Hearts on Fire

by Roz Lee

  He jerked his gaze up. “I’m not pretending.” He sucked in a short breath and let it out. “I didn’t come here for sex. I’m all out of condoms, remember?”

  Her face turned red. Yeah, she remembered.

  “Last night was…incredible. Different. I’m usually a once is enough kind of guy, but…well, you know. I get it. You don’t stay in one place for long, and I’m a stay put kind of guy, but I was wondering…. I thought….” He raked his fingers through his hair. “Hell, do you want to spend the day with me? I mean, until you have to go to work? We could go to the beach. Have something to eat, walk a little.”

  She stared at him as if he’d grown two heads, and he felt as if he had, and neither one could think straight. “I’d like to get to know you better. I know you’re leaving in a few days, but I don’t want you to leave thinking I’m that kind of guy.”

  “And you want to see if I’m that kind of woman.”

  “I deserve that, I suppose.” Knowing he’d insulted her didn’t make her verbal slap sting any less. “I know you felt it, too. Last night was more than sex. Maybe we won’t be anything more, but last night wasn’t like any one-night stand I’ve ever had. I have no idea what else we could be to each other, but maybe if we spend some time together—not having sex—we can figure it out.”

  Her gaze dropped to where her hands twisted the plastic bottle around and around.

  “If you don’t want to, just say so, and I’ll go. I just thought….”

  “I haven’t been to the beach in years.”

  He almost jumped for joy at her softly spoken words. She wanted to spend time with him! “What time do you have to be back?”

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Shannon’s tongue felt like a wad of cotton in her mouth, even though she’d downed nearly an entire bottle of water minutes before. Her heart was tapping out a crazy rhythm—had been since she opened her door to find Steve standing there.

  God, he made her motor home feel cramped, made her feel cornered, trapped—but in a good way—sort of. He seemed solid, like someone she could depend on, like an immovable object she could cling to in a storm. It had been a very long time since she’d had anyone to cling to, and she’d never had anyone like this man.

  He was right. She didn’t have any experience with one-night stands, but the time they’d spent together had been more than sex for her. Knowing he’d felt something, too, scared the living daylights out of her. She had no idea what he wanted from her, and she had no right wanting anything from him. But that hadn’t kept her from reliving every minute of their night and wishing she could have the same kind of connection in her life.

  “Noon. The faire opens at ten, but the crowds don’t show until then.” He looked as disappointed as she felt. “If you give me a minute, I can ask someone to watch my booth for me.”

  “You can do that?”

  The hope in his voice buoyed her. She nodded, rising to her feet. “Wait here. I’ll be right back.”

  Shannon hurried to the small camper parked next to hers and knocked on the door. “Nadya, it’s me, Shannon.”

  The gypsy fortune-teller opened the door, a smile on her face. “Come in, come in.”

  “I can’t stay.” Shannon stepped into her friend’s living space. The older woman had been nothing but kind to her since the day Shannon had joined the traveling troupe of actors and craftspeople. She didn’t actually believe the old woman could tell fortunes, but that didn’t matter as much as her friendship did. “You’ve turned me down every time I’ve offered since your tent burned, but, please, can you use my booth today? You don’t have to try to sell anything; just keep it open so no one steals anything.”

  “Has something happened? Is everything all right?”

  Shannon hugged the other woman. “Nothing’s wrong, but thanks for caring. I just want to get away for the day…you know, see the beach, do some shopping, enjoy the area before we move on.”

  Nadya held her at arm’s length, her gaze assessing. “Yes, I see. You’ve found the man the crystal showed me.” She nodded. “This is good.”

  Shannon opened her mouth to cut the fortune-teller off before she could get started again on her prediction that a big, strong, handsome man would come and sweep her off her feet, but before she could get a word in, she was being shoved out the door.

  “Go. Spend the day with your young man. He is strong, no? His shoulders are wide enough to carry your burdens.”

  Shannon’s feet hit the ground.

  “Hurry. Don’t keep him waiting.”

  She stared at the closed door for a second before turning back toward her motor coach. Unbelievable. Nadya had made the prediction months ago. Shannon had joined her for dinner in her tiny camper one night. After dinner, the woman had brought out her crystal ball—claimed she heard it calling her—and began to spout nonsense about a man searching for Shannon. The last thing Shannon needed was a relationship, and the idea of a man out there looking for someone like her—someone with enough baggage to sink a ship—was ludicrous. The prediction had been nothing more than an old woman’s wishes and a way to nudge Shannon back into the living.

  Hand poised on her own door latch, she paused. A wave of panic overtook her. What if the prediction is real? What if Steve is the man Nadya had been talking about?

  The night before had been special, and Steve had felt it, too. Her heart knocked against her ribs. A man with shoulders wide enough to carry her burdens.

  Steve’s shoulders were the widest she’d ever seen.

  No. Impossible. I don’t want a relationship.

  Opening the door, she stepped inside. The man stood. His presence stole the breath from her lungs. She put a hand out to steady herself. Lord, his shoulders brushed both sides of the narrow hallway, but it was more than just his size. It was him. The way he looked, all hot, muscled male, and the way he smelled, like a warm summer day, and the way his eyes took all of her in as if he’d been looking for her, and then, there she was—sort of startled, but happy.

  No. No. No. No. There is no man looking for me, let alone this one. Get a grip, Shannon.

  “All set?”

  She nodded. “Yes. Let me get my purse and a hat.”

  He stepped back into the widest part of the camper and turned sideways, allowing her room to scoot past. Once inside the bedroom, she leaned against the wall. Eyes closed, she focused on her breathing, which hadn’t been normal since she first saw Steve on her doorstep. Going off for the day with him could possibly be the worst idea she’d ever had.

  It’s all Nadya’s fault. She put that crazy idea in my head. There is no man. There is no man. There is no man.

  “Shannon? Is everything okay?”

  Okay. So there is a man. She pushed away from the wall, grabbing her purse from the bed and her hat from the dresser. Jerking open the door, she faced him. “Everything is fine. Just fine.” She scooted past him. “Let’s go.”

  The drive to the beach was quiet. She didn’t know what to say to him. Somehow, he’d gotten under her skin, and she was torn between the path she’d chosen for herself and the path a man like him tempted her to follow.

  She had good reasons for the life she’d chosen, and up until she’d noticed a little girl standing alone amid the confusion and chaos of a potential disaster, she’d been content. Looking back, she decided she wouldn’t have done anything different. Megan had been in danger. And somewhere within Shannon, the heart of the mother she’d once been still beat. She could no more have turned a blind eye to the child’s distress than she could have stopped breathing.

  I can’t do this.

  A few days before, she would have said, “I don’t want to do this.” But then she’d met Steve, and wants had turned to needs.

  He had her thinking about things she had sworn never to contemplate again and reassessing everything in her life. His showing up on her doorstep only made the situation worse. Why couldn’t he have just left her alone? Why
did the one man she’d been attracted to in years have to be the one who couldn’t be satisfied with a one-night stand?

  He pulled into a parking lot facing the beach. A few optimistic souls paddled around on surfboards, waiting for a wave to come along. From the looks of the ocean water, they might as well pack it up and go home. Other than a few lacy whitecaps breaking on the shore, the water appeared calm.

  “Want to get out and walk a while?” His voice jerked her back to the here and now. “Or we can just sit here.”

  “Let’s walk.” She opened her door, slapping her hat on her head as her feet slid to the ground. She had to end whatever Steve thought they had before it went any further, and the things she needed to say required lots of space. The cab of one pickup truck couldn’t possibly contain all the hurt inside her.

  She slipped out of her sandals then took off down the deserted stretch of sand, needing the few seconds it would take for him to catch up in order to gather her courage. She made her way to the wet sand left behind by the receding tide and gave in to her need for open spaces. The early morning sun, coupled with the salty breeze, cleared the cobwebs from her brain.

  “What’s your hurry?” he said, matching his long stride to her shorter one.

  “Sorry.” God, why did he have to be such a nice guy? “This was a good idea.”

  “Want to tell me what’s going on? Are you mad because I showed up at your door?”

  “No.” She shook her head. “I’m not mad, but I am concerned you might be under the impression that last night meant more than it did.”

  In her peripheral vision, she saw him tuck his fingertips into the front pockets of his jeans. He’d removed his shoes, too, and there was something strangely intimate about seeing his bare feet.

  “Last night was…incredible,” he said after they’d walked along in silence for a few minutes. “Even if it doesn’t mean a thing, I want you to know it wasn’t just another hook-up for me.”

  “It wasn’t for me, either. I haven’t been with anyone in a very long time.”

  “I know our lives are different, but I couldn’t let you leave without trying to see if there might be a way we could work it out. I’d like to see you again. I don’t know how or when, but I do know I wish you weren’t leaving.”

  She stopped and turned to face the surf. The warm breeze threatened to carry her hat away. Holding it in place kept her from reaching for him. The time had come to tell him why he would never have the things he was asking for. “I had a life like yours many years ago. I lost it all. At first, I tried to go on. I kept my job, but it was the only thing I had left, and after a while, I realized it was the one thing in my life I would have gladly given up if I’d been given a choice.”

  “What happened to you, to the life you had?”

  It had been years, but the pain was still there as fresh as it had ever been. She had only to look below the surface. Wrapping her arms around her middle, she headed down the beach, hoping movement would make the telling easier, because she’d been standing still for so long. Steve fell in beside her.

  “I had a high-powered job in Manhattan that I commuted to five days a week. My husband had a similar job, but he traveled a lot. We rarely saw each other except for an hour or two in the evening when he was home. We had a nanny for our two children.” She choked on the last two words. Tears she had long since given up trying to control streamed down her cheeks.

  “Hey.” Steve grabbed her arm, halting her. He stepped in front of her, his big hands anchoring her where they curled around her upper arms. He felt so…solid. “Something happened to your children?”

  “There was a fire. I rode the train into work every day, and delays were normal, expected. My husband was in Seattle. Marguerite was home with the kids. Michael was four, and Tessa was two. She’d put them to bed upstairs then put in some laundry. She must have fallen asleep in her room. The fire inspector said she died of smoke inhalation. She never knew there was a fire.”

  Steve pulled her against him. His strong arms cocooned her tight against his muscled chest while she cried out the anguish she’d held in for so long.

  His heart broke for the woman in his arms. He’d seen plenty of tragedy in his years with the department, but nothing like what she had been through. No wonder she’d been so pissed at him for leaving Meggie alone the other day. The fact that he did it in order to put out a fire must have made it all that much worse for Shannon, given what he knew about her now.

  “I’m so sorry,” he said, resting his cheek on the top of her head. He rubbed circles on her back while her tears soaked his shirt.

  He didn’t know how long they stood there, but it didn’t matter. He hated the reason he had her in his arms, but he couldn’t get past how right it felt to hold her. The more he knew about her, the more certain he was that he’d misjudged her. She wasn’t the flighty, hippy transient he had first thought. He could only imagine the kind of grief that had set her on her present path. If he’d been through something like she had described, he wasn’t at all certain he would have survived.

  “Tell me what happened.” He loosened his hold but kept her close. Her eyes and nose were red and swollen, her lips puffy. His heart ached to take the pain away from her.

  “I got a cab from the train station. All I remember are the lights. Lots and lots of red and blue lights flashing. More than I’d ever seen in one place. The driver let me out a few blocks from my house, and I walked the rest of the way. As I got closer, I could see the flames through the smoke.” She shuddered in his arms. “There was so much smoke. I tripped on a fire hose and someone helped me up. That’s when one of my neighbors saw me. I could tell by her expression that something was terribly wrong, but it still hadn’t registered that it was my house. She grabbed me in a big hug.”

  “Thank goodness you’re all right.” Rosemary backed up, her gaze darting around. “The kids are with you, aren’t they?”

  “No. Marguerite is at the house.”

  She didn’t know Rosemary well. She and Mike had been too busy building their careers to get to know anyone in the neighborhood, but she did know the woman holding her hands had children about the same age as Michael and Tessa. Still, the expression on the woman’s face needed no interpretation.

  “No. No. No!” Shannon shook her head. Tearing her gaze away from her neighbor, she looked in horror at the fire blazing down the block. She counted houses until she got to where their slate-gray Cape Cod should be.

  “As I said, I don’t remember much. The inspector told us the fire started in the laundry room—a clogged dryer vent or something. It spread fast. The kids’ bedrooms were right above the utility room.”

  He brought her close again, her next words muffled by his shirt. “They never had a chance.”

  Jesus. He didn’t know what to say. There were no words to make something like that right, so he did the only thing he could. He held her.

  After a while, he steered her toward an outcropping of rocks that shielded them from the wind. With his back to a boulder, he made a cradle for her with his legs. When she sat, he wrapped his arms around her once again. He wasn’t sure she needed the connection, but he did. He wanted to be there for her.

  The need to comfort was new to him. Yeah, Meggie had her moments when she needed a hug, but for the most part, he didn’t do the touchy feely thing. However, the last thing he wanted to do was let go of Shannon.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  More people were arriving to take advantage of the warm day and calm surf. Families with children, teenagers with body boards and footballs, and the occasional sun worshiper began to dot the landscape. Steve was content to remain right there for as long as Shannon wanted to stay. Meggie was probably having the time of her life, being spoiled rotten by his mother and aunt. He had all the time in the world.

  “I went back to work the next week. Mike, my husband, went to the local bar. I don’t know which one of us handled it worse. He tried to f
ind absolution in a bottle, and I…I don’t know what I was doing. I’d lost everything, and there I was, going through the motions as if getting another promotion would make a difference.”

  “But you quit?”

  She nodded. “I did. It took me about six months to realize I’d lost all interest in my job. If I’d been at home where I belonged instead of trying to impress people I’d never met into giving me a promotion…. But I wasn’t at home. I blamed myself. I blamed Mike for not being handyman enough to know the dryer vent needed to be cleaned out. I blamed poor Marguerite, who had never done anything but love my children like they were her own.”

  “Understandable.”

  “Perhaps, but unproductive. We had a few things in a storage locker—mostly stuff I’d inherited from my grandmother. Antiques and things. I’d lost everything but the clothes on my back, so I went there one day to see if I could use some of the furniture for my new apartment. By then, Mike had filed for divorce. The loom you saw in my tent and another, bigger, one were in the locker. I spent the next six months learning to use them.”

  She sighed. “They saved me. Once I came up from the pit I’d been in, I looked around. The only thing in my apartment was a mattress, no frame, and the looms. I’d lost all my friends, what few I had, and my family could hardly look at me. I had to get out of there, so I bought the motor coach and started traveling. I stopped at the Renaissance faire one day and met Nadya—the fortune-teller whose booth you tried to save. The next thing I knew, I had my own booth, and I was making a living, sort of, selling garments made from the cloth I weave.”

  “You could sell your cloth from anywhere, so why travel?”

  “If I stop in one place for too long, the memories come back. Then I remember all the reasons I can’t go back to my old life.”

  “Who says you have to go back to your old life? What’s wrong with starting a new one?” He knew the minute the words left his mouth that he’d said the wrong thing. Her body stiffened in his embrace.