Free Blind Promises by Diana Palmer Page A

arms before she could move away.
    “Mr. van der Vere,” she said with controlled firmness, “please let me go.”
    But his fingers tightened, and a look of sudden pain washed over his features as her small hands pressed helplessly against his warm, broad chest. “Dana, don’t push me away,” he said softly.
    The quiet plea took the fight out of her. She stared up at him, hating what he made her feel, hating her own reaction to it. But how could she fight him like this?
    His big hands ran up and down her arms. “I wish I could see you,” he said harshly.
    “There’s nothing uncommon about me. I’m just an ordinary woman,” she said quietly. “I’m not a beauty; I’m plain.”
    “Let me find that out for myself,” he said, letting his hands move to the sides of her face. “Let me feel you.”
    “No!” She tried to move away, but his hands were too strong.
    “What is there about my touch that frightens you?” he asked harshly. “I won’t hurt you, I promise.”
    “It isn’t that…!”
     
    78
     
    Blind Promises
     
    Diana Palmer
     
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    “Then, what?” His face contorted. “For God’s sake, am I such a leper? Does my blindness repel you…?”
    Her eyes closed; her lower lip trembled. There was nothing for it now: She was going to have to tell him the truth or let him feel it, and she didn’t think she could bear that. She didn’t want him to know that she was disfigured.
    “I’m…there’s a scar,” she whispered shakily, her eyes closed so that she missed the expression on his face. “Down my left cheek. A very long one.”
    His hands shifted, and he found the scar with its puckered surface and traced it from her temple down past her ear, traced it with fingers that suddenly trembled.
    Her eyes closed even more tightly. “I didn’t want you to know,” she whispered.
    “Dana.” He searched her delicate features with warm, slow fingers, tracing her eyebrows, her eyes, her nose, her cheeks and, finally, her trembling mouth.
    “It’s like a bow, isn’t it?” he whispered, drawing his forefinger over the line of her mouth. “Do you wear lipstick?”
    “No,” she admitted. “I…I don’t like it.”
    “Firm little chin, high cheekbones, wide-spaced eyes…and a scar that I can barely feel, which must hardly show at all.” He bent and brushed his mouth over the scar with such tenderness that her eyes clouded and tears escaped from them.
    “Don’t cry,” he whispered.
    She swallowed. “You make it seem so…so small a thing.”
    “It is. Beauty is more than skin deep-isn’t that what they say? You have a lovely young soul…and a stubborn spirit that makes me gnash my teeth, even though
     
    I respect it.” He lifted his head. “Dana, I’d give a lot to taste your mouth again. But that wouldn’t be ethical, I suppose, and we must above all be ethical.”
    She smiled at his cynicism. “Yes, me must,” she murmured. She disentangled herself gently from his hands and he let her go with a sigh. “Now, about going to Savannah…”
    His face darkened and he scowled. “I do not want you to go….”
    “Oh, Dirk and I aren’t going alone,” she assured him. “We’re taking you with us.”
    He blinked. “What?”
    “We thought the ride would do you good,” she murmured. “Help your disposition, as it were. Blow the cobwebs away.”
    He chuckled softly, then loudly, and she loved the masculine beauty of his face when it relaxed. “I can think of something that would do my disposition a lot more good than a drive,” he murmured, tongue in cheek.
    She cleared her throat and moved toward the door. “You just sit here and mink about that. I’m going.”
    “Coward,” he said silkily.
    “Strategic retreat,” she corrected. She paused at the doorway. “Thank you for what you said about the scar, Mr. van der Vere.”
    “My name is Gannon,” he reminded her. “I’d…like to hear you say it”
    “Gannon,” she whispered, making a caress of it She turned