“I’m glad you’re okay.”
She looked up to find Journey uncharacteristically sober. “Beckett got me out.” She might have managed on her own, but he’d been the one to make sure it happened in the shortest amount of time. She made a face. “I should send him flowers or something. As a thank-you.”
“Trust me, honey—if you want to thank Beckett, I’m sure there are half a dozen ways to do it more effectively than sending flowers.”
Chapter Nine
Beckett met the fire inspector at the office bright and early Sunday morning. The small man was probably one-forty soaking wet, but he knew his shit. They walked through the lobby to the employee break room he’d had installed a couple years ago.
It was damaged beyond repair.
“You’re lucky the door was closed. Slowed things down.” The fire inspector held out a hand when Beckett started to lean into the room. “We still have to conduct a full investigation, but I can tell you right now that it wasn’t an accident.”
He studied the blackened walls and the destroyed cabinets. “This is one of the only rooms with flammable shit in it on this floor.” The door was usually locked, but there were currently half a dozen keys unaccounted for because of the employees he’d lost. Normally, there were more people in the building on Saturdays—there would have been if Lydia hadn’t poached the ranks.
Lydia.
Beckett wanted to blame her for this, but even without Samara’s voice in his head he knew he was jumping to conclusions. She’d caused him other grief, and he wanted to lay this at her feet, too. Someone could have snuck in through one of the side doors somehow, and there was a spare key the girls at the front desk kept hidden in case one of them forgot their own. It was against company policy and they didn’t advertise its existence, but it did exist.
The fire inspector pulled a toothpick out of his pocket and motioned. “That cabinet is ground zero. They left a cigarette burning down into a bowl of lighter fluid. Not fancy, but it got the job done.” He turned to survey the rest of the lobby. “If you had a different interior decorator, we might not be having this conversation at all.”
Because the fire would have spread too fast, preventing escape. Beckett cataloged every single thing about the burned room and imagined opening the bottom stairwell door to find the entire lobby on fire. Fear took root in the pit of his stomach. He could have died. Samara could have died.
She didn’t. She’s fine.
It didn’t kill the impulse to call her to reassure himself again that she was safe. It wasn’t his right. She didn’t want him hovering. He’d see her at the end of the week when they gave their respective proposals for the government contract. And then…
Then they’d go back to something resembling normal. Barely seeing each other. Pretending like he didn’t know what his name sounded like from her lips when she orgasmed.
Focus.
“Will there be a report I can read once the initial investigation is complete?”
“Yeah.” The fire inspector hesitated. “Are you filing an insurance claim over this?”
Beckett shrugged. “I was planning on it.”
The fire inspector huffed out a breath and nodded. “You have any idea of who might have set this? Disgruntled employee? Pissed-off ex?”
Lydia.
He didn’t say it. “Not off the top of my head.” He had no damn proof. Beckett had no proof of anything. Not of her meeting with Nathaniel. Not that she’d somehow orchestrated his father deeding her Thistledown Villa. Sure as hell not for the fire.
At least one of those things he’d be able to confirm soon. Frank was working on getting provable confirmation for the dinner, and he’d work forward from there to figure out how Nathaniel was on that particular road at that particular time of night.
Samara might be right. It might just be that the old man made a shitty decision and paid the price. I might be hyper-focusing because I can’t deal with my grief.
He set it aside. There was no other option. “Thanks for walking me through it.”
“No problem.” The fire inspector shrugged. “You might want to keep an eye out, though. Someone has it out for you. Doubt they’ll stop with a petty little fire.”
It hadn’t felt like a petty little fire when the alarms had gone off. “I’ll watch my back.” He walked the man out and stood just inside the door, surveying the street. It was too late for Sunday brunch and too early for dinner, so there wasn’t much foot traffic. It didn’t matter. He still searched the face of every person who walked past, wondering if they were all as innocent as they seemed, or if there was something deeper going on. He’d been outmaneuvered again and again since he got back to Houston. Pretty shitty track record for just a couple of days.
That had to change. Now.
As if summoned by his thoughts, a limo pulled to a stop at the curb outside the building. He knew who it was before a white-clad leg appeared, followed by the rest of Lydia King. She wore another white pantsuit, but the top below the blazer was gold lace. Giant sunglasses shielded her gaze from him, but he knew the exact moment she registered him standing on the other side of the glass doors. Her step didn’t hitch, but she seemed to focus in on him.
He moved back as she came through the doors. “Lydia, to what do I owe the dubious pleasure?”
“Beckett.” She nodded and made a show of looking around the lobby. “I heard you had a fire. I came to ensure you were unharmed.”
Uh-huh. Sure she did. He could tell her to get lost, but they were on his territory now. “Walk with me.” He didn’t want her in the building or near anything important. The gardens were safer across the board.
“Happily.”
He strode through the lobby, a little too fast to be perfectly polite, but her long legs kept
