HER: *** eye-roll emoji*** Don’t be ridiculous. You’ve been busy with your summer semester, and I’ve been busy helping out at the ranch.
HIM: I miss my Maisey-girl.
HER: Stop by Jack’s, and you’ll be swarmed with at least a dozen females willing to be my stand-in.
HIM: No one can take your place, Maise. You’re irreplaceable.
PRESENT DAY
Maisey’s eyes were flashing as shepaced. Fury, frustration, and responsibility all mixed into a potent cocktail that I thought might just explode. It was better than the glazed, what-the-hell-just-happened look she’d had when she’d shown up at her dad’s house—the look most fire victims had when we arrived at the scene of a residential fire.
But I’d gladly take the fury over the blank face she’d gotten good at showing me lately. The one she’d shown just now in her dad’s hospital room.
As she flew back and forth over the sidewalk, the fading sunlight surrounded her, and I swore it cast a halo around her. She shimmered and sparkled with a crusading angel-type glow.
Instead of a yellow sundress tempting me as it had last night, it was how her small, tantalizing curves were on display in her riding outfit. Curves that made me crave things I’d never wanted before last night. Impossible things. Like how she would feel wrapped around me in the middle of the night… Hell, the middle of the day. Any time of day.
Fuck.
I had to get a grip on this new obsession. Because those thoughts, the places my brain and body went just as she was drowning, proved exactly why I wasn’t cut out for a relationship. Not with her. Not with anyone. Here she was, stressed and hurting, and I was thinking about what she’d sound like if I were deep inside her.
Disgust filled me.
I was a bastard.
A selfish bastard who’d done things to her today she didn’t even know about yet.
The lie I’d told Delilah.
The evidence I’d handed over to Ron.
I’d debated for longer than I should have about calling Ron after I’d found the empty Sterno can sitting next to what was left of her dad’s stove. Ron trusted me to make the call on most cases, and I could have just pretended I hadn’t seen it. But if it ever came out that I’d hidden evidence in a fire, my career would be over. Forget the job as fire chief, forgetanyfirefighting career. And I couldn’t save Maisey’s dad at the cost of my future.
As Maisey paced by me once again, I caught her arm to stop her. She resisted my touch just like she had in the hospital, but this time, I refused to back off. I just yanked her to me. She put a hand out to slow the collision of our bodies. The heat of her palm burned through my chest, settling over the cold heart that beat beneath it and zapping it with the strength of a defibrillator.
“If he loses the house, that’s on him,” I said. “You don’t owe him a goddamn thing.”
Lewis Campbell hadn’t completely fallen apart after his wife died, but he hadn’t kept his shit together like my dad had when the worst struck. Not once had my father abandoned me, physically or emotionally, after any of the hits he’d taken. He’d stuck around while Maisey’s dad had escaped to his rig, using money as an excuse for leaving her and Chelsea to shoulder the real loss on their own.
Maisey tried to pull away, but when I didn’t let go, she gave in, resting her forehead on my chest. My hands went to her shoulders, kneading at the stiffness I felt there. She didn’t deserve more heavy burdens landing on her.She’d already had enough for a lifetime.
When she lifted her face, the look of devastation I saw made me want to strangle someone.
“He’s lost his wife, his job, and his pride, Beckett. If he loses his house too…” her voice cracked. “I can’t let that happen. No matter his failings, no matter our past, I love him too much to let him lose the last bit of himself…of Mom…he has left.”
The tightness in my chest grew at her tortured words, wishing I could ease them. I was as helpless today as I was the day her mom had died.
“I can clean out Chelsea’s room,” she continued, “and move in there. After today, she isn’t going to come back.”
My hands, kneading her shoulders, stilled. “Wait. Chelsea was at the house today?”
She scoffed in disgust. “Yep. Turns out the red sports car we saw last night belongs to her latest actor boyfriend. She supposedly stopped on their way to a movie they’re filming in the mountains. The visit wasn’t pretty and ended just like it had the last time she’d come home, with Dad asking her to leave and her storming out.”
Something dark and unsettled washed over me. A fleeting thought I couldn’t quite grasp.
“She left before you did?”
“Yeah. Before I could tell her about Dad’s stroke or the trouble he’s in with the house. Not that Chelsea would help him even if she had the money.”