Scorch (18 page)

Heads swung in her direction to catch her reaction. She should have made a smart remark, or at the very least mentioned that she didn’t mind having him around. Instead, she sat there dumb and hurt. She was crushed, damn it, and it took everything in her to keep
that
hidden.

“You and Vin have a fight?” Jessica asked later in an undertone, hanging over Jacqui’s desk, seeming genuinely concerned.

Jacqui lied and said, “Of course not.”

By the end of the week, she was getting really sick of it all, though, and was happy to clock out when a hailstorm grounded the entire base.

*

Vin saw Jacqui
come into The Drop Zone with a box of things that she showed to Hugh. Russ’s auction paraphernalia, he imagined.

What a week. He’d had that call out, then time had slowed as they all waited for the next. He’d tried to keep busy, tried to keep out of her hair, but he hadn’t been able to avoid the barrage of questions about his reasons for moving into the barracks.

He had honestly thought the house sale excuse would hold water, but everyone kept throwing, “it will work out” platitudes at him, all having graduated from the Jacqui Edwards school of optimism, apparently.

And they all questioned why he would want to stay in the barracks when he’d had such a great setup with Jacqui. Her house was close enough to the base it almost took more time to open and close the garage door and drive over than it would to run the distance on foot.

It seemed everyone had completely bought that they were just friends and now he’d drawn attention to their falling out by leaving.

Why was life so complicated?

Why
had
he moved out? He missed her.

“Hey, Jacqui!” Hugh’s daughter, Miranda, invited her to join the group at her table.

Jacqui glanced around, paused when she met his gaze, then sat with her back to him. A minute later she had a glass of wine and a menu in front of her.

“Kingston. You’re up.”

He snapped to attention, scanned the pool table and bent to take his shot.

Twenty minutes later, Tori brought a beer when she brought his burger.

“I’m not drinking tonight,” he said. It was raining, they probably wouldn’t get any calls, but he was first on the roster if they did.

“It’s on me,” his ex-wife said with the warmest smile he’d received from her in a long time. “The real estate agent just called. We have a fresh offer.”

“That was fast. How much?”

“Asking price.”

“Are you serious?” They had talked about dropping it after losing the first sale, but their agent had encouraged them to give it a few weeks at the original price.

“Preapproved mortgage. No subjects.”

“Shut the front door.”

“And lock it and hand over the keys, baby.” She sashayed away, twirling her empty tray on her finger like a basketball.

Dodson slapped him on the back. “There you go. Congratulations.”

“Not until the fat lady sings,” Vin said, but the huge weight on his shoulders lightened. Possibility hovered like the sun creeping up to brighten the horizon.

A cheer went up across the bar and he turned to see it was the women at the table where Jacqui sat. Tori had just given Jacqui a fresh glass of wine and obviously imparted the news.

Jacqui glanced back at him.

He could hear what she was silently asking. Did this mean he was buying her house after all?

*

Jacqui was tipsy.
As far as foods that absorbed alcohol went, salads were useless. She should have had a steak sandwich and cross-tracks with gravy. But she had only planned to have one glass of wine until Tori had surprised her with that celebratory second. Miranda had already promised to drive her home, so she had indulged herself.

She carried that glass half-finished to the back of the bar and touched the round bottom of her glass to the side of Vin’s. His looked like a Bloody Mary, but might have just been tomato juice with a salted rim and a stick of celery.

“Congratulations,” she said.

“Thanks.” The way his flinty gaze skipped over her head told her they were being observed. She didn’t think anyone could hear them, though. Pool balls were clinking, the place was full and everyone was talking. She could barely hear the twang of whatever was being played on the jukebox and she knew the volume was turned up to max on nights like this.

“What does this mean for us?” she asked Vin.

“It means that once the sale closes and my portion is in my bank account, you and I can talk again.”

She knew he meant the house, but still lifted her brows and asked with more than a little offense, “Until then, I can continue to expect the silent treatment?”

It must have struck a nerve. His jaw hardened along with the blue of his eyes. “Come on, Jac.”

“Come on where? I’ll go, you know. I’ll go anywhere you’ll take me.”

“Don’t.” He warned through his teeth.

Why would she listen to caution? The last time he’d dared her to come for him she had got exactly what she was looking for.

Okay, maybe not
exactly
, but parts of it had been really freaking fantastic. Hadn’t they? He had
implied
that he’d liked it, but then he’d left her wallowing in despondency.

“Don’t you think about it at all?” she asked. “Or is it always like that for you? I mean, you’re the one who said one-night stands aren’t that great, but I thought ours was. Is this why you think I’m not built for them? Because all I can think about is how good we might be together in the long haul if we gave it a shot—”

“I said,
don’t
.”

“They all know,” she said, waving her glass at the room and feeling her wine spill over the rim to wet her knuckles. “They’re all asking if something is up between us. So why can’t there be?”

“How much have you had to drink?” His mouth was tight.

“Not enough, okay? This isn’t me
drunk
, Vin.” Irrational, maybe. Driven there by an excess of pent-up emotion. “It’s me trying to figure out
why
—”

“Because you’re grieving.” His gaze sliced a swath around them again. “You don’t want
me
. You miss Russ and want a warm body in your bed.”

She dropped her hand to her side, forgetting that she was holding the wine. The glass slipped from her grip, hitting the floor with a small shatter of glass and a splash of liquid.

Conversation thinned around them as everyone turned to look.

Vin didn’t shift his stare from hers. “I should take you home.”

“Oh, don’t do me any favors. Is that really what you think I was doing?” She demanded shakily. “Auditioning a stand in?”

He was a glacier of a man, muscles layered with tension, eyes piercing blue.

The music sounded overloud, lyrics droning on about lips tasting like sangria as the crowd strained to hear his response.

“Let’s go.
Now
.”

“Because I loved him
so
much, right?” If the spotlight was upon her, then she was damned well going to play this loud, all the way for the cheap seats to hear. “You know what the saddest part of the funeral was for me?” She demanded in a ragged voice. “How many people said they were sorry because they knew how much I loved Russ. And not one person, not one, fucking person—”

Her voice caught like a barbed hook in her throat. Tears flooded her eyes as she held up that single finger, that symbol of the one tiny piece of evidence she’d yearned for the entire time that she had loved her idol, then her boyfriend, then her fiancé, and finally her husband.

“Not
one person
ever made the
observation
that Russ loved me.
Because he didn’t
.”

Vin’s expression fell in shock and his brows pulled with consternation, maybe even protest as he realized exactly what a wasteland her marriage had been. Saw how devastated she was.

He swore under his breath and reached for her elbow.

She shook him off.

“So you’re wrong. I do not want to replace that. I want a man who actually loves me. If that’s not you, good. Fine. Thanks for clearing that up.”
Go to hell and take your silent treatment and fear of gossip and double standards with you
.

She turned away and saw the blur of Miranda’s red hair and creamy skin.

“Let me drive you home, Jac,” Miranda said.

Jacqui leaned into the taller woman and let her lead her from the bar.

*

You were always
the outsider when you were a foster kid. The minute that fact was known, you were different in people’s eyes.

Once Vin had become an adult, it was less of an issue, especially in a group like firefighters where he was judged on how well he supported his brothers and sisters in the field. They had become his family and he wasn’t alone anymore.

Except when he fucked up. Then he was that useless foster kid again.

Vin had that feeling now. He had not only slept with the boss’s wife, he’d stood on her heart and bounced a few times.

Oddly, as humiliating as that was, the greater pain inside him was for Jacqui. He relived all those little moments where her gaze had clouded, when she had talked about her limited experience with men, when she had said she thought Russ had chased a girl to Marietta, as if she had wondered what that might be like—to have a man want her bad enough to drive off the map to find her.

He remembered her calling herself a pity fuck.

She couldn’t have meant Russ when she said that. Russ had loved her.

Hadn’t he?

Not meeting any eyes, Vin took a few bills out of his wallet, threw them on the table and left.

*

When Jacqui heard
the door from the garage into the house, she assumed Miranda had forgotten something. She didn’t get up from the couch, only called, “Did you leave your keys?”

“It’s me.”

His deep voice went into her like a sonic vibration.

She squished her fingers deeper into Muttley’s ruff, not moving off the sofa. Barely breathing. If an eagle had taken hold of her shoulders and dug talons into the tendons on either side of her neck, she couldn’t be more tense and fixed by pain.

“Am I allowed to be here?” Vin paused in the archway from the kitchen.

“I’ve told you a hundred times, it’s your house.”