by Anne Marsh
When he went inside, Ben was right on his heels. He beelined it to the metal filing cabinets rusting away against the back wall.
“What are you after?” Ben asked.
“Shut up,” he said, “and start looking, old man.” His own fingers were walking double-time through the nearest cabinet, myriad old fire calls condensed into reams of ancient logbooks that had been left behind, no longer considered useful. “Lily’s stalker likes fire. He has to be a local. How much you want to bet he’s set fires here before?”
Hell, Jack himself had been one of a handful of boys who’d loved the ride-along. Nothing unusual in getting a thrill from riding up on the fire truck, being first on the scene. It would have been more unusual if any of them hadn’t gotten a thrill from riding out on the engine. They’d all come running when Ben had fired up the siren and gone to work. Maybe a half dozen other boys, besides him and Rio and Evan. What he wanted were those names.
Ben’s gaze swept over the pages of call records. “What, exactly, are we looking for?”
“Names. Patterns.” He hadn’t expected to spend hours combing through dusty old paper, but his gut told him it was important. This old firehouse held answers, and he was going to find them.
Lily was Ben’s niece. Now she was Jack’s lover.
Maybe he should have left her alone.
But he’d already walked away from her once, all those years ago. He’d regretted what he’d missed; somehow even then he’d known that Lily was a once-in-a-lifetime woman.
He knew he wasn’t the kind of man she deserved. He’d known that from the moment they met. He was hard, and he was ruthless. He knew these things. On the streets, these were good things to be. The strong survived, and he’d never regretted or second-guessed his choices. Until now.
Lily was strong, too, but a different kind of strong—quiet, with the kind of backbone that was pure steel. You didn’t notice until you pushed her, and damned if she didn’t push right back. She didn’t have to be loud to get her point across or to demand respect.
The pages of the logbooks were neat and tidy. Ben’s handwriting reflected the man. Pages and pages of orderly entries marching up and down the columns in clear black and white.
“You always wrote our names down,” he said. “To make us feel special, I’m betting, but every time we rode out with you or we showed up at a scene to lend a hand, you gave us a line in the book. You treated us like we were real firefighters, even though we were just wannabe kids.”
“Whether you helped with handing out equipment or slung hose, you were helping to fight fires,” Ben said quietly. “Sure, you didn’t have professional experience and I wasn’t letting you too close to those flames, but you were all fighters, Jack. Hell, I don’t think you or your brothers knew how not to fight. Every day, every fire was a new battle, and you’d charge on in. Head down, fists out. You were taking us all on. There’s a lot to respect right there. You earned your place in that logbook.”
Each name brought the flash of a childhood memory. The truck. The adrenaline rush and the sense of danger. That moment when the truck pulled up to whatever fire needed fighting and he got his first eyeful of what they were facing. There’d been a sense of belonging riding that truck he hadn’t found anywhere else. He’d always been bigger, taller, stronger than the other boys. It hadn’t been long before he’d been slinging dirt and hauling hose with the adult members of the team. On the job, they were all part of that same team, joining forces because together they were far more than the sum of their parts. All that mattered was getting those flames put out.
There were more than a dozen names in the logs from those long-ago summers. Some of the boys were long gone, but some were still right here in Strong. He was on to something, and he knew it.
Grabbing a dusty pad of paper, he started listing names as he found them. “I’m ruling the three of us out,” he said tightly. “I know my brothers. They didn’t do this thing.”
Ben gave a short nod. “Didn’t think any of you did.”
Jack couldn’t help thinking of Lily’s vulnerability, his memory providing a detailed image of the way she’d looked in his arms. In his temporary bed. She’d been sweet and trusting and so damned hot. He wanted to taste her again, see what it would take to make those soft little cries for him fall from her lips once more.
Christ, he needed to leave her alone.
“This particular summer,” he said, stabbing his pen at a logbook and holding it out for Ben to see, because the hell of it was, he was standing shoulder-to-shoulder with Lily’s uncle, and no way did he want the other man to guess the thoughts running through his head. Ben wasn’t stupid. He knew what Jack had gotten up to the last couple of nights, but he wouldn’t want the details. “You had a series of grass fires. Trash can fires, too.”
Beside him, Ben was nodding. “Garage fires, as well. I thought at the time it could be some kid up to mischief. We didn’t find anything at the scenes, but maybe there were too many little fires for them all to be accidental.”
“What if whoever is going after Lily rode along on those calls? You think he’d want to see the effect of his handiwork? Maybe, just maybe, he’d have gotten off on setting those fires and then putting them out himself.”
“Or making us all run around.” Ben was nodding slowly again. “Like his own personal cleanup crew.”
“He likes power.” Jack pushed down his rage. Anger wasn’t going to help Lily, not right now. He didn’t like or understand these new emotions tearing him apart. He had never been possessive. Not about women. “With fire, he could be the one in charge. Starting things.”
“So who had that kind of itch all bottled up inside him?” Ben wondered aloud.
“A dead man,” Jack said grimly. Scanning the list, he marked a handful of names with pencil. Damning ticks. He needed Rio and his software know-how.
“We’re all concerned about Lily,” Ben said.
“True.” He hadn’t said otherwise, had he?
“So you don’t have to do this all by yourself.” Ben looked at him pointedly. “You think I’m going to sit back and let whoever this is come after her? Hell, no. He’s going through me first.”
“Fine,” Jack said tightly. Flipping the page, he made more marks. Seven of them, including his brothers, had gone out on calls that summer. Isaiah, Ethan, Eddie, Charlie Joe.
“Just how involved are you getting with Lily?”
“Don’t push, Ben.” Charlie Joe—C.J.—Jack remembered, had left for a summer sleepaway camp after three weeks. And Isaiah had twisted his ankle at a fire and been out of commission for weeks.
“She’s my niece,” Ben said. His voice was calm, but older man wasn’t budging. “If you’re seeing her, you tell me straight up.”
“Fine.” There had been more than twenty calls in July. July was typically hot and dry, which meant grass fires weren’t out of the ordinary—but they’d ridden out on a dozen of those calls in one particular week. And all of those fires had started without an obvious cause. “These belong to our boy,” he decided.
“Are you seeing Lily?” Ben wasn’t letting this one go. “Or did you sleep with her, Jack, and now you’re moving on?” Maybe a deaf man would miss the unspoken warning in the other man’s voice. If Jack hurt Lily, Ben would be coming after him.
That was good. He’d help the man himself. “Yes,” he said tightly. Lily deserved better. Question was: could he give it to her?
“Which one is it?” Ben’s hand came down, covering the printed pages. Apparently their investigation was at an impasse until Ben had some answers to his questions. “You going to hurt my little girl, Jack? Because I’m not going to be okay with that. She may be all grown up, but she doesn’t need the heartache. She’s lost enough.”
“What do you want from me, Ben?” He never explained himself, but this was Ben. Lily’s uncle. Ben had practically been a father to him, and he knew precisely how much Ben meant to Lily and vice versa. So he’d explain. As much as he
could and no matter how uncomfortable it made him feel.
“I can’t promise happily-ever-after and wedding bells,” he said carefully. “And I don’t think that’s what Lily wants. Not from me. I’m not the kind of man you should want sticking around for your little girl anyhow.” A tiger couldn’t change its stripes, so he’d do what he’d always done, and he’d leave when summer was over. In the meantime, he’d see Lily, and he’d fix up the firehouse and turn it back over to the town.
He didn’t want anything more from Lily Cortez, did he? So why did the thought of another man taking her into his arms, settling down with her in a little house in Strong, make him see red?
“Don’t sell yourself short, Jack.” Ben shook his head. “You say those things long enough, maybe you’ll start believing them.”
He’d spent a lifetime moving from one place to another, never stopping for long. That was who he was, part of what made him a damned fine firefighter. He’d never had a problem coming—or going. When that call came in, he just picked up and moved on to where he was needed. The urge to stay put—stay with this one particular woman—scared the hell out of him. He’d fought his battles, held the line in one firefight after another, but he’d never cared about whether or not the fire took more than Jack kept away from it.
He couldn’t afford to care now. “You never married,” he pointed out.
“And I’m not asking you to,” Ben said quietly. “Just asking you to treat her right. And I know you’ll do that, but she’s like a daughter to me, Jack, so I have to ask. Someday you’ll have a daughter of your own, and you’ll understand how I feel.”
Lily was a damned special woman. No matter how bad Jack was at holding up his end of this conversation, there was no question about that. Lily mattered. Maybe he already knew how Ben felt. Not exactly, because there was nothing paternal about the attraction blazing between Lily and him. But he understood Ben’s need to protect Lily.
Drawing his finger down the page, he forced his mind back to the business at hand. Two other boys had gone out consistently with the engine, riding along to the summer’s fires. Eddie Haverley and Ethan McBride. Both of them were still right here in town. Ethan owned a ranch, while Eddie had some sort of consulting business. Not that Eddie, who faced the world armed with a trust fund, had to work to pay the bills.
He looked down at the page again to confirm the pattern coming together in his head. Not just little grass fires. There had been a series of fires on Haverley land as well.
He tapped the page to get Ben’s attention. “Take a look at this, and tell me what you think,” he said. “What do you know about Eddie Haverley?”
Nonna walked into the firehouse as Jack and Ben were closing up the logbooks, slipping through the door in that quiet way she had. “You took the plunge,” she observed, giving Jack her usual kiss. “This place has been empty a real long time now.”
Yeah, he’d fix the old place up some and move his boys into it. He didn’t like walls, never had, preferred sleeping out at the hangar or on Nonna’s sunporch. When he was younger he’d often slept there, where he could open the windows and pretend the walls weren’t closing in on him.
“This is temporary,” he warned. He wasn’t filling up whatever kind of empty she meant. And, with Nonna, every conversation had more damned layers than a cake.
Nonna, of course, just looked at him. “Uh-huh,” she said. The Adirondack chair Ben had brought over earlier as a “housewarming” gift creaked as she settled back into it, folding her legs beneath her. Jack bet Ben had known precisely who would be sitting in that chair.
“I don’t stay put,” he repeated. He needed her to remember that.
“I know, baby.” Curled up in the chair, she looked smaller than he remembered. And just a little bit sadder. There was a shadow to her eyes he didn’t remember. “You never did stay put. Not once.”
Chapter Twenty
Friday night was free concert night in Strong. Sprawled on the grass, listening to a local band belting out a nearly unrecognizable rendition of bluegrass, Jack figured the concerts were free because no one in his right mind would pony up cash for this kind of noise. Still, Main Street was lit up real pretty, the beer was cold, and there were worse places to lie in wait for a woman. It looked as if the entire town had come out to park their asses in lawn chairs and eat dinner out of red plastic coolers. Plenty of barbecue and laughter.
His team was making themselves right at home. Joey was whooping it up with a curvy brunette who might or might not have been in Jack’s high school biology class. Either way, she had her fingers wrapped up real tight in Joey’s T-shirt, standing on tiptoe to whisper something into his ear as they improvised a set of moves Jack was fairly certain wouldn’t win any dance competitions. An appreciative grin lit up Joey’s face, though, so his friend was clearly enjoying his dance. A second tug on his shirt had him following the brunette off the improvised dance floor and into the shadows. His hand on the girl’s shoulder flashed a quick signal, and Zay melted away into the edges of the small crowd.
Eddie Haverley hadn’t showed his face yet, but Jack wouldn’t miss him if he did.
Where was Lily? She should have been here by now. His intel said she’d left her farm and headed down the road. All he could think about was kissing her. Running his hands over her hair, down that curvy little body of hers. Pulling her just as close as she could get. He wanted to go on holding her for the next fifty years or so.
Hell, he hadn’t known he possessed a side like that—and it scared the ever-loving shit out of him. Men who had families didn’t jump out of planes at three thousand feet, because that wasn’t the responsible thing to do. Those men kept their feet firmly planted on the ground and punched a nine-to-five somewhere.
Ben came up beside him, and he turned to the older man as if to a lifeline.
“How do you know?” This wasn’t the kind of shit he usually discussed, but Ben knew Lily, and he probably knew way more about relationships than Jack did. Because, he mocked himself, you run like hell just as soon as there’s any chance of things sticking. Now he needed to understand what long-term really meant.
Needed to understand this woman he feared was holding his heart in the palm of one small hand. “How can you be sure you’ve met that one woman you can settle down with?”
Ben took a careful sip of his beer. “You want to hear about all the times I’ve fucked up?” He shook his head. “It’s instinct, Jack. You’ve just got to trust those instincts of yours. How do you know a fire isn’t going to flash back over you? You just know, Jack. You’ve been doing it long enough. You know what the land and what your gut is telling you, and, at some point, you trust your instincts, and you jump.”
“You ever done that?” From the other side of the street, Evan flashed him a signal, and Jack forced all the unwelcome emotional back-and-forth to a far corner of his mind. Lily was walking up the sidewalk. She’d come. He could just make her out, laughing with her friend Miriam. The one who ran the florist shop.
Ben snorted. “I’m standing here with you, aren’t I? Told you I should be the last person you take advice from. All I know is, if you’re asking the question, maybe you’re on the right track here.”
“Right.” He wanted to move the conversation in another direction, but his brain shorted out, taking all reasonable thought with it as Lily strolled into view. God, she was so beautiful. She was wearing a wickedly short romper, a pretty little pink swoop of soft fabric that clung to her ass and her breasts and made him itch to run his hands down her sides. Tiny pink ribbons held up the bodice above the short shorts. And, God help him, there were little buttons marching down the front of the romper. He wanted to reach out and unbutton her, peel back that fabric, and taste every inch of her.
Down, boy. He needed to get to her. Fill her in on the Eddie Haverley situation. She was shooting blanks in the dark if she didn’t know the name of her stalker.
Manning up, he stalked over to her, ignoring the raised eye
brow she sent his way. He didn’t care if she objected to his possessive manner or not. She was stuck with him. “You’re late enough,” he said, “that I thought you weren’t coming.” Real smooth, Jack. Maybe he could just write sad love notes while he was at it. Rip out his heart and hand it on over.
“I wasn’t aware we had a date,” she said coolly. Was she a little pissed that he’d been so preoccupied lately and hadn’t seen that much of her? She did a little side step when he reached for her arm, but he wasn’t letting her get away, not now, so he captured her elbow and drew her up against his side.
“I need to talk to you.” He steered her over to a wrought-iron bench. Looked harder than hell, but it was a pretty little spot in front of the window of a particularly cluttered antiques shop. That would cover their backs for the moment.
She shrugged. “What’s so important?” she said. “You haven’t seemed much into conversation with me lately.”
Okay, so she was pissed, but he’d deal with that later. He got right down to what was important. “I think I know who our stalker is.” That got her interest, all right. She turned toward him so fast, her hand slammed into his thigh. He put one hand over hers, trapping her fingers against his leg. Savoring the feel of her.
“Who?” she demanded.
“Eddie Haverley.” Quickly he sketched out the reasons for believing Eddie was their man. “You ever date him in high school? Give him any reason to believe there was the possibility of a relationship between the two of you?”
“No.” Her brow puckered as she thought it over, but at least she’d stopped trying to pull her fingers free, so he loosened the prison of his hand and stroked her palm softly. “Eddie’s older than me,” she pointed out. “By a couple of years. I can’t have spoken more than a handful of words to him.” She shrugged again, and he wrapped his hand around hers before she could pull free. “Not that I remember. He didn’t ask me out. I didn’t ask him.”