From Winter's Ashes: Girl Next Door Crime Romance Series - Book Two

by Amy Leigh Simpson

  She blinked, their labored breaths contradicting the seeming calm of the moment. Her eyes softened, her lids batting heavily before resting shut, granting permission.

  Finn’s hand relinquished hold of her wrists and skimmed down the length of her arm as he leaned in the last inch. His nose left the slightest brush on hers, his fingers guiding her delicate jaw, his lips coming in for contact, his eyes closing for the long awaited moment—

  “—Josie, dinner!” Gloria’s voice boomed from an intercom overhead.

  Finn hurled his body off of her as if someone plucked him up by his collar and tossed him on the floor.

  Joselyn scrambled to her feet, and before he could even meet her gaze she was descending the stairs.

  So close. Too close. He squeezed his eyes tight and raked both hands through his hair. Have you lost your mind? Bracing his palms on the floor to push himself up, he felt something crinkle under his fingers.

  Joselyn’s diary lay open in all the commotion. He knew he shouldn’t read it again, but his eyes wandered of their own volition to the top of the open page dated April 29 – Prom. Fighting a battle against his conscience he closed the diary, but not before his eyes captured the first few lines.

  This time starting with … Dear Mom.

  Chapter 13

  Joselyn Whyte

  “Hey Finn, come here.” Sadie called out to the tall and lean surfer dude propped against the burnt-orange lockers. He raised his hand in greeting before rolling the pages of the comic book he’d been reading and shoving the tube into his back pocket. As he strode toward them he swiped a hank of shaggy blond hair from his forehead.

  Sweet. Moses. Joselyn’s breath tangled in her throat. His eyes were an unfathomable shade of turquoise. Crystal clear and swimmable. Stupid as it was, she was sinking like a brick.

  “Hey. What’s up?” His lips slipped into an easy smile, revealing stunning white teeth and heartbreaking dimples in each cheek.

  Geez. Was this guy even real? Was he Sadie’s boyfriend? She swallowed hard lest she start drooling over someone else’s man and forced herself to duck away beneath the dark drape of her hair.

  Joselyn had only met Sadie the day before, and so far she was the only person who had deigned to even speak to the new girl in school.

  Mental note: Do not fantasize about my only friend’s boyfriend.

  “… –er, Finn. Finn, this is Joselyn. She’s new.” Sadie’s introduction jarred her back.

  Back to the boy’s eyes she should not be swooning so ridiculously over.

  “Joselyn.” Her name on his lips tickled her senses. “Nice to meet you.” He extended his hand, his steady gaze holding hers. And then … contact. The warmth of his touch engulfed her completely. From her chronically cold hands to her frigid toes to the fire blazing in her cheeks she was practically a furnace. Charged particles they’d just learned about in chemistry came to life and zinged back and forth in the rowdy hallway, slowing everything but her galloping heart.

  “You too.” She let go and instantly felt a chill take hold once again.

  “So, Joselyn and I were gonna run up to Smoothie King after school,” Sadie said. “Thought, if you didn’t have baseball practice you might wanna join. Ryan’s coming too.”

  Joselyn slurped down a final glance before focusing on Sadie. Stunned by her odd reaction—something akin to love at first sight, though she knew that was ridiculous, not to mention impossible. Besides, what could a girl like her know about love anyway? Joselyn shook her head, chasing away the fanatical feeling.

  “Umm, who’s Ryan?”

  “There he is. Ry!” Sadie beckoned over another nearly perfect male specimen.

  Some girls have all the luck.

  Finn leaned in, speaking unnecessarily close to Joselyn’s ear. “Ryan is Sadie’s BFF and our neighbor.” A shiver descended her spine from his nearness. The fresh soapy scent that teased her nose didn’t help either. This was bad. And completely unlike her. She really needed to rein it in.

  “Wait, you live together?” Sadie didn’t strike her as that kind of girl. But then again, Joselyn had never attended a public high school, let alone a coed one, and was unaccustomed to social norms.

  His eyes crinkled with amusement. “One of the downsides of being siblings. But I do get to go to college next year while she stays with the ’rents for two more years. We won’t be living together then.”

  “Siblings.” The word escaped from smiling lips as the realization bloomed like hope in her heart.

  “Must have missed that part, huh?” His lips curled, her toes reacted in kind. “Now, tell me, what are your thoughts on drinkable fruit?”

  The sound of Joselyn’s alarm was the slap of reality she needed. She whacked blindly at the snooze button and buried her head beneath the pillow with a muffled sound of disgust. It had been years since she’d thought about the first time she met Finn and the asinine illusions of love that had sprouted out of loneliness, naivety, and yes, fine, attraction.

  But she’d been on enough blind dates in the past few years to know for a fact that first impressions could be wildly off base. So could second and third. Her youthful infatuation with that boy a painful reminder of the untimely realization of his selfish arrogance—the consequences of which that had almost driven her to take her own life.

  You should have.

  The wicked whisper soaked all around her, permeating the doughy down comforter with a cold truth that had her shivering. It all came flooding back. The memories so dark, so chilling they dragged her under with the current, trapping her beneath the ice. Her breaths came faster. She squeezed her eyes tight, curled deeper under the covers into a quivering ball. “Stop.”

  The near silent command was met with a startling halt of the tormenting visions. And even more curious was a sudden swell of warmth in her chest. The mysterious tug-of-war was as unsettling as the dream. The cold paralyzing fear versus the fires of rebuke. Maybe there was something to be said for those years of coping mechanisms she’d had crammed down her throat.

  But regardless of how far she’d come, the high-school flashback and the ensuing internal battle for her soul had her teetering on the fringes of sanity and it wasn’t even eight o’clock.

  She needed a fix.

  Having been good the past week, even the past several days since her near kiss with Finn, her streak came to an end. Digging into the nightstand drawer she scavenged for the bag she’d hidden. Her secret shame. When the familiar crinkle signaled success, she tore it open, thrust in her hand and retrieved a fistful of heaven.

  “Ohhh,” she moaned. The peanut butter M&M’s going down without a fight. Her eyes closed as she inhaled another handful. “Ohhh, that’s good.”

  “Cheese and rice! By the sound of things I thought you’d smuggled a guy in here.” Sadie pushed through the door and plopped down on the bed next to Joselyn, digging in for a fix of her own. “Oh my. You might be onto something here. Keeping these bedside is dangerous, Joss. Brilliant, but dangerous. You’ve fallen off the wagon, and I’m here to, you know, save you from yourself and whatnot. So spill it before I confiscate the rest.”

  Oh, how she wanted to. But this was about Sadie’s brother, not one of Joselyn’s boring, impeccably vetted blind dates. It was too complicated, too … weird. The sad fact was she didn’t have anyone else she could talk to. Except, maybe, Yia-Yia, though she hadn’t had a lucid moment in days.

  What a banner year. Yia-Yia’s abrupt decline combined with a proverbial clown car of dating train wrecks. Not to mention the malicious media circus surrounding her father’s campaign, and this just in, her attempted murder and newfound homelessness. A gut-wrenching combination of unsavory flavors all blended up and served with a cherry on top in the form of her mortal enemy, Finn Carson.

  “There’s … a lot going on right now. I’m a little stressed.” Joselyn winced as she met Sadie’s disbelieving glare and then sighed. “Fine. It might have something to do with your obnoxious brother, but th
at’s all you’re getting from me.” She popped another few M&M’s into her yapper, lest she be tempted to purge any further.

  “Oh, boy. What’d he do this time?”

  “Nothing.” Joselyn chewed. Swallowed. “Everything. I dunno. I can’t figure out why he’d volunteer for this, other than to torture me—which, by the way, seems to be his calling in life.”

  Sadie snorted. “You two are something else. All those years ago when I first introduced you I could have sworn there was something there. I never imagined it would be this.”

  Joselyn swallowed hard, forcing down the remaining slurry of chocolate and peanut butter. If only Sadie knew all the things Joselyn had kept from her. Protected her from. After Sadie lost Ryan, she didn’t need any more graphic doses of reality.

  “I will say one thing though.” Sadie inhaled some more M&M’s and continued to talk while she attacked the bag. “Finn is not the monster you’ve created in your head. I don’t know what caused this rift, but I do know that, despite the arrogant front, he’s a good man. We all make mistakes, Joss. I’m not making excuses for either of you, but at some point you are gonna have to talk this thing out. I can’t keep running interference. It’s not fair.”

  Joselyn opened her mouth in defense, but realization flooded in. All these years and she hadn’t even considered that she’d put Sadie in the middle, pitting a family against each other. How much damage had she caused between the two siblings?

  “Well, he, ah, did make a surprisingly good impression on my dad the other night.” Although she’d refused to look at him for the remainder of the evening after their little tussle in her hideout. She didn’t know what had possessed her to let her guard down. Over ten years of curiosity perhaps, but still.

  Even the ride home had been stilted and silent. Maybe more so from the fact that Archer had shown up and explained that the cops had lost the Grand Prix guy and were still scratching their heads about it. That sweet little morsel was coupled with the news about the Five-Alarm Arsonist fire that ravaged an abandoned warehouse in a neighboring suburb of Valley Park the same night her house burned down. Which fire had been the decoy? Had she been the target of the now infamous arsonist or were they looking for a different killer?

  “… you okay, Joss?”

  “Hmm? Oh, sorry. Lost in thought, I guess.”

  Sadie leaned over and rested her head on Joselyn’s shoulder, found her hand, and laced their fingers in a firm clasp. “We’re gonna get through this. You might not realize it yet, but there are greater forces at work here. A bigger plan we can’t yet see. A good one.”

  Joselyn wasn’t so sure, but she nodded anyways as tears burned her eyes. What would that kind of faith feel like? Would it fill the empty places in her lonely life or would it bestow short-lived but beautifully deluded false hope until it crash-landed into her reality?

  Those greater forces had taken everything from her and left her without a family—without anyone to care about the stolen pieces of her life. She couldn’t work out the kinks of how Sadie still believed after all she’d been through.

  Because God, to Joselyn, was like that new Valentino purse. Exquisite. Perfect. A big starry-eyed wish. Until you let your guard down and realized too late that the claws still sink in—tearing apart that thing that seemed sturdy, reliable, and worth the high price of believing you could deserve something so special.

  Like Declan Whyte, God may have spared her life, but then he’d walked away, left her in the cold to deal with the barrenness he’d brought upon her life. Left her to wade through the murky darkness alone again and again to a place that was neither warm nor welcoming. And would never be home.

  She’d seen too many miracles to believe God simply didn’t exist, but the truth of it was he was as much of a stranger as her own father.

  After another colorful morning at the nursing home, rehearsing the simple and often seated choreography for Mamma Mia!: The Geriatric Edition, Joselyn stopped by her shop to go over invoices with Charisma’s manager, Lacy, and sent in orders for the upcoming spring collection she’d hand selected from a variety of designers during fall fashion week. Having hung up her managerial hat six months prior, allowing more flexibility to spend time with Yia-Yia, Jocelyn was still having trouble giving up the reins to her baby.

  She huddled over the white, shabby chic desk in her office, the cheeky glow of the dusty pink walls lifting her spirits as she spent several hours poring over the books. She’d come to love all the ins and outs of the business, even number crunching. Having attended the business program at Stanford for four miserable years, she was glad some good had come of her forced educational directive from Declan Whyte, the dictator.

  It still irked her not knowing if she’d gotten in on her own academic merit. Her father had long arms of influence, and she wouldn’t put anything past him.

  And that made her think of Finn. The easy way he communicated with her father had aroused more suspicions about Finn’s intentions for their “arrangement.” He said early on that he didn’t have to explain himself, but that only stirred up more doubts and insecurities.

  Maybe he simply enjoyed toying with her emotions.

  Not maybe. Definitely.

  Or … maybe her father was paying him.

  Her heart contracted at the thought. Not because it was Finn. Not really. But because it made her wonder if she would ever find someone who cared about her? Just her. Not her father’s money, fame, and the power that gave the elite license to dispose of people like empty wrappers from her chocolate stash. Was there anyone without a selfish agenda? And did Finn really care about keeping her safe, or was this simply another power play?

  She told herself not to care. His motives were irrelevant. She couldn’t care less about Finn Carson. That was all in the past. She should stitch that into a T-shirt so she wouldn’t forget.

  A bit later, after bundling back up to brave the bitterness of a St. Louis winter, she bid Lacy farewell and deposited her fur-lined riding boots on the sidewalk of Downtown Kirkwood. The icy wind bit through the thick wool of her jacket and the flimsy barrier of her leggings. Brr. Hiking her purse on her shoulder, she pulled the drape of the hood low over her face and ducked into the bakery a few doors down from where she’d parked—where Sal’s unmarked car reminded her that there was nothing ordinary about her day.

  The hot green tea she ordered served dual purposes: soothing her nervous stomach and counteracting winter’s assault on her bare fingers. As she stood in line to pay for her steaming confection her gaze landed on a glamour shot of the Kirkwood firehouse—reminding her that Finn, and the heroic men of the fire department, had saved her life.

  “Only the tea, miss?” The cashier, a late sixties woman with a fine dusting of powdered sugar on the rounded center of her smock, smiled, her kind eyes crinkling down to fine slits.

  “Hmm. No, I’d also like two dozen of these assorted pastries. Thank you.”

  Armed with goodies, Joselyn scurried through the cold to her SUV and drove the half a mile to the fire station to properly thank the firefighters who’d come to her rescue.

  Well, some of them.

  Chapter 14

  Finn Carson

  The prism of the late morning sunlight flashed a pattern beneath the slow-moving blades of the ceiling fan. The inanimate thing seemed to somehow badger him for his unproductive morning. Finn groaned in response to the unintentional message playing in tandem with the throbbing fist working his temple from the inside of his head. Sleep deprivation plus migraine equals misery.

  But yet again, even with the cleansing wash of daylight and the anguished gray matter between his ears, her dark words rang with resounding clarity in his brain for the millionth time.

  Dear Mom,

  Something happened. I have no one, I’ve lost everything … and nobody cares. I’m thinking I’d rather be with you.

  It had been three days since he’d seen Joselyn.

  Three long days reliving those few unguarded momen
ts of fun. Remembering the sweet anticipation of her surrender. Rethinking the ominous admission from her most private thoughts.

  Three days of no sleep. Not one wink.

  On the bright side, he hadn’t suffered any flashbacks from the Monroe fire, but at this point would consider trading in a few hours of nightmares for any amount of actual sleep. His feet found the floor and slumbered about like a dead man walking. The intercom redirected him from the bathroom down the stairs to the door.

  He pressed the button. “Who is it?”

  “Carson. It’s Cody. I tried calling, but I guess your phone’s off. Can I come up?”

  “Yeah, sure thing, Largeman.” The nickname was Cody’s last name and an homage of sorts to his oversized ego and his family’s grandiose wealth.

  Opening the door, Finn’s oldest friend slapped him on the shoulder and strode in like he owned the place. Dressed to the nines in a navy pin-striped suit tailored to his brawny five-foot-nine stature, Cody’s presence and the potent sting of his cologne filled the room to excess.

  “So, what’s up? Haven’t seen you in a while.”

  “I know, man. Been super busy helping my dad at the firm.” Cody’s father owned the largest, most prestigious law firm in St. Louis, and while Cody didn’t possess a law degree, his dad made sure he was high on the payroll, doing … Finn didn’t know what Cody’s job entailed actually. But he’d always had that lawyer charm and could sweet talk his way into or out of anything. Came in handy with their childhood shenanigans. There’d been a lot of them.

  “What about you?” Cody asked.

  “You know, same old. Nothing major.”

  Cody smelled his bluff as evidenced by the sardonic grin twisting his mouth. “Anything else you’ve failed to mention?”