Tread Softly

I
have spread my dreams under your feet; Tread softly because you tread on my
dreams.

"He
Wishes for the Cloths of Heaven," by William Butler Yeats

  CHAPTER ONE

Cady
leaned over Rafe's sleeping form and kissed his cheek. It had been two months since
the operation and soon he would be going home. He could speak, he could
walk...Cady shrugged. Well, he could move in his walker a few feet more each
day. Soon he would be back to full strength, the doctors assured her, and at
his job in the Senate as junior senator from the state of
New York
. Cady sighed. Maybe she would again
find herself in the limbo their marriage had been in before the airplane
accident that had cost Rafe so much.

No...Even now,
as she watched his eyes flutter, Cady vowed to herself that no one would
relegate her to the hidey-hole life she'd been leading before the accident five
agonizing months ago, when the plane carrying Rafe and a few friends crashed.
They had been on their way to Durra, his father's home in
Maryland
,
named after the tiny hamlet in
Ireland
where Rafe's great-grandfather was born. The Learjet's engine had
malfunctioned; the plane had hit the ground on a wingtip and somersaulted into
a tree. The pilot had been killed, and Rafe, who had been standing talking to
his friends, had broken his back, causing a vertebra to press on his spinal
column. He'd been paralyzed from the neck down as a result. He'd received
further damage from a severe blow to the head when his body was flung through
the cabin. His vocal cords had been injured, but, although at first the doctors
were not hopeful about Rafe's back, they'd been confident he would at least
regain control of his voice.

When Dr. Kellman
had come forward and told Cady his feeling that with a radical type of surgery
with which he had previously been successful, Rafe would again be mobile, Cady
had felt the beginning of hope.

"The spine
would be fused here... here... here Dr. Kellman pointed to the many dots on the
scan. "Admittedly, the more points of injury, the greater the risk."
The doctor stared at her, his mouth tight. "But I also feel that his
chances are very good. Of course, there will be long weeks of physical therapy,
speech therapy..." The surgeon tapped his pointer on the desk. "But
with the use of the 'Halo,' the head device I described to you that will keep
him immobile, I think we'll succeed."

Cady stood and
shook Dr. Kellman's hand. "Doctor, thank you." She took a deep
breath. "I'd like time to think this over, and of course I'll consult with
other specialists."

Cady's research
had confirmed what Dr. Kellman told her. There had been success with such a
procedure, but it was still experimental, radical, and because so many pressure
points on the spine were involved, very risky indeed. Still, when Rafe had not
responded to physical therapy or to any of the other types of treatment the
doctors had tried, it became clear that the only hope for his full recovery lay
in the new laser surgery that Dr. Kellman recommended.

As she watched the vacant look in Rafe's blue eyes as he
came awake, the restless flutter of his hands as he clutched at the covering
sheet, Cady remembered the long days in the nursing cottage when his eyes were
the only moving part on that vital form. It still made her shudder with pain to
think of it. She recalled the day she had told him she was going ahead with the
operation, over the strong opposition of his father.

"Emmett
is furious that I would dare contemplate having such a radical procedure
performed on you." Cady lifted the flaccid hand to her mouth, delighting
in being able to touch him. "Oh, I know it's because he fears for your
life." She smiled at her husband, kissing each of his fingers. "He
would rather have you confined to this Stryker frame than risk your life."
She had watched his blue eyes become cobalt rays burning into her mind.
"Oh, yes, I know how you feel about that. I have no intention of letting
anyone interfere with the surgery that Dr. Kellman feels can help you."
Cady caught her breath as the fire deepened in his eyes. For a moment she felt
as though he were speaking to her rather than blinking his eyes, as he usually
did to communicate.

She
cleared her throat. "Ah... the governor called this morning and asked if I
would consider running for your seat if you're unable to do so." She
rubbed Rafe's limp hand against her cheek, wanting to touch him. "I told
him I would be busy campaigning for you." She kneaded his hand gently.

Before his
accident, she and Rafe had been estranged for nearly five years. They had lived
in the same house but almost as strangers. It hadn't been a cataclysmic schism
but rather a gradual alienation that had begun with Cady's dislike of some of
her father-in-law's friends. To her, these people seemed like leeches trying to
suck the vitality from Rafe's high-level priorities and leave behind the sleazy
money-making schemes they represented. Rafe had defended his father's cronies
and insisted that he had to give careful consideration to the bills that many
of them urged him to support. His sheepish defense of these people during
heated arguments with Cady had bordered on the defensive, she thought in retrospect.
At the time, however, she had interpreted Rafe's hesitation as a sign that he
was on the verge of knuckling under to his father's friends' demands. She had
been bitter in her denunciations of these men—and of her husband for listening
to them.

More and more
Rafe had attended parties alone, especially the parties his father gave at
Durra. True, he had initially asked Cady to attend these gatherings with him.
She had refused, partly because of her dislike of Emmett Densmore, Rafe's
father, who had never accepted Cady as his son's wife. But the parties at Durra
were a sore point with Cady for another reason as well.

It wasn't so
much the scandal that had broken when Rafe, then a freshman congressman, had
been discovered hosting a private party at Durra where the only guests other
than men in public office had been a bevy of notorious call girls. After all,
the episode had occurred before Cady had even met her future husband. But Rafe
had never mentioned the incident, had indeed acted as if the parties at his
father's estate were dull, staid political affairs, and he had been lukewarm in
his urging that Cady accompany him. Diffidently he had offered to forgo them
himself, though Cady, unwilling to create a wedge between father and son,
wouldn't hear of it. Yet she couldn't help wondering if her husband's silence
about the scandal and his continued presence at what she could only speculate
were little better than orgies weren't proof that he had not forsaken the wild
playboy life that he had led prior to their marriage. Hints to this effect from
Bruno Trabold, Emmett Densmore's most intimate assistant and manager of his
various sidelines and investments, fueled Cady's suspicions. But pride—and love—prevented
her from confronting Rafe about the parties at Durra.

As time went on
it seemed that Rafe spent more and more time at his father's estate. Cady
sought to fill the lonely hours by enrolling at
Georgetown
University
to pursue a master's degree in archaeology. She was encouraged in this
endeavor by Rafe's colleague, Rob Ardmore, a young congressman from
Iowa
. Rob also suggested
that Cady do her utmost to combat what he suggested was an undue influence over
Rafe of his father's questionable associates. But Rafe seemed to turn a deaf
ear to everything she said. While she studied, he partied. The rift between
husband and wife widened.

"I suppose
you'd rather I didn't even sleep in this room," Rafe had said to her one
evening when he walked into their bedroom and she grabbed a dressing gown and
held it up in front of her.

"That's
up to you," Cady had responded coldly.

Rafe had moved into
another bedroom the next day, tearing Cady apart, though she had said nothing
to dissuade him.

She
had held her breath waiting for him to ask for a divorce. Days went by when she
didn't even see him. She had been glad to take a trip back to
New York
State
to see her father in the university town of
Ithaca
.

It
was while she was there that the call had come informing her of the accident.
"It's Rafe." Emmett didn't spare her. "The plane crashed on the
way to Durra. He's alive, but it's bad. Get here fast." The phone had
crashed down, leaving Cady to arrange her return trip to
Washington
. She had felt as though her
insides were shredded. She remembered being on the plane and thinking Rafe
mustn't die. She had promised an elusive deity that she would do anything if
only her husband's life were spared.

She
studied Rafe again as he came more fully awake.

"Hello.
You had a long, deep sleep." Cady felt her smile slip sideways under
Rafe's long scrutiny.

"Hello,"
he answered, his voice retaining the slight hoarseness that the doctors assured
her would gradually fade. "It always seems as though I'm still unable to
speak when I first awaken." He swallowed. "God, it was awful having
to blink my eyes to communicate." His mouth lifted at the corners.
"Sometimes I think you read my mind rather than my blinks." He
coughed and nodded gratefully when Cady held out the water mug with the bent
glass straw. Rafe took several deep drafts, sighing and leaning back against
the pillows. "I'll never forget that helicopter ride from the nursing
cottage to here. I wanted either to be well again or to die on the operating
table."

Cady
could feel the pressure of tears building in her eyes. "I knew how you
felt."

Rafe
turned his head on the pillow. "I know you did. And I appreciate your
standing up to my father when he tried to block the surgery. I could blink my
consent, but the operation wouldn't have been properly authorized without your
having signed the release papers. Dad would have used all his influence to
prevent it if you hadn't kept it secret from him until after I was already on
the operating table."

Cady
shuddered in reminiscence of her father-in-law's ire when he had discovered
that his son was in the midst of undergoing the experimental surgery.
"Emmett was furious with me," she said quietly.

"Don't
I know it!" Rafe grinned at her, some of the pallor leaving his haggard
face. "And I can imagine how you felt when my brothers arrived to visit me
less than an hour before the helicopter was scheduled to take me from the
nursing home to the National Institutes of Health for the operation."

Cady
grazed her knuckles across her lips and nodded, recalling her shock when the
twins, Rafe's brothers, had ambled into the cottage. She had frowned at them in
her fear. "What are you doing here? I thought you visited Rafe earlier in
the day."

"Nice
greeting, Cady," Gareth, the more voluble twin, offered before going over
to the bed and lifting Rafe's heavy arm. "I bet you didn't expect to see
me twice in one day, did you, old man?" Gareth said to Rafe. "Gavin
decided he would come after practice because he had a makeup test today. So I
came with him." The sandy-haired giant turned around to look at Cady.
"Satisfied, o sister-in-law who never smiles anymore?"

"Hey,
Gareth, knock it off. Cady smiles. She's just tired from working those long
hours in Rafe's Senate office," the lesser giant with the darker-color
hair answered, smiling in his rather shy way at Cady before walking toward the
hospital bed and grinning at his brother. In the quick, restrained way he had,
Gavin leaned down to kiss his brother on the cheek.

Cady liked the
twins, although at times she thought Gareth a little too flippant and
outspoken. It was enough for her that they came to visit Rafe. That made them
top drawer to Cady. She cleared her throat, wondering how she was going to get
rid of them. "Ah... I... ah... this... I hate to say that this is my hour,
but it is." She looked at a now-frowning Gareth, her eyes steady.

"Cady of
the tiny slim body, the honey-color hair, and the violet eyes that should have
been fawn-brown to go with the rest of your coloring. You surprise me, as
usual. Why do you want us to go? You always seem to be in there battling about
something, but you look as fragile as that Belleek china from
Ireland
that
Dad prizes so much. What's going on behind that doll face, Cady?" Gareth
quizzed her, his careless college look fading into a sharp-eyed study.

His twin glanced
up from Rafe's bed. His quiet eyes had an arrested look as the color rose in
Cady's face.

"Why
does it seem strange to you that I would want my designated hour alone with my
husband? It wasn't my idea to break the time down so that Emmett and Bruno
could have their special times." She bit her lip as she heard her voice
rise in a hysterical way. At all costs she had to keep her cool. Nothing must
be allowed to interfere with Rafe being taken to the hospital today and
operated on by Dr. Kellman. All the plans hinged on split-second timing. If
Rafe's father ever suspected, he would try to stop her.