It Came Upon A Midnight Clear

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.”