Dancing with Fire

by Susan Kearney

  Promo Page

  The race is on to find the missing formula. Will they come together or will she keep them apart?

  “You’re stuck with me.” He didn’t raise his voice. But he didn’t get out of her car, either. She could see determination in the stubborn tilt of his jaw, the oh-too-casual tone on his voice, the simple challenging gesture of slipping on a pair of sunglasses and easing back into the seat.

  “Fine.” She didn’t have time to argue. Twisting the key in the ignition, she fired up the engine and backed out the driveway, trying hard to keep her temper under wraps. She understood his high-handed tactics were due to his concern about her safety, but she didn’t like it. “If you want to waste an entire afternoon with me—”

  “Time with you is never wasted.”

  She glared at him. “You don’t even know where I’m going.”

  “I’m fine with Orlando.” He grinned. “The specifics don’t matter.”

  “Maybe I’m going to . . . to see my lover.” She said the most outrageous thing she could think of.

  He chuckled.

  And that made her all the more furious. He didn’t believe her and wasn’t the slightest bit jealous. “Why is that funny? I could have a lover.”

  “But you don’t.”

  “Really?”

  “If you had a lover, you wouldn’t have kissed me.” How did he know that? “You just want to make me angry so you can justify pushing me away. It won’t work.”

  “So now you’re into psychobabble?”

  “I’m into you. I like you, Kaylin.”

  He’d seen right through her. She wanted to hit him, and not just for his perception but for telling her straight up that he liked her. He wasn’t giving her maneuvering room. He wasn’t allowing her to tell herself that their kiss had just been one of those momentary things. He wasn’t allowing her to tell herself that she didn’t mean anything to him. He wasn’t letting her misinterpret his feelings.

  He wasn’t playing games. And he wasn’t giving her any place to go.

  Novels by Susan Kearney coming soon from Bell Bridge Books

  Kiss Me Deadly

  The Challenge

  The Dare

  The Ultimatum

  The Quest

  Island Heat

  Solar Heat

  Dancing With Fire

  by

  Susan Kearney

  Bell Bridge Books

  Copyright

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons (living or dead), events or locations is entirely coincidental.

  Bell Bridge Books

  PO BOX 300921

  Memphis, TN 38130

  Ebook ISBN: 978-1-61194-274-3

  Print ISBN: 978-1-61194-255-2

  Bell Bridge Books is an Imprint of BelleBooks, Inc.

  Copyright © 2008 by Hair Express, Inc.

  Printed and bound in the United States of America.

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer, who may quote brief passages in a review.

  A mass market edition of this book was published by Tor in 2008

  We at BelleBooks enjoy hearing from readers.

  Visit our websites – www.BelleBooks.com and www.BellBridgeBooks.com.

  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  Cover design: Tara Adkins

  Interior design: Hank Smith

  Photo credits:

  Male face (manipulated) © Jperagine | Dreamstime.com

  Fire (manipulated) © Julia Burlachenko | Dreamstime.com

  Dancer and sunset (manipulated) © Tara Adkins

  :Ewdf:01:

  Dedication

  To my favorite San Diego couple, Tara and Jared. Thanks for the book cover. Thanks even more for Busy Bee. Love you all a bunch.

  1

  DAMN, the woman had moves.

  Stunned and awed, Sawyer Scott peered through the sheer curtains into Kaylin Danner’s dance studio. Ignoring the hot Florida sunshine baking his neck while he stood on the sidewalk, he watched, riveted by Kaylin’s shapely silhouette, a Kaylin he’d never seen before.

  The conservative, practical, proper ballet teacher he might have imagined in pink toe shoes and a sleek leotard had been replaced by a Kaylin in black, a Kaylin who was innovative, wild, and uninhibited, a side of her that Sawyer barely recognized. Beyond the pink door of the dance studio, this new Kaylin was dancing to the radical music of Goldfrapp. Sawyer would have given up dinners for a week to watch her dance all evening. In fact, Kaylin’s erotic and undulating movements had so seduced him that he’d almost forgotten he’d come to her school about business.

  And forgetting business wasn’t like him at all. During the last ten years while Sawyer had earned doctorates in chemical engineering and physics at MIT, he’d rarely been distracted from his goal of running a manufacturing plant with Kaylin’s father, Dr. Henry Danner. Set on having the satisfaction of being an innovator and entrepreneur, he’d turned down a big offer from a petrochemical company to work with Henry. And they’d made remarkable progress.

  In fact, they were on the verge of a breakthrough. Sawyer had never regretted his decision, a decision that meant he’d been doing little more than studying, researching, and dreaming about oil. Yet now, seeing his business partner’s daughter dance, he had no doubt Kaylin would be invading his future thoughts as easily as she’d distracted him from his present objective.

  Sawyer had no idea what kind of dance Kaylin was performing but was fairly certain it wasn’t the classical ballet she taught the neighborhood children. No way. These moves were as complex as they were mesmerizing. And so out of character for Kaylin that the surprise had stopped his forward momentum.

  But he wasn’t here to watch a private performance or to enroll as a student in her class. He was here on business. Sawyer forced his hand to knock on the door. But Kaylin didn’t stop dancing.

  “Probably can’t hear over the drumbeat,” he muttered. A drumbeat that echoed from his ears to his toes.

  Taking a deep breath, Sawyer opened the door and stepped from warm and humid to hot and steamy. Kaylin wore a black sports bra and matching yoga pants that sat low on her hips and flared wide at the ankles. Her feet were bare, her hair in a messy knot at the back of her head. However, her clothing, or lack of it, had nothing to do with his breath whistling out of his lungs. Instead of precise spins and regulated moves that he would have expected of the Kaylin he thought he knew, this Kaylin’s body ebbed and flowed like a wave, the rhythm provocative, the beat primal. The effect she had on him was druglike, tantalizing, like a whitecap swelling, breaking, sweeping him under.

  From outside the studio, the full impact of her skill hadn’t been as apparent. Her stomach muscles, emphasized by a slick gleam of sweat, shimmered and flexed as she spun a complete rotation. As she twirled, she caught sight of him and went still. If he hadn’t been watching closely, he wouldn’t have seen her bristle, her nostrils flare, her lips tighten, her eyes narrow—just a bit. Then she flicked off the music, picked up a towel and draped it around her graceful neck, and raised an imperious eyebrow.

  Dabbing her face with the towel, she shot him a you-better-have-a- damn-good-reason-for-invading-my-space look. “Yes?”

  “That dance . . . wow.” He could tell by her expression she wasn’t sure whether t
o take his words as a compliment. She bit her lower lip, the confidence and sensuality of the dance hidden, replaced by invisible armor she’d wrapped around her taut frame. She appeared as unhappy as he’d be if a stranger intruded on one of his experiments.

  Uncertain if he’d offended her, he combed his fingers through his hair. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to come in uninvited. I knocked. You didn’t hear. Those moves you do . . . that’s not classical ballet, is it?”

  Kaylin chuckled, her green eyes brightening, her lips breaking into a wide and playful grin. In that one moment, her barriers shredded, and her inner self shone through. “That was tribal fusion belly dance. An experiment.”

  “If you want my opinion,” and he wasn’t sure she did, “your experiment’s an unqualified success.”

  “Thanks, but as you aren’t a dance critic . . . what are you doing here?”

  She hadn’t taken long to redirect his personal comments. She did it smoothly, giving him a gentle brush-off. He had to give her credit. Kaylin Danner was outwardly consistent. Her tribal dancing—a wild aberration in her normally staid character—had shocked and intrigued him. To his frustration, the Kaylin he’d occasionally seen around her father’s business had returned, the one who was a master at keeping Sawyer at an emotional distance. “I’m looking for your father.”

  She frowned. “Isn’t he at the lab?”

  Twenty-five years ago, Henry Danner had built his lab, a nine-thousand-square-foot steel building, on the one-acre lot next door to the house he’d inherited from his grandparents. Back then, the zoning laws had permitted industrial building in the area, allowing Henry to construct his lab in the middle of the neighborhood, and it had since been grandfathered in. Henry could work on his inventions literally in his own backyard. Although Kaylin’s studio shared land with her family’s home and stood about a hundred yards behind her father’s laboratory, Sawyer hadn’t been here before.

  Since Henry had made Sawyer a partner in an exciting new business, they’d stayed busy at the lab. Lately, their results had been encouraging, and Sawyer had just returned to Tampa after an interesting consultation with researchers at the University of Michigan. With technology growing exponentially, Sawyer and Henry couldn’t afford not to stay apprised of the latest developments.

  “Your father didn’t answer the phone or my knock.” Sawyer pulled a key from his pocket and held it up. “My key didn’t work, and he didn’t answer his cell phone. I heard your music and thought you might know where he is. So I came over. Why’d he change the locks?”

  “He upgraded security.” Kaylin went from uptight to thoughtful. “You were gone last week, right?”

  “Yeah. Why the upgrade?” Sawyer was surprised she’d noticed his absence. Kaylin didn’t come over to the lab much, if ever. She preferred her dancing. According to Henry, she’d been all set to head for New York and ply her talents on Broadway four years ago. Then her mother, Danielle, had died, and Kaylin had given up a serious boyfriend and her dreams. She’d stayed home to help raise her younger sisters and undoubtedly pick up the slack. Henry, who would be the first to admit he was a better inventor than businessman, needed Kaylin’s help to pay the bills. Though with Sawyer on board, that was about to change.

  Still, he understood why Kaylin was so prickly. As much as he admired her loyalty to her family, he thought it a shame that she’d given up her ambitions to stay home and teach ballet to five-year-olds. Anyone who could move like she did should be sharing her talent with the world.

  “Would you like a glass of water?” Kaylin asked, then headed toward an alcove she used as her studio’s office.

  The apricot-painted walls showed off framed pictures of her students as well as posters of famous ballet stars from the New York City and Moscow Ballet companies. A pair of threadbare toe shoes hung from ribbons on a hook, signed by some ballerina whose name he couldn’t read. She opened the mini-fridge beside her desk, removed a pitcher of water, poured two glasses, and handed him one.

  She sighed. “Dad told me this morning he has the biodiesel formula all worked out. He was waiting for you to return to fire up the plant’s reactor. But when I walked my students to their parents’ cars, I heard the generator go on. I assumed you were with him. You think he started without you?”

  “I doubt it. It takes both of us to make fuel. He was probably just warming up the power.” However, the generator hadn’t been on when Sawyer had discovered his key didn’t work. He hoped the power wasn’t on the fritz.

  Kaylin’s shoulders slumped as she let down her guard again, allowing him to see her concern. “Dad’s been working too hard. Sometimes to relax, he sits by my mother’s rose bushes. Did you check out the backyard?”

  Kaylin stood and pulled open the sheer curtains so they could both look out the window. Sawyer’s gaze swept over the lot that Kaylin’s students’ parents used for parking. Spiked grass with Mexican heather, blooming yellow, pink, and orange zinnias, roses, and variegated ginger decorated the yard. Her students and their parents were long gone. And Henry wasn’t there.

  His gaze shifted to the Danners’ back porch, a cozy deck with a potted pink grapefruit tree and hanging baskets of white and pink orchids. Their mutt, Randy, lay curled and lazy on a lounger, sunbathing in a beam of Florida sunlight that filtered between palm fronds. The grass needed mowing, and the orange trees required pruning, but the ferns beneath the moss-laden granddaddy oaks shone green and healthy. A swift perusal of the fading olive-colored paint along with the curling shingles and sagging shutters of the family’s two-story home reminded Sawyer that the house needed repairs to squeak through another hurricane season. He didn’t see Henry anywhere.

  Kaylin went to her big yellow purse on a hook by her desk. “Let’s see if he’s in the lab.” She pulled a key from her purse, but it snagged on a piece of paper. An airline ticket fell to the floor.

  “Going somewhere?” he asked.

  “Maybe.” A muscle in her jaw tightened, and she picked up the ticket and replaced it in her purse.

  “Maybe?” His eyebrows rose in surprise. “But you’ve already bought the ticket.”

  Kaylin helped support the family with her dance studio. She was practical, full of common sense, and managed the family checkbook like a seasoned accountant and financial planner. And she never, ever went anywhere. Not to the beach with friends. Not over to Disney or Universal Studios for a day trip. Certainly not anywhere that required air travel. It was so atypical for her to buy an airline ticket, never mind one that she wasn’t certain she’d use, that she’d piqued Sawyer’s curiosity. And from the flush of color in her cheeks, she didn’t want to talk about it.

  “I haven’t—”

  One moment she was placing her purse strap onto her shoulder, the next a thunderous roar rocked them. The glass panes of her studio’s windows shattered. Sawyer yanked her to the floor with him and caught a glimpse outside. A fiery inferno.

  “Oh God,” he breathed.

  The lab had exploded.

  2

  KAYLIN AND SAWYER shoved up from the floor and dashed out of the studio. Her view of the hellish flames was up-close and perfect. Just like her fear.

  God.

  Oh, God.

  Dad had started up his lab, and something had gone terribly wrong. Rectangular, made of gray and rusted metal, the entire building had burst into flames. The red-hot metal walls flickered with orange fire, and the roaring flames devoured the two-story flat roof. Even from here, the heat beat on her face.

  The fuel—Dad’s biodiesel—must be burning, the black smoke curling into an ugly death plume. As Kaylin stared in growing horror, a second explosion rocked the building, spitting flames thirty feet into the sky.

  “Call for help,” Sawyer told her, his face drawn and hardened, his jaw set as if clenching his teeth. “I’ll check the back of the building.”

 
; As Sawyer sprinted around the lab, she prayed the other side wasn’t on fire, too. Hands shaking, she reached into her purse, plucked out her phone, and dialed 9-1-1. On autopilot, she gave her name and address. “Hurry. Please hurry.”

  No one could survive that inferno. Yet, Dad might not have been inside. After all, Sawyer had been at the lab before he’d come to her studio, and no one had answered his knock. Her father could have gone to buy more caustic soda, used in the biodiesel production process, or to see his attorney. Or maybe he’d had a dental appointment he’d forgotten to mention.

  Kaylin looked right and left and didn’t see her father in the backyard. Not on the back deck. Not beside her mother’s rose bushes.

  Don’t panic.

  She had to hold herself together. For her sisters. Perhaps Dad had stepped out to get the mail. Or returned to the house for a file or a wrench. Or gone to his car to run an errand.

  Randy scampered by on his short little legs and started barking at the fire from the relative safety of the back porch. A neighbor shrieked for her children to come inside. Even from her studio, the air reeked with the stench of burning fuel, causing Kaylin’s eyes to water.

  Her sixteen-year-old sister, Lia, sprinted across the yard with Billy, her best friend, in tow. Lia had lost her usual flirty and sassy expression. She now wore a wide-eyed look of horror. Billy hung back, and his normal teenage cockiness had vanished. And when, for a moment, Billy and Kaylin locked gazes, she could have sworn he looked guilty as hell. When he took off running toward the house, her suspicions spiked.

  But then Lia was tugging Kaylin toward the lab with surprising strength. “We have to get Dad out. He was in there.”

  Please, no. “Are you sure?”

  “Billy and I were just there, talking to Dad. He got a phone call, and then his line went dead. We left. We have to get him out.”

  No way would she let her sister walk into that blaze. “Sawyer’s checking the lab.” Kaylin tugged Lia back toward the house, a relatively easy task since her sister’s initial strength seemed to have vanished. “If Dad’s phone went dead, maybe he went to the house for his spare battery or to recharge it on the cigarette lighter in his car.”