by Lisa Childs
He could lose his peace of mind as well as the job he loved.
Cody snorted. “Like I would know how a mom acts…”
The younger firefighter had no family. He’d grown up in a series of foster homes. He claimed he’d liked being raised that way—that staying in one place for too long would have driven him crazy.
Dawson figured it mattered who was in that place with you. He sure as hell hadn’t wanted to leave Avery. If the call hadn’t come in, he would have given in to temptation. He would have crawled back into bed with her; he would have wound his arms around her and held her tight. But no matter how tightly he held her, he’d have to let her go. She didn’t live in Northern Lakes; she was only here for a week. Less than a week now. Even less if she got her story sooner.
“Trust me,” Dawson said. “You’re acting like my mother.” She’d always been so overprotective—always wanting to know where he was going and what he was doing. She’d tried to control his life so she wouldn’t lose him. But in trying to control him, she’d lost him faster.
Cody shuddered. “Maybe it’s good I never had one, then. I’d hate having to answer to anyone—which is another reason I don’t want to ever get married.”
Dawson chuckled at the hypocrisy of his friend’s reply. “So, you don’t want to answer to anyone, but you want me to answer to you?”
Cody chuckled at himself. “Hey, you’re the one with the special assignment.”
“Right now I’m just concerned about the fire,” Dawson said. It was out but for the last puffs of smoke wafting from the burned ground, but he wanted to know what or who had caused it.
“What do you think this was?” Wyatt asked their boss.
Braden had been studying it, walking around the area. “It could be another hot spot,” he said—almost reluctantly.
“You don’t sound entirely convinced of that,” Dawson observed. And neither was he. The ground had been so scorched from that first fire—everything so dead. What could have ignited it, let alone fueled it?
There shouldn’t have been any hot spots. There was nothing left to get hot.
That wasn’t the case at all with the fire that had burned between him and Avery. It had been hotter than any passion he’d felt before. Her heat and her desire had scorched him. But it hadn’t burned itself out. Not yet. He’d intended to spend the night with her but not to sleep. He knew there was so much more to experience. So many ways they could bring each other pleasure. But when he’d found her sleeping, he’d had an anxious moment—feared that he was getting in too deep.
He’d already brushed that fear aside though when the siren had sounded. He’d intended to go back to her. To make love to her again.
And again.
Dawn had only just broken. She probably wasn’t awake yet. He could go back to her—could crawl back into bed with her. Or he could have if he hadn’t locked the door to keep her safe.
Of course, he hadn’t been able to turn the dead bolt from the outside. But locking the door should keep out whoever had been inside the cottage the other night. The lock would also keep him out.
“What do you think?” Wyatt prodded their boss to reply.
Braden sighed. “It’s been really sunny and dry. It could just be firing back up on its own.”
“Could?” Cody asked.
Braden shrugged. “We’ll do some more tests for accelerants—see if anything turns up here.”
Dawson had an uneasy feeling that it would. Because if the arsonist was still in Northern Lakes, he wouldn’t be able to resist setting another fire. The urge would be too great; he’d have to keep burning things.
Had he been the one who’d burned whatever had created the ashes in Avery’s fireplace? The one whose footprints he’d found around the trees?
Why was he watching her? Because he’d already made contact with her or because he wanted to?
Dawson had to figure out some kind of test of his own—some way he could learn how much Avery really knew.
As if he’d read Dawson’s mind, Braden asked, “What about you?”
“What about me?” he asked. He had his opinion about the fires, but until they had confirmation, he intended to keep it to himself—which was probably exactly why Braden was reluctant to offer a definite opinion. He didn’t want to alarm anyone with news that the arsonist was still around, still preying on the town in which they lived, in which they had friends and family.
Sure, they cared about the blazes they battled in other states. They wanted to protect the people and the property. But it was different at home—it was more personal. Dawson had a feeling that it was for the arsonist, too. That was why he’d started the fire in the national forest, why he’d stayed here.
Because he probably lived here, too.
“Have you learned anything from the reporter?” Braden asked him.
Dawson had learned a lot but none of it had anything to do with the fire.
“What could he learn from me?” a familiar female voice asked.
It wasn’t the question he’d expected her to ask. But then he hadn’t expected her to show up here at all. He whirled around, alarmed to see her standing just outside the wafts of smoke. They had machines running yet. The fire engine. A backhoe. No wonder they hadn’t heard her little Jeep or her approach. But he should have sensed she was near. “What the hell are you doing here?”
He flashed to all those times he’d had to rescue reporters who’d gotten too close to a fire. Too many times…
People like her—career driven and overly ambitious—needlessly endangered themselves and others. It annoyed him when other reporters did it; it infuriated him that she had. “You can’t be this close to the fire.”
She peered around him. “What fire? All I see is smoke.”
“How’d you know where to find us?” Braden asked. He’d been nice to her the day before—too nice, in Dawson’s opinion. That niceness was gone now. He didn’t like reporters at the scene of a fire any more than Dawson did.
Despite the coldness of his boss’s question, she smiled as if he’d wished her a good morning. “That curly-haired kid is so helpful.”
More likely helpless to resist her charms. Dawson could hardly blame him, though, when he hadn’t managed to resist her himself. While he hadn’t told her anything about the fire or really about himself, he’d gone to bed with her. And he wanted to again—so badly that he might reveal things he had no intention of revealing…
Cody cursed. “That damn kid…” He’d been the one to vouch for the teenager and get him the part-time job working at the firehouse. Like Cody, the kid had grown up in foster homes. Once Stanley had turned eighteen, he’d had to leave his last one and go out on his own.
Dawson suspected Cody had helped him out with more than just getting the job. And he teased Dawson about having a hero complex…
“What happened here?” she persisted as she gazed around at the smoke rising from the scorched earth.
With her sunny blond hair and golden skin, she looked so out of place in the middle of all the darkness. Everything that had once been just as beautiful and vibrant was gone now. And the hot spots firing back up hadn’t allowed any of the vegetation to start growing again. It was as if the fire—or the arsonist—was determined to keep this area dead.
His voice gruff with fear for her safety, Dawson replied, “Nothing that concerns you.”
“Sounds like it does,” she said. Her turquoise eyes hardened with anger and suspicion, she focused on his face and asked, “What were you supposed to find out from me?”
Was that all she’d heard? What about Braden checking for signs of accelerants? Had she heard that too?
And what would she do with the information? Put herself in danger, no doubt.
Ignoring her question, he replied, “You can’t be here.” Dawson wrapped his arm around her waist and turned her back in the direction she’d come from.
She squirmed in his embrace. Just a short while ago, she’d clutched at him, her nails diggi
ng into his back, and struggled to get closer to him. Now she struggled to get away.
But he held her closely as he guided her over the black ground to her older model Jeep Wrangler. He opened the driver’s door for her. “It’s not safe for you here.”
Her face was flushed and he could see the anger in her eyes as she glared at him. She’d heard enough that she was mad at him, mad that he’d been trying to get information from her.
“The fire’s out,” she said.
He suspected she wasn’t just talking about the flames they had extinguished. She wasn’t going to let him spend the night again—not on the couch and most especially not in her bed.
11
“HE USED ME!” She had never been so furious. It didn’t matter how many times she’d paced her sister’s kitchen—her fury hadn’t lessened. She nearly trembled with it.
Kim laughed.
“So much for being a sympathetic big sister,” Avery griped. And she shot Kim a glare every bit as venomous as the one she’d given Dawson when he’d all but shoved her back into her Jeep at the fire scene.
Kim laughed again. “It’s hard to be sympathetic when you had fully intended to use him.”
Heat flushed Avery’s face. It was probably from all the pacing. She wasn’t embarrassed. Even if he had used her, she didn’t regret having sex with him. She regretted more that they wouldn’t be doing it again. “I wasn’t using him!”
“You don’t want to do a story about him?” Kim asked.
“Yes, I do,” Avery said. “But that isn’t using him.”
“But he doesn’t want you to do the story,” Kim reminded her. “Are you sure the story is really what you want?”
“Yes,” she said. There was definitely a story there. She would get it despite him. “That’s all I want.”
Kim smiled skeptically. “Sure it is.”
“It is now.”
“Oh,” her sister said with a nod of realization. “You slept with him.”
She hadn’t slept with him. He’d slipped out while she’d been sleeping. Sure, he’d been called out to that fire. Her face heated again over how he’d rushed her away from that fire as if she had been just a pesky reporter to him, as if he hadn’t seen her naked and been inside her…
“He acted all sweet and protective,” Avery said. And she’d fallen for it, for that hero complex of his. But after what she’d heard, she didn’t think he was a hero at all.
“But he was just using you for sex?” Kim asked.
“I don’t think so,” Avery admitted. He hadn’t been with her for sex or because he’d wanted her; he’d been with her for information. And that was why she was so furious.
What had he been supposed to find out from her? She was still asking herself that a while later when she drove up to her cottage. She hadn’t walked even the short distance between Kim’s place and her cottage since the other night—since she’d had that eerie sensation of someone watching her.
Even though she’d rushed out after Dawson that morning, she’d been careful to lock the door. She was probably overreacting. Those ashes had probably been inside the fireplace already—the smoke smell just from one of the bonfires on the beach.
But she’d rather be safe than sorry. That was why she couldn’t let Dawson distract her again—why she had to focus on the fire and not on the desire she felt for him.
Finding the door still locked, she breathed a sigh of relief as she turned the key in it. She didn’t have to worry about anyone being inside now. But as she stepped over the threshold, her foot slipped and she nearly fell. She regained her balance and looked down to see what had tripped her. Someone had slid an envelope under the door.
Had Dawson left her an apology? It hardly seemed his style. But then she hadn’t thought that using her was his style, either. So much for that hero complex everyone—including her—had thought he possessed…
She studied the envelope. The handwriting definitely didn’t look the way she would have imagined his. The letters were big and loopy—almost childlike. And it had been addressed to Miss Kincaid instead of Avery.
No. The letter wasn’t from Dawson. It was probably Northern Lakes’s version of junk mail, some kid’s offer to mow her lawn or something. So she didn’t have a burning need to open it at the moment. Her burning need was to speak to Dawson, instead—to find out exactly what he had been expected to learn from her.
Heat pooled low, and that ache she’d had for him returned—the pressure building inside her. She had a burning need for him, too. Still…
Even though he had apparently just been using her. And he’d acted as if he was worried she was using him. She hadn’t been. But she should.
She’d been watching her station online. Another new reporter had been hired. To replace her? Hopefully not. It had already been difficult enough to get airtime. Now it would be harder yet. Unless she broke a big story soon…
Hearing a vehicle drive up, she shoved the envelope into her purse. Then she glanced out the front window. Her heart rate quickened when she saw the black US Forest Service truck nearly scraping between the trees. Dawson had come to see her again. To use her?
Heat streaked through her, but it was the heat of desire more than anger. Maybe she wanted him to use her after all.
Moments later, her door vibrated from the force of his knock. She eagerly opened it with the playful threat, “I should whap you with the oar again.”
She should have checked that it was him before she opened her door. Because it wasn’t Dawson standing on her welcome mat.
“Again?” her visitor asked. “I don’t believe you’ve ever whapped me with anything, Ms. Kincaid.”
*
THE KNOCK AT his door didn’t surprise Dawson. Apparently Cody had been coming by the past two nights. Dawson had thought it was just to razz him about his special assignment to get the “hot reporter” to talk. But maybe he had another reason. Maybe Cody wanted to talk himself.
He had an uneasy feeling Cody might want to talk about leaving. Dawson didn’t want to lose a valuable team member and a good friend. But they’d all wondered how long Cody would stick around before the wanderlust got him. Sure, they traveled all the time for their job. But they’d been spending more time this season at their home base because of that damn arsonist.
Maybe it was too much—or actually not enough—for Cody. He wanted more action.
Dawson did, too. But the action he wanted had nothing to do with his job and everything to do with Avery Kincaid. He would have gone back to her place tonight—if he hadn’t doubted she would let him in.
But when he opened his door, it wasn’t Cody he found standing on his porch. It was her.
He sucked in a breath. Her turquoise eyes sparkled in the light spilling out of his cabin. God, she was beautiful. “How did you find me?”
Unlike Braden and Wyatt, who had places close to the firehouse, he and Cody were stationed out in the forest.
“I’m a reporter.” She shoved past him to step inside his cabin. “I know how to track down a story.”
He wasn’t sure letting her inside was that smart. But the breeze was brisk, and his hair and skin were still damp from the shower he’d just taken. So he closed the door—shutting out the chill even as he shut her inside with him. “I’m not a story.”
Not anymore. And he damn well wouldn’t be again—not even for her.
“You should be,” she said as she glanced around the place. There wasn’t much to see. It was an open space with his bed in the middle. The kitchenette was off to one side, the door to the bathroom off the other wall. “Even your boss thinks so.”
“What?” When Dawson had left the firehouse earlier that evening, Braden had mentioned that he was going to do damage control with the reporter. Making her more determined to do the special feature about him sounded more like damage expansion to him. More damage than Braden realized. “What did Zimmer tell you—besides where I live?”
What the hell had hi
s boss been thinking, to let her know where to find him?
Oh, yeah, Zimmer wanted him to find out what she knew about the arsonist. At the moment Dawson was more worried about what she knew about him.
“Superintendent Zimmer said that he’s worked with you for years,” she replied.
Sometimes he forgot how long it had been. He’d joined the Forest Service fire department fresh out of college, and he’d requested to be assigned to this area even though he hadn’t grown up here. He’d grown up out West. So it might have been easier for him to get hired onto a Hotshot team out there, especially if they’d known who he was. But he hadn’t wanted anyone to know who he was.
Panic gripped him, tightening his stomach into knots. She couldn’t know…
She couldn’t find out.
Avery continued, “But he still doesn’t know that much about you.”
There was a reason for that. Dawson had worried that if Zimmer knew too much he might reassign him to another Hotshot crew. And he had his reasons for wanting to be on this team—with a particular team member.
“That’s because there’s not that much to know,” he said. “There’s nothing special about me for your feature.”
“You’ve said that before,” she said. “I didn’t believe you then. And I don’t believe you now.”
Was that the only thing she didn’t believe? She’d looked at him earlier as if he’d betrayed her, as if she couldn’t trust him and wouldn’t let him near her again.
She wasn’t looking at him that way now. She was looking at him the way he always looked at her—with lust. Her gaze traveled down his chest. His shirt was in his hand instead of on his body. He hadn’t even buttoned his jeans yet; they hung low on his hips.
As her gaze skimmed down there, his cock swelled and pressed against the zipper. “Avery?”
She looked up, and her face was flushed—with the same desire he felt for her.
“I thought you were mad at me,” he said.
“I was.”
“That’s why I didn’t come over tonight,” he explained. But he’d wanted to—so badly—just like he wanted her.
“Superintendent Zimmer came by instead,” she said.