Lisa Bingham - Man Behind The Voice

He shrugged, doing his best to pretend that wearing little more than a T-shirt in the gusting wind was no big deal.

“I’m fine. Right now, I’m more worried about you, Miss…”

She licked her lips, squinting up at him in the darkness. “Eleanor. Eleanor Rappaport.”

“Well, Eleanor. How’s the head?”

“Hurts.” She squeezed her eyes shut, blinked then opened them again. “I must have banged it on the side of the car when I tried to get out.” She frowned. “But then, I already told you that, didn’t I?”

Jack felt a twinge of guilt, knowing that it was because of his truck slamming into her that she’d been injured at all.

“Does anything else hurt?”

She shook her head. “I’m really…fine. Don’t know why…I feel so…shaky.”

He took her hand, squeezing it. “Don’t you worry. You’ve got a nasty goose egg beginning to swell over one eye. You’re bound to be a little woozy.”

Releasing her hand for just a moment, Jack tore open the first aid kit. Selecting a pre-moistened towelette, he swabbed the gash. To his relief he found that it probably wouldn’t require stitches.

Working as quickly as he could, he cleaned the area, then applied a thick gauze bandage. Then he touched her forehead again. She was cold. Cold, clammy and so very, very pale.

Her eyes suddenly opened. She blinked, squeezed them shut for a moment, then peered at him again.

“So blurry.”

Jack felt his mouth grow dry. “You can’t see?”

“I’m having trouble…focusing…on things.”

Since the fact evidently agitated her, he touched her cheek, then took her hand.

“Don’t worry about it. You’ve probably got a concussion or something. A little rest and you’ll be fine.”

“You never…” she murmured, her voice faint and somehow fragile “…told me…your name.”

He squeezed her fingers. “Jackson. Jackson Mac—” He broke off, his head lifting. From far away he heard the faint wail of sirens.

“Hear that?” he said. “They’ve already sent someone to help. In no time at all, you’ll be safe and snug inside an ambulance.”

But when he searched her face for a sign of relief, he saw instead that she was gazing at him wide-eyed, a look of sheer horror spreading over her features.

“Jackson? Jackson!”

“Shhh,” he offered gently, calmly, even as his heart thudded in his ears and the wailing of the sirens grew louder and louder, scraping nerves already raw from the night’s events.

“I’m here, Eleanor,” he said, wondering if she were about to lose consciousness. Instead, as he bent low, he realized that her eyes were open, but they weren’t tracking him. She stared at him blankly, huge tears beginning to well up and spill down her cheeks.

“Jackson, I can’t see,” she cried, softly at first, then louder, the sobs tearing at his heart. “Jackson! I can’t see!”

Six Months Later

Jackson MacAllister bolted upright in bed, his own shout echoing in the darkness of the hotel room.

Breathing heavily, he dragged his fingers through his hair, trying to calm the fierce pounding of his head.

The dream. It had come again—as it always did when he was tired or feeling under the weather.

Or recovering from a nasty concussion.

Wincing, Jack swung his legs over the edge of the bed and turned on the bedside lamp. His body throbbed with the aftereffects of injuries he’d sustained on the job that day and the dregs of his dreams, causing his head to ache until he thought his skull would split with the pressure.

Standing, he padded into the bathroom. Under the harsh glare of the overhead light, he shook four aspirin from the bottle on the counter, then gulped them down with a glass of water from the tap.

Only then did he begin to relax.

Willing himself not to think of the dream or the woman who had seemed so real, so vulnerable, he moved to the windows. Pulling the heavy curtains aside, he peered down at the pre-dawn glow seeping over the Lincoln Memorial in the distance.

It had been nearly a week since the stunt car he’d been driving had flipped end-over-end during a staged high-speed chase for the film adaptation of the bestselling techno-thriller …Savage Justice. The scene had been choreographed and reshot three times in the first month of production, but since the director had spent only a quarter of a million dollars more than his budget had allotted, he’d decided to celebrate his good fortune by spending another fifty grand expanding the final chase scene.

Jack grimaced at the irony of the whole situation. Naturally, the director had decided that the footing showing Jack’s accident was “mar-r-r-velous”—as if Jack had planned to roll out of control and finish the take upside down next to a broken water hydrant. If Jack hadn’t immediately been rushed to the hospital, he would have grabbed the director by the collar, pinned him against a wall and chastised the man for moving a camera crew into the middle of the road—unannounced. As it was, Jack had still been in the emergency room when he’d received the news that the filming was finally—finally—over.

His anger at the director hadn’t eased with the announcement. If anything, Jack’s ire had increased—to the point where he’d made an effort to ignore the man so that he wouldn’t say anything politically incorrect. Jon Palermo might be an idiot, but his films were spectacular, and Jack enjoyed the creative freedom and lucrative budgets that came with a spot on Palermo’s crew. In the meantime, he planned to avoid Palermo.

Which was why Jack was booked on the next afternoon flight to Los Angeles. Once he’d returned to California he could put this whole miserable week behind him.

As if of its own volition, his mind quickly strayed away from all thoughts of Palermo to the nightmare that had awakened him.

Eleanor Rappaport. Why did the memories of that night, that woman, still continue to haunt him?

But even as he asked himself the question, he already knew. In the months since the accident, Jack had thought about Eleanor more than he would care to admit. He couldn’t seem to banish the image of her lying next to him, gripping his hand, and crying, “I can’t see!”

Again, the words shuddered through him like an icy finger touching his heart. He often found himself wondering what had happened in the intervening months. And if she’d ever regained her sight…

He shook his head as if to clear it of his thoughts, then regretted the action when a slicing pain shot through his head.

The time had come to put the memories of that night behind him, he told himself fiercely. After all, Eleanor Rappaport was a stranger to him. Other than those few minutes at the scene of the accident, he had never seen her again.

But he’d tried, a little voice reminded him. He’d brought a huge bouquet of daisies to the hospital where Eleanor had been taken, only to discover she’d been transferred to another facility.

Sighing, Jack stared out at the jewel-like glow of the historic buildings clustered around the glassy reflecting pool. Maybe the pressures of the job were to blame, but lately the dreams of that night plagued him even more. The details seemed sharper and Eleanor’s panic seemed that much more real.

If only he could assure himself that she was all right. If only he knew if she’d regained her sight. If he could see her one more time…

No. He couldn’t even think such a thing. She was a stranger to him. And those few moments they’d had together didn’t give him the right to interfere.

But she wouldn’t have to know.

The moment the thought raced through his head, he tried to push it aside, but it returned with even more force.

If he could somehow find her, he could tell at a glance if she was happy, healthy…

And whether or not she could see.

Again, he tried to bury the idea. He was out of his mind to even consider such a thing.

But he had the time.

And he needed to know.

Already he found himself making plans. Denver. If he could change his flight to Denver, he could—

No!

Again every logical bone Jack possessed insisted that he stop and think about the repercussions of such an action. Eleanor Rappaport was a stranger. He had no business barging into her life unannounced.

But another part of him, one that reacted on instinct, had taken control of his body. He was filled with impatience, a sudden hunger to see her again.

Numbly he turned, making his way to the closet. Slowly at first, then with greater urgency, he began throwing his belongings in his suitcase, banging drawers as he went.

“Hey! Where are you going?”

The door to the adjoining room squeaked open and a stoop-shouldered man glared at Jack.

Jack grimaced, realizing too late that he’d been making enough noise to wake Ira Sullivan, a fellow stuntman and mentor—known to his friends as One-Eye because of the patch he wore over his left eye, the result of a stunt-related accident that occurred years earlier.

“Denver!”

“Denver?” the man echoed incredulously. “What the hell for? I thought we were taking a four o’clock flight to L.A.”

“I’ve got to see someone there.”

“Who?”

“Eleanor Rappaport.”

One-Eye’s mouth gaped. He’d heard all about the accident and was clearly flabbergasted that Jack intended to see Eleanor again. He opened his mouth intending to argue, then closed it again.

“I’ll just gather my things. Heaven only knows what kind of trouble you could get into with that concussion. ’Pears to me you’re going to need someone to ride shotgun with you on this little adventure.”

“THERE YOU GO, Ms. Rappaport.” The bus driver’s rich-as-chocolate voice was accompanied by the squeal of brakes and the pungent scent of diesel fumes. “You be careful on your way home, y’hear? It’ll be slippery out there with all that rain.”

“Thanks, Burt.”

Eleanor awkwardly pushed herself to her feet, automatically smoothing the folds of her jumper over the protrusion of her stomach.

Two months. Two more months and she wouldn’t have to complete the odd contortion of movements it took to wriggle out of her seat and stand on a moving bus.

Finally gaining her balance, Eleanor automatically curled her hand around the iron bar overhead and made her way to the rear doors, her body leaning backward to adjust to the rocking of the vehicle.

Once she was positioned in front of the exit, she hooked an elbow around the vertical pole and used her free hand to unfold the red-tipped cane she’d slipped into her purse, taking great care not to bump the strident bicycle bell attached to the handle. Burt came unglued if she rang it on his bus. Something to do with the fact that he was an ex-police officer—go figure.

Looping her wrist through the strap, Eleanor clasped her coat more tightly around her neck, tapping her toe in an impatient tattoo as she waited for the city bus to come to a standstill. Not that she had anything important waiting for her when she arrived home. She merely hated waste—wasted time, wasted energy, wasted emotion.

Vainly she tried to shake off the impatience and frustration that invariably settled under her skin with bad weather. The smells of exhaust, damp earth and wet wool hung in the air around her, infiltrating her consciousness like mustard gas. The noise of raindrops splatting against the windows and drumming to the ground muted the sounds she’d become accustomed to absorbing on her ride home from work—the snore of Ed Mecham, who would sleep to the end of the line, the rustle of newspapers, the chatter of the Selma sisters who rode the number nine to mass each Wednesday and Friday. Calming sounds. Ritualistic sounds.