Tread Softly (3 page)

One afternoon,
when Cady had had a particularly tough day at the Senate and was telling Rafe
how pompous she thought a thirty-year member of that august body was, Rafe's
two sisters swept through the door, looking every inch the wealthy Maryland
society ladies they were.

"My dear
Rafe," Aileen cried, bestowing a vague smile on Cady. "I just talked
to our dear friend Hugo Billings, you know who I mean, don't you? He was at
Harvard with Dave, a terribly successful surgeon. He says that the operation I
described to him is very revolutionary and not positively safe." She
turned her gaze full on Cady. "I can understand poor Daddy's reservations."
She blinked. "It was a bit high-handed and thoughtless of you, Cady."

"High-handed
and thoughtless," Aveen parroted, pushing aside the reading material that
Cady had just brought Rafe and putting in its place a bouquet of flowers in a
Wedgwood vase.

"I'm
delighted that you're so glad to have me back among the living," Rafe
pronounced, his dry tone not all due to his still-hoarse throat.

Aileen looked at
him down her long, aristocratic nose. "Your welfare is not the issue here.
Rafe. dear.'"

"Yes, Rafe.
Don’t cloud the issue by talking about your health, dear." Aveen's smile
was indulgent. 'You don't want to be thought a hypochondriac. Very tacky."

"I'll
try not to be tacky.' Rafe assured his sisters ironically.

"Good."
.Aiken said, frowning as if already having forgotten who she was censuring and
why.

"He always
took discipline well," Aveen assured her sister. She turned to Cady, a
pained look on her face. "Cady, dear, I do so wish you wouldn't sit around
with your mouth open. So declasse, don't you see?" The lines between her
eyes deepened. "I'm surprised that Rafe hasn't said anything to you about
it." She pursed her lips at her brother. "I'm sure people know that
Cady's related to us. You should say something."

"Cady,
make a note that I'm to tell you that you mustn't sit around with your mouth
open, no matter what my sisters say." Rafe smiled at his sisters in a
bland way, ignoring their suspicious stares. Neither Aileen nor Aveen was known
for having a sense of humor.

When
her sisters-in-law left, Cady gave a huge sigh, not wanting to look at Rafe for
fear she would laugh. But when she heard him chuckling, she let her own smile
loose.

"Lord,
they're incredible. Cady, you have my permission to shoot me if I ever get as
pompous as my sisters." Rafe's blue eyes shone merrily into hers.

Cady
giggled, loving the feeling of intimacy they were sharing. "I won't ask
your permission. I'll just do it."

They
laughed together. Then, as Cady watched, Rafe's smile seemed to harden.
"Lying trapped in a tilted bed, I learned more about my own family than I
ever did when we all occupied the same house. Lord, Cady, have they always
acted toward you as if you're totally brainless? Don't they know about the
great job you've done in the Senate?" His lips tightened even more.
"Was I so damn blind that I didn't see the cavalier way they treated you?
Damn it, Cady, why didn't you tell me I was a bigger ass than either of my
sisters?"

Cady
felt lighthearted and would willingly have let Rafe's sisters have another go
at her without flying at them if it made Rafe so tender. She chuckled again.

"Share
the joke."

"I was just
thinking how much I've changed. When we first got married, I was so in awe of
your sisters.

They were so
tall, so imposing, so much the women in command. Now..." She shrugged.
"Now what, Cady?"

"Sometimes
I'm afraid I'll laugh in their faces."

"Only
sometimes?" Rafe flashed her the impish look that Cady loved so much, had
so missed seeing.

She laughed,
feeling weightless, treasuring these close moments with Rafe, moments that she
hadn't shared with him in a long time, moments that had marked the early days
of their marriage. Hope snowballed inside her that he wouldn't want to divorce
her, that he might suggest they try again.

They
were still laughing together when Bruno entered the room. "Your father is
attending the rally for Congressman Sykes, but he wanted me to bring these
figures that the Greeley people compiled on the nuclear power plant."
Bruno barely nodded to Cady as he leaned over the end of the bed to hand Rafe a
manila folder.

"Another
plan on how to rape the planet, Bruno?" Cady queried, her voice mild, her
pulse jumping when Rafe chuckled.

Bruno
looked at her, his polar ice cap smile making her shiver. "No. Another
plan to make the country richer."

"The
country?" Cady scoffed. "Or a few vested interests whose
under-the-table boss happens to be Mr. Greeley?"

"You're
beginning to talk like Congressman Ardmore, that left-wing buddy of yours,
Cady." The frigid display of teeth widened, reminding Cady of a shark. No
one could call that a smile. Cady shuddered to herself.

"What
are you saying, Bruno?" Rafe demanded, his voice expressionless.

"Nothing."
He pulled a package of cigarettes from his pocket, then frowned at the No
Smoking sign and returned them to his pocket. "We all thought Cady was
having all those meetings with Rob Ardmore because they were both interested in
archaeology." His glance slid off Cady's face, taking note of the two
coin-size spots of color she felt burning in each cheek. "I can see now
that they had more to... discuss than that. No wonder you met him so often,
Cady."

He
left, a satisfied look on his face.

Cady could feel
the change. The closeness was gone. There was a chill in the air instead of
laughter.

The
balloon of hope burst palpably when she turned to look at her white-faced
husband, his eyes leaping in cobalt fury.

CHAPTER
TWO

Rafe
stayed in the hospital longer than anticipated because he had to be introduced
to his recuperation program under the aegis of his physical therapists and his
doctors. Often after these sessions Rafe would be exhausted, and upon returning
to his room he fell into a deep sleep.

It
seemed to Cady that relations between them grew increasingly strained. She had
tried to talk to Rafe about Rob Ardmore and how grateful she was to him for
helping her through two rough periods, her adjustment to Rafe's debility and
her work in the Senate. She couldn't bring herself to tell Rafe how lonely she
had been, before and after his accident, how she had needed both a friend and a
diversion to keep her sane. She had begun her studies in archaeology at Rob's
instigation after they had talked one day about their majors in college.

"With
your scientific background, Cady, I'll bet you'd enjoy these classes I'm
auditing. Why don't you come with me one evening?" Rob had urged her.

To Cady, the
classes had become a lifeline. It seemed to her it was at that point that she
had really begun to take hold of her life.

She
shook herself out of her reverie and glanced at her slumbering husband. How
boyish he looked in sleep! All the pain lines smoothed away, all the anger at
Cady softened out of that firm mouth.

She
sighed, trying to implant the image of that face on her mind against the time
when she might be separated from him. "You've never known how much I love
you, have you, Rafe? To you, I was just a star-struck schoolgirl you happened
to marry. Oh, Rafe, don't you know that I willingly settled for anything you
could give me, not because I was a silly college girl, but because even then,
twelve years ago, at the age of eighteen, I loved you." She could feel her
body tighten as though because she was saying the words, even in a whisper, she
had to protect herself against Rafe's derision. "Not that you ever made
overt fun of me, love. You didn't. But it always seemed as though you would
reach a point where you would regret that I was your wife. It seems from the
moment we married, I've been trying to harden myself against the day you would
want to be free of me." She could feel her lips twist at the sound of her
words. "Feeling sorry for yourself, Cady Densmore?" she quizzed
herself. "No!" Cady almost shouted. Then she looked at the somnolent
Rafe, afraid she might have wakened him. No, his lips were still parted in low
snoring as sleep held him in its grip.

Her critical
gaze took note that he seemed to have gained weight despite the arduous and
often painful therapy sessions. Rafe was a fighter, too. They were both
fighters. She had always known it about Rafe. She had only found it out about
herself after Rafe's accident.

"I wasn't a
fighter when you first met me, was I, Rafe? Otherwise I would have gone back to
the dorm and punched Todd and Marina in the eye that day instead of running
home and crying alone in my room. But then if I hadn't done that, maybe you
wouldn't have met me. Just maybe if I hadn't kept you talking so long, you
wouldn't have stayed at our house overnight." Cady yawned, her long day in
the Senate office beginning to have its effect on her. She didn't want to sleep
when she only had a short stay with Rafe. Perhaps if she just closed her eyes
for a minute, she would be fresh and alert when he woke up.

As
she fell into a half-doze, the memory came coursing back.

She
was Cathleen Dyan Nesbitt, and she was eighteen and already a sophomore at
Cornell, and she was in love with Todd Leacock, a twenty-year-old junior. At
least that was what she thought was between them, until she had hotfooted it to
her best friend's dorm room and found Todd in bed with Marina. He had laughed
at her and told her to grow up, that shocked little virgins were out of style.

She had left the
dorm and stumbled across campus and down the hill to the house she shared with
her father, a professor of political science. She had heard him laughing with someone
in the study, but she had gone right to her room to lie across the bed,
wide-eyed, staring at the ceiling. "You won't die from this, Cady,"
she had muttered to herself. "It just feels like you're dying." She'd
flopped over on her stomach and moaned into her pillow. She hadn't heard the
bedroom door open.

"Your
father thought you were home, and since his housekeeper is at the store, he
told me to come and fetch you." The baritone voice had a sandpaper quality
to it, making Cady assume that the speaker was a smoker. "Shall I tell him
that you'd like to stay in your room for a while?"

Cady
turned over and pushed herself to a sitting position on the bed. She started
to say yes, she would prefer to remain in her room until dinner, when her eyes
filled with tears once again, blinding her. She sat there seeing only the
blurred outline of the man, not able to stanch the flow of her tears or
articulate a word. She knew he was next to her when she felt the bed sag
beneath his weight. He was a big man, and without thinking she moved to make
more room for him.

"Don't cry.
It can't be that bad. Did you get a bad grade? That happened to me, too, many
times, but I survived. So will you." The coarse silk voice was comforting
to Cady.

She
had no idea how it happened, but all at once she was held against a worsted
suit that had the softness of silk, the faint aroma of woodsy aftershave in her
nostrils. "It wasn't my grades." She sobbed a sigh. "It was my
boyfriend, Todd. I thought he loved me. He said he did." She lifted her
head. "No wonder he wanted me to sleep with him. He wanted another scalp
on his totem pole. If not mine, he'd take my best friend's." She glared at
the man looking down at her, her eyes like wet amethysts.

"You found
him with another woman." His hand pressed her head down again, stroking
her honey-color hair that looked streaky blond in the summer. It was as thick
and straight as rope.

"In
bed with Marina," she gritted into the custom-tailored jacket. The
stranger let his breath out in a long sigh. She felt it under her cheek.
"Men do that sometimes. So do women. It's the chance you take in a relationship."
He leaned back from her. "All the men who come into your life won't be
like that."

"Would you
be like that?" Cady snuffled, taking the fine linen handkerchief he
offered her and blowing into it. "I'll wash this and send it to you,"
she muttered, pushing the hankie up the sleeve of her sweater.

"Thank you,
but there's no need. You can keep it." He smiled at her and she almost
gasped at the thickness of his lashes and the deep sky blue of his eyes.

"You
didn't answer my question." She tried to sit straighter but was impeded by
his body.

"No,
I didn't. I wanted to ignore it, because I don't know the answer."