by Jill Shalvis
“Sure, I could tell you that.”
“But it would be a lie?” Lyndie let out a noise of disgust when Nina just lifted a cool brow. “Damn it. Damn it, he’s probably worried sick.” Stalking back over to her telephone, she yanked up the receiver and started punching numbers.
“If he’s worried sick, it’s because he didn’t read my note,” said Nina with a derisive sniff. “But I doubt you will find him surprised.”
Lyndie glared at her while she waited for Tom to pick up his phone.
He didn’t.
“Damn it all to hell,” she muttered while his machine clicked on.
Tsking at Lyndie’s use of the language, Nina started folding the clothes she’d just tossed aside, and came up with a blouse slightly cleaner than the one Lyndie had on. “Switch,” she demanded.
“This one is fine.”
“You have a stain on your breast, you look like a slob. Switch.”
Lyndie started unbuttoning and leaving a message for Tom at the same time. “Tom, look, your errant daughter took it upon herself to stowaway on my plane. I thought she’d have called you by now, but I should have known better, as the girl—”
“Woman,” Nina corrected.
Lyndie glared at her. “As she does whatever the hell she wants. Call me.”
Just as she hung up the phone, someone knocked on her door. “Grand Frigging Central Station.” Lyndie stalked to the door. “I’m five little minutes late and the man can’t give me a break. “Look,” she called back to Nina, “I’m going to be gone until late, late tonight, it can’t be helped. Stay out of trouble.”
“Are you talking to me or the cat?” Nina asked.
“Both of you.”
“I will be out of your hair by this afternoon.” Nina turned her back, her thin shoulders stiff and distant.
And Lyndie felt like slime. “Come on, don’t get like that.”
“I know how inconvenient it is, having me here.”
“I never said—”
“And I know how much of a loner you are—”
“Well, I’m not—”
“I am very sorry I bothered you.”
“Nina, damn it, would you listen—”
The knock at the door came again, louder and more impatient this time. Lyndie pointed at Nina. “Don’t move.”
Nina crossed her arms. Lyndie recognized the stance all too well. “I mean it.” She hauled open the door. “Jeez, Sam, I have my hands full here, and—”
“Let me guess how you have your hands full.” Brody Moore, gorgeous as ever and looking quite tense, stepped over the threshold. “Where is she?”
Lyndie blinked. “How did you know where I live?” She tried to see the street from her porch—Had Griffin come with him?—but couldn’t see anything past Sam’s huge mansion.
“Just tell me you’ve got her,” Brody said. “I talked to Tom, and he said I’d probably locate her here—”
“Her who?” Nina moved into the room and eyed Brody with a cool smile. “Her me?”
“Thank God.” He reached her in less than two strides, hauling her against him, burying his face in the crook of her neck. “Jesus, you give me gray hair.”
Nina rumpled his already rumpled hair with her long fingers. “Stop it. There’s not a gray in the mix. Men. Always exaggerating.”
But she encircled him with her arms and hugged him back, closing her eyes, inhaling him in, a look of such rapture on her face that Lyndie found herself staring.
It took her back—the sigh factor she hadn’t expected, the dreamy sense of something going so right between two people she cared about. It took her back, and also left her just a little unsettled because, once again, here she stood on the outside looking in. Always slightly detached.
Her own fault, but she didn’t know how to change it. She seemed to be missing the get-attached gene. “I have a flight,” she said.
But they were kissing now, and not just a how-do-you-do kiss either, but a holding each other’s faces, eyes open, I’m-going-to-gobble-you-up kiss that did something funny to her knees. “So, uh, I guess we’ll talk later.”
No answer, just more sucky-face noises. “Really,” she said, fingers tapping on the opened front door. “I have to go.”
Behind Brody’s back, Nina waved a hand at her. Go.
Lyndie started to walk out, then stopped. “Don’t let Dummy Kitty out, okay? I don’t want the coyotes to get him.” Why she was worried about such a thing happening, when it would only save her from buying cat food, she had no idea.
But Brody and Nina were really getting into it now, complete with sounds that made her wish for ear plugs. She wondered if Griffin looked like that when he kissed her, with his entire heart in his eyes, if it showed in every touch and whisper.
She’d never looked at him while he’d kissed her, but now she wished she had.
And yet wishes were for someone who harbored regrets, something Lyndie never did. She lived her life for the here and now, forget the past, don’t think about the future.
With that in mind, she slammed the door behind her and headed toward her day.
26
Lyndie ended up staying over in Cabo to get some maintenance done on her plane, and no matter how often she tried to call her place, Nina didn’t pick up the phone.
She had no way of calling Brody—hell she didn’t even have a way to contact Griffin—but she did try Tom again.
And had to leave another message. Odd since it was eight at night now, and typically Tom’s bedtime, as he got up with the sun.
On the beach in Cabo, stuck waiting for her plane, watching a bunch of half-naked kids dodge the waves in the dusk, she called Rosa.
“You coming back to me?” Rosa asked, Tallulah yipping at something in the background. “Because I just make some fresh corn tortilla—”
“Have you seen or talked to Tom?”
“He is right here, querida. Want me to tell him something for you?”
Lyndie glanced at her watch again. Still eight. “What’s he doing there?”
“Now do I ask you such a thing when you have that gorgeous firefighter in your bedroom?”
“I—” She broke off, unsure of which had her more baffled, that Rosa had known she and Griffin had slept together, or that Rosa and Tom were possibly doing the same. She pinched the bridge of her nose and took a deep breath. “You know what? Never mind. Just tell him Nina’s at my place. Or she was. Tell him not to worry, she’s fine, but she has no plans on coming back anytime soon.”
“That is what he suspected.” Rosa sighed and passed the news to Tom before saying to Lyndie, “Well, the girl deserves a shot at her own dreams. I’ve been trying to tell him that for years.”
She heard Tom grumble at that, and then he must have grabbed the phone because then he was in her ear demanding, “Is she driving you crazy?”
“Nothing I can’t handle.”
“Look, I know I have no right to ask, but…” He blew out a frustrated breath. “Keep an eye on her, okay?”
Lyndie thought of how she’d left Nina, in the arms of a man who looked as if maybe he wasn’t going to ever let her go. “Well—”
“I just worry about her falling for the first man who smiles at her.”
Lyndie thought more than likely it would be the other way around, as Brody had seemed pretty smitten himself.
“Because really, for all her bravado, she’s naive as hell,” Tom said.
Naive wasn’t exactly the word Lyndie would have used for the savvy, streetwise Nina, but she kept her tongue. And her head. “Tom, I’m gone more than half the time, and the other half I’m lucky I manage to feed myself—”
“I’ll send money.”
“I’m not talking about money. I’m talking about responsibility—”
“You’re kidding me. Honey, you’re the most responsible woman I know.”
“Tom—”
“Please.” His voice was soft, devastated. “I can’t make her come back, thi
s is the best I can do. Just watch out for her.”
She let out a breath. “I’ll do what I can.” She hung up, calling herself every kind of fool for even caring in the first place.
* * *
That caring thing went a whole lot deeper than Lyndie ever intended. When she finally got back to San Diego the next day, she found her place empty except for one little kitty sleeping on the floor, who lifted his head and glared at her when she came in the front door.
“Nina?” She tossed down her keys and glanced at Lucifer. “Well, what’s your problem? You have a kitty box. A huge bowl of food. I was only gone overnight—” She broke off because he looked quite different. Instead of his usual dirty white, he looked like he’d just been through a washer with bleach. Upon closer inspection, he had a white powder all over him. “What the hell—”
It took only one glance in the kitchen. “Bingo.” Her tin canisters were sprawled out on the counter. The biggest one, which had been filled with flour, now sat sideways and open on the kitchen floor, along with the entire five pounds of white flour she’d never used because she had no idea how to cook. “You just had to play hockey with the canisters. You couldn’t lie around the house and be lazy like all the other cats in the universe.”
He came toward her, the usually careless little thing very meticulously not using his front left paw. “Mew.” He sat there, with his one little paw lifted, looking beyond pathetic. She picked him up—generating a cloud of flour in the process—and he carefully held his paw out. When she touched it, he hissed, then licked her hand in a gesture that broke her heart. “Oh, you poor little idiot.”
She set him down and waited for him to walk correctly, maybe even smirking at her over his shoulder to prove he’d gotten her and gotten her good.
Instead, he limped a few feet away from her and sat.
Another cloud of flour arose.
Then he very gingerly lifted his paw and looked at her.
“Shit.” The pain and suffering in those light blue eyes slayed her. “Let me look.” But when she sat on the floor next to him and pulled him onto her lap to see, he pulled the paw free and hissed at her again.
“Fine.” Hands on her hips, still on the floor, she watched him walk—limp—away. “Suffer. See if I care.”
But she did care. She cared so much it hurt. No question, she needed help with this one. Grabbing her phone, she called Sam.
“You’re back,” he said before she could say anything but his name. “Great. When do you want to fly next, because I have this entire haul that has to go to Alaska, plus two dentists who are willing to freeze their asses off for the rest of their summer vacation and pay heavily for the pleasure.”
“I need Griffin Moore’s address.”
“What?”
“I need—”
“I heard you.” He switched from work to playful mode. “You want the address for the guy you’re not admitting you have a thing for. The guy you won’t kiss and tell about.”
“Do you have it in your records or not?”
“I believe I do. So you’re really going back for seconds, huh? That sounds extremely unlike you—”
“Just give me the address,” she said through her teeth. She pulled Lucifer closer, getting her blue pants covered in flour for her efforts. The little kitten mewled softly and held his paw up, looking so unexpectedly young and pathetic that her throat tightened. “I’m sorry,” she whispered to him. Her fault. He was far too young to have been left alone. She should never have taken him home in the first place, clearly she wasn’t cut out to have anything or anyone counting on her—
“Here we go…”
She heard the whir of Sam’s fingers over his computer keyboard. “By the way, this isn’t exactly professional of me,” he said. “Giving out an address like this.”
Lucifer whined again, and her heart caved in. “Like you’ve ever worried about your professionalism. Hurry up, Sam.”
“Hey, I worry about you.” He gave her the address of a place at Ocean Beach. “Are you going to tell me why you sound like you’re an inch away from tears?”
Lucifer began licking his paw, and just the sight of him looking so tiny and defenseless tore at her. “I’m not crying.” Liar, liar. “It’s just that Lucifer has something wrong with his paw, and—”
“Lucifer? Who’s Lucifer?”
He’d told her no pets years ago.
“Mew.”
“You don’t have a pet,” he said. “Lyndie? Tell me you don’t have a pet in my guesthouse.”
“Uh…”
“Mew,” Lucifer said again.
“A cat? Is that a cat? Named…Lucifer?”
“Lucifer is a figment of our joint imagination—”
“Lyndie—”
“Gotta run, Sam. Thank you—” Disconnecting, she surged to her feet, still holding Lucifer. Grabbing her keys, she headed out the door, and drove to the address she’d gotten off Sam.
Lucifer did not enjoy his drive. He curled up on the passenger seat of her truck, loudly letting her know how much he hated every minute of the adventure. When he wasn’t caterwauling, he licked his paw, looking so miserable, Lyndie felt even worse. By the time she pulled up to Griffin’s house, she was a wreck.
His place was a small light blue house with white trim, sitting on the bluffs overlooking the beach. The shutters were dark blue and open to the afternoon sun. So was the front door.
It seemed almost overwhelmingly inviting.
Grabbing the kitten, who’d gone silent the moment she turned off the engine, she headed up the walk. “It’ll be okay,” she promised rashly. “He’ll fix you right up.”
She hoped. She knocked, and from within, she heard bare feet padding their way toward her.
* * *
Griffin had just gotten back from his interview with Jake Rawlins of the San Diego Fire Department when the knock came. The city work would be a world away from the wildland firefighting in his past, but that was the appeal. He needed a change.
Only the interview hadn’t gone as planned, which was his own fault. He’d opened the meeting by admitting he felt he should have been able to prevent the twelve deaths in Idaho. Stupid, but true.
Now he’d planned on stripping down and standing in the shower until the day was nothing but a distant memory of bad judgment.
What the hell had come over him, thinking he could do it all over again? That he could actually start over at a new place, with a new crew, day in and day out, season after season, putting it all on the line, never knowing if this would be the fire that finally destroyed him?
Again.
At least he’d come to his senses and realized it. As he walked to the front door instead of stripping, he glanced at his red bag filled with his gear, shoved in a corner, and a pang of longing welled through him.
So he’d suffered some losses—big ones. He was still here, wasn’t he? Here and capable. He’d proven that in Mexico two weeks running. So why did he have to give it all up? He rubbed his eyes, tired of himself, tired of thinking too much, of the indecision…
And now someone had come to his door.
Brody was the only one who knew where to find him, and that worked out just fine, because Griffin was spoiling for a fight and he knew his brother would give it to him.
Only it wasn’t his brother standing on his doorstep at all, but Lyndie, cradling Lucifer against her chest. The soft, short layers of her fiery hair were everywhere, and he might have hauled her in close and kissed them both to oblivion, if it hadn’t been for the look of pure misery on her face.
“He’s hurt, he’s limping—” She gulped in some air, and hugged the kitten tighter. “I left him at home all alone.”
“Cats are fine alone.”
“Not this stupid cat. He took himself for a joy run along my counters and I think he fell off. I think he broke his paw. I think—”
Her voice cracked, and he looked from Lucifer back to Lyndie, shocked to his toes to see her green
eyes shimmering with unshed tears. “Oh, baby,” he breathed.
“I know. I’m a terrible mom. I—”
“Shh.” He took Lucifer from her arms and settled him against his chest. Then he looked the cat over, frowning at the paw, which appeared unusually swollen. “I’m afraid we’ll need an X-ray for this.”
“An X-ray?”
“Come on.” He took her hand and led her back to her truck, opening the passenger side for her. He put Lucifer on her lap.
He’d walked back around, had started the engine and pulled onto the street before he glanced at her. “You’re really shaken if you’re letting me drive without an argument.”
“I never…” She let out a mirthless laugh. “I never even thought about a vet.” She stared at him. “I deal with emergencies for a living, and I got so panicked over the damn cat that isn’t even mine…I just came to you thinking you could fix it. The stupid cat likes you. I just drove straight over here without thinking—”
“I’m glad you came to me.”
She let out a sound that managed to perfectly convey her confusion. “I’m glad someone’s glad.”
The vet clinic was only down the road. When he pulled in and parked, he leaned toward her. “You came because some part of you wanted to see me.”
Her eyes never left his. “Maybe.”
His fingers stroked her jaw, sank into her wild hair. God, what he’d give for another night with her. “I know how much it costs you to ask for help.” He put his mouth to the spot beneath her ear, enjoying her quick and shallow breathing. “So I won’t ask you to admit it out loud.”
She laughed, but it backed up in her throat when he cupped her face and looked into her eyes. “And when we’re done here,” he said, “we talk. About what’s going on in your head, between us, everything.”
“Oh.” She tried to pull back. “Well, I don’t—”
“It’s time,” he said. “Past time.”
* * *
They went inside the clinic. In the waiting room, Lyndie paced while Griffin held the unhappy Lucifer.
“I should have come alone,” she muttered. “You probably had something much more important to do—”
“Nope.” He smiled without much mirth. “I’d already blown the interview with the SDFD today, and was pretty much just feeling stupid when you came knocking.”