The Crush

by Sandra Brown

“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have used the hair dryer. I was afraid it might wake you up, but you were sleeping so soundly I took the chance.”

  “What time is it?”

  “Going on six.”

  Her bare feet made whispering sounds on the hardwood floor as she moved to the edge of the bed. “How are you feeling?”

  When she bent down to take a closer look at him, her hair fell forward to curtain both sides of her face. She swept it over one shoulder to keep it out of her way. “Can I bring you anything?”

  Hair, eyes, skin, lips. She was a beautiful woman. He had thought so the first time he’d laid eyes on her in Oren’s eight-by-tens. That’s when the desire took root and the lying began. He had lied to Oren and to himself, first about his opinion of her, then about his objectivity. It had died when she turned to him at the wedding reception. He had known in that instant that his professionalism was done for. It sank right along with him into the depths of her green eyes.

  During his career he had dealt with all types of women, from hookers to homemakers. Cheats and liars and thieves and saints. Women who dressed in power suits and made it their mission in life to symbolically de-ball every man with whom they came into contact, and women who undressed for the amusement and entertainment of men.

  Oren had been right when he said that he’d never had an unremarkable encounter with a woman. All had been memorable for one reason or another, from his adoring kindergarten teacher, to the policewoman who had pronounced him the biggest asshole she’d ever had the displeasure of knowing, to Crystal the waitress. He never failed to make an impression.

  Good or bad, he had an innate awareness of females that was reciprocated. It was just one of those things, a component of himself that he’d been born with and more or less took for granted, like his palm print or his crooked front tooth.

  He had slept with some of those women—he had slept with a lot of them. But he had never desired one as much as he desired Rennie Newton. Nor had one ever been so forbidden. She had meant trouble to him from the start, and she would mean trouble to him from here on.

  None of that mattered, though, when strands of her hair brushed against his bare chest. Common sense and conscience didn’t stand a chance.

  “Ah, hell,” he growled. Curving his hand around the back of her neck, he drew her head down to his.

  It was a full-blown kiss from the start. No sooner had his lips touched hers than he pressed his tongue between them. He probed her mouth lustily. Her breath was warm and rapid against his face, and that urged him on. He tilted her head, found more heat, more sweetness, wet delight.

  His hand moved up from her neck and spread wide over the back of her head. His other hand settled on her rib cage. Against his thumb he could feel the soft weight of her breast. Then the center of it, growing firm at his touch, responding, becoming harder beneath his stroking.

  “No!”

  Backing away, she shook her head furiously. She stared at him for several ponderous seconds, then turned and fled—the only way to describe the speed with which she left the room.

  Chapter 24

  He showered. He shaved with one of Rennie’s pink razors. In the mirror above the bathroom sink, he didn’t look quite as frightening as he had before the long sleep. The dark rings under his eyes had lightened and the sockets weren’t as deep.

  But he was no Prince Charming. His hospital pallor emphasized the discoloration on his cheekbone. And when was the last time he’d had a haircut? “Screw it,” he said to his reflection as he left the bathroom.

  Rennie was in the kitchen. She glanced over her shoulder when he walked in. “You found your duffel bag?”

  “Yeah, thanks.” She had placed it at the foot of the bed so he would have a change of clothes.

  “How do you feel?”

  “Better. Thanks. For everything. Except the shot. My butt’s sore.”

  “I’m sure you’re thirsty. Help yourself to anything in the fridge.” She was dredging boneless chicken breasts in seasoned breading and placing them in a Pyrex dish.

  He took a carton of orange juice from the refrigerator, shook it, and twisted off the cap. “Okay to drink from the carton?”

  “Not in this house.”

  “I used your toothbrush.”

  “I have extras.”

  “Why am I not surprised?”

  “Glasses are in the cabinet just behind you.”

  The juice tasted good. He drained the glass and refilled it. “What did you do with the bobcat?”

  “Called the game warden. He came out and picked him up. He congratulated me.”

  “You provided a valuable community service.”

  She gazed into near space for a moment. “It didn’t feel like that. It felt like killing.” She washed her hands, moved to the oven and turned it on, then went to the vegetable sink and picked up a chopping knife. She used it to gesture toward a cell phone lying on the counter. “It’s rung several times.”

  “Jeez, I don’t even remember where I last had it.”

  “It was in your truck.”

  “Where’s my truck?”

  “In the garage out back.”

  He looked through the window and spotted the building. It was a smaller version of the barn. The double doors were closed. “How’d you manage to get it here?”

  “I rode Beade over, carrying the gas can. Then I tied him to the tailgate and drove back slowly.”

  “It would have been easier if you’d waited on me to go with you.”

  “I didn’t think you wanted anyone to know you were here.”

  He studied her for a moment. “That’s not quite accurate, is it, Rennie?”

  She stopped slicing tomatoes and looked across at him.

  “You didn’t want anyone to know I was here.”

  She returned to her task. “Do you like tomatoes in your salad?”

  “Rennie.”

  “Some people don’t.”

  “Rennie.”

  She dropped the knife and confronted him. “What?”

  “It was only a kiss,” he said softly.

  “Let’s not make a big deal of it, all right?”

  “I’m not, you are. You’re the one who went tearing out of the bedroom like it had caught fire.”

  “So you would stop mauling me.”

  “Mauling you?” he repeated in a raised voice. “Mauling you?”

  “The night we met—no, the night you arranged for us to meet—I told you then, straight out and in language a child could understand that I wasn’t interested in… all that.”

  Masculine pride kicked in. Wick rounded the work island so it would no longer be between them. “Well that’s a switch for you, isn’t it? One kiss and I’m mauling you, but back in Dalton you were quite the party girl. What did you call it then?”

  She recoiled as though he’d struck her, but that initial reaction lasted only a second before her facial expression turned hard. “You must have had a locker-room chat with your pal Detective Wesley.”

  “Only after I heard all about you from folks in Dalton. You’re remembered there, Sweetcheeks. Because you used to do a lot more than kiss the locals, didn’t you?”

  “You’re so well informed—why ask me?”

  “You did considerably more than kiss.”

  She backed down and looked away. “I’m not like that now.”

  “Why not? Seems to me like you were having one hell of a good time. Tongues in Dalton are still wagging about your topless cruise through town in your red Mustang convertible. But I get your nipple ripe and you freak out.”

  She tried to go around him, but he executed a quick sidestep and blocked her path. “You had all those horny cowboys at the rodeo panting after you. And their daddies, and their uncles, and probably even their grandpas.”

  “Stop it!”

  “And you knew it, too, didn’t you? You liked keeping ’em steaming in their jeans.”

  “You don’t know—”

  “Oh, yeah
, I do. Guys know. We have ugly names for girls like you, Rennie. Doesn’t stop us from wanting what you advertise, though. How many hearts were broken when you set your sights on Raymond Collier?”

  “Don’t—”

  “Then when that affair went south, you shot and killed him. Is that what turned you off mauling?”

  “Yes!”

  Her shout was followed by a sudden, reverberating silence. She turned away from him and leaned forward against the counter. She put her hand to her mouth and kept it there for several moments. Then, very unsurgeon-like, she seemed at a loss what to do with her hands. She crossed her arms over her midsection and hugged her elbows; she wiped her palms on her thighs; she finally picked up the baking dish of chicken and placed it in the oven. After setting the timer, she returned to chopping tomatoes.

  Wick continued to watch her with the single-mindedness of the buzzards that had circled the carcass of the bobcat. He refused to drop this subject. He felt entitled to peel away just one of her multiple layers. He wanted at least a glimpse of who she was and what had made her so compulsively neat, what had made her so disinclined to touch another human being except in the sterile security of an operating room. He wanted to see, if only for an instant, the real Rennie Newton.

  “What happened in your father’s study that day?”

  The knife came down hard and angrily on the chopping block. “Didn’t Wesley share the details with you?”

  “Yes. And I read the police report.”

  “Well then.”

  “It didn’t tell me shit. I want to hear what happened from you.”

  She finished with the tomatoes and rinsed off the knife. As she dried it on a tea towel, she looked at him sardonically. “Prurient curiosity, Wick?”

  “Don’t do that,” he said, keeping a tight rein on his anger. “You know that’s not why I’m asking.”

  She braced her arms on the countertop and leaned toward him. “Then why are you asking? Explain to me why it’s so bloody important for you to know about that.”

  He leaned forward to narrow the space between them. “You know why, Rennie,” he whispered. There was no way his meaning could have escaped her. But just in case it did, he covered the back of her hand with his palm and encircled her wrist with his fingers.

  She lowered her head. It appeared to him that she was staring at their hands, but all he could see was the crown of her head, the natural part in her hair. Half a minute passed before she withdrew her hand from beneath his.

  “Nothing good can come of this, Wick.”

  “This being the weird triangle we have going? You, me, and Lozada?”

  “There’s no such triangle.”

  “You know better, Rennie.”

  “The two of you had a score to settle before you ever heard of me.”

  “That’s true, but you’ve added another dimension.”

  “I’m not involved in your feud,” she said adamantly.

  “Then why did you leave town?”

  “I needed some time off.”

  “You heard Lozada was released from jail.”

  “Yes, but—”

  “And you beat it here within hours of his release. Looks to me like you’re hiding from him.”

  His cell phone rang. He picked it up and read the caller ID, then swore under his breath. “I might as well get this over with.” He carried the phone with him through the living room and out onto the front porch. He answered as he sat down in the swing. “Hey.”

  “Where the hell are you?”

  “No hello?”

  “Wick—”

  “Okay, okay.” He sighed heavily. “I just couldn’t take that hospital anymore, Oren. You know I don’t handle inactivity well. Another day in that place and I’d’ve wigged out. So I left. Retrieved my truck from your house and drove most of the night. Reached Galveston this morning around, hmm, five or so, I guess. Been asleep most of the day and got a whole lot more rest listening to the surf than I would have in the hospital where real rest is impossible.”

  After a significant pause, Oren said, “Your place in Galveston is locked up tighter than a drum.”

  Oh, shit. “How do you know?”

  “Because I asked the police there to check it.”

  “What for?”

  “I’m waiting for an explanation, Wick.”

  “Okay, on my way home I took a little detour. What’s the big deal?”

  “You’re with her, aren’t you?”

  “I’m a big boy, Oren. I don’t have to account to you for my—”

  “Because she’s coincidentally flown the coop too. From the hospital. From her house. Her obliging neighbor told me that he saw a man who looked seriously ill and malnourished knocking on her door in the middle of the night.”

  “Does that guy keep vigil at his window or what?”

  “He’s become a valuable informant.”

  “My, my, Oren. Talking to Galveston police. Talking to nosy neighbors. You’ve been busy today.”

  “And so has Lozada.”

  “Oh yeah? Doing what?”

  “Terrorizing my family.”

  * * *

  His name was Weenie Sawyer. Only someone of Weenie’s diminutive size would have tolerated such a derisive name. Weenie did so only because he had no choice. He was defenseless.

  He had acquired the name in second grade when he’d wet himself in the classroom. During a geography lesson on Hawaii a seeming river of urine had charted a course down his leg. To the amusement of his classmates, what wasn’t absorbed by his sock had formed a puddle beneath his desk. He’d wanted to die on the spot, but he had had the rotten luck of living through it. That afternoon he had been dubbed Weenie by a pack of bullies led by the scourge of the school yard, Ricky Roy Lozada.

  The nickname had stuck to this day. And so had Lozada’s bullying. Weenie audibly groaned when he opened his door and saw Lozada standing on the threshold.

  “May I come in?”

  The formality was a mockery. Lozada asked only in order to remind Weenie that he didn’t need an invitation. He pushed past Weenie and entered the cramped, poorly ventilated apartment where Weenie sometimes confined himself for days without going out. For self-protection, Weenie existed in a universe of his own making.

  “This isn’t a good time, Lozada. I’m having dinner.” On a TV tray next to the La-Z-Boy a bowl of Cap’n Crunch was growing soggy.

  “I wouldn’t interrupt, Weenie. Except that this is very important.”

  “You always say that.”

  “Because my business is always important.”

  Lozada’s torture of his unfortunate classmate hadn’t ended that afternoon in second grade, but had continued through their high school graduation. Weenie’s size, his perpetual squint, and his meek personality were open invitations to torment and ridicule him. He was almost too easy a target. Consequently Lozada had treated him as a forgettable pet, one he could scold and neglect, or grace and praise, at whim.

  Every class has a computer whiz, and in their class it had been Weenie. While computers and microchip technology bored Lozada, he was nevertheless aware of the advancements being made. As the viability of computer usage increased, so had Weenie’s value to him.

  Nowadays Weenie’s livelihood was designing Web sites. He liked the work. It was a rewarding creative outlet. He could do it alone, at home, on his own schedule. He billed his clients four times the number of hours it required him to complete a job, but they were so pleased with the result that none ever questioned the amount of the invoice. It was a lucrative business.

  But that income was paltry compared to what Lozada paid him.

  Weenie’s computer setup occupied one whole room of his apartment and rivaled NASA’s in sophistication. He put most of his money back into his business, buying state-of-the-art equipment, upgrades, and gadgets. He could dissect a computer with the precision of a pathologist, then reassemble it with new and improved specifications. He’d never met one he didn’t
like. He knew how they worked. Furthermore, he understood how they worked.

  With a minimum of mouse clicks, he could enter any secret chat room, generate a deadly virus, or crack any security code. If Weenie had possessed any imagination or larcenous impulses, he could potentially control the world from this old, ugly, smelly, cluttered apartment in a run-down neighborhood in the shadow of downtown Dallas.

  Lozada thought it a woeful waste of talent. Weenie’s level of know-how should belong to someone who would exploit it, someone with panache and style and cojones.

  Had Lozada been in another field, he could have used Weenie’s genius to steal huge quantities of money with little chance of getting caught. But where would be the challenge? He much preferred the personal involvement his occupation required. He relied on Weenie strictly to provide him with information on his clients and his targets.

  He told Weenie that was what he was after tonight. “Information.”

  Weenie pushed up his slipping eyeglasses. “You always say that, too, Lozada. And then the person I get you information on winds up dead.”

  Lozada fixed a cold stare on him. “What’s wrong with you tonight?”

  “Nothing.” He picked at a crusty scab on his elbow. “What makes you think something’s wrong?”

  “You don’t seem very glad to see me. Didn’t I pay you enough last time?”

  “Yeah, but…” He sniffed back a nostril full of mucus. “I’ve got no quarrel with the money.”

  “Then what’s the matter?”

  “I don’t want to get into trouble. With the law, I mean. You’ve been in the news a lot lately, or haven’t you noticed?”

  “Have you noticed that it’s all been good news?”

  “Yeah, but this time, I don’t know, the police seem to be closing in tighter. That Threadgill’s got it in for you.”

  “He’s the least of my worries.”

  Weenie looked plenty worried. “He comes across as a man with a mission. What if they, you know, link us? You and me.”

  “How could they do that?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Lozada remembered that whining tone from elementary school. It had annoyed him then, and it annoyed him even more now. He was in a hurry, and this conversation was wasting precious time.