Irresistible Stranger (11 page)

“I couldn't eat anything. And I couldn't do that.”

“Why?”

“Because…come on, Griff. Instead of making friends, I seem to have done nothing but make enemies here. It's not as if I'm still in middle school, worried about being popular. But sheesh, it's gotten unnerving, feeling so
unwanted in town, so judged, when no one even knows me.”

“Exactly. I don't know who started all this fire-setter talk, but it's obvious how to stop it. Spend a few seconds with anybody, and they'll realize you're beautiful and warm and smart and good to the bone.”

“Huh?”

“Just work with me on this, sugar.”

The diner's parking lot was crowded—no surprise, when town news and gossip was running this juicy. But that was the point, Griff thought grimly. It was time to get active. Sitting on the sidelines and watching problems from a distance was the complete worst.

“I can't,” she repeated for the fourth time, as he herded her toward the door.

He knew it was hard for her to walk in. And the moment she was spotted in the doorway, talk stopped faster than a switch turned off. The sick look of hurt on her face made him feel a little tense all over again. But sometimes there was only one way to get out a splinter, and that was to just go in there and get the needle part over with.

For a woman who wasn't hungry, she ate two bowls of Griff's Secret—and that was before she even looked at the menu for breakfast food. Debbie was no fool. She greeted them in her typical loud, brassy voice, seated them in plain view, and took care of them herself.

As he'd expected, that was the last time they had two seconds alone. The tall, gray-haired Margo ambled over with a mug in her hand. Being his insurance agent, it would have been odd if she hadn't stopped to say hello,
so it was easy to get a conversation going about the fires with her. And so it went. Manuel Brock often had breakfast at the diner; he paused at their table en route to paying his bill. Jason's father—who Griff never had any use for—thought he was a big shot, and put in that he knew who the arsonist was “but he wasn't telling”. Louella's second cousin was having breakfast with a lady friend, both wearing rhinestones and sequins on their Vegas-trip sweatshirts. It went on and on….

All of them looked at Lily, even if they aimed conversation at Griff. Some of the older ones mentioned that they'd known her mom or her dad. Some brought up the “old days”, when the mill was the major source of employment in town. Someone's sister's mother's cousin's current girlfriend saw her at the library yesterday, saw old man Renbarcker, too. In the way of Southern conversations, cousins four or five times removed were still considered kin, even if they'd been divorced nine thousand times and there was no blood relationship whatsoever. Griff never could keep track of all that, but this morning that wasn't the point.

The point was getting Lily in public. It wasn't so easy to talk about someone, once you'd met them. And if they couldn't see Lily was the most innocent, decent human being they'd ever met, Griff figured they had to be too dumb to waste time on, anyway.

 

Over the next two hours, his lover—the one who was too nauseous to eat—finished off two dishes of ice cream, a farmer's omelet with all the extras, three cups
of coffee and a brownie. Debbie was trying to hand her a lunch menu when Griff stood up.

“All right, all right,” she said, once they were outside and aiming for his car. “I admit it. You were right. That was a good thing to do.”

“Of course I was right.” He glanced down the street toward his store, and felt a new stab in the gut, looking at the burned-out mess. It was fixable. Material things didn't matter. Still, it hurt. Normally, there'd be a swarm of kids hanging out there by now—kids who often had no place to go.

As they walked to the car, he hooked an arm around Lily's neck, inhaled the scent and touch of her. In the diner, he hadn't wanted to overdo contact. He wanted to show the town that they had a connection, that he was on her side. But to overly let the gossips believe they were lovers wasn't necessarily the best thing for Lily. He liked having a bad-boy reputation, but didn't want her tainted by it. Now, though, that long stretch of not touching caught up with him.

“After all that food, you want to come home to my place and catch a nap?”

She looked up at him. “It's not napping on your mind.”

“It is too.”

“You lie.”

“That's relevant how?”

“It's not. You can lie to me all you want, Griff. I like it. I especially like it when you're trying to get away with something. But for a few hours…I'm guessing you have stuff you need to do in the middle of the day. And I want
to hit the newspaper office, to see if I can track down records of what was going on the year of the fire.”

“I'll go with you.”

“Does that sound like a thrilling way to spend an afternoon? Pouring over old newsprint? No. You have serious things to do. You've got a clean-up plan to put together, you've got your other work, you've still got ice cream equipment that needs some kind of resolution, you—”

“I don't care about any of that.”

She sighed, put her slim hand on his chest. Just like that, he felt the electric connection, the pulse between them, the beat he'd never imagined before. “Griff—go do your life. We can meet up at dinner if you want.”

“I'm not—”

“You're worried something's going to happen to me. It's not. Think about it. No one's targeted me. These fires may be somehow
about
me, but no one has actually tried to harm me in any way. I'll be perfectly safe.”

He didn't like her ability to read his mind, to draw conclusions without his permission. He also couldn't deny her logic—and it was true he had five million things that needed to get done. At the newspaper office, she'd be around other people.

So he agreed, said he'd pick her up for dinner around seven at the B and B. That was where he dropped her now, so she could get her car. But when he drove off, he felt an uneasy itch, like the nag of a mosquito bite. No one
had
tried to harm her. But he was afraid someone
would
—because all these fires had to be
leading up to something. Unless someone figured out what it was, Lily wasn't safe. He knew it in his head and his heart both.

 

The Pecan Valley Herald
was located just outside of town, sandwiched between peach orchards flanking the east side, and a pre-loved car dealership stretching out to the west. When Lily pulled open the door, she was greeted by a blast of fabulously cold air and a gum-chewing receptionist.

The redhead took one look at her, said, “Bridal or Engagement announcements, down the hall to the left.”

“No, I—”

“Classified straight through that door.”

It took a while for the redhead to run down her list, they simply asked for “past newspaper history.” No one had apparently asked that before, because the young woman looked confounded, but eventually she pushed some buttons and a middle-aged man showed up.

“You're Lily Campbell?” he asked.

Timothy was a sweetheart, disguised in too-short pants and white socks and a zealous comb-over. The reference room was
his,
his source of power, his love. “I'm afraid a lot of the old stuff is still on microfiche. I've been computerizing since I got here, but that's only been three years, and you should have seen the place then. So. You think you want to go through two years of papers?”

“Yes.” She told him her goal, which was to track the phrase in the investigative report referring to her parents'
fire being “nothing like the other arson events”. She just wanted to see what those other fires were about. She realized it was grasping for some mighty slim straws, but it was one of the few things she hadn't tried pursuing before.

“You know how long it's going to take you to read two years' worth of copy?” Timothy asked her.

“I figure…a while.”

He sighed. “You can't smoke or eat in here. But that far door, that leads to a restroom, a minikitchen—the coffee pot's usually on—and a back door, if you want to get out in the fresh air.”

“There's fresh air in Georgia in the summer?” she asked incredulously.

He looked blank, then chuckled. “I can come back and help you if I get more projects done, but I'm behind. Still, just yell out my name if you want me.”

“Thanks, Timothy.”

She'd never seen microfiche before. The method was prehistoric as far as she could tell, but it was a way to scroll through page after page of every newspaper edition.
The Pecan Valley Herald
was hardly a big paper, but like in all small towns, it covered every wedding, every funeral, every achievement of every child, every reunion, every recipe…on and on. And on.

The minutes started to add up. Then the hours. Lily felt her neck creaking, her wrist whining from the constant scrolling motion. The monitor was ancient, with no resolution and blurry print. The chair would have fit any fanny that was square. Hers wasn't.

She took a potty break, took another break to stand
at the sink in the employees' room, gulping down two tall glasses of water. She thought blissfully of last night's lovemaking with Griff. Who knew? Who knew she could be wicked? That she could actually throw off her good-girl chains and just, well, go for it?

Who knew she could fall crazy in love? Inappropriately in love? Maybe irrevocably in love, so fast, and with such a wrong guy in the wrong place?

She hiked back to the godawful chair and parked there again. Thinking of Griff wasn't going to solve anything. She had to concentrate on other kinds of fires.

 

And over the next hour she found several. An old farmhouse: electrical fire. A lightning strike at a trailer park. A divorcing couple who set fire to each other's stuff.

But then she found pay dirt. At least sort of.

Thirteen months before her parents' fire, there'd been an arson event in the high school. The school locker of a junior, a boy named Billy Webb, had been doused with gasoline. No one could pin down a culprit, but Billy claimed his ex-girlfriend was “real, real mad” at him. The girl friend wasn't named in the article, but Sheriff Conner and the school principal were both reported to be doing an extensive investigation.

Then, seven months before her parents' fire, another arson-type fire was reported—this one also targeted a teenage boy. John Thornton had been a high school senior that fall. The day after the Homecoming Dance, someone heaped a pile of rags in the trunk of his fourteen-year-old Grand Am, sprayed it with gasoline and struck a
match. Sheriff Conner and the school principal were again quoted. Both said they were looking into the “coincidence” of two fires targeting young men in the high school. No motive was found. No evidence was found.

A letter to the editor was picked up that “someone” should look into what girls these boys had been seeing, since the boys weren't culprits—the boys were the ones who were being targeted. A flurry of letters followed, all from parents of boys worried about their sons. Worried about the school. Worried about the state of education in general.

One parent felt it was all linked to an alien invasion.

Timothy's head showed up in the doorway. “I have to close up fairly soon, Miss Campbell.”

“You can kick me out whenever you need. I appreciate your letting me stay here as long as you have.”

“It's not a bother. Hardly anyone goes to the trouble of digging into the microfiche records anymore. But I can't leave an outsider alone here. When I have to lock up, I'm afraid you'll have to go.”

“Okay.”

“In about twenty minutes.”

“Okay.” She didn't look up. She was getting closer to the time of her parents' fire. Her eyes were burning from staring at the old screen. She tried kicking off a shoe, sitting on one leg. Then kicking off the other shoe, sitting on the other leg.

Then she forgot how tired she was, because she found
another
arson fire. This one took place three months
after the Homecoming Dance, just after New Year's. But it wasn't at the school. It was in someone's home….

“Miss Campbell?”

She squinted closer, squirmed closer. It was in an adult's home, but the fire took place in a teenage boy's bedroom. Same setup. A heap of debris and clothing were piled together, this time on the boy's bed, and then soaked with gasoline. The fire took place while the family was out to dinner. The Frasiers—the family involved—were bewildered and upset and terrified. They had insurance, but as Mrs. Frasier was quoted in the article, they'd “never feel safe again.” Mr. Frasier said, “There has to be a serial arsonist in town, and nobody is doing a thing about it.” The head of the fire department at the time, Rubal Whitney, was fired. A town meeting was called. Herman Conner urged everyone to stay calm, that he was as concerned as everyone else, but the bottom line was a lack of evidence. So far, they had failed to find a link between the fires, if there was one. They needed concrete information. They needed…

“Lily.”

Lily whirled around at the sound of Griff's voice. Griff was standing in the doorway with the round-faced Timothy. “Sugar, it's past eight at night. This nice man has kept the place open for you. He could see you were engrossed. But you can come back tomorrow.”

“Oh, my heavens. Timothy, I'm so so sorry. I never meant to be a pain. I had no idea how much time had passed.”

“It's all right, Miss Campbell. I just started reading a
book. But when Griff came in, I thought it was all right to interrupt you then.”

“Of course it was. Oh, I feel terrible to have made you stay so late. It was so inconsiderate, I…” She scrambled to her feet, found one shoe, couldn't find the other. Grabbed her purse, put it down, leaned forward to turn off the machine. Her heap of notes and papers skidded to the floor. “Timothy, I owe you dinner. Or lunch or something. Whatever or whenever you have time. And I promise, if I come back, I'll keep track of the—”