It Came Upon A Midnight Clear

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.”