dead, looking at her quickly. Almost like the kind the blind use, he’d been about to say. And suddenly it hit him. The moment he realized the truth, he felt as though he’d been smacked in the solar plexus with a football.
“Yes, he is a guide dog,” she said calmly. “And, yes, I am. Blind, that is.”
He was still too stunned to speak, not to mention the accompanying humiliation of being such a fool as not to have noticed before.
“Oh, pick your jaw up off the ground,” she said briskly.
“I … I’m so sorry, I …”
“No need to be sorry. It’s been quite amusing. I threw all kinds of hints out there that you didn’t pick up on.” She smiled serenely. “I think you hold the record. You’re the most clueless man I’ve ever met.”
“I. listen, I just didn’t …”
“It’s been almost a good twenty-four hours, hasn’t it? I once went three hours straight with an elderly man with a hearing problem who didn’t realize I was blind, but he was talking at the top of his lungs the whole time. And at ninety-four you expect a little density. But you!” She grinned, happy to have found a vulnerability in him. “You take the prize.”
He knew he was flushing. Luckily, she couldn’t see that, could she? Now if he could just get a steady tone back in his voice, he might be able to get back in control of this situation. He sank into a chair across from where she was sitting and looked at her, hard.
She was blind. For some reason that tore at him in a way he wasn’t prepared for. What a tragedy. She was so beautiful. His compassion for her hardship actually overwhelmed his resentment for having been fooled— and that wasn’t like him.
A waiter appeared, offered coffee drinks, and retreated again, and Adam nodded his response, but his mind was completely engaged in this lovely woman’s situation.
“My son says your name is Elena,” he managed to say at last, leaning forward and talking very slowly.
“Yes. Elena Valerio.”
“I am Adam Ryder,” he went on gingerly. “And I guess you’ve picked up that my son is Jeremy.”
She groaned, letting her head fall back. “Mr Ryder, I’m blind, not deaf, not hard of hearing, or even somewhat slow. You don’t have to speak carefully to me. Please. Just use your normal voice.”
He flushed again, annoyed at … what? Being caught out trying to be compassionate? That was the problem. It didn’t come naturally to him. No wonder she’d nailed him on it.
“Okay, Elena Valerio,” he said, speaking in a quick staccato. “I’m Adam. And if you skip the jokes about the Garden of Eden, I’ll lay off treating you like you’re in need of a keeper.”
Smiling, she stuck out a slender hand. “You’ve got a deal. It’s nice to meet you, Adam Ryder.”
He took her hand in his and held it a moment too long, studying it, admiring the long, slender fingers, the pink nails, the smooth skin.
“It’s nice of you to say so, Elena Valerio,” he responded as she pulled her hand away again. “I hope nothing happens to make you change your mind.”
She looked startled. “What could happen? Why are you talking in riddles?”
He smiled, glad to be back in control. “Tired of games? You seemed all for them yesterday.”
It was her turn to flush. “Sorry about that,” she said breezily. “But you’ve got to admit, you asked for it.”
He wasn’t prepared to admit anything of the kind, but he didn’t say so. He was still trying to adjust to the fact of her blindness. There were so many angles to it, aspects he’d never considered before. He pushed away the pity factor immediately. His intuition told him she would scorn any sort of sympathy for her condition. And that left him to wonder at her elegance and how gracefully she seemed to deal with the situation. He couldn’t imagine coming to terms with such a thing himself. Anger and bitterness would probably rule his life.
As if they didn’t already, he thought wryly, though he knew he was overstating a bit. Still, no one would call him a happy man these days. A cynical man, yes. A hard man. Life tended to make you that way.
He’d been taken aback recently when he’d overheard a young female employee at his film production company say, “Mr Ryder is so hot. How come he never smiles?”
Smile, he’d thought at the time. What the hell was there to smile about, anyway? Who had time? Smiling was for losers.
And yet he’d made it a point to stop by the men’s room and look into a mirror. She was right. Smiling didn’t seem to come naturally anymore. He finally forced the corners of his mouth up into the proper shape but his silver-blue eyes didn’t join in. They were still as cold as an Arctic winter.
He hadn’t been born angry. In fact, despite having a mother who spent her days dashing about the world with the jet set, his childhood had been relatively calm. But it seemed as if he was angry all the time lately. Maybe that was why Jeremy was so impossible to handle. The sins of the father and all that.
He looked at Elena and wondered if she had a lover.
“I guess you didn’t make those sketches, did you?” he said sadly.
Her laugh sounded like chimes. “No, I did not.”
“That’s disappointing.”
“Such a pity.” She pretended sympathy. “You thought you’d found a woman with a lot of naked male anatomy on her mind.”
She had him there. The idea had been appealing. “I thought I’d found a very interesting woman, that’s for sure.”
“So women aren’t interesting if there is no sex involved?”
There was a pause, and then he said softly, just because he couldn’t resist, “Who says there’s no sex involved?”
“I …”
That stopped her for the moment. She actually blushed. He grinned. The waiter brought a tall coffee drink he didn’t recognize as anything he would have ever ordered, but he accepted it, then waited for the man to leave before he leaned forward and asked, “So if you didn’t draw them, who did?”
“My friend Gino did. He came out on the ruins with me, but he went back before you arrived to make a phone call and left his sketchbook in my bag.”
That made him raise his eyebrows. “So he’s the one interested in male nudes.”
She smiled. “You might say that. He’s a very good artist, isn’t he?”
“I suppose. Though I’d be a better judge of that if the nudes were female.”
Her smile faded. She didn’t need any reminders that he was aggressively heterosexual. His vibes were coming through loud and clear—and making her nervous. She had no intention of getting chummy. As soon as Fabio and the boy came back, she would find an excuse to leave. In the meantime, she didn’t mind sparring with him a bit, as long as he didn’t take it as an invitation toward anything friendlier.
He moved and she tensed, not sure what he was going to do, then felt a bit foolish when it was obvious he was just using his cell phone. She reached for her drink, as if that had been her objective all along, but she knew she wasn’t fooling anyone.
“Damn,” he said after a moment. “Why don’t cell phones work around here? I can’t get through to anyone on this phone.”
“Is it set up for international?” she asked.
“I bought it deliberately for just that reason,” he said. “I’m beginning to wonder if there’s a magic button or something.”
It was on the tip of her tongue to offer him the use of her landline.