never considered doing with anyone else.”
Talk about a way to melt a girl. Griff’s Secret, she thought, wasn’t just an ice-cream flavor. It was this ingredient in him, a secret, insidious factor, that annihilated defenses and seduced a heart without half-trying. She turned in his arms, well aware they were suddenly breast to chest, tummy to tummy, danger zone teasingly rubbing against danger zone.
“Hey,” she murmured worriedly. “Where’s that kind of talk coming from?”
“I don’t know,” he admitted. “But you’re scaring me. I barely know you.”
“That’s supposed to be my line. I’m the girl, remember? I’m the one at risk if I fall in love with a guy who’s reported to have no settle-down or responsible genes in his entire DNA.”
“That’s me,” he admitted. “If I were you, I wouldn’t get involved with me either. I’ve never had a committed relationship in my life. Never bought a ring or shopped for one. Never had the energy or ambition to.”
Oh, for Pete’s sake. He’d been selling that snake oil since she met him. Being only a pinch away made it easy enough to…well, to shut him up. It was as simple as laying her lips against his.
On his.
With his.
Yearning shot through her bloodstream like a silky streak of surprise, crazy strong, achey wild. He tasted so good. He tasted like everything she’d been forbidden, everything she’d secretly dreamed of.
His tongue dove inside her mouth, combined tastes and textures, at the same time his knee eased between her legs. His hands swept her body-up, down, roaming, igniting the slope of her spine, her fanny, back up…
She twisted in his arms, not kissing him back-more-feeling inhaled. Taken in. Taken under. She’d liked kissing him before. She’d liked his touch. She’d liked that electric sensation of risk and desire, the rush of need and want. But this was different.
Recklessness. She’d never tasted it before. Heat. She’d never suffered from it before, not like this. She’d been afraid of fire her entire life-but somehow not with him.
Not this kind of fire.
She opened her eyes, saw his-dark, intent now, not playing. He looked at her as if she was the only woman he’d ever wanted, the only woman he’d ever needed. The hunger in his touch, his eyes, his mouth, was more than sexual. It was about loneliness. Gut loneliness. The kind where you knew there was no one else who could accept you, all of you, who could know you, all the way inside, and still want to be there.
She didn’t do fantasies like that. Ever.
But with him… Her breath caught when his palm found her breast, cupped, then squeezed. Her hand slid down his side, down his bare hip, knuckled inside, to cup where he was hard and hot. She squeezed.
“Okay,” he hissed. “You’re in real trouble now.”
His head disappeared under the covers. She didn’t quite remember when she’d lost her shirt, but her bra was still on, all a tangle, straps around her arms, cups pushed away. He got rid of it altogether, started sampling slopes and valleys of skin, found freckles between her breasts, found each nipple, analyzed each thoroughly with his tongue-until she was gasping for breath, and her legs reflexively clenching. He roamed down her tummy, found her navel and appendix scar…
“Hey,” she whispered. “Maybe…hold on there. Just for a second. Maybe…wait. Maybe I need to think about this.”
“No.”
“No? Huh? You can’t say no. If you vote no, we stop. If I vote no, we stop. Those are the rules.”
“Now, Lily, trust me. I know the rules. Come on, though. Give me a chance to be a hero. I’m in the striving class. Don’t know what I’m doing. You could help me learn. You could give me an achievement badge if I’m good. Or a whack upside the head if I goof this up. See? No risk.”
She almost laughed at his words. Only, Griff wasn’t a fledgling, and he knew-awesomely, brilliantly, inventively-exactly what he was doing.
She stopped thinking. Stopped breathing. Forgot her name. Forgot just about everything but that she was female, pure female, and Griff, damn him, was more man than she’d ever dreamed existed. She gulped in pleasure, greedily wanted more, needed more. Needed him. Yelped his name in her angriest tone, her bossy teacher tone. “
“Okay, okay, I’m coming up,” he promised her-only right then his landline rang.
Then her cell phone did its bell tone thing.
And then his cell phone did some kind of jubilant chime.
The three noxious sounds struck her as a blast from planet Earth. For a little while-for an insane, wonderful, breathtaking little while-she’d forgotten about reality. Her fire. His fire. The way that past seemed to be strangely spilling over into the here and now.
Maybe she’d been haunted all her life by fire. But she’d never been afraid…until coming home again.
Now she tasted fear. And the upsetting flavor of guilt-because somehow, her history with fire had managed to hurt Griff.
“I got a proposition for you.”
The only proposition Griff wanted was from Lily, but he turned around to face the new interruption. Debbie, from Debbie’s Diner, had straw-dry, big blond hair, boobs so big you wondered why she didn’t fall on her face just trying to walk and was decent to the core. She always chose the wrong men, made fried chicken so good it could make a rock salivate, never met a dog so ugly she wouldn’t take in. She was one of the best commerce neighbors on Main Street.
She peered into the burned-out shell of Griff’s ice-cream parlor and clucked in sympathy. “I was thinking, Griff, I got spare freezer space. We could put your ice creams on the menu in the diner until your own place is up and running again. That way, you could use up the ice cream so it’s not wasted, and I’d get more customers coming into the diner just for the ice cream. We’d both win.”
Debbie had barely left before Manuel Brook showed up, tapping him on the shoulder. Manuel came from a family of farm workers, and had gotten a business started cleaning carpets. He barely reached five-four, had beady little eyes, and a wife-some claimed-who regularly slapped him around. “Hey, Griff. You got a big mess here. I clean up fire and water messes before. Once you get the debris out, you call me. I’ll do the cleaning, my own time, on me.”
“That’s not necessary.” Griff said immediately, but it had been the same story all morning. Neighbors and friends stopped by, didn’t waste time sympathizing, just dug straight in with offers of help.
Margo, his insurance agent, had been on the site almost the minute he’d parked the car. “I know there are still questions as far as the investigation goes,” she told him. Margo was well over sixty, spare as a reed, hair the color of iron. “But I don’t want you worried about the claim. I sold you good coverage, and I’ll have a check to you as fast as we can get the details on paper and get it processed.”
Every kid who’d ever worked for him showed up through the morning as well-the ones who’d been in jail, the ones who couldn’t stop fighting, the ones who’d been drinking hard liquor since fourth grade. Not a clean-cut kid in the lot. Yet all of them showed up, offering to help, offering to shoot whoever did this, offering to stand guard, offering to hang with Griff in case anyone else tried to hurt him.
By noon, Griff couldn’t keep his eyes off the street. He hadn’t forgotten that wild body in bed with him this morning. For damn sure, he hadn’t forgotten what had unfortunately been interrupted by the blast of phone calls. He also hadn’t forgotten finding Lily sitting on the curb last night, waiting for him, hanging with his boys.
When they’d split this morning, she said that she was going back to the B and B, needed to shower, clean up, change clothes, and then she’d be here. It wasn’t as if either of them had set a timetable.
He hadn’t been worried about it-until the sheriff and fire chief had stopped by, taken him out back to have a quiet talk.
His fire hadn’t been accidental. Maybe Griff had already guessed that, but it was still another thing to have “arson” put in indelible ink.
His fire had started from a gasoline accelerant, exactly like the accelerant used in the deserted mill fire the day after Lily arrived in town. Exactly the same accelerant had been used in that long-ago fire that took her parents’
