“I wish I could have met your parents, Reece. They sound like good people.”
“They were.” He gave a small smile, a sexy uptick at the corner of his mouth. “Mom would have loved you. Dad…he wouldn’t have known what to make of you, either.”
She nudged him with her shoulder. “We’re two peas in a pod.”
He laughed. “Hardly.”
“You should laugh more often.”
“Yeah?” He glanced over at her, a mischievous glint in his eyes as he lowered his head, closing the distance between their mouths. “Does it turn you on?”
“Oh yeah,” she breathed, in the moment before his lips touched hers.
Reece took his time with the kiss, a slow caress with no sense of urgency. Just like that last kiss in the closet before Dylan interrupted them. She trembled at the sweetness behind it and fisted her hands in his jacket, intending to push him away, but instead drawing him in closer. She didn’t want this tenderness from him, though. Hard, dirty, lust-slaking sex? Yes, absolutely. But anything more than that, no matter how much she secretly yearned for it, would only end in broken hearts. It was too much.
For once, she broke the kiss first.
He drew away slightly, confusion in his eyes. “Is everything okay?”
“Yeah.” She didn’t sound very convincing, even to her own ears, so she made herself smile despite her heartbeat thundering nervously. “Yeah, everything’s fine. But we should go. It’s getting late, and I’m supposed to meet with the arson investigators tomorrow to talk about The Bean Gallery.”
The confusion morphed into concern. “Did you tell them you’re the owner?”
“Yes. They weren’t happy with me for withholding the information.”
And the concern nosedived into alarm. He stood. “They don’t think—are you a suspect?”
“No. No,” she added more firmly when he started to pace.
He stopped in front of her. “I’m going with you tomorrow. I want to tell them I was there.”
“That’s up to you, but I don’t think it’s necessary.”
“I do.” He held out a hand to help her up. “Let’s go home.”
Chapter Seventeen
On the way downstairs, Shelby paused and studied the framed photos hanging in the stairway. She hadn’t noticed them earlier, but now that she knew more about his family, she had to stop and look. Some candid shots, some posed, some obviously from school. She studied those first because school photos were always a riot. They appeared to have been taken the school year before their parents died—Reece was about twelve in his.
“Oh, man. You were a nerd!” An adorable nerd, yes, with his unruly dark hair and clunky glasses.
“What do you mean, were?” he said from the bottom of the stairs. “I still am.”
“You said it, not me.” She traced the frame of the photo. “Were you picked on a lot in school?” In her experience, high schoolers mercilessly teased anyone not like them. She’d certainly wanted to go all Carrie on more than one “cool” kid during those endless four years.
She turned to find him watching her with those unnervingly intense eyes of his. She sometimes wondered if he could see through her to the scared little girl she kept locked away inside.
“Were you?” Her voice wobbled, and she cleared her throat, infusing her words with as much cheer as she could muster. “Picked on, I mean?”
“No.” He came back up the stairs and tapped Greer’s picture on the wall next to his. It showed the same square jaw, hard mouth, and wide shoulders, but fewer shadows hid in the eldest Wilde brother’s dark eyes.
“Nobody ever wanted to piss off Greer. He was always big for his age. Takes after Dad that way.”
Shelby spotted a wedding photo farther down the stairs and moved closer to get a better look. “What were your parents’ names?”
“David Wilde, Sr. and Mom was Meredith.”
The groom in the wedding picture looked shockingly like Greer—or, more accurately, Greer looked like him. “He was a senior?”
“Greer’s the junior. David Greer Wilde.”
“Oh. Never knew Greer goes by his middle name.” She went back to studying the picture. The senior David Greer Wilde was a hulk of a man, all hard lines, with coal-dark eyes that should have been intimidating as hell, but beamed nothing but joy and love as he held his bride in a permanent spin, her white dress flaring out around her.
Exactly how Shelby had pictured him from Reece’s stories.
Shelby took a step down to see another photo, one showing Meredith Wilde in a hospital bed holding two swaddled bundles—the twins—and beaming at the camera with toddler-sized versions of Greer and Reece at each arm. Unlike the other brothers, who all strongly resembled their father, Reece took after his mother. He had her hazel eyes, her aquiline nose. And while he was by no means a small man, he was the smallest of his brothers, having inherited Meredith’s long, lean form rather than David’s bulk.
Another photo—Meredith holding a baby with a tuft of dark hair. The twins were still toddlers in diapers and sitting on their father’s lap. Greer would have been six when this photo was taken and Reece, already wearing glasses, would have been about three. He appeared utterly fascinated by his new baby brother, Jude.
They were all so happy. So…complete. A real family.
An ache Shelby didn’t want to explore lodged in her belly, and she spun away from the wall of memories and stalked down the stairs. She didn’t know the whys of her sudden burst of anger, but she embraced it. “Why bring me here, Reece? The real reason.”
Reece glanced away. “I’m not sure. I don’t often come here myself.”
“I’d like to go now.” The walls were closing in on her, all of the happy smiles like a mockery of her pathetic childhood. And if the hot pressure kept growing behind her eyes, she was going to embarrass herself and ugly-cry all over him.
“Okay.” Reece picked up her coat and held it out to her. As soon as she accepted it, he grabbed the notebooks he’d set down on a table and strode toward the front door like he was in just as much of a hurry to leave as she was.
But she didn’t move. Her boots stayed glued to the floor, and she found her gaze tracing over all of those photos once more.
Eva wanted this. She’d never understood her sister’s drive to find a man and start a family—until now. Staring at the Wilde family photos, she got it. She felt like an unwelcome stranger from the wrong side of the tracks, but she totally got it.
And, goddammit, she wanted it, too.
She just couldn’t have it with Reece.
Reece waited on the front porch for Shelby, but she barely looked at him as she strode from the house. She’d been rattled ever since that kiss upstairs in his bedroom, though he couldn’t put his finger on why.
Had he done something wrong?
The car door slammed shut behind him, and he winced. He must have. Why else would she be angry with him?
And this was exactly why he’d avoided relationships. Women were just too damn confusing.
Sighing, he took one last look around the living room of his childhood home.
Why had he brought her here? He didn’t know, except that he’d wanted to show her…himself. The real Reece and not the one he projected to the world. He kept expecting time to dull the pain, but the hurt never went away. Every time he came here the grief slapped him again. Because his parents should still be here, excited that Jude and Libby were trying to give them grandbabies, happy that Cam had finally married Eva, whom they’d have loved. They should still be here, dancing in the kitchen together.
But they weren’t.
Maybe it was time to pack everything up and sell the old house…
But his heart lurched at the thought. As painful as the bad memories were—he’d been standing right over there at the bottom of the stairs when Greer answered the door to the cops the night their parents were killed—there were far more good memories here, and he wasn’t ready to let them go. Not
yet. Maybe not ever.
Reece shook his head and started to close the door, but a strange smell stopped him.
Smoke?
At first it was only a drifting curl of scent in the air, and if it had been summertime, he might have brushed it off as a nearby bonfire. But it was the middle of winter, with temps hovering in the low twenties, and nobody would be having a bonfire now. And it was close, the scent of burning wood becoming heavier, acrid.
No.
Heart dropping like a stone, he stared at the house. No, no, no. Not this house. Please, not this house.
“Fire!” he yelled to Shelby over his shoulder. “Call 911!”
He dropped his notebooks and raced back inside, through the living room, toward the kitchen, where there was a fire extinguisher under the sink. Flames danced across the back porch, casting orange shadows over the kitchen floor where his parents used to dance together after dinner. The dead ivy vines clinging to the side of the house—the ones he’d been meaning to pull down since summer—went up like kindling in a flash of heat and light, climbing toward the roof.
Holy shit. It shouldn’t be spreading this fast. Already it was too big, and his little fire extinguisher wasn’t going to do a damn thing, but he had to try.
He had to try.
If the fire reached the roof, the house was done.
He grabbed the extinguisher and ran to the sliding glass doors, but the wood frame was charring, warping, and he couldn’t get the door open. He slammed the end of the extinguisher into the glass with every ounce of strength he possessed, and it shattered. He couldn’t step out onto the porch because of the heat, so he aimed the extinguisher hose at the door. White powder doused the flames climbing up the frame, but it wasn’t enough. The kitchen started filling with thick black smoke, and his eyes burned. The extinguisher sputtered and died in his hands.
“Fuck!” He threw it aside and tried to remember where there was another one stashed. Laundry room? Yeah, there was one next to the washer.
“Reece?”
Shelby’s voice. Had she come inside? Jesus. What was she thinking?
His heart stuttered, and he gave up on finding a second fire extinguisher. He had to get her out of here, away from the heat and smoke. She needed to be safe.
Coughing hard, he spun and ran toward the front of the house, moving entirely by memory now because he couldn’t see shit. Overhead, the roof groaned.
Oh shit.
He inhaled to yell for her to get outside, he was right behind her, but smoke rushed into his lungs. He gagged and choked, nearly doubling over from the pain of it.
A small hand gripped his arm and tugged. Shelby. She was in the house, damn her. And the fire continued chewing away at the roof. It was going to collapse at any moment, and they’d be trapped.
Straightening, he scooped her into his arms and ran. Through the living room, stumbling over the coffee table, and finally, out the still-open front door.
Cold air poured into his heated lungs, making him cough harder. He staggered and dropped Shelby into the snow in the front yard. His legs didn’t want to hold him any longer, and he collapsed on his ass beside her.
Shelby coughed, and tears streamed down her soot-smeared cheeks. “Oh my God,” she whispered. “Reece. Your house…”
He lay back in the snow and watched flames reach toward the sky, coloring the underbellies of the low-hanging clouds a dull yellow. Then, biting back a sob, he closed his eyes so he didn’t have to watch the only place he’d ever considered home burn.
Sometime later, Reece realized he was no longer lying in the snow but in the back of an ambulance, breathing into an oxygen mask.
How did he get here?
Must have passed out, because he didn’t even remember the firefighters and medics arriving. He yanked off the mask and sat up. Jude and the twins stood in a loose circle around the back end of the ambulance, their gazes all focused on the still-burning house. He saw his own anger and heartache reflected in each of their expressions, and a lump of sorrow clogged his throat.
He scanned for Shelby but didn’t see her, and that sorrow took on the sour note of dread. He stood and—he was dizzy as fuck. His lungs and throat were raw.
Cam glanced over, noticed him swaying on his feet. “Hey, whoa.” He climbed into the ambulance and made Reece sit down again. “Take it easy, bro. You inhaled a lot of smoke. They’re just getting ready to transport you to the hospital.”
“No hospital.” Holy shit, was that his voice? It sounded like broken glass. He tried to clear his throat. “Shelby?”
“You’re going to the hospital,” Cam said. “And, yeah, she’s fine. She’s with Eva and Libby, and she’s talking to the police, but she doesn’t know what happened.”
“Someone set fire to the back porch. Pretty sure accelerant was used. It got big fast.” His gaze traveled past Cam to Vaughn and Jude. “Where’s Greer?”
“We don’t know,” Jude said. “None of us can get ahold of him.”
“This Houdini act of his has to stop,” Vaughn said. “He should be here.”
“We’re not arguing that,” Cam said. “And we plan to corner him as soon as he shows up again, but he’s not our top concern right now. Reece—”
“I’m fine.” Reece pushed to his feet and stumbled past Cam, out onto the sidewalk. When he saw what was left of the house—bricks blackened, roof completely caved in—his knees threatened to buckle.
Oh. Fuck.
Vaughn propped a shoulder under his arm to keep him upright. “Jude, help me get him back into the ambulance.”
“I’m not going to the fucking hospital.” He shook them both off and walked to the edge of the property. Stared up. Even the tree with the tire swing his dad had hung was now nothing more than a blackened skeleton of its former self.
“It’s gone.” He sensed his brothers joining him but didn’t look away from the smoking ruins. “Just…gone.”
“Reece,” Jude said softly. “It was just a house.”
“It wasn’t—” He stopped short, sucked in a calming breath. “Everything we had of Mom and Dad was in that house. Every-fucking-thing. Wasn’t it enough that we lost them?”
“I don’t know about you guys,” Vaughn muttered, “but I’m tired of being the butt of the universe’s sick cosmic jokes.”
“I don’t think this is the universe’s doing,” Cam said, and his gaze tracked to Shelby.
A blast of heat flashed through Reece, and his fingers folded into fists at his sides. He stared, unblinking, at his brother. If Cam was suggesting Shelby was some kind of pyromaniac, he’d pummel him. Plain and simple. He may be the nerd of the family, the odd man out, but he’d grown up with four brothers who liked to fight and could brawl with the best of them. “Shelby didn’t do this. She was with me the entire time.”
Cam crossed his arms over his chest. “I love Shelby like a little sister, and I don’t want to think she’s capable of this any more than you do, but we have to look at the facts. This is the second fire she’s been involved in—”
“Second fire I’ve been in, too,” Reece interrupted. “I was with her the night The Bean Gallery burned down. You want to question me for arson, too?”
Cam opened his mouth, then closed it again. Shook his head. “I knew I saw your car that night,” he grumbled. “Still, two fires in as many weeks? Actually, three if we count the fire at a neighbor’s house a few years ago.”
That…was news to him and chilled his anger from inferno to low boil. “What fire?”
“A five-alarm fire at the house across the street from Eva’s,” Cam said. “Nobody was hurt, but the house was a complete loss. Eva was out of town at the time and, ever since, she’s been afraid to leave Shelby home alone. Told me once she thinks her sister is a walking jinx, a magnet for bad luck. So even if Shelby’s not setting the fires—”
“She’s not, and I will punch you if you say it again. Don’t test me.”
Cam held up his hands in surrender. “Just
saying it’s a big ass coincidence. Too big. So something’s going on with her, and you need to find out what it is, because she won’t tell Eva.”
“And you think she’ll tell me?”
“You’re married to her.”
“It’s a business arrangement.”
“That’s bullshit.” Cam took a step forward, got in his face. “What are you really doing with her, Reece? Huh? Because you say it’s a business thing, but you’re obviously fucking her every chance you get, and you brought her to Mom and Dad’s—”
“I had to pick up something I left here. That’s all.”
“No. That’s not all. I know you, bro. I know you wouldn’t have brought her here if this thing between you is as superficial as you claim it is. But I’m telling you now, you need to end this.”
Reece’s molars hurt and he realized he was grinding his teeth. He worked his jaw to loosen it. “Back off, Cam. We’ll end it when and if we’re ready to.”
“Uh, guys,” Jude said and stepped between them, pressing a palm into each of their chests. “How about we take this somewhere…I don’t know…less public?”
“Nah,” Vaughn said, “let ’em duke it out. It’ll be good for them both.”
Cam ignored them, stepped around Jude, and jabbed a finger at Reece’s shoulder. “I can’t believe I’m saying this to you, of all people, but get your head out of your dick. Remember the night Shelby and Eva’s mother attacked them? You ducked out and didn’t see Shelby break down like I did. You didn’t watch her cry herself into exhaustion or have to carry her to her bed. She’s…fragile. So much more than she lets people know, and you’re not gonna just hurt her when things go sour between you. You’re gonna break her.”
Not unless she breaks me first. But he kept his mouth shut, because saying that out loud would be like ripping open his chest and offering up his heart to his brothers for dissection.
“She won’t bounce back from it,” Cam continued. “And Eva will worry herself sick if Shelby goes into another nosedive. I can’t let that happen.”
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