Crash had to pull up short to keep from knocking her over. “No, you don’t. I promise you, you don’t.”
She just laughed. And she went up on her toes, and she brushed her lips across his, and Crash’s world went into slow motion.
One heartbeat.
He couldn’t move. He knew that the smart thing to do would be to go for the kitchen door. He knew he should get it unlocked, push this woman inside, then lock it tightly again, with him on the outside.
Instead he stood there, holding his breath, waiting to see if she’d do it again.
Two heartbeats. Three. Four.
And then she did kiss him once more, slowly this time. She stared into his eyes as she stood on her toes again, her gaze finally flickering down to his mouth and back, before she touched her lips to his again—her lips, and the very tip of her tongue. She tasted him, softly, lightly, and the last of his control shattered.
He pulled her close and kissed her, really kissed her, lowering his head and claiming her lips, sweeping his tongue deeply inside of her sweet mouth, his heart pounding crazily.
Crash felt her fingers in his hair as she kissed him back just as fiercely, just as hungrily. She pressed herself against him even as he tried to pull her closer and he knew without a doubt that she wanted far more than a kiss. All he had to do was ask, and he knew he could spend the night in her bed.
She was a sure thing. He could sate himself, with Nell as a willing participant. He could bury himself inside her. He could lose himself completely in her sweetness.
And tomorrow, she would wake him up with a kiss, her hair tangled charmingly around her pretty face, her eyes sleepy and smiling and…
And the light and laughter would fade from her eyes as he quietly tried to explain why he couldn’t become a permanent fixture there in her bed. Not couldn’t—didn’t want to. He didn’t really want her. He’d just wanted someone, and she’d been there, willing and ready and…
And he knew he couldn’t do that to Nell.
Crash found the strength to push her gently away. She was breathing hard, her breasts rising and falling rapidly beneath her dress, her eyelids heavy with passion. Dear God, what was he doing? What was he giving up?
“I’m sorry,” he said. He’d been saying that far too often lately.
Realization dawned in her eyes. Realization and shocked embarrassment. “Oh, God, I’m sorry,” she countered. “I didn’t mean to attack you.”
“You didn’t,” he said quickly. “That was me. That was my fault.”
Nell stepped even farther back, away from him. “It was just, um, part of tonight’s fantasy, right?”
She was searching his eyes, and Crash knew that she was more than half hoping he’d deny her words. But instead, he nodded. “Yeah,” he said. “That’s all it was. We’re both tired, and…that’s all it was.”
Nell hugged his jacket more tightly around her, as if she’d suddenly felt the cold. “I better get inside.”
Crash went up the stairs and unlocked the kitchen door, holding it open. She slipped out of his jacket, handing it back to him.
“Good night,” he said.
To his surprise, she reached out and touched the side of his face. “Too bad,” she said softly.
And then she was gone.
Crash locked the door behind her. “Yeah,” he said. “Too bad.”
OUT IN THE BARN, the band was finally packing up. But as Crash watched from the shadows beyond the doorway, Jake and Daisy still danced to music only they could hear.
Admiral and Mrs. Jacob Robinson.
The evening had been one of laughter and celebration. Jake had accepted the congratulations of friends and colleagues. He’d smiled through the toasts that wished the two of them long life and decades more of happiness. He’d laughed as friends had joked, trying to guess exactly how he’d finally convinced this longtime lover to willingly accept the chains of matrimony.
Jake had finally gotten what he’d always wanted, but Crash knew he would trade it all for a miracle cure.
As Crash watched them dance, Jake wiped his eyes, careful to keep Daisy from seeing that he was crying.
Jake was crying.
All evening long, Crash had fought to keep the constant awareness of Daisy’s mortality at bay.
But now death’s shadow was back.
Crash waited until the band had left, until Jake and Daisy slowly made their way out to the house.
He turned down the heat and locked the barn door, then went to his room.
Nell’s door was closed, and as he passed it, it stayed tightly shut.
He was glad for that. Glad she was asleep, glad she hadn’t been waiting for him. He didn’t think he would have had the strength to turn her down again.
He hesitated outside his own bedroom door, looking back down the hall toward Nell’s room.
Yes, he was glad. But he was also achingly disappointed.
CHAPTER SEVEN
NELL SAT NUMBLY ON HER BED, next to her suitcase. She was aware that she was going to have to stand up and walk over to her dresser if she wanted to transfer her socks and underwear from the drawer into that suitcase.
It couldn’t have happened so quickly, it didn’t seem possible. But yet it had.
Two days after the wedding, Daisy had had another of her fainting spells. It had taken even longer for her to be roused, and when she was conscious, she’d found that she could no longer walk unassisted.
The doctor had come out to the house, leaving behind a final, chilling prognosis—the end was near.
Yet Daisy and Jake had continued to celebrate their newlywed status. They’d sipped champagne while watching the sunset from Daisy’s studio. Jake had carried Daisy wherever she wished to go, and when he grieved, he did it out of her sight.
And then, three days after Christmas, Daisy and Jake went to sleep in their master-bedroom suite, and only Jake had awakened.
Just like that, in the blink of an eye, in the beat of a heart, Daisy was gone.
The evening before, they’d all been together in the kitchen. Nell had been making a cup of tea, and Jake, with Daisy in his arms, had stopped in to say good-night. Crash had come in from outside, wearing running clothes and a reflective vest. Even though Nell had offered to make him some tea as well, he’d gone upstairs shortly after Daisy and Jake. Ever since the night of the wedding, he’d been careful not to spend any time alone with her.
But he’d come into her room the next morning, to wake her up and tell her that Daisy had died, peacefully, painlessly, in her sleep.
That day and the next had passed in a blur.
Jake grieved openly, as did Nell. But if Crash had cried at all, he’d done it in the privacy of his own room.
The wake had been filled with many of the same people who’d come to the wedding barely a week before. Senators. Congressmen. Naval Officers.
Washington’s elite.
Four different people had given Nell their card, knowing that she had not only lost a friend but was suddenly out of work. It was a gesture of kindness and goodwill, Nell tried to tell herself. But still, she couldn’t shake the image of herself in the middle of a feeding frenzy. Good personal assistants were hard to find, and here she was, suddenly available.
Senator Mark Garvin had talked for ten minutes about how his fiancée was seeking a personal assistant. With their wedding only a few months away, she was hard-pressed to keep her social schedule organized. Nell had stood there uncomfortable until Dex Lancaster had come to her rescue and pulled her away.
Still, despite that, the wake had been lovely. As at the wedding, laugher resounded as everyone told of their own special memories of Daisy Owen Robinson.
The funeral, too, had been a joyous celebration of a life well lived. Daisy definitely would have approved.
But through it all, Crash had been silent. He’d listened, but he hadn’t responded. He didn’t tell a story of his own, he didn’t laugh, he didn’t cry.
Several times, N
ell had been tempted to approach him and take his pulse, just to verify that he was, indeed, alive.
He’d distanced himself so completely from all of the grief and turmoil around him. She didn’t doubt for a minute that he’d distanced himself from everything he was feeling inside, as well.
That was bad. That was really bad. Did he honestly expect to keep everything he was feeling locked within him forever?
Nell stood up, took her socks from the drawer and tossed them into her suitcase. Just as quickly as Daisy had died, other changes were happening, too. She was leaving in the morning. Her job here was finished.
As much as she wanted to stay, she couldn’t help but hope that once he was alone with Jake, Crash would be able to come to terms with his grief.
Her favorite pair of socks had rolled out of the suitcase, and as Nell picked them up off the floor, she noticed the heels were starting to wear through. The sight made her cry. For someone who never, ever used to cry, nearly everything made her burst into tears these days.
She lay back on her bed, holding the rolled-up ball of socks to her chest, staring at the familiar cracks in the ceiling, letting her tears run down into her ears.
She’d loved it here at the farm. She’d loved working here, and she’d loved living here. She’d loved Daisy and Jake, and she loved…
Nell sat up, wiping her face with the back of her hand. No. She definitely didn’t love Crash Hawken. Even she wouldn’t do something as foolish as fall in love with a man like him.
She put the socks in her suitcase and went back to the dresser for her underwear.
Sure, she loved Crash, but only in a non-romantic way—only the way she’d loved Daisy, the way she loved Jake. They were friends.
Yeah, right. She sat down on her bed again. Who was she trying to kid? She wanted to be friends with Crash about as much as she wanted to sign on to be personal assistant to oily California Senator Mark Garvin’s pampered debutante fiancée. In a single word—not.
What she wanted was to be Crash Hawken’s lover. She wanted him to kiss her again, the way he’d kissed her on the night of the wedding. She wanted to feel his hands against her back, pulling her close.
She wanted to tear off her clothes and share with him the hottest, most powerful sexual experience of her entire life.
But those feeling weren’t necessarily based on love. They were the result of attraction. Lust. Desire.
There was a knock on her door, and Nell nearly fell of her bed. Heart pounding, she went to open it.
But it was Jake, not Crash. He looked exhausted, his eyes rimmed with red. “I just wanted to let you know that I’m going to be sleeping downstairs again tonight.”
Nell had to clear her disappointment out of her throat before she could speak. “Okay.” Had she honestly thought that it might be Crash knocking on her door? What was she thinking? In the entire month that they’d slept under the same roof, with the sole exception of the night of Jake and Daisy’s wedding, Crash had never made a move on her. He’d never done anything at all that even remotely suggested that he was interested in anything but her friendship. So why on earth had she thought he would knock on her door now?
“What time are you leaving tomorrow?” Jake asked.
She was going home to Ohio for a week or two. “First thing in the morning. Before seven. I want to try to miss the rush-hour traffic.”
He reached into his jacket pocket and drew out an envelope. “I better give this to you now, then. I want to sleep as long as I can in the morning.” His mouth twisted into an approximation of a smile. “Like, until April.” He handed her the envelope. “Severance pay. Or a bonus. Call it whatever you like. Just take it.”
Nell tried to give it back. “I don’t want this, Jake. It’s bad enough that Daisy left me all that money in her will.”
Somehow Jake managed a more natural smile. “Yeah, well, she really wanted to give you Crash. She was sorry that didn’t work out.”
Nell felt herself blush. “It didn’t not work out,” she said. “It just… There was nothing there. No spark.”
Jake snorted. “You really don’t think Daisy and I didn’t notice the two of you staring when you didn’t think the other was looking? Yeah, right, there were no sparks—there were nuclear-powered fireworks.”
She shook her head. “I don’t know what you think you saw.” She lowered her voice. “I did everything but throw myself at him. I’m telling you, he’s not interested in me that way.”
“What he is is scared to death of you.” Jake pulled her in close for a quick hug. “You know I’ll never be able to thank you enough for all you did, but right now I have to go lie down and become unconscious. Or least attempt it.”
“Admiral, are you sure you want to be alone? I could get Billy, and we could all have something to eat and—”
“I’ve got to get used to it, you know? Being alone.”
“Maybe tonight’s not the night to start.”
“I just want to sleep. The doctor gave me something mild to help me relax. I’m not proud—if I need to, I’ll take it.” Jake gave her a gentle noogie on the top of her head. “Just give me a call when you get to your mom and dad’s so that I know you made it to Ohio safely.”
“I will,” Nell promised. “Good night, sir.” She was still holding the envelope he’d given her. “And thank you.”
Jake was already gone.
She turned and looked at Crash’s door.
It was tightly shut, the way it always was when he was inside his bedroom.
What he is is scared to death of you.
What if Jake was right? What if the attraction Nell felt for Crash really was mutual?
If she didn’t do something now, if she didn’t walk over to that tightly shut door and knock on it, if she didn’t get up the courage to look Crash in the eye and tell him exactly how she felt, she could very well lose the opportunity of a lifetime—a chance to start a very real relationship with a man who excited her on every level. Emotionally, physically, intellectually, spiritually—there was no doubt about it, William Hawken turned her on.
When she woke up in the morning, he’d probably already be downstairs, coming back inside from his morning run. She would load up her car, then shake his hand and that would be it. She would drive away, and probably never see him again.
She stood a chance at making a royal fool of herself, but if she wasn’t going to see him ever again, what did that matter?
As she stood there, gazing at Crash’s closed door, she could almost hear Daisy whispering in her ear, “Go for it.”
Nell tossed the envelope Jake had given her into her suitcase and, straightening her shoulders, she went back into the hall, heading for Crash’s room.
CRASH SAT IN THE DARK, fighting his anger.
He’d sat through the funeral as if he were watching it from a distance. It didn’t seem possible that Daisy was dead. Part of him kept looking around for her, waiting for her to show up, listening for her familiar laughter, watching for her brilliant smile.
He didn’t know how Jake could possibly stand it. But for the past two days, Jake had accepted condolences with a graciousness and quiet dignity that Crash couldn’t imagine pulling off.
The anger Crash felt was something he could manage. He was good at controlling his anger. He was practiced in distancing himself from it. But the grief and the pain he was feeling—they were threatening to overpower him.
He’d found he could stomp down the grief, controlling it with his stronger feelings of anger. But after two solid days, the anger was getting harder and harder to control.
And so he sat in the dark with his hands shaking and his teeth clenched, and he silently let himself rage.
Nell was leaving in the morning. The thought made him even angrier, the feeling washing over him in great, thick waves.
He heard a sound in the hallway. It was Jake, knocking on Nell’s door. He heard the door open, heard the two of them talking. He could hear the murmur of voic
es, but he couldn’t make out the words. Still, he managed to get the gist. Jake and Nell were saying their goodbyes. Then he heard Jake walk away.
Crash closed his eyes, listening even harder, but he didn’t hear Nell’s door close. A board creaked in the hall, and his eyes opened. She was standing right outside of his room.
Dear, sweet Mary, how was he supposed to fight the temptation that Nell brought as well as all his grief and pain?
He closed his eyes, again, willing her to walk away. Walk away.
She didn’t. She knocked on his door.
Crash didn’t move. Maybe if he didn’t answer, she would just go away. Maybe…
She knocked again.
And then she opened the door a crack, peering in, looking in the direction of his bed. “Billy? Are you asleep?”
He didn’t answer, and she stepped farther into the room. “Hawken…?” The light from the hallway fell onto the bed, and he saw when she realized it was empty. “Crash, are you even in here?”
He spoke then. “Yes.”
Nell jumped, startled by his voice coming from the other side of the room.
“It’s dark in here,” she said, searching for him in the shadows. “May I turn on the light?”
“No.”
She flinched at the flatness of his reply. “I’m sorry. Are you… Are you all right?”
“Yes.”
“Then why are you sitting in the dark?”
He didn’t answer.
“This all must seem like some terrible kind of déjà vu to you,” she said quietly.
“Have you come to psychoanalyze me, or did you have something else in mind?”
It was too dark to see her clearly, even with the light from the hall, but he could picture the slight flush rising in her cheeks.
“I came because I’m leaving in the morning and I wanted to…say goodbye.”
“Goodbye.”
She flinched again, but instead of turning and walking out of the room the way he hoped she would, she moved toward him.
He was sitting on the floor with his back against the wall, and she sat down right next to him. “You’re not alone in what you’re feeling,” she said. “There was nothing any of us could do to keep her from dying.”
Tall, Dark and Dangerous Vol 1: Tall, Dark and FearlessTall, Dark and Devastating Page 134