Irresistible Stranger

ways. Her students all had sharp edges, radiated the same don’t-fit-in loneliness. They were always braced for people to judge them as “different.”

In the meantime, the crowd was slowly drifting away. The smoke was still thick, the burned stench pervasive, but the fire was out, the danger clearly over. The fire truck had turned off its flashers. The authorities still hovered with Griff. Lily was uncertain how much time had passed. One hour? More? For darn sure, it was well past midnight…and the two boys were weaving on their feet.

She didn’t ask if their parents knew where they were. She would have bet the bank it was a waste of time. She just said, “I can see they’re starting to close this down. And I was thinking…”

“What?” Steve asked.

“Well. Nobody’s going to be allowed to touch anything until they take off the yellow tape-which I assume will be tomorrow, at the soonest. But the thing is-it really looks like a mess.”

“You’re not kidding,” Jason said.

“Griff is really going to need some help. But not now. So, it’d seem the best thing to do for us is to go home and get some rest. Because he’ll need all the energy we’ve got to help him tackle this tomorrow.”

“I don’t think we should go,” Steve said.

“I know. It feels wrong. But I keep thinking, if we’re all exhausted tomorrow, how much help can we really be for him? And there isn’t a prayer anyone will let us do anything tonight.”

“I don’t know,” Jason said unhappily.

But twenty minutes later, when the last bystanders disappeared into the night, the boys finally agreed to pack it up-after some more ardent words about being there for Griff first thing the next day.

Eventually, the fire truck left. Then the sheriff drove off with the fire chief right behind him.

An older man with a thatch of gray hair parked in front of the place, opened his windows-it looked as if he’d been assigned to stay the night, make sure no one trespassed on the fire scene until morning. Griff stood talking with him for a while after that, before turning around and aiming for his car.

Initially, he didn’t notice Lily sitting on the curb, which suited her just fine. He wasn’t devil-may-care womanizer Griff now. The lazy stride was gone.

He was mad. He had to be beyond exhausted, but he stalked toward the car with a clipped step, an iron cast to his chin, his mind obviously working overtime at a hundred miles an hour. The character in his face fascinated her. So did the splotches of soot decorating his clothes and arms and face.

He was startled when he suddenly spotted her. “What are you still doing here, you crazy woman?”

“I figured I’d take you home.” She stood up, wiped the cement crumbs from her fanny.

“I assumed you’d have already gone home. You weren’t supposed to wait-”

“I wanted to.” She wanted to wrap her arms around him right then, too, but she didn’t. He moved tighter than wire, every muscle coiled up and bunched. “It was arson, yes? Gasoline as the accelerant?”

“Yeah. I take it you heard some of the talk.” He scraped a hand through his hair, which only added more soot to the mess. “It’s actually not as bad as it looks. The clean-up will be a godawful mess, for sure. But the two locked rooms in back-the freezer section, and my experimental kitchen-those would have taken serious money to replace, and they’re fine. It’s just the main part of the store that’s a wreck. Apparently, someone used a skeleton key, dropped a homemade gasoline explosive in a wastebasket. It seems impossible. A crime with no motive. Vandalism for no purpose. But planned.”

“So…”

“So, the fire team needs to see the scene by light of day. Do their investigative thing. Then I can get in there. Rather than clean up, frankly I suspect it’ll be easier to gut the place, start with new sheet rock, new floor, just redo the darned thing. What?” He seemed to suddenly notice that she was dangling her car keys in front of him.

“I want to hear more,” she assured him. “But it’s been a long night. Let’s get you in the car first. I’ll take you home.”

“You’re taking me home?”

“Don’t get your hopes up. I’m not offering a wild night of sin and surprises. You’re just not going home alone tonight. I’m driving, because you have to be stressed. Then I’m putting you in a hot shower, and after that, tucking you into bed.”

He shot her a look. “I don’t think so,” he said dryly.

She did.

She was gaining a certain comfort level in this odd, powerful attraction she had for him. It was like looking at a diamond so expensive that she couldn’t have it. Griff was a fantastic flirt, but he couldn’t really be interested in her. His home was here. Hers would never be here again. He played a sophisticated game. She went to makeup and jewelry parties. He had a secret life. She never had a reason to keep a secret. Bottom line was that she might as well let this singing, zinging fire between them smoke through its course, because she couldn’t imagine how she could get burned. He wasn’t for her. She’d never lie to herself about that.

But tonight wasn’t about such heavy issues. Tonight was just about watching over a man who was beside himself and worn out.

His house was dark. Neither had thought to leave an outside light on. Griff gave her grief every step of the way, insisting she go home, that he didn’t need a babysitter, that he could get his own towels-when she turned on the shower, she prowled around for a linen closet and clean towels, then prowled in the kitchen until she found a bottle of Talisker’s.

She wasn’t exactly positive what kind of liquor that was, but when she unscrewed the top and smelled, she knew it was exactly what she was looking for. She splashed a couple shots in a water glass, and put that on the bathroom counter, too.

“If you’re determined to stay here, you could at least come into the shower with me,” he called from the other side of the smoky glass.

“Maybe next week,” she said.

“What? What’s next week?”

“The point is that you’re not getting any tonight, so just get your mind off it.” She left the door ajar, and went into his bedroom. The master suite wasn’t particularly huge, but the balcony was a pool of moonlight, the room colors a rich blend of silvers and pale grays and charcoals. She plumped his pillows, turned back the sheets.

She debated what to do with the clothes he’d peeled off-her first choice was to trash them, but really, she hardly had that right. The fire stench was too noxious for them to stay inside, so they got a temporary home in his garage.

Griff emerged from the shower still protesting-but his voice was starting to slur, his eyes bloodshot from all the smoke. She pointed with a royal finger-her teacher royal finger-toward his room. “I’m not tired,” he said. “And besides that…”

She didn’t need to tune him out. He was out for the count from the instant his head hit the pillow. Actually, he crashed so deeply that she was a little fearful he’d gone straight into a coma-but his chest was rising and falling, so there was no excuse to keep hovering over him.

Because she couldn’t find any herbal tea, she poured herself a thimbleful of that Talisker stuff, found a blanket from his linen closet, and curled up in an oversized chair in his living room. With that location, she was within springing distance of his landline, just in case anyone dared try to call and interrupt his sleep again.

She expected to nap, but couldn’t. She was too troubled-by the fire, by why arson fires had suddenly started when she came back. By why anyone would target Griff. By that long-ago fire and the memory of her dad’s face in the window, backlit by flames…

Unsettled by the old nightmares, she scrounged in her purse for her cell, thinking that maybe it was past time to consult with the big guns. She used to either call or email her sisters several times a week-but that was before they’d both fallen in love last year. Their guys were great, but her sisters had been so insufferably, relentlessly happy that they couldn’t talk about anything but her finding someone. Tonight, though, she just plain needed sis time.

Because it was the middle of the night in D.C., she couldn’t call her youngest sister, Sophie. But Cate was honeymooning in Alaska, and the time there was relatively early evening.