She switched the air conditioner to full blast, then turned off on Old Twin Palms-Caldwell Road. It was the cutoff between the two cities and led to an area where there were lots of older places that had been homesteaded back in the early 1900s.
She loved the landscape here. Big scrub oaks heavy with Spanish moss and swampy ground covered in palmettos. She’d missed her home. She turned off the A/C and opened the driver’s window, letting the full blast of hot May air circulate around her.
Florida had been mainly held by the Seminoles until the late 1890s and settled by runaway slaves and prisoners from other states. Not that long ago, this area had been a huge citrus-growing center. But too many hard freezes and a bad spell of citrus canker had killed most the groves back in the 80s.
Now, places like Elias Clapham’s were all that was left. She turned off the paved road onto one that was mainly dirt and rock, then stopped and got out when she got to a rusted gate with a large C squarely in the middle. She reached into her car and took out her SLR camera then pushed open the gate. J.P. was meeting her out here along with the owner and the other bidder’s agent. She was determined to get the homestead. Steeling herself for whatever she might face, she got back in her car and drove up to the house.
The place itself was a sprawling two-story ranch-style house with a wraparound porch. In its heyday, the shutters had been pristine white and the clapboard had been painted a rustic red. Today, it was faded and the paint was chipping off. And the front porch was falling down in one corner.
But when Meg pulled her car to a stop in front of it, she saw it as her future. It was perfect.
It wasn’t lost on her that she had a knack for knowing how to make things better. Old buildings, broken-down relics of the past—she quickly saw the way things could be. Too bad she couldn’t do that for herself . . .
She got out of the car and walked around the perimeter of the house, taking pictures with her iPhone as well as her SLR. There was an overgrown rose bush near the kitchen door with one bloom in a net of thorns and she fiddled around with her angle until she was able to get the perfect picture of it.
Her phone rang and she saw the screensaver photo of Rory. She had to get rid of it . . . but not right now.
“It’s J.P. I’m running about thirty minutes late,” he said. “Have you seen the property?”
“I’m already here. It’s perfect. Do you think it will be okay for me to walk around?” she asked. It was one thing to do it in the five minutes before J.P. got here, something else to be trespassing.
Being the daughter of a cop and a devoted rule follower, she wasn’t about to do anything to get into trouble.
“I’ll call and let them know. I’ll text you if it’s not okay. Be careful. I know they are concerned about the roof in the barn,” he said. “Also, you might check with your dad. I thought I saw some evidence of someone sleeping out there and called it in.”
“Okay, I will,” she said.
She thought about texting her dad, but didn’t really want her family and friends to know what she was doing. She couldn’t bear to let them down again.
She hung up the phone and walked back to her car, getting in and turning up the A/C so that she could cool down. Keeping J.P.’s warning in mind, she locked the doors.
She looked over at the barn. It was in worse shape than the house, if that was even possible. It made sense to wait. Despite her past behavior, she was usually a very smart woman.
She heard the roar of a motorcycle and glanced in the rearview mirror as a big-ass Harley Davidson pulled up behind her. She shook her head as she recognized Rory on the bike.
She rolled down her window and looked over at him.
“You following me?”
“Not quite. I’m looking for a house,” he said, nodding toward the Clapham place.
Of course. She knew it had been too easy. The kind of house producers were looking to remodel, right here in her backyard. Nothing ever went that smoothly for her.
So hottie here wanted the house, too. “Why do you want this place? It’s going to be a lot of work.”
“I’m not afraid of work,” he said, flexing his muscles.
“Don’t be cute,” she said.
He took his helmet off and ran one hand through his short brown hair, leaving it disheveled. He had obviously taken the time to go home and shower. The scent of his aftershave drifted toward her on the warm breeze.
“Who said I was being cute?” he asked. “The truth is, I like hard work. It keeps me from thinking too much.”
“What could you have to worry about?” she asked. “You look like you have it all together.”
“Touché.”
“Um . . . I know you heard all those people ribbing me about being back in town.”
“I did. What’s the story?”
“Picture some big, bragging idiot telling everyone that she was going to be a star and then leaving town after throwing herself a big-ass goodbye party. Then um . . . nothing. That shot at stardom dried up.”
“Ouch,” he said. There was something in his eyes that revealed he’d dealt with humiliation as well.
“Yeah, ouch. This house . . . it’s sort of my future,” she said.
“That’s a nice story from a pretty lady, but it’s going to take more than big eyes to make me back down.”
“You think I’m pretty?” she asked. God, she wished she were better at flirting, but she never had been. She sounded awkward and like she was trying to be coy. “That sounded dumb, didn’t it? Can you tell I’m the world’s worst flirter?”
He arched one eyebrow at her. “I wouldn’t say worst.”
“Is that supposed to be some kind of backwards compliment?”
“Not at all.”
She noticed the afternoon clouds blowing across the sky getting darker and darker. She glanced back at the house. She wasn’t going to give it up without a fight. The humiliation of running back home with her tail tucked between her legs was one thing. But an outright challenge like Rory presented just spurred her to win. And she liked to win.
“That’s a shame,” she said.
“Why is that?” he asked, leaning down and resting his arm on the car roof above her head.
“I was hoping we could be friends. But now it looks like we’re going after the same thing.”
“I don’t see why that precludes us from being friends,” he said. “Unless you’re a sore loser.”
“Ah, honey, it’s so cute you think you’d win.”
Chapter Two
STRONG WORDS FROM the redhead with the big cinnamon eyes. He planned to pretend that all he felt was the tingle of excitement at coming across a new challenge, after weeks of sitting around the fire station cleaning everything in sight. This was definitely a good kind of excitement.
Damn it. He just noticed that her mouth was full and he knew he wanted to kiss her. But kissing the enemy . . . well, hell. Was there anything sweeter? Besides, it wasn’t as if they were truly at war.
“You’re cute. Deluded, but cute,” he said.
“Why do you want this property?” she asked. “A firefighter should be closer to town.”
“I’ve had my eye on this property for a while.”
“Really?” she asked sounding skeptical. “That’s odd. It’s just come on the market.”
A cooler breeze blew around him and he glanced up at the darkening sky. No need to look at his watch. He knew that the regular late afternoon thunderstorm was almost upon them. He needed to find a place out of the rain to store his bike until it passed.
“Well, honey, I bought the surrounding grove area about three years ago.”
“Please, don’t call me honey. My name is Meg,” she said.
“Sure thing, Meg. I’ve got to get my bike under some
cover before the rain starts,” he said. “I guess this is goodbye.”
He noticed an overhang near the barn and started walking his bike that way.
“Wait up. I still have questions,” she said. He heard her close the window on her car, and then get out and follow him.
The ground was dry in most spots. Despite getting rain every day, the May heat sucked it all out of the land. The barn didn’t look exactly safe, but Rory reckoned if it had managed to survive for at least fifty years, it could make it one more day.
He parked his bike and leaned back against it as Meg followed him under the overhang. She crossed her arms and looked at him.
He could almost see the wheels turning in her mind as she tried to figure out a way to best him or to get him to back down. But he was an O’Roarke and the word quit wasn’t in his vocabulary.
“Tell me something, Rory. Where does a firefighter get this kind of money?” she asked.
The million-dollar question and one he could answer glibly, thanks to his ex-wife’s aversion to firefighters. “I’m good with numbers. I used to work for an investment banking firm.”
“Sounds like there is more to this story,” she said.
“How do you mean?” he asked, shrugging out of his leather jacket and putting it over the saddle of his bike. He caught her staring at his chest and hid a smile.
“Um . . .” She looked away from him, turning her attention to the land that surrounded the house. Then she took a deep breath. “So, why did you decide to become a fireman?”
“Have dinner with me and I’ll tell you,” he said.
“Dinner, really? We’re competitors,” she said. “Then again, I do believe in knowing my enemy.”
“I’m not your enemy, honey.”
“Meg!”
“Meg!”
She shook her head. “You think you’re charming, don’t you?”
He shrugged. The truth was, before Nat, his ex, he’d done all right with the ladies. And someone like Meg was easy to needle. He liked flustering her. “Dinner?”
“Is there anything I could do to convince you to walk away from this place?”
He shook his head. “Nope. But we can still spend some time together. Talk about my sordid past. And if you’re nice, maybe I’ll give you some flirting tips.”
She rolled her eyes at him. “Be serious. I just told you that your charms don’t work on me.”
Oh, he thought they did. But that was ego and this was fun. Still, he knew he wasn’t going to back down just because a pair of pretty eyes looked his way. He needed a project and this house would be perfect. Something to keep his mind off the fact that the last time he’d been in a fire, he’d lost a little part of his soul.
“Makes a lot more sense for a first responder to be in town.”
He cocked one eyebrow at her. “You’d think, but I work twenty-four hours on, forty-eight off, so it will be fine.”
“Of course it will. But don’t you think this place is a little big for a single dude?”
“Even bigger for a single lady.”
She bit her lower lip and he tracked the movement. He really wanted at least one kiss from her. One little taste of her sassiness.
“You know, I’ve just come back to Twin Palms, Rory. This county is my home. I need to find a way to feel like I’m part of it again . . . I have been searching for a place to call home.”
He started laughing.
She shook her head. “You know you’re being rude, don’t you?”
“Sorry, honey, but I can tell when I’m being conned. I have a sister and I’ve seen her do it all too often to her husband,” Rory said.
“I really need this place,” she said.
He heard the desperation in her voice. He understood it. He’d been backed into a corner before. “Have dinner with me. You can tell me why you need it.”
“Will it make you change your mind?”
“I won’t know until you tell me your story,” he said.
He crossed his arms over his chest and just stared at her. As the breeze kicked up, blowing more strongly from the west, the first droplets of rain fell over them.
It was still hot, but the wind stirred his hair. Meg’s hair blew in the breeze as well, tendrils escaping from her headband and dancing in front of her eyes. He wondered if those strands felt as soft as they looked.
“Crap,” he said as the first drops of rain fell around them.
The drops were cold after the heat of the day. The spray from the wind showered them in moisture. He glanced around the area, hoping for a place to escape, but there wasn’t any. Meg tipped her head back and let the droplets hit her face.
“I missed Florida,” she said. But it was clear she wasn’t talking to him.
He wondered what her story was. Dinner was definitely going to happen. She looked like a woman who wanted to let the rain wash everything away. But why?
THE RAIN SLOWED, but everything was soaked, including Meg Starling. She stood next to him, staring at the house with such longing that he was tempted to give in. But the last time he’d given up something because a woman asked, hadn’t worked out that well for him.
The homestead’s property contained a natural spring. Plus, going through it was the only way to get to the land he’d purchased almost ten years ago. It was funny that the property that had brought Nat into his life, his first big investment at Fidelity, was directly responsible for helping him start over here.
“Okay, I’ll have dinner with you,” she said at last.
“Well, thank goodness,” he said sarcastically.
“I’m being a brat, aren’t I?”
“Nah. Not any more than I am. I guess we’re both the type of people who go after what we want.”
“I am,” she said. “Unfortunately, when you want something nebulous, it’s easy to get distracted.”
“Is that what happened to you?” he asked.
She sighed. “Kind of. It was simply easier to keep doing what I was being asked to do instead of doing what I wanted.”
“I don’t understand.”
“I left here to star on HGTV.”
“Ah, I had no idea you were good at . . . what is it you do?” he asked.
“Take old things and upcycle them. When I went to Manhattan five years ago, I thought it was my big break. But the job I got wasn’t what I’d hoped it would be. Finding this house is my ticket back.”
“Why go back when you just got back here?” he asked.
She gave him a hard stare, and then shrugged. “I don’t know if I will go back. What I do know is that I need to prove to myself that I could go back if I wanted. That the potential I had at twenty-five is still a big part of me.”
“I get that,” he said. Big time. It was the same reason he had taken the job at Twin Palms Fire Department. He had to prove something to himself—prove that he hadn’t lost everything along with his ex-wife.
“Tell me your dreams,” he said, his voice low.
She tipped her head to the side. A tendril of wet dark red hair fell over her eye and she slowly tucked it back behind her ear. “My dreams? Honey, I don’t know you well enough to share them.”
“Really? Meg, please don’t call me honey,” he said with a wink.
She smiled at him and shook her head.
“How would you upcycle this place?” he asked. “What were your plans?”
The tendril fell forward again and she wrapped it around her finger, twisting it, then tucking it away again. For a moment, he saw truth in those cinnamon eyes. Then she looked away. They were strangers, still. He knew that he’d asked her for more than she was going to give him. At least, for now.
“Listen, if you want this property and want me to bow out, you’re going to have t
o give me something.”
“I don’t know yet. I have an image in my head, but it’s still hazy. That sounds dumb, doesn’t it?” she asked, glancing at him quickly. “It’s just that until I get inside and see what I’d be working with, it’s hard to know what I’m going to do.”
“That doesn’t sound dumb,” he said. He treated fires the same way. Until he got into the heat and saw where it was heading, how it was behaving, he couldn’t really know how he’d stop it.
She smiled at him—that sweet, almost sad smile that he was starting to like a little too much. She seemed confident—hell, she was ballsy to come back to town after she’d left the way she said she had. So she wasn’t a coward.
He liked that.
Hell, he liked her and her big kissable mouth. And he knew that if she had dinner with him and he got to know her . . . she might have the keys to beating him. But he wasn’t planning to back down.
“There are a lot of places like this one around here. Why do you want this one so badly? Why the Clapham homestead and not some other piece of property?”
She rubbed the back of her neck as she stared at the house with its wraparound porch and peeling paint. He wanted to hear what she saw when she looked at the house. Not her vision for what she’d do, but why this place was special.
She walked toward the edge of the overhang as the afternoon rain started to slow and looked at the ramshackle old house. “It’s unkempt but the structure is still solid. It looks like old Florida to me. So many of the houses in this area are all pink stucco. That’s not Florida. Not my Florida. I want the chance to show the producers something that’s a part of me.”
“That’s a nice sentiment. But I know of a few other places in the county that are pretty similar. I saw a nice Victorian in town. I think it’s across from the diner.”
“My sister owns the diner, so I can’t buy that house. She’s already got dibs on it. Besides, it’s not a real Victorian. It was built in the eighties,” she said.
In The Heat 0f The Night (The O'Roarkes Duet Book 2) Page 2