Tall, Dark, and Dangerous Part 2

by Suzanne Brockmann

  She lifted her head only slightly—not far enough to look into his eyes. “May I sleep in here with you tonight?”

  She sounded so uncertain, so afraid of what he might say. Something in his chest tightened. “Yeah,” he said. “Sure.”

  “Thank you,” she whispered, shivering slightly.

  He shifted them both so he could cover them with the sheet and blanket. He pulled her closer, wrapping her tightly in his arms, wishing he could make her instantly warm, wishing for a lot of things that he knew he couldn’t have.

  He wished that he could keep her safe from the rest of the world. But how could he? He hadn’t even been able to keep her safe from himself.

  Chapter 8

  Crash sat up in bed. “What time is it?”

  One second, he’d been sound asleep, and the next his eyes were wide open, as if he’d been awake and alert for hours.

  “It’s nearly six.” Nell resisted the urge to dive back under the sheet and blanket and cover herself. Instead, she sat on the edge of the bed with her back toward him, briefly closing her eyes, feeling her face heat with a blush.

  Her jeans were here on the floor. Her shirt and bra were across the room. Her underpants…in the bathroom, she remembered suddenly, with a dizzying surge of extremely vivid memory.

  She slipped into her jeans, forsaking her underpants. There was no way she was going to walk naked all the way across this room with Crash watching. Yes, he’d seen her naked last night, but that had been last night. This was the morning. This was very different. She was leaving for Ohio today, and if he shed any tears at her departure, they were surely only going to be tears of relief.

  Nell knew with a certainty that could have gotten her hired by one of those psychic hotlines, that what had happened between herself and William Hawken last night had been a fluke. It had been a result of the high emotions of the past few days, of Daisy’s death and the wake and funeral that had quickly followed.

  It had been an incredible sexual experience, but Nell knew that a single episode of great sex didn’t equal a romantic relationship. When it came down to it, nothing had changed between them. They were still only friends—except now they were friends who had shared incredibly great sex.

  She stood up, fastening the button on her jeans, knowing that she couldn’t keep her back to him as she went across the room in search of her shirt and bra. She was just going to have to be matter-of-fact about it. That’s all. She had breasts, he didn’t—big deal.

  But Crash caught her arm before she could take a step, his fingers warm against her bare skin. “Nell, are you all right?”

  She didn’t turn to face him, wishing that he would prove her wrong. Right now, he could do it—he could prove her entirely, absolutely wrong. He could slide his hand down her arm in a caress. He could pull her gently to him, move aside her hair and kiss her neck. He could run those incredible hands across her breasts, down her stomach, and unfasten the waistband of her pants. He could pull her back into the warmth of his bed and make love to her slowly in the gray morning light.

  But he didn’t.

  “I’m…” Nell hesitated. If she said fine, she would sound tense and tight, as if she weren’t fine. His hand dropped from her arm, and her last foolish hopes died. She crossed the room and picked up her shirt.

  It was inside out, of course, and she turned away from him as she adjusted it. She slipped it over her head and only then could she turn and look at him.

  Bed head. He had bed head, his dark hair charmingly rumpled, sticking out in all different directions. He looked about twelve years old—except for the fact that even the simple act of sitting up in bed had made many of his powerful-looking muscles flex. God, he was sexy, even with bed head.

  Nell used all her limited acting skills to sound normal. “I’m…still pretty amazed by what happened here last night.”

  “Yeah,” he said. His pale blue eyes were unreadable.

  “I am, too. I feel as if I owe you an apology—”

  “Don’t,” she said, moving quickly toward him. “Don’t you dare apologize for what happened last night. It was something we both needed. It was really right—don’t turn it into something wrong.”

  Crash nodded. “All right. I just…” He glanced away, closing his eyes briefly before he looked back at her. “I’ve been so careful to stay away from you all this time,” he said, “because I didn’t want to hurt you this way.”

  Nell slowly sat down at the foot of the bed. “Believe me, last night didn’t hurt at all.”

  He didn’t smile at her poor attempt at a joke. “You know as well as I do,” he said quietly, “that it wouldn’t work, right? A relationship between us…” He shook his head. “You don’t really know me. You know this…kind of PG-rated, goody-two-shoes, Disney cartoon version of me.”

  Nell wanted to protest, but he wasn’t done talking and she held her tongue, afraid if she interrupted, he would stop.

  “But if you really knew me, if you knew who I really am, what I do…you wouldn’t like me very much.”

  She couldn’t hold it in any longer. “How can you just make that kind of decision for me?”

  “Maybe I’m wrong. Maybe you have some kind of sick thing for cold-blooded killers—”

  “You are not cold-blooded!”

  “But I am a killer.”

  “You’re a soldier,” she argued. “There’s a difference.”

  “Okay,” he said levelly. “Maybe you could get past that. But being involved with a SEAL who specializes in black ops is not something I’d wish on my worst enemy.” His usually quiet voice rang with conviction. “I certainly wouldn’t wish it on you.”

  “Again, you’re just going to decide that for me?”

  He threw off the covers, totally unembarrassed by his nakedness. He found his pants, but they were the ones he’d worn to the funeral. Dress pants. He tossed them over a chair and pulled a pair of army fatigues from the closet.

  Nell closed her eyes at a sudden vivid image from last night. His hands around her waist, his mouth locked on hers, his body…

  “Here’s the deal with black ops,” he said, zipping his fly and fastening the button at his waist. “I disappear—literally—sometimes for months at a time. You would never know where I was, or for how long I’d be gone.”

  He ran his fingers back through his hair in a failed attempt to tame it, the muscles in his chest and arms standing out in sharp relief. “If I were KIA—killed in action—you might never be told,” he continued. “I just wouldn’t come back. Ever. You’d never find out about the mission I was on. There’d be no paper trail, no way to know how or why I’d died. It would be as if I’d never existed.” He shook his head. “You don’t need that kind of garbage in your life.”

  “But—”

  “It wouldn’t work.” He gazed at her steadily. “Last night was…nice, but you’ve got to believe me, Nell. It just wouldn’t work.”

  Nice.

  Nell turned away. Nice? Last night had been wonderful, amazing, fantastic. It hadn’t been nice.

  “I’m sorry,” he said softly.

  She looked out the window. She looked at the rug. She looked at a painting that hung on the wall. It was one of Daisy’s—a beach scene from her watercolor phase.

  Only then did she look up at him. “I’m sorry, too. I’m sorry you think it wouldn’t work,” she finally said. “You know, I knew most of what you were going to say before you even said it. And I was going to pretend to agree with you. You know, ‘Yeah, you’re right, it would never work, different personalities, different worlds, different lives, whatever.’ But to hell with my pride. Because the truth is, I don’t agree with you. I think it would work. We would work. I think we’d be great together. Last night could be just the beginning and I’m…saddened that you think otherwise.”

  Crash didn’t say anything. He didn’t even look at her.

  Nell bolstered the very last of her rapidly fading courage and tossed the final shred of her
pride out the door. “Can’t we at least try?” Her voice broke slightly—her final humiliation.

  Crash didn’t speak, and again she found the courage to go on.

  “Can’t we see what happens? Take it one day at a time?”

  He looked up at her, but his eyes were so distant, it was as if he wasn’t quite all there.

  “I’m sorry,” he said again. “I’m not looking for any kind of a relationship at all right now. I was wrong to give in to this attraction between us. I wanted the comfort and the instant gratification, and the real truth is, I used you, Nell. That’s all last night was. You came along, and I took what you offered. There’s nothing for us to try. There’s nothing more to happen.”

  Nell stood up, trying desperately to hide her hurt. “Well,” she said. “I guess that clears that up.”

  “It’s my fault, and I am sorry.”

  She cleared her throat as she moved toward the door.

  “No,” she said. “I knew last night…I mean, it was clear that’s what it was. Comfort, I mean. It was that way for me, too, sort of, at first anyway, and…I was just hoping…Billy, it’s not your fault.”

  She opened the door and stepped into the hall. Crash hadn’t moved. She wasn’t even sure if he’d blinked.

  “Happy New Year,” she said quietly, and shut the door behind her.

  Chapter 9

  A year later

  Someone opened fire.

  Someone opened fire, and the world went into slow motion.

  Crash saw Jake pushed back by the force of the gunshots, arms spread, face caught in a terrible grimace as an explosion of bright red blood bloomed on the front of his shirt.

  Crash heard his own voice shouting, saw Chief Pierson fall as well, and felt the slap as a bullet hit his arm. His years of training kicked in and he reacted, rolling down onto the office floor, taking cover and returning fire.

  He shut part of his brain down as he always did in a firefight. He couldn’t afford to think in terms of human beings when he was spraying lead around a room. He couldn’t afford to feel anything at all.

  He analyzed dispassionately as he evaded and struck back. Jake had pulled out the compact handgun he always wore under his left arm, and even though the glimpse Crash had had of the other man’s chest wound made him little more than a still-breathing dead man, the admiral somehow found the strength to pull himself to cover, and to fight back.

  There could be as few as one and as many as three possible shooters.

  Crash noted emotionlessly that his captain, Mike Lovett, and Chief Steve Pierson, a SEAL known as the Possum, were undeniably dead as he efficiently took down one of the shooters.

  Not a man. A shooter. The enemy.

  At least two other weapons still hiccuped and stuttered.

  He could hear the rush of blood in his ears as he tipped what had once been Daisy’s favorite table on its side and used it as a shield to work his way around to an angle where he could try to take out another of the shooters.

  Not men. Shooters.

  In the same way, Mike and the Poss weren’t his teammates anymore. They were KIAs. Killed in action. Casualties.

  Crash could do nothing for them now. But Jake wasn’t dead yet. And if Crash could eliminate the last of the shooters, maybe, just maybe Jake could be saved….

  Crash wanted Jake to live. He wanted that with a ferocious burst of emotion that he immediately pushed away. Detach. He had to detach more completely. Emotion made his hands shake and skewed his perception. Emotion could get him killed.

  He separated himself cleanly from the man who wanted to rage and grieve over the deaths of his teammates. He set himself apart from the man who was near frantic from wanting to rush to Jake’s side, to stanch the older man’s wounds, to force him to fight to stay alive.

  Crash felt clarity kick in as he looked at himself from the outside. He felt his senses sharpen, felt time slow even further. He knew the last of the shooters was circling the room, looking for a chance to finish off Jake, and then take Crash out as well.

  One heartbeat.

  He could hear the sound of the admiral’s FInCOM security team, shouting as they pounded on the outside of the locked office door.

  Two heartbeats.

  He could hear the almost inaudible scuff as the shooter moved into position. There was only one left now, and he was going for the admiral first. Crash knew that without a doubt.

  Three heartbeats.

  He could hear Jake struggling for breath. Crash knew, also dispassionately, that Jake’s wounds had made at least one lung collapse. If he didn’t get medical help soon, the man was definitely going to die.

  Four heartbeats.

  Another scuff, and Crash was able to pinpoint precisely where the shooter was.

  He jumped and fired in one smooth motion.

  And the last shooter was no longer a threat.

  “Billy?” Jake’s voice was breathy and weak.

  With a pop and a skip as jarring as a needle sliding across a phonograph record, the world once again moved at real time.

  “I’m still here.” Crash was instantly at his old friend’s side.

  “What the hell happened…?”

  Jake’s shirtfront was drenched with blood. “That’s just what I was going to ask you,” Crash replied as he gently tore the shirt to reveal the wound. Dear sweet Mary, with an injury like this, it was a miracle Jake had clung to life as long as he had.

  “Someone…wants me…dead.”

  “Apparently.” Crash had been trained as a medic—all SEALs were—but first aid wasn’t going to cut it here. His voice shook despite his determination to maintain his usual deadpan calm. “Sir, I need to get you help.”

  Jake clutched Crash’s shirt, his brown eyes glazed with pain. “You need…to listen. Just sent you…file…incriminating evidence…last year’s snafu in Southeast Asia…six months ago…You were…there. Remember?”

  “Yes,” Crash said. “I remember.” A civil war had started in a tiny island nation when two rival drug lords had pitted their armies against each other. “Two of our marines were killed—Jake, please, we can talk about this on the way to the hospital.”

  But Jake wouldn’t let him go. “The military action…was instigated by an American…a U.S. Navy commander.”

  “What? Who?”

  The door burst open and Jake’s security team swarmed inside the room.

  “I need an ambulance now!” the security chief bellowed after just one look at the admiral.

  “Don’t know…who,” Jake gasped. “Some…kind of…cover-up. Kid, I’m counting…on you…”

  “Jake, don’t die!” Crash was pushed back, out of the way, as a team of paramedics surrounded the admiral.

  Please, God, let him make it.

  “For God’s sake, what happened?”

  Crash turned to find Commander Tom Foster, Jake’s security chief, standing behind him. He took a deep breath and let it out in a rush of air. When he spoke, his voice was calm again. “I don’t know.”

  “How the hell could you not know what happened?”

  He didn’t let himself react, didn’t let himself get angry. The man was understandably shaken and upset. Crash could relate. Now that the shooting was over, his own hands were shaking and he was dizzy. He hunkered down, sliding his back against the wall of Jake’s private office as he lowered his rear end all the way to the floor.

  He realized then that his arm was bleeding pretty profusely, and had been since the battle had started. He’d lost quite a bit of blood. He set down his weapon and applied pressure with his other hand. For the first time since he was hit, he noticed the searing pain. He looked up. “I didn’t see who fired the first shots,” he said evenly.

  He turned to watch as the paramedics carried Jake from the room. Please, let him make it.

  The security chief swore. “Who would want to kill Admiral Robinson?”

  Crash shook his head. He didn’t know that either. But he sure as hell wa
s going to find out.

  Dex Lancaster kissed her good-night.

  Nell knew from his eyes, and from the gentle heat of his lips, that he was hoping that she would ask him to come inside.

  It wasn’t that outrageous a hope. They’d had dinner seven or eight times now, and she honestly liked him.

  He lowered his head to kiss her again, but she turned her head and his mouth only brushed her cheek.

  She liked him, but she wasn’t ready for this.

  She forced a smile as she unlocked her door. “Thanks again for dinner.”

  He nodded, resignation and amusement in his blue eyes. “I’ll call you.” He started down the steps, his long overcoat fanning out behind him like an elegant cape, but then he stopped, turning back to look up at her. “You know, I’m not in any real big hurry either, so take as long as you need. I’ve decided that I’m not going to let you scare me off.” With a quick salute, he was gone.

  Nell smiled ruefully as she locked her door behind her, turning on the light in the entryway of her house. The single women in her exercise class would have been lining up for a chance to invite a man like Dexter Lancaster into their homes.

  What was wrong with her, anyway?

  She had just about everything she’d ever wanted. A house of her own. A great job. A handsome, intelligent, warmhearted man who wanted to spend time with her.

  Thanks to the money Daisy Owen had bequeathed her, she’d bought her own house, free and clear—a drafty old Victorian monster with prehistoric plumbing and ancient wiring that still ran on a fuse box. Nell was fixing the place up, little by little.

  And she’d found a new job that she really loved, working part-time for the legendary screen actress, Amie Cardoza. Amie had had most of her successes on film in the seventies and eighties, but as she approached and then passed middle age, the better roles had disappeared, and she’d turned to the stage. She’d started an equity theater in the heart of Washington D.C., her hometown. She’d really needed a personal assistant—the theater company was still struggling and Amie was becoming politically active as well.