Flash and Fire

by Marie Ferrarella

  She shook her head. “I didn’t do anything to contribute,” she pointed out.

  Pierce shrugged carelessly. “You showed up.”

  “That might have cost us a run or two.”

  Pierce laughed as they reached the bench. “You take things far too seriously, Mandy.”

  She sidestepped an enthusiastic crew member who was heading right toward her. The man threw his arms around someone else instead and hugged indiscriminately. Just beyond the fringe, the other team was licking its wounds and muttering about unfair playing conditions.

  “And you don’t,” she countered, taking off her cap. She wanted a shower. Badly.

  “Absolutely.” He watched as she gathered up her tote bag. Every movement had his full attention. “Life is too damn serious to take seriously.” A glint entered his eyes a moment before he looked at her face. “Think a compromise might be in the offing?”

  She’d give him A-plus for determination, but that was all. She had already given. Once was enough for anyone. “Not a chance, Alexander.”

  With that she slung her bag over her shoulder and started to weave her way through the tangle of bodies.

  “You might be surprised,” he called after her.

  She stopped only long enough to glance over her shoulder, her words as final as a judge passing sentence. “I sincerely doubt it, Alexander.”

  Don’t, Pierce thought as someone grabbed and pumped his hand. Don’t count on it at all, Mandy. It won’t be today and it won’t be tomorrow, but someday, somewhere, it’ll be.

  Chapter Three

  Like the hot weather that wrapped itself around her body, refusing to recede, thoughts of Pierce stubbornly clung to Amanda’s mind. His image persisted and hovered, his smile just the slightest bit crooked, his eyes slipping the clothing from her slick body. Phantomlike, he followed her all the way home.

  In her mind, he looked exactly the way he had in the park when he had surrounded her with his arms. Sensual, unsettling, like a sultry tropical storm that was about to break.

  The memory made her even more irritable than the miserable weather did. And itchy. That strange itch that had no origin and existed without an epicenter. It was just there, haunting her. Making her uncomfortable. Refusing to be placated.

  Or denied.

  The sun beat down unmercifully. The air-conditioning in her car was no match for the hot, glaring sun. She had it turned up high and still it felt sticky. This was hardly more bearable than sitting on that bench, waiting for her turn at bat. Again, her thoughts jumped to Pierce. Her body became tense, rigid as she tried to cleanse her mind.

  Amanda squirmed in her seat. Damn that smug son of a bitch anyway; she didn’t need this.

  She opened her glove compartment, reached in, and pulled out a handful of orange jelly beans. Waiting until after she made a right turn, she popped them into her mouth. She would have preferred a chocolate bar. One with nuts. A strong love for chocolate was a weakness she shared with her son. But on a day like today, a chocolate bar in the glove compartment would have been nothing more than a brown mess by the time she had a chance to get to it. So Amanda took what she could get. What was important right now was the sugar.

  All the jelly beans did was make her vaguely nauseous.

  What she needed, she thought in desperation, was a really cold shower and perhaps even a short nap, circumstances and Christopher permitting.

  Amanda’s lips curved in anticipation as she brought her car up the short driveway. If she tried hard, she could almost feel the cold spray hitting her body, invigorating it. That’s what she needed, what she wanted, a cold shower and a rest, not some man’s hands all over her. She gritted her teeth as she swung her legs out of the car. A little sleep might even make a new woman out of her. The old one was feeling frazzled around the edges and put upon these days.

  She slammed the car door shut and slowly rotated her neck. She could feel the kinks throughout her neck and shoulders, like so many small, hard marbles.

  Maybe a long nap, she amended.

  Nurturing a small glimmer of hope that her son might actually be sleeping, making her own rest an attainable possibility, Amanda inserted her key into the front door lock.

  It was a modest house compared to what she had once been accustomed to. Three bedrooms and a den the size of a walk-in closet, but it suited her needs. More than that, it suited her pocket. Or what Jeff had seen fit to leave in her pocket before he had divorced her.

  A bitter smile twisted her lips as it always did when she thought of her ex-husband. Gone, but not forgotten. Unfortunately. Jeff had granted her the divorce on the sole condition that she give up all claim to their house and to whatever money he hadn’t managed to squander away that was still in their joint bank account. The fact that the money was more than half hers didn’t matter.

  Or perhaps it did. Perhaps it had given Jeff his incentive to emotionally blackmail her. There was nothing else she could call what he had done. Emotional blackmail. With eyes as pale as ice caps on the Arctic Ocean, he had looked at her over dinner at an exclusive restaurant and coldly promised her one hell of a custody fight for Christopher.

  Not that he wanted the boy. He had never wanted Christopher, not from the moment she had gotten pregnant. But he liked the satisfaction of winning. Winning had always meant a lot to Jeff. Almost as much as money did and just a little more than the endless parade of women who passed through his life.

  A momentary image of Pierce, his light blue eyes looking down at her, flashed through her mind, and she felt a shiver forming, even as a trickle of perspiration zigzagged down between her shoulder blades.

  No, she thought, raising her hair from the back of her neck, she had no use for handsome men with icy blue eyes. The man she would someday put her trust in, if she were so inclined, would look like a troll and have the heart of a prince, not the other way around. Once was more than enough to show her how flawed her judgment could be if she let looks blind her.

  Amanda unlocked the front door, but it wouldn’t budge. Instead, it stuck stubbornly in the door frame. Disgusted, she applied her shoulder to the sweltering wood and pushed. The door gave.

  “Carla, I’m back,” she announced loudly as she closed the door behind her.

  She didn’t want Carla thinking that someone was attempting to break in. Her housekeeper took the stories on the nightly news to heart. Carla was quickly approaching the conclusion that she might be the last decent person left within the city limits. Another reason, as Carla never grew tired of pointing out, to move back to New Mexico. Taos was safe. The double locks on the door were Carla’s idea.

  Amanda looked around. She was barely aware of the moan that escaped her lips. “Oh, God.”

  Suddenly, she felt twice as tired as she had a moment ago. The living room was just beyond the front entrance. Right now, it looked like a war zone. A war zone belonging to a miniature soldier.

  Life had been like this ever since Christopher had pulled himself up into a standing position. Actually, that was inaccurate. Christopher had never really stood. He’d galloped. Quickly. On all fours at first, then on two legs, and always leaving havoc in his wake. Despite pleas and entreaties, Carla somehow could never keep up.

  Amanda didn’t feel up to this today.

  Being around Pierce this afternoon had done something to her, loosened something that had been tightly coiled inside her. Maybe it was because this was the first time they had ever seen one another outside of the studio. She didn’t know the reason why; she could only guess at it. But the reason didn’t really matter. What mattered was that there had been something about the way he had looked at her that made her uneasy, like he knew things about her that she didn’t.

  “Heat frustration, Mandy,” she muttered sternly. “It’s making you hallucinate.” Pierce Alexander was just an ordinary man, with a liver and spleen like everyone else.

  Reasoning didn’t help.

  She looked around again. She wished she were hallucinati
ng this mess. Toys, crayons, and shredded paper lay scattered as far as the eye could see, littering the floor like the multicolored aftermath of a ticker-tape parade.

  Except there was nothing to celebrate.

  Amanda yanked off her ribbon and shook out her hair. She spiked her hand through it. It felt gritty, just the way she did. Damn it, why did she have to be such a soft touch? If she’d been stronger, she would have just turned Jon and his bedroom eyes down. She could have spent a more useful four hours here at home.

  Charity was supposed to begin at home, and home certainly did need it right about now.

  Picking her way over a sprawled fighter pilot in a downed plane, Amanda crossed the threshold into the living room.

  “Okay, where are you, Chris?”

  As she said his name, she saw him. Her son was balancing himself on his tiptoes. Dusty red sneakers nibbed intimately against beige cushions. He was trying to keep from sinking into the L-shaped sofa that was flush against the far back wall. His object of attack was a large painting that hung just above the sofa. Amanda’s favorite.

  Painting was a hobby that used to soothe her, when she’d had the time for it. This one she had painted in happier times. It was a spray of bright blue, red, and yellow flowers centered on a stark white field. The colors were warm and promising.

  Muffin, a semiwhite toy poodle, was barking incessantly, cheering Christopher on from the floor. As if the boy needed encouragement.

  Oh, damn.

  Amanda swallowed the oath as she dashed across the room. Christopher loved to pick flowers. The denuded front yard bore silent testimony to his newly acquired hobby. Well, he wasn’t picking these, she thought with a surge of triumph. She snatched her son away from his target just as his chocolate-smeared fingers were about to make indelible contact.

  Frustration passed over the child’s face like a rain cloud threatening a sudden downpour. Just as quickly, it disappeared.

  “Mama.” Christopher twisted around in her arms to look up at her. “You here.”

  She laughed at the perplexed note of surprise. “Yes, I’m here. And just in time, I see.”

  Still holding Christopher, she sank down onto the sofa. It was like trying to hold on to a bale of wiggling worms. Christopher was all arms and legs as he mistook her attempt to restrain him for another kind of game.

  It was hard to stay annoyed with her son when he looked so pleased to see her. But Amanda was bone-tired and the mess in the room looked insurmountable.

  She tightened her hold around Christopher as the heel of his sneaker made sharp contact with her knee. Amanda winced. “Don’t you ever stop?”

  She received no answer, but then, she hadn’t expected one. At two, Christopher’s vocabulary consisted of a limited number of words, the most frequently used being “uh-oh.” It was, Amanda thought, quite appropriate at this stage of his life. On the whole, he was too busy doing to spend time talking.

  Like a budding Houdini, Christopher managed to twist out of her arms. Scrambling to his feet, using her body as if it were a mere stepping-stone created solely for his benefit, he directed his attention to the painting again.

  “That’s what I like about you, Chris. You never give up. Get that from your mom, you know.”

  Amanda rose and scooped her son up. This time he protested a little more strongly. She ignored him. Tucking him under her arm like a dangling, motorized rag doll, she went in search of Carla. Muffin followed, yipping all the way.

  “Watch it, dog,” she warned, “or I’ll step on you.”

  Uncertain, the dog scurried around in a circle until he was directly behind her.

  Christopher was making self-satisfied noises as she crossed the room, heading toward the kitchen. He was pointing to the floor with the sort of pride one would expect from a master craftsman.

  Amanda looked down. Batman was locked in mortal combat with one of GI Joe’s men. From the looks of it, each had lost a limb.

  “Yes, I see them. Quite a mess you’ve made, isn’t it?” Amanda gingerly stepped around an overturned dump truck. “Where’s your keeper?”

  The answer to her question came almost instantly.

  She heard the rapid flow of Spanish sprinkled with a seasoning of English here and there. The voice was coming from the kitchen.

  With a resigned sigh, Amanda walked into the room, knowing exactly what she would find. Carla Nunez was hunched over the long, gray-tiled counter, holding the base of the telephone against her stomach.

  Carla’s bouts of homesickness were making the phone company rich, Amanda thought.

  Her dark eyes filled with surprise as Carla looked toward the doorway. The volume of her voice dropped to a near whisper.

  “Uh-oh. Yo no puedo hablar mas, Mama,” she murmured into the receiver. “Ella esta aqui.”

  “Uh-oh,” Christopher echoed, crowing the word.

  Getting his second wind, he began to flap wildly again. Amanda set him down on the floor, too exhausted to try to restrain him any longer. Like a released rubber band that was tethered on one end, Christopher shot back into the living room with a triumphant squeal.

  “Yes, she is here,” Amanda repeated Carla’s words to her in English.

  With a sheepish grin, Carla hung up the telephone.

  “And she’s not happy,” Amanda concluded.

  For a moment, Amanda lost her struggle with her temper. She waved her hand angrily toward the living room. “What is all this, Carla? He’s only two years old. Can’t you keep up with a two-year-old?” She scowled at the telephone. “Maybe if you weren’t on the damn phone all the time, you could stay ahead of him once in a while.”

  Carla bit her full lower lip as she bowed her head. Tears shimmered on her thick black lashes.

  Chapter Four

  Amanda sighed as guilt nibbled at her. She wasn’t up to guilt at the moment. She certainly hadn’t meant to make Carla cry. Regret flooded her. Now she felt like a bully.

  She laid her arm around the twenty-year-old’s shoulders as comfortingly as possible. “I’m sorry. Don’t cry, Carla. I didn’t mean to lose my temper. I’ve had a rotten morning.”

  Carla raised her head. A small smile of absolution lifted the corners of her wide mouth. “Yeah, me too.”

  Pressing her lips together, Amanda struggled to get control of her irritability. Why wouldn’t this feeling leave? It couldn’t be just the weather. This was far from the first day of heat and humidity she had experienced. She had to be feeling this way because she had made a fool of herself in front of people.

  What was needed was humor. She looked for it now as she led the way into the living room.

  Humor or not, the room looked every bit as awful as it had a minute ago.

  She saw a dinosaur lying on its side and didn’t have the strength to pick it up. “So when does the board of health come to condemn the house?”

  Carla simply lifted her wide shoulders in reply. Amanda collapsed onto the far side of sofa.

  Her eyes were immediately drawn to Christopher. Her son was back at it, tottering on the edge of the sofa, fingers outstretched, reaching for his goal. This time it was Carla who pulled him away. He shrieked in protest, but remained on the floor.

  There were times when his tenacity was a little wearing, Amanda thought. She looked around wearily for something to distract him. Oversized blocks were sticking out of the rubble.

  She pointed to them. “Make a house for Mommy to move into, honey, since this one’s such a mess.”

  Christopher threw himself into the task with glee.

  At Amanda’s comment, a guilty flush crept up to tint Carla’s ruddy complexion. She murmured something under her breath in Spanish, careful not to utter the words too loudly, and sank to her knees. Using her apron as a sack, she began gathering up the multitude of toys. It looked as if every single toy in the huge box that stood in the corner had found its way to the floor.

  “You’re home early.” Carla took the first armload and deposited the toy
s with a careless crash into the box.

  Christopher looked up, a protest hovering on his rosebud lips. But then he just shrugged and went back to creating a tottering castle. The strap on his bright red coveralls slipped off his shoulder. He yanked at it and a button flew across the room. Amanda could only watch its flight and sigh.

  Carla looked over her shoulder. Amanda wasn’t answering her. She tried again. “I thought you’d be gone for at least another hour.”

  “We got lucky,” she answered. “The other team played worse than we did.”

  Carla saw this as a reason to be happy, not sad. “Then why was your day rotten?’

  If she was being completely honest with herself, there was a very basic answer to that. Amanda voiced it aloud. “Because Pierce Alexander was in it.”

  At the mention of the investigative reporter, Carla forgot about the toys and visibly melted. She looked at the woman who was half her employer, half her surrogate mother, though Amanda was only eight years older. Sympathy filled her deep brown eyes.

  “He ignored you?”

  Amanda thought of the look in Pierce’s hypnotic eyes and felt something unwanted stir. It had been over three years since she had slept with a man. She certainly didn’t want Pierce to be the one to overturn that, even though she recognized a very basic strong pull between them. Lust wasn’t her style.

  “I wish he had.”

  Carla scowled, completely lost. “I don’t understand.”

  That makes two of us.

  “It’s too complicated to explain.” Amanda rubbed the back of her neck with her hand. She still needed that shower. Badly.

  Amanda tried to will energy into her wilted body. She got as far as shifting in her seat. “Well, if I can get up enough oomph, I’m heading for the shower.”

  Fisting her hands on either side of her, she dug into the sofa and propelled herself forward.