Tall, Dark and Fearless. Suzanne Brockmann

for her to go on.

      “I don’t think we should… I mean, I think it would be a mistake to…” She was blushing again.

      “Okay.” Frisco nodded. “That’s okay. I…I understand.” He couldn’t blame her. How could he blame her? She wasn’t the type who went for short-term ecstasy. If she played the game, it would be for keeps, and face it, he wasn’t a keeper. He was not the kind of man Mia would want to be saddled with for the rest of her life. She was so full of life, and he was forced to move so slowly. She was so complete; he was less than whole.

      “I should probably get home,” she said, starting to gather up her things.

      “We’ll walk you back,” he said quietly.

      “Oh, no—you don’t have to.”

      “Yeah, we do, okay?”

      She glanced up at him, and something she saw in his eyes or on his face made her know not to argue. “All right.”

      Frisco stood up, reaching for his cane. “Come on, Tash, let’s go into the water one last time and wash that ice cream off your face.”

      He tossed the unopened ice pop into a garbage can as he walked Natasha down to the ocean. He stared out at the water and tried his damnedest not to think about Mia as Tasha rinsed the last of her ice cream from her face and hands. But he couldn’t do it. He could still taste her, still feel her in his arms, still smell her spicy perfume.

      And for those moments that he’d kissed her, for those incredible few minutes that she’d been in his arms, for the first time since the last dose of heavy-duty pain medication had worn off five years ago, he’d actually forgotten about his injured knee.

      NATASHA DIDN’T SEEM to notice the awkward silence. She chattered on, to Mia, to Frisco, to no one in particular. She sang snatches of songs and chanted bits of rhymes.

      Mia felt miserable. Rejection was never fun, from either the giving or the receiving end. She knew she’d hurt Frisco by backing away. But her worst mistake had been to let him kiss her in the first place.

      She wished she’d insisted that they take her car to the beach, rather than walk. Frisco was a master at hiding his pain, but she could tell from the subtle changes in the way he held himself and the way he breathed that he was hurting.

      Mia closed her eyes briefly, trying not to care, but she couldn’t. She did care. She cared far too much.

      “I’m sorry,” she murmured to Frisco as Natasha skipped ahead of them, hopping over the cracks in the sidewalk.

      He turned and looked at her with those piercing blue eyes that seemed to see right through to her very soul. “You really are, aren’t you?”

      She nodded.

      “I’m sorry, too,” he said quietly.

      “Frisco!” Natasha launched herself at him, nearly knocking him over.

      “Whoa!” he said, catching her in his left arm while he used his right to balance both of their weight with his cane. “What’s wrong, Tash?”

      The little girl had both of her arms wrapped tightly around his waist, and she was hiding her face in his T-shirt.

      “Tash, what’s going on?” Frisco asked again, but she didn’t move. Short of yanking the child away from himself, he couldn’t get her to release him.

      Mia crouched down next to the little girl. “Natasha, did something scare you?”

      She nodded yes.

      Mia pushed Tasha’s red curls back from her face. “Honey, what scared you?”

      Tasha lifted her head, looking at Mia with tear-filled eyes. “Dwayne,” she whispered. “I saw Dwayne.”

      Mia looked up at Frisco, frowning her confusion. “Who…?”

      “One of Sharon’s old boyfriends.” He pulled Natasha up and into his arms. “Tash, you probably just saw someone who reminded you of him.”

      Natasha shook her head emphatically as Mia stood up. “I saw Dwayne,” she said again, tears overflowing onto her cheeks and great gulping sobs making her nearly impossible to understand. “I saw him.”

      “What would he be doing here in San Felipe?” Frisco asked the little girl.

      “He’d be looking for Sharon Francisco,” a low voice drawled. “That’s what he’d be doing here.”

      Natasha was suddenly, instantly silent.

      Mia gazed at the man standing directly in front of them. He was a big man, taller and wider even than Frisco, but softer and heavily overweight. He was wearing a dark business suit that had to have been hand tailored to fit his girth, and lizard-skin boots that were buffed to a gleaming shine. His shirt was dark gray—a slightly lighter shade of the same black of his suit, and his tie was a color that fell somewhere between the two. His hair was thick and dark, and it tumbled forward into his eyes in a style reminiscent of Elvis Presley. His face was fifty pounds too heavy to be called handsome, with a distinctive hawklike nose and deep-set eyes that were now lost among the puffiness of his excess flesh.

      In one big, beefy hand, he held a switchblade knife that he opened and closed, opened and closed, with a rhythmic hiss of metal on metal.

      “My sister’s not here,” Frisco said evenly.

      Mia felt him touch her shoulder, and she turned toward him. His eyes never left Dwayne and the knife in the man’s right hand as he handed her Natasha. “Get behind me,” he murmured. “And start backing away.”

      “I can see that your sister’s not here,” the heavy man had a thick New Orleans accent. The gentlemanly old South politeness of his speech somehow made him seem all the more frightening. “But since you have the pleasure of her daughter’s company, I must assume you know of her whereabouts.”

      “Why don’t you leave me your phone number,” Frisco suggested, “and I’ll have her call you.”

      Dwayne flicked his knife open again, and this time he didn’t close it. “I’m afraid that’s unacceptable. You see, she owes me a great deal of money.” He smiled. “Of course, I could always take the child as collateral….”

      Frisco could still sense Mia’s presence behind him. He heard her sharp intake of breath. “Mia, take Tash into the deli on the corner and call the police,” he told her without turning around.

      He felt her hesitation and anxiety, felt the coolness of her fingers as she touched his arm. “Alan…”

      “Do it,” he said sharply.

      Mia began backing away. Her heart was pounding as she watched Frisco smile pleasantly at Dwayne, always keeping his eyes on that knife. “You know I’d die before I’d let you even touch the girl,” the former SEAL said matter-of-factly. Mia knew that what he said was true. She prayed it wouldn’t come to that.

      “Why don’t you just tell me where Sharon is?” Dwayne asked. “I’m not interested in beating the hell out of a poor, pathetic cripple, but I will if I have to.”

      “The same way you had to hit a five-year-old?” Frisco countered. Everything about him—his stance, his face, the look in his eyes, the tone of his voice—was deadly. Despite the cane in his hand, despite his injured knee, he looked anything but poor and pathetic.

      But Dwayne had a knife, and Frisco only had his cane—which he needed to use to support himself.

      Dwayne lunged at Frisco, and Mia turned and ran for the deli.

      Frisco saw Mia’s sudden movement from the corner of his eye. Thank God. It would be ten times easier to fight this enormous son of a bitch knowing that Mia and Tash were safe and out of the way.

      Dwayne lunged with the knife again, and Frisco sidestepped him, gritting his teeth against the sudden