by Jill Shalvis
Summer sank beneath the water to wet her hair. She sat up, poured shampoo into her hand and worked on getting the smell of smoke out of her hair. She dunked again and stayed under a moment to let the shampoo rinse out.
Suddenly a hand snaked around her arm and hauled her up. Blinking water out of her eyes, she stared into Joe’s.
“What are you doing?” he demanded.
“Um, washing my hair?”
“Oh.” He let go of her. “Right.”
She stared at him, seeing the fierce angst on his face. “What did you think I was trying to—”
“I don’t know.”
“Jesus, Joe, I’m not that distraught over your second rejection.”
Looking taut enough to splinter into pieces, he dropped his chin to his chest. His genuine distress tore at her, and she touched his strong, square jaw. “I’m really okay, you know.”
“Yeah.” He slowly backed away.
“Is my touch that bad?”
“Try that good.” He stared into her eyes, his own glittering with all he felt. The unspoken promise was there. He’d catch her if she fell. He’d be there for whatever she needed, and it caught her defenseless and choked her up. Joe Walker was the real deal, as real as a man could get, and much too much for her to handle.
As if he could read her mind, he surged to his feet. “You might be able to be blasé about this,” he said, his gaze sweeping over her. “But I sure as hell can’t be.”
“Joe.”
“Your mom called. I told her I’d stay with you until dawn.”
Dawn. There were a lot of hours between now and then.
“Finish your bath. Then get into bed and try to sleep.”
“What about you?”
“I’ll be in the living room if you need me.”
His message was clear. Don’t need me.
The scream shot through Joe like shredded shrapnel. He jerked out of sleep and right off the couch, landing face first on the floor.
With the last echoes of Summer’s terrified cry echoing in his head, he leapt to his feet in the pitch black living room of her cottage. “Red?”
Only a gasping breath answered him. He rushed toward the sound, tripped over what felt like a cement pipe against his shins, and once again landed flat on his face. Something tumbled down after him, smacking him on the back of the head, making him see stars.
A light flickered on.
He’d tripped over the end table, upending the lamp, which had hit him in the head. The pain spreading outward to every inch of his body, he flopped to his back and groaned. Summer stood in the doorway next to the light switch. Her face was pale, her eyes huge in her face as she held on to the doorjamb like a lifeline.
“You okay?” she asked.
“I was going to ask you that question. Before your furniture beat the crap out of me.” With another groan, he rubbed the back of his head and staggered to his feet. “I was trying to rescue you.”
“That’s okay, the demons were all in my head.”
“A nightmare?”
Eyes still filled with the remembered horror, she nodded.
Everything within him softened in sympathy and understanding. He knew the dreams, knew how haunting they could be. He started toward her, manfully not whimpering at the cracking, stinging pain in his shins and the base of his skull.
“I was back there.” Her breath hitched. “I couldn’t get out. I could hear my dad. Screaming—” Covering her mouth with a shaking hand, she looked away.
She wore only a soft white camisole and hot-pink bikini panties, but even in the low light of the lamp he could see the goose bumps raised on her flesh. Miles of sleek, smooth, bronzed flesh.
Down boy, he thought, and did the only thing he could. He reached for her. She met him halfway, curling into him, burying her face in the crook of his neck. Wrapping his arms around her, he absorbed her tremors and stroked a hand down her hair, down her back. “Just a dream,” he murmured, and pressed his lips to her temple.
“The flames were biting at me.”
There weren’t words to take those memories away so he just held her as tight as he could, stroking his hands up and down her quivering body. Later he couldn’t name the moment when things shifted from him giving the comfort, to him losing control of the embrace entirely, but it might have been when he felt her lips against his throat.
And then the tip of her tongue.
“Red.” He anchored his hands to a neutral position by fisting them in her hair.
She did the same to him, then lifted her head, lined up their mouths and took his. And just like that, he sank into her. He couldn’t help it. There they were, with him wearing only his opened jeans and her in her barely there camisole and panties, naked flesh brushing naked flesh, mouths fused, sharing breath, sharing that soulful connection he’d never been able to find in anyone else. It felt like a homecoming.
Still kissing him, she slipped her hand into his jeans, humming with approval when she wrapped her fingers around the biggest erection he’d ever had.
He put his hands on her shoulders, skimming her straps down. Then he lifted his mouth from hers to watch as he tugged the thin material away from her. Her breasts bounced free, and her nipples hardened for him. “You take my breath,” he murmured, and bent to taste her.
She gasped but kept her eyes open. Progress. He looked up at her in the lamp’s glow and felt his heart clench.
She still had her hands in his pants, and she stroked him, squeezing lightly. “Slow down,” he warned. “Or I’ll lose it before we start.”
She didn’t slow down.
To make them even, he slipped his hands into the back of her panties, playing his fingers between her thighs in the creamy heat he found there. Not enough. He dropped to his knees and put his mouth low on her softly rounded stomach, right next to the belly button ring that was going to highlight his fantasies for many nights to come. God, she was the sexiest thing he’d ever seen. And the tastiest. He nibbled his way lower.
After that he never remembered who dragged whom to the carpet, or who found the condom, or even who tore off whose clothing, but when he finally sank into her glorious body so wet and ready for him, he felt…engrossed. And not just physically. She captured him heart and soul, and as he leaned over her, touching her face, kissing her mouth, looking into her fathomless eyes so full of emotion for him, he hoped to God she felt the same way.
Chapter 11
As the sun came up, Joe drove from Summer’s cottage back to the fire site. His eyes were gritty from lack of sleep and the already warm air didn’t help.
After he and Summer had given each other rug burns to be remembered, he’d carried her to bed and had then proceeded to watch her sleep for the next few hours. It hadn’t been her light snoring that kept him awake, but the woman herself.
He’d lain there with no covers—seemed she was also a bit of a blanket hog—staring up at the shadows on the ceiling, reliving the night. The fire. The fear. The adrenaline. Then Summer slowly stripping out of her clothes as the bath filled up, standing there in a stark white sports bra and panties, looking long and willowy and curvy.
And irresistible.
He’d pictured it thousands of times, her naked in his arms, her fiery hair draping his body as she sank down on him, taking him deep inside her. The reality of her doing just that had blown the fantasy out of the water.
She was leaving today.
He wasn’t a complete fool. He knew enough about her to understand that what had happened between them wouldn’t get in her way.
Fine. So be it. When she was gone, he could get back to some semblance of normalcy, without wondering each day if she’d send one of her soulful smiles his way. Yep. Her leaving would free up a lot of mental time and energy.
He pulled into the parking lot of the burned-out Creative Interiors II and showed his badge to the officer who’d been there all night guarding the scene. Kenny pulled up right after him. All around were a crew of f
irefighters, checking for hot spots. The chief was there, too, looking tired and haggard.
It’d been a bad season so far, the lot of them were overworked, and the hot weather hadn’t helped. They had more fires than they could investigate, and as always when that happened, things slipped through the cracks. In their county alone they were working on two major arson cases, at least one of which was the work of a serial arsonist. Everyone was itchy because they’d had a dry spring, too dry, and the fears about the wildfires getting out of control again were running rampant.
The chief came over as he and Kenny were pulling out their gear. “Wrap this one up fast as you can,” he said quietly, and when he walked away, Kenny looked at Joe with an arched brow.
“This is Creative Interiors’s second fire in a month,” Joe said. “Big coincidence to ‘wrap up quickly.’”
They were sitting on the bumper of his truck getting their gear organized, which was easier for Kenny since he’d actually had his stuff organized in the first place.
“Yeah, but the warehouse appears to be accidental,” Kenny said, pulling out his clean boots.
“We both know ‘appears’ means nothing.”
“True.” Kenny watched as Joe pulled out his own boots, not clean. “Is it possible you’re too close to the case?”
“I’m not too close to the case.” Joe stared at his dirty boots. “How the hell do you stay clean?”
“It’s not that difficult. Look, just admit it. You’re in love with Camille’s daughter.”
Joe’s heart skipped a beat. “You’ve been watching soap operas again.”
“I notice you’re not denying anything here.”
Was it love? Joe hadn’t put a name to the bone-melting, heart-stretching emotion he’d experienced last night, he hadn’t been able to.
But whatever it was that he felt for Summer, it was a whole lot more complicated than he’d ever felt for Cindy, or any woman for that matter, and he had to look away from Kenny’s knowing expression.
“So it’s serious,” Kenny said.
A serious case of stupidity, maybe. “She’s leaving. Hell, she might already be gone.”
“That should suit you, the master of screwing up long-term relationships.”
“Maybe Summer isn’t my type.”
“Since when is smart, sexy, and funny not your type?” Kenny pulled on gloves, also clean. “Face it, man, she’s been your walking wet dream your entire life.”
“No she’s not.” Joe didn’t have any clean gloves either, damn it. “She’s…flighty. Unstable. She’s…” Warm, compassionate, beautiful. Sexy as hell. “Christ.”
Kenny tossed him a pair of new gloves from his own kit. “If it helps, I think I could feel the same way about her mom.”
“Camille?” Joe stared at him. “Okay, that’s it, no more soap operas at lunchtime for you.”
Kenny’s smile faded. “You have a problem with me going out with Camille after the investigation’s over?”
“No, Camille would be so lucky to have you. But Kenny, she won’t keep you. Who do you think taught Summer that love is either a terrifying soul destroyer or skin-deep only?”
“They’re just both skittish, is all.” Kenny smiled confidently. “With the right man, they could learn to trust their hearts.”
“You’re scaring me, I mean it.”
“You girls going to work or gab all damn day?” the chief barked at them from fifty yards away.
Kenny and Joe looked at each other, then moved into the building, dropping all their problems at the door to concentrate, as they’d done for two years now.
Inside the store was a mess. The walls were charred through to the studs and the furnishings were either melted, burnt to a crisp, or floating in the mud and debris on the ground. Joe flicked open the lens on his camera and began shooting.
The first thing that stuck out like a sore thumb were the puddles of wax throughout the store. Candles, he thought grimly, snapping pictures of them. “Summer thinks she might have left one lit.”
Kenny made a sorrowful noise. They both knew exactly how dangerous candles were. They saw hundreds of fires caused by them every year. They waded through an inch of water and grime to find each and every puddle of wax, and recorded it.
The hot spot had been in the small employee’s bathroom off the main floor, a room lined with wooden paneling and smooth parquet flooring. According to the burn pattern, here was the area of origin. There’d been a candle originally seated on the porcelain sink, now just another puddle of melted wax on the wood.
“If people knew the statistics on how many fires these votives started, would they stop buying them?” Kenny asked.
“Doubt it. People never think its going to happen to them.” Oddly enough, even if the candle had tipped here, there was no additional fuel to keep it burning, nor was it beneath the burn pattern on the opposite wall.
Which meant the candle hadn’t been the point of origin at all. Joe pulled out his handheld accelerant detector unit as a matter of course. The reading meter went crazy.
Joe exchanged a long look with Kenny.
“Interesting,” Kenny said.
Given that it was a bathroom, there were all sorts of possibilities. Nail polish remover. Oil. Chemicals. A neglectful accident.
Or…malicious intent. Joe looked closer. On the wall beneath the burn pattern had hung a toilet paper holder. The paper itself was long gone, but he eyed the wall and saw it as it might have been before the fire.
Paper hanging down, dipping into a puddle of gasoline, or paint thinner, whatever accelerant had caused the reading on his meter. It would have acted as a wick, and if the roll had been full, all the better.
A match could have been lit, tossed into the puddle of gasoline.
Poof.
Above the toilet paper had been a towel rack, with at least two towels on it. More fuel. By that time, the flames had been hot, leaping straight up, catching the wood paneled walls, the wood ceiling.
A tinder box waiting to explode.
All hidden by the more obvious “evidence,” the conveniently left-burning candles.
The flames would have leapt across the ceiling and down the other walls, and then outward. And with the store closed, and the bathroom right in the middle of the place, it had grown hotter and faster, burning out of control before anyone on the outside caught the scent.
There were any number of motives here. Revenge, excitement, insurance fraud. They both knew it. They’d both seen it all.
Kenny opened his evidence-collecting box. “Better get everything. We just went from accidental to God knows what.”
“Yeah.” Joe swiped at his brow and set his camera aside. Together in the hot, damp, tiny space they meticulously began to sweep the entire bathroom.
“So were you up all night or what?” Kenny asked when Joe couldn’t hold back his umpteenth yawn.
“I don’t want to talk about it.”
“Ah.”
Joe scowled and sat back on his heels. “What the hell does that mean?”
“It means now I get why you’re so prickly. You must not have gotten laid last night.”
A lot he knew. “I’m not prickly.”
“As a porcupine, but forget it. You don’t want to talk about it.”
“That’s right, damn it.” Joe shoved his flashlight into his kit. “Look, I was just trying to help her.”
“Because she’s nobody to you.”
Joe gritted his teeth and eyed what was left in the room. After the fire, the water, and now what he and Kenny had done over the past two hours, there wasn’t much.
“A mess,” Kenny muttered. “And if this is connected to the warehouse fire…”
“Yeah. A bigger mess.” Joe thought of how Summer had been in the basement, asleep, alone. Vulnerable. If she hadn’t had her cell phone, if she hadn’t woken up…
His gut clenched hard.
“What?” Kenny asked.
“She could have died.”
/>
“Yeah. Now let’s use what we found here to prove whether or not it’d have been murder.”
A few hours after Joe left, Summer turned over to her back in her bed. Eyes still closed, she stretched, and decided she felt delicious. Thanks to Joe.
She opened her eyes, then gasped.
“Sorry, darling,” Tina said. She and Camille stood over the bed with twin worried expressions. “Didn’t mean to scare you.”
Summer drew a breath and shoved her hair out of her face. “You’d better have caffeine.”
“Yes. And food too.”
They gathered in Summer’s tiny kitchen at the even tinier table.
“Tell us everything,” Tina said, and pushed a croissant toward Summer.
Camille didn’t say a word, just poured tea.
Socks, who’d come with them, wound around their feet, purring, waiting for falling crumbs.
Summer tucked her feet beneath her and tried to smell the tea to see which healing potion Camille was feeding her, but could smell nothing but herself and the smoke still in her skin and nose.
And Joe. She smelled Joe.
“Talk,” Tina said.
“Yeah.” She didn’t suppose Tina meant the part where Joe had put his talented fingers and mouth on her, or how he’d drawn her out of herself, so far out that it would have terrified her if she hadn’t sensed he’d been just as swept away.
Who’d have thought Joe Walker would have grown up to be such a passionate, demanding, giving, incredibly magnificent lover?
“Summer? Can you tell us?”
She shrugged off the memories of Joe and tried to figure out where to start with the fire, but the thought of saying it all out loud made her heart pound heavily. “Well…I was closing up, and had to go downstairs to turn off the lights. The beanbag was there, looking comfy, and…” And I felt so alone. “I sat down for a minute. I guess I fell asleep.” And woke to the smothering feeling of choking on smoke. Her chest tightened.
Oh, damn.
“Oh, darling.” Tina got up and stood behind her, stroking her hair, rubbing her shoulders. “I’m so sorry you had to go through this again. It’s not right.”