However terrified she was at leaving her home, leaving Safety Harbor, contacting a stranger, the alternative was worse. If she didn’t make an effort to understand why she had the nightmares, to understand what she was so afraid of, to make some kind of effort to get her life back, she could spend the rest of her days in this condition.
The thought was unbearable. She’d rather die.
She had to know.
Had
to.
Gunnery Sergeant Daniel Weston might have some answers to the Laka bombing. He might be able to provide some information that would fill the terrifying gaps in her memory.
But that wasn’t the reason why she was venturing out from her home for the first time in a year. There was another, far more urgent reason. A reason she didn’t dare tell him, because then he really would think she was crazy.
Because Daniel Weston was the man in her dreams who kept her safe.
The goddess of hurting women listened and the dizziness subsided, leaving her shaken and still disoriented. What on earth was she doing here, so far from home?
Oh yes. Coming to Weston Consulting at 2215 Barron Street in Alexandria because maybe, just maybe, Daniel Weston could help dispel some of the shadows in her mind.
And, though she could hardly let herself think of it, because he haunted her dreams.
So here she was, at—The paper with the address on it shook in her hand as her mind suddenly went blank. She had to check the number, then the brass plaque again.
What a simple thing—to check an address, something any person on earth had to do but once. And yet so hard for her. She
hated
it that she needed to check even simple things twice, three times.
She turned to the taxi driver who had been patiently waiting, probably thinking she was a moron to take so long, and nodded.
Yes, this is the right place.
He touched his baseball cap with his index finger in a salute, then took off with a squeal of tires, leaving her completely alone on the deserted street.
The trip had been such a nightmare. She’d regretted it the moment she’d left the house in the pouring rain. The taxi had got caught in a jam due to the sudden downpour, tipping her out at departures barely in time to make it to the gate. Two huge Airbuses were boarding and the gates were crowded with far more passengers than the relatively small Tampa airport was equipped to handle.
By the time Claire had fought her way to the gate through enormous pink tourists smelling of suntan lotion, tripped over baby bags and tried to shove her way past a group of basketball players so tall they looked alien, she was sweating and frightened, heart pounding, head so light she prayed she wouldn’t faint.
The plane ride had been the most turbulent flight she’d ever experienced. She thanked her wretched stomach that it had refused any food that morning, because she wasn’t forced to spew her breakfast into a paper bag like the lady sitting next to her in 26C.
Even finding a taxi at National had been a horror story, since apparently there was a huge snarl-up downtown.
But finally she was here. Shaking, wondering whether she’d lost her mind, almost certain that this Daniel Weston would call 911 to have her carted away—but here.
She’d made it this far, in her first foray out of Safety Harbor since the bombing, which surely should earn her points somewhere.
Now all she had to do was ring the bell, go inside and ask a man she didn’t know if he knew her, and try to figure out why he was haunting her dreams.
Piece of cake.
She drew in a deep breath, pressed the bell and waited. And waited. Nothing happened. Oh God, had she made this nightmare journey for someone who wasn’t in? She forced her brain into rewind mode, consulted her muscle memory and realized that she hadn’t pressed the bell hard enough.
She pressed the bell again, harder. Almost immediately a female voice with a strong New York accent answered.
“Weston Consulting.”
“I’d like—” What would she like? Well, her life back, for starters. To have this perpetual fog in her head lifted. To understand her nightmares. All of that would be nice.
She cleared her throat.
“I’d like to speak to Daniel Weston, please.”
The sigh was audible over the intercom. “You and a million other women,” the disembodied, nasal voice said. “Do you have an appointment?”
Oh God.
Claire was appalled. Not that she hadn’t picked up the phone to make an appointment, but that the thought hadn’t even
occurred
to her.
This was awful. She was much worse off than she’d thought.
She’d been a successful professional in a hard job that wasn’t top-heavy with women. Apart from being good at it, she’d risen through the ranks because she also knew how to play the game, because she knew the rules and abided by them.
Right up there in the rules on how to get by in this life was making an appointment with a busy man whose help you needed.
She knew that, knew it intimately, down to her toes. And yet, when she’d seen the video footage, all she could think of was
This man might help me
as she’d set about feverishly making her travel arrangements with no thought other than how hard it was going to be to trek up to Washington.
And even during the exhausting journey, she’d been so busy surviving her first trip since the bombing it had never once crossed her mind to call ahead and make an appointment.
Claire hardly recognized herself. She was a shell of a woman, more than halfway to going mad. Certainly incapable of living in the modern world.
“No, sorry.” She swallowed. “I don’t have an appointment. I’m sorry to take up your time.”
Another sigh over the intercom. “Well, since you’re here, you might as well come up. I’ll see what I can do to fit you in. Fourth floor.” And with a loud snick the big, solid door unlatched.
Claire placed the flat of her hand against the big polished wooden door, hesitating.
She felt as if she were on a raft somewhere far out to sea, rudderless, completely adrift. There was one island in all the vastness of the sea and it was waiting upstairs. If the island was empty, merely a sandbar, she was dead. Her life was over.
Her fingers caressed the grain of the wood as she tried to steel herself to push the door open.
Opening an unlatched door. How hard could it be? And yet her heart pounded and she felt dizzy, unable to draw breath.
She stiffened her knees and spine.
Just do it.
After all, the worst thing that could happen would be that he’d think her a loon. He couldn’t say anything worse to her than what she told herself a dozen times a day.
Claire pushed the door all the way open and entered the building’s foyer. It was nice without being obnoxiously upscale. The kind of building small, personal, successful businesses would choose. Clean, with lots of thriving plants.
According to her research, former Gunnery Sergeant Daniel Weston had been out of the Marines for nine months, had started up his company just six months ago and here he was already in a nice building, with a receptionist.
Whoever and whatever Daniel Weston was, he seemed to be good at his job.
Claire forced herself to walk across the lobby to the bank of elevators at the back. When one arrived, she punched the button for the fourth floor and felt her stomach sink as the car rose.
How much of a wild-goose chase was she on? She was going to bother a perfect stranger, whose only connection to her was that they’d been posted to Laka at the same time, though she didn’t remember him and presumably he wouldn’t remember her.
And, well, of course, she dreamed about him. There was that. Maybe the latest Manual of Mental Disorders would create a new category—women who dream of men they didn’t know.
The elevator came to a smooth stop, the doors opening with a muted whoosh onto a pleasant landing with inset ceiling lights, more potted plants and a series of doors with shiny brass plaques.
Right across from her was the door to Weston Consulting. All she had to do was step out and ring the bell.
Without any warning, Claire had a sudden panic attack, the bottom dropping out of her stomach. It wasn’t that she was frightened of Daniel Weston. She was frightened of
herself
. At what she had become. This fearful creature incapable of dealing with the world in any way, on any terms.
She was frightened at what might come of this meeting. Or rather, what might not.
She recognized that something wild inside her, something that felt perilously close to hope, had propelled her a thousand miles north, on a trip she wasn’t yet ready to take. Only now could she recognize the crazy hope that somehow this man held some answers to the darkness inside her for what it was.
Madness.
She wasn’t terrified at what he would say to her. She was terrified that he would have nothing to say to her. That this would be a dead end, and that she was condemned to the shadows in her mind forever.
Trembling, she crossed the corridor and rang the bell. When the door clicked open she stood quaking on the threshold, then drew in a sharp breath and stepped forward.
Inside was a pleasant waiting room decorated in neutral tones, with comfortable-looking couches and some tasteful art. Well, if you had to go to a security consultant, you probably needed reassurance. The calm neutral surroundings actually worked, because she felt her anxiety go down a notch.
“Can I help you?” A good-looking, middle-aged African American woman looked up from her computer monitor. She looked competent, intelligent and kind. She also looked a little like Marie and Aba’s mother, who’d basically adopted Claire as the third Diur girl while she’d been in Laka. Claire’s anxiety dropped another degree.
“Yes,” she said, hating the breathlessness in her voice. Her heart was pounding so hard she wondered whether the silk blouse over her left breast was moving. Thank God she had her coat on. “I’ve come to see Gunnery—Mr. Daniel Weston. I’m sorry I don’t have an appointment. We served together at the Laka Embassy in Makongo. Our tours of duty overlapped briefly. He—he might remember me.”
The woman already had a handset to her ear. “Dan, the lady has arrived. Uh-huh.” Her eyes rolled skyward. “Yeah, I know. But she said to say that the two of you worked together in Makongo. Her name is—” She looked over her reading glasses at Claire, dark eyebrows up in silent query.
Claire Day
, she wanted to say, but somehow the words never came out. To her utter astonishment, her Foreign Service nickname came spilling out of her mouth before she could censor herself.
“Blondie. Tell him Blondie is here.”
“Too late,” Roxanne trilled in a singsong voice and hung up.
Jesus Christ. Ever since that reporter put him on the news as some sort of male meat up for grabs, his life hadn’t been worth living. He’d had no idea of the impact the news item had made until he walked out of the hospital into the glare of feeder lights and overhead boom mikes, with a hundred screaming reporters and a thousand screaming women.
He’d had to make his way through the crowd by sheer force, hoping he wasn’t hurting anyone, but desperate to just get out of there, batting mikes away from his mouth and fending off women who were old enough to know better. Women who wanted a souvenir of him and weren’t prepared to take no for an answer.
He’d lost his bomber jacket to a particularly sinewy red-head who threw him a body block and started stripping him. The only way out was to ditch the jacket, like throwing a minnow into the water for the sharks so you could get away.
He’d made his escape in the ensuing scrimmage, accompanied by squeals he could hear a block away.
Home was no sanctuary since he’d crazily allowed his home number to be listed in the phone book. Man, that had been a big mistake, one he wasn’t making again. The answering machine tape had run out of room one hour after the show aired. He walked into his home to the sound of the ringing phone and simply pulled the plug. His office email box was full, which he would have thought impossible since he had tons of memory. But it looked like every female loon in America and even some in Canada had come out of the woodwork to send him photos. Lots of them. Not all of them with clothes on.
Just glancing at the subject lines—most of which were propositions for sex—made him shudder as he quickly ran down the list of literally thousands and thousands of emails, deleting everything that wasn’t work-related.
It took him hours.
The instant he emptied his inbox, it started filling up again. At this rate, he was going to have to change his email address, which was a real pain. It meant contacting all his clients and buddies, changing the web page and notifying his bank, accountant, lawyer and doctor.
Gah.
What the fuck was the matter with these women anyway? It was like he’d flipped some kind of switch he never even knew was there. Or had emitted some kind of whistle on a high-pitched frequency only women heard.
He’d done exactly what any other man would have done. Certainly one as well-trained as he had been. Any cop, any firefighter, any pilot, certainly any soldier, would have done exactly the same. You’d think he’d morphed into Superman and the entire female population into Lois Lane.
And his secretary Roxanne hadn’t been any help at all. She found the whole thing hilarious. When he’d walked in this morning, she’d simply saluted him and pushed several sheets of paper across her desk at him.
“Messages. My hero.” She’d actually fluttered her eyelashes, the minx. She smiled at his snarl and when he’d slammed the door behind him, he could hear her laughing.
Shit, shit,
shit.
He wasn’t going to get any work done today, and he had the World Bank security assessment report and a Homeland Security contract to get through, not to mention preparing for a big meeting in Baltimore this afternoon with the CEO of an enormous hedge fund. But how could he concentrate on work through a solid wall of women?
His old Marine buddy Andy Crossley had called, sniggering. “Maybe they’ll do a made-for-TV movie. Man, you are going to get
so
laid for the next year, you lucky dog. All you’ll have to do is snap your fingers.”
Fuck that. He didn’t want to get laid. Well, of course he did, he had a Y chromosome after all, but not to any of the women so frantic to get in touch with him.
There was only one woman he wanted, and she’d been in the cold, cold ground for a year now.
Shit
. He tried, he really did, to keep Claire Day out of his head, but it wasn’t working. It hadn’t been working for a whole fucking year. It was like she was stuck in there.
He hadn’t even been able to go to bed with someone—a full year of chastity, completely self-imposed. He told himself it was because the women he dated all had fatal flaws. They were too this or not enough that.
Bullshit.
He realized it was bullshit when he accompanied a very pretty and nice enough brunette home after dinner last month without even a good-night kiss, thinking he liked her but she wasn’t blond.
The instant that thought struck him, he knew he was in the deepest, deepest shit, because the problem with all of these women was that none of them were Claire and Claire would never walk this earth again.
So he told himself he was too busy building his business to have time for sex and tried to forget about it. Which was okay during the day, sometimes, but his wayward head betrayed him at night, when as likely as not he’d fall asleep thinking of her, wake up thinking of her and suspected that the dreams he could never remember were of her.
It was insane. He remembered every second he’d spent with her that last day. He remembered the sound of her voice, the curve of her cheek, that lock of shiny, pale blond hair curling over her shoulder.
He remembered the hot kiss, the taste of her mouth, the shape of her tongue, the feel of her skin, the smell of her.
He remembered the affection in her voice as she spoke of her father. Above all, he remembered how strong and brave she’d been alone with him in an embassy and a city under siege, with no guarantees that it would end well. And it hadn’t, not for her, anyway.
It hadn’t ended well for him, either. He’d blown out a knee and an eardrum, didn’t have a spleen anymore and had spent three months in physical rehab. Worst of all, he’d never be an active duty Marine again, which was like a kind of death.
Not Claire’s kind of death, though. She was gone forever. Nothing he could do and nothing he could say would change that.
Dan hardly recognized himself. He didn’t do mooning. He never wanted what he couldn’t have. He was a hard-headed, practical man. He was a fucking
Marine
, for God’s sake
.
Even with a busted knee, no spleen and one eardrum blown out, he was a Marine. Once a Marine, always a Marine, forever. And Marines took life exactly as it was and didn’t wish for the impossible.
So what was with the wanting a dead woman? What was that about?
Claire Day was never coming back and he had to recognize that before he blew a gasket or his dick shriveled from lack of use. Maybe he should just . . . what? Accept the advances of a couple of the less loony-sounding women? Only how could he tell? It’s not as if they had an
I’m only temporarily deranged due to the news report but am actually very sane
sign hung around their necks.
Maybe he should have them vetted by Roxanne. Yeah, that would work. Roxanne would have made a great Marine. She cut straight through any BS and was as tough as any drill instructor he’d ever had.
So let her sift through all the phone calls and letters and emails to see if there was anyone viable he could date. Maybe go to bed with, just to get Claire Day out of his head.
Jesus.
He rested his forehead on his hand a minute, tired and frustrated that the thought of just going out and bedding a woman didn’t hold any appeal at all.
The intercom crackled to life. “Dan, the lady has arrived.”
“Damn it, Roxanne, I don’t have time for this,” he growled.
“Uh-huh. Yeah I know. But she said to say that the two of you worked together in Makongo. Her name is—”
She conferred with someone and as Dan heard the soft voice replying he sat up straight, electrified. Christ, it sounded like . . . But that was crazy.
“Blondie,” Roxanne said. “She said her name is Blondie.”
He raced for the door, not even feeling his feet. He wrenched the door open and—God, yes. Oh Jesus, yes.
Claire.
Claire.
“My God,” he breathed, hanging on to the door frame, hoping his metal knee wouldn’t collapse. “You’re alive.”
There she was. Much thinner, very pale, with short-cropped hair and deep purple bruises under her eyes. Looking sad and lost and lonely. But definitely Claire.
In two strides he was with her. He pulled her up by her elbows and put his arms around her. At the last minute, he realized she was trembling badly, so he kept his embrace loose, when what he really wanted to do was pull her tightly against him, using all his strength, and never let her go.
She felt so . . . fragile. As if her bones would bend under his hands. Dan was about to let her go when he suddenly felt her hands clench around his back and her forehead bury itself in his shoulder.
An enormous shudder worked its way through her body. She sobbed once, a harsh sound coming from deep in her chest, then she pulled in a sharp breath to stop another one coming out.
She was trembling so hard Dan was scared she might hurt herself, so he wrapped himself around her, keeping his hold gentle. His eyes rose to meet Roxanne’s kind, chocolate brown eyes. She looked troubled.
It’s okay
, he mouthed, then bent his head back to Claire’s. They stood there, clinging to each other. Claire to keep upright and Dan to make sure she wasn’t a mirage and wouldn’t disappear from his life again.
“I thought you were dead,” he said finally into her hair. That glorious, pale, shiny hair, now cut boy-short. It was still as soft as he remembered, though. Like goose down.
He kept his voice low and had to swallow against a tight throat.
It was as if he hadn’t spoken. Claire pulled away slightly and though it cost him, he let go of her. He kept his hands loose, ready to catch her if she fell. She looked as if a strong wind would blow her away.
Claire watched his eyes carefully, as if there might be something very important in them. “You know me,” she whispered. “You remember me. Oh God, it’s not all in my head.”
She swayed and Dan gripped her elbows. He wasn’t going to force her to have this conversation on her feet. She looked close to collapse.
“Yes, I know you.” Dan kept his voice gentle. “But I thought you were dead. I thought you died in the blast. Listen, why don’t we go into my office and . . .”
Stay with me. I’ll never let you go again.
“And we can catch up.”
“Oh yes,” she breathed, sounding relieved. She turned and with shaking hands gathered her purse and umbrella. Dan ushered her into his office then stuck his head back out. “Roxanne, how about—”
“Coffee,” Roxanne said promptly. “Lots of it, black and strong. Milk and sugar. Croissants from the French pastry shop across the street.”
Bless her. At that moment, Dan loved her. “You be sure to tell that husband of yours he’s a lucky man.”
“I do, constantly.” Their eyes met and Dan could read infinite kindness there. “Go on in, I’ll bring the coffee soon.”
He nodded and placed a hand at Claire’s back. Because it was the gentlemanly thing to do, but also because she looked like she needed it.
Once inside his office, he took her coat and showed her to the most comfortable armchair, the one he sometimes took a short snooze in. He didn’t sit behind his desk. He sat on the couch, at right angles to her.
She sat down gingerly, at the edge of the seat, and folded her hands in her lap. Her hands were trembling. Dan looked at them, wanting to hold them so badly he hurt with it.
What the hell.
He reached over and encased her hands in his. They were ice-cold. He didn’t say anything, just sat there until her hands warmed up a little and stopped trembling.
She watched his eyes carefully, unmoving.
She opened her mouth, then closed it.
“What?” Dan kept his voice low and gentle.
“I—you’re going to think I’m crazy.”
He tightened his grip on her hands. “I’m pretty tolerant. Why don’t you try me?”
She drew in a deep breath, like someone about to dive, then stopped.
He simply waited, hands over hers.
“Were we—were we lovers?” she finally whispered, then gasped at her own words.