliable, tough—”

“I’m not talking about Mac.”

A bit of the concern she’d seen etched in Martha’s face now lined her mother’s. “What do you mean?”

Barbara closed the distance between mother and daughter. Physically, and emotionally. “I’ve never seen my little girl tuck her tail between her legs and run home to hide before.”

Julia held her tongue, not knowing what to say. She’d tried to be cheerful, talk of good times, help around the house. But she could see now that she hadn’t fooled her mother for one instant. “I’m sorry if I worried you. I didn’t mean to.”

Barbara smiled. “I’m a mom. Even after thirty years, it goes with the territory.” She reached out and brushed one of the short curls that crowned Julia’s head off her face. “I don’t know what happened to you in Chicago, but I’m sorry it hurt you. You are always welcome at home, and I am always ready to listen, if you decide you need to talk. But, in the meantime, I think you should do something. Keep busy, don’t just brood.”

Julia clasped her mother’s hand and squeezed it tight. “I love you for your concern, but I don’t think this is the right thing for me to do.” She looked up to the house, seeing it as a distant symbol of lost hope and shattered dreams. “He needs so much. And I don’t just mean nursing care. I don’t think I have it in me to give him enough of anything right now.”

The answering silence brought Julia’s attention back to her mother’s face. Those hazel eyes looked sad in the grim expression Barbara wore. “Martha Taylor has been my friend longer than you’ve been alive. You and her son Cole were classmates and good friends for many years. That family’s in desperate trouble now.” Julia sighed right along with her mother. “I won’t insist on anything that would put you or your feelings in danger. I just want you to remember that, sometimes, giving is what enables us to move beyond the fear or sorrow, and allows us to find a way to heal ourselves.”

Julia rolled her eyes heavenward, seeking the strength that seemed to have abandoned her. Growing up hadn’t been easy for her mother. But that life experience had given her a wisdom and insight that had surprised her daughter more than once. Maybe she did know something about healing the spirit, about mending a shattered self-image, about piecing together the will to move forward with her life. She looked at her mother, wanting to believe in that wisdom.

“I don’t remember you being this philosophical, Mom.”

“I don’t remember seeing you in this much pain.”

Julia considered the importance of family and friendship, of loyalty and love. She weighed the value of her actions in Chicago and what they had revealed about her true character. Her instincts had failed her, and she’d been too stubborn to listen to common sense. She had fallen short of her parents’ expectations of her, far short of her own expectations for herself.

Maybe she owed them a bit of penance until she could figure out how to make things right again.

If only she wasn’t so afraid of making things worse.

But Barbara Dalton hadn’t raised a quitter.

“All right.” She stepped forward and wrapped up her mom in a hug. The tight embrace around her own shoulders might be the only strength she’d have to sustain her through this. “I’ll give you twenty-four hours. We’ll see how it goes. But you and Martha need to be looking for a backup plan.”

She felt the tension in her mother relax. “Thank you, Jule.”

Embarrassed by the simple gratitude, Julia separated and trudged up to the door. “Twenty-four hours,” she reminded her.

To do a favor for an old family friend?

Or to survive a sentence from hell?

MAC WAITED A GOOD ten minutes after his mother’s goodbye before leaving the sanctuary-slash-prison of his bedroom. At least he thought it was ten minutes. His internal clock seemed to have gone haywire in the same instant the toxic flames and lacerations scarred his throat and tore the sight from his eyes.

Ten minutes. Five. Twenty.

What did time matter to a man who served no useful purpose?

The dull ache behind his left eye was a constant reminder of all he had lost. And no amount of scientific or medical training could bring back the competency of a man who had lived by his senses, his powers of observation, his ability to see something once and identify its attributes. He was a man of science, a man of thought and reason. He’d never worried about how to get from point A to point B. How to find the toilet across the hall. How to pick out socks that wouldn’t clash with his jeans.

He’d never thought about living without his sight.

Mac swung his bare feet off the edge of the bed and slipped into the beaten loafers that had become his uniform of late. He inhaled a deep, fortifying breath and stood, steadying himself by grabbing on to the headboard. He waited for the waves of dizziness to pass, knowing damn well these vertigo attacks were a result of panic and disorientation, and had no bona fide physical cause.

Only when his shadowed world stopped spinning did he move. Three steps from the bed to the dresser. He trailed his fingertips along the scarred oak top, sticking a moment where the old varnish had pooled, sliding past the spot where there was no varnish at all. His hand hit a smooth, hard object and glass clinked against glass.

Tempting defeat, he turned his hand, lifted the glass to his nose and sniffed. Nothing. Plain water. Maybe the other…

His stomach rumbled in protest at the lone leftover doughnut he had scrounged for breakfast. Despite his abysmal welcome, he hoped against hope that his mother had left a sandwich for him to eat. Restoring the clutter on his dresser, he reached for the door.

Two steps more across the hall to the bathroom. He followed the wall until he hit the dining room. Then he was in no-man’s-land as he buffeted from chair to wall to sideboard. When he stubbed his toe on the break in the carpet beneath the archway, he knew he’d reached the living room.

He clutched at the molding that framed the arch and paused to get his bearings. He needed to learn the number of steps into the kitchen, or move the bookshelves and recliner so he could simply follow the perimeter of the wall without breaking his foot, his face, or any of those knick-knacks his mother had entrusted to him over the years.

As if thoughts of his mother triggered the response, guilt reared its ugly head. He’d never realized how much temper simmered inside him. He’d always prided himself on maintaining an even emotional keel. But since the explosion, he’d learned he could be a beast. Reactive. Out-of-control. And his mother, meddling saint who had raised six boys and one girl under her roof, didn’t deserve to bear the brunt of his sour moods. Once he had some food in his stomach, he’d call home and apologize.

And make Ma promise not to spring any more surprises on him.

Feeling even that small bit of mastery over his life once more, Mac extended his arms as feelers and braved the booby-trapped path to the kitchen.

One step. Two steps. He butted his shin against the recliner and stopped, rotating his arm like a compass needle in his search for the clear path. His outstretched fingers hit the floor lamp and knocked it at a tilt. He caught it and straightened the shade, experiencing a silly little rush of triumph that he hadn’t destroyed it. With a trace of positive energy whispering through him for a change, he moved with more confidence, stepping to the left to avoid the obstacle.

He plowed into something warm and soft and solid, with two hands that latched on to his wrist and elbow to catch him from recoiling backward.

“Mac?”

He wrenched his arm away from the firm grip and smacked the lamp with his fist, sending it crashing to the floor.

Jules.

“I thought I told you to leave.” The condemnation in his scarred voice sounded harsh, even to his own ears.

“You never got around to that. You were rude to your mother, and then you stormed out.”

The teasing retort came from below, and he realized she had squatted down to pick up the lamp. “Bent, but not broken.” Her voice sounded nearer. Had she stood? “No wonder it looks like a demolition derby in here. Didn’t you get a cane to walk with?”

“I don’t need a cane.”

“Right.” Her clear, low-pitched voice danced with a smug humor. “It would be easier to just rent a bulldozer and trash the whole place in one fell swoop, instead of wrecking one little corner at a time.”

A flood of indignation surged through him. How dare she joke at his expense! Did she have any idea how embarrassing it was to flounder around his own home like a fish out of water? He couldn’t even hold a decent argument with her, not knowing whether he was talking to her face or her belly button.

“What are you doing here?” he demanded.

“Helping out a friend.”

Right in front of him. Mac turned his scarred visage on her. “I didn’t ask you to come.”

“I was talking about your mother. She needed my help.”

Ouch. An appropriate comeback escaped him. Jules had been one of the neighborhood kids. Hanging out at his dad’s shop or in the rooms upstairs they called home. Of all those adolescent interlopers who interrupted his work and study time, she had been…which one? He thought his way through the maze of comings and goings that had been a part of their everyday lives back on Market Street.

It had been useless to try to concentrate on his books when Cole and his buddies descended upon them. They’d gather around the kitchen table and raid the fridge and play cards, or perch in the living room to watch sitcoms on TV. Accepted as one of the guys, Jules had always been at the center of their laughter.

Her sassy wit hadn’t dulled over the years.

Mac wondered if anything else about her remained the same.

But he filed away his curiosity to return to later. A more pressing question needed to be answered as a fist of concern gripped his heart. “Is Ma holding up okay?”

A faint rustling sound answered him. “If dark circles under her eyes and new wrinkles beside her mouth are normal, then, yes, I’d say she’s doing fine.” That tart voice was a shade more distant. She’d moved.

“I owe her an apology.”

“Probably.” The gentle agreement nicked at his conscience. He owed Jules an apology, too. But she never gave him a chance to organize those thoughts. “If you take half a step to the left, your path is clear to the kitchen.” Like a beacon, her concise directions called to him from a distance. She must have gone into the kitchen herself.

Not yet trusting that the edge of a rug or leg of a chair wouldn’t leap into his path, Mac stood rooted to the spot.

In an effort to form an image of what she looked like now, he tried again to picture the Jules he’d once known. Having graduated in Cole’s class, she’d be seven years his junior. “Braces. Freckles.” He tapped the memories out loud. He’d watched a couple of coed league games one summer to support his brother. “You played second base. Killer arm. Shag hitter, always made contact with the ball.”

He could remember details of a fifteen-year-old softball season, but couldn’t remember the layout of his own house. Frustration made his damaged voice tight. “So what have you been doing all this time, playing for the majors?”

Her voice returned to the living room. “Nah, I got cut last week. Right after the braces came off.” The husky music of her laughter defused the tension that had paralyzed him. “You coming?”

He heard the rustling sound again. Then the clank of pots from the broiler pan beneath the oven. She’d abandoned him once more.

A trace of scent lingered in the air. Something crisp and fresh, like autumn air and sunshine. With arms outstretched, he followed that scent into the kitchen. Just as she had promised, there’d been nothing in his path to stumble over.

But his victory was short-lived. When his feet hit the smooth linoleum, shards of pain shot through his eyes. He reeled back a step, squinting against the bright overhead light. He shielded his eyes with his hand and cursed. The remnants of torn and burned tissue contracted at the glare, an autonomic response of organs that still did everything they were supposed to do—except see.

“Sorry. I’m a nurse. I should know better.” Julia’s hasty apology registered the same time that crisp sunshine smell floated past him. He heard the tiny click of the light switch, then the gentle rasp of cotton on cotton coming toward him and circling around him. Mac dipped his head to follow the faint rustling sound. It had to be Jules herself.

He tried to anchor himself to her scent, pinpoint her heat. Though finely tuned to compensate for his blindness, he had yet to master control of his other senses. Julia’s proximity was a bombardment of sensation—warmth and scent and sound.

And touch.

Strong, supple fingers pulled his hand from his eyes and Mac froze. “I read the write-up from your doctor.”

She gently probed the tender new skin at his cheek, temple and brow. “He prescribed bandages on your eyes until the end of the week.” In his mind, the inspection of her fingertips was a timid caress against sensitized skin, a stark contrast to the confident strength with which she still held his hand. “If you wore them the way you’re supposed to, the light wouldn’t aggravate your condition.”

His condition? He was a crippled-up cop. A cop who should have seen the accident coming. Who should have seen a lot of things before he ever lost his sight.

Mac snatched her hand from his face, putting an end to the unwelcome examination. “My condition is called blindness. I can’t see your hand in front of my face. I can’t see you. I can’t see a damn thing!”

Their fingers twined together as he shook his fist to make his point. “You can push and poke and prod all you want, but I’m still a blind man.”

Unknowingly, he clung to her while he spoke. Long enough to detect the uniquely feminine combination of soft calluses inside her palm, and even softer skin on the back of her hand. Long enough to note the blunt, functional fingernails at the tips of lithe, lineal fingers.

Long enough to feel the fine tremors trembling within his grasp.

Was that Jules’s shocked reaction to his spare, unadorned words? Or the remnants of his own anger running its course?

But almost as if she sensed the instant he began to analyze the subtle movement, she freed herself. “You’re a man, Mac. Pure and simple. A man who happens to be blind. Millions of people live with that handicap every day and lead full, productive lives—”

“Spare me the inspirational speech.”

He’d heard the same lecture from his doctors, the police psychologist, his parents—even his big brother. He should be grateful he was alive. Hopeful he had a 50-50 chance of regaining sight in one eye.

But a friend was dead.

His career was finished.

His life had flashed before his sightless eyes.

He didn’t need some freckle-faced Florence Nightingale doing the neighborly thing for old times’ sake. He needed to be alone to figure out where he’d made his mistake, and devise a plan to make everything right again.

“Go home, Julia.”

There. He’d made himself perfectly clear.

He turned toward the open doorway. He hoped.

“I found a pair of sunglasses with the price tag still on them.” She started talking again without comment or argument, as if his succinct command had been an invitation to make herself at home.

Mac halted his grand exit. With his fingertips, he reached out and verified that he had found the door. The worn contours of sculpted oak reassured him. He wasn’t the one disoriented this time.

The clang of metal on metal and the suction pop of the refrigerator door opening behind him indicated she was preparing a meal. He ignored the sudden anticipation that wet his mouth and rumbled in his stomach, and concentrated on her words. “Somebody’s trying to take care of you. At least the glasses would protect your eyes from the light, if not from infection.”

The glasses had been a gift from his youngest brother, Josh. Along with some lame advice about making him look cool, and turning him into a babe magnet.

Such questionable laws of nature no longer applied to him.

“You don’t have to be here, you know.”

The racket behind him stilled, followed by a long, controlled whisper of air. “Yes, I do. For twenty-four hours.”

Twenty-four hours? What was that about?

He heard the rustling noise again. Julia was moving.

Wrapping his fingers around the doorjamb for balance, he tipped his ear toward the intriguing sound. In his mind he pictured a pair of legs, dressed in soft, snug denim, the thighs gently touching with each step.

He closed his eyes unnecessarily and envisioned her as a fifteen-year-old. She’d had a stocky, muscular build, perfect for snagging grounders and blocking base paths. He wondered what she looked like now. If she’d filled out in the right places over the years. If those muscles had turned into curves. If those long legs he heard brushing together were rounded or straight. Or…good God, what the hell was he thinking?

This was a fine time for his intellectual curiosity to rear its head. He wanted to get rid of her, not study her like some unidentified lab specimen.

Then the import behind her odd pronouncement registered through his instinct to analyze and identify. “If you don’t want to be here, then why are you?” he asked.

The pungent odor of gas catching flame told him she had gone back to the stove. “Your mother was worried about you. My mother was worried about me. Their solution was to put the two of us together.”

“They’re not matchmaking, are they?” His older brother Brett had recently married, and Martha Taylor seemed to have developed a fever now to find mates for all her brood. For Mac, her timing couldn’t be worse.

Julia laughed. “Are you kidding? Have you seen me lately?”

Her self-deprecating joke turned full circle in the dead air that followed. He knew the instant that her gaze searched his back in apology. Mac straightened. Six feet, three inches of stiff back ought to finally get rid of her.

“Can’t say as I have.”

“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean—” An immediate flurry of activity covered the silence. “I’m fixing an omelette for a late breakfast. It’ll take just a few minutes. Have a seat, the chair is two steps to your left. I’ll get some coffee going, too.”

Hell. Her attempts to distract him from her apology pricked his defenses. He’d rather do battle with her than endure her pity. He already carried enough of his own to choke on.

He ignored the pangs in his stomach and the curiosity of his mind, and tramped back into the living room. He hit the trash can and kicked it aside, not giving a damn about the mess he’d inevitably made.

That enticing whisper of denim followed quickly behind him. “You don’t have to like this,” said Jules. “But we should make the best of it.”

“Fine. You make the best of it. I’m going to my room.”

“Dammit, Mac, be reasonable.” She snatched his sleeve and tugged him around. Half a turn, maybe. Or was it all the way around? He squeezed his eyes shut against the dizzying confusion. As if the complete darkness was somehow more comforting than the shadowy nothingness of his vision.

“You look like hell. You need a shave and clean clothes. This scruffy look never was you.” A second hand grasped his chin and tilted his face to one side. “At least let me bandage your eyes. We can’t risk infection.”

He jerked his chin free of her soft, firm touch. “I can risk anything I damn well please.”

“What about breakfast? I didn’t see any dirty dishes. Have you eaten at all today? What about fresh air? Sunshine? Do you ever get outside?”

The woman was relentless. “Too many damn questions!” He twisted his arm from her grip and swatted the air, clearing the space around him, and hopefully scaring some sense into her. “Just leave me alone.”

Mac headed for the dining room, intending to leave Nurse Jules and her annoying determination behind him. On his second step he banged his shin against the coffee table and let out a stream of curses that would have made his mother grab the soap and wash out his mouth.

He spun around, planning to skirt the table. His knees butted into the sofa. He took a half turn to the right, ignoring a flare of panic, and ran into the overturned trash can.

Just like that internal clock, the compass inside him had gone haywire.

Mac choked back a frisson of fear that erupted within.

Lost in a spinning world. Trapped among the unknown terrors of his own home.

Imprisoned by his handicap.

For a man who had relied on cool, concise thinking his entire life, this continual buffeting of emotion played havoc with his sense of reason. Guilt. Fear. Anger. They were all his enemies now.

And for the first time in his life, he could think of no way to fight back.

Chapter Two

“With a cane you could tap your surroundings and find the way out.” Julia’s calm suggestion made a mockery of Mac’s own common sense.

“Shut up.”

He could control this. He could figure a way out of the maze of his own living room.

The rustle of sound barely registered as he concentrated on getting his bearings. He detected her unique scent, coming from behind him now, an instant before her hand latched onto his.

For an unthinking moment, he folded his fingers around hers, clinging to her sure grip, anchoring himself in the spinning disorientation of darkness. For all his crude words and rude behavior, he was grateful for the un-deserved patience in the gesture.

“This way.”

Her gentle voice beckoned and he followed. He allowed himself to be led a few steps, until he was free of the embarrassing hazards of his own home. He stopped when she stopped, but she tugged on his hand and pulled him forward another step.

His remaining senses buzzed into full alert as she guided his hand to the crook of her elbow. A practical gesture, he supposed. But the skin on the back of his hand and wrist bristled with acute awareness after brushing against the bountiful softness of what had to be a breast. In contrast, her strong shoulder nudged against his chest as she positioned herself to guide him. About chin height, he estimated, judging how she measured up against him. Maybe a shade taller.

The scent he had detected earlier and identified as her own pooled at nose level. It was her hair, he deduced. Her shampoo, to be more precise. Nothing perfumy. Clean, but not antiseptic. Fresh. Sassy. Just like…

Mac snatched his hand away and stepped back, shocked to realize he’d been analyzing Jules in a way that had nothing to do with science, and everything to do with the primal way a man checked out a woman.

As if he had any business checking her out.

As if she’d have any interest in being checked out by a scarred-up waste of a man like him.

“I don’t need you to be my guide dog.” His raspy voice, already ruined by the toxic fire that had destroyed his lab and killed a friend, sounded harsh in the monstrous quiet of the house.

He expected her to pack her things and run. The other nurses had refused to put up with his churlish behavior. He wanted to be alone right now. He needed his solitude.

But he’d met his match when it came to bullheaded determination.

Jules had somehow moved behind him. She touched his shoulders and turned him slightly. But she released him before he could justify any protest. “The archway’s about five steps directly in front of you.” Could he trust her guidance? He took two tentative steps, then three more. Her crisp, no-nonsense voice remained behind him. “The wall’s just to your right now. Put your hand out and use it to guide you.”