Tall, Dark, and Dangerous Part 2

by Suzanne Brockmann

“Oh, come on, Daisy, she’s bluffing,” Crash said.

  “Look at her.”

  “I never mentioned it because it’s not something that usually comes up in normal conversation,” Nell said. “I don’t go around introducing myself to people and saying,

  ‘Hi, I’m Nell Burns—oh, by the way, I know how to tap-dance.”’

  “I don’t buy it.” Crash shook his head. “No way. She’s just trying to get out of this.”

  He was teasing. There was a light in his eyes that told Nell he was teasing. Ever since the evening they went sledding, the evening he’d actually talked about himself, their relationship had continued to grow. But only in one direction. They only continued to be friends.

  It was driving her nuts.

  “You just think because you’re helping FInCOM do an advanced security check, you know everything there is to know about me,” Nell countered. “I’m glad you don’t believe me. This proves that I’m still capable of having secrets. God knows everyone needs at least one little secret—even if it’s only that they know how to tap-dance.”

  The truth was, Nell had more than one secret. And one of those secrets she was keeping was enormous. She was falling for Crash. With every moment that passed, she was falling harder for this man who was determined to be no more than her friend.

  She glanced at Daisy, who was watching her with a smile. Strike that. The way Nell felt about Crash was apparently quite obvious to some people in the room.

  “I believe you,” Jake told her. “But there’s only one way you’re going to convince Lieutenant Skeptic here. You’re going to have to tap dance for him.”

  “That’s right.” Crash gestured toward the spacious kitchen floor. “Come on, Burns. Knock yourself out.”

  “Right here? In the kitchen?”

  “Sure.” He leaned back in his chair, waiting.

  Nell shook her head. “I…don’t have tap shoes.”

  “I bought us each a pair,” Daisy said helpfully.

  “They’re out in the barn.”

  Nell stared. “You bought four pairs of—”

  Crash stood up. “Let’s go.”

  “Now?”

  He started for the door. “Jake was right. The only way I’ll let you get out of the required beginners’ class is if you walk your talk, so to speak.”

  Nell rolled her eyes at Daisy, then followed Crash out to the barn. She shivered as he unlocked the door.

  He glanced at her. “Where’s your jacket?”

  “You didn’t take yours.”

  “I usually don’t need one.”

  “You usually work in the jungles of Southeast Asia where the average December temperature is a steamy eighty degrees.”

  “You aren’t supposed to know that.” He held the door open for her and then closed it behind them. “It’s cold in here, too. I’ll turn up the heat.”

  “Don’t. It’s not good for the trees to be really warm until they absolutely have to be,” Nell explained. “If we keep ’em inside at seventy-two degrees for a week, and then put them outside when it’s in the twenties…it blows their minds.”

  “They’re trees,” Crash pointed out dryly. “They don’t have minds.”

  “That’s not what my mother thinks. She talks to all her plants. And I think it works. My parents’ entire house is like a botany experiment gone wild.”

  “I hate to break it to you, Burns, but that says more for the power of CO2 than anything else.”

  “Yeah, yeah,” Nell said. “Be that way.” The morning was gray and she turned on the overhead lights.

  Four shoe boxes were neatly stacked underneath one of the Christmas trees that she and Crash had decorated.

  Tap shoes. Two pairs of men’s shoes, and two pairs of women’s. They were all black leather, and the women’s had a sturdy two-inch heel.

  Somehow Daisy had known Nell’s exact shoe size. She sat on the floor and pulled off her boots. “It’s been a while,” she said, looking up at Crash as she strapped on the shoes. “I learned to tap back when I was in high school. I was a theater-major wanna-be—you know, in the chorus of all the school musicals, never good enough to get a lead role. I was an okay dancer, but not talented enough to get into a performing-arts program at any college. At least not any college I wanted to go to.”

  She stood up. Trust Daisy to spend the money on quality shoes that fit comfortably.

  Nell caught sight of herself in the wall of mirrors. Dressed in jeans and a turtleneck, she felt odd in fancy black heels. She felt odder still about Crash, leaning against the wall, arms crossed, waiting to watch her dance. She knew he wouldn’t laugh at her—at least not out loud.

  She glanced over her shoulder at him. “You know, I really shouldn’t have to do this,” she said. “We’re friends. You should believe me. You should take on faith what I’ve told you is true.”

  He nodded. “Okay. I believe you. Dance.”

  “No, what you should say is that you believe me, and because you believe me you don’t have to see me dance.”

  “But I want to see you dance.”

  “All right, but I’m warning you. It’s been years, and even back when I was taking lessons I wasn’t very good.”

  Crash turned toward the windows. “What’s that?”

  “What?”

  He straightened up, pushing himself off the wall. “A siren.”

  “I don’t hear…” She heard it then. In the distance, moving closer.

  Nell went toward the door, but Crash was even faster. He pulled it open and went outside at a run. Her tap shoes clattered on the macadam as she followed. Somehow the kitchen door had gotten locked, and they raced around to the front of the house, arriving just as an ambulance bounced over the speed bump and up into the main part of the driveway.

  God, what had happened? It hadn’t been more than fifteen minutes since they’d left Daisy and Jake in the kitchen.

  “Jake!” Crash burst into the house.

  “In the studio,” the admiral bellowed back.

  Nell held the door for the paramedics. “Down the hall on the left,” she instructed them, standing back to let them go first. They were moving fast and she raced after them.

  Please God…Nell stopped in the studio doorway as the three paramedics crowded around Daisy.

  She was on the floor, as if she’d fallen, with Jake beside her, and Crash crouched beside him. Nell hung back, suddenly aware that she was not a member of the family.

  “She blacked out,” Jake was telling the paramedics.

  “It’s happened before, but not like this. This time I couldn’t rouse her.” His voice broke. “At first I thought…”

  “I’m okay,” Nell heard Daisy murmur. “I’m all right, baby. I’m still here.”

  Nell shivered, holding on to herself tightly. She knew what Jake had thought. Jake had thought that Daisy had slipped into a coma. Or worse.

  The paramedics were deep in discussion with both Jake and Daisy. They wanted to take Daisy to the hospital, to run some tests.

  “Nell.”

  She looked up to find Crash gazing at her. He’d straightened up and now held out his hand to her—a silent invitation to come stand beside him.

  She took both his invitation and his hand, lacing their fingers tightly together.

  “Your hand is cold,” he whispered.

  “I think my heart stopped beating for a minute.”

  “She’s okay, you know,” he told her.

  “For now.” She felt her eyes fill with tears.

  Crash nodded. “Now is all we’ve got. It stinks, but it’s better than the alternative, which is not to have now.”

  Nell closed her eyes, willing her tears away.

  To her surprise, he touched her, gently pulling a strand of her hair free from where it had caught on her eyelashes, pushing it back, dragging his fingers lightly through her hair. “But remember that line of thinking doesn’t apply to every situation,” he said quietly. “Sometimes taking advantage of no
w doesn’t do anyone any good.”

  He was talking about…them? Was it possible…? Nell looked up at him, but he’d let go of her hand, all of his attention on Jake, who was pushing himself to his feet.

  As she watched, Jake backed away to let the paramedics put Daisy on a stretcher.

  “She didn’t agree to go in for tests, did she?” Crash asked incredulously.

  Jake gave him a you’ve-got-to-be-kidding look. “No chance. She’s only letting them help her into the bedroom. She’s still feeling kind of dizzy.” He forced himself to smile as Daisy was carried past. “I’ll be in in a sec, babe,” he told her before turning back to Nell. “I know this is asking a lot, but…What are the chances of moving the wedding up a few days?”

  Nell glanced from Jake to Crash then back. “How many days?”

  “As many as possible. To tomorrow, if you can swing it.”

  Tomorrow. Oh, God.

  “I’m afraid…” Jake cleared his throat and started again. “I’m afraid we’re running out of time.”

  She would have to call the pastor, see if he could change his schedule. And the caterer was going to have a cow. It wasn’t a weekend, so the band might be open to switching the dates. But—the guests! She’d have to call them individually. That meant close to two hundred phone calls. But first she’d have to find all those phone numbers and…

  Crash touched her shoulder. When she looked up at him, he nodded, as if he could read her mind. “I’ll help.”

  Nell took a deep breath and turned back to Jake. “Consider it done.”

  Chapter 6

  As far as weddings went, this one had been perfect.

  Or rather, it would have been perfect, had the bride not been dying.

  Crash closed his eyes. He didn’t want to go there. All day long, he’d avoided that dark place.

  The barn sparkled and glistened with the decorations he’d helped Nell hang. It rang with laughter and music. It glowed with warmth and light.

  The band was great, the food was first-rate, the guests were bemused by the bride and groom’s sudden change of plans—because none of them knew the truth.

  And amidst all the sparkle and joy, Crash could almost pretend that he was just as ignorant.

  The champagne he’d had hadn’t hurt much, either.

  The crowd was really thinning out as it approached eleven o’clock. Crash watched Nell from across the room as she spun around the dance floor in the arms of a man he’d met just that evening. He blanked on the name. Tall, dark and distinguished-looking, whoever he was had just been elected to the U.S. Senate. Mike something. From California. Garvin. That was it. Senator Mark Garvin.

  Garvin said something to Nell and she laughed.

  Crash was certain that Garvin—along with the other 299 wedding guests—couldn’t tell that Nell hadn’t had more than two hours of sleep in the past forty-eight. The only reason he knew that she hadn’t slept much was because in the past two days he hadn’t had time to catch more than a short combat nap himself.

  Of course, he was used to going without sleep. He was trained to be able to stay alert and functioning under severe conditions.

  Nell was running on adrenaline and sheer grit.

  “She’s great, isn’t she?”

  Crash looked up to see Dexter Lancaster standing beside him, following his gaze. He was talking about Nell.

  “Yeah,” Crash agreed. “She’s great.”

  “I figured you out, you know.” Lancaster took a sip of his drink. “I’ve danced with Nell four times tonight. Garvin over there has danced with her twice. A collection of other gentlemen have taken her around the floor this evening as well. But you, my friend, have not danced with her at all.”

  “I don’t dance.”

  Lancaster smiled and his blue eyes twinkled warmly.

  “She doesn’t have a clue that you’re hung up on her, does she?”

  Crash met the man’s gaze steadily. “She’s my friend,” he said quietly. “I happen to know that she’s emotionally vulnerable right now. She doesn’t need me—or anyone else—taking advantage of her.”

  The lawyer nodded, setting his empty glass down on a nearby table. “Fair enough. I’ll wait to call her until spring or early summer.”

  Crash gritted his teeth and forced himself to nod. By spring or early summer, unless there was some kind of miracle and Daisy went into remission, he’d be on the other side of the world. “Fair enough.”

  “Say good-night to her for me,” Lancaster said.

  Across the room Mark Garvin gallantly kissed the back of Nell’s hand before releasing her. What was it about Nell that attracted older men like flies to honey? Garvin was Jake’s age—maybe even older. He was a walking ad for Grecian Formula.

  Nell seemed unaffected by the blazing-white flash of Garvin’s perfectly capped teeth as she turned and approached a group of women who were putting on their coats.

  She looked incredible.

  She was wearing a long gown, befitting the black tie formality of the evening wedding. It was long-sleeved, with something Crash had heard Daisy describe as a sweetheart neckline that dipped elegantly down between her breasts. It was a rich shade of emerald, which—Daisy claimed—was Nell’s duty to wear as maid of honor, because it accentuated the bride’s green eyes.

  The gown was made of some kind of stretchy velvet material that clung to Nell’s slender figure, and drew Crash’s attention—along with Garvin’s and Lancaster’s apparently—away from the bride’s eyes.

  As Crash watched, Nell laughed at something one of the women said. And as she laughed, she looked up and directly over at him.

  He was in trouble. He knew that everything he’d tried for so long to hide from her was written clearly on his face. He knew everything he was feeling, all of his longing and desire, was burning in his eyes. But he couldn’t look away.

  Nell’s smile slowly faded as she stared across the room at him, trapped by his gaze, just as he was by hers. He could see the hint of a blush rising in her cheeks.

  Any second now, she would look away. Crash knew it. Any second, she’d turn and…

  She didn’t turn. She walked toward him. She came right across the dance floor.

  Yes, he was in trouble here. He knew he was in big trouble. But he still couldn’t bring himself to look away.

  “I owe you a dance.”

  Bad idea. If he took her in his arms, if he touched the soft velvet of her dress, felt it warmed by the heat of her body beneath…

  “I know it’s not the same as tap-dancing,” Nell said,

  “but for now it’ll have to do.”

  She took his hand and led him onto the dance floor. And just like that, he was holding her. He wasn’t sure exactly what she’d done, but he knew it wasn’t entirely her doing that had put her in his embrace. He’d surely done something stupid, like hold open his arms.

  And now that she was there, now that they were dancing, his instinct was confirmed. This was a very bad idea. He’d had way too much to drink to be doing this. “I’m not a very good dancer.”

  “You’re doing fine.” The fingers of her right hand were looped gently around his thumb, and her left hand was resting comfortably on his shoulder. He was holding her loosely, his hand against the small of her back, against the warm softness of her dress. Her legs brushed against his as they moved slowly in time to the music. She smelled deliciously sweet. Her face was tilted up, her mouth close enough to kiss. “How are you holding up?” she asked, looking up into his eyes.

  He was dying. “I’m hanging in,” he said.

  She nodded. “I noticed you broke your no-drinking-unless-you-have-to rule tonight.”

  Crash gazed down into the calming blue of her eyes. “No, I didn’t. Tonight, I had to.”

  “‘’Til death do us part,”’ Nell said quietly. “That was what really got to me.”

  “Yeah.” Crash nodded. He desperately didn’t want to talk about that. “Do you think if I kissed you tonight, we
could both pretend it never happened tomorrow?”

  Her eyes widened.

  “I didn’t really mean that,” he said quickly. “I was only trying to change the subject to an allegedly less emotional topic. It was a bad attempt at an even worse joke.”

  She wasn’t laughing. “You know, Hawken—”

  “I don’t want to go there, Nell. I shouldn’t have said that. Look, I don’t know what I’m doing here, dancing with you like this. I’m a lousy dancer, anyway.” He forced himself to let go of her, to step back, away. Distance. Separation. Space. Please God, don’t let him kiss her….

  He turned to walk away. It was the best possible thing he could do for her. He knew that. He believed it with all of his heart. But she put her hand on his arm, and he hesitated.

  He who hesitates is lost….

  He turned and looked into her eyes, and indeed, he was lost.

  “This whole night’s been like some kind of fairy tale,” Nell whispered. “Like some kind of fantasy. If I close my eyes, I can pretend that Daisy’s going to be all right. Give me a break, will you, and let me have my dance with Prince Charming. My world’s going to turn back into a rotten pumpkin soon enough.”

  “You’ve got it wrong,” he said harshly. “I’m no prince.”

  “I never said you were. Not really. This is just a fantasy, remember? I just want to hold someone close—and pretend.”

  Somehow she was back in his arms again, and he was holding her even closer this time. He could feel the entire length of her, pressed against the entire length of him. Her hand was no longer on his shoulder but instead was wrapped around his neck, her fingers entwined in the hair at the nape of his neck. It felt impossibly good.

  He was no longer dying. He had died—and gone to heaven.

  “You know what’s really stupid?” she whispered.

  He was. He was impossibly stupid and certifiably insane. He should’ve walked away. He should do it now. He should just turn and walk out of the barn and stand for several long minutes in the bracing cold. And then he should walk into the house, up the stairs and into his bedroom, and lock himself in until his sanity returned with the rising sun.

  Instead he bent his head to brush his cheek and nose against the fragrant softness of Nell’s hair. Instead, he let his fingers explore the velvet-covered warmth of her back. Please God, he absolutely couldn’t let himself kiss her. Not even once. He knew one taste would never be enough.