Jill Shalvis - Flashpoint

He didn’t dwell or give her any sympathy. “I thought we were friends.”

She gave him a look.

“Aren’t we?”

“I don’t know.”

“Let’s do something, then, and you can decide.”

“I can’t. I’m closing up my grandmother’s house before it sells, and I’ve only got a month left in town.”

“You think you’ll be able to leave Santa Rey without falling in love with it? Or the people?”

She looked into his eyes, wishing for a witty response. But the truth was, she fell a little bit more for her grandma’s house every single night she slept there. “I don’t know.”

“Do you know how you feel about surfing?”

“I’m pretty uncoordinated.”

“I’m a good teacher.”

Uh-huh. She bet he was.

“Come on, say yes. I’m betting you don’t take enough downtime.”

“I take lots.”

He arched a brow, and she let out a breath. “Okay, so I don’t.”

“Is that because you like to be so busy your head spins, or because you don’t know how to relax?”

“Is there an option number three?”

“You work a stressful job.”

“So?”

“So…” He smiled. “Maybe you should let that hair down and just be wild and free once in a while.”

“Wild and free. Is that what you do?”

“When I can.”

She hadn’t expected him to admit it, and she ran out of words, especially because he was still standing there with no shirt on.

“Not your thing, I take it,” he said. “Letting loose.”

“I’ve never thought about it.” Okay, she’d thought about it. “I’m not sure how to…let loose,” she admitted, going to tuck her hair behind her ears. But he shifted closer and caught her fingers in his.

That electric current hummed between them. He looked at their joined hands and then into her eyes. “Maybe it’s time to think about it,” he said silkily and stroked a finger over the tip of her ear, causing a long set of shivers to race down her spine. Then, with a look that singed her skin, he walked off.

She managed, barely, not to let her knees give and sit right there on the ground. He wanted her to relax? Ha! So not likely, and not just because he wound her up in ways she hadn’t anticipated. Relaxing, getting wild and free, those were all alien concepts for her. No matter what her secret desires were, she had responsibilities, always had. She didn’t have time for letting loose.

But, as he’d suggested, she thought about it. Thought about it as she drove home-yes, she’d begun to think of her grandmother’s house as home-and she thought about it as she finished the attic. She thought about it, dreamed about it, fantasized about it…

Ironically enough, in the pictures that chronicled her grandma’s life, she saw plenty of evidence that her grandma had known how to relax, and be wild and free.

How was it her grandmother had never insisted on getting to see her only grandchild?

It made her sad. It made her feel alone. She had missed out on something, something she needed badly.

Affection.

A sense of belonging.

Love.

Damn, enough with the self-pity. Having finished the attic, she moved down a floor to box up her grandmother’s bedroom. There she made an even bigger find than pictures-her grandmother’s diaries. Brooke stared down at one dated ten years back, the year she’d graduated from high school.

I tried calling my daughter today but she’s changed her number. Probably long gone again on another of her moves. Of course she didn’t think to let me know the new number, or where she’s going.

She’s still mad at me.

I really thought I was doing the right thing, telling her what I thought of her bohemian lifestyle and the shocking way she drags that child across the world for her own pleasure. I thought she needed to hear my opinion.

For years I thought that.

Now I know different. I know it’s her life to live as she wants, and if I’d only arrived at this wisdom sooner, I wouldn’t be alone now, with no one to belong to and no one to belong to me.

Brooke remembered that year. Her mother had gone after some guy to Alaska, and she’d entered junior college in Florida, feeling extremely…alone. Hugging the diary to her chest, she stared blindly out the window, wondering how different her life might have been if stubbornness hadn’t been the number one trait in her grandmother’s personality…

Or her mother’s.

Or hers…

* * *

If anyone had asked, Zach would have said he spent his days off surfing with Eddie and Sam, and replacing the brakes and transmission on his truck.

What he wouldn’t have mentioned was how much time he spent thinking about Brooke. They most definitely had some sort of an attraction going on, one he wanted to explore. He wished she’d taken him up on spending some of their days off together. His weekend might have turned out differently if she had.

But with too much time to think, he’d gone over and over the Hill Street fire, the one he was so sure had been arson.

Tommy wouldn’t give him any info. He and Tommy went way back to when Tommy had sat on the hiring board that had plucked Zach out of the academy, but the inspector wasn’t playing favorites. Sharp as hell and a first-rate investigator, he was as overworked as the rest of them and frustrated at Zach’s pressing the issue. All week his response had remained the same: “I’m working on it.”

Still, Zach found himself driving to the site, where he’d gotten an unhappy shock. Back on the night of the fire he’d only had three minutes before the chief had ordered everyone out, just long enough for him to catch sight of two points of origin. One in the kitchen beneath the sink, the other in the kid’s bedroom inside a wire-mesh trash can.

But now the kid’s bedroom had been cleaned, and there was no sight of the wire-mesh trash can or flash point marring the wall.

And no sign of an ongoing fire investigation.

What didn’t shock Zach was finding Tommy waiting for him at the start of his next shift.

Tommy was a five-foot-three Latin man with a God complex compounded by short-man syndrome. Added to this, ever since his doctor had made him give up caffeine, he’d been wearing a permanent surly frown; now was no exception as he stalked up to Zach as he got out of his truck. “We need to talk.”

Zach shut his door without locking it. No one ever locked their doors in Santa Rey. “Still off caffeine, huh?”

“The Hill Street fire.”

Zach sighed. “What about it?”

“I just left the scene.”

“Okay.” Zach nodded and grabbed his gear bag out of the back of his truck. “So maybe you can tell me what happened to the second point of origin, the one I saw in the kid’s bedroom the night of the fire.”

Tommy’s jaw bunched. “The fire is out. Your job is done.”

Zach turned to look at him, and it was Tommy’s turn to sigh. “We found the point of origin in the kitchen. Beneath the sink. There were rags near the cleaning chemicals, which ignited. The fire alarm was faulty and didn’t go off. It wasn’t called in by anyone in the house, but by an anonymous tip reporting smoke.”

“There was a metal trash can in the kid’s room-”

“Zach, stop.” Tommy’s voice was quiet but his eyes were intense. “The chief’s signing off on the report today. Accidental ignition.”

“He can’t sign off. It’s arson.”

“I’m not having this conversation.” Tommy turned and started to walk away. “Not with you.”

“Are you kidding me?”

Tommy looked back, regret creeping into his expression. “Look, you’re not the most credible of witnesses right now, okay? There were those two other fires earlier in the season that you cried arson-”

“Cried arson? What am I, the boy who cried wolf?”

“Just leave the case to those who are trained, Zach. I’ve got a helluva workload right now and I don’t need you-”

“I don’t care about your workload. We’re all overworked. What I care about is making sure that whoever killed that kid pays his due.”

“My job, Zach. My job.”

“But you don’t believe it was arson.”

Tommy gave him one hard, long stare. “I never said that.”

“What the hell does that mean?”

“Look, I get that after what happened to your parents, that you’d see arson in every fire, but-”

No. Oh, hell, no. “We dealt with that in my interview, remember? That fire was years ago and has nothing to do with this.”

“Are you saying that what happened to them when you were a kid has nothing to do with you being a firefighter?”

“I’m saying that I know what I saw on that Hill Street fire.”

“No, you don’t.” Tommy scrubbed a weary hand over his face. “Listen, you should have several strikes on your permanent record by now, but I’ve always stepped in for you. I trusted you, and now I’m asking you to trust me.”

“To do what?”

“To not go over my head with this. The chief is getting pissed off, Zach. And when he’s pissed, he reacts. You know that by now. So do this, for me.” He paused. “Please.” And with that, he walked away.

Zach watched him leave in frustrated disbelief before turning to go inside, coming face-to-face with Brooke.

“Hey,” she said softly.

“Hey.” Before he could ask how much she’d overheard, she put her hand on his arm and literally gave him a physical jolt. Gave her one, too, by the way she pulled her hand back. Jesus, when they finally touched each other sexually-and they would-he was convinced they’d spontaneously combust.

“You okay?”

Better now, he thought. “Yeah.” He took her hand in his, and felt the jolt all the way to his toes. “Quite a zap.”

“Yeah.”

Something about her made him forget his troubles. Well, not forget, but be able to ignore them, anyway. Her eyes were soft and also somehow sweet. After nearly three weeks, Number Seven had finally let her guard down, and damn, but it looked good on her. He wondered if she wanted to put that concern to good use, because he had several ideas-

“Are you sure you’re okay?”

Soft, sweet, sexy, and too perceptive. “I’m fine.”

“Because it’s understandable if you’re not. I’m here if you wanted to-”

Oh yeah. He wanted to. He wanted to in his bed, in hers, with her panting out his name as she came all over him.

“-talk.”

He blinked the sexy vision away. “No. Not talk.”

She blushed but didn’t go there. “I’m sorry about your parents.”

So she’d heard everything. “It was a long time ago.”

“And it doesn’t change what you saw at that Hill Street fire.”

He stared at her, a little stunned. “No, it doesn’t.” He felt his heart engage, hard. “You’re different, Brooke O’Brien.”

“I’ve heard that before.”

“Different good. Different great.”

She didn’t believe him, that was all over her face. “If you’d gone surfing with me,” he said, “I could have shown you, proven it to you.”

“Maybe another time.”

Now that, he could get behind. “I’ll count on it.”

With an unsure but endearing nod, she walked away.

If Brooke had talked with Zach for even another minute, she’d probably have thrown herself at him. She wouldn’t have been able to help herself. He’d been standing there, looking fiercely unhappy, and her ears had been ringing with all she’d heard Tommy say to him-about his parents, about that kid dying, about how Zach needed to stay out of it. God, she’d wanted to grab him and hug him and kiss away that look on his face.

Even now she wanted to, hours later, sitting by herself in the house.

Good thing she was off duty for two days. Two days in which to get herself together and find some semblance of control. Because there were other ways to offer comfort than sex, for God’s sake. She could buy a Hallmark card, for instance. Or make cookies.

But neither appealed. No, she wanted to offer a different kind of comfort all together.

A physical comfort.

A grip. She needed one. So she buried herself in packing. By the time her weekend was over, she’d gotten to the halfway point, setting aside a shocking amount of boxes to keep.

Keep.

Odd, how she wished she could keep even more, but she’d talked herself out of that, going only for the photos and diaries, still surprised at the sentimental impulse. What was she going to do with it all and no house to keep it in? Oh sure, her name was on the deed of this one, but that was temporary.

Like everything in her life.

The answers didn’t come, not then, and not when she drove to work for her next scheduled shift. As she got out of her car, her eyes automatically strayed to the hammock, empty of one übersexy firefighter. Not there.

And not washing his rig, half-naked. His rig was parked, though, so she knew he was here, somewhere. Pulse quickening for no good reason other than she was thinking about him, she stepped inside her new home away from home and found a big poster had gone up in the front room, announcing the chief’s upcoming big birthday beach bash.