“You know, I’d rather set myself on fire than have you trailing me everywhere.” Celia, freshly showered after her ordeal at the pool and dressed for her evening shift in wide-leg black pants and an acid-green, Mandarin-collared shirt, pushed angrily through the glass library doors. She’d twisted her hair up and secured it to the top of her head with two black-and-gold chopsticks, but a few curls had sproinged loose and bounced as she walked. Daniel, who’d changed into jeans and a gray Lakers T-shirt he’d had in the trunk of his car, followed behind.
“I’m so not letting you into my apartment,” she continued without looking back at him, which gave him a pretty nice view, all things considered. “So you’d better get that whole 24-7 business out of your head right now.”
“We’ll see,” he replied calmly. He didn’t care if he had to hang upside down in front of her bedroom window—he was going to stick to her like a fungus until the man who was threatening her was caught. But he didn’t think it would come to acrobatics—he’d wear her down. Always did. “And come on, Cel. Aren’t I a better alternative to self-immolation?”
Celia smacked through the half door to the library’s front desk, and it swung back hard, nearly taking out his knees. Daniel caught it with one hand and gently pushed it out of his way as he walked through.
“You know, the jury’s still out on that one,” Celia replied, her back to him as she shuffled through a stack of books on the desk.
“Drama queen,” he said, feeling a smile tug at the corners of his mouth. Calling Celia a drama queen was sort of like calling the ocean wet, or his brother Joe’s dog ugly.
She bent down to grab something in a floor-level cabinet, so her response of “Overbearing, stubborn man” came out muffled, though hardly out of his earshot.
You’d think after eleven years, Celia would be over being angry at him, but apparently not. Figuring silence was better than continuing their sixth-grade-level discussion, Daniel reached over and picked the top book off her stack. He backed away and sat down on a nearby padded stool, opening the book and skimming the dust-jacket blurb.
“Give that back,” she said.
“Just looking.” He kept on skimming.
He heard her sigh in exasperation. “You wouldn’t like it.”
He raised his eyes to look at her, his head still bent toward the book.
“It’s a mind-numbingly pedestrian account of first contact with an alien race. Trust me, nothing to scream about.” She turned to her desktop computer and tapped at the keys, then picked up a stubby pencil and scrawled something on a piece of scratch paper. “Have you read David Weber?”
He grunted a negative.
“I read my way through his Honor Harrington series a while back. It’s this great space opera—a cross between Horatio Hornblower, Star Wars and Xena: Warrior Princess. Right up your alley, since you seem to have such parochial reading tastes.”
He smacked the book he was holding shut and slowly smiled at her. This was more consideration than she’d showed him in a long time. “You remember my reading tastes?”
She slid past him and glided into the stacks, her silk pants fluttering around her amazing legs as she walked. He tossed the book aside and followed.
“I remember way too much about you, Holmes.” She tapped a peach fingernail on the spines of several books shelved at her eye level. “Space opera, cyberpunk and futuristic dystopias all the way. Not a classic to be had on your nightstand.” There was an awkward pause as the two of them contemplated the last time Celia had seen his nightstand. He cleared his throat, and she scrutinized the shelves with amazing intensity.
“Aha. Here it is.” Celia pulled the book out from where it was sandwiched between several others by the same author and handed it to him, the faintest pink still staining her cheeks. “Now, go.” She shooed him away with one hand. “Read, and stay out of trouble.”
He bit his bottom lip and grinned at her. “What if I get bored?”
Celia dropped her hand and tilted her head at him, looking genuinely perplexed at the thought of getting bored. That was pure Celia all the way—she was always running at Mach 2 with her hair on fire, and she wouldn’t know how to be bored if she tried.
He stepped into her space, lowering his eyelids to half mast. Such a bad idea, but he always seemed to lose his mind whenever Cel was around, which had been less and less often over the years. Now she was here, and he was stunned that he still felt…way too much. And some perverse impulse inside him made him want to mess with her world as much as she was messing with his.
To her credit, she tilted her chin upward to keep his gaze and didn’t back down when he stepped closer. “That stairwell in the back looked pretty private,” he murmured, laughing softly. “We could go inside and…” His gaze dropped to her full lips, slathered in a pink-tinted lip balm that smelled like cherries.
The loose ends of her hair bounced as she reeled back in shock, but then she quickly assumed a blasé expression, hooded eyes, wry mouth and all. “Daniel, my tastes—in men and in pastimes—are a lot more civilized today than they were a decade ago.”
“What about a year and a half ago?” he asked, unable to stop himself.
“A year—” She cut herself off, looked down at the floor. Now her expression just looked sad. “A very big mistake,” she said softly. She raised her face to look at him, and he couldn’t speak, couldn’t think of anything to say to her that would take away that sadness, that would make her trust him again.
“Why do we do this to each other?”
He just shook his head.
Dropping her gaze to somewhere over his left shoulder, she lightly touched the fingertips of one hand to his chest, gently pushing him out of her path. “Excuse me. I need to get to work.”
As she moved quickly through the stacks and into her office, he could still feel the five points on his chest where she’d touched him. Oh, man, this was so not good. He’d meant to mess with her, and she’d blown his mind instead. He should have known it would happen, because that’s what always happened whenever they’d met over the past eleven years.
She closed the door behind her, but the front wall of her office was made of glass, affording her the ability to watch over her domain but very little privacy. Daniel folded himself into a study carrel that boasted a perfect view of her desk if you tilted it at a slight angle, which he did. He opened his book, watching her over the top of the cover.
After a few seconds of fidgeting behind her desk, obviously feeling him staring at her, she looked up, glared at him, and spun her desk chair around so all he could see was its padded gray back.
Why can’t you just let it go, Chief?
Why, why, why. That had always been the question when it came to Celia and him. They’d started dating in high school, ended their relationship when they were nineteen—she was in her junior year at USC, and he was a patrol cop for the LAPD. It should have been easy to forget a woman he’d dated at such a young age. It should have been easy to move on, find a nice blonde or a redhead with a sweet temperament and a squishy right hook. But it wasn’t. Their relationship had officially ended eleven years ago, but he and Celia had made each other pay for that fact a thousand times over since then.
The last time he’d seen her, a year and five months ago, Rita Henderson had dragged him to the Arthur Murray dance studio in Century City for ballroom dance classes—very much against his will. Rita, a woman he’d casually dated a few times, had been blond, with the requisite sweet temperament and squishy right hook, not to mention a disturbing thing for unicorns. But that day had been her birthday, and he’d been unable to disappoint her by refusing her request.
So he’d agreed to go, not knowing that in the middle of the Arthur Murray Studio B dance floor, wearing a flowy red dress that hugged her full hips and small waist perfectly, Celia was waiting.
She was also with another guy.
She saw Rita and him as soon as they entered the room. Raising her eyebrows in a casual hello, Cel immediately turned her back on them and tangoed the other guy to the opposite side of the room—leading all the way, despite the instructor’s frequent call-outs of “Ms. Viramontes, let your partner lead.” So even though seeing her was like a punch to the stomach, he took Rita into his arms and picked up on the basics of the tango in no time. He was Mexican and Honduran—dancing was not an issue.
After the first hour, the instructor called out that they were all to switch partners. Rita twirled away on the arm of a guy Danny could have sworn he’d recently seen in a deodorant commercial. Bodies swirled around him, pairing up without giving him so much as a glance. And before he knew it, he and Celia were in the center of the room. Face-to-face.
She looked around, a hint of desperation in her face before she realized they were it—the leftovers who would be forced to pair up. Then she rolled her eyes and held out her slim, brown hands, their nails tipped in red to match her dress. “Fine. Whatever. Let’s just be adults about this.”
He pulled her into his arms.
Once again, he’d been trying to play mind games with her, but as was usually the case when it came to Celia, things didn’t work out according to plan. The feel of her in his arms—again, finally—took his breath away. So when he didn’t say or do anything, Celia aimed their clasped hands outward and tried to steer him across the room.
Her actions brought him back, and he immediately retaliated by flexing the arm around the small of her back, pulling her tightly against his chest. Her cherry-red mouth dropped open in surprise as she stumbled against him, and the strength left her arms. Looking straight into her warm brown eyes, he began to lead, and, miracle of miracles, she started to follow.
The instructor, who’d been calling directions to her students, fell silent. Slowly, as they danced, the other couples broke apart and stepped back, two by two, against the studio walls and mirrors. Then it was just the two of them.
“Who is she?” Celia finally gasped her first real words to him as he dipped her over his arm, running a hand across her collarbone.
He pulled her back upright, twirling her on his outstretched arms across the floor while he simply advanced. The hem of her red dress flared around her show-stopping legs. “Date,” he said simply when she’d stopped twirling, because that’s all he could manage.
“Serious?” Brushing a hand against his chest, she promenaded around him, her back strong and her brown eyes flashing.
“Nah. We’ve gone out a couple of times. What about him?” Danny cocked his head toward Celia’s date, who stood forlornly against the wall in his light blue, button-down oxford and khakis. “Get you to join the Young Republicans for Tax Reform yet?”
He twirled her so her back was against his front, raising their right arms over their heads, and then skimming his hand down the side of her body. He looked down at her face, and her eyes fluttered shut briefly. “Brad is a fun guy,” she murmured.
He spun her to face him and advanced on her as she retreated. “Right. Fun. Looks like a real animal.”
“I don’t date ‘animals.’” She turned her head to the side in time with the music, kicked her leg out, and then she was advancing, and he was backing away. “Anymore. And it’s not like Betty Crocker Barbie over there looks like she’s rocking your world.” Celia glanced over at where Rita was standing, and Danny followed suit, noting that she seemed to be enjoying her conversation with the deodorant guy. “Is she actually wearing a Peter Pan collar?” Celia asked.
She wrapped one leg around his, and they swiveled their bodies together the way they’d just learned, “for drama,” as the teacher had said. He clicked his tongue at her and gave her a slow smile, amusement washing over him as he realized that Celia was jealous. She’d never made disparaging comments about people she didn’t know unless she had a good reason. “Not nice, Cel.”
“Sorry,” she said, mid-swivel. “It’s a cute Peter Pan collar. She’s very cute.”
“Thank you,” he replied, twirling her away from him.
“Whatever.” She twirled back in, and they moved smoothly across the room once more.
The music rose to a crescendo, and Celia kicked her leg up, her skirt flaring out, and then her heel was resting on his shoulder. The other students gasped at her flexibility—thank heaven for gymnastics—as he put his hand on her ankle, moving back and taking her with him. They moved seamlessly into a low lift and he spun her around, put her back down, dipped her once more. The music ended, and he was bent over her, his mouth so close to hers, he could feel her breath on his face. The other students started clapping.
“You’re beautiful,” he murmured under the sound of the applause, before he could stop himself.
She jerked back, nearly causing him to drop her. With one arm still around her waist, he helped her straighten, and she pulled out of his arms. “You have a date,” she muttered through her teeth, practically spitting out the final T as she smiled at the other students.
“I think she’s more into that actor guy she’s talking to.” When Celia turned to look at Rita, still batting her long eyelashes at her dance partner, he moved closer to her. “Stay with me tonight,” he whispered in her ear.
“I have a date, you cad,” Celia whispered back. The instructor asked the students to join him and Celia on the floor, and soon they were surrounded by other couples. Rita and the actor seemed to want to stay together, but Brad was making his way toward them with purposeful strides.
“You know how good we are together.” His mouth moved against her flushed cheek as the music started. He didn’t want to let her go. Not without a promise.
“At dancing. Just at dancing.” Her shoulders rose and fell with her deep, almost gasping breaths, and her hands were clenching his shoulders as if she were drowning.
He laughed softly in her ear. “More than just dancing, baby girl.”
He felt Celia’s fingertips dance lightly on the back of his neck, where his hair touched his collar. “I—” she began.
Someone loudly cleared his throat next to them. “May I cut in?” Brad asked primly.
“I’ll be waiting,” Danny said as she slipped out of his arms.
And later, after he and Rita had amicably decided that that night’s date would be their last, after he’d gone home to his La Brea apartment, after he’d turned out the lights and paced, restless, in the dark for longer than he cared to remember, she came.
As he’d known she would.
They’d spent one very hot night together, and then, by morning, the ghost of Sonia Sanchez rose to tear them apart once more.
Celia had started talking about it again, and he hadn’t known what to say. He’d hurt her when he hadn’t opened up to her after Patricio got out of the Cobras. Truth was, he just…couldn’t. Everything, every big emotion, especially the negative ones, was something to hide, something to swallow. Straighten up, put a smile on your face and push it all away, pretend everything was just fine. It was how he’d dealt with the deaths of his parents, with losing his brother, Joe, his baby sister, Sabrina.
So when Patricio had gone through his darkest moments, Daniel had shut down and shut Celia out, focusing only on his twin brother, on keeping him alive. And when the worst was all over and he’d tried to get Celia back into his life, she didn’t want any part of him. The woman was the queen of holding grudges, damn her Viramontes pride. And he couldn’t find the right words to tell her how sorry he was.
So they did this figurative dance every time they saw each other—they met, were blown away by the still-potent attraction between them, acted on it more often than not, and then, she’d bring up that time with Patricio after Sonia’s murder. She always made it clear that she wanted something from him, but for the life of him, he didn’t know how to give it to her. He’d apologize, but then she’d always ask him if he’d do things the same way if he could do them all over again.
And he always said he would. He couldn’t see doing anything differently. Patricio had needed him, so he’d been there. And he couldn’t see how getting all weepy about it with Celia would have helped their relationship. Fact was, he couldn’t have if he’d wanted to. It just wasn’t the way he was built.
He’d told her that, again, the morning after their meeting at the dance studio, and she’d left him. Again. He’d sworn, at that moment, to get her out of his head once and for all. It had almost been working, until he’d found out that her life was in danger. He’d keep her safe, or die trying. And he wasn’t ready to die just yet.
He also knew he’d have her before this was all over—he could see it in her eyes every time she looked at him. They were repeating the same pattern, locked in the same steps they’d danced a year and a half ago. They’d have each other, and then she’d leave, just the way she always left.
Resting his forehead on one hand, Daniel peered through his fingers at Celia, who was staring blankly at her desktop, lost in her own thoughts.
They were a mess, the two of them.
When he’d realized that she was in danger, he knew he had to help her. Because worrying about her only made everything worse, and he knew he wouldn’t have a moment’s peace unless he was right by her side to keep her out of harm’s way until it was all over. And then, maybe after all was said and done, he could finally walk away. Maybe by forcing himself to be beside her day in and day out, they could work through some of the crap they’d put each other through and find peace. And then, he could do what she kept asking him to do—just go, just leave her alone for good.
Sure. You keep telling yourself that, Chief.
Celia’s door swung open and she barreled out, her face pale and her hands shaking.
“Danny!” she called, her voice tinged with hysteria. He didn’t even have to think. Within seconds, he was right by her side.
“I just got a call from Jay Alvarez,” she said. One of the ex-Cobras involved in the Sanchez murder, who now worked in the St. X theater, he remembered.
“He sounded like….” Her voice trailed off. “Danny, he sounded terrified.”