My heart began to beat faster and my head swirled as I gaped at his hands. “I don’t know.”
“Has anything like this happened before?”
I lifted my gaze to his. “No…”
Then I remembered the way Jack’s shaving nick had disappeared over the course of the day.
“It has,” he said, sounding excited.
“Maybe. I don’t know.” It had been a small nick, so it certainly wasn’t outside the realm of possibility that it had just healed on its own. In fact, that would be the more sensible explanation.
“When?”
I shook my head to clear my confusion. I needed to be smart about this. This man was with the FBI, and there was no way I wanted him to know the first thing about Jack. “This is the only time.” I narrowed my eyes as I looked up at him. “What do you think happened?”
“I don’t know, Darcie,” he said in a short tone. “That’s why I’m here.”
“I have no idea, Special Agent Stone, and that’s God’s honest truth. My dress spontaneously caught on fire, you tackled me and put it out, and you were burned in the process. You have no idea how incredibly guilty that makes me feel,” I said honestly.
“Things don’t just spontaneously catch on fire,” he said. “What made you go out back in the first place?”
“I was hot,” I said, feeling the color creep up my neck and onto my face.
“Hot? Why were you hot?”
Why did he have to be so good-looking? Did I really have to tell him I’d had a hot flash? But then again, he’d seen me in my support underwear. How much more embarrassed could I be? “I was having a hot flash.”
“A hot flash,” he scoffed.
“You don’t believe me?”
“Aren’t you a little young to be having a hot flash?” he asked dryly.
I wasn’t sure whether to be flattered, or pissed that he thought I was lying. “Apparently not,” I said. “It’s a new thing for me. I’ve never heard of them causing anyone to spontaneously combust, although I’ve heard a few women say they’d felt like it,” I added with a forced chuckle. I didn’t want to lie to him, not directly. Surely FBI agents knew how to spot something like that.
“How many hot flashes have you had?” he asked.
“First of all,” I huffed, “I can’t believe you’re asking me such a personal question. Second, it’s none of your dang business.” I snatched my mascara from the console. “Now I need to get inside. I don’t want to be late.”
I stuffed the tube into my purse and started to reach for the door.
“One more thing,” Heath said, leaning back in his seat as though he had no intention to leave any time soon. “How long have you and Parker Townsend dated?”
“What business is that of yours?” I snapped.
“Call it curiosity.”
“It was our first date, not that it affects you in any way,” I said.
“And how long have you worked for Lisman and Freud International Shipping?” he asked.
The hairs on my arms stood on end. “Why?” When he started to speak, I cut him off. “And don’t try that just curious malarkey on me. I’m the mother of two teenagers who have tried multiple BS lines. I can read through the crap, so tell me the truth. Why does it matter how long I’ve worked there?”
His mouth tilted up into a forced smile. “It doesn’t. I’m just trying to get to know you better.”
I cocked my head and gave him some serious side-eye. “You’re putting the moves on me?”
Chuckling, he said, “Well, I wouldn’t have put it that way.”
“You can stop right there, Romeo. I’m too old for that nonsense. Now get out of my car. I have to go to work.”
“I really would like to see you again, Darcie.”
“I can’t think of a single reason why.” Then, because the last thing I needed was a curious FBI agent poking around, however handsome he might be, I added, “Besides, I’m seeing Parker.”
He started to say something, stopped, then said, “You can do better than him.”
“With you?” I asked with a bitter laugh. “I just got rid of one conceited asshat. I don’t need another.”
A grin spread across his face. “That hurt my feelings, Darce.”
“That’s Darcie to you,” I said. “Give it a few minutes. With an ego as large as yours, I’m sure you’ll be just fine in no time.” Then I gave him a pointed stare and nodded toward his door.
He laughed and reached for the handle, only to stop at the last second, a grin tugging at his features and lighting up his eyes. “I can take a hint, but before you head in, I suggest you take care of that.”
He pointed to my forehead.
Leaning to the side, I glanced in the rearview mirror and realized I’d been having this entire conversation with a mascara trail up my forehead, almost up to my hairline, the lines from the bristles on the wand perfectly delineated.
Great. Twice now I’d looked like a fool while dealing with him. Darcie pre-divorce would have been horrified, but post-divorce Darcie had zero fucks left to give. “Thank you for your helpful advice, now get out.”
He reached into his coat and pulled out a business card. “We still have unfinished business, so I’ll leave you my card.” He held it out to me, but when I refused to take it, he placed it on my dashboard. He turned serious. “If you need help or have anything you want to share with me, give me a call, anytime. Day or night.”
“Thanks, but I doubt that will happen.” Then, because I felt conflicted about being so brusque, I added, “Thanks again for helping me last night.”
He gave me a long look, then said, “I suspect you would have been just fine on your own, but I was glad to help anyway.”
With that, he got out and walked over to a dark sedan parked in the row behind me and left.
Only after he was gone did it occur to me that he was the only man who’d ever told me I’d do fine without him.
Chapter Eleven
I found a package of wet wipes and rubbed the mascara off my forehead as I watched Special Agent Stone’s car pull out of its parking space and drive away. As soon as he was out of sight, I let myself slump in the seat and closed my eyes.
What on earth had happened to his hands? Had I somehow…healed him?
Had my hands created those fires too?
Holding my hands up in front of my face, I stared at them in disbelief. My nails were uneven and scraggly, and my skin was rough and dry from washing them so much and the cold winter air. The backs of my hands had a couple of age spots, and my skin had thinned, making my veins more visible. That old Palmolive dish soap commercial came to mind—the one where the mother and daughter held their hands together and some random observer tried to guess who was the mother and who was the daughter. No one would have to guess with Harriet and me.
My hands looked every bit of my forty-two years, but as Vee had suggested about the rest of my body, my hands had earned their wear and tear. From changing diapers to holding little hands, from cooking my children’s meals to helping with homework. My hands had helped me with acts of love and service. But were those same hands capable of destruction?
Were they capable of healing?
As much as I wanted answers to those questions, I was equally terrified to find out.
Despite leaving the house early, I was still a minute late to work, and Nikki was fit to be tied.
“It’s bad enough that Parker called in sick,” she grumped. “And now you’re late.”
Parker had called in sick? Part of me was relieved—I hadn’t looked forward to expanding on my nonexplanation for why I’d left dinner—but we couldn’t avoid each other forever.
“The elevator was slow.”
“Next time take the stairs.”
“Six floors up?”
She looked me up and down, her lips pursed. “It wouldn’t hurt.”
Before I could offer a retort, she turned and walked away.
When I got to my desk
, Kristie immediately slid her chair over.
“How’d it go last night?” she asked, her eyes glowing with excitement. “When I heard Parker called in sick, I figured things might have gone really, really well…”
Oh crap. How was I going to explain? “Actually, I ended up having to leave early. I wasn’t feeling great.”
“You chickened out,” she said with a frown.
“No. Trust me, I didn’t. I was at the restaurant and a wave of nausea hit me out of nowhere. The kids have had a stomach bug.”
“Oh, no,” she said, looking genuinely worried. “You should have stayed home today.”
“I’m fine now. It was one of those six-hour things,” I said.
Which wasn’t actually a thing as far as I knew, but hopefully I’d said it with enough conviction to sell it.
“Maybe you gave it to Parker,” she said. “And that’s why he called in sick.”
“Probably,” I said. More like he didn’t want to run into me right after I’d bolted from him—before we’d even ordered dinner—and then turned him down for another date.
In retrospect, agreeing to go to dinner with him had been a huge mistake, but I couldn’t change that now. I’d have to put on my big-girl pants and figure out a way to face him.
The morning got busy, and for a few blissful hours, I forgot all about Parker and the fires and Special Agent Heath Stone. Distraction can be a heady thing, something I learned during the divorce. It was almost lunchtime when Nikki appeared in front of my desk with a large manila envelope. “Darcie, I need you to take this down to the basement.”
“Of course,” I said cheerfully, hoping to get back into her good graces. Kristie hated when Nikki sent her down there on errands, saying the dimly lit windowless space gave her the creeps. I personally preferred being down there to being under Nikki’s ever-watchful eyes.
“How is everything going after the fire?” Kristie asked.
“Things are…going,” our boss said, her body tensing.
“Are you staying with your sister?” Kristie asked.
Nikki had a sister? The only thing I knew about her personal life was that she wasn’t married, didn’t have kids, and she was now homeless.
Our boss gave her a death stare. “I’m living out of a Motel 6 while I try to prove I didn’t start the fire.”
I swallowed hard. “What?”
“Yeah,” Nikki said in disgust. “I’m going to need you all to submit affidavits about what happened at the Super Sort and Seal party.”
“Of course, Nikki,” Kristie said, nodding emphatically. “Anything we can do to help.”
Affidavits were legal documents, which meant I’d have to tell the truth or risk perjury. And while I had no idea how the fire started, it was starting to look like I’d had something to do with it.
If Nikki found out I’d started the fire on her sofa, she’d fire me in an instant.
And now I felt guilty for being more worried about my possible unemployment than her homeless situation. She wasn’t my favorite person, but nobody deserved to lose everything and come under suspicion for it.
Guilt sat on my chest like a pile of bricks, making it difficult to breathe, so I stood and snatched the envelope from Nikki’s hand. “I better get this downstairs.”
I briskly walked around my desk and headed toward the elevator bank.
“You really should take the stairs, Darcie,” Nikki called after me. “Going down is easier than going up. Your butt could use the workout.”
Several bricks of guilt crumbled off. No, no one deserved to have their house burned down, but if someone had held a gun to my head and asked me whose house to torch, I would have easily picked hers.
People like Nikki got away with tons of crap without ever being punished. Maybe the house fire was simply karma giving her a payback.
Or maybe Cyn was right. Maybe I was turning into a fire demon, because I was definitely on my way to hell with thoughts like that.
But that thought did nothing to pacify the anger burning in my gut. Who was Nikki to belittle and fat-shame me? Sure, I could file a complaint with HR, but nearly a dozen people had already filed complaints, and the only perceivable impact was that Nikki had made their lives a living hell for daring to stand up to her.
There was no way I was risking even more wrath from the woman. I’d suffer in silence.
Only I didn’t feel like being silent. An uncharacteristic desire for vengeance burned through my veins, making me want to turn around and give her a lecture that would make my teens squirm. But as much as I wanted to give her a talking-to, I also needed this job. So I headed for the staircase instead, hoping the physical exertion and the time alone would give me a few minutes to cool down before I entered the basement.
The basement was eerily quiet when I emerged from the stairwell. The employees down here started their shifts several hours before the office staff, so they usually took their lunch breaks earlier than the rest of us, and I’d noticed they tended to go to lunch at the same time, leaving one person at the loading docks in case a shipment came in.
Lisman and Freud was an international shipping company, but most of what we transported never even made it to our facility. When something was shipped to us directly, it was stored in the basement until it was sent to its ultimate destination. On rare occasions, we would hold on to something indefinitely. Those items were held in a section cordoned off with floor-to-ceiling chain-link fencing and a padlocked gate. The space was currently half full of wooden crates of various sizes. This was the exhibit we were storing for the Perry Art Museum. They still hadn’t moved it, which was kind of surprising given the ball was next week.
I passed the enclosure, staring at the large wooden crates, and I found myself slowing to look more closely at it, irrepressibly curious.
The shipment had been in the basement for over a month, and I’d passed it multiple times before on Nikki’s errands, but this was the first time I’d felt compelled to check it out. Was it because I was feeling rebellious?
No, I could tell it was something more. Something deep inside me yearned for something in one of those crates.
Which was crazy.
I shook my head. What the heck was happening to me? Hot flashes. Mood swings. Irrational anger. Those were perimenopausal symptoms, so at least they had an explanation. I was more worried about the fires, the stripes in my hair, and the tattoo unfurling across my back.
Oh, and my healing hands.
I had enough going on. I didn’t need to add destruction of property and trespassing to the list. Tearing myself away from the fence, I walked briskly to the loading docks at the far end of the basement. The manager had a small office next to the docks, and when I was sent down here to deliver something, my usual practice was to drop the envelope into the plastic inbox screwed into the wall, then spend the next five to ten minutes talking to the dock workers so I wouldn’t have to go back to my desk. However, the chat would be out today since the workers were at lunch and they always left the same guy behind. For a reason. Billy Ranier was as sleazy as they came, and to everyone’s surprise, he always had a new “lady friend” and loved to tell everyone every detail of their exploits. I’d heard there was a running bet between the dock workers—half believed Billy, and the other half thought he was a forty-year-old virgin overcompensating for his lack of experience. Either way, I had absolutely no desire to hear about his conquests, so today would be a drop-and-leave.
Just as I deposited the envelope into the plastic bin, I stopped in my tracks, sure I was having an auditory hallucination. I could hear Parker’s voice coming from inside the office. I couldn’t make out what he was saying other than snatches of “advance schedule…” and “we can make this work.”
Parker had called in sick, so what was he doing here?
Part of me wanted to find out—but not badly enough to face him yet. So I turned tail and hurried back to the elevator. Whatever he was doing was none of my business, anyway. I wasn’
t about to bust Parker for not being sick, and he didn’t owe me an explanation, especially given the way I’d run out on him last night.
Still, I couldn’t help but wonder why he was down here, and why he was apparently so interested in the museum collection. As far as I knew, Parker’s job had nothing to do with the loading docks. But there were a lot of things about this place I didn’t understand, like why Nikki got away with treating all of us so poorly. I had enough of my own issues to deal with without worrying about anyone else’s. I needed to keep my head down—make sure I held on to my job until I found a new one. Pronto.
Chapter Twelve
I ended up having to work late, so I called the kids and told them to meet me at my mother’s house at seven and not to forget Nana Stella. I also texted Cyn and told her to meet us there too, and because I suspected she might try to get out of it, I offered to work at the coffee shop for a short shift in the early afternoon.
She replied: OK. You know I’m short-staffed and you DID tell me you’d work all day, but I know you have a good reason
Let it All Burn: A Paranormal Women's Fiction Novel (From the Ashes Book 1) Page 9