Blaze (The Firefighters of Darling Bay Book 1) (11 page)

It was just like her in here. If a plane had dropped him anywhere in the world, he would have been able to tell that he was near Grace Rowe. It smelled like her, sweet, with a hint of spice, as if she tucked packets of cinnamon and cloves in the furniture. A faint scent of something sexy and earthy, maybe incense. That wouldn’t have surprised him. 

The furniture was comfortable. Nothing fancy. Things like this red sofa, and the two oversized green chairs, things that called out to be sunk into, rested upon. There was no art, as he would have called it, on the walls. Instead,
things
hung from nails and hooks. A large drum with a fringe of feathers and beads hung on one wall. Next to the brick fireplace was a collection of what looked like painted gourds. 

Hippie stuff. The kind of furnishings he would have mocked only days ago. In here, though, it looked good, like he was sitting inside some Western decorating magazine. 

There was something hung above a low blue bookcase that looked like a round box made of metal. A tiny dollhouse? He stood and moved to get closer to it. Not a dollhouse, it was an aluminum open case that held a picture of a saint that had been painted with…glitter? 

“My tin
nicho
,” Grace said from behind him. In her hands she held two orange mugs of tea. She’d taken off her canvas beach shoes and her bare feet surprised him, somehow. They looked so vulnerable. 

“Pink toenails,” he said rather stupidly. 

She laughed. Such a pretty sound that was. It was like the sound of dancing. She touched the round box on the wall. “It’s my own little, um…do you know what a hope chest is?” 

“Not really.” 

“It’s something a girl had in the old days. She filled it with the things she made to take with her into marriage. Her hopes.” 

Tox felt his eyebrows shoot upward. “This is your marriage box?” 

“
No.
Only the hopes for my life.” 

“That looks like a saint or something.” He pointed at a picture glued inside. “Is that you?” 

She nudged his shoulder with her own, only she was so much shorter than he was, she really just touched his elbow. His arm ached, suddenly, to go around her, but he held himself back. 

“Of course not. That’s just a generic saint I cut out of a magazine.” 

“Isn’t that blasphemous to someone? Somewhere?” 

“Nah,” she said easily. “I just think there’s something good and amazing and strong and wonderful in all of us, and part of our job here is to find out what that is.” 

Did she really believe that? That people were inherently good? “Well, you haven’t seen the dregs of humanity, then.” 

She touched her lips. He wanted to do that. Badly.

“Maybe,” she said. “But I’ve seen more than I would have liked to have seen. My first acupuncture job was in an alcoholic rehab center.” 

“Okay.” He paused. “Maybe you’ve seen a little bit, then. What’s with the saint, then?” 

She said, sounding a bit abashed, “She kind of looks like me. A little bit, I mean. Around the nose, maybe.” 

Heck, she was right. Now that she said it, he could see it. It was as if they’d modeled the whole image on her. The same long toffee-colored hair that curled at the ends—always looking like it had just been caught in a windstorm. And the same big, brown eyes, as light as her hair. Almost clear, really. As expressive as the sun setting at twilight. 

“My sister actually pointed it out to me in the magazine. I thought she was full of it, but I was…I was in a low place, then. Relationship-wise. Later, I dug the magazine out of the recycling and cut it out. Look, even the same dimple.” 

Tox longed to touch that dimple with the very tip of his finger. Instead, he shoved his hand in his pocket and forced himself to listen.

“I used glitter glue on her dress, or robe, whatever it is. The thimble was my mother’s, and it reminds me that needles have always been important in our family. After my father died, before she got sick, she took care of both me and my sister as a single mother on just the income she made as a seamstress.” 

There was pride in her voice, a stubbornness that drew him to her. He liked it. And recognized it. “What’s the matchbook for?” 

She made a murmuring sound in the back of her throat, as if she was trying to decide what, or how much, to tell him. “It’s…to remind me of something.” 

“And is that…”

“A piece of chain-link fence? Yeah.” Grace straightened her back. “It is.” 

Tox hated it when anyone pushed him, so he wouldn’t do it to her. “I get it.” He accepted the mug of tea from her. “Thank you for this.” 

They sat on the red loveseat. She was so dang close that if he moved an inch their legs would tangle. Just one inch, and they’d be touching. He wanted that so much. But she was like a kid who had called 911 after learning about it in school—all jumpy, jangled nerves. If he moved too fast, he thought she might scream, and that would seriously kill his chances of scoring another kiss from that luscious mouth. 

Did she really not know how she was affecting him? 

Grace drew her legs up and rested the mug on her knee. She sighed and faced forward. 

Her body language read as defensive. “Hey, Grace.” 

She started. “Yeah?” 

“We don’t have to do anything else.” 

“What?” 

He knew she was only pretending confusion. “I mean it. Yeah, I freakin’ loved making out with you at the beach. You’re so hot I can barely look at you sometimes. You
do
something to me. And I like it. A whole lot.” 

“Oh.” Her voice, again, was small, but that little smile stayed on her face. 

“But you’re spooked. And I hope to all heck it’s not me doing that, but if it is, I want to make it clear that all I want from you at this exact moment is this here cup of tea.” 

She stared at the wall behind his head, where the
nicho
hung. She bit her lower lip again. It wasn’t that she was shy—Tox would never have called her that. She was scared of something. 

That was fine. As long as it wasn’t him. 

“There was this guy.” Grace said. “That’s the matchbook.” 

“He was an arsonist?” 

“He burned me. The matchbook is to remind me not to let it happen again.” 

Tox held out his hands and looked at them. “Sugar, we might have a problem. Because it’s hard for me not to light a match when it’s in my fingers.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

Grace made a noise that was between a choke and a cough. 

Tox was worried immediately. “How’s your breathing?” 

“Fine. I’m fine. It’s just that sometimes you…” 

“What?” 

“You make me so nervous.” Grace closed her eyes, and Tox stared at the way her long lashes played against her cheeks. “I’ve screwed up so many times before. It’s embarrassing. I’m supposed to be the healthy one, and…” 

“Tell me about him. Matchbook guy.” He wanted to hear her secrets, all of them. At the same time, he wanted to keep his. No way would he tell her about his worries that his neck was going to put him out on medical. That he’d lose the job that meant everything to him if he didn’t somehow fix it. That without the job, he was nothing. A nobody. A failure. 

Yeah, Tox shouldn’t push her. It wasn’t fair. “I mean, you don’t have to.” 

“It’s fine. It’s just that I was with him a long time. Four years. It was my longest relationship.” 

“I’ve never made it past two.” 

“I hadn’t either, until him. I thought he was the one.” 

“Your first real love?” 

She shook her head, her hair skimming one eye. It was almost amber in the light of the orange lamp, and for a second Tox imagined sweeping it back over her shoulder. He clenched the mug tighter. 

“No. I’d been in love before. I have no problem falling in love.” Grace smiled again, a real one. A wide smile, and she directed it right at him. Tox felt something in his chest tighten. 

She went on, “I love falling in love. I’m good at it. The problem was, I’ve never been good at picking the guys. One was an alcoholic, and I didn’t know until he didn’t call me for three weeks because he was in freaking rehab.” 

“You didn’t know?” 

“I’m clueless. That’s the whole problem.” She sighed and took a sip of her tea. “Another had a gambling problem. He stole the little bit of jewelry my mother left me and sold it to bet on his ponies. I almost killed him for that. And again, I didn’t see it coming.” 

Tox’s fist curled into a ball. He’d like to get his hands on that guy. “That must have hurt.” 

“Nothing like the four-year guy, though. I thought I’d finally done it right. Picked a guy who was healthy. Strong. He was a yoga teacher, for Pete’s sake. We met when he came in for a tune-up. Nothing wrong with his body, he just wanted to make sure he was in alignment.” Grace’s eyes were far away. “He swept me off my feet. Told me I was beautiful.” 

“You are.” He couldn’t help it.

 “Oh!” Grace looked startled. And pink, so prettily flushed. Tox had never wanted to kiss anyone so much in his whole life. 

Then she went on, as if he hadn’t spoken. “He told me that I was everything he was looking for. He’d been with a bunch of screwed-up people, too. He’d gotten taken in by a woman who’d turned out to be a coke-head, and he hadn’t even noticed her using. We congratulated ourselves on finding someone healthy. Someone not crazy or screwed up or mean. Every year on our anniversary, we’d toast each other for not being insane.” 

“So what did he end up being? A sex-addict?” 

Her mouth dropped open and she turned to face him, crossing one ankle under her knee. “Do you know him? Tim Smith? Oh, please tell me you don’t know him.” 

“It was the only thing on your list of losers you hadn’t mentioned.” 

“Sex addict.” Grace almost spat the words. “I can handle that people have problems with alcohol and drugs. I believe those are diseases, and that it’s hereditary. But he tried to tell me that sex addiction ran in his family.” 

“What he meant was that he saw his father cheating on his mother his whole life and had learned it was the only thing to do.” 

“Holy cow,” she said. “Yep. That’s it exactly.” 

Tox felt as if he’d gotten an A on a really important test. 

“And the worst part was that I’d missed it entirely. Again. It was like my eyes were so open, and I was so happy that I was in something healthy that I completely didn’t believe any of the warning signs. He would come home late and say that he was working.” 

“As a yoga instructor.” 

“Yeah.” She laughed humorlessly. “I knew his studio closed at nine, and I believed him when he said he was doing paperwork. Paperwork! Until one in the morning. He was helping someone with her poses all those nights, and I found out later it was always a different someone. So I guess he was working, all right.” 

“How did you find out?” 

Grace set the mug on the low yellow coffee table in front of them and covered her face with her hands. “That was the worst part.” She peeked at him through her fingers. “He told me.” 

“He
told
you?” 

“He said he had to come clean before he asked me to marry him. He wanted it to be perfect between us, and nothing would do but total honesty. And the funny thing was, he thought I would be proud of him.” 

“He sounds like a dog.” 

Grace sat bolt upright and stared at him. “Methyl. You have to go home.” 

Tox held out his phone. “Sims sent a message. He’s sleeping on the couch with her tonight. Look at this.” 

The picture was darling, a tuckered-out yellow puppy curled into a ball on a blue pillow. Grace held out a finger as if she could touch the dog from her seat. “Okay, good.” 

“So yoga-dude.” 

“Was awful. It was all terrible. And the worst part was that even as I prided myself for being strong and healthy, and helping other people recover, I couldn’t seem to do it.” 

“You were in love with him.” Tox wasn’t that fond of what he felt inside when he said it. 

“That’s the weirdest part,” said Grace. “I was. But I realized the person I loved had never existed, and it was more like mourning a death, in a way. I’d been with him for four years, and I’d never had the foggiest idea who he was.” 

“That sucks.” 

“It did.”

He wondered if they’d had good sex. Or was it great? 

He stood, setting his mug next to hers, needing to move around, distribute some of the tension that ached in his bones. 

Grace pulled up her knees again. “What about you, though? Long history of girls chasing you around the fire station?” 

“Nah. I tend to meet the ones who spiral out of control after the first date. Because of that, I don’t really
do
relationships. You know.” He touched the
nicho
and turned. 

“I do.” Grace looked at him, and their gazes tangled for one long moment. 

Tox felt something build inside him. A determination of sorts. But it was blended with heated excitement, a fine tremor that made his hands feel jittery. “I should go.” 

She stood, too. 

“Thanks for the tea.” Instead of moving away, though, he came forward the two steps it took to get close to her. Tox lifted a hand and carefully, slowly, so as not to spook her, touched the strand of hair that kept falling over her eye. “Would hanging out with you make me healthier?” 

“Probably.” She tilted her head to the side and rubbed her cheek against his hand. “You
should
probably leave. You’re bad for me.” 

He could be so much worse for her, she had no idea. The guys called him the Angel of Death for a reason. Wherever he was, chaos came roaring in right behind. He ran the back of his fingers down the slope of her jaw, and let his thumb rest where it had wanted to all night, right on the plumpest part of her lower lip, exactly where he wanted to taste it again. “You’re probably right.” 

“Obviously. Your nickname is Toxic.” 

“I helped save your sister. Doesn’t that make me good for something?” 

Oh, shoot. Wrong words, wrong phrase. Her eyes widened, and he saw the incident flash in front of her again.