Burning Up

by Anne Marsh

“Shipment’s off?” Nonna called from her front porch.

  Lily didn’t want to stop and talk, but there was nothing casual about Nonna’s question, and she had too much respect for the older woman to simply drop her a handful of words and keep on going. Plus, Uncle Ben would kick her ass two ways to Sunday if she took that approach. “Sure is.”

  Those dark eyes examined her face. “So you’ve got a little extra time on your hands.”

  Like hell she did. She cursed again, because just she’d borrowed Jack’s favorite set of cusswords. What she had was a working lavender farm—there was no free time in that job description. “If I keep at it,” she said, avoiding the question because she wasn’t stupid enough to walk straight into Nonna’s little trap, “I’ll clear just enough to make things right with the bank this month.”

  Nonna took a ladylike sip from the iced glass set by her elbow. “So you have some time.” The rocker creaked as Nonna got up and poured another glass of lemonade. “Sit with me.”

  Reluctantly Lily took the offered lemonade, perching on the edge of the porch. This was a command performance.

  “You need to slow down some,” Nonna said. “Take a few minutes. Ben checked in a little while ago. Our boys won’t be back for a while yet. They’ve got that fire on the run now, but there’s still work up there for them to do.”

  She decided to give in with good grace. Jack Donovan wasn’t hers, would never belong to just one woman. She’d share him with Nonna—and likely with at least a dozen more.

  “Uncle Ben is used to fighting fires,” she said cautiously.

  Nonna just smiled, which meant Lily wasn’t putting one over on the older woman. Not today. “But we both know I’m not worried about him, don’t we?”

  She threw caution to the wind. “I don’t want to talk about Jack.”

  Nonna smiled. “Jack’s never been an easy one. He’s worth the effort, though, Lily. If you make that effort, I don’t think you’ll regret it.”

  She didn’t need Jack. Well, maybe for sex—because sex with Jack Donovan had exceeded every fantasy she’d dreamed up on her own—but she wasn’t stupid enough to confuse sex with anything else. That morning he couldn’t wait to get the hell out of her bed, out of her house. To go fight a fire that could kill him. She stared at Nonna and wondered if she knew what her son was up to, if she worried herself sick whenever her boys rode out of town to chase a fire.

  “It gets easier,” Nonna said quietly. “And harder, too. Jack’s real good at what he does, Lily. He doesn’t take chances he doesn’t need to take. The job he’s doing is an important one.”

  “I know that.” She did, too. She just wanted to be as important to him, and that needy part of her made her angry. She knew Strong needed him, but she needed him, too. Wanted him to need her, as well. If he thought he was sleeping with her tonight, he could damn well think again. He’d be lucky if she let him stay on the porch. “He’s a damned hero. I know that.”

  “Strong needs a man like that on its side.” Nonna sighed. “But you’ve got your reasons to dislike fires, haven’t you? What happened back in San Francisco isn’t something easily forgotten. If you want to talk about it, I’m here. Or, if you want to forget it ever happened, that’s your choice, too.” Nonna’s eyes promised sympathy. Warmth. A shoulder to cry on if she needed it. As if the older woman understood exactly what it meant to come home one day and realize that home wasn’t a safe place.

  “I want to forget.” She swallowed. “I do. I’m tired of being afraid, of looking over my shoulder. I don’t know if I can stop, though.” Those memories of the flames were right there, waiting for her, when she closed her eyes. “Strong was supposed to be safe. How do I know this fire is just another summer fire? How do I know he didn’t set it? And that, this time, he won’t take everything I care about away?”

  “We don’t know.” Lily didn’t miss Nonna’s deliberate choice of pronouns. “It seems pretty clear to me that this town needs saving in more ways than one.” Ice cubes clinked, hitting the sides of the glass as Nonna thought over what she’d said. “Fire season is never kind, but jobs went away a long time ago. Strong needs all the help it can get.”

  It was true enough that many of the people she’d grown up with, gone to school with, were flat-out gone now. You wanted an education or a choice in jobs, you left. It was as simple as that. Some of them, though, well, some of them came on back, didn’t they?

  She had.

  “We’ve got ourselves an ice cream place, a few antiques shops,” Nonna continued comfortably. “Couple of places where visitors can lay their heads. The winery. But what else are folks going to do around here? We need more places like your farm, Lily. That farm of yours, it’s going to bring in money and visitors.”

  “You’re saying lavender is sexy?”

  Nonna snorted. “Guess I am.”

  Nonna looked at Lily, took another sip of lemonade, and made up her mind. “He’s a good man.” Lily just froze, and that was all the confirmation Nonna needed. She hadn’t missed the interest in Lily’s eyes, not ten years ago and not now. She’d give Lily what she could. Not too much, because it was Jack’s story, after all, but she was his mother, damn it, and that gave her some license to interfere. Just a little.

  “You’re talking about Jack.” Lily gave a little half laugh that wouldn’t convince anyone. She was fighting her feelings, just like Jack was. Lily had always been cautious. She wasn’t outright denying the attraction, though, and that was good. Just maybe Jack wouldn’t be so alone after this summer ended. “Why?”

  “Why wouldn’t I?” She headed on into her kitchen, leaving Lily no choice but to follow her or risk outright rudeness. She loved the vintage tile. Jack had done the whole kitchen over for her right before the boys finished high school, bringing the Craftsman home back to its former glory. Even then her boy had been good with his hands. She’d thought, for just a little while, that he’d choose a different path than the military, but there was no arguing that the service had made a man out of her boy. “You were always watching Jack, even when the two of you were too young to know what you were getting yourselves into.” If she wasn’t mistaken, that was chagrin she saw on Lily’s face. “He’s my son, Lily. Of course I saw what the two of you were getting up to. I had my hopes, too.”

  “What did you think was going to happen between us?” Challenge replaced chagrin. What Lily’s voice didn’t make clear, the stubborn set of her chin did. Jack wasn’t going to have an easy summer of it, but that wasn’t a bad thing. If he wanted this woman standing here in her kitchen, he’d have to fight for her.

  Jack had always loved a good fight.

  She started pulling sandwich fixings from the large refrigerator. “I’ve lived a pretty good life of my own. I’ve been kissed a time or two. Done my share of whispering and talking and hand-holding.” There was amusement in her voice when she thought of those memories. And a touch of sadness. Sometimes it seemed as if she only talked in the past tense, about people and places long gone. Memories were good, but there was no holding on to them. They were over and done with. “I think I had a pretty good idea of what you kids got up to down at the swimming hole.

  “Maybe.” A smile creased Lily’s face, lighting up those beautiful eyes of hers. “We got up to plenty of mischief, Nonna, but that was all. We weren’t too outrageous.”

  “Did you want to be?” She added mustard to the first stack of ham sandwiches. Rio would want his plain, so she laid out more bread.

  Lily, bless her, grabbed the plastic wrap and started in on the sandwiches. “It wouldn’t have mattered, Nonna. Jack was never going to be any less than a gentleman.” The mental picture she got, thinking of Jack as a gentleman, had her snorting. Jack was a fighter and a protector. Raw. Hard. Lily had seen sides of Jack he wouldn’t share with a mother. He was no gentleman. Jack had never held back a day in his life. Except maybe that one.

  “He kissed you.” The knife sawed effortlessly through the thick bread. “Back in
the day,” she clarified, because she had a pretty good idea what had happened since Jack’s return to Strong.

  “Yes.” Lily’s voice was cool, but Nonna didn’t miss the hint of nostalgia. “He was damn good at it,” she admitted, laughter coloring her voice. “I’d be lying if I said he wasn’t. I wasn’t his first.”

  “But do you want to be his last?” Nonna started loading up the cooler. Not too heavy, she decided, or she and Lily would never get the blasted thing into Lily’s car to take to the boys.

  “Jack’s not the settling-down type.”

  “Not the settling type, that’s for certain. I ever tell you how he came to me?” Lily’s mute shake of her head was carefully nonchalant, but there was no missing the interest in her eyes or the way those capable hands stilled on the sandwiches. She had Lily hooked.

  “Jack,” she continued, “well, he was always first out of a room, first to end a conversation. Not to be rude, you understand, and not because he didn’t care, but because he needed to be the one who ended it. He’d already had too many people walk out on him, and he was only ten. He was all wiry muscles and scrapes, just plunging in and letting me know, even then, that he’d be staying put just as long as he felt like it and not a minute longer. He made me realize that the dreams I’d had about being a foster parent were just that. Dreams. He made me work for his trust every day. He’d already been in three, maybe four different houses by then. He figured mine would be just another stop on the road.” She shook her head. “Turns out, I’m even more stubborn than he is. That had to have been a shock for him, but, somehow, we all survived.”

  “What were his birth parents like?”

  “Not much for hanging around, so Jack didn’t get a chance to know them, but you’d understand all about that.” Lily’s mother had left her with her uncle and hit the road, never to return. “You had Ben, though. Jack—well, he didn’t have anyone at first.”

  “When did he meet Evan and Rio?”

  “They’re quite a trio, aren’t they?” She treasured those memories of raising a pack of wild boys. She’d been like Wendy with the Lost Boys, even though she’d never been the sweet and nurturing type. She’d given them all of herself, and that, it turned out, had been just enough. They were every inch her sons. “They met as runaways, down on the beach. Accidental doesn’t mean they weren’t family, though. You couldn’t separate those boys. Caseworker made it clear she wasn’t responsible if I tried. Previous foster mom only wanted to keep one. The lot of them took right off.”

  “They ran away?” It wasn’t hard to imagine what could—and would—happen to a ten-year-old boy out on his own. Nothing good. Nothing she wanted to imagine happening to Jack.

  “Tried.” Nonna shut the lid on the cooler and started pulling cold cans of soda out of the fridge. “Course, being not quite ten, those boys didn’t get all that far. They’d made their point, though.”

  “You took all three.”

  “Of course I did. They were a package deal—the boys had made that clear. Folks around here thought I was just plain crazy. Maybe I was, but I wouldn’t have traded those boys for anything. There I was, looking forty closer in the eye than I liked, and I had this big house. Together, we made it a home. Three years after they came to me, the state of California finally let me make it legal and adopt them. Since then we’ve had our ups and our downs, but we’ve got each other’s backs, and no one lies to anyone in this house. They’ve never let me down.”

  She shouldered open the screen door. “Give me a hand with this, will you?” She took one end of the fully loaded cooler, waiting until Lily grabbed the other, and then she marched toward that little import Lily loved so much. “Don’t have much trunk space in this thing, do you?”

  “There’s enough to suit me,” Lily grumbled, too preoccupied to notice just what Nonna was up to. She was trying to imagine Jack Donovan as a scared, rebellious, ten-year-old boy. They’d grown up together, in the same town, but she hadn’t paid him much attention until she was older. Until high school, when every new hormone in her body had sat up and taken note of him. She’d just bet he’d been every bit the heartbreaker then that he was now—but that was dangerous curiosity she didn’t need, any more than she needed or wanted the unexpectedly sweet tug on her emotions brought by Nonna’s tale. Jack had landed with Nonna, and he’d found a happily-ever-after too many kids in the foster care system never got.

  “Pop the trunk.” Nonna set her end of the cooler down, leaving Lily no choice but to follow. The weight of the loaded cooler wasn’t inconsequential. “You take this on up to the camp for me,” Nonna suggested. “They’ll be hungry now they’ve got that fire under control.”

  Lily opened her mouth to refuse, but Nonna wasn’t the kind of woman you said no to. Not once she’d put her mind to something. She’d clearly decided to throw the pair of them together and see what happened.

  Getting into the car to head up to the fire camp, Lily knew her decision to be a good girl and do as she was asked was only part of the story. Because part of her—the shameless, pleasure-loving part of her—wanted every minute Jack Donovan would give her.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Granddad’s place was light and airy, a well-designed mansion carefully placed to take advantage of the stunning mountain views. The back of the house was built straight into a canyon, so that the lower floors flowed seamlessly into the rich earth. More than one design magazine had sent a photographer through the place, gushing over the floor-to-ceiling windows and the architecture that blended outdoors with indoors.

  Eddie hated the place.

  Hated everything it stood for.

  If he could have, he would have burned the house right to the ground. But he wasn’t that stupid. Fire that big would draw more attention than he wanted right now. Insurance claim would have investigators crawling all over the property. This morning’s wildfire had done fuck-all as far as razing the place went. He’d had hopes there, but Jack Donovan had put up a chopper and dumped an obscene amount of fire retardant on their happy little gully. He’d saved the neighborhood, and Strong would have given the man a hero’s welcome if he’d wanted it.

  Still, he couldn’t go cold turkey, could he? And he needed to work out the finer details of the little messages he was crafting for Lily.

  The fire pit was his own personal touch on the place. A man really could learn everything he didn’t know from the DIY network. A little show-me-please and some vigorous use of the black AmEx card, and he had himself a safety zone where he could let off a little steam.

  The sun was still riding high in the sky because dark came far too slowly in the summer months, but he dragged the wooden Adirondack chair right up to his little theater anyhow. Fire-resistant slate surrounded the bronze fire pit. Pit looked like a funeral urn, which he figured was appropriate. After Granddad had died, he’d tossed the old man’s ashes right on in there. Now every fire he set there further reduced his nemesis to a messy black smear.

  He liked that.

  The subject of today’s little bonfire wasn’t quite as satisfying. Now that his Lily had come home, she spent all her time working on that farm of hers. Not much he could pick up from her trash there, so he’d hacked up a handful of lavender plants. Dash of lighter fluid and a few matches later, and he had a ringside seat to the best-smelling barbecue in all of Strong.

  Eventually she’d notice what had happened to her plants.

  He was counting on it.

  Maybe he’d bring her the remnants, just in case she proved slow on the uptake.

  That was another happy thought, so, while the flames got themselves going, he eased his zipper down, nice and slow.

  Fire licked right on up the wood like a living mouth on a cock.

  That was real good, too. Wrapping his hand around his dick, he stroked in time to the rhythm of the flames. Sucking in the heady scent of lavender, the sweet smell of Lily and fire, with each hard stroke.

  The sun was just starting its slow, heated dip-
and-slide behind the mountains when Jack finally got the chance to shower the fire off himself. The fire crew had set up a portable shower rig, and the cheerful sounds of the fire camp around the hangar almost drowned out the welcome splatter of lukewarm water hitting his skin. Guys hollered and music played, and every breath he took smelled of pine-scented soap and fresh-cut grass from somewhere close by where someone had taken the lawn mower out for a little spin.

  The telltale signs of the day’s work headed right on down the drain. After he’d done his cleanup number, he shut off the water and moved on out. Nodded a greeting to the next man in line.

  Pulling on a faded pair of jeans, he draped his towel around his neck and shoved a hand through his hair. Solar-heated shower, his ass. There was something to be said for heading back to Lily’s farm tonight as he’d planned.

  “Those fires were no accident.” Damned if Ben Cortez wasn’t lying in wait for him. Given the intense look in the other man’s eyes, he was surprised he’d been allowed to finish his shower before the interrogation and debrief took place.

  Maybe Ben was right. Maybe he was dead wrong. That was what made fire such a challenging bitch. “Could have been,” he allowed.

  There were too many variables during summer season to be dead sure without bringing in an arson team. If you didn’t find a man with a gas can and a lit match, you called in a team before you let the accusations fly. Especially when you weren’t sure what name to hang the blame on. He needed to play it real cautious until he had the information he needed.

  “What the hell do you mean?” Ben hooked a hand onto his hip. Glaring. Jack recognized the look in the old man’s eyes. Fire had his back up, and he wasn’t letting go of what they both suspected was the truth.

  Stalling for time, he ran the towel over his head. “Fire likes to eat up the evidence, Ben.”

  Ben shook his head, stubborn to the bone. “You feel it just like I do, Jack. We both know it. Those fires were set.”

  “This another one of those moments where your bones are talking to you, Ben?” He’d never discounted any of the older man’s hunches, not when his instincts were screaming, too, but he couldn’t take instinct to the sheriff. It was real hard to write an arrest warrant for a nameless guy on a dirt bike.