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.
Chapter 4
Crash held the stepladder while Nell positioned the angel on the top of one of the trees.
She’d brought a portable CD player into the barn, and Bing Crosby sang “White Christmas” over remarkably natural-sounding speakers. Nell sang along, right in Bing’s octave, her voice a low, throaty alto.
She looked out the window as she came down the ladder. The snow was still falling. “I can’t remember the last time it snowed for Christmas. Certainly not since I’ve lived in Virginia. And last year, I visited my parents in Florida. I was on the beach on Christmas Eve. The sand was white, but it just wasn’t the same.”
Crash was silent as he carried the stepladder to the last tree, as Nell removed the plastic wrapping from the final angel.
“You didn’t make it out here to the farm last Christmas, did you?”
“No.”
Nell glanced at him and he knew what she was looking for. She’d tossed him the conversational ball, and wanted him to run with it. She wanted him to tell her where he’d spent last Christmas.
He cleared his throat. “Last December, I was on a covert military op that is still so top secret, I can’t even tell you which hemisphere of the globe I was in.”
“Really?” Her eyes were wide. And very blue. Ocean blue. But not the stormy blue of the Atlantic, or even the turquoise of the Caribbean. Nell’s eyes were the pure blue of the South China Sea. In fact, there was a beach there that—He cut his thought off abruptly. What was he doing? Allowing himself to submerge in the depths of this woman’s eyes? That was insanity.
He turned away, making sure the stepladder was close enough to the tree. “Most of what I do, I can’t talk about. Not to anyone.”
“God, that must be really tough—considering the way you love to run off at the mouth.”
She’d caught him off guard, and he laughed. “Yeah, well…What can I say?”
“Exactly.” Nell paused on the rung of the ladder that brought them eye to eye. “Actually, I shouldn’t be making jokes. It’s probably really hard for you, isn’t it?”
Malaysia. The beach was in Malaysia, and the ocean had been an impossibly perfect shade of blue. He’d sat there in the sand for hours, drinking it in, watching the sunlight dance across the water.
“It’s my job,” he said quietly.
Unlike in Malaysia, Crash forced himself to look away.
He could feel her gazing at him for several long moments before continuing on up the stepladder. She set the angel on the top branch of the tree, carefully adjusting its halo.
“I know that part of what Jake does has to do with these…covert ops you’re sent on. Although…they were called something else, weren’t they? Black ops?”
Crash waited several beats before speaking. “How do you know about that?”
Something in his voice must have been different, because she glanced down at him. “Uh-oh. I wasn’t supposed to know, was I? Now you’re going to have to kill me, right?”
He didn’t laugh at her joke. “Technically, your having access to that information is a breach of security. I need to know what you saw or heard, to make sure it doesn’t happen again.”
She slowly came back down the ladder. “You’re serious.”
“There are only five—now six—people in the world who know I work covert ops for Admiral Robinson,” Crash told her. “One of them is the President of the United States. And now one of them is you.”
Nell sat down on the second to last rung of the stepladder. “Oh, my God, you are going to have to kill me.” She looked up at him. “Or vote me into office.”
He nearly laughed at that one. But in truth there was nothing funny about this. “Nell, if you knew how serious…” Crash shook his head.
“But that’s just it,” she said imploringly. “I don’t know. How can I know when you won’t even finish your sentences? I know close to nothing about you. I’m friends with you almost entirely on faith—on vague gut instincts and the fact that Daisy and Jake think that the sun rises and sets with you. Do you know that in the past two weeks, you’ve told me nothing about yourself? We talk about books, and you tell me you’re currently reading Grisham’s latest, but you never say if you like it. You wouldn’t even tell me your favorite color! I mean, what kind of friendship is that?”
The problem she had with him was nothing compared to the problem he currently had with her. He pinned her into place with his eyes. “Nell, this is extremely important. I need to know how you found out I was working with Jake. Have you mentioned this to anyone else? Anyone at all?”
She shook her head, holding his gaze steadily. “No.”
“Are you sure?”
“I’m positive,” she said. “Look, I overheard Jake and Daisy talking. I didn’t mean to, but they were being loud. They were…exchanging heated words. It wasn’t quite an argument, but it was the closest to it that I’ve ever heard. Daisy accused Jake of sending you out on a black op. Those are the exact words she said. A black op. I remember because it sounded so spooky and dangerous. Anyway, Daisy wanted to know where you were. It was back when all that trouble was happening in the Middle East, and she was worried about you. She wanted Jake to stop using you for those dangerous covert missions—again, that’s pretty much a direct quote—and he told her there was no one he trusted as
much as you to get the job done. Besides, he said, you could take care of yourself.”
Crash was silent.
“They both love you an awful lot,” Nell told him.
He couldn’t help himself. He started to pace. “You had a security check run on you before you started working for Daisy,” he said, thinking aloud.
“No, I don’t think so.”
He shot her a look. “You probably didn’t know about it, but you definitely have a FInCOM file with a copy at the NAVINTEL office. Think about it—you’re working for Admiral Robinson’s significant other. Believe me, you were checked out before you even met her.” He took a deep breath. “I’m going to talk to Jake, and what’s probably going to happen is we’ll run a deeper, more invasive check.” He stopped pacing and gazed down at her. “You’ll be asked to make a complete list of people that you know. A complete list. Family, friends, lovers. Even casual acquaintances, so that—”
Nell laughed in disbelief. “My God, have you caught a whiff of the irony here? It positively reeks. I’ve been complaining because you never talk about yourself, but now I’ve got to give you a list of my lovers.” She shook her head. “What’s wrong with this picture?”
“You won’t have to give those lists to me. You’ll be contacted directly by FInCOM.”
“But you’ll probably see it.” She stood up. “You’ve probably already seen my current file, haven’t you?”
Crash closed the stepladder, carefully hooking the two sides together. “Should I put this back?”
“Leave it out. We’ll probably be using it again before the party.”
He set it against the wall by the kitchen. “How about we get a pizza delivered for dinner?”
“You’re purposely not answering me.” Nell slipped on her jacket and fastened her scarf around her neck. “You do that all the time—don’t think I haven’t noticed. You change the subject to avoid answering my questions. I hate that, you know.”
Crash might have sighed.
Or maybe Nell only imagined it. God, he gave so little away. She crossed her arms.
“Aren’t you hungry?” he asked. “I’m hungry.”
“I’m waiting,” she said. “I believe the question was, you’ve already seen my current FInCOM file, haven’t you?”
He turned off the overhead lights. In the dimness, the six trees they’d decorated looked spectacular. The colorful lights glistened and the ornaments gleamed.
“I’m not looking at the trees. I’m refusing to be distracted.” She put her hands up around her eyes, like a horse’s blinders. “I’m going to stand here until you answer my question.”
Crash almost smiled, and for once she knew exactly what he was thinking. How could she even dream of winning this kind of contest of wills with him?
The answer to that was simple. She couldn’t win. There was absolutely nothing she could do to force him to answer her question.
So she answered for him.
“Yes,” she said. “You’ve seen it. I know you’ve seen my file. If you hadn’t, you would have said so already. So what’s the big deal, right? It’s probably full of all kinds of boring details. Grew up in Ohio, just outside of Cleveland, oldest of three kids, attended NYU, graduated with a liberal-arts degree and without a clue. Stumbled into a personal assistant job for a Broadway-musical director who owned a chain of convenience stores on the side, went to work for Daisy Owens several years later. Any of this sound familiar?”
He didn’t say a word. She hadn’t really expected him to. “My personal life’s been just as dull. In the past six years, I’ve dated three different men, all nice, respectable professionals with solid futures. Two proposed marriage. I think they thought they’d be getting some kind of bonus deal—a wife who worked as a personal assistant. I was like some kind of yuppie fantasy woman. Buy me some Victoria’s Secret underwear, and I’d be perfect. I turned them both down. The one who didn’t want me instantly became the one I wanted, and I pursued him—only to find out he was as boring as the rest of ’em. My mother is convinced I’m a victim of the fairy tales I read as a little girl. She thinks I suffer from ‘Someday My Prince Will Come’ syndrome, and I think she’s probably right, although I’m not sure that’s in my file.”
Crash finally spoke. “Probably not in so many words. But all FInCOM files include psychological evaluations. Your reasons for remaining unmarried would have been touched on.”
Nell snorted. “God, I can just see the fink-shrinks sitting around psychoanalyzing me. ‘Subject is a complete chicken. Sits around reading books on her days off. Never does anything even remotely interesting, like skiing. Subject is a total loser who is afraid of her own shadow.”’ Without looking at him she turned and walked out the door.
And then stopped short. It was still snowing. The sky was already dark, and the falling snow swirled around her face, reflecting the light from the lamps that lit the walkway to the house.
Nell looked up at the millions of flakes falling dizzily down from the sky. She could hear the softest, slightest hiss as the snow hit the frozen ground.
“It’s beautiful,” she whispered. if there was one thing she’d learned from these past few hellish weeks, it was to stop and take note of the sheer beauty of the world around her.
“It’s been a while since I’ve seen snow.”
She turned to see Crash standing behind her. He’d actually made a somewhat personal comment without her dragging it out of him. And he didn’t stop there.
“Being cautious doesn’t mean you’re a loser,” he said.
Nell looked out at the field that went halfway up the hill back behind the barn before ending at a stone wall on the edge of the woods. It was covered with snow, so pristine and inviting.
“I used to like to do all sorts of things that scare me now,” she admitted. “When I was little, the sight of that hillside would’ve sent me running for my sled.” She turned to face him. “But now even the thought of doing something like skiing makes me break out in a cold sweat. When did I learn to be so afraid?”
“Not everyone was born to like the sensation of wind in their face.”
“Yeah, but that’s where it gets really stupid. There’s a part of me that wants that. A part of me is really ticked that I didn’t go skiing with Daisy and Jake. There’s a part of me that has these incredible fantasies….”
One of his eyebrows went up an almost imperceptible fraction of an inch, and Nell hastened to explain.
“Fantasies like riding a motorcycle. I’ve always secretly yearned for an enormous Harley. I’ve always wanted to come roaring up to some important meeting on a huge bike, with those long, black leather fringes coming out of the ends of the hand grips, wearing one of those helmets with the kind of visor you can’t see through. I have this really vivid picture of myself taking off the helmet and shaking out my hair and unstrapping my briefcase from the back and…” She shook her head. “Instead, I drive a compact car and I can’t even get up enough nerve to go skiing—and you’re standing out here without a jacket on,” she interrupted herself. “We should go inside the house and order that pizza.”
“Large, extra cheese with sausage, peppers and onions,” Crash told her. “Unless you don’t like sausage, peppers or onions, and then you get to pick what’s on it. Go call from the barn while I get my jacket, then meet me out by the garage.”
The garage? “You want to go pick it up?”
“No, have it delivered.”
“But—”
Crash was already gone, disappearing into the shadows as easily as he appeared.
“Why by the garage?” she called in the direction he’d vanished.
He didn’t answer. She hadn’t really expected him to.
Nell stopped short when she saw Crash holding the Flexible Flyer sled that he’d dug out of the garage.
“Oh, no,” she said with a laugh. “No, no…”
The snow still fell with a whispering hiss around them. It was the perfect evening for sledd
ing.
“The snow’s supposed to turn to rain before midnight,” Crash told her. “It’ll probably all melt off by tomorrow.”
“In other words, now or never, huh?”
Crash didn’t answer. He just looked at her. The bright red scarf she was wearing accentuated the paleness of her face, and flakes of snow clung to her thick, honey-colored hair. On anyone else the combination of pale skin and not quite blond, not quite brown hair might have been drab, but her eyes were so blue and warm, and her smile was so perfect….
Crash found her impossibly beautiful, and he knew that his attempt to take her sledding was nothing but an excuse to get close to her. He wanted to put his arms around this woman and he was resorting to subterfuge to do it.
“The pizza will be here in about thirty minutes,” she told him. “We don’t really have time to—”
“We have enough time to make at least a couple of runs down the hill.”
She gestured up behind the barn. “That hill?”
“Come on.” Crash held out his hand. He was wearing gloves and she had on mittens. It wasn’t as if he would really be touching her.
But when she took his hand, Crash knew he was dead wrong. It didn’t matter. Touching her was touching her. But he couldn’t stop now. He didn’t want to stop. He pulled her up the hill, dragging the sled behind them.
It was slippery, but they finally reached the top.
Away from the lights of the house, the snow was even more beautiful as it fell effortlessly from the sky. And the snow that covered the ground seemed to glow in the darkness, reflecting what little light there was.
It was just dark enough. In this kind of shadow, Crash didn’t have to worry about Nell seeing every little thought—every little desire—that flickered in his eyes.
“I’m not sure I can do this.” Nell sounded breathless, her voice huskier than usual. “I’m not sure I remember how to do this.”
“Sit on the sled and steer with your feet.”
She sat gingerly down on the Flexible Flyer, but then looked up at him. “Aren’t you coming, too?”
Tall, Dark, and Dangerous Part 2 Page 30
