His Heart Aflame (Beach Haven Book 2) (6 page)

Chapter Eleven

She was on fire. Even with the cool, damp sand beneath her and the gentle touch of Lake Michigan licking at her skin, she was burning up with a heat from within that threatened to scorch every part of her.

Maggie wriggled under Sean's weight, desperate to touch him and set him on fire as he was doing to her. She was almost certain he would release her wrists and let her go in an instant if she only asked him to.

Almost
certain.

She had no intention of asking just yet.

Gone was the calm, emotionless firefighter. The man she had come to see as the perfect model of efficiency and self-control was falling apart before her eyes and frightening her just a little with the intensity of his touch.
This is crazy!
she told herself
. I've only known him for two days; I should be screaming for help and trying to get away from him!

He shoved her dress up over her hips and yanked her panties away. She wasn't sure at what point he had released her hands, and she didn't care. His touch against her overheated skin was enough to drive all rational thoughts from her head. She felt his warm breath as he tasted and teased her, explored her with his mouth and with his fingers. Flames of sensation rolled through her body, sparking cries of ecstasy as she reached for him, wanting and needing so much more.

"Shhh," he hissed. She bit her lip; the last thing they needed right now was for some nosy tourist to interrupt them. But it was no use. She heard her own voice ring out in the still night air when Sean returned his attentions to her. He clamped one hand over her mouth, stifling the sounds as wave upon wave crashed over her.

She was still quivering from the force of her climax when he removed his hand and shifted his position. He cupped his hands around her behind and raised her hips to meet him.

"Sean," she whimpered as he entered her, slowly at first and then with more force. She wrapped her legs around him and tried to draw him closer, deeper. He covered her mouth with own, stifling her cries, and she lost any last shreds of self-control with his every thrust until he let out a cry of his own and collapsed against her, spent.

Maggie heard his breathing slowly return to normal. She shivered as a cool night breeze danced across her bare skin, moving closer to Sean to try to draw heat from his body.

"Oh, God." He sat up abruptly and looked down at her. "Maggie, I—I didn't mean. . . Are you, I mean, did I . . .
hurt
you?"

"
Hurt
me?" She echoed. "Are you kidding?" For just a moment, she wanted to laugh, but there was nothing funny about the look of horror that was spreading across the firefighter's face.

He helped her to her feet and hurriedly dressed while she straightened her clothes. His rugged features had gone pale in the soft light of the moon. He looked everywhere but at her.

"Come on," he said. "I'll walk you to your room."

"But—"

"It's late, Maggie."

"D-do you want to come in?" she stammered.

He snorted. "I think we both know that's not a good idea."

They walked up the beach in silence until they reached the lighted back patio of the B&B. She caught his arm as he turned to go. "Sean, don't—"

"A little late to say that, isn't it?" he said bitterly. "This should never have happened. I'm so sorry, Maggie."

She recoiled as though slapped.

"Your friend will be here tomorrow, right? Then you can go back to Chicago and forget you ever met me."

What if I don’t want to forget?
She bit back the words and watched him stalk away into the night.
Stupid man
.

How could he possibly just walk away and leave her here after what had been the single most erotic experience of her life? He couldn't be thinking he had taken advantage of her, could he? She thought she'd made it pretty damn clear that she was a willing participant.

She felt her face grow warm as she thought back to those moments on the beach. W
hat was I thinking
? she wondered. Sure, he was handsome, and there had been an undeniable attraction from the moment she touched his hand back at Ronda’s Place. She had to admit that there was something appealing about the way he seemed to be looking out for her, too, from searching for her in the rainy woods while she cowered in the back of his truck to vouching for her with the Carringtons to get her a room at their Bed and Breakfast.

He seemed to be a genuinely good guy.

He deserves better than a liar
. Maggie groaned and let herself into her room, flinging her key on the dresser and flopping back on the bed. He’d been so upset after towing Devon’s car. Was it because he’d figured out who she was? Was he angry because he realized he had vouched for a liar and a car thief?

She mentally kicked herself for not chasing him across the parking lot and forcing him to talk to her. But if she’d done that, she would have had to tell him the truth about everything; somehow, she didn’t think a confession at this point was going to make him feel any better. She should have tried harder to tell him the truth earlier when he stopped her.

Stop
. She needed to stop her whirling thoughts from chasing each other in circles around her brain. She was too tired and confused to come to any kind of decision about what to tell him and when, and she was fed up with the constant recriminations.

Maggie turned on the TV to distract herself, and ended up on a 24-hour news channel. Maybe there had been an earthquake in some Third World country that would make her feel sufficiently ashamed of herself for thinking her own problems were so big. She watched a financial report and tried to pay attention to the perky weather girl who was attempting to explain why the upcoming summer was supposed to be hotter than usual, but her mind kept wandering back to the beach.

“And now for some breaking news from the entertainment world.”

Maggie’s attention snapped back to the TV.

“There has been a break in the case of missing reality star Maeve Renault. According to police reports, Devon Rock’s missing sports car has been found in a small town in southwest Lower Michigan. While there is still no sign of Renault, this network has been able to secure photographs of what is now being called a crime scene. A warning to some of our more sensitive viewers: some of these pictures are quite graphic.”

“Oh, no.”

The first picture showed Devon’s car tucked into the shadowy spot between Ben Jacobs’ barn and a willow tree. The next showed the interior of the car, followed by close-ups of the piles of blonde hair, the bloody smears on the upholstery and the tattered pieces of duct tape. One last picture showed her as Maeve in her full bridal glory, taken just moments before she had fled from the church.

It looked so bad that even
she
felt a spasm of horror. There was a perfectly logical explanation for everything in those pictures, but without that explanation, it certainly seemed to show that the glamorous Maeve Renault had met with some sort of violent fate.

“Network publicist Lindsay Newman has turned over recordings of a phone call she received from Renault late yesterday,” the reporter continued. “We have obtained copies of those recordings.”

“I- I don’t like this, Lindsay. I’m afraid --”

Maggie winced at the sound of her own voice. She sounded pathetic and weak, and she had to admit that it sounded really bad without the rest of the conversation that had surrounded it.

The camera cut to a scene of Devon and Lindsay walking into the network office building, surrounded by paparazzi. At one point, Devon sank weakly to his knees and buried his face in his hands, as though overcome with grief. Lindsay bent over him and waved the cameras away while making sure that they all caught the most flattering angle of her client.

Maggie stopped in mid eye-roll as the camera panned down for a close-up of the actor’s over-the-top reaction. Lindsay’s took a step out of the way, but not before the lens caught a quick flash of the tiny, delicate tattoo on her ankle.

It was a daffodil.

She had seen that tattoo once before. It was on the ankle of the legs wrapped around Devon Rock in a Sunday School room just moments before Maggie and Devon were supposed to say their vows.

Chapter Twelve

There was only one person Sean could talk to when his mind was reeling like this.  Only one person who would open the door for him and be willing to listen no matter how late the hour, and Sean could have kicked himself for not turning to his friend earlier.

“What’s wrong?”  Ethan asked, standing in the doorway of his home, a tidy beach cottage with a large sign proclaiming its name as
The Seashell
.

“What makes you think anything is wrong?”  Sean asked.  He smiled weakly and instantly wished he hadn’t.

“Because it’s the middle of the night and you look like you’re going to cry.  Is this about your ghost?”

Sean struggled to answer but finally gave up and simply nodded.  His friend took his arm and guided him to a comfortable wicker rocking chair on the front porch before taking the other for himself.  The two men sat in silence for a long while, staring at the cool, smooth waters of Lake Michigan while the firefighter fought to regain his composure.

“She’s real, Ethan,” he finally said.  “Her name is Maeve Renault.”  

“From
Battle of the Brides
?”

Sean gaped at him.

“Tara made me watch it,” Ethan said defensively.

Sean told him everything then.  He described the black car hidden behind Ben Jacobs’ barn and explained every last detail about the mess inside the car, from the smears of blood to the ripped duct tape and the strands of long blonde hair.  He estimated the distance from the barn to the stretch of road where he had seen her.

“It had to be her,” he finished.  “She must have been running away from her kidnapper when I saw her.  That explains why she didn’t answer me.  He must have found her, Ethan.  If only I’d tried a little harder to find her –“

“You can’t blame yourself, buddy.  You couldn’t have known.”

“I should have called it in, insisted on a search of the area.  Damn it, I should have done
something
.”  Sean pounded his fist against the porch railing in frustration.

“Did you tell Griswold?”

“Not yet.  I’m not ready to hand over my shield yet.”

Ethan rested a hand on his shoulder.

“You know I’ll have to hand it over,” Sean said miserably.  “I failed to report an incident.  Even if Griswold doesn’t make me hand it over, I have to.  I don’t deserve to be a firefighter.  I’m a horrible person.”

To his surprise, Ethan laughed.

“Sean, you are not a horrible person,” he chuckled.  “You’re the opposite of horrible.  You’re the world’s biggest Boy Scout.  Sure, you made a terrible mistake here, but that doesn’t make you a horrible person.  It makes you human.”

“But this kind of mistake could have cost someone her life.”

“I know.  But Griswold is going to look at so much more before he decides to fire you.  He’s going to look at your track record as a member of his department, as well as all of the people in this town who will vouch for the fact that you’re a good man.  He knows everything you’ve done for this community over the years.”

“But –“

“You’re incapable of doing the wrong thing,” Ethan said bluntly.  “You see the world in terms of black and white, good and bad, right and wrong.  You’ve never been able to see gray areas in life.”

Sean buried his face in his hands.  He ached to tell his old friend about Maggie, and about losing control with her on the beach not too long ago.  Before tonight, he’d never made love to a woman with such wild abandon, such passion, such
force
.  He kept thinking back to the fear that had flashed in her eyes when he pinned her down on the wet sand.

She told me not to stop
, he told himself, over and over.

“You don’t know me as well as you think you do,” he said now, quietly.  “You have no idea what I’m capable of.”

“Okay, dude, now you’re just scaring me.  Why don’t you come inside and stay in the guest room for the rest of tonight.  It’s after midnight, so you might as well stay.”

“No, I . . . I need to be alone for a while.  Look, I’m sorry I bothered you so late.  Tell Tara I said I’m sorry for waking you guys up.”

“Sean—“

“I’ll be all right.  “I’m going to go home and take a nice hot shower and get a good night’s sleep.  Things will look better in the morning, right?”

# # #

Sean had joined the local fire department as a cadet when he was only fourteen years old. He had worked and learned the ropes all the way through high school, gaining his full certification shortly after high school graduation. He loved everything that went with being a firefighter, but even more than that, he tried to learn everything he could about fire itself.

He knew when a smoky smell wafting on the night air was something simple, like a bonfire, and he knew when it meant trouble.

Tonight, he smelled trouble.

After leaving Ethan at The Seashell, he drove back out to the curve on County Road 388 where he had seen Maeve disappear into the woods like some ghostly wraith, and he parked on the side of the road, trying to remember any details.  He didn’t expect to find any further evidence there, but he hoped that being there at night might trigger some kind of memory that might help them find the missing woman.

He remembered seeing a pale face, wide-eyed with terror. He couldn’t describe any details such as hair color or whether or not the woman was injured because it had all happened so quickly. There had only been enough time to take in those eyes and the glow of her white dress in the headlights, and then she was gone.

There was something about her eyes that tugged at his memory. Something familiar, even though he’d be hard-pressed to even identify their color.  Muttering to himself, he rolled down the window and leaned his head back against the seat to try to conjure up any kind of mental pictures.

It was then that he smelled smoke.

He sat up and sniffed. Definitely smoke. Uneasily, he went down a mental checklist of possibilities. Campfires from the nearby campground? No, wrong direction. A beach bonfire? No, too far away. Wrong kind of smell for that, anyway. Another grass fire? Probably, but there was something different about the odor.

Sean put the truck in gear and slowly started driving east, toward the smoky smell. He fumbled with his radio for a moment, but dismissed the idea until he had a better idea of what he was facing. It wouldn’t do to call in for backup if it turned out to be nothing more than an untended leaf pile.

Within a matter a minutes, he knew it was more than a leaf pile. He could see a faint glow against the dark night sky to his left, and he knew this was
big.

He turned north on a little dirt road that twisted through the woods toward an open field. His heart pounded; there was a row of tiny rental cabins on the other side of that field, and it was anybody’s guess if there were any vacationers there this early in the season.

As he picked the radio up again, he rounded a curve in the road -- and almost slammed on the brakes. For a brief moment, he wondered if the entire world had caught fire.

The field was burning, flames sweeping dangerously close to the road. Trees on the far side of the field had caught fire as well, but the sight that made his heart leap into his throat was the first rental cabin, which had smoke pouring from the open windows and flames dancing along the outside edge of one wall.

There’s not enough water in the world to put that out
.

He called it in and drove his truck as close to the cabin as he dared. There were no vehicles in the driveway, but the open windows were a strong indicator that someone had been there to open them. Was that person still inside?

He grabbed his bag from the back and shimmied into his turnout gear as fast as he could. “Hello?” He bellowed. “Anybody in there?”

Silence.

Damn, damn.

He heard Tim’s voice on the radio, followed by Griswold’s and Hale’s. Another voice rang out and he cheered inwardly as he realized that a mutual aid call had gone out to other departments. Good; they were going to need all the help they could get.

Sean leaped up on the tiny porch and pounded on the door, bellowing again. Two quick steps to his left took him to an open window, and he yanked the screen out of the way to peer inside. “Hello!” he shouted again.

Once more, silence greeted him.

He aimed his flashlight through the open window around the smoke-filled room. There was no sign of movement, nothing indicating anyone was inside. He was just about to turn away, satisfied that the place was empty, when something caught his eye.

It was white, and it billowed in the wind created by the churning flames that were beginning to eat away at the wall. It was balled up in a small, vaguely human-shaped heap on the couch that had started to smolder.

A . . . wedding dress?

Maeve
.

Of course. Whoever had taken her could have found these empty cabins and taken over this one as the perfect place to hide his victim.

Sean vaulted through the window and ran to her. He knew that entering a structure fire with no gear and no back-up was a direct violation of SOP’s -- standard operating procedures -- but he also knew that he’d been given a second chance to save Maeve Renault, and he’d be damned if he was going to fail her again. By the time he reached the couch, his eyes were stinging and his lungs felt ready to burst from the smoke and fumes. He lunged for her, stumbling, coughing.

Only to plunge his arms into a pile of white fabric -- bedding, maybe? -- with no person inside.

It wasn’t Maeve. It wasn’t even a person.

He stumbled again, and dropped to his knees.
Stupid, stupid rookie move!
he scolded himself. He should have known better than to charge into a burning building without packing up or waiting for backup. He’d allowed emotion cloud his judgment, not to mention his common sense.

He was crawling now, trying to reach the window that was suddenly so far away. The room he had crossed in a matter of minutes just seconds ago had become a vast expanse, an impossible distance. He had dropped the flashlight somewhere; he didn’t remember losing it but it was gone, and the thick, dark smoke was squeezing in on him.

Someone shouted his name. He tried to shout back, but no sound came out. He flapped one hand in the direction of the door, praying that someone would see him.

“Jackson!”

He felt hands clutching at him, dragging him to his feet. He stumbled along blindly, gasping and choking. His head swam.
No, damn it, I will not pass out!

Then he was outside, struggling desperately to draw the sweet night air into his tortured lungs. More hands, more shouting, and a persistent orange glow at the edges of his vision that just refused to clear. Something was being pressed against his face, and he clawed at it frantically.

“Easy, Spiffy,” a deep voice commanded. “Deep breaths.”

Gradually, Sean became aware of the cool grass beneath him and rumble of nearby diesel engines. He blinked rapidly as his vision began to clear.

“Can you hear me, Kid?”

Sean nodded.

Griswold let out an explosive breath and turned the younger firefighter’s face slightly so that Sean was looking directly up at him. “You’re an idiot,” he snapped.

Sean nodded again.

“Ambulance is on the way. Just lay here and breathe until the paramedics gets here.”

Sean shook his head.

Tim’s face moved into his line of vision. “Is he gonna live?” he asked nervously.

“Only ‘till I kill him.”

Sean smiled weakly behind the oxygen mask as the rookie moved away again and Griswold rolled his eyes. “God save me from rookies and glory hounds,” the man muttered. “I’ve got to deal with him bouncing around like a frickin’ Chihuahua on meth, and all of a sudden you think you’ve got to go charging into burning buildings with no gear. What the hell, Jackson?
What the hell?
You know better than that, especially after everything that went down with Mikey last fall.”

Sean didn’t answer. At that moment, the medics arrived and the chief returned to the fire as soon as he was sure his Lieutenant was in capable hands.

What the hell, indeed. How could Sean explain to his commanding officer that he had charged into the burning cabin without gear, without following protocol, because he thought he saw the woman he’d abandoned on a dark and rainy roadside just a few nights earlier?

By the time the others had the fire under control, Sean felt almost back to normal. His throat was still rough and he felt as though he could sleep for days, but his head was no longer spinning and he was finally able to focus his thoughts again. And the one thing he could focus on was the fact that he needed to come clean to his chief about everything. About seeing Maeve in the road, about dismissing her as a hallucination, about thinking he saw her inside the little cabin.

If it meant the end of his career, then so be it; he was done lying. He tried to ignore the way that realization made it difficult to breathe all over again.