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Authors: Anne Marsh

BOOK: Burning Up
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Surveying the nearest field now, Lily slammed the car door and bypassed the house in favor of confronting Jack about the destruction he'd wreaked while she was away.
Ahead of her, alongside the road that sloped down to the field, a small covey of California quail bathed in the fresh-turned dirt. Dust exploded upward in little puffs as the birds burrowed into the ground, flapping their wings. She'd seen this particular group every day. Recognized their black-and-white striped bellies and black backs. Startled by her approach, the birds took off briefly in an explosion of wings, then settled back down to run. The soft
pip
of their cries filled the hot, dusty air as they called back and forth to one another, scratching at the ground. It was charming.
Too bad for Jack that he was a dead man.
Propping her hands on her hips, Lily strode toward said dead man. Her anger didn't stop the heat unfurling low in her belly, and that just made her madder. She didn't want him to do this to her. Despite the heat, he still wore his usual faded jeans, although he hadn't put back on the white cotton T-shirt draped over a fence. And, God, those muscles. The man was one hard, chiseled masterpiece.
And he had no sense whatsoever.
Pruning oleanders, she'd discovered, was an art form. Cut too late in the spring, and the stubborn bushes wouldn't bloom until late spring or summer. She pruned once in the early spring and again in the cooler fall months, when the bushes became top-heavy. She'd been reluctant to cut away the branches at first, but it was best for the bush. Left alone, the heart of the bush grew woody and stopped flowering.
Jack didn't share those inhibitions.
Hell, the man probably wouldn't recognize an inhibition if the damn thing bit him on the ass.
He'd single-handedly created a wide, ugly strip of stubble around her beautiful field. Decades-old oleanders were just plain gone, chopped down to bare stumps. Maybe those oleanders would come back, but it would take years. Clearly, he hadn't heard a word she'd said. He'd touched precisely what she'd said not to touch, and wasn't that all too typical? He'd taken where he should have asked, and now, judging by the slow, welcoming smile creasing those damned lips, he planned to coax her into a better mood.
Too bad for him she planned on being stubborn.
She forced herself to take a deep breath before she let the words out. “What do you think you're doing?”
“Whatever it takes, Lily.” He ran a hand over his head. “That's what I'm doing here.”
“This isn't
whatever it takes,
Jack.” She gestured toward the mutilated remnants of her oleanders. “This is carnage. I told you not to touch them. You're no white knight,” she pointed out. “You don't need to come charging in here. I don't want that. I don't need that.”
“So, tell me, Lily,” he drawled, “what do you want, baby?”
 
God, she was riled up good. Jack shouldn't have found her anger arousing, but he did, and he'd stopped pretending to be a nice man years ago. His hands tightened on the shovel. She hadn't minded his taking care of her before. Hell, she'd been sweet and willing, and he'd had to force himself to walk away before he took something he had no business taking. Somewhere, somehow, she'd changed, and he didn't like hearing she no longer had a place for him in her life.
He missed the sweet trust, the hope in her eyes when she looked at him. He'd wanted to lose himself in those baby browns, and he'd run, fast and hard, because that possibility had scared him. He'd known he didn't deserve that kind of woman—but he hadn't expected it to hurt when she agreed with him.
She crouched down beside the stump of the pink and purple bushy thing he'd cut down. A little frown puckered her forehead as her fingers traced the clean edges of the wood he'd cut through. “Look at this, Jack.” She scowled. “You've cut them right back to their roots. They were
beautiful
.”
He wanted to talk about what she needed, not about her damn plants.
“Those
beautiful
bushes were going to get you killed.” Carefully, he laid the shovel in the bed of his truck and dragged on his shirt.
“Really?” She didn't look up, just moved to the next stump. “Last time I checked, Jack, these poor bushes of mine didn't have feet. They weren't chasing me anywhere, and I don't want to hear anything more about fire lines and tinder and—and . . .” She waved a hand.
“I know fire.” Crossing his arms over his chest, he leaned back against the sun-warmed metal of the truck.
“Yes, Jack, you're the expert,” she mocked.
“About this, I am.” He leaned forward. “I warned you, Lily. My job here is to keep you safe. It's too damned bad if you don't like my methods.”
“And that's something else,” she continued, as if this conversation was all one-sided and she didn't want to hear what he had to say. She stood up, all long, sun-kissed legs in those little denim shorts of hers. She was driving him crazy, and he wasn't sure how long he could keep his baser instincts under control. How much longer he could stop himself from pulling her right into his arms and kissing her until she was melting for him and this discussion of theirs no longer mattered.
“You need to stop and listen, Jack. This is my life, and you don't get to come barging in here and take charge of it. Of
me
.”
“Maybe you'd like that.” He knew damned well that was an erotic game he'd enjoy.
The way her eyes widened, he figured she knew
exactly
what he meant. Her nipples were all tease, hard little nubs beneath the fragile fabric of her tank top. He could tuck a finger into the tempting hollow between her breasts and just stroke that impossibly soft skin while he sucked on those perfect little nipples like they were candy and he was a man with a sweet tooth.
“Don't look at me like that, Jack,” she warned. She brushed dirt off her hands, her thighs, and he didn't think he could get any harder. She had to know, too. It wasn't as if his jeans were hiding the evidence. “I'm not some helpless thing you need to take care of.”
“Then make the choice, Lily,” he growled, frustrated. “Let me do what I can do here. Choose to let me keep you safe.”
“This isn't about my choosing.”
“It is, baby. Trust me.”
“Trust you, Jack?” she cried. “You think I should trust you? I know what your reputation is.”
“Is this about my firefighting abilities—or something else? I'm not giving you a catalog of my lovers.”
“You tell me, Jack. Is this just another job for you? Do you move in with all the happy homeowners you're hired to protect?”
“You know I don't,” he said calmly, loading the neat bundles of oleander branches into the truck's bed. “But we practically grew up together, Lily. Your uncle and Nonna are closer than close. He asked me to help out, so I am. You just have to decide to let me do what I do best here.”
“Which would be?” She was spitting mad. He shouldn't have found it endearing. He shouldn't have wanted to keep pushing her, to see what she would do or say next. She'd kept all that fiery passion tamped down, locked up her feelings as if letting herself go would be a bad thing. He grinned. He'd wanted her passion ten years ago. Guess things hadn't changed all that much in Strong.
“Keeping you safe, baby. That's what I'm doing.”
“Then leave me alone, Jack,” she cried. “You're not helping me, not really. Even if there is someone out there watching me, we don't know that he'll stop just because you're here. I can't do this.”
“I'm not leaving.” She was headed right for him, but she kept on going, up to the house. She smelled even better than he remembered, and he wanted to lower his head, ease his mouth right on over hers, and kiss her until she forgot everything but kissing him back.
Given what she was muttering, though, he didn't think she'd be kissing back.
Not anytime soon.
Chapter Eight
M
a's was a deliberate hole-in-the-wall. Tucked behind the town's main street so a man had to go looking to find the place, Ma's had the only neon sign in town, with the obligatory light-up martini glass. The bar wasn't precisely flush with martini drinkers—Ben would have bet most of Ma's customers had never tasted a martini in their lives—but the drink was on offer. Live music on the weekends, three pool tables, and an honest-to-God jukebox—a man didn't need much more than that. The owner had talked once about putting in an Internet jukebox, but the patrons had resisted. People here liked the comfort of the same-old-same-old. The world outside might be changing, but there were some things you could still count on. Ma's, a cold beer, and some quarters in the jukebox were among them.
Jack Donovan, now, he looked like a man in need of a real cold beer.
Mimi gave him a friendly smile, deftly sliding a beer across the bar top to him when he picked himself a stool and sat down next to Ben's booth. Jack signaled that he'd run a tab and reached for the cold bottle like it was a lifeline.
“You cut her oleanders down? Man, you do have a death wish.” On the other side of Ben, Evan shook his head and smiled. Even Rio, silent Rio, just gave him a commiserating look.
Jack had to know he'd never hear the end of this. “I didn't cut them down,” he grumbled. “I pruned them.”
“Out of existence,” Evan observed. Like any good brother, he was ready to give Jack a hard time. “I didn't know our Lily knew that many curse words. She sure learned a lot living in San Francisco.”
Lily obviously had Jack at sixes and sevens. Jack might think this was just a summer gig, but Ben was thinking differently. Still, even if Jack and Lily had a history, that didn't mean she'd want to pick right up where the pair had left off ten years ago.
Even if Jack clearly wished she would.
“She shot him down.” Rio nodded knowingly.
“Of course.” Evan tilted his beer bottle toward Jack in a mock toast. “He cut down her flowers. Bet he didn't even ask first, just swooped in there, acting all fire chief.”
“I asked,” Jack pointed out. He didn't lose his death grip on the bottle, though.
Ben shook his head. “Did you spell it out? You don't cut a woman's flowers until you've pre-approved every tiny slice.” Ben had spent way too much time in places like Ma's when he'd first hit legal drinking age. More after Lily had joined him in Strong and Nonna had acquired her trio of boys. The pair of them had often hashed out tales of woe—and success—over a beer or two. Christ, those boys had been a handful and a half. He still didn't know how Nonna had managed them.
“It's time we talked about Lily.” Ben got right down to the business of their meeting. “Things are heating up.”
Jack just nodded. “I agree. I've seen the fire maps. You know what those patterns say. Little fires. Getting closer and closer together. More frequent. Our boy's losing patience, or she's pushing his buttons.”
Thirty-plus years after he'd done four tours of duty with the Marines. Three hundred and sixty-five days each of those years. Ben had done his thing, done his best to protect his town from the danger of fire. But, damn, some days he felt like Chicken Little squawking at a bright blue sky. There wasn't always smoke. But he knew firsthand just how fast a blaze could grow.
And lately there had been too many little fires for a town this size. Little, harmless fires you could dismiss as someone being careless. Those fires you put out and moved on from. No worries. But when his Nonna worried, Ben worried. That was why he hadn't put up a fuss when Jack showed up. He knew that Nonna had pulled some strings behind the scenes. And he was okay with having some extra help on this one.
“Someone has a real big issue with our Lily. Question I've been asking myself is, who? Who'd want to hurt her like this, bad enough to follow her from San Francisco?” His baby girl was hurting, and he hadn't forgotten the look on her face when she'd first come home.
I was ready for a change,
she'd said. Hell, he'd known then that there was more to her story.
Much more.
He might not be her daddy, but he was her uncle. They had blood in common, and he'd raised her since she was five years old, when her mother had decided she couldn't do it anymore. He knew Lily, and he damned sure knew when she was running scared.
Jack leaned forward. “So who do you think is behind this?”
Ben considered for a moment and then had to admit the truth. “I don't know. If I knew that, Lily wouldn't be constantly looking over her shoulder. But we've got to figure it out. Fast.”
“What makes you think we'll do any better than those cops in San Francisco did?”
Ben snorted. “You taken a good look around you recently? This is as small-town as it gets. We look after our own here. And any new face sticks out in Strong. No matter how careful our guy is, he'll make a mistake at some point.”
Jack shook his head. “I don't think this is a stranger, though. I think she knows this guy.”
“You sure her stalker is a guy?”
Jack thought for a moment, set the bottle down on the table, and ticked the reasons off on his fingers. “Most arsonists are white. Male. Under the age of thirty. Maybe our arsonist here is female, but I don't think so. This feels personal. I haven't told Lily that she probably knows who it is. It's an ugly thing to accuse anyone of.”
Rio nodded slowly. “Any new faces in town? Other than ours? Because I'm assuming you're letting us off the hook for this one.”
“None that stick around. People come and go—that's what happens when you live in a historic town.”
“This stalker of hers, he's sticking to her. He's watching her, Ben.” Jack ran a hand over his hair. “What about family?”
“I never knew who her daddy was,” he said regretfully. “Just a mistake—that's all her momma told me. Mistake for the two of them, maybe, but Lily was the sweetest mistake that ever happened to me. I had no idea what I'd been missing out on when she landed in my lap. Thank God for your Nonna,” he added, laughing, “or I would have been washed up the first week. I didn't know jack shit about little girls, and Lily was none too happy about being dumped here with an uncle she'd never met. I didn't realize a five-year-old could think of that many ways to say no,” he said fondly.
“She was lucky she had you.”
“I'm still here for her. She'll always have me. That's a given.” Ben gestured for another round. He'd go all out tonight. Make it three beers instead of his usual two. “You have any thoughts on who might be stalking our girl?”
“Ours?” Jack raised an eyebrow, the bottle frozen in his hand.
“Ours,” Ben confirmed. “We both know it, Jack. She was yours before you left all those years ago, and some things don't change.”
“Lily might have something to say about that.”
“Well, I figure you're every bit as much hers,” Ben said. Christ, the seats in the bar didn't get any softer as he got older. “Two-way street and all. But she took it pretty hard when you left, followed that road right out of town damn quick.”
“We were just kids.”
“Maybe,” Ben allowed. “You did the right thing there, holding back. You were both too young to handle a serious relationship.”
Jack shot him a look that didn't take much interpreting. “She wasn't my first girl, Ben.”
“First one that meant anything to you,” Ben pointed out comfortably. When Jack didn't say anything, he figured he had that one right enough. “She needed to do some more growing up before she could give what you needed from her. She was a sexy little thing but not old enough to do some things.”
Yeah.
That was definitely a flush on Jack's face. Maybe it was truth hitting home or simply the fact that Ben wasn't dead and buried yet. Lily was like his own daughter, but there was no skirting some truths. She'd been a pretty, pretty girl. Pure trouble. He'd been glad enough when she'd taken an interest in Jack Donovan, because he'd known, even then, that Jack was on track to be a good man. He hadn't taken advantage of Lily.
“You did the right thing, Jack. You left, because sticking around would have meant trouble. She was too young. You weren't old enough, either. Question really is, what are you going to do now?”
Jack's eyes measured him, and that face of his didn't give away a damn thing. “I'm going to find her stalker, Ben.”
“That all?” Ben raised an eyebrow, just to see what Jack would do next. He wasn't looking for the man to pop out a diamond ring—not yet—but damned if he'd loose the man on Lily without getting some kind of commitment from him. “I figure you'll do the right thing by Lily. No matter what folks here had to say about you boys, I always knew you were good at heart. Honorable men,” he said pointedly.
“I'm not going to hurt her.”
“Good to know.” He nodded. “But I wouldn't expect any less from you. Question is, what happens if she needs more than a strong pair of hands, someone to beat the crap out of the bastard making her life hell?”
Jack sucked down his beer and tried desperately to pretend Ben hadn't just dropped the conversational equivalent of the bomb that had hit Hiroshima. For a long moment the only sounds filling up the silence were the country music playing on the jukebox and the soft clack of balls colliding on the pool table. Mimi chatted up a newcomer who couldn't drag his eyes from the tall blonde's face. Her pretty voice was giving a shout-out to the local eateries, but Ben figured her audience wasn't too interested in dinner unless the bartender was along for the ride. Which meant the newcomer was plain out of luck, because he'd seen Mimi ride into Strong on the back of Rio Donovan's Harley. He knew what that meant.
“Don't push me, Ben.” Jack went on the offensive, which was usually a move Ben would have applauded. But since this was Lily they were discussing, the tactic wasn't going to fly.
“I'm asking you to tell me whether my girl is a little summertime fun for you, or if there's something more going on between the two of you.” Blunt but to the point, he decided. He didn't have Nonna's more delicate touch, but Jack had always appreciated the straight-up.
“I have a job to do here.” Jack slammed the bottle back down on the bar, and Mimi stopped her heart-to-heart and looked over.
Shit.
He didn't want an audience for this conversation, or Nonna would hear about it. “Lily is up to her sweet little ass in trouble, and we both know it. She needs someone to keep an eye on her, to keep her in line before she goes and does something that ends badly. Fire-boy isn't sane. I don't think he's going to go away, and neither do you, or you wouldn't have welcomed me in here in the first place.”
“So you're keeping her safe.” Ben took a long sip of his own beer and decided,
what the hell
. He'd go for broke in this conversation he was having. “There's no romance. Just a whole lot of business.”
Next to him, Rio snorted and just about fell off his bar stool trying to hold in the laughter.
Jack glared at his brother, but then he pulled it together. “I don't know.”
That was honest enough. Ben wasn't surprised his Lily had the other man all turned around.
“The way I see it,” Jack continued, “we have some unfinished business of our own. I'd like to see Lily, but you know me, Ben. You know the job. At the end of the summer, I'll be shipping out again. There will always be another fire.”

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