Under the Microscope

the first response units. You’re lucky it was so quick, though. Another few minutes…” She gestured to an unfolded gurney. “Anyway. You can put her down here.”

But Max barely heard the order because he knew the paramedic was right. If the alarm hadn’t been sounded…if he’d been a few minutes later…

He tightened his arms around Raine and felt a stir in response. He looked down just as her eyes opened and locked on him. There was no change in her expression, no flicker of recognition or surprise or fear or any emotion beyond simple acceptance. She slipped her arms around his torso, reached up, pressed her cheek to his and said, “You came for me. Thank you.”

He froze, peripherally aware of the firefighters’ shouts and curses as they gained control of the blaze, along with the growing crowd of gawkers and the hiss of the angry fire. He noticed all those things, plus the sting of burns and the catch of smoke in his lungs and throat, but the sensory inputs seemed so much farther away than the woman in his arms, who filled up a space that had been empty for longer than he cared to admit, longer than his apartment had been bare.

He shifted, intending to push her away, but she moved and their bodies realigned until her lips were a breath away and her eyes were locked on his. He saw her lips shape his name, and before he knew he would do it, before he could stop himself, he closed the gap between them.

And then, almost exactly three years and three months after the day she’d walked out on him, he kissed her for the first time.

FLAMES. FIRE. SEARING HEAT. Raine could have blamed it all on the burning building, but that would have been a lie. The heat wasn’t coming from an external source; it was coming from inside her. From Max.

From the spark they kindled together.

Finally, she thought on a whisper of memory, as his mouth slanted across hers and his tongue demanded entry. She parted her lips and accepted him, tasted him and wanted more.

She remembered wishing for him as her attacker had knocked her unconscious. Then she’d come to and known whose arms held her. Whose heart beat beneath her ear. Who had come to her rescue.

Again.

Max. She fisted her hands in his flannel shirt and held on as a maelstrom built inside her, around her, swirls of heat and smoke and sensation roaring alongside the pounding beat of her heart. She felt his pulse drum beneath her fingertips, or maybe that was the race of her own heart; she wasn’t sure anymore; she only knew that he was there with her, beside her, pressed against her. He had come for her when she’d needed him.

He’d come. He’d rescued her, and-

And she was doing it again, Raine realized on a sudden shock of cold reality. She was putting herself in the middle of a rescue fantasy and grabbing onto the first man to step into the role.

She broke the kiss and stared at Max, whose eyes were very close to hers and dark with passion. She said, “Put me down.”

He lowered her to her feet and kept a hand on each arm until he was sure she was steady. Then they stood for a second, staring at each other, breathing heavily from the escape, from the kiss.

She saw the flames in his normally shielded expression, felt the answering surge in her blood and nearly reached for him.

But she didn’t. She couldn’t.

What the hell was she thinking? She’d been attacked. Thriller hung in the balance. She had to be the boss here, not the victim.

Not a woman.

She drew a deep breath. “I shouldn’t have done that. I’m sorry. It won’t happen again.”

A moment later, between one heartbeat and the next, his expression blanked. He muttered something unintelligible and gave her a long, measured look. Then gestured to the gurney and the waiting paramedics. “Let them check you out and get you to the hospital. You’ll need to be treated for smoke inhalation, at the very least.”

She batted his hand away and stood on her own two feet, doing her best not to wobble. “Don’t boss me around, Vasek. I’m fine.” She lifted her hand to the back of her head and winced when she found a large, tender bump. “Okay, a few bruises and a sore throat, but nothing I’m going to the hospital for. Where are the police? I saw the guy who grabbed me. I can give them a description of the bastard.”

She fanned the flames of outward anger, but the realizations bounded through her head in a terrifying litany. She’d been attacked. In her own home. Her place had been torched with her in it. She should be dead.

She would have been, if it hadn’t been for Max.

She didn’t know what he’d done to get her out, but she knew she owed him a hell of a debt, so she touched his arm. “A man was waiting for me when I got home tonight. He knocked me out, then set the place on fire several hours later. Don’t you see? This could be related to what’s going on at Rainey Days. It could have something to do with the Thriller deaths.”

His brows lowered and he seemed to grow bigger and more menacing, though she knew he hadn’t moved a muscle. “Exactly,” he said, voice low. “Which is why you should leave it to me.”

She froze. “You’re taking the case.”

Maybe that should have been obvious. Otherwise, why would he be in Connecticut? But she needed to hear him say it, needed to know she had someone on her side.

“I’m taking the case.” He held out a hand and she shook almost numbly, two businesspeople sealing a deal in the strangest of settings, standing in the darkness as firefighters slowly gained control of the inferno that had once been her house.

Then Max’s lips twisted. “I had planned on mentioning professional detachment, and how it would be a good idea to keep our previous association separate from our business deal. But I’d say that horse has already left the barn.”

Raine lifted her fingers to touch her mouth, which still hummed with his touch, his flavor. “I don’t know-” She broke off and took a deep breath. “The kiss was my fault. It won’t happen again.”

She couldn’t let it.

She’d had little security as a child, bouncing from one foster home to the next, so many different schools, so many different friends that it was easier not to bother. Longing for stability, she’d been too quick to grab on when Rory had wanted to take care of her. Rory, who’d barely been able to take care of himself.

No, Raine thought, this time she was going to succeed on her own. She would hire the help she needed to prove that Thriller was safe, that something-or someone-else had killed those four women. Max was the best man for the job, but so what? That didn’t mean she needed to lean on him.

Didn’t mean she needed him.

He looked at her for a long moment, but before he could say anything a thin, graying man approached from the driveway, where a wide stream of water ran beside her SUV and down to the street, looking oily and black in the darkness.

“Is this your car?” the stranger asked. He was dressed in street clothes, but a uniformed officer hovered at his side with the deference of a subordinate.

A detective, then, or maybe an arson investigator, Raine thought. Lord knows she’d need one of those.

She stepped forward and was aware of Max’s steady presence close behind her when she said, “My car. My house.” She clasped her hands together in front of her body to keep them from trembling. “I was inside. Max here got me out.”

“I’m Detective Marcus.” The gray-haired man indicated the officer at his side. “This is Officer Nichols. Why don’t you walk us through what happened?”

After providing her full name and salient personal details, she described her return home and what she remembered of the attack, which wasn’t much. She was able to give a general description of her attacker-white, medium height, brown hair and eyes-but though she could swear she’d seen him up close, the details eluded her. In the end, she had to shrug. “He was pretty average.”

As she spoke, she was acutely conscious of Max’s presence. She was too comforted by the warm solidity of his body, too aware of his every gesture and expression, and the silent hum of tension that ran between them.