Fast Courting (16 page)

“I’ll be here,” he growled in mock scolding.

Not only was he there when she returned, slightly exhausted, from her interview with Thomas Reiss on Tuesday, but he was at her office to take her to lunch on Wednesday, and there again on Thursday evening to pick her up from work. They seemed to be very comfortably falling into a pattern that worked around both their schedules. When he had an evening game they met for lunch; when his evening was free, they had dinner and spent the hours together.

For Nia these days and evenings were filled with warmth and pleasure. Her time away from Daniel seemed to fly because of the knowledge that she would be seeing him soon. The only damper on her pleasure was the purely physical strain she had begun to feel. Daniel had become her closest friend; gradually, that ceased to be enough. In utter contradiction to everything she had thought she believed such a few short weeks ago, she wanted to be with him constantly, as a friend
and
, she finally admitted to herself, as a lover.

Her thoughts were filled with him—his lean length, his dark good looks, his thoroughly masculine aura. She dreamed of him at night, imagining the solid feel of his flesh beside hers, yearning for the richness of him even more intimately. She daydreamed of him at work, feeling foolish when her cheeks grew warm and her pulse raced, ostensibly over some dry piece she had been assigned to edit.

If Daniel suffered similar frustrations she didn’t know it. He insisted on returning her home each night with a kiss—sometimes soft, sometimes more fierce, sometimes nearly explosive with passion—but it went no further. In her heart Nia knew something had to give. It was a hopeless situation, one doomed by incompatible lifestyles. Fool that she was, she
did
love him. And she knew of only one additional way to express that love—and
he
seemed dead set against it.

It was in light of her newly emergent feelings that her trip to Connecticut on Friday was positively tedious. Oh, it was an easy two-hour drive to Hartford and the interview with the Honorable Jonathan Trent went as smoothly as she might have hoped. He was a pleasantly charming, good-looking man—but she found that she couldn’t muster up an ounce of personal interest. Her thoughts were all on Daniel. She spent four hours—two each way— brooding on what was to come of their relationship. She wanted to be with him constantly. Hers was an emotional hunger that seemed insatiable. How could she handle this? How could she continue to spend this time with Daniel on a purely platonic level? Granted, there were those kisses, the occasional deeper embrace, even a momentary loss of control—until Daniel regained equilibrium again. Always Daniel. Perhaps his feelings for her were quite different from hers for him. Perhaps they weren’t even half as deep. Hadn’t he once said that he didn’t want to feel guilty after making love to her? That seemed to imply a fear of “using” her. Evidently he was far from being in love himself.

When Nia drove up his long drive on Friday evening and let herself into his house with the key he had given her the night before, she had no way of anticipating what was to come. He was at the arena now; she would watch the game on his television set, then wait for his return.

With a luxury that his presence would not have afforded, she wandered from room to room. Its openness gave her a sense of freedom, even as its every niche was crammed with Daniel. She recalled him as he’d sat one day at his desk, a vee-neck sweater over his bare chest, his sleeves pushed up to his elbows. She had touched that vee with its warm mat of hair and had traced the tendons of those forearms. She wandered to his bedroom,
his bedroom,
with its velour-covered oversized bed, and conjured up images of him sprawled atop it—dressed, partially dressed, then finally with nothing at all as cover save that with which he had been born.

How could she have fallen in love after all that she’d been through once? But as many times as she asked herself the question, the fact remained that she did love Daniel. He affected every aspect of her life and she found herself affected by every aspect of
his
.

He, too, had been more tense of late. With the end of the regular season only two-and-a-half weeks away it was inevitable that he should brood about its outcome. The Breakers had just about clinched their playoff spot; another two wins would do it. It seemed inevitable—yet he had every right to uneasiness. Granted, there was money at stake. More importantly, there was his job. And, of course, there was his pride—and the joy he derived from the game. She had never been able to deny that—she never would. Indeed, she couldn’t even deny the pleasure
she
felt at
his
joy—be it in basketball or anything else in life.

With this blunt reminder she helped herself to a snack and switched on the game to watch the Breakers soundly defeat the Bucks for one of those two crucial wins. The jubilation on the floor and from the broadcasting booth was shared by Nia—the very last thing she would have expected to feel three weeks ago. Then she would never have been interested even in the fact of the win, much less have watched its accomplishment with wide violet eyes. How things had changed!

By the time Daniel returned Nia had prepared a feast to honor both the victory and the victor who had engineered it. She had no way of knowing that Daniel’s pleasure was only in part related to the win, that her presence in his home had made that win nearly incidental to the delight of returning to a brightly lit place brimming with the warm scent of veal parmesan à la Antonia.

She had never done this for him before— waited at his house, fixed him a late meal. During the week, with each early morning in the offing, it was too impractical to consider driving back to Cambridge at such a late hour. This was Friday night, however, and playing house was as much a genuine treat as it was a novelty.

Despite Nia’s protestations that she could drive herself, Daniel insisted that she leave her car at his house and returned her to Cambridge himself. It was one-thirty. The hours had flown by amid gentle talk and shared thoughts. He had promised to pick her up for breakfast—a final breakfast before the team left for its six-game stint on the West Coast. That, in itself, was a subtle form of tension, an anticipated loneliness. It was also, however, a stark reminder to Nia of the importance of keeping that last physical barrier in place, much as she abhorred it more as each moment together passed. Once they became lovers—
if
they became lovers—these separations would be devastating. Hers was the voice of experience.

The silence between them was particularly tangible that night as they rounded Soldier’s Field Road and the Harvard Stadium to cross over the Longfellow Bridge into Harvard Square. It was the more scenic route he had chosen, as though he, too, was prolonging their time together. They sailed easily through the square and on down Brattle Street, finally turning in at Nia’s street. Signs of distress were everywhere.

“My God, there’s a fire!” she exclaimed, wondering which of her unfortunate neighbors had been hit. The end of the road—her end— was a confusion of red lights and blinkers, totally blocked off by fire engines and police cars, making it necessary for Daniel to park at a distance. Nia jumped from the car to be hit by the acrid smell of burning that permeated the air. There was no sign of either flame or smoke, though; whatever the problem, it was apparently under control.

Daniel was right beside her, taking her hand. “Let’s take a look. If there’s been a fire at the house next to yours I don’t know if I like the idea of you—”

“Daniel!” she shrieked, at last seeing the object of the firemen’s powerful floodlights. “It’s mine! Oh, my God …!”

“Come on.” He tightened his grip. “We’ll see what’s happened.”

Less than an hour later they were headed back toward Weston, barely able to assimilate what they had seen and learned through conversations with the firemen. As Nia shook her head slowly the passing street lights lent a flickering sheen to her hair. “Thank goodness he’s all right!” she cried shakily. “Material loss is one thing. If Dr. Max had been hurt it would have been so much more horrible. As it is…” Her voice trailed off in dismay.

Daniel kept the car at a steady clip. “Fortunately he woke up in time and had the presence of mind to get out of the house. At his age he could well have become disoriented. It’s a miracle that the flames hadn’t spread to the front room where he’d fallen asleep. The entire back of the house was involved before he woke up.” He sighed. “According to what the fireman said, he feels guilty as hell….”

“Pipe ash,” she half-sobbed. “I never even knew he smoked a pipe.”

“From what his daughter told them, he never did. Not regularly, at least. He had an old collection of them. Must have decided to have a smoke on some kind of crotchety old whim. When he didn’t care for the taste he knocked the ash into the wastebasket. That’s all it takes—a few tiny bits of glowing tobacco and a basket full of crumpled paper. It was slow to start, but once it caught, it went!”

Nia gave a low moan of helplessness, then began to tremble uncontrollably. As if his words had not been vivid enough, the smell of destruction clung to her clothes and, even more bitterly, her memory.

“Everything, Dan. Everything’s ruined!” she cried in abject misery. “What am I going to do?” It was an overwhelming thought, that of rebuilding from scratch.

“For starters, babe, you’re going to keep calm and cool.” His voice, as if in example, was level and reassuring, its tranquilizing effort enhanced by the sure hand that encompassed hers and brought it to rest on his thigh. “You’re going to stay at my place—”

“Daniel, I can’t do that!”

“You can. And you will. Tomorrow—er, today—we’ll go out and get you some clothes to wear. Monday morning you can talk with your insurance company. Little by little you can replace what you’ve lost.”

“I can’t believe this! Any of it!” Despite what he had said and his deliberate attempts to calm her, she felt near hysteria. Nothing like this had ever happened to her—this sudden, completely unexpected, utterly total loss. “I’ve got nothing left but the clothes on my back. The house…it was home for more than ten years….”

“I know, babe. I know.” He brought her hand to his lips and breathed his warmth onto her chilly skin. “Everything will work out. Believe me, it will.”

But she wondered. The prospect of the immediate future suddenly terrified her. She felt lost, uprooted, floundering in an instant limbo. If she had felt any numbness at the scene of the fire, the last of it had worn off by the time they reached Daniel’s house. He insisted that she sit down while he poured her a snifter of brandy, then sat with her to make sure she drank it all. It helped, steadying her some, easing the queasiness she’d felt in the pit of her stomach.

“I still can’t believe this,” she repeated in a whisper, shaking her head, burying her face in her hands.

Reaching for her, Daniel drew her against his strength, holding her with arms that were steady and sure. “It’ll take a while, Nia. It’s understandable that you should feel in shock.”

“That’s an understatement,” she breathed against his chest, inhaling the richness of his manly scent as a counterpoint to that other, harrowing one. “Do you think that anything will be salvageable?”

“I don’t know, babe.” He absently stroked her upper arm, rustling the silk of her blouse against her skin. “The fire reached the roof at the back of the house. I doubt there’s much worth saving there. As for the front, what wasn’t touched by flame is probably damaged by either smoke or water.” Tucking in his chin to look down at her, he grew more stern. “I don’t want you going over again…until I get back.”

Nia met his gaze in disbelief. “But you’ll be gone for nearly ten days! I’ve
got
to go—”

“No, you don’t. I have a friend. Actually, Peter is the brother-in-law of our trainer, Hickey Simms. Peter is a handyman-carpenter of sorts…and he has a truck. I’ll call him later and
he’ll
go to the house. I trust him to remove anything that’s worth saving or fixing. You let the insurance adjuster go there by himself. When I get back I’ll take you over— it’s far too upsetting for you and there’s absolutely nothing you can accomplish by going there at this stage. Insurance claims take time, as does the emotional healing from this kind of upset.”

Overcome by sudden lethargy, Nia couldn’t argue. Daniel had taken over and she was half-glad to let him do so. The thought of her house, now a mass of charred ruins, sent a chill through her that even the brandy could barely control. Daniel was right. The mess they had seen tonight had been obscured by the dark; in the harsh light of day it would be that much more traumatic for her. Perhaps she did need time to gradually accept the reality of it all.

“Come on, babe.” He coaxed her to her feet, having studied her despairing expression long enough to convince him that she needed something, preferably rest. “I think you ought to go to bed—”

“—I don’t think I can sleep.”

“You can try.” As he talked he led her down the hall, past his own bedroom to the guest room just beyond. “The bed is already made up.” His deft hand flicked back the coverlet. “Wait here. I’ll get something for you to wear.” In an instant during which Nia did not so much as blink, he was gone and back, bearing what was obviously the top to a pair of navy blue pajamas. “The bathroom’s got towels; there are extras in the vanity below the sink.” He held her gaze with a tenderness, born of worry, that touched her even through her silent anguish. “Why don’t you take a long, hot shower?” He smiled. “It will help you relax.”

“Maybe I will,” she whispered, her eyes infinitely sad. “And …Daniel …?”

“Yes?”

“Thanks…”

“For what?”

“For…being here. For…taking charge…helping me.”

In the wake of her soulful expression a fierceness flashed across his features, his torment comparable to hers.

Shoulders bowed beneath his own burden, he stepped back. “I’m…glad I was here,” he murmured, then turned and with a raspy “good night” left the room, pulling the door firmly shut behind him.