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.”
