Flashpoint

Chapter 4

“Hey, new hire seven,” Cristina said several days later, the next time she saw Brooke. “Any more Viagra calls?”

Brooke looked over as Firefighter Barbie entered the fire station living room grinning from ear to ear. “Brooke. My name is Brooke.”

“So. You ever have a patient with a perma-boner before?”

“No. That was a new one,” Brooke admitted.

“At least you didn’t have to climb a tree to get to him, huh?”

“At least he was human.”

Cristina laughed and walked past Blake, who was on the computer, and affectionately rumpled his hair. “You get the message that your sister called?”

“Yep, thanks.”

“Kenzie sounds good. I saw her on Entertainment Tonight last night, she was being interviewed about being nominated for a daytime Emmy for her soap.”

“I taped it.”

“We still all having dinner tonight, right?”

“Yep.”

Brooke knew that they did that a lot, got together. All of them. They’d asked her to join them weeks ago, on her first night, but she had been anxious to get started packing up her grandma’s house. Now that she’d been doing that for two weeks, she’d love to be included, but didn’t know how to ask.

A lifelong problem-not knowing how to belong. But for the first time in her life, she wanted to. She didn’t know if it was her grandmother’s house with all that family history, or the way she yearned and burned for Zach at night, or just wanting more for herself from life, but she wanted to be a part of this team. A part of their family. At least for the month she had left. Then, when she did go, she’d have these memories. She’d have her own history to look back on and remember.

Cristina leaned over Blake’s shoulder. “Got anything good today, Eeyore?”

Blake pulled open a drawer and held out a candy bar. “Careful,” he warned. “I rigged it. The person who eats that is going to turn sweet.”

“Not a chance.”

With a sigh, Blake went back to the computer.

Brooke headed into the garage to restock their rig as end-of-shift protocol dictated. And then, blessedly, she was off the clock. Stepping outside, she was immediately hit by a sucker punch to the low belly area-not by the hot, salty summer air, but by good old-fashioned lust.

Zach stood on the bumper of the truck, hose in hand, leaning over his rig, squirting down the windows. Stripped to the waist, his skin glistened with a light sweat. She broke into a sweat, too, just from looking at him.

His back was sleek, smooth and sinewy, and improving the already fantastic view was the fact that his pants had slid low enough to once again reveal a strip of BVDs, blue today. His every muscle bunched and unbunched as he moved, hypnotizing her, fusing her to the spot. She didn’t mean to keep staring, she really didn’t, but was unable to help herself as she eyed his sun-streaked hair, his rock-solid and ready-for-action body, all corded bulk honed to a fine edge, topped with so much testosterone she could hardly breathe. He looked like the perennial surfer boy all grown up-and it hit her.

This might be more than a crush.

“If you come help, you can get a better view.”

Oh, for God’s sake. She jerked her gaze off him and pretended to search her purse for her keys while silently berating herself. “I’m sorry, I-”

“Are you kidding? A pretty woman looks at me, and she’s sorry?”

“I wasn’t looking-”

Tossing aside his hose, he lithely hopped down from the rig and came closer, letting out that damn slow, sexy smile of his. “Anal, uptight and a liar?”

“Okay, so I was looking.” She crossed her arms and tried not to look at his chest but it was right in front of her, drawing her eyes. “But I didn’t want to be looking.”

With a soft laugh, he turned the tables, letting his gaze slowly run over her, from her hair to her toes and then back up again, stopping at a few spots that happily leaped to hopeful attention.

“Stop it.” God, was that her voice, all cartoony-light and breathless? “What are you doing?”

“Looking,” he murmured, mocking her. “And I wanted to.”

“Okay, you know what? You need a damn shirt. And I’m going now.”

Leaning back against the rig, he smiled, and damn if it didn’t short-circuit her wires. “Have anything special planned for your days off?” he asked. “Visiting friends, family?”

No. Fantasizing about you… Unacceptable answer. She’d be working on the house. The house that she was beginning to wish was hers in more than name, because being there reminded her of exactly how rootlessly she’d lived her life, and how much she’d like to change that. Going through decades of family history had brought it home for her. It was exhausting, almost gut-wrenching, but also exhilarating.

And honestly? Flirting with Zach was the same.

But no matter what the house represented to her, no matter what someone like Zach could represent to her, she still didn’t know how to get there.

How to belong. “I don’t have either friends or family here.”

“Everyone back East?”

She hated this part. Telling people about herself, getting unwanted sympathy. “My mother’s in Ohio. I’m an only child. And I haven’t made any friends here yet.”

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.