Move Heaven and Earth Read Online Free Page B

and Rand bounced with it, experiencing the discomfort with grim triumph.
    Some nurse this woman was, treating her patient with such cavalier disinterest. She was probably nothing more than one of those hussies who drank their patients’ whiskey, administered medicine when they remembered, and whored with the patients who had money.
    Too bad she couldn’t whore with him. He’d give a lot to get that smug little face on a pillow. He’d show her who was in command.
    At least…he’d have shown her at one time.
    They reached the top of the gentle cliff that led to the beach. He’d been climbing down it since he was a toddler. The first part of the path was nothing more than a dip, really, coming to a broad flat place where he had sat many a time. But after that the path descended rapidly, twitching to the left, then the right, in sharp curves that made the descent possible for those with the legs to walk.
    He’d once loved this spot. Now he clutched the wheels and glanced fearfully around. The cliffs closed the beach off in both directions, baiting the trap for fools who ignored the tide. Boulders pocked the sand,beckoning him as a bloody sacrifice. The ocean licked eagerly at the beach, sucking up the land.
    “How beautiful.”
    Her words were nothing but an exhalation, but he heard them. He gazed again, squinting against the glare of the sun. He’d seen it that way once.
    She stepped up beside him. “I can see forever.”
    He looked at her, and realized he could see forever, too. The wind made that possible as it blew the fine blue cotton of her dress against her body, molding every curve. She looked as if some man-elf, far gone with drink, had put her together as his ideal. She was petite, short enough that her head would fit under Rand’s chin—if he could stand.
    But she wasn’t skinny. Nice curves. She was pretty, too. Not beautiful, but striking. Even in repose, her face told him that she liked to laugh, for the fine lines around her wide mouth and wide eyes slanted up. But her hair—was that blond or white that slipped among the brown strands?
    “How old are you?” he demanded.
    “I’m twenty-seven years old.” She answered his question coolly, and asked right back, “How old are you?”
    Then he remembered he wasn’t supposed to ask a woman her age. It had been so long since he was made to be polite to anyone, so long since he cared what anyone thought of him, that he had forgotten even that rudimentary rule. But he refused to apologize for such a minor infraction.
    He’d done so much worse these last few months, and to people he loved.
    “I’m thirty-six years old, going on one hundred.”
    “Aren’t we all?”
    The birds catapulted on the wind. She studied them,and he studied her. So white did mark her hair. Her skin glowed like that odd-shaped pearl his mother wore on special occasions, and her big green eyes sparkled as if she’d laughed her whole life, but at some time, for some reason, tears had etched betraying lines into the delicate skin.
    “Let’s go there.” She pointed to the flat place down on the first rise.
    “No.”
    “We could lean against the rock and it’ll protect us from the wind.”
    “You’d never get me back up.”
    She let her gaze linger on him. “With those muscles, you could get yourself back up.”
    Suddenly, he realized the wind revealed more than her shape. It revealed his, too. What he had brazenly flaunted in the house seemed flagrant exhibitionism now. What was he doing on the cliffs in a robe?
    He wrapped the flaps over his chest and tugged the tie at his waist. Then the chair moved, headed down the path under her guidance.
    “Don’t!”
    He reached for the wheels, but she returned quickly, “Don’t! I’ll lose control.”
    Lose control . Oh, God, that nightmare phrase. He froze as she guided him down the gentle dip, and they came to a stop on the flat stone. She backed him up so he rested in a hollow. Removing her pelisse, she folded it and