CHAPTER ONE - Firestorm

"When you are off the edge of a cliff,

legs dangling, hands grasping,

think of it as a gift – instant awareness."

The Saffir-Simpson scale might need revision if Dani Reese's ire were any yardstick.

She stalked the antiseptic hospital with the rage of a Category Five hurricane. The heel of her boots left sparks in their wake, the force of her gait echoing down the shiny linoleum scattering people like leaves before a fell wind and still she advanced. Her muttered curses and countenance firmly fixed in a scowl making her a terror on tiny heels. Her landfall, her destination was one curtained corner of an emergency room frothing with injuries and the intended target of her wrath – one six foot one inch red haired man who just couldn't leave well enough alone.

She reached for the curtain and the chains suspending it from the metal rod made a screeching sound as she dragged it back made for a dramatic entrance. Her face wore a scowl that gargoyles envied. Said rosy ruffian looked up with his face bearing strawberry colored scuff and impossible blue eyes and she had to fight to stay in that moment. She struggled against an outgoing tide of empathy, to hold onto her anger. Damn him for making her care.

"You fucking idiot," she snapped. "I told you to wait. Five fucking minutes Crews. Just five effing minutes," she quieted trying to tone down her tirade for the ten year old with the broken arm and wide eyes across the way.

"I know," he began, "you're mad."

She glared at him; effectively shutting him up and continued her tirade, "Look at you…" Her gaze dropped to his chest and shoulder, which bore heavy, raw and rough looking friction burns that would ripen to the blue-black color of a succulent plum. "You look like you were hit by a train."

"Not a train, just a car," his smile leaked through his split lower lip. The blood that welled there was the rich color of a Bing cherry and thick like syrup.

She caught herself before her concern compelled her to step toward him and thumb it from his cracked lip. She wheeled away hard, continuing her rant, "I told you he wanted you dead. You know what he's capable better than anyone. It's why I told you to wait, but do you listen? No… I mean why would you listen? I'm just your senior partner."

Her sarcasm dropped like ripe fruit falling from a tree. She concentrated her focused anger to deflect her need to touch him; her overwhelming desire to sooth his tired muscles and run her hands over his lean lines to satisfy herself he was whole and for other reasons she didn't want to acknowledge yet.

The storm summoned a stern look and braced her hands on hips prompting a response. "Say something…" she barked.

"It wasn't even a very nice car," he muttered wryly.

"This is not funny, Crews." She snapped holding onto her ire. "You are stupid, reckless, it was…"

"Something only you get to do," he finished her tirade with a rebuke of his own and a raised eyebrow bearing a butterfly bandage covering a cut that only escaped stitches by the thinnest of margins. He twisted his neck and wrung his hand through a kink there in the joist between his neck and bruised shoulder, but otherwise remained stubbornly mute in his own way of rebellion.

She stared transfixed and he watched her become impossibly angry. Her heat and energy hovered around nuclear and then she crossed the distance to him and engaged in her long awaited physical contact with him, but not the sort he hoped for. She slapped him as hard as she could.

Crews chuckled and when she drew back to hit him again he slid off the exam table and enveloped her in his arms. He held her tightly against him as she spent her rage like a loose shutter in a roaring window with gulps of guilty air against his chest.

"You fucking bastard," she whispered as he kissed her hair and shushed her gently.

"I'm sorry," he promised tenderly and meant every word of it.

"For going after him alone?"

"No. For making you worry," he explained.

"It is a very nice car," she grumbled. "He loves that car and the fact that he tried to kill you with it should tell you that he's not kidding Charlie. My father hates you. He will kill you if you let him," she prophesied.

"Then I won't let him," he drew back and captured her eyes, brushing a lock of hair from her face. The impulse to kiss her was strong enough he had to restrain himself, so he stoked her anger to reestablish their distance, "but I won't let you be a part of this."

He watched as the wide black of her pupils constricted and her gaze narrowed and he could feel her anger return. He absently thought he could spend a month just watching Reese's eyes constrict and dilate as she spun through emotions. They were her "tell", the one thing she could not hide, when her walls dropped and she froze him out entirely – her coffee colored eyes showed her fears and expectations they shone like neon in the darkness there.

"He's a criminal," she obstinately objected. "Catching him is MY job."

"He's your father," he patiently replied with his lips pursed. "Even though I'd rather not get slapped again - I'm not going to change my mind," he darkly joked. "Let me handle this."

"You just try and stop me, Crews. I'll go with you or I'll find him on my own." She shot back and pushed away from him physically and emotionally.

Dani Reese pouted better than anyone he knew. She could stay angry for hours, sometimes days. He was convinced she was the most stubborn woman he'd ever known and still he found himself admiring her spunk.

"Do you want a new partner?" he teased.

They had long since established she would not abandon him under any circumstance. She was perhaps the most loyal person he'd ever seen. Why she stayed with him after all trouble he brought her he never understood.

But as predicted, she shook her head vigorously and glared at him from under her dark lashes. "I want a partner who work with me, not on some private crusade, which he obviously can't do alone and sucks at – cause he manages to nearly get killed every time he's out playing lone wolf."

"Ouch," Charlie joked "and I thought these hurt," he gestured at his wounds. He didn't tell her about the forays she didn't already know about, many of which were wildly successful. He was putting the pieces together in ways that made his mouth water, but for the effect it would have on Reese – or more precisely her father.

The doctor picked that moment to appear and Reese's mouth snapped shut as she sublimated the smart assed retort on the tip of her buggy whip of a tongue.

"Ah, I see your wife has come to get you," the bespectacled man began oblivious to the minefield he'd walked into, "okay, Mr. Crews…these are your discharge instructions." Dani glowered but surprisingly didn't correct the man, as she'd been so quick to do in the past. He wasn't sure if she'd just gotten used to people inferring they were a couple or comfortable with the idea that someday they might be. He mentally stomped on the later half of his thought, which all too often of late strayed, to unprofessional thoughts about his little sable haired partner.

The doctor continued with little interest in whether either of them was listening or paying attention. "Now I'd recommend that she watch you for signs of a head injury although the x-ray showed nothing - those things can be discreet. This is for the pain, but wait twelve hours before taking any" he tore off a script then pulled it away as Crews reached for it choosing to hand it to Dani instead. She ducked her head to hide a guilty smirk as the oblivious physician continued. "You can get it filled at any pharmacy and you'll need to come back in two weeks and have those stitches removed."

Dani's head snapped up, and her snide grumbled "a head injury would be an improvement" comment was swallowed by the wide-eyed concern she could not hide. He was growing on her – he was sure of it - Charlie thought as he heard her ask, "What stitches?" in a much more subdued tone.

"These," he demonstrated proudly holding up his forearm which has been sliced open by some random piece of glass. Charlie thought it would end up to be one of his more orderly scars because of the precision of glass. It was neatly sewn together and taped over lightly with a paper tape that let her see every single stitch. He watched as her hand strayed to trace the outline of the seven-inch future scar with feather light touches of her fingertips.

In unguarded moments the depth of feeling in her eyes was something he could become lost in. Charlie realized if he let himself he could love this mercurial nymph in two-inch heels trailing a cloak of attitude like a mighty hurricane pulling winds across miles of water. She had instantly morphed from intense ire to involuntary compassion in milliseconds, there was no guile in her reactions - she was so very raw and heartbreakingly real.

He took a deep deliberate breath and pushed her away again - with his words for her own safety, "Honey, is that concern I hear in your voice?" he teased.

Her sideways glance dripped brimstone as the fire rekindled in her eyes.

This was where he needed to keep her – safely away from him. She was already too damned close for her own good. While Charlie's scars were visible, he could see the ones on Reese's soul. Even though he wanted nothing more than to kiss the curse words off her tongue and bleed her soul dry of pain; he was determined not to let anyone harm her while he still drew breath – not even him.