by Oram, Jean
Not that kind of ‘came to see her.’ Of course. The stress. Totally messing with her brain.
“But...” she protested.
“I just need a few details.” He flashed her a smile. “First hand.”
He shouldn’t be smiling as though he was enjoying his job. Not a nice man like him. He should be on his hands and knees all wrung out at having to pursue her case. He should automatically know she was innocent. A girl in the wrong place at the wrong time.
He made up the ground between them and extended his hand to shake hers. “It’s been a few days. Always a pleasure to see you.”
She watched his hand lingering in the air and slowly reached out. It felt as though she was doing everything in slow motion, as though she was coated in a deep layer of cold molasses. Dear Lord, please make it so I don’t look slow.
Rob made up the distance between their hands and grasped hers warmly, fitting their hands together expertly. Like they were made for each other. What other body parts could he fit together like that?
She gave herself a shake and met his eyes. God, he had great eyes. So bright and sparkly against his dark hair. And he looked…happy. Happy to see her. How twisted was that?
Jen gave herself a mental slap.
The heat and strength from his grip had pleasant prickles of desire working their way up her arm, spreading further, making her unable to speak. She snatched her hand out of his grip. She needed to convince him she was innocent. She needed to block out his rocking, ogle-worthy body and the serrated pangs of loneliness that shot through her now that they were no longer touching.
God, she was lonely. She needed to touch him again.
No. She promised herself she would never be that lonely again. She would never make the same mistake twice. No matter what.
But there was something about him that made her feel safe despite everything. Something that whispered to her soul that he wouldn’t be that guy. That he was on her side—even though in the eyes of the law he wasn’t. He was an impartial, third-party investigating her, collecting evidence to determine her fate.
“You two need my office, Jen?” Wally offered, snapping her into the moment.
“Thanks, Wally, but I think we’ll use the staff area,” she said stiffly. No need to lock herself in a small office with this man.
“Thank you,” Rob said to Wally. “I need to interrog—” He cleared his throat, his cheeks flushing. “Interview Jen. Would we be disturbed?”
Interrogate. He almost said interrogate.
Jen pulled herself up, feeling slightly weak. “Should I have a…” She gulped. “Should I have a lawyer present?”
“If that suits you,” he replied.
She stared at him. What in heck did that mean?
“Anything you tell me will be considered part of the investigation,” he clarified.
“Against me?”
“In general,” he said, waving a hand nonchalantly. “As a nature guide, information you provide may give me clues about the fire and its true cause.”
Jen practically hauled him to the staffroom. She tucked a strand of hair behind an ear, eager to help him pin this on someone who didn’t know what they were doing out in nature—someone who wasn’t her. And she didn’t need John present in order to do that.
The door jangled as it opened and Moe called out, “Jen!” He moved toward her with purpose, his eyes never leaving Rob as he tugged his dirty shirt over his head. His torso bare, he slipped the fresh shirt on, his focus solely on Rob. “I know you,” he said slowly, his eyes tracking every movement Rob made.
Rob gave him a polite smile and raised his brows.
“Yeah, you’ve been asking around about Jen.” Moe nodded, sizing up Rob in a way that made Jen uncomfortable.
“It’s his job,” Jen said quietly.
Rob held out his hand to shake Moe’s. “Rob Raine. Fire investigator.”
“Yeah, that’s who you are.” Moe stood a little closer to Jen, his shoulder touching hers as he handed her the keys, ignoring Rob’s offered hand as he stared him down.
“Moe, don’t be rude,” Jen murmured and Moe gave Rob a reluctant, brief hand shake.
Moe tucked in his shirt, addressing Rob more than Jen. “We’ve got to get that spare set made.”
For a second, Jen thought Moe was going to give her a kiss. But he didn’t, of course, because they were nothing more than friends. “Thanks, Moe. Have a good day at work.”
If this stress kept up, she’d be stuck in the funny farm in a sweater with sleeves so long they’d wrap all the way around her. Although, maybe that would be okay. She’d look better in white than an orange jumpsuit. And the drugs would be better, too.
She led Rob to the staffroom, offering him the old, wheeled chair she often sat in while she took Wally’s.
“Can I get you anything to drink?” she asked, tugging down the cuffs of her shorts.
Rob, spying the coffeemaker between them said, “A coffee would be great.”
Jen let out garbled sounds as she thought of the perfectly good coffee she’d spilled all over him only days before. And how she was about to ruin another coffee experience for him due to the fact that, more often than not, she made horrid coffee. There was a really good reason she let Wally create caffeine magic every day. “Right. Coffee.” She turned to the machine, her back to the window that overlooked the store, and wrung her hands. “Right.” She could do this. She could make decent coffee.
“If it’s a problem—” he began.
“No, no problem,” she said, her voice too high to come off as natural.
She carefully measured out the coffee, keeping her back to Rob. When she needed water for the pot, she squeezed past him, her bare thighs grazing his arm. Electricity arced between them, brushing her nerves. She shivered and scooted by quickly so she could breathe again.
As she filled the pot in the bathroom’s sink, she rubbed the bags under her eyes and sighed. There was no way a guy such as Rob would ever find a girl like her attractive. She sighed and turned off the tap, giving herself one last glance in the mirror. Not willowy enough. Too strong. Too outdoorsy and natural with curves that would give an old-fashioned boudoir dame a run for her money. It seemed not many men fell for that look these days.
She gave a light laugh. What was she thinking? He was here to interrogate her, and she was wishing she was someone else so he’d fall in love with her? What the hell was wrong with her? She’d rather be strong and able to portage a canoe solo than be someone else so this guy could fall in love with her. He had to love her for who she was or he could go jump off a cliff.
Back in the staffroom she moved to squeeze past him and he scooted his chair so far out of her way he bounced off the wall. Swallowing hard at the rejection, she finished making the coffee and plunked onto the chair across from him. He tugged a pile of papers from his zip-up folder and carefully placed them on his lap. That’s when she noticed the small voice recorder perched beside her.
Suddenly, it was rather difficult to breathe through her increasingly small throat.
“I don’t know how much you know about what I do, or why I am here.” Rob cleared his throat.
“Right. I don’t know.” Jen crossed her arms and tried to relax. She dug around in her mind, seeking out those protected feelings she’d had earlier when he’d come into the store. “Know anything. That is.” She kicked her legs out in front of her, just about nailing Rob in the shin. “About you. Or why you are here.” She rubbed her nose and leaned forward, then back. It was really cramped in here. And Rob was blocking the door, making her feel trapped. She just wanted to leave. To go sit by Blueberry Lake and not think for an hour.
Rob leaned on the arm of his chair, blocking her exit even further. “Basically, I’m here as an impartial party.”
“Some party,” she muttered.
“Sorry?” He looked up from his papers, his gray eyes curious.
“Nothing.”
His lips twitched as though
he was holding back a smile. “I’ll survey the burn area and do tests to determine approximately where the fire started and, hopefully, by what. It can take days or weeks. Part of my success depends on the information I get from you and others.”
“Word on the street sounds as though you already know all that.” She fidgeted with the loose material on the arm of Wally’s chair.
“I’ve sent in a preliminary report to my boss, based on what I’ve seen so far, but until the fire is out I can’t confirm those deductions. Fires tend to act in several different ways so my deductions are likely to be fairly accurate. However, I do need to confirm it with evidence from the burn site as well as a few eyewitness accounts.” He pulled a sheet off his stack of papers. “I’ll need to record our conversation as well as have you sign a consent form.” He turned the first sheet around and passed it to her.
Jen stared at the page blankly, her mind refusing to engage.
“Basically, it says that anything you say to me here can be used in court and that you promise to be truthful and won’t interfere in my investigation or hold back information from me or the company I work for,” he said.
“Right. Got that.” Maybe she should call John. This was sounding pretty serious. In fact, this conversation might lead to her not being able to camp ever again. Or go for a paddle whenever she wanted. Or take groups of smiling people on hikes and share her world with them.
The room lost its brightness, and she quickly bent over to tuck her head between her knees.
“Are you okay?” Rob’s voice filled with concern as he laid a warm hand on her back.
“Just give me a second. I think I lost a button.”
“Can I get you a water or something?”
“No, I just have to find this, this…button.” She tried to sound upbeat, and not as though she was struggling to regain blood flow to her brain. She waited a moment, slowly calming her breathing, willing her vision to correct itself. Slowly, she lifted her head.
So far, so good.
She attempted a reassuring smile.
He watched her for a moment, his eyes skimming the front of her T-shirt, then tentatively handed her a pen. “Could you sign this, please?”
Jen signed the consent, wondering what he would do if she refused to sign. Probably have her tossed in jail for being belligerent or whatever that legal term was for being difficult and unhelpful. She handed him the form, hoping he wouldn’t notice the way the paper shook.
The coffeemaker finally began gurgling. “Do you take cream and sugar?”
“If you have it.”
“We do. Excuse me.” She pointed to the mini-fridge which was blocked by Rob’s long legs. “I need in there.” She moved slowly, lightheadedness badgering her.
Rob briskly rolled his chair back where it stuck in the old carpet. He scooted his chair forward to get it unstuck, the force springing the wheel free, and thrusting him forward, colliding into Jen. He put out a hand to lessen the collision, landing on her bare knee, skidding up her bare leg.
“Sorry! So sorry.” His face flushed crimson as he stared at the spot his hand had been.
She inhaled sharply. “It’s okay.” She quickly grabbed the cream and sugar from the fridge and plunked them beside a cup for Rob.
“I’m usually more coordinated,” he said, clearing his throat as he studiously doctored his coffee.
Her shaking hands skittered sugar out of her spoon. “What can I say? I have that effect on guys.” She inhaled and rolled her eyes behind her eyelids. What was it about him? She needed a big ol’ case of shut the hell up. And now she was probably so bright red she could give a lobster a run for its money in a ‘who is redder’ contest.
Rob looked startled for a moment, then started choking and laughing.
Jen smiled, loving that he could break the tension just like that. And his laugh? Oh, hell. That laugh did her in. It tickled her heart and made her want to join in. There was just something about that laugh. About him.
Familiar.
Endearing.
Totally crush worthy.
There was no way she was calling in John. She could handle this on her own.
She watched Rob take a healthy gulp of his coffee with no ill impact to his expression, and she took a hesitant sip of her own. How about that? She’d actually managed to make coffee. In fact, this cup of joe was so good it could almost make her believe her world was going to be okay again. She closed her eyes and took another sip. Cream and sugar mixed in caffeine made the world a happy, happy place. Two coffees within an hour had to equal a good day, didn’t it?
Rob clicked on his voice recorder. “So, did you start that fire, Jen?”
And now that happy world was filled with vicious little gremlins sporting torches and pitchforks.
“Very funny.”
He gave her an apologetic smile. “Gotta ask. Gotta try.”
She twisted her chair back and forth, feeling as though she was in some cross-border interrogation room, waiting for the onslaught. She clenched her hands around her cup as Rob let a long silence crowd the small room.
“Tell me your side of the story, with as much detail—including location—as possible.” He looked up at her as though he was used to looking at people over the top of reading glasses and poised his pen.
Outside the window looking into the store, Mary Alice gave her a grin and a wave as her eyes took in Rob with one large assessing sweep. Oh, hell. The sisters were onto her horrible day like vultures on a carcass.
She explained how she’d left after work, driven to the park, then hiked to her site after registering at the registration/interpretive hut near the park gate. She explained that she set up camp just before sundown.
He interrupted to ask, “Did you make a fire that night?”
“No. The pit was in poor condition. I didn’t have time to rebuild it.” Not wanting to admit that she was out of condition and too tired from the long hike in with all her gear, she added, “It was getting too dark to go looking for more rocks, so I waited until morning.” She left out the part about accidentally heaving her brand new pop-up tent, which set itself up in the air when you tossed it high enough, into the bushes when she forgot to unlatch its straps. That and the way she’d slipped and fallen into the parking lot at the end of her long hike out again.
She rubbed the pink skin on her knee where the scab had recently fallen off. Talk about a humiliating tumble. She must have slid at least twenty feet, the momentum of her large pack preventing her from being able to regain her balance at the top of the hill or stop once she’d begun sliding and falling. She’d ruined her favorite pair of hiking pants in that fall as well as dented her pride.
“In the morning, I rebuilt the pit and made myself breakfast.” He asked her to explain in detail how she rebuilt the pit and she indulged him with details. “I know my pit was sound,” she emphasized.
“Did you put out the fire?”
“Of course I did.”
“Hang on a second,” Rob said. He chewed his bottom lip, studying her without reserve. She barely fought the urge to wipe her face in case something was on it. “You had to rebuild the pit.”
“Yes.” She thought he was supposed to be bright. He’d just had her explain how she rebuilt the pit a minute ago. If her fate was truly in his hands, she was so screwed.
He leaned forward. “You didn’t build your fire in a metal fire pit?”
“There aren’t any in the clearing.”
He pulled out a map from his pile of papers. “Please explain.”
“The clearing. It’s bush camping.”
“The clearing?” He looked at his map, confused.
Holy chocolate chip cookies. Did she have to walk him through his job? “It’s where the locals go if they want a bit more of a hike, more seclusion, more nature.” She pointed to an area on the map, north of the regular sites. “It’s where I always go. Very nice. Quiet. No garbage or noise. Real camping.”
“Oh.” He looked at
her as though re-evaluating her. She hoped that was good. He was still watching her, recalculating things in his head. The only issue was she wasn’t sure where she was going to come out in the equation.
Finally he gave her a knowing smile, a hint of a gleam in his eyes. “Okay, so you registered but didn’t mark where you were going to make camp?”
“Well, kind of. Do you have a copy of my registration?”
“Yes.” He pulled out a photocopy.
Feeling hopeful, Jen pulled her chair closer so their knees almost touched and leaned over the sheet. She could smell his woodsy aftershave. Manly. Real. She liked it.
She pointed where she hadn’t checked off a campsite number on the sheet. “If you’re going to the clearing, you leave it blank. The old forms used to have a place to check for the clearing. It used to be called Local’s Point. Because of the locals. But, they changed the forms a few years back because people kept getting lost trying to find it. So, they left it off, but people still camp there. It’s a local’s nuance.” She pushed her chair back and looked at him, figuring this would clarify everything.
Which, judging from the way he was chewing on his lip again, it evidently didn’t.
“Shouldn’t Scott have known where you were camped? He didn’t say you were at the clearing.” He gave her a sidelong glance as if she wouldn’t notice that he was sizing her up. Again.
She forced herself to be patient. “He probably didn’t think to mention it. It’s easy to forget that not everyone knows about the clearing. He’s only filling in as a forest ranger since the last guy retired. They’re looking for someone new.” She didn’t want to diss Scott as he was a friend of Amber and Mandy’s and she’d hung out with him here and there. But he wasn’t exactly enthralled with his added duty of babysitting forests, and it kind of showed.
Rob narrowed his eyes and said, “How do I know you’re telling the truth? What if you’re covering your tracks? What if you started a fire down in the main sites, but say you were in the clearing?”
Okay, suddenly this guy wasn’t so cute. And definitely not stupid. She met his eyes and leaned forward. “I am not a liar.” She held his gaze until he looked down. “I love that park.” She poked herself in the chest. “And I did not start that fire.” She bit her bottom lip, biting back the anger.