It Came Upon A Midnight Clear

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.