Not in Her Wildest Dreams

by Dani Collins

  Lyle snorted and kept going.

  Sterling took all the alcohol across the yards and donated it to the next firefighter barbeque. Cam was there, along with milling neighbors and lookie-loos.

  “You’ve had a busy week,” Sterling said to Cam.

  “A day off from talking to a Fogarty would be nice. Shit.” He surveyed the rubble with a shake of his head.

  “Yeah.” Sterling scratched his hair. It felt gritty. He wondered if Lyle would put off construction in the bathroom long enough for him to shower. “You’ll want to talk to Paige. She’s asleep right now, though, and needs it.”

  Another car pulled up and they turned to see Britta and Zack climb from their vehicle. Zack’s eyes bugged out. Britta covered her mouth as she saw what remained of the house: not bloody much.

  Zack shot a horrified look across the car roof at her. “Why is Dad’s truck here?”

  “He came back this morning. He’s at my place,” Sterling said.

  Zack walked around where the carport used to be, eye-balling the last of the firefighters as he made his way across to Sterling’s yard.

  “Paige is there, too,” Sterling told Britta.

  She nodded jerkily and pulled a plastic bag from the back seat. It was stuffed full of something, clothes maybe. She flicked a glance at Cam then drew back from something in his expression.

  Cam scowled at Britta’s back as she walked away.

  Sterling felt the same chill he always felt between his parents when a trip to the lake house was imminent. “Look, I want to know who almost killed Paige last night. Should I wait for another officer, or...?”

  Cam swore under his breath. “No. Let’s get it done.”

  He spent a few minutes talking to the firemen first, looking at where they had identified probable trails of accelerant. Sterling felt sicker and sicker as he took it all in.

  As they approached Sterling’s house a few minutes later, they heard the murmur of Britta’s voice through the open bathroom window.

  Lyle’s voice rose loud enough for them to make out the words. “...I’d offer support if I had a fucking job!”

  “I’m not talking about money, although it would be a nice surprise to see you open your wallet more than once a month. No, I meant the only involvement I want from you with this one is financial.”

  Sterling’s step faltered. Did that mean what he thought it meant? Cam’s color deepened.

  “I don’t want you to see this baby,” she added, in case Lyle was having trouble connecting the dots.

  “I sobered up for this shit? Christ, Brit, can’t we have this conversation in a couple of months? Maybe when I don’t have a hammer in my hand?”

  Cam hopped onto the porch and through the back door in two steps.

  Inside, a door slammed.

  As Sterling followed, he found Britta and Cam face to face in the hall, like a pair of cats, ears back, tails twitching.

  “I was just taking a meeting with the father of my child,” she told Cam with a go-screw-yourself smile. “For the record, it was one time, it happened three days before you asked me to dinner, and I didn’t even know I was pregnant until you and I were already involved. Where’s Zack?”

  “In here,” he called from the parlor. “And I didn’t need to hear that.”

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Paige woke, startled.

  She was in Sterling’s parlor, on his sofa. Zack was in Sterling’s recliner, watching women’s beach volleyball on the T.V. Someone nearby was running a power tool.

  As she sat up, she smelled stale smoke in her hair and clothes.

  The house. Loss tore through her, sharp and fresh in the confused moments between sleep and awakening.

  She tugged the quilt closer around her, staving off the chill in the room, alert enough to know she didn’t want to be. She felt awful. Sad and grubby and stuffy-headed. Why hadn’t she packed her things into her father’s car last night? At least she had her glasses. She’d grabbed them last night when she’d woken, to see what the hell was going on, but she would kill for a toothbrush right now.

  Sterling came in from the hallway, his face and clothes still filthy, his gaze critical as he studied her.

  She swallowed, so dopey from her nap that her love for him was right there, ready to well up and spill out.

  She should have gone back to Seattle last night.

  “Are you and Dad finished?” Zack asked as Britta came from the hall with Cam.

  “So done.” Britta was in her sweats and looked puffy-eyed and teary.

  “I can go help him?” Zack asked.

  “Have at it.”

  Zack clicked off the T.V. and slipped by his mother, down the hall.

  “Help him what?” Paige frowned. It hurt to talk.

  “He’s fixing the bathroom. Sorry we woke you. How’re you doing?” Britta sat down next to Paige and hugged her.

  It hurt Paige’s skin to be touched. She stayed leaning on Britta anyway, allowing herself some self-pity.

  “Sweetie, I think you’re running a fever.” Britta’s hand was uncomfortably cold on her forehead, causing a shiver that started at the base of her spine.

  “It was that walk in the rain yesterday,” Sterling said in a gruff voice.

  Paige scowled at him. No one liked an I-told-you-so. She would have told him, too, but when she tried to find her voice, she wound up coughing hard enough for her chest to sting.

  Everyone looked at her with pained frowns.

  “I caught a cold,” she said, her voice thinning into a strained pitch. She turned to Britta. “Are you up to driving me to Seattle? I don’t have a car.”

  “That’s the flu,” Sterling said. “And how ‘bout we figure out who almost killed you first?”

  “I would have thought that was Cam’s job.” Man, it hurt to talk. And it just made her cough. “Can I have a drink of water?”

  Britta popped off the couch, but Sterling was already doing it.

  Paige sat back, bundling the quilt around herself while Britta settled back down beside her.

  Cam moved to sit on the edge of the recliner. Britta stiffened.

  “I’d like to talk to you about who might have had reason to set that fire, Paige. Are you up to it?” Cam asked, not looking at Britta. “‘Cause I could come back.”

  “It’s just a cold,” she insisted, but fighting not to cough brought tears to her eyes.

  Cam looked skeptical.

  Sterling came back with a glass of water and two pills. “For the fever.”

  “Thanks.” As soon as she’d picked the pills out of his palm, he raised the backs of his cool fingers to each of her cheeks. He let out a breath heavy with aggravation. “I should have put you in the damned truck myself. You want some tea, too?”

  She wanted to tell him where he could put his tea, but it sounded so good she nodded, and said, “Yes, please.”

  “I’ll do it.” Britta leapt off the couch.

  “Thanks, Britta,” Sterling said. “Are you up to making coffee too? I’m wiped, but I want to hear what Paige has to say about the fire.”

  “Sure, big guy.” Then, for Cam’s benefit, “That’s why I’m here, to mother everyone.”

  The remark made Cam go all stoney-faced. He didn’t look at Britta as she walked through the archway into the kitchen.

  Sterling sat down beside Paige, exhaling with relief.

  Great. Now all she wanted to do was curl in his direction until her head rested on his shoulder. While he sat there with that disapproving glower. Grudges are heavy and they don’t have handles, mister.

  “So, who was home? Were you two—” Cam waved his pen between them.

  Paige shook her head, heard Sterling say, “No,” in a tone she couldn’t interpret.

  She didn’t look at him. In fact, she could barely raise her gaze to Cam’s, she was so hyper aware of the foot-wide chasm between her and Sterling. She had barely projected to the end of their relationship when they’d started it, but she
hadn’t imagined it would feel this hostile. So raw and sensitive, like her skin had been peeled off.

  “What about Lyle? Was he home?” Cam asked.

  “He left for the detox clinic in Lasser yesterday afternoon,” Paige said.

  Cam exchanged a silent I’ll-check look with Sterling that made Paige pinch her lips together.

  “You weren’t supposed to be home,” Britta said from the archway. “You told us you were going back to Seattle.”

  “Who is ‘us?’“ Cam demanded of Britta.

  “My family,” Paige hurried to clarify, and explained who had been in the house last evening and why.

  “What happened with the factory share?” Cam asked, as she finished up. “Why did you have to tell them Grady had no claim on it?”

  She glanced at Sterling, but all he said was, “Go ahead. Tell him.”

  But it was so sordid. So typical of her dad. And she was still mad and hurt and even though this was her opportunity to blurt out his mother’s fallibility, she couldn’t bear to hurt Sterling. She told Cam what she thought was relevant.

  “Dad had a loan with Sterling’s parents that he never repaid. He used his share in the factory as collateral.”

  She looked again at Sterling.

  He said nothing, wore only a neutral expression.

  She didn’t want to say anything else, but added, “I don’t think the Roys had anything to do with the fire. They could have claimed that loan any time in the last number of years, but didn’t.” Which was true.

  “Dad didn’t want to get the factory back that way.” Via his mother’s affair with Grady as payment, Paige surmised, even though he didn’t spell it out. “He wants to negotiate in good faith,” Sterling added, more to her than Cam. “They’ve destroyed the note. You don’t have to walk away from your father’s share in the factory. Everyone will be taken care of.”

  Paige shrugged, not relieved. She preferred to walk away, rather than be sucked back in.

  Britta broke her concentration, coming in with a cookie sheet covered with a tea towel, steaming mugs balanced on top of it along with a creamer and a sugar bowl. She gave Paige a significant, I-want-to-hear-more-later look. Paige reached for her mug, cupping it in her weak hands.

  “Honey and lemon,” Britta said. “Good for your throat.” Then she smiled at Sterling. “I saw you have pancake mix. Would you like me to make some?”

  “I’d love it. I’m starving.” His voice was heavy with gratitude.

  Britta gave him an easy smile that Cam appeared to note.

  “And what was Zack’s attitude when he heard about the factory not being part of the estate?” Cam asked Paige.

  Britta snapped her head around to glare at him. “You son of a bitch.”

  “Cam.” Paige hurried to intervene. “You don’t really think Zack would have torched that house.”

  “I’m just doing my job, trying to eliminate suspects,” Cam said, ignoring Britta while aiming his deadpan expression at Paige.

  “You’re trying to piss me off,” Britta said.

  “I’m being thorough.”

  “You’re being an asshole.”

  “Where were you last night?” He finally looked at her.

  “In bed with the Sonics.” She gave him the finger and went back to the kitchen.

  Cam tap-tapped his pen on his little notepad, his expression so set he was obviously fighting not to explode.

  Paige stared at the spot where Britta had been, wanting the energy to go in there and warn her to quit slicing her own throat.

  “Could we turn off the soap opera? I’d like to get through this.” Sterling leaned forward to stir cream into his coffee. Cam took up his own, undoctored.

  Paige raised her mug so the steam warmed her face and finished telling them what everyone had said, collaborating with Britta when she came in with a plate of toast for Sterling—obviously trying to get in Cam’s face again.

  Give him time, sweetie.

  Sterling turned to Paige. “Who else knew you were planning to go back to Seattle? Who knew you weren’t?”

  “I only told the family I was planning to go. I didn’t decide not to go until after they were gone.”

  “Why’d you change your mind?” Sterling asked, the twang in his voice coming through with soft curiosity.

  The gentleness was so unexpected, she drew a blank for a minute, then it came to her. The debt to his mother. The apartment. Oh, shoot. “Because I, um...what time is it?”

  Too late to phone and make other arrangements. Did she want to?

  “A, um, courier might show up for me,” she added.

  “On a Sunday?”

  She touched her hot forehead, blaming the illness that now had the better of her. What had she been thinking? Where on earth would she go now?

  “Paige?” Sterling asked, his fingers against her cheek making her open her eyes.

  “I’m okay. I just—” should have made like Dad and ignored that stupid promissory note.

  No, she didn’t care that the Roys had forgiven it. She still couldn’t live with Evelyn Roy having paid for her education.

  “I didn’t talk to anyone else about my arrangements except my ex.”

  Sterling pulled his hand away.

  “Who?” Cam asked.

  “My ex-husband. Anthony Sebastiano.” She spelled it. “But he’s in Seattle. And he wouldn’t set a fire.”

  “Why tell him?” Sterling asked, back to sounding grim.

  She really didn’t need this. “I just did. It doesn’t matter.”

  “So to the best of most people’s knowledge, you were staying in your father’s house indefinitely,” Cam said, closing his little notebook and pocketing it. “You’re starting to look like a target, Paige.”

  Chapter Thirty

  “No one is trying to kill me. Look, all those things that happened, the break-in and the car? They were—” Paige halted, gave Sterling another one of those uncertain looks, but he wasn’t about to stop her saying anything. They needed to get to the bottom of this.

  “It was just a misunderstanding between me and the Roys,” she continued.

  Cam waited, but Paige didn’t add anything.

  Sterling was about to step in and reveal the whole sordid contents of the family closet, when Cam said, “Your house was just torched.”

  “That doesn’t mean I was a target. What have I done to anyone?” She sat straighter. “Could it have something to do with the audit?” She sounded more annoyed than terrified, which irritated the hell out of Sterling because he was over here bathed in a clammy sweat.

  Arson and attempted murder. Christ.

  “Perhaps this person feels threatened by something that could be revealed by what you’re doing,” Cam suggested.

  Like what? Sterling rubbed his face. And how would he protect her from this nameless person if she went to Seattle?

  “Pancakes are ready.” Britta came to the archway with a spatula in her hand.

  “I’m not hungry. Do you mind if I shower?” Paige asked Sterling, like she was a first-time guest. Like she hadn’t been in there with him three nights ago, soaping the dirtiest parts of him clean.

  “It’s all yours.”

  Britta pointed out the bag of clothes she’d left propped against the sofa and Paige peeked in, nodded, then let the quilt fall away as she stood.

  It was hard for Sterling to let her out of his sight. He was scared she was going to slip away while he wasn’t looking. He wasn’t used to being scared of losing a woman.

  He rose with restless energy and went hunting for Britta’s pancakes.

  Cam hovered in the kitchen long enough for the tension to reach critical level, when he, Britta, and Lyle occupied the same space for ninety seconds, then made sure Sterling had his number and left.

  Sterling wolfed down four pancakes, watched Paige’s nephew eat nine, and was on his feet the minute he heard the bathroom door crack open.

  Paige stood in the hallway wearing a shirt
with sleeves that left her wrists exposed and a pair of sweatpants that threatened to slide off her hips. Her hair was still damp and her teeth were chattering. “None of the clothes are warm enough.”

  “I’ll give you a sweatshirt.” He looked down. “And re-wrap your foot.” He herded her, limping, into his bedroom. When he started to tug a sweatshirt down over her head, he saw she was swaying. He nudged her toward the bed. “Sleep. Get better. We’ll wrap later.”

  And talk. That was definitely happening.

  ~ * ~

  She woke disoriented again, in Sterling’s bed this time. Through her clothes, she could feel his heat pressed from her shoulder blades to the bottoms of her feet as he spooned around her, the weight of his arm pinning her close.

  Someone was standing at the foot of the bed.

  “See? She’s fine, just sleeping,” Lyle said.

  “Shit,” another male voice said. Anthony?

  Paige bolted to sit, flinching from the headache that bounced into place between her eyes. Next to her, Sterling rolled and came up on his elbow, the sheet falling away to expose his bare chest.

  Grabbing her glasses, she saw Anthony wore some of his goin’-to-the-country attire: a forest green cashmere sweater draped over a black silk turtleneck, along with five hundred dollar jeans that he’d probably ironed himself.

  “You think you’re funny?” Anthony said, straightening his own glasses so he could better glare at Lyle.

  “It breaks up the boredom of not drinking.” Lyle pointed at the bundle Anthony held, and said to Paige, “He wouldn’t give me that and leave.”

  “Your courier?” Sterling murmured, rubbing fingertips into his eyes. His face was clean and shaved. He must have showered before he came to bed.

  “Ex meets Next. Kicks like vodka,” Lyle said with enjoyment.

  “You can leave,” Paige told Lyle, fighting the drag of blankets over her clothes to swing her legs to the side of the bed. Her limbs felt weak, disconnected. Stupid fever.

  “You sound terrible. And hey, when you walked in on him, he was doing more than sleeping,” Lyle said. “I thought you’d appreciate the gesture.”

  “I don’t.”