Flirting With Fire (Hometown Heroes) (33 page)

“I can’t believe
that was you!” I punched him in the arm. “Do you know how embarrassing that
was? I got overlooked for a semi-formal date because of you!”

Mitch chuckled,
his face repentant. “But you gotta admit, it was one of my better pranks.”

“You better hope
we don’t make it out of here, buddy. Because if we do—”

What sounded
like a lightning strike erupted across the cellar. We both shrank back, waiting
for a ball of flame to engulf our prison. When it didn’t come, I peeked through
narrowed lids across the room. Sure enough, the door at the top of the stairs
had been blasted away. But instead of a ball of fire, there was a wall of
flames. A glowing backdrop to the silhouette of a body I’d know anywhere.

Torrunn.

CHAPTER
28

“I found them!”
he cried into a cell phone. “In the cellar!”

Mitch and I
raced forward from our perch. Hope blossomed in my chest, and I pushed aside
the stab of guilt for believing, if only for a moment, that Torrunn had been
the firebug. He surged down the steps, closing the distance between us in a few
long strides.

“Liz,” he whispered,
pulling me close and burying his head in my hair. “Are you alright?”

“Better now.” I
pulled back and met his gaze, a watery veil clouding my view. “I thought—”

“I told you. No
civilians die on my watch. Ever.”

I nodded, weak
with relief, and did my best not to fall apart. Now was not the time.

“How bad is it?”
Mitch asked, peering around him to the top of the stairs.

“Bad. He used an
accelerant, all around the perimeter.” He leveled a look at the two of us. “I
don’t know what you did to piss him off, but this was a fire set with no
intended survivors.”

Another crash
sounded above us, followed by the sound of broken glass raining down on Mitch’s
ceramic-tiled kitchen. Torrunn released me and scanned our surroundings. “The
floor upstairs is weakening by the minute. Is there any other point of exit?”

“Yes. The storm
doors,” Mitch said, shining his flashlight in that direction. “But there’s a board
across them, and we can’t get it to budge.”

Torrunn lifted
the cell back to his ear. “Nate, you still there? Yeah, go around to the east
side of the house. There’s a set of large, wooden storm doors. Yep. Okay.”

He tucked his
phone in his back pocket, then motioned us forward.

“Let’s go.”

We hurried
toward the storm doors, Mitch in the lead, Torrunn bringing up the rear.

“But, how did
you know?” I chanced a quick look back, but all I could see was darkness. And the
glow of fire growing at the top of the main stairs.

“Your phone.
I’ve been tracking you for a few weeks now.”

I came to a
screeching halt. “What?”

“Hey, I had to
make sure you really weren’t the bug.”

“Are you kidding
me?”

Up ahead, one
storm door flew open. Lightning from this evening’s long-forgotten storm lit
the sky, revealing another silhouette. Nate.

“We can discuss
this later.” He grabbed my arm and gave me a gentle shove forward. “Now go!”

I stumbled
forward, still in shock from his admission. How the hell had he been tracking
me? Was that even legal?

My foot caught
on an uneven spot in the floor yet again, and I threw my hands in front of me
to catch myself.

“Liz?” Torrunn’s
voice contained its first hint of fear. “Liz, where are—”

A beam above us
groaned, creaked, split. With what sounded like a wooden avalanche, the room
above us came crashing down.

For the second
time in two days, everything went black.

CHAPTER
29

“Liz?”

A low, raspy
voice called my name, pulling me back from the darkness. Instead of trying to
open my eyes, I clamped them shut tighter, afraid I’d find myself at the pearly
gates. Or worse: a survivor when the others had not been so lucky.

I sensed a hand
slide into mine, then a thumb begin to stroke my palm. The touch was warm.
Familiar.

Impossible.

Torrunn was
gone. Mitch? Had Mitch made it?

“You’re not
fooling anyone, you know,” the voice came again. Low. Deep. Unmistakable.

Could it be? My
eyelids parted a fraction of an inch. I was not alone. And I definitely wasn’t
at the pearly gates.

“Come on, you
big baby,” Torrunn teased. “You don’t really want to hang out in the hospital
all night again, do you?” His thumb stroked my palm once more. “I was hoping to
bust out of this joint. Take you with me.”

A grin crept
across my face. “Your place or mine?”

“Your choice.” I
felt his lips brush along my jawline. When next he spoke, his breath tickled my
ear. “Hell, I’ll drive straight to the Hilton if you’ll let me see you naked
again.”

I sucked in a
shocked breath. My eyes flew open to scan the room for any witness to his offer,
but Torrunn was the only other face in the room. But—

“Mitch?”

“He’s fine. Made
it out before all hell broke loose.”

I nodded, relief
rendering me temporarily mute. Torrunn lowered himself back into the chair
beside my bed. Several bandages decorated his hands and forearm, and one just
below the hairline above his left temple. My heart ached at the sight—it was
all my fault he’d been hurt.

Then I
remembered my resolution. That I should end this before it really even started.
With a sigh I knew the hurting for me was just about to begin.

Torrunn cleared
his throat. “Look, if you two are…”

“No.” I smiled.
“It’s not like that between us. Never has been. He was worried about me, that’s
all. And maybe a little overprotective. I’m assuming he’s told everyone about Glenn?”

Torrunn nodded.
“Yeah. He was worried we wouldn’t believe him. But that was before he found out
we’d caught Glenn speeding away from the fire. The Huntington County sheriff’s boys caught up with him after a mile or two, reeking of gasoline and with a
duffle bag full of money.”

“Good. I hope
the jerk rots in jail for a long, long time. Gonna have nightmares for years
over this.” I shook my head and muttered, “Next to this, seventh grade science
class was nothing…”

Torrunn’s hand
found mine once more. “Then you’ll need someone beside you, to hold you until
the nightmares pass. Because they will pass, Liz. Trust me, they will.”

I felt the sting
of tears at the corners of my eyes and looked away. “Yeah.”

“If there’s
anyone who knows what you’re going through, baby, it’s me.”

One traitorous
tear spilled down my cheek. Then another. And another. I shook my head. “No,
you don’t.”

“Yes, I do. And
I’ll be there for you, every night. Well, except when I’m at the station, but—”

“Don’t. Don’t
make promises that you can’t keep.”

He remained
silent for a moment. I heard the chair squeak under his weight, then retreating
footsteps.

“You know,” he
finally said, his voice quiet. “I expected more from you.”

“What?” I turned
my head back toward him, incredulous. His back was to me, his eyes on some
medical device hanging across the room.

“One little
scare.” He shook his head.

“It was more
than a little scare!”

“And you’re a
bigger fighter than this!” Torrunn whirled around, his eyes ablaze with fury.
“You’ve held me off for weeks, sidestepping my every move! Every request you’ve
made, I’ve complied. Every roadblock you threw at me, I’ve found a way around
it. And now, when I’m sitting here, promising things I’ve never promised anyone—”

He stopped,
shook his head, then crossed back to me and sat with a weary sigh. “I don’t
know what it is about you, Elizabeth Williams, but from the moment you stabbed
me in that drink aisle at the BP, I haven’t been able to get you out of my
mind. I would have called it a mere coincidence, but then fate played a trick
even more cruel on me by making you Dawn’s replacement.” His voice grew softer
now. “I was doomed from the start.”

“You know how
badly I wish this could work.”

“Then why can’t
it?” he demanded.

“Torrunn, we
want different things. Too different. You want your independence, your freedom
from the constant worry about leaving behind a wife and kids. Well, I want to
be the wife with the kids. And to have a husband to come home to every night. Someone
to grow old with together.”

Tears welled up
in my eyes once more. Why did this break-up seem to hurt infinitely more than
all the rest, especially when our time together had been so brief?

I felt him reach
out and tip my chin back toward him. “Ah, that’s what I thought I wanted. But
it was you, Liz, who finally had the nerve to call me out. And when Nate and I
pulled up in front of that burning house tonight, all I could think was how
stupid I’d been to waste my chance at happiness. And how close I’d been to
losing the best thing that’d ever walked into my life.

“All these
years, I’ve been living in fear of what might happen, instead of embracing the
life I have. You were right—it’s time to let go of the past.”

I searched his
face for any hint of reservation, but found only a raw honesty I’d not seen on
him before. “Do you think you can?”

“Only if I have
someone strong by my side, through the good days and the bad. Someone to love
for all they are, and who loves me for all I am. Someone like you.”

I blinked. Gave
myself a subtle pinch.

Nope, not a
dream.

“And the thought
of a few kids thrown into the mix doesn’t scare you?”

A crooked grin
crept upon his beautiful face. “A few? I want at least five or six. Maybe a
dozen.”

He stood then,
and gave my hand a squeeze. “You with me on this?”

“Yeah,” I said,
unable to hold back the ear-to-ear grin on my own face. “I’m in.”

“Good. Now why
don’t you get out of that bed and get dressed. I don’t know about you, but I
could really use a
shower
right about now…”

EPILOGUE

“Well, I think
that’s everything.”

Torrunn pulled
the U-Haul door closed, the resounding clank like a closing gavel on another
chapter in my life. My tenure at the Spa del Sol had ended, and my lease was up
in a matter of days. Monday, I would assume the role as co-owner of Marissa
Steele’s salon and spa.

No, it wasn’t
the Relaxation by Liz I’d dreamed of all these years, but I had a feeling this
would be better. Jessica’s future sister-in-law was bubbly and fun, yet serious
and business-minded. We’d hit it off from the start, and she was giving me free
rein on the spa expansion at her shop. Still, it was a lot of change in a short
period of time. It might have been too much to handle, had Torrunn not been
here with me now.

Two warm, strong
hands lit gently onto my shoulders. “You okay?”

“Yeah. It’s just
a lot to take in, that’s all. I loved this apartment.”

“That balcony
did rock.” When I didn’t respond, he gave my shoulders a squeeze and stepped
around to face me. “Hey, no one’s saying we can’t keep up with the TinCaps.
Maybe next time we can actually sit on the normal side of the field.”

I laughed at
that, and tried to push aside my melancholy mood. It was silly, feeling this
way, and I knew as much. The man of my dreams had saved my life a few short months
ago. Not just my body, but also my heart. And though I’d been a bit skeptical about
how well he’d do in a serious relationship, he had yet to let me down. In fact,
with each passing day I could see that commitment and planning for the future seemed
to suit him well.

“Shall we?” He
held his arm out for me. I took it with a nod, and together we headed for the
truck’s cab.

“You’re still
sure about this?” I asked after we’d travelled a few blocks.

“What, picking
up that couch I found on Craig’s List?”

“No, silly.
Moving in together.”

His gaze slid to
mine and then back to the road. “Absolutely.”

That made one of
us. For as hell bent as I’d been to settle down all these years, the idea of
sharing Torrunn’s condo had me shaking in my boots. Was it because deep down, I
knew he really was the one? That the days of my manhunt were coming to a close?

Crap, it was a
good thing Tony wasn’t here to read my face—he’d call me out in a heartbeat.

Torrunn turned
left on Spy Run, leading us north out of downtown. The giant trees that lined
this stretch of road were heavy with snow, after the early-season ‘dusting’
we’d received last night.

Back in Autumn Lake, three inches had never been called a dusting. But my days there were
officially done now. Well, they would be, as soon as we emptied the truck at
his place and then swung down there to finally empty my storage unit. I could
only imagine my mother would be glad to see that bill expire. Even more glad
when she finally had a grandchild on the way.

A grandchild. I
gazed down at my bare left hand and wondered if children were truly in my
future. Our future.

“Almost there,”
Torrunn murmured, flipping on the right turn signal as we approached East State Boulevard.

“Where did you
say this place was again?”

“On Kentucky Avenue.”

I nodded, not
having a clue where that was but trusting him to get us there. Surely my
fireman boyfriend knew which way to go. He’d probably even saved a house or two
on that very street over the years.

A few more
blocks and the turn signal began to flash again. We passed under a decorative
wrought iron banner announcing the East State Corridor, and several small
businesses came into view. Torrunn turned right and headed south onto a quiet,
tree-lined street.

“It’s pretty
over here,” I murmured, the older homes reminding me of those back in my
hometown.