Slow Burn

Twenty-five minutes! Spencer pushed herself away from the staircase and tore into their bedroom. In seconds flat she arranged the covers and pillows invitingly on the bed. Then she spun around and headed into the shower. This was going to be Danny’s day, and she was going to make it the best one he had ever lived.

Work! She raced for the phone.

She told her secretary she had a touch of flu, but would be in the next morning. She felt a blush touch her cheeks as her secretary sympathized and told her that she hoped Spencer would feel better. How strange! She was married—not to mention the president of Montgomery Enterprises—and Audrey was a good friend, but she still couldn’t quite manage the truth. You see, we’re trying to procreate here, but our schedules are so screwed up that Danny’s at work on the nights that count, and I’m usually in another city when it matters most. I’m staying home just to spend the entire day screwing around.

“Do you need anything, Spencer? Can I bring you something?” Audrey asked with concern.

“No, no, Danny will be back after he’s done jogging. I’ll be fine, thanks,” she said firmly, a touch of guilt stirring within her again. She was the boss! she reminded herself. She worked long, hard hours, and she deserved a day off with her husband.

“Stay in bed now,” Audrey warned her.

“I, ah—yes, I will,” Spencer said, stared at the receiver, then set it down.

So what was Danny telling David?

A hot flush crept over her body; she didn’t want to think about it. She didn’t want to think about David. She tried so damned hard not to think about David most of the time.

She turned on the water full blast.

“I love Danny Huntington!” she said fiercely out loud. And it was true. She did. Very much. There just seemed to be so many levels of love. Sly had told her that once. And it was true.

“I love Danny!”

She loved him; their life was good. They laughed together; they talked together. Danny was kind, concerned, wonderful, gentle. She was lucky, so lucky. She stepped into the shower. Danny wanted a baby. This time they were going to do it the right way—and at the right time!—to have one.

The water rushed down on her.

Danny left his house behind and inhaled the clear morning air. The day was going to be a scorcher, but it wasn’t dead hot yet. He loved the early morning and the late night, when the sun hadn’t gotten its grip on the city yet. He loved to run when even the early birds weren’t out, when dew still touched the grass and the leaves of the gnarled trees that lined the road.

He smiled. Just what the hell was he going to tell David? The truth would be best, but he had told Spencer he would think of something else. How the hell was he going to manage when he was grinning from ear to ear, anticipating the day? They hadn’t had a chance to do anything like this since their honeymoon. Since that day in Paris when they had watched the sun rise over the gargoyles, gilding the City of Lights. He quickened his pace, anxious to get back home.

He came out of his private road and rounded the corner. To his amazement, he saw a familiar figure jogging toward him. Curious. Talk about someone he’d never expected to see here…

David Delgado ran in place by the street sign, then looped around a few times on the jogging trail that ran alongside the road. Six foot two, black-haired, and with eyes so dark a blue that they appeared black at times, he was an arresting figure. But then, in Coconut Grove runners came in all kinds, the squat and the lean, the muscled and the nearly anorectic. But even amidst the healthy, muscled, tanned and sometimes very young and almost bare bodies that jogged through this old but still-trendy section of Miami, David was a striking man. The best of a strange mixture of genes had combined to make him as tall and broad shouldered as the Highlanders of his mother’s Scottish kin, while his raven dark hair and clean-lined, classical features had come from his father’s side, Spain by way of Cuba. Thanks to his Hispanic heritage, he was a natural in the sun, bronzing quickly, and since he had spent most of his life in that sun, he didn’t notice the heat too badly while he jogged around in another circle, glanced at his watch and considered heading to the house and giving Danny a call. It wasn’t like him to be late. Especially when he didn’t have far to come to meet David. David’s house didn’t compare to the old Twenties manor Spencer and Danny had bought and fixed up. Though he was doing well at his new business—so well, in fact, that it almost scared him at times—he didn’t have the kind of income to purchase such a place, not to mention keeping it up. He had to hand it to the pair of them, though. There was nothing ostentatious about their home. It was in a quietly affluent neighborhood, and it had lots more character than it did dazzle. It was a warm house to walk into, with a good feeling about it, it just felt a little bit too much like Spencer Anne Montgomery—Spencer Anne Huntington, he reminded himself. But there hadn’t been anything between him and Spencer in well over a decade, and Danny was one of his best friends. It was still amazing to him that someone who had been born with a silver spoon—hell, a silver knife and fork, as well—in his mouth could have grown up to become such a decent human being. But Danny had always been good, ever since they had first met, and Spencer was as cold as ice to him now. Hell, it was ancient history. They were long past whatever feelings they’d shared, and they’d both built their own lives. It was something they could all laugh about. Except that they never did. Maybe, David thought, it was because there had been something vulnerable about all of them way back then. As kids, they had all learned each other’s weaknesses, and maybe some of those weaknesses hadn’t gone away. He and Spencer were still, after all these years, wary of one another, though they both tried, for Danny’s sake, to be civil.

Just as he tried like hell not to let his best friend know how much he remembered about Spencer Anne Montgomery.

Spencer Anne Huntington.

He jogged around the loop again, looking down the street. Things hadn’t changed much here since he’d been a kid. The foliage still grew right up to the edge of the winding road, and the old houses still stood almost on top of it, except where long drives led to mansions unseen by the general public. From the time he’d come here as a kid not quite four years old, he’d loved the Grove, even if life there hadn’t always been easy. Back then, in the early sixties, it had been a laid-back place, not at all ready for the boom that was about to seize Miami and erase its small-southern-town status forever, turning it into a huge metropolis with an international flavor. Back then, they’d had lots of snowbirds, Northerners down just for the winter. They still came, but now they mostly went over to Naples, up to Palm Beach, down to the Keys, or to the dead center of the state, to Disney. But Miami still thrived, and the Grove had grown right along with it. In the late sixties and early seventies, the Grove had gone right along with the hippie movement. The shops had sold Nehru jackets and incense and black lights. Artists had thrived, smoking pot in back rooms, and psychedelic music had filled the air. But then things had moved upscale; the yuppies had moved in, and now the trendy shops sold high-priced jewelry and expensive collectibles, while the restaurants offered the height of nouvelle cuisine. He thought rather affectionately of his home as a very bright whore—Coconut Grove twisted whichever way the money came and the wind blew, doing whatever it needed to do to survive. It was one of the oldest sections of Miami, right on the bay, and there were still a few old-timers around to tell him what it had been like in the early days. Spencer’s grandfather, Sly, could talk about the old days with the ability of a born storyteller, and there were still times when David missed the hours he had spent with the old man almost as much as he missed Spencer.

He swore at himself. He didn’t miss Spencer. How could you miss someone who had been out of your life for most of it? He just missed the feelings he remembered. She was part of all the other nostalgia about growing up, certain music, the sight of bougainvillea, the salt scent of the sea on a balmy day. It was just his bad luck that they’d all been friends forever.

David jogged farther and found himself looking down the street where he’d first lived when he’d come here. God, what an awful year that had been. Spanish had been his first language, and the only thing he could remember being called for years had been “refugee.” Not boy, just refugee. He’d had it better than most, though. His father had been in the Cuban prison where he was destined to die, his mother had passed away soon after Reva’s birth, but his mother’s father, old Michael MacCloud, had managed to swoop down right in the middle of the crisis days to help them. He had taught David and his sister, Reva, English. At least then David had been able to understand the Americanos who looked down their noses at him, though what English he did speak he spoke with the old Scotsman’s accent. His folks gone, thrown into a world that didn’t want the upheaval coming its way, he’d started off fighting. That was when he’d met Danny Huntington. Danny had left his pristine public school to walk over to the yacht club to meet his folks, but he’d been stopped by a group of toughs. David had seen it from the small park where he’d been playing, and there had just been something about Danny that had gotten to him. He’d been a skinny kid, and he’d obviously known he was about to take a beating, but he’d stood his ground. Then David had moved in. He’d taken a black eye himself, but he’d still managed to come out on top. The fight had been one of those “you should see the other fellow” occasions, and when it was over, Danny had just stared at him as if he was some kind of hero.

“Hey, thanks, man!”

David had shrugged, determined that no one was going to see that he was hurting like hell himself. “You’re just a skinny little rich kid. I could see you needed help.”

“Jeez, that’s some shiner!” Danny had told him, taking no offense at his comments. “You’d better come with me and get it taken care of.”

That had been the first time David had entered Danny’s world, and it had been a strange time for him. Bloodied, ragged, he had been drawn into the club with its spotless windows looking out on the bay, its rows and rows of sleek, beautiful boats. Everyone had stared at him. The ladies in their pristine white, the gentlemen in their leisure suits. He hadn’t been able to look at the people, the men and the women talking about how the riffraff and the refugees were bringing down the neighborhood. He’d looked out at the boats, instead, and decided he wanted a boat right then and there—more, even, than he wanted a life where he could eat all the mouth-watering food being served around him, play tennis on the perfect courts or dive into the pool. Just a boat, that would have made him happy.

He hadn’t been too fond of Danny’s parents, but he’d met Sly that day, and though he’d had a few opinions about the rest of the lot at the club, he’d known right off that he liked Sly, just as he’d known that one day he would buy a boat.

Sly knew something about politics. He’d heard of David’s father and even knew his grandfather. He’d bought David a meal, and when he’d seen the boy’s eyes, huge and a little overawed, he’d told him, “America, boy. This is America. Trust me. You reach out and get what you want here. The only difference between you and these folks is that their folks got here and did it for them!” And then he’d winked.

When David left that day, he’d thought he would never see Danny or Sly again. But two weeks later out of the blue, he’d gotten a scholarship to Danny’s prestigious grade school, and Michael MacCloud had insisted he take it. When he’d been on the outs, an object of fun for some of the rich kids, Danny had been there, stuck to him like glue, his best friend. Luckily he’d been a damned good athlete, and it was amazing what that could do for a poor boy. A refugee. Soon after David’s strange scholarship had come through, David’s younger sister, Reva, had received one, as well. And Danny had been just as great to Reva.

Spencer had come…later.

He glanced at his watch again and thought about jogging to Danny’s, then decided to jog home, instead. He would call Danny rather than appear. It would be easier to talk to Spencer on the phone. But maybe Danny would answer himself—still there for some reason—or the housekeeper would be in.

It was a strange situation. Danny, the kid born into a world of wealth, was a cop. A homicide detective. That was where they had met up again, after years of going their separate ways after high school. Danny wanted to be D.A. someday. Actually, he wanted to go much higher, but he wanted to take the long route into politics. He wanted to know how the working stiff on the street managed; then he wanted to buck the system all the way, not just catching the criminals, but managing to put them away. Spencer had been upset at first about Danny going into homicide, but Danny had been quick to tell her that it was all right. “The cases I’m called to are really safe. Spence. What are the victims going to do to me? They’re already dead!”

Spencer had reminded him that they had gotten that way through the ill will of others, but it seemed that Spencer really did love and support her man, because Danny was still working homicide. And sometimes the thought that she was there for someone else, not for him, brought a little twist of bitterness to David’s heart. Maybe he hadn’t been quite fair to Spencer Anne Montgomery all those years ago. Or maybe Spencer had changed; he didn’t know. Anyway, it didn’t matter anymore. She was Danny’s wife, and theirs was a good marriage. She and Danny had come from the same world. They knew how to live in it, and also how to fight it. Everyone had probably expected the two of them to wind up together, just as they had shaken their heads at the thought of Spencer Anne Montgomery winding up with David Delgado.

It was the past. Ancient history. David had his own life. He lived it. But sometimes it seemed that no matter how fast he ran from times gone by, they still caught up with him in the end.

Hell, where was Danny? The sun was beating down mercilessly on his head. He gave a final look around and started jogging to his own house.

A good house. Modern, three bedrooms, on the water, his boat docked in the back. He pushed open the front door and strode to the phone.

“What’s going on? What the hell are you doing here?” Danny demanded.

The answer came quickly in the form of three hastily fired bullets. One burned by his ear. The other two sank into his middle.

The figure raced on as Danny Huntington opened his mouth to protest. No sound came. He fell to the ground.

He didn’t lose consciousness. Not then. He started to crawl. Blood trailed from his wounds, over the dark earth, over tree roots, fallen leaves. Over dirt and pavement.

He kept crawling. David’s house was straight ahead. The door was open. Sweet Jesus, but he was in pain. Oh, God, oh, God, oh, God, how could one person lose so much blood? His life, oh, no, not yet, he couldn’t die yet….

Spencer…

“Danny!”

David dropped the receiver he’d just lifted and raced to the doorway. Danny was there, crawling toward him, covered in blood. David started to pick up his best friend, registering almost blankly that Danny had been shot. Years of training sprang into his mind, and he ran for his phone again, dialing the police dispatcher.

“Three-fifteen!” It was the code for Emergency! Officer needs assistance. “It’s Danny Huntington, and he’s been shot.” He gave his address, then added, “Hurry, damn it!” He’d already said enough, he knew they would hurry for any officer, but this was Danny. In his heart he kept pleading. Christ-oh-God-please-get-here-it’s-really-bad.

He raced to Danny and cradled his friend in his arms, trying to discern just where the injuries were. Shot, oh, hell, Danny had been shot twice, and he’d lost a lot of blood, but he still had a pulse, his heart was beating, and his lungs were still laboring. If the trauma unit could just get here and get him over to Jackson, they worked miracles there.

Staunch the blood, you asshole, staunch the blood. You’ve got to keep him alive, David told himself.

But the bleeding wouldn’t stop, no matter what he did.

Suddenly Danny’s eyes opened. He reached out a bloody hand, circling it around David’s neck. He tried to form words.