It Came Upon a
Midnight Clear
Suzanne
Brockmann

www.millsandboon.co.uk

MILLS & BOON

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For Tom Magness

(1960–1979)

I never had the chance to tell you that

I’m glad I didn’t miss the dance.

Contents

Prologue

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Prologue

Crash Hawken shaved in the men’s room.

He’d been keeping vigil at the hospital in Washington, D.C., for two days running, and his heavy stubble, along with his long hair and the bandage on his arm, made him look even more dangerous than he usually did.

He’d left only to change the shirt he’d been wearing—the one that had been stained with Admiral Jake Robinson’s blood—and to access a computer file that Jake had sent him electronically, mere hours before he had been gunned down in his own home.

Gunned down in his own home…Even though Crash had been there, even though he’d taken part in the firefight, even though he’d been wounded himself, it still seemed so unbelievable.

Crash had thought that last year’s dismal holiday season had been about as bad as it could get.

He’d been wrong.

He was going to have to call Nell, tell her Jake had been wounded. She’d want to know. She deserved to know. And Crash could use a reason to hear her voice again. Maybe even see her. With a rush of despair, he realized something he’d been hiding from himself for months—he wanted to see her. God, he wanted so badly to see Nell’s smile.

The men’s room door opened as Crash rinsed the disposable razor he’d picked up in the hospital commissary. He glanced into the mirror, and directly into Tom Foster’s scowling face.

What were the odds that the Federal Intelligence Commission commander had only come in to take a leak?

Slim to none.

Crash nodded at the man.

“What I don’t understand,” Foster said, as if the conversation they’d started two nights ago had never been interrupted, “is how you could be the last man standing in a room with five-and-a-half dead men, and not know what happened.”

Crash put the plastic protective cap on over the razor’s blade. “I didn’t see who fired the first shot,” he said evenly. “All I saw was Jake getting hit. After that, I know exactly what happened.” He turned to face Foster. “I took out the shooters who were trying to finish Jake off.”

Shooters. Not men. They’d lost their identities and become nothing more than targets when they’d opened fire on Jake Robinson. And like targets in a shooting range, Crash had efficiently and methodically taken them out.

“Who would want to assassinate the admiral?”

Crash shook his head and gave the same answer he’d given Tom two days earlier. “I don’t know.”

It wasn’t a lie. He didn’t know. Not for sure. But he had a file full of information that was going to help him find the man who had orchestrated this assassination attempt. Jake had fought both pain and rapidly fading consciousness to make sure he had understood there was a connection between this attempt on his life and that top-secret, encoded file Crash had received that very same morning.

“Come on, Lieutenant. Surely you can at least make a guess.”

“I’m sorry, sir, I’ve never found it useful to speculate in situations like this.”

“Three of the men you brought into Admiral Robinson’s house were operating under false names and identifications. Were you aware of that?”

Crash met the man’s angry gaze steadily. “I feel sick about that, sir. I made the mistake of trusting my captain.”

“Oh, so now it’s your captain’s fault.”

Crash fought a burst of his own anger. Getting mad wouldn’t do anyone any good. He knew that from the countless times he’d been in battle. Emotion not only made his hands shake, but it altered his perceptions as well. In a battle situation, emotion could get him killed. And Foster was clearly here to do battle. Crash had to detach. Separate. Distance himself.

He made himself feel nothing. “I didn’t say that.” His voice was quiet and calm.

“Whoever shot Robinson wouldn’t have gotten past his security fence without your help. You brought them in, Hawken. You’re responsible for this.”

Crash held himself very still. “I’m aware of that.” They—whoever they were—had used him to get inside Jake’s home. Whoever had set this up had known of his personal connection to the admiral.

He’d barely been three hours stateside, three hours off the Air Force transport he’d taken back to D.C. when Captain Lovett had called him into his office, asking if he’d be interested in taking part in a special team providing backup security at Admiral Robinson’s request.

Crash had believed this team’s job was to protect the admiral, when in fact there’d been a different, covert goal. Assassination.

He should have known something was wrong. He should have stopped it before it even started.

He was responsible.

“Excuse me, sir.” He had to check on Jake’s condition. He had to sit in the waiting area and hope to hear continuous reports of his longtime mentor’s improvement, starting with news of the admiral finally being moved out of ICU. He had to use the time to mentally sort through all the information Jake had passed to him in that file. And then he had to go out and hunt down the man who had used him to get to Jake.

But Tom Foster blocked the door. “I have a few more questions, if you don’t mind, Lieutenant. You’ve worked with SEAL Team Twelve for how long?”

“On and off for close to eight years,” Crash replied.

“And during those eight years, you occasionally worked closely with Admiral Robinson on assignments that were not standard SEAL missions, did you not?”

Crash didn’t react, didn’t blink, didn’t move, carefully hiding his surprise. How had Foster gotten that information? Crash could count the number of people who knew he’d been working with Jake Robinson on one hand. “I’m afraid I can’t say.”

“You don’t have to say. We know you worked with Robinson as part of the so-called Gray Group.”

Crash chose his words carefully. “I don’t see how that has any real relevance to your investigation, sir.”

“This is information FInCOM has received from naval intelligence,” Foster told him. “You’re not giving away anything we don’t already know.”

“FInCOM takes part in its share of covert operations,” Crash said, trying to sound reasonable. “You’ll understand that whether I am or am not a part of the Gray Group is not something I’m able to talk freely about.”

Reasonable wasn’t on the list of adjectives Tom Foster was working with today. His voice rose and he took a threatening step forward. “An admiral has been shot. This is not the time to conceal any information whatsoever.”

Crash held his ground. “I’m sorry, sir. I’ve already given you and the other investigators all the information I’m able to provide. The names of the deceased, as I knew them. An account of my conversation with Captain Lovett that afternoon. An account of the events that led to one of the men in the team opening fire upon the admiral—”

“What exactly is your reason for concealing information, Lieutenant?” Foster’s neck was turning purple.

“I’m concealing nothing.” Except for the shocking information Jake had sent him in a top-secret, high-level security-clearance file.

If Crash wanted to get to the bottom of this—and he did—it wouldn’t help to go public with all that Jake had told him. Besides, Crash had to treat the information in that file with exactly the same care and secrecy as he treated every other file Jake had ever sent him. And that meant that even if he wanted to, he couldn’t talk about it with anyone—except his Commander-in-Chief, the President of the United States.

“We know that Jake Robinson sent you some kind of information file on the morning of the shooting,” Foster informed him tightly. “I will need you to turn that file over to me as soon as possible.”

Crash met the man’s gaze steadily. “I’m sorry, sir. You know as well as I do that even if I did have access to this alleged file from Admiral Robinson, I wouldn’t be able to reveal its contents to you. The status of all of the work I did for the admiral was ‘need to know.’ My orders were to report back to Jake and to Jake only.”

“I order you to hand over that file, Lieutenant.”

“I’m sorry, Commander Foster. Even if I had such a file, I’m afraid you don’t have the clearance rating necessary to make such a demand.” He stepped dangerously close to the shorter man and lowered his voice. “If you’ll excuse me, I’m going to see how Jake’s doing.”

Foster stepped aside, pushing open the door with one hand. “Your concern for Robinson is heartwarming. At least, it would be if we didn’t have indisputable evidence that proves you were the man who fired those first shots into Admiral Robinson’s chest.”

Crash heard the words Foster said, but they didn’t make sense. The crowd of men standing outside the bathroom door didn’t make sense, either. There were uniformed cops, both local and state police, as well as dark-suited FInCOM agents, and several officers from the shore patrol.

They were obviously waiting for someone.

Him.

Crash looked at Foster, the meaning of his words becoming clear. “You think I’m—”

“We don’t think it, we know it.” Foster smiled tightly.

“Ballistic reports are in.”

“Are you Lt. William R. Hawken, sir?” The shore-patrol officer who stepped forward was tall and young and humorlessly earnest.

“Yes,” Crash replied. “I’m Hawken.”

“By the way, the bullet taken from your arm was fired from Captain Lovett’s weapon,” Foster told him.

Crash felt sick, but he didn’t let his reaction show. His captain had tried to kill him. His captain had been a part of the conspiracy.

“Lt. William R. Hawken, sir,” the shore-patrol officer droned, “you are under arrest.”

Crash stood very, very still.

“The ballistic report also shows that your weapon fired the bullets that were found in four of the five other dead men, as well as those removed from the admiral,” Foster told him tightly. “Does that information by any chance clear up your foggy memory of who fired the first shots?”

“You have the right to remain silent,” the shore-patrol officer chanted. “Anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law. You have the right to an attorney—”

This was impossible. Bullets from his weapon…? That wasn’t the way it had happened. He looked into the blandly serious eyes of the young officer. “What exactly am I being charged with?”

The young officer cleared his throat. “Sir. You have been charged with conspiracy, treason, and the murder of a United States Navy Admiral.”

Murder?

Crash’s entire world tilted.

“Admiral Robinson’s wounds proved fatal one hour ago,” Tom Foster announced. “The admiral is dead.”

Crash closed his eyes. Jake was dead.

Disassociate. Detach. Separate.

The shore-patrol officer slipped handcuffs onto Crash’s wrists, but Crash didn’t feel a thing.

“Aren’t you going to say anything to defend yourself?” Foster asked.

Crash didn’t answer. Couldn’t answer. Jake was dead.

He was completely numb as they led him from the hospital, out to a waiting car. There were news cameras everywhere, aimed at him. Crash didn’t even try to hide his face.

He was helped into the car, someone pushing down his head to keep him from hitting it on the frame. Jake was dead. Jake was dead, and Crash should have been able to prevent it. He should have been faster. He should have been smarter. He should have paid attention to the feeling he’d had that something wasn’t right.

Crash stared out through the rain-speckled window of the car as the driver pulled out into the wet December night. He tried to get his brain to work, tried to start picking apart the information Jake had sent him in that file—the information that was recorded just as completely and precisely in his head.

Crash was no longer simply going to find the man responsible for shooting and killing Jake Robinson. He was going to find him, hunt him down and destroy him.

He had no doubt he’d succeed—or die trying.

Dear, sweet Mary. And he’d thought last Christmas had been the absolute pits.

Chapter 1

One year earlier

It was only two days after Thanksgiving, but the city streets were already decked with wreaths and bows and Christmas lights.

The cheery colors and festive sparkle seemed to mock Nell Burns as she drove through the city. She’d come into Washington, D.C. that morning to do a number of errands. Get a new supply of watercolor paper and paint for Daisy. Stop at the health food store and get more of that nasty seaweed stuff. Pick up the admiral’s dress uniform from the dry cleaners near the Pentagon. It had been a week since Jake had been in to town, and it looked as if it would be a while before he returned.

Nell had saved the hardest, most unpleasant task for last. But now there was no avoiding it.

She double-checked the address she’d scribbled on a Post-it note, slowing as she drove past the high-rise building that bore the same number.

There was a parking spot open, right on the street, and she slipped into it, turning off her engine and pulling up the brake.

But instead of getting out of her car, Nell sat there.

What on earth was she going to say?

It was bad enough that in just a few minutes she was going to be knocking on William Hawken’s door. In the two years since she’d started working as Daisy Owen’s personal assistant, she’d met the enigmatic Navy SEAL that her boss thought of as a surrogate son exactly four times.

And each time he’d taken her breath away.

It wasn’t so much that he was handsome….

Actually, it was exactly that he was handsome. He was incredibly, darkly, mysteriously, broodingly, gorgeously handsome. He had the kind of cheekbones that epic poems were written about and a nose that advertised an aristocratic ancestry. And his eyes…Steely gray and heart-stoppingly intense, the force of his gaze was nearly palpable. When he’d looked at her, she’d felt as if he could see right through her, as if he could read her mind.

His lips reminded her of those old gothic romances she’d read when she was younger. He had decidedly cruel lips. Upon seeing them, she’d suddenly realized that rather odd descriptive phrase made perfect sense. His lips were gracefully shaped, but thin and tight, particularly since his default expression was not a smile.

In fact, Nell couldn’t remember ever having seen William Hawken smile.

His friends, or at least the members of his SEAL team—she wasn’t sure if a man that broodingly quiet actually had any friends—called him “Crash.”

Daisy had told her that Billy Hawken had been given that nickname when he was training to become a SEAL. His partner in training had jokingly started calling him Crash because of Hawken’s ability to move silently at all times. In the same manner in which a very, very large man might be nicknamed “Mouse” or “Flea,” Billy Hawken had ever after been known as Crash.

There was no way, no way, Nell would ever consider becoming involved with a man—no matter how disgustingly handsome and intriguing—whose work associates called him “Crash.”

There was also no way she would ever consider becoming involved with a Navy SEAL. From what Nell understood, SEAL was synonymous with superman. The acronym itself stood for Sea, Air and Land, and SEALs were trained to operate with skill and efficiency in all three environments. Direct descendants from the UDTs or Underwater Demolition Teams of World War II, SEALs were experts in everything from gathering information to blowing things up.

They were Special Forces warriors who used unconventional methods and worked in small seven-or eight-man teams. Admiral Jake Robinson had been a SEAL in Vietnam. The stories he’d told were enough to convince Nell that becoming involved with a man like Crash would be sheer insanity.

Of course, she was failing to consider one important point as she made these sweeping statements. The man in question had barely even said four words to her. No wait—he’d said five words the first time they’d met. “Pleased to meet you, Nell.” He had a quiet, richly resonant voice that matched his watchful demeanor damn near perfectly. When he’d said her name, she’d come closer to melting into a pathetic pool of quivering protoplasm at his feet than she’d ever done in her life.

The second time they’d met, that was when he’d said four words. “Nice seeing you again.” The other times, he’d merely nodded.

In other words, it wasn’t as if he was breaking down her door, trying to get a date.

And he certainly wasn’t doing anything as ridiculous as not only counting the number of times they’d met, but adding up the total number of words she’d ever said to him.

With any luck, he wouldn’t even be home.

But then, of course, she’d have to come back.

Daisy and her longtime, live-in lover, Jake Robinson, had invited Crash out to the farm for dinner several times over the past few weeks. But each time he’d cancelled.

Nell had made this trip into the city to tell him that he must come. Although he wasn’t their child by blood, Crash was the closest thing to a son both Daisy and Jake had ever had. And from what Daisy had told her, Nell knew that Crash considered them his family, too. From the time he was ten, he’d spent every summer and winter break from boarding school with the slightly eccentric pair. From the time his own mother had died, Daisy had opened her home and her heart to him.

But now Daisy had been diagnosed with an inoperable cancer, and she was in the very late stages of the disease. She didn’t want Crash to hear the news over the phone, and Jake was refusing to leave her side.

That had left Nell volunteering to handle the odious task.

Damn, what was she going to say?

“Hi, Billy, um, Bill, how are you? It’s Nell Burns…remember me?”

Crash stared at the woman standing out in the hallway, aware that he was wearing only a towel. He held the knot together with one hand while he pushed his wet hair up and out of his eyes with the other.

Nell laughed nervously, her eyes skimming his near-naked body before returning to his face. “No, you probably don’t know who I am, especially out of context this way. I work for—”

“My cousin, Daisy,” he said. “Of course I know who you are.”

“Daisy’s your cousin?” She was so genuinely surprised, she forgot to be nervous for a moment. “I didn’t realize you were actually related. I just though she was…I mean, that you were…”

The nervousness was back, and she waved her hands gracefully, in a gesture equivalent to a shrug.

“A stray she and Jake just happened to pick up?” he finished for her.

She tried to pretend that she wasn’t fazed, but with her fair coloring, Crash couldn’t miss the fact that she was blushing. Come to think of it, she’d started blushing the minute she’d realized he was standing there in only a towel.

A grown woman who still could blush. It was remarkable, really. And it was reason number five thousand and one on his list of reasons why he should stay far away from her.

She was too nice.

The very first time they’d met, the very first time Crash had looked into her eyes, his pulse had kicked into high gear. There was no doubt about it, it was a purely physical reaction. Jake had introduced him to Nell at some party Daisy had thrown. The instant he’d walked in, Crash had noticed Nell’s blond hair and her trim, slender figure, somehow enhanced by a fairly conservative little black dress. But up close, as he’d said hello, he’d gotten caught in those liquid, blue eyes. The next thing he knew, he was fantasizing about taking her by the hand, pulling her with him up the stairs, into one of the spare bedrooms, pinning her against the door and just…

The alarming part was that Crash knew the physical attraction he felt was extremely mutual. Nell had given him a look that he’d seen before, in other women’s eyes.

It was a look that said she wanted to play with fire. Or at least she thought she did. But there was no way he was going to seduce this girl that Jake and Daisy had spoken so highly of. She was too nice.

He couldn’t see more than a trace of that same look in her eyes now, though. She was incredibly nervous—and upset, he realized suddenly. She was standing there, looking as if she was fighting hard to keep from bursting into tears.

“I was hoping you’d have a few minutes to spare, to sit down and talk,” she told him. For someone so slight of build, she had a deceptively low, husky voice. It was unbelievably sexy. “Maybe go out and get a cup of coffee or…?”

“I’m not exactly dressed for getting coffee.”

“I could go.” She motioned over her shoulder toward the bank of beat-up elevators. “I can wait for you downstairs. Outside. While you get dressed.”

“This isn’t a very good neighborhood,” he said. “It’d be better if you came inside to wait.”

Crash opened the door wider and stepped back to let her in. She hesitated for several long seconds, and he crossed the idea that she was here to seduce him off his list of possible reasons why she’d come.

He wasn’t sure whether to feel disappointed or relieved.

She finally stepped inside, slipping off her yellow, flannel-lined slicker, hanging it by the hood on the doorknob. She was wearing jeans and a long-sleeved T-shirt with a low, scooped collar that accentuated her honey-blond chinlength hair and her long, elegant neck. Her features were delicate—tiny nose, perfectly shaped lips—with the exception of her jawline, which was strong and stubbornly square.

She wasn’t conventionally beautiful, but as far as Crash was concerned, the intelligence and the sheer life in her eyes pushed her clear off the scope.

As he watched, she looked around his living room, taking in his garish purple-and-green-plaid sofa and the two matching easy chairs. She tried to hide her surprise.

“Rented furniture,” he informed her.

She was startled at first, but then she laughed. She was outrageously pretty when she laughed. “You read my mind.”

“I didn’t want you thinking I was a purple-and-green-plaid furniture type by choice.”

There was a glimmer of amusement in Crash’s eyes, and his mouth quirked into what was almost a smile as Nell gazed at him. God, was it possible that William Hawken actually had a sense of humor?

“Let me get something on,” he said as he vanished silently down a hallway toward the back of the apartment.

“Take your time,” she called after him.

The less time he took, the sooner she’d have to tell him the reason she’d come. And she’d just as soon put that off indefinitely.

Nell paced toward the picture window, once again fighting the urge to cry. All of the furniture in the room was rented, she could see that now. Even the TV had a sticker bearing the name of a rental company. It seemed such a depressing way to live—subject to other people’s tastes. She looked out at the overcast sky and sighed. There wasn’t much about today, or about the entire past week and a half, that hadn’t been depressing. As she watched, the clouds opened and it started to rain.

“Do you really want to go out in that?”

Crash’s voice came from just over her shoulder and Nell jumped.

He’d put on a pair of army pants—fatigues, she thought they were called, except instead of being green, these were black—and a black T-shirt. With his dark hair and slightly sallow complexion, he seemed to have stepped out of a black-and-white film. Even his eyes seemed more pale gray than blue.

“If you want, I could make us some coffee,” he continued. “I have beans.”

“You do?”

The amused gleam was back in his eyes. “Yeah, I know. You think, rented furniture—he probably drinks instant. But no. If I have a choice, I make it fresh. It’s a habit I picked up from Jake.”

“Actually, I didn’t really want any coffee,” Nell told him. His eyes were too disconcertingly intense, so she focused on the plaid couch instead. Her stomach was churning, and she felt as if she might be sick. “Maybe we could just, you know, sit down for a minute and…talk?”

“Okay,” Crash said. “Let’s sit down.”

Nell perched on the very edge of the couch as he took the matching chair positioned opposite the window.

She could imagine how dreadfully awful it would be if some near stranger came to her apartment to tell her that her mother had only a few months left to live.

Nell’s eyes filled with tears that she couldn’t hold back any longer. One escaped, and she wiped it away, but not before Crash had noticed.

“Hey.” He moved around the glass-topped coffee table to sit beside her on the couch. “Are you okay?”

It was like a dam breaking. Once the tears started, she couldn’t make them stop.

Silently, she shook her head. She wasn’t okay. Now that she was here, now that she sitting in his living room, she absolutely couldn’t do this. She couldn’t tell him. How could she say such an awful thing? She covered her face with her hands.

“Nell, are you in some kind of trouble?”

She didn’t answer. She couldn’t answer.

“Did someone hurt you?” he asked.

He touched her, then. Tentatively at first, but then more firmly, putting his arm around her shoulders, pulling her close.

“Whatever this is about, I can help,” he said quietly. She could feel his fingers in her hair, gently stroking. “This is going to be okay—I promise.”

There was such confidence in his voice. He didn’t have a clue that as soon as she opened her mouth, as soon as she told him why she’d come, it wasn’t going to be okay. Daisy was going to die, and nothing ever was going to be okay again.

“I’m sorry,” she whispered. “I’m so sorry.”

“It’s okay,” he said softly.

He was so warm, and his arms felt so solid around her. He smelled like soap and shampoo, fresh and innocently clean, like a child.

This was absolutely absurd. She was not a weeper. In fact, she’d held herself together completely over the past week. There had been no time to fall apart. She’d been far too busy scheduling all those second opinions and additional tests, and cancelling an entire three-week Southwestern book-signing tour. Cancelling—not postponing. God, that had been hard. Nell had spent hours on the phone with Dexter Lancaster, Jake and Daisy’s lawyer, dealing with the legal ramifications of the cancelled tour. Nothing about that had been easy.

The truth was, Daisy was more than just Nell’s employer. Daisy was her friend. She was barely forty-five years old. She should have another solid forty years of life ahead of her. It was so damned unfair.

Nell took a deep breath. “I have some bad news to tell you.”

Crash became very still. He stopped running his fingers through her hair. It was entirely possible that he stopped breathing.

But then he spoke. “Is someone dead? Jake or Daisy?”

Nell closed her eyes. “This is the hardest thing I’ve ever had to do.”

He pushed her up, away from him, lifting her chin so that she had to look directly into his eyes. He had eyes that some people might have found scary—eyes that could seem too burningly intense, eyes that were almost inhumanly pale. As he looked at her searchingly, she felt nearly seared, but at the same time, she could see beneath to his all-too-human vulnerability.

“Just say it,” he said. “Just tell me. Come on, Nell. Point-blank.”

She opened her mouth and it all came spilling out. “Daisy’s been diagnosed with an inoperable brain tumor. It’s malignant, it’s metastasized. The doctors have given her two months, absolute tops. It’s more likely that it will be less. Weeks. Maybe even days.”

She’d thought he’d become still before, but that was nothing compared to the absolute silence that seemed to surround him now. She could read nothing on his face, nothing in his eyes, nothing. It was as if he’d temporarily vacated his body.

“I’m so sorry,” she whispered, reaching out to touch his face.

Her words, or maybe her touch, seemed to bring him back from wherever it was that he’d gone.

“I missed Thanksgiving dinner,” he said, talking more to himself than to her. “I got back into town that morning, and there was a message from Jake on my machine asking me to come out to the farm, but I hadn’t slept in four days, so I crashed instead. I figured there was always next year.” Tears welled suddenly in his eyes and pain twisted his face.

“Oh, my God. Oh, God, how’s Jake taking this? He can’t be taking this well….”

Crash stood up abruptly, nearly dumping her onto the floor.

“Excuse me,” he said. “I have to…I need to…” He turned to look at her. “Are they sure?”

Nell nodded, biting her lip. “They’re sure.”

It was amazing. He took a deep breath and ran his hands down his face, and just like that he was back in control. “Are you going out to the farm right now?”

Nell wiped her own eyes. “Yeah.”

“Maybe I better take my own car, in case I need to get back to the base later on. Are you okay to drive?”

“Yeah. Are you?”

Crash didn’t answer her question. “I’ll need to pack a few things and make a quick phone call, but then I’ll be right behind you.”

Nell stood up. “Why don’t you take your time, plan to come out a few hours before dinner? That’ll give you a chance to—”

Again, he ignored her. “I know how hard this must’ve been for you.” He opened the door to the hallway, holding her jacket out for her. “Thank you for coming here.”

He was standing there, so distant, so unapproachable and so achingly alone. Nell couldn’t stand it. She put her jacket down and reached for him, pulling him close in a hug. He was so stiff and unyielding, but she closed her eyes, refusing to be intimidated. He needed this. Hell, she needed this. “It’s okay if you cry,” she whispered.

His voice was hoarse. “Crying won’t change anything. Crying won’t keep Daisy alive.”

“You don’t cry for her,” Nell told him. “You cry for you. So that when you see her, you’ll be able to smile.”

“I don’t smile enough. She’s always on my case because I don’t smile enough.” His arms suddenly tightened around her, nearly taking her breath away.

Nell held him just as tightly, wishing that he was crying, knowing that he wasn’t. Those tears she’d seen in his eyes, the pain that had been etched across his face had been a slip, a fluke. She knew without a doubt that he normally kept such emotions under careful control.

She would have held him all afternoon if he’d let her, but he stepped back far too soon, his face expressionless, stiff and unapproachable once again.

“I’ll see you back there,” he said, not quite meeting her eyes.

Nell nodded, slipping into her raincoat. He closed the door quietly behind her, and she took the elevator down to the lobby. As she stepped out into the grayness of the early afternoon, the rain turned to sleet.

Winter was coming, but for the first time Nell could remember, she was in no real hurry to rush the days to spring.

Chapter 2

“What you want to do,” Daisy was saying, “is not so much draw an exact picture of the puppy—what a camera lens might see—but rather to draw what you see, what you feel.”

Nell looked over Jake’s shoulder and giggled. “Jake feels an aardvark.”

“That’s not an aardvark, that’s a dog.” Jake looked plaintively at Daisy. “I thought I did okay, don’t you think, babe?”

Daisy kissed the top of his head. “It’s a beautiful, wonderful…aardvark.”

As Crash watched from the doorway of Daisy’s studio, Jake grabbed her and pulled her onto his lap, tickling her. The puppy started barking, adding canine chaos to Daisy’s shouts of laughter.

Nothing had changed.

Three days had passed since Nell had told Crash about Daisy’s illness and he’d gone out to the farm, dreading facing both Daisy and Jake. They’d both cried when they saw him, and he’d asked a million questions, trying to find what they might have missed, trying to turn it all into one giant mistake.

How could Daisy be dying? She looked almost exactly the same as she ever had. Despite being given a virtual death sentence by her doctors, Daisy was still Daisy—colorful, outspoken, passionately enthusiastic.

Crash could pretend that the dark circles under her eyes were from the fact that she’d been up all night again, painting, caught in one of her creative spurts. He could find an excuse for her sudden, sharp drop in weight—it was simply the result of her finally finding a diet that she stuck to, finally finding a way to shed those twenty pounds that she always complained were permanently attached to her hips and thighs.

But he couldn’t ignore the rows of prescription medicines that had appeared on the kitchen counter. Painkillers. They were mostly painkillers that Crash knew Daisy resisted taking.

Daisy had told Crash that he and Jake and Nell would all have to learn to grieve on their own time. She herself had no time to spare for sad faces and teary eyes. She approached each day as if it were a gift, as if each sunset were a masterpiece, each moment of shared laughter a treasure.

It would only be a matter of time, though, before the tumor affected her ability to walk and move, to paint and even to speak.

But now, as Crash watched, Daisy was the same as always.

Jake kissed her lightly, sweetly on the lips. “I’m going to take my aardvark into my office and return Dex’s call.”

Dexter Lancaster was one of the few people who actually knew of Daisy’s illness. Dex had served in Vietnam when Jake had, but not as part of the SEAL units. The lawyer had been with the Marines, in some kind of support-services role.

“I’ll see you later, babe, all right?” Jake added.

Daisy nodded, sliding off his lap and straightening his wayward dark curls, her fingers lingering at the gray at his temples.

Jake was the kind of man who just kept getting better-looking as he got older. He’d been incandescently, gleamingly handsome in his twenties and rakishly handsome in his thirties and forties. Now, in his fifties, time had given his face laugh lines and a craggy maturity that illustrated his intense strength of character. With deep blue eyes that could both sparkle with warmth and laughter or penetrate steel in anger, with his upfront, in-your-face, honestly sincere approach and his outrageous sense of humor, Crash knew that Jake could have had any woman, any woman he wanted.

But Jake had wanted Daisy Owen.

Crash had seen photos of Daisy that Jake had taken back when they’d first met—back when he was a young Navy SEAL on his way to Vietnam, and she was a teenager dressed in cotton gauze she’d tie-dyed herself, selling her drawings and crafts on the streets of San Diego.

With her dark hair cascading down her back in a wild mass of curls, her hazel eyes and her bewitching smile, it was easy to see how she’d caught Jake’s eye. She was beautiful, but her beauty was far more than skin-deep.

And at a time when the people of the counterculture were spitting on the boots of men in uniform, at a time when free love meant that strangers could become the most intimate of lovers, then part never to meet again, Daisy gave Jake neither disdain nor a one-night stand. The first few times they’d met, they’d walked the city streets endlessly, sharing cups of hot chocolate at the all-night coffeehouses, talking until dawn.

When Daisy finally did invite Jake into her tiny apartment, he stayed for two weeks. And when he came back from Vietnam, he moved in for good.

During their time together, at least during all the summer vacations and winter breaks Crash had spent with the two of them, he had only heard Daisy and Jake argue about one thing.

Jake had just turned thirty-five, and he’d wanted Daisy to marry him. In his opinion, they’d lived together, unwed, for long enough. But Daisy’s views on marriage were unswerving. It was their love that bound them together, she said, not some foolish piece of paper.

They’d fought bitterly, and Jake had walked out—for about a minute and a half. It was, in Crash’s opinion, quite possibly the only battle Jake had ever lost.

Crash watched them now as Jake kissed Daisy again, longer this time, lingeringly. Over by the window, Nell’s head was bent over her sketch pad, her wheat-colored hair hiding her face, giving them privacy.

But as Jake stood, Nell glanced up. “Is it my turn or yours to make lunch, Admiral?”

“Yours. But if you want I can—”

“No way am I giving up my turn,” Nell told him. “You get a chance to make those squirrely seaweed barf-burgers every other day. It’s my day, and I’m making grilled cheese with Velveeta and bacon.”

“What?” Jake sounded as if she’d said “arsenic” instead of bacon.

“Vegetarian bacon,” Daisy told him, laughter in her voice. “It’s not real.”

“Thank God,” Jake clutched his chest. “I was about to have a high-cholesterol-induced heart attack just from the thought.”

Crash took a deep breath, and went into the room.

“Hey,” Jake greeted him on his way out the door. “You just missed the morning art lesson, kid. Check this out. What do you think?”

Crash had to smile. Calling the object Jake had drawn an aardvark was too generous. It looked more like a concrete highway divider with a nose and ears. “I think you should leave the artwork to Daisy from now on.”

“Tactfully put.” Jake blew Daisy a kiss, then disappeared.

“Billy, are you here for the day or for longer?” Daisy asked as Crash gave her a quick hug. She was definitely much too skinny.

Focus on the positive. Stay in the moment. Don’t project into the future—there would be time enough for that when it arrived. Crash cleared his throat. “I had the last of my debriefings this morning. My schedule’s free and clear until the New Year, at least.” Scooping the puppy into his arms, he glanced at Nell, changing the subject, not wanting to talk about the reasons why he’d arranged an entire month of leave. “Is this guy yours?”

Nell was smiling at him, approval warming her eyes as she put away her sketch pad and pencils and stood up.

“This guy is a girl, and she’s only here on loan from Esther, the cleaning lady, unfortunately.” Nell reached out and scratched the puppy’s ears. She moved closer—close enough that he could smell the fresh scent of her shampoo, and beneath it, the subtle fragrance of her own personal and very feminine perfume. “Jake was afraid that you were going to be sent on another assignment right away.”

“I was asked, but I turned it down,” Crash told her. “It’s been over a year since I’ve taken any leave. My captain had no problem with that.” Especially considering the circumstances.

Nell gave the puppy a final pat and her fingers accidentally brushed his hand. “I better go get lunch started. You’re joining us, right?”

“If you don’t mind.”

Nell just smiled as she left the room.

The puppy struggled in Crash’s arms, and when he put her onto the floor, she scampered after Nell. He looked up to find Daisy watching him, a knowing smile on her face.

“‘If you don’t mind,”’ she said, imitating him. “You’re either disgustingly coy or totally dense.”

“Since I don’t know what you’re talking about—”

“Totally dense wins. Nell. I’m talking about Nell.” Daisy kicked off her shoes and pulled her legs up so that she was sitting tailor-style. “She’s giving you all the right body-language signals. You know, the ones that say she wants you to jump her bones.”

Crash laughed as he sat down on the window seat. “Daisy.”

She leaned forward. “Go for it. She spends far too much time with her head in a book. It’ll be good for her. It’ll be good for you, too.”

Crash looked at her. “You’re actually serious.”

“How old are you now?”

“Thirty-three.”

She grinned. “I’d say it’s definitely time for you to lose your virginity.”

He couldn’t help but smile. “You’re very funny.”

“It’s not entirely a joke. For all I know, you haven’t been with a woman. You’ve never brought anyone home. You’ve never mentioned so much as a name.”

“That’s because I happen to value my privacy—as well as respecting the privacy of the woman I’m seeing.”

“I know you’re not seeing anyone right now,” Daisy said. “How could you be? You were away for four months, you got back for two days, and then you were gone again for another week. Unless you have a girlfriend in Malaysia or Hong Kong, or wherever it is you’re sent…”

“No,” Crash said, “I don’t.”

“So what do you do? Stay celibate? Or pay for sex?”

That question made Crash laugh out loud. “I’ve never paid for sex in my life. I can’t believe you’re asking me about this.” Daisy had always been outrageous and shockingly direct, but she’d always steered clear from the subject of his sex life in the past. Some subjects were too personal—or at least they had been, before.

“I’m no longer worried about shocking anyone,” she told him. “I’ve decided that if I want to know the answer to a question, dammit, I’m going to ask it. Besides, I love you, and I love Nell. I think it would be really cool if the two of you got together.”

Crash sighed. “Daisy, Nell’s great. I like her and I…think she’s smart and pretty and…very nice.” He couldn’t help but remember how perfectly she had fit in his arms, how soft her hair had felt beneath his fingers, how good she’d smelled. “Too nice.”

“No, she’s not. She’s sharp and funny and tough and she’s got this real edge to her that—”

“Tough?”

Daisy lifted her chin defensively. “She can be, yeah. Billy, if you’ll just take some time and get to know her, I know you’ll fall in love with her.”

“Look, I’m sorry, but I don’t do ‘in love.”’ Crash wanted to stand up and pace, but there was no room. Besides, he knew without a doubt that Daisy would read some deep meaning into his inability to sit still. “The truth is, I don’t even do long-term or permanent. I couldn’t even if I wanted to—and I don’t want to. You know that I’m never around for more than a few weeks at a time. And because I’m aware of those realities, I don’t ever give anyone false hope by bringing them here to meet you.”

“All those don’ts are so negative. What do you do?” Daisy asked. “One-night stands? You know, that’s dangerous these days.”

Crash looked out the window. The sky was overcast again. December in Virginia was wet and dreary and utterly depressing.

“What I do is, I walk into a bar,” he told her, “and I look around, see who’s looking back at me. If there are any sparks, I approach. I ask if I can buy her a drink. If she says yes, I ask her to take a walk on the beach. And then, away from the noise of the bar, I ask her about her life, about her job, her family, her last scumbag of a boyfriend—whatever—and I listen really carefully to what she tells me because not many people bother to listen, and I know I’ll win big points if I do. And by the time we’ve walked a quarter mile, I’ve listened so well, she’s ready to make it with me.”

Daisy was silent, just watching him. Her expression was sad, as if what he was telling her wasn’t what she’d hoped to hear. Still, there was no judgment and no disapproval in her eyes.

“Instead, I take her home and I kiss her good-night,” Crash continued, “and I ask her if I can see her again—take her to dinner the next night, take her someplace nice. She always says yes, so the next night we go out and I treat her really well. And then I tell her over dessert, right up front, that I want to sleep with her but I’m not going to be around for long. I lay it out right there, right on the table. I’m a SEAL, and I could be called away at any time. I tell her I’m not looking for anything that’s going to last. I’ve got a week, maybe two, and I want to spend that time with her. And she always appreciates my honesty so much that she takes me home. For the next week or however long it is until I get called out on some op, she cooks for me, and she does my laundry, and she keeps me very warm and very, very happy at night. And when I leave, she lets me go, because she knew it was coming. And I walk away—no guilt, no regrets.”

“Didn’t you learn anything from me at all? All those summers we spent together…”

Crash looked up. Daisy’s eyes were still so sad. “I learned to be honest,” he told her. “You taught me that.”

“But what you do seems so…cold and calculated.”

He nodded. “It’s calculated. I don’t pretend it’s not. But I’m honest about it—to myself and to the woman I’m with.”

“Haven’t you ever met anyone that you burn for?” she asked. “Someone you just want to lie down in front of and surrender to? Someone you absolutely live and die for?”

Crash shook his head. “No,” he said. “I’m not looking for that, and I don’t expect to find it, either. I think most people go through life without that kind of experience.”

“That is so sad.” There were tears in her eyes as she looked up at him. “It’s crazy, too. I’m the one who’s dying, but right now I feel so much luckier than you.”

Nell was moving at a dead run as she rounded the corner by the stairs and plowed smack into Crash.

Somehow he managed to catch her and keep them both from landing on the ground in a tangled pile of arms and legs.

“Sorry.” Nell felt herself blushing as he made sure she was steadily on her feet again.

“Is everything all right?” he asked, finally letting go of her arms. “Is Daisy…?”

“She’s fine,” Nell said. “But she said yes.”

He didn’t bother to ask. He just waited for her to explain. He was dressed all in black again today, but because the chill of winter was in the air, he wore a turtleneck instead of his usual T-shirt.

Most men managed to look good in a simple black turtleneck. William Hawken looked incredible.

It hugged his shoulders and arms, accentuating his streamlined muscles. It was funny, Nell had always thought of him as somewhat thin—more lean and wiry than muscular—because most of the time he wore clothes that were just a little too large. His T-shirts were never tight and he always wore his pants just a little low on his hips and slightly loose.

But the truth was, he was built as solid as a rock.

Nell felt herself flush again as she realized she was standing there, staring at the man. “You look really good today,” she admitted. “I like that shirt.”

“Thank you,” he said. If she’d surprised him, he didn’t show it. But then again, he didn’t show much of anything. With the exception of that one time in his apartment, he played all of his emotional cards extremely close to his chest.

“I’m going to need your help,” Nell started toward the second-floor office she’d shared with Daisy. “What do you know about swing bands and health-food caterers? Or how about where I can find a florist specializing in poinsettias and holly?”

“Any florist should be able to handle a Christmas-style arrangement,” Crash said, keeping pace. “Health-food caterers—I’m not the one to ask about that. As for swing bands, I’ve always preferred Benny Goodman.”

“Benny Goodman’s great, but unfortunately he’s dead.” Nell turned on the office lights and sat down at the desk with the computer, using the mouse and the keyboard to sign on to the Internet. “I need to find someone good who’s alive, and ready to be booked for the evening before Christmas eve.” She looked back at Crash. “Any idea where we can get a half dozen twelve-foot Christmas trees with root balls attached—delivered? And then there’s lights and decorations…But we can’t hire a decorator, because they do that ‘monochromatic garbage’—that’s a direct quote—all silver or all red, and that’s not any good. We need real ornaments, all different colors and sizes.”

Crash sat down on the other side of the desk. “Are we having a Christmas party?”

Nell laughed. And then, to her horror, her eyes filled with tears. She blinked them back, but she knew he saw them, because for a fraction of a second, a very peculiar mix of trepidation and an answering flash of pain crossed his face.

“I’m not going to cry,” she told him, fiercely willing herself to do just that. “I’m just…” She forced a smile. “I feel so bad for Jake, you know? In a way, Daisy’s got it easier, because Jake’s the one who’s going to have to go on living. And sometimes, when Daisy’s not around, I see him, and he has this look in his eyes that just breaks my heart.”

Nell sank down, resting her head on top of her desk.

Crash knew she was fighting tears again, and she didn’t want him to see. Nell’s loyalty impressed him. He understood loyalty. It was the one strong emotion he could relate to—and could allow himself to feel.

“You don’t have to be here,” he said.

She lifted her head and looked at him through a curtain of rumpled hair, her expression aghast. “Yes, I most certainly do. Daisy needs me now more than ever.”

“This wasn’t what you were hired to do.”

“I was hired as her personal assistant.”

“You were hired to take care of all the business aspects of Daisy’s career,” Crash pointed out, “so that she would have more time to paint.”

“A good personal assistant does whatever’s needed,” Nell argued. “If the dishes need washing, I’ll do the dishes. Or I’ll clean the fish tank, or—”

“Most people would’ve given their notice weeks ago. Instead of that, you moved in.”

“Yeah, well, the idea of Daisy having to go into a hospice was unacceptable.” Nell swept her hair out of her face as she reached for a tissue and briskly blew her nose. “And she hated the thought of hiring some stranger to provide round-the-clock personal care. But she didn’t want to dump all that responsibility on Jake, so…” She shrugged.

“So you volunteered.”

“I haven’t had any medical training, so when the time comes that she needs a nurse, someone’s still going to have to come in, but at least she’ll know I’ll be there, too.” Nell tossed the crumpled tissue across the room, sinking it expertly into the wastebasket. “It’s no big deal.” She took a deep breath and pretended to look at the computer screen.

“That’s not true and you know it.”

She looked up at him, gazing directly into his eyes. “Are you going to help me, Hawken, or what?”

Crash had to smile. He liked her direct approach. He liked her. He was definitely going to help with whatever it was that she was doing, but first he had to make something clear to her.

“I know we’re all trying to be as upbeat as Daisy is,” he said quietly, “but that gets hard sometimes. I don’t want you to have to worry about what I’ll say or do if you need to cry. You don’t need that weighing you down, too. We’re living with a lot of emotional upheaval here. There’s nothing normal about this, and we can’t expect each other to behave normally. So, let’s make a deal, okay? You can cry whenever you want, but you can’t hold it against me if I stand up and walk away when you do, because…everything that you’re feeling…I’m fighting it, too.”

Nell just sat there, looking at him. Her eyes were rimmed with red, she wore no makeup, and she looked as if she’d slept about as much as he had in the past few days—which wasn’t much at all.

Maybe they’d both sleep better if they shared a bed.

Crash gently pushed that thought away. He knew it would be true, but he also knew that the absolute, absolute last thing Nell needed in her life right now was to become intimately entangled with him.

She was the kind of woman he avoided like the plague when he walked into a bar. He’d recognized her on sight that first time they’d met. She was too sweet, too smart, too innocently full of life and hope and promise.

She was the kind of woman who wouldn’t believe him when he said he wasn’t looking for long-term or permanent. She was the kind of woman who would think that she could change him.

She was the kind of woman who would cry great big, silent tears as he packed his bag—the kind of woman who would beg him to come back.

No, under completely normal conditions, Crash wouldn’t allow himself to get close to Nell. And right now she was a bubbling caldron of high-octane emotions. He knew—not with any sense of ego, but from that same flatly factual voice of experience—that it wouldn’t take very much for her to fancy herself in love with him. He knew because he was experiencing the very same highs and lows himself.

But, like he’d told Daisy, he didn’t do “in love” and he knew himself well enough to recognize that the rush of emotions he was feeling wasn’t real. It couldn’t possibly be real. And giving in to this powerful physical temptation would be the worst thing he could do to this woman, no matter how badly he longed for something—for someone—to hold on to. No matter how badly he longed for the distraction of sexual release.

He liked Nell too much to use her that way. And knowing what he knew about her, he would be using her.

Crash forced himself to take a step back, to separate a little bit more from his emotions. He’d file his red-hot attraction for Nell in that mental holding area he’d created, right next to all the anger and grief and pain he felt over Daisy’s impending death. All he needed was just a little more distance, a little more detachment.

But Nell finally moved, holding out her hand to him, stretching her arm across her desk. “I’ll accept your deal,” she said. “I want to state for the record, though, that I don’t usually cry at the drop of a hat.”

He took her hand. It was so much smaller than his, her fingers slender and cool. Her grip was firm, and that, along with the crooked smile she gave him, almost made him toss his resolve out the window.

He nearly asked her, point-blank, if she wanted to try to release some tension with him tonight. Daisy had purposely put them in bedrooms right next to each other. It wouldn’t be difficult for him to slip into her room and…

Nell was looking at him, her eyes wide, as if she knew what he was thinking. But then he realized that he was still holding her hand. Quickly, he let it go.

Detach.

He cleared his throat. This entire conversation had started with evergreen trees, swing bands and poinsettias. “So, are Jake and Daisy throwing a Christmas party?”

Nell lifted an eyebrow. “Do you really think they’d do something that mundane or predictable—or easy to plan? No, this is not your average Christmas party. I was just up in the studio while Daisy was painting,” she told him, “and Jake came in and asked her what she wanted to do tonight. He thought maybe she’d want to go to a movie. And she said that lately they only did what she wanted to do, and that wasn’t fair. She thought that tonight they should do something that Jake wanted. And they got into this discussion about Daisy’s list—the list of all the things she wants to do before…you know.”

Crash nodded. He knew.

“So Daisy said she thought it would be fair if Jake made a similar list, and he said that he didn’t need to. He said there was only one thing on his wish list—a wish that she would get well and live with him for another twenty years. And if he couldn’t have that, then his only other wish would be for her to marry him.”

Crash felt a lump forming in his throat. After all this time, Jake still wanted Daisy to marry him.

“So she said yes,” Nell continued softly.

He tried to clear it, but it wouldn’t go away. “Just like that?”

Nell nodded. “Yeah. She’s finally giving in.”

Poor Jake. He’d wanted forever, but all he was getting was a cheap illusion.

Crash felt helplessness and rage churning inside of him, fighting to break free and sweep him away like a tidal wave. It wasn’t fair. He had to look away from the gentle blue of Nell’s eyes, or, dammit, he was going to start to cry.

And once he started, he’d never be able to stop.

“Maybe,” Nell said quietly, “maybe knowing that Daisy loved him enough to give in and marry him will help. Maybe someday Jake will find some comfort in that.”

Crash shook his head, still unable to meet her gaze. He stood up, knowing that if he just walked away, she would understand. But she’d also asked for his help. He sat back down, willing himself to detach even more, to stop feeling so damn much. He took a deep breath and let it slowly out. And when he spoke, his voice was even. “So now we’re planning a wedding.”

“Yup. Daisy said yes, and then turned to me and asked if I could take care of the details—in exactly three weeks. Of course, I said yes, too.” She laughed, and it came out sounding just on the verge of hysterical, just a little bit giddy. “Please, please say that you’ll help me.”

“I’ll help you.”

She briefly closed her eyes. “Thank God.”

“But I don’t have a lot of experience with weddings.”

“Neither do I.”

“In fact, I tend to avoid weddings like the plague,” he admitted.

“All of my college friends who are married either eloped or got married on the other coast,” Nell said. “I’ve never even been to a real wedding. The closest I’ve ever gotten was watching the TV broadcast of Princess Diana’s wedding to Prince Charles when I was little.”

“That probably had just a little bit more flash and fanfare than Daisy and Jake are going to want.”

Nell laughed, and then stopped short. He’d just made a joke. That had been a joke, hadn’t it?

He wasn’t smiling, but there definitely was a glint of something in his eyes. Amusement. Or was it tears?

Crash turned his head and examined the toe of his boot. With his lids lowered, Nell couldn’t see his eyes, and when he looked up again, he was carefully devoid of all expression.

“We should probably make a list of all the essential supplies for a wedding,” he suggested.

“We’ve got the bride and the groom. They’re pretty essential, and we can already cross them off the list.”

“But they’ll need clothes.”

“A wedding gown—something funky that’ll make Daisy feel as if she’s still thumbing her nose at convention.” Nell started an Internet search. “There must be some kind of wedding checklist somewhere that we can use—so we don’t forget something important.”

“Like wedding rings.”

“Or—God!—someone to perform the ceremony.” She looked up, pushing the phone and the yellow pages toward him. “Trees,” she said. “A half a dozen twelve-foot Christmas trees. Live.”

“Delivered ASAP,” he said. “You can already cross it off your list.” He reached for the phone, but she didn’t let it go, and he looked up at her.

“Thanks,” she said quietly. They both knew she was talking about more than just his help with this project.

Crash nodded. “You can cross that off your list, too.”

“A prenuptial agreement?” Nell’s voice was loaded with disbelief.

Crash paused in the kitchen doorway, looking in to find her sitting at the table across from Dexter Lancaster, Jake and Daisy’s lawyer.

She’d made them both tea, and she sat with her hands wrapped around her cup, as if she were cold.

Lancaster was a big man. He had at least five inches and seventy pounds on Crash, but most of those pounds were the result of too many doughnuts and Danishes in the morning and too many servings of blueberry cheesecake at night. Age and a sweet tooth had conspired to take the sharp edges off Lancaster’s WASP-y good looks and as a result, somewhat ironically, he was probably more handsome at age forty-nine than he’d been at thirty.

He was a friendly-looking bear of a man, with warm blue eyes that actually twinkled behind round, wire-framed glasses. His hair was sandy-blond and still thick and untouched by gray.

He sighed as he answered Nell. “Yeah, I know, it sounds crazy, but in a way, it’ll clarify exactly which parts of Daisy’s estate she wishes to leave to persons other than Jake. If it’s in both the prenup and the will, it’ll speed the process along after she’s…” He shook his head, taking off his glasses and wiping his eyes with both hands. “Sorry.”

Nell took a deep breath. “Don’t be. It’s coming, you know. Daisy faces it. She talks about it matter-of-factly. We should be able to do that, too.” She made a sound that was half laughter, half sob. “Easier said than done, though, huh?”

Dex Lancaster set his glasses down and reached across the table to cover her hand with his. “You know, your being here is a godsend to both of them.”

The exact same thought had crossed Crash’s mind at least three times a day. But he’d never said it aloud. He’d figured that Nell surely knew.

She smiled at Lancaster. “Thanks.”

The lawyer smiled back at her, still holding her hand.

The man liked her. He more than liked her.

Dexter Lancaster had a thing for Nell. The man was twenty years her senior, at least, but Crash knew from his subtle body language and from the way he was looking at her that he found her undeniably attractive.

Lancaster was no fool. And judging from the fact that his law firm had one of the best reputations in the country, he also was not an underachiever. Any second now, he was going to ask Nell out to dinner.

“I was wondering…” Lancaster started.

Crash coughed and stepped into the room.

Nell slipped her hand out from beneath Lancaster’s as she turned to look up at him. “You’re back,” she said, giving him a smile. It was a bigger smile than the one she’d given Dex Lancaster. “Did you have any problem getting the rings?”

Crash took the two jewelers’ boxes from the inside pocket of his jacket and set them on the table in front of her. “None whatsoever.”

“You know Dex, don’t you?” she asked.

“We’ve met a few times,” Crash said.

The lawyer stood up as he held out his hand, and the two men shook.

But their handshake wasn’t a greeting. It was a not-so-subtle sizing up. It was more than obvious, from the once-over Lancaster was giving him, that he was trying to figure out what claim—if any—Crash had already staked out.

Crash met the older man’s gaze steadily. And after the handshake was done, he moved slightly to stand closer to Nell, putting one hand on the back of her chair in a gesture that was clearly possessive.

What the hell was he doing?

He didn’t want this girl.

He’d resolved to stay away from her, to keep his distance, both physically and emotionally.

But as much as he didn’t want her, he didn’t want to see her taken for a ride, either.

Crash didn’t trust lawyers any farther than he could throw them, and Dexter Lancaster was no exception to his rule, despite the fact that his eyes twinkled like Santa Claus’s.

Lancaster checked his watch. “I have to get going.” He twinkled at Nell. “I’m sure I’ll talk to you soon.” He nodded at Crash as he slipped on his overcoat. “Nice seeing you again.”

Like hell it was. “Take care,” Crash lied in return.

“What was that all about?” Nell turned to ask as the door closed behind Dexter Lancaster.

Crash opened the refrigerator and pretended to be engrossed by its contents. “Just a little Army/Navy rivalry.”

Nell laughed. “You’re kidding. All that tension just because you’re in the Navy and he was in the Army?”

Crash took a can of soda out and shut the refrigerator door. “Crazy, huh?” he said as he escaped into the other room.

Chapter 3

Nell glanced up from her computer to see Crash standing in her office. She jumped, nearly knocking over her cup of tea, catching it with both hands, just in time.

“God!” she said. “Don’t do that! You’re always sneaking up on me. Make some noise when you come in, will you? Try stomping your feet, okay?”

“I thought I’d made noise when I opened the door. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to scare you.”

She took a deep breath, letting it slowly out. “No, I’m sorry. I’ve been…feeling sideways all day. There must be a full moon or something.” She frowned at the half-written letter on her computer screen. “Of course, now I’ve got so much adrenaline raging through my system, I’m not going to be able to concentrate.”

“Next time, I’ll knock.”

Nell looked up at Crash in exasperation. “I don’t want you to knock. You’ve been working as hard as I have—this is your office, too. Just…clear your throat or play the bagpipes or whistle, or something.” She turned back to the letter.

Crash cleared his throat. “I’ve been ordered to tell you that after two days of rain, the sky’s finally clear, and the sun’s due to set in less than fifteen minutes,” he said.

Sunset. Nell glanced at her watch, swearing silently. Was it really that time already?

“I’m waiting for a fax from the caterer, and Dex Lancaster’s supposed to call me right back to tell me if Friday is okay to come out and discuss some changes Daisy wants to make to her will, but I guess he can leave a message on the machine,” she told him, thinking aloud. “I’m almost done with this letter, but I’ll hurry. I’ll be there. I promise.”

Crash stepped closer. “I’ve been ordered to make sure you arrive on time, not five minutes after the sun has gone down, like last Monday. Daisy said to tell you that the rest of the week’s forecast calls for total cloud coverage. In fact, the prediction is for snow—maybe as much as two or three inches. This could be the last sunset we see for a while.”

The last sunset. Every sunset they saw was one of Daisy’s very last sunsets.

Every clear day for the past two weeks, Daisy had brought Nell’s work to a screeching halt as they’d all met in the studio to watch the setting sun. But now there was less than a week before the wedding, and the list of things that needed to be done was still as long as her arm. On top of that, the sun was setting earlier and earlier as midwinter approached, cutting her workday shorter and shorter.

It was also reminding her that the passage of time was bringing them closer and closer to the end of Daisy’s life.

Nell looked at her watch again, then up into the steely gray of Crash’s eyes.

To her surprise, there was amusement gleaming there.

“I’ve been ordered not to fail,” he told her, giving her an actual smile, “which means I’m going to have to pick you up and carry you downstairs to the studio if you don’t get out of that chair right now.”

Yeah, sure he was. Nell turned back to the computer. “Just let me save this file. And wait—here comes that fax from the caterer now. I just have to—Hey!”

Crash picked her up, just as he’d said he would, throwing her over his shoulder in a fireman’s hold as he carried her out of the door.

“Okay, Hawken, very funny. Put me down.” Nell’s nose bumped his back and her arms dangled uncomfortably. She wasn’t sure where to put her hands.

He seemed to have no problem figuring out where to put his hands. He held her legs firmly with one arm, and anchored her in place by resting his other hand squarely on the seat of her jeans. Yet despite that, his touch seemed impersonal—further proof that the man was not even remotely interested in her.

And after two weeks of living in the same house, sleeping in a room one door down the hall from his, and working together twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, on this wedding that had somehow grown from a small affair with forty guests into a three-hundred-person, Godzillasized event, Nell probably didn’t need any further proof.

William Hawken wasn’t interested.

Nell had given him all the full-speed-ahead signs—body language, lingering eye contact, subtle verbal hints. She’d done damn near everything but show up naked in his room at night.

But he’d kept at least three feet of air between them at all times. If he was sitting on the couch and she sat down next to him, he soon stood up on the pretense of getting something from the kitchen. He was always polite, always asking if he could get her a soda or a cup of tea, but when he came back, he was careful to sit on the opposite side of the room.

He never let her get too close emotionally, either. While she had babbled on about her family and growing up in Ohio, he had never, not even once, told her anything about himself.

No, he was definitely not interested.

Except whenever she turned around, whenever he thought she wasn’t looking, he was there, looking at her. He moved so soundlessly, he just seemed to appear out of thin air. And he was always watching.

It was enough to keep alive that little seed of hope. Maybe he was interested, but he was shy.

Shy? Yeah, right. William Hawken might’ve been quiet, but he didn’t have a shy bone in his body. Try again.

Maybe he was in love with someone else, someone far away, someone he couldn’t be with while he was here at the farm. In that case, the careful distance that he kept between them made him a gentleman.

Or maybe he simply wasn’t interested, but he didn’t have anything better to look at, so he stared at her.

And maybe she should stop obsessing and get on with her life. So what if the most handsome, attractive, fascinating man she’d ever met only wanted to be friends? So what if every time she was with him, she liked him more and more? So what? She’d be friends with him. No big deal.

Nell closed her eyes, miserably wishing that he were carrying her to his room. Instead, he took her all the way down the stairs and into Daisy’s art studio.

Jake had set up the beach chairs in front of the window that faced west. Daisy was already reclining, hands lazily up behind her head as Jake gently worked the cork free from a bottle of wine.

The last sunset. Crash’s words rang in Nell’s ears. One of these evenings, Daisy was going to watch her last sunset. Nell hated that idea. She hated it. Anger and frustration boiled in her chest, making it hard to breathe.

“Better lock the door before you put her down,” Daisy told Crash. “She might run away.”

“Just throw her down fast and sit on her,” Jake recommended.

But Crash didn’t throw her down. He placed her, gently, on one of the chairs.

“Watch her,” Daisy warned. “She’ll try to squeeze in just one more call.”

Nell looked at the other woman in exasperation. “I’m here. I’m not going anywhere, okay? But I’m not going to drink any wine. I still have too much work to—”

Jake put a wineglass in her hand. “How can you make a toast if you don’t have any wine?”

Daisy sat up to take a glass from Jake, who took the chair next to her. She leaned forward slightly to look across him to Nell. “I have an idea. Let’s just let this wedding happen. No more preparations. We’ve got the dress, the rings, the band’s set to come and nearly all the guest have been called. What else could we possibly need?”

“Food would be nice.”

“Who eats at weddings, anyway?” Daisy said. Her cat-green eyes narrowed as she looked at Nell. “You look exhausted. I think you need a day off. Tomorrow Jake and I are going skiing over in West Virginia. Why don’t you come along?”

Skiing? Nell snorted. “No thanks.”

“You’d love it,” Daisy persisted. “The view from the ski lift is incredible, and the adrenaline rush from the ride down the mountain is out of this world.”

“It’s really not my style.” She preferred curling up in front of a roaring fire with a good book over an adrenaline rush. She smiled tightly at Crash. “See, I’m one of those people who ride the Antique Cars in the amusement park instead of the roller coaster.”

He nodded, pouring soda into the delicate wineglass Jake had left out for him. “You like being in control. There’s nothing wrong with that.” He sat down next to her. “But skiing’s different from riding a roller coaster. When you ski, you’ve still got control.”

“Not when I ski,” Daisy said with a throaty chuckle.

Crash glanced at her, his mouth quirking up into one of his near smiles. “If you had bothered to learn how to do it instead of just strapping the skis on for the first time at the top of a mountain—”

“How could I waste my time on the bunny slope when that great huge mountain was sitting there, waiting for me?” Daisy retorted. “Billy, talk Nell into coming with us.”

Crash’s eyes met Nell’s, and she wondered if he could tell just from looking how brittle she felt today. She’d been tense and out of sorts just a few minutes ago, but now she felt as if she were going to snap.

Crash on the other hand, looked exactly as he always did. Slightly remote, in careful control. That was how he did it, Nell realized suddenly. He stayed in control by distancing himself from the situation and the people involved.

He’d cut himself off from all his emotions. Sure, he probably didn’t feel as if his rage and grief were going to come hurtling out of him in some terrible projectile vomit of emotion. But on the other hand, he didn’t laugh much, either. Oh, occasionally something she or Daisy said would catch him off guard, and he’d chuckle. But she’d never seen him laugh until tears came.

He’d protected himself from the pain, but he’d cut himself off from the joy as well.

And that was another desperate tragedy. Daisy, so full of life, was dying while Crash willingly chose to go through life emotionally half-dead.

Nell was clinging to the very edge of the cliff that was her control, and the sheer tragedy of that thought made her fingernails start slipping.

Crash leaned slightly toward her. “I can teach you to ski, if you want,” he said quietly. “I’d take it as slowly as you like—you’d be in control, I promise.” He lowered his voice even further. “Are you all right?”

Nell shook her head quickly, jerkily, like a pitcher shaking off a catcher’s hand signal. “I can’t go skiing. I have way too much to do.” She turned toward Daisy, unable to meet the other woman’s eyes. “I’m sorry.”

Daisy didn’t say it in front of Jake and Crash, but Nell could see what she was thinking—it was clearly written on her face. She thought Nell was missing out. She thought Nell was letting her life pass her by.

But life was about making choices, dammit, and Nell was choosing to stay home, to stay warm instead of strapping slabs of wood onto her feet and risking broken arms and legs by sliding at an alarming speed down an icy slope covered with artificial snow. The only thing Nell was missing was fear, discomfort and the chance for a trip to the hospital.

She sat back in her chair, feeling as if the sudden silence in the room was the fault of her bitchiness. Her chest got even tighter and the suffocating feeling she was fighting threatened to overwhelm her. She looked at Crash. He was watching the sky begin to change colors as he sipped soda from his wineglass.

What did it look like to him? Did he look at the beautiful pink and reddish-orange colors with as much detachment as he did everything else? Did he see the fragile lace of the high clouds only as a meteorological formation, only as cirrus clouds? And instead of the brilliant colors, did he see only the dust in the atmosphere, bending and distorting the sun’s light?

“How come you’re not required to drink wine?” Her words came out sounding belligerent, nearly rude. But if he noticed, he didn’t take offense.

“I don’t drink alcohol,” he told her evenly, “unless I absolutely have to.”

That didn’t make sense. Nothing about her life right now made any sense at all. “Why would you have to?”

“Sometimes, in other countries, when I meet with…certain people, it would be considered an insult not to drink with them.”

That was it. Nell boiled over. She stood up and set down her glass, sloshing the untouched contents on the tablecloth. “Could you possibly be any more vague when you talk about yourself? I mean, don’t bother adding a single detail, please. It’s not as if I give a damn.”

Nell was furious, but Crash knew that her anger wasn’t aimed at him. He’d just been caught in her emotional crossfire.

For the past two weeks, she had been in as carefully tight control as he was. But for some reason—and it didn’t really matter what had triggered it—she’d reached her limit tonight.

She was staring at him now, her face ashen and her eyes wide and filled with tears, as if she’d realized just how terribly un-Nell-like she’d just sounded.

Crash got to his feet slowly, afraid if he moved too quickly she’d run for the door.

But she didn’t run. Instead, she forced a tight smile. “Well, I sure am the life of the party tonight, huh?” She glanced at the others, still trying hard to smile. “I’m sorry, Daisy. I think I have to go.”

“Yeah, I have to go, too,” Crash said, hoping that if he sounded matter-of-fact, Nell might let him walk with her. The stress she’d been under for the past few weeks had been hellishly intense. She didn’t deserve to be alone, and he, God help him, was the only candidate available to make sure that she wasn’t. He took her arm and gently pulled her with him toward the door.

She didn’t say a word until they reached the stairs that led to the second floor of the rambling modern farmhouse. But then, with the full glory of the pink sky framed by the picture window in the living room, she spoke. “I ruined a really good sunset for them, didn’t I?”

Crash wished that she would cry. He would know what to do if she cried. He’d put his arm around her and hold her until she didn’t need him to hold her anymore.

But he didn’t know what to do about the bottomless sorrow that brimmed like the tears in her eyes—brimmed, but wasn’t released.

“There’ll be other sunsets,” he finally said.

“How many will Daisy get to see?” She turned to him, looking directly into his eyes as if he might actually know the answer to that question. “Probably not a hundred. Probably not even fifty. Twenty, do you think? Twenty’s not very many.”

“Nell, I don’t—”

She turned and started quickly up the stairs. “I have to do better than this. This cannot happen again. I’m here to help her, not to be more of a burden.”

He followed, taking the steps two at a time to catch up to her. “You’re human,” he said. “Give yourself a break.”

She stopped, her hand on the knob of the door that led to her room. “I’m sorry I said…what I said.” Her voice shook. “I didn’t mean to take it out on you.”

He wanted to touch her, and knew that she wanted him to touch her, too. But he couldn’t do it. He couldn’t take that risk. Not without the excuse of her tears. And she still wasn’t crying. “I’m sorry I…frustrate you.”

It was a loaded statement—one that was true on a multitude of levels. But she didn’t look up. She didn’t acknowledge it at all, in any way.

“I think I have to go to sleep now,” she whispered. “I’m so tired.”

“If you want, I’ll…” What? What could he possibly do?

“I’ll sit with you for a while.”

At first he wasn’t sure she heard him. She was silent for a long time. But then she shook her head. “No. Thanks, but…”

“I’ll be right next door, in my room, if you need me,” he told her.

Nell turned and looked up at him, then. “You know, Hawken, I’m glad we’re friends.”

She looked exhausted, and Crash was hit with a wave of the same fatigue. It was a nearly overwhelmingly powerful feeling, accompanied by an equally powerful sense of irrationality. It was all he could do to keep himself from reaching out and cupping the softness of her face, and lowering his lips to hers.

Instead, he stepped back, away from her. Detach. Separate. Distance.

And Nell slipped into her room, shutting the door tightly behind her.

At two in the afternoon, the trees were delivered.

As the huge truck rolled into the driveway, Nell pulled her brown-leather bomber jacket on over her sweater and, wrapping her scarf around her neck, went out to meet it.

She stopped short before she reached the gravel of the drive.

Crash was standing next to one of the trucks.

What was he doing there?

He was wearing one of his disgustingly delicious-looking black turtlenecks, talking to the driver and gesturing back toward the barn.

It was starting to snow, just light flurries, but the delicate flakes glistened and sparkled in his dark hair and on his shirt.

What was he doing there?

The driver climbed back into the cab of the truck, and Crash turned as Nell came toward him.

“I thought you went skiing.” She had to raise her voice to be heard over the sound of the revving engine and the gasping release of the air brakes.

“No,” he said, watching as the truck pulled around the house, in the direction he had pointed. “I decided to stay here.”

He started following the truck, but Nell stood still, glancing back at the house. “You should get a jacket.” She was suddenly ridiculously nervous. After last night, he must think her an idiot. Or a fool. Or an idiotic fool. Or…

“I’m fine.” He turned to face her, but he didn’t stop walking. “I want to make sure the barn is unlocked.”

Nell finally followed. “It is. I was out there earlier. I picked up the decorations in town this morning.”

“I figured that’s where you went. You left before I could offer to help.”

Nell couldn’t stand dancing around the subject of the night before one instant longer. “You didn’t go skiing today because you thought I might still need a baby-sitter,” she said, looking him straight in the eye.

He smiled slightly. “Substitute friend for baby-sitter, and you’d be right.”

Friend. There was that word again. Nell had used it herself last night. I’m glad we’re friends. If only she could convince herself that friendship was enough. That was not an easy thing to do when the very sight of this man made her heart beat harder, when the fabric of his turtleneck hugged the hard muscles of his shoulders and chest, clinging where she ached to run her hands and her mouth and…

And there was no doubt about it. She had it bad for a Navy SEAL who called himself Crash. She had it bad for a man who had cleanly divorced himself from all his emotions.

“I want to apologize,” she started to say, but he cut her off.

“You don’t need to.”

“But I want to.”

“All right. Apology accepted. Daisy called while you were out,” he said, changing the subject deftly. They walked around the now idling truck toward the outbuilding that Jake and Daisy jokingly called the barn.

But with its polished wood floors, one wall of windows that overlooked the mountains and another of mirrors that reflected the panoramic view, this “barn” wasn’t used to hold animals. Equipped with heating and central air conditioning, with a full kitchen attached to the ballroom-sized main room, it was no ordinary stable. Even the rough, exposed beams somehow managed to look elegant. The previous owners had used the place as a dance studio and exercise room.

Crash swung open the main doors. “Daisy said she and Jake were getting a room at a ski lodge, and that they wouldn’t be back until tomorrow afternoon, probably on the late side.”

She and Crash would be alone in the house tonight. Nell turned away, afraid he would read her thoughts in her eyes. Not that it mattered particularly. He probably already knew what she was thinking—he had to be aware of what she wanted. She’d been far less than subtle over the past few weeks. But he didn’t want the same thing.

Friends, she reminded herself. Crash wanted them to be friends. Being friends was safe, and God forbid he should ever allow anything to shake him up emotionally.

Crash stepped to the side of the room, gently pulling Nell with him as three workmen carried one of the evergreen trees into the building.

She moved out of his grasp, but not because she didn’t want him to touch her. On the contrary. She liked the sensation of his hand on her arm too much. But she was afraid if she stood there like that, so close to him, it wouldn’t be long before she sank back so that she was leaning against him.

But friends didn’t do that.

Friends kept their distance.

And there was no need to embarrass herself in front of this man two days in a row.

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