Fire at Twilight: The Firefighters of Darling Bay 1 (10 page)

“I can tell,” she laughed, breathless. “You must have gone to school a long time for that.”

“I put in at
least
six hours of training. Can I kiss you now?”

“Again,” she said. “You did that once already.”

He smiled. “And it’s all I’ve been able to think about doing ever since.”

She reached up on tiptoe to kiss him.

Grace thought it would be a light kiss, like the moment. A sweet kiss. On the beach, in the sunset, in a handsome firefighter’s arms, what could be nicer?

But the kiss wasn’t nice. Or, at least, it wasn’t for long. His mouth, soft at first, soon blazed against hers. The heat of it stunned her, lighting every cell in her body on fire. His tongue was firm, direct, sure. He tasted like mint and something darker. His hands held her close, tightly, so that she could feel his arousal. He said her name against her kiss, so that the wind tore it away.

Grace felt something at her ankle.

Something insistent, even more so than Tox’s kiss.

Methyl was humping her shoe. “Oh,
come
on, dog!” She shook her leg out of Methyl’s grasp and ignored Tox’s laughing. “Really? How did you train your dog to do this already?”

Tox drew Grace close again. “She joost feels zuh passione.”

Bumping her hip against his, she turned so that she could look out at the ocean, hoping to catch her breath. To draw herself back in line. No man should affect her like this. She felt thrown, off kilter. It was a foreign feeling, and she wasn’t sure she liked it.

“I thought you were supposed to put out fires,” she said, not looking at him. “Not start them.”

His lips were at her ear. “I’m an arsonist when it comes to you.”

Grace wheeled, pulling from his arms. “That’s the worst line I’ve ever heard.” She pointed at the pier ahead of them. “Are we headed back there to eat?”

“Yep.”

“Race you.” She ran. Somehow, she knew he’d let her get ahead.

But she knew he was right behind her. She wanted nothing more than for him to catch her. And at the same time, she knew he wasn’t right.
Toxic.

A terrible idea.

A hot, terrible, intoxicating idea.

She ran harder.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

Grace, since the kiss on the beach, had kept him at arm’s length, and Tox wasn’t sure what he’d done wrong.

Surreptitiously, he blew into his hand. Breath, check. Still minty from the gum he’d chewed on the way to her house. He remembered putting on his deodorant before he left the house, so that wasn’t it.

Maybe he was a terrible kisser. Maybe he’d horrified her with a bad kiss! Oh, no. Could that be it? He’d never had any complaints in that area, but there was always a first time.

But then again, she’d accused him of starting a fire. And that had to be a good thing, right?

They’d tucked Methyl safely into her crate, locking the door. She drank water and promptly passed out in a sandy heap.

Now they sat facing each other at one of the picnic tables Darling Bay had installed two years before. Tox had never taken the time to sit here before. It was pretty great, actually. The view of the breakers was impressive from up here on the raised sidewalk—they could watch not only the water crashing, but the surfers being thrown over the waves, as if the ocean was shaking them out like a damp towel.

“How’s your burger?” he asked.

“Terrible,” Grace said, but she took another big bite.

“I can tell you hate it.” Tox opened the bun and added more salt from the paper packet. “Hey, look, there’s Lexie.”

Lexie strolled next to an older man who was dressed in a blue polo that paunched out at his round belly. It couldn’t have been a date—he looked at least twenty-five years older than she was. Lexie leaned down and said something to the man and then skittered toward them, leaving him standing at the top of the stairs that went down to the sand.

Lexie raced toward them, draping herself over the end of their picnic table. “Yes,” she said, “before you ask, I’m on a date. I’m on a date that I got online, and right after this I’m going to go home, eat a package—no, a
crate
—of Oreos while in the tub, and then drown myself.”

Grace said, “You sure you don’t want to dump him right now and join us?”

Tox said, “Yeah. You wanna? Hey, wait.” Was his own date going so badly Grace wanted her friend to join them? But then Grace dropped a quick wink at him, and he remembered the way she’d responded to him on the beach. He took another look at the man standing by the steps. His thinning hair was almost in a combover because of the wind. Tox could have some compassion for the guy.

“Nah,” said Lexie. “I just want you both to get a good look at him so that if I go missing, you’ll know whose basement to tear up. His name is Scooter Fuzz.”

“It is
not
,” said Grace.

Lexie held up a hand. “Swear. He showed me his license. Okay, I have to go so I can get this over with faster. Enjoy your burgers.” She waggled her eyebrows and was gone.

Tox took her advice and took another big bite out of his burger. Around it, he managed to say, “Thish is amashing.”

Grace shook her head and held up her hamburger to the sunset streaking across the sky. “Neither of us should be eating this. Think of the gluten in the bun, the fat in the burger, and that’s not even to mention how processed the bacon is. And this cheese! This isn’t cheese. It’s melted plastic.” She glared at it. Then her face softened. “Delicious, delightful, addictive melted plastic.”

“That’s what I’m talking about. And hey, this is a step up for me? You know how times I eat McDonalds a week?

“Don’t tell me.” She meant it.

“I throw some Carls Jr. in there if I’m feeling like I need a little something better. This, this is highbrow cuisine. Lettuce and everything. Have a fry.”

“No, thanks,” she said, but her fingers lingered near his fry basket. “I’m happy with my salad on the side.”

“Which you haven’t touched yet.”

“I will.”

“No, you won’t,” Tox said. He nudged the fries closer to her. “Because you want some of these.”

“No way. I want to live to be a hundred.”

“Potatoes. They’re a vegetable.”

Her hand skittered toward the fries and then away. “No …”

“I won’t tell anyone.”

“That’s not the point,” she said. She had a tiny dab of mustard just below her lip, and he wanted to lick it off.

“What’s the point, then?”

She put down the french fry she’d picked up, placing it squarely back in its paper basket. They both looked at the squabbling seagulls next to the table who were fighting over half a dropped corn dog.

“This isn’t real food,” she said, but she didn’t sound convinced.

“Look,” Tox said, opening his burger bun again. “Meat. Vegetables. Wheat. Pretty straightforward food to me. You’re sad it’s not a tofu burger? Because we can go get you one of those. They have ‘em down the block.”

“No!” She gripped her burger tighter and took another bite.

“I didn’t think so.”

Grace chewed and watched the waves. She was so all-fired cute, with that ponytail and that earnest expression. She’d gone somewhere, far away, and he wasn’t sure how to get her back.

“Give yourself a break, huh?”

She jumped. “What?”

“I know when someone’s beating themselves up, and that’s what you’re doing. Just enjoy your burger, huh?”

She bit her bottom lip, then licked away the mustard. He missed it as soon as it was gone. “I’m fine.”

Sure. She could play it that way. Tox wasn’t that big on pushing anyone, anyway.

A little boy wandered past the table, his mother right behind him. She was on her cell phone, looking into the parking lot, and didn’t notice the little boy had let go of the string of his yellow balloon. Tox lunged sideways, grabbing it while it was still a few feet over his head. “Hey! Here you go, kid.”

The mother thanked him as she tied the string around the child’s wrist.

When he sat back down, Grace said, “That was nice.”

“All in a day’s work. Helium’s deadly, you know.”

She laughed again. “Yeah. That’s why every kid in America sucks it as often as possible.”

Tox smiled gamely. Helium was actually a great way to kill yourself, too, and he’d been on enough of those calls over the years that he had a hard time forgetting that.

“Whoa,” Grace said. “Where did
you
go?”

“Sorry.” He jerked himself back to the conversation. Normal people didn’t think things like that. He always forgot. “It’s just …”

“Just what?”

Tox met Grace’s eyes. She looked at him like she really wanted to know what he was thinking. Like it meant something, the next thing he said. And instead of saying what he was thinking—that nothing mattered anyway, that nothing good lasted—he said, “It’s just that you should really have one of these fries. They’re the best on the coast.”

“Well, okay, then,” Grace said. Her voice was happy, and the look on her face as she closed her eyes matched.

He didn’t want to be anywhere else.

Then the car crashed into the pier behind Grace.

CHAPTER NINETEEN

Grace felt, rather than heard, the noise.

A cacophony of sound—screams, guttural cries for help—split the air.

Tox who’d been facing the accident, was up and running before Grace had even fully turned around in her seat.

A small black car—expensive looking with custom rims, the kind rich tourists drove through town—had broken through the pier’s barrier and had driven at least fifty feet down the pier before hitting the rail, smashing partially through it. The car was balanced, teetering. It looked as if a strong wind might blow it all the way off and down to the water below. Inside, Grace could see that the airbags had deployed but it was impossible to tell how many people were still in the car.

People were running toward the crash, but Tox moved faster than anyone else. He stopped to check a woman who was bleeding from the face. He said something to her, and flagged another person down. Grace heard him say, “Direct pressure. Keep it there,” and then he ran to the car.

From inside the vehicle came a sharp scream.

Tox turned around and looked right at Grace, and somehow, she knew.

“Samantha,” she breathed, and then Grace was running, too, faster than she ever knew she could, straight down the pier. The car had struck several people, and she didn’t care about their injuries. They didn’t matter.

Only getting to the car mattered.

“You’re going to help me,” said Tox.

His words didn’t matter, either. “Sam! Samantha!” Grace could see her sister’s hair, her head at a strange angle in the front seat. The driver—whoever he was—looked as if he was waking up, turning his head in confusion.

“Grace!” barked Tox. “I need you.” A piece of the pier, part of the railing, broke off next to his elbow and sailed downward, toward the crashing waves.

Grace’s hand rested on the glass of the passenger window, as close as she could get to her sister. “Okay. Anything. Tell me,” she said. The lower part of the door was warped, the handle sheared off by hitting something. How would they ever …

Tox touched her arm. His hand was warm. Reassuring. As if everything was okay, which it obviously wasn’t. “We need to secure the car. I don’t want anyone to come near it, I don’t trust the weight.” As if listening to him, the pier gave an ominous creak below their feet. “I need you to keep them back.” He gestured at the crowd gathering.

But Grace couldn’t do that. “No. I’m getting her out.” She turned her head to yell through the glass. “You hear that, Sam? We’re getting you out!” She pulled on the handle of the back passenger door of the car.

“Don’t touch anything!” warned Tox, grabbing her hand.

“Tox—”

He pointed at the front, where the bumper was hanging treacherously over the water. “If we shift the load, we could send it right off. The water isn’t deep enough here, and it’ll go ass-deep in the sand ten feet under, trapping them. We won’t be able to get them out in time, not if they can’t get themselves out.”

Grace looked at her sister’s head, still unmoving.

“The only thing we can do is keep the car as still as possible. I’m going to the other side to talk to the driver, to get him not to move. Do you know who he is?”

“Not a clue.” Some loser? Some dealer? Samantha had been doing so
well
, too.

A man wearing a yellow t-shirt approached her, his hands out, face pale. “What can I do?”

“Keep everyone away. Keep them back,” said Grace. She swiveled her head, moving between looking at Tox and her sister. Tox was doing a great job of keeping the driver calm. Over the crashing of the waves and of the crowd, she couldn’t hear his words, but the man was nodding slowly at whatever he was saying.