Irresistible Stranger (2 page)

And Lily couldn't stop looking at the sheriff's face, because she'd identified him as the one adult who could give them some hope. Herman Conner was skinny as a blade back then—sharp nose, sharp bones, a fast, sharp decision-maker—some said impulsive. Some said,
once he judged you on the wrong side, he never forgot. Everybody said he could make a body jump when he got riled up.

That long-ago night she'd kept fiercely trying to hear, kept hoping he'd make everyone jump this time. She wanted him to get her mom and dad out of that fire. She wanted him to do what sheriffs do. Make things better. Make them right.

Instead, he pulled one fireman aside—closer to the girls by accident; he was trying to get away from that madhouse noise near the fire truck. “Look,” he said. “I don't see a reason to run too deep an investigation—”

“There's a lot of damage. A lot of—” Lily could see the fireman answering, arguing, looking unhappy, but she couldn't hear most of the conversation. The sheriff's voice had been closer and clearer.

“I know. I see. But we all know Campbell lost his job. Been what you call despondent. Three girls to support, no money coming in. I know he'd never have done nothing to hurt his family by intention. But I can believe a fire intended to get some insurance money got out of control.”

“Herman, I agree that that's possible.” The old fireman pulled off his helmet, wiped a river of sweat from his brow. “But unless we investigate, I won't have a clue how that fire started.”

“There's only one likely reason. That's all I'm saying. And I don't want to hurt those girls more they're already hurt. You hear me? There'll be a cloud over their father's reputation as it is. You want to make that worse?”

“No, 'course I don't….”

Lily couldn't remember much else, but looking at Herman Conner now brought back that night, like being slapped with the heat and the loss all over again.

He might be twenty years older, but he was still tall and lean, still just as sharp-edged. He'd lost half his hair, and the eyes looked baggy and tired. When he barged out of the office and caught sight of her, his face turned pale under his ruddy tan.

“Sheriff Conner…” She stepped forward. “You have no reason to remember me, but I'm Lily—”

“Lily Campbell. And of course I remember you. You were the middle one with the big eyes. Never thought I'd see any of you girls in this town again.”

Her polite smile froze. She remembered Pecan Valley as everyone being kind, with a lot of “honeys” and “ma'ams” and “bless her hearts” in drawling, liquid voices. Herman's tone wasn't harsh, just stiffer than starch.

“I wondered if you could spare me a few minutes,” she said.

“Why sure. Got a mighty busy morning, but I'd always spare the time for a pretty girl, bless your heart, honey.”

There was the old-fashioned Southern flattery she remembered; yet somehow, she felt increasingly uneasy as he motioned her into his office.
Office
was a nomenclature. The room had waist-high walls, with windows on three sides facing the central, open space. No private conversation was possible here. Herman hitched his belt and then plunked down behind his battle-scarred desk when she took the only spare seat.

She came immediately to the point. “I wonder if you still have the investigation record of the fire when my parents died.”

“Aw, honey. I was afraid you were here for something like that. Sweetheart, it's foolishness. Your daddy was a good man. When the mill closed, he just lost his way, sank into whatcha call a depression, a serious depression. He adored you girls, you must know that. And your mama. He would never have done anything to hurt you, not deliberately.”

“I believe that, too,” she said. “But I'd still like to see the report from the fire.”

“Well, the investigation report is public. I'm sure you know that. But I think it's a bad idea for you to go digging there, honey. There's nothing to gain. Nothing to know. We all knew what happened. Your daddy was desperate. Didn't know how he was going to support you girls and your mama. There wasn't a job to be had for quite a while, after the mill closed. What we think—what we all believed at the time—was that he set a fire for the insurance money. Only, he just didn't know much about accelerants, didn't know how or when such a fire could get out of hand.” The sheriff leaned back as if relaxed for the first time all day. “We all felt bad. The whole town. And he died trying to save you girls, you know.”

“I know.” For an instant, the memory gripped her, the heat and choking smoke, her dad carrying each of the girls. The second-story drop. The firemen below. They were getting hoses and ladders and such, but that was all too late. She was the last one out the window, unwilling to let go of her dad, unwilling to leave him.
Then the drop into the dark night, the hard thump into the fireman's arms, and then…

Her dad silhouetted with the fire behind him—then the sudden woosh of fire and her dad disappearing, her screaming and screaming for him….

“There, there, little honey.” Herman Conner lunged out of his chair, yanked a generic tissue from the box on his desk. “You need to forget about this all. It was a tragedy. An awful, awful thing. Hurt the whole town, too. But it just won't help to dwell on it.”

“I've tried to believe that. But I've come to believe the only way I can move past it is for me to see those records for myself.”

“Well, I'll see what we can scare up for you, of course. Where are you staying?”

“Louella's Bed-and-Breakfast.”

“For how long?”

She couldn't stay more than eight weeks, not without risking her teaching contract for the coming year. But the answer she gave the sheriff was the one she wanted to be true. “As long as it takes.”

He sighed. “All right. Well, I'll get Martha on it, and whatever we can chase up in the way of records, we'll send over to Louella's soon as we can. But my advice to you is, amble around town for a bit, remember the good times from when you three girls were little. If you're looking for what they call closure, that's the real stuff that matters. Remembering how folks cared about you all, your family, you three girls. Remembering what a nice town this was to grow up in, how loved you were.
Everything that matters, honey, it shouldn't be about that one unfortunate night.”

“Thank you for the advice. And I appreciate your getting those records to me.”

Lily walked out of the police station with her stomach a-jangle and her mind all tangled up. In principle, she knew the sheriff was right. Her sisters had managed to move on, find great guys, get over the past just fine. She
should
be able to do the same thing. She loved her job, teaching ultra-bright, challenging kids; loved her apartment in a historic part of Virginia, had many friends and things she loved to do.

But something inside her just couldn't rest. A lot of it was about her dad. She never believed he'd started that fire. Every memory of her dad was wonderful and loving, including the very last one, when he sacrificed his own life to save hers. He was no coward…yet that's what they'd always said. That he'd set the fire for insurance money, the act of a coward if ever there was one.

Her dad was a hero, not a coward.

She knew it in her heart.

She just had to find some impossible way to prove it.

T
wo nights later, Griff heard the rare sound of fire engine sirens, followed by a rush of cop cars down Main Street. It was just nine, the sun thinking about dropping and the air drowsy with heat.

He was just shutting down the place. Jason had stuck with him, was pretending to do extra clean-up while Griff hunched over a table with the day's receipts. The day'd been busy. Everybody stopped for ice-cream on a summer day. Even so, the ice cream parlor couldn't support a cat, so it occasionally amazed Griff that folks actually believed he had no other source of income.

Of course, it had always worked well for him to be seen as a generic lazy scoundrel and a womanizer. Nobody pried any deeper. Why would they?

“You hear the sirens?” Jason asked.

“Yeah. First time all summer.”

Jason squirted more window cleaner on the glass counter, even though he'd cleaned it twice already. “I heard some say they were worried about her coming back. That the fires'd start again.”

“Say what? Who's this ‘her'?” Griff looked up, only half-listening. He wanted to get out of here, put his feet up, open a dripping-cold long neck and start in on his real work. But the kid had been scrubbing the place until he'd practically worn out his hands; obviously he didn't want to go home. Bruises hadn't healed up from the last time his dad had a snootful.

“You know. The pretty lady who came in the other day. The one with the long brown hair. You went right over to her. Don't tell me you didn't notice.”

Griff scowled. Sometimes the kid saw way more than he needed to.

Lily had been in twice more for Griff's Secret—but not for any of his. She'd chatted up Steve the first time; someone had talked to her the other. God knew, he'd raced from the back room to flirt her up, but she'd escaped before he could tackle her both times. Maybe that was accidental—or maybe she didn't remotely feel the same spark he did.

No sweat, he'd told himself. But somehow she kept pouncing into his mind, lingering there like a sweet taste he couldn't get out of his head. That he could get hung up on a woman he barely knew was downright worrisome.

It implied a capacity for commitment.

That was fearful.

Still, he couldn't let Jason's comment go. “Why would
anyone think that Lily Campbell has anything to do with the sirens?”

Jason rolled his eyes. “Come on. Her coming back after all these years just stirred up the story. Everyone knows what happened.”

“Well I don't, so why don't you enlighten me?”

“Her daddy was a fire setter. That's what everybody said. And now she's back, so people been saying, ‘watch out for fires.' And now you heard the sirens.”

“That's pretty darned ridiculous, Jason.”

“Hey, I wasn't even born when it all happened. I'm just telling you what people are saying, that's all. Her dad and her mom got burned up in the last fire. The three sisters, they got split up all over the country. People said the three girls, they cried and screamed when folks tried to separate them. That it all was a tragedy. That nobody guessed there was something so broken in Mr. Campbell. That was her daddy. Mr. Campbell. Anyway. The fires stopped after they left. Only now she's back. And there's a siren.”

Griff frowned. “Jason, that's ludicrous. Who's spreading these rumors?”

“I dunno. Hey, don't be mad at me. I was just telling you what I heard, that's all.”

“Well, think about it. If she left town when she was a little girl, there's no reason to think anyone even recognizes her. And if her father was an arsonist, that has nothing to do with her.”

“I never said he was an ars'nist. I said he started fires.”

“Jason. An arsonist is someone who sets fires.”

“Sheesh. It's summertime. You're not supposed to have to learn stuff in the summertime. It's not fair.”

There were times Griff loved living in a small town. This wasn't one of them. That young, pretty woman was soft clear through. It was in her eyes, her face, the look of her. That anyone could think she was a criminal—or in town for no good—was beyond absurd.

But Pecan Valley did love its gossip. And good news was boring. The chance of something naughty and meaty was always the ideal, but it was only now that Griff remembered—Lily had mentioned something in that short first conversation. Something about how he might not want to get to know her. He wasn't sure what it meant at the time. Didn't matter then. All he'd been concentrating on at the time was the lap of her soft tongue on Griff's Secret.

He'd imagined her tongue on a few other secret places of his in the days since, making him worry that he was turning into a dirty old man—before he was even in his prime.

“Jason.”

“Yup?”

“You cleaned up enough. I'm locking up. I know you don't want to go home.”

“Sure I do. You think I want to work all the time?” he said under his breath, “But you'll keep half my pay still, right?”

“Yup. Got it hidden. Earning interest.” This was old, touchy territory for the boy. “I'm just saying. You find trouble at home, you know where I live.”

“I'm not leaving my mom.”

That voice. So low. So defeated. So old. “I never said you should leave your mom. I said you know where I live. Just like your mom knows there's a shelter where she'll be safe, and they'd help her start over.”

“She won't go.”

“That's not on you.”

“Right.”

Griff told himself to shut up, because he knew better than to push. He'd pushed before. He had four kids working for him—all troublemakers, school flunk-outs, all of them tattooed and pierced and familiar with the holding cell at the sheriff's office. You don't push kids who've already given up. And when a kid had already given up by age eleven, you tiptoed, because you might only have one chance to earn some trust—and that's if you were lucky.

Griff wasn't a good tiptoer. He wore a size-l4 shoe.

Once Jason finally headed out, Griff thoughtfully packed up a pint-size cold tote and carried it to his car in the alley. Main Street was shutting down.

Shops closed up early on a weekday, but the pharmacy was still open and Deb's Diner still had a cluster of pickups in front. Although there was no sign of the fire trucks now, all the lights were blazing at the sheriff's office.

He noticed the lights, but didn't linger, just turned left two blocks later on Magnolia. The street was an antebellum postcard; the houses were huge and old, built of cool cinder block, most with sweeping verandas and swings hung with chains. Big old oaks shaded the sidewalks, but everybody had flowers, cottage roses
under trellises where there was a peek of sun, bosomy peonies in the deep shade…he didn't know all the flower names. A fat fox squirrel chased right in front of his car—the measure of a safe town, he'd always thought, was that the darned squirrels knew perfectly well they had right of way.

The rich didn't hang in the neighborhood anymore, mostly because no one was all that rich—but the big old houses still looked loved, porches swept, gardens fussed over. Young couples who wanted a passel of children could afford the mortgages. The elders had already paid off theirs. Those in between had invariably turned their place into the ever-hopeful bed-and-breakfasts.

He parked, climbed out, took his tote. In the way of a small town, he knew Louella's even if he'd never been inside. It was the last on the block, with a red tile roof and long, long steps leading to the porch…he didn't initially see her. At least not exactly. What he saw from the rail on the veranda, were a pair of very bare, very dirty, very feminine feet.

Judging from the position of those feet, they were attached to someone who was lying flat on the wood plank veranda floor. A curious position for sure.

He ambled up the sidewalk, up the steps, to peek his head over the rail.

The glow of lights and distant voices murmured from beyond the B and B's giant screen door, but the only one on the veranda was her.

For a moment, his heart stopped—he wasn't sure she was alive. She was lying there with her feet up on the rail, eyes closed, arms just lying at her sides, palms up…
as if she'd fallen in that kind of heap and couldn't move. She was wearing shorts and a tee in some pastel color, all wrinkled and tangled.

His heart immediately resumed beating on noting she wasn't wearing a bra. And that her plump, perfectly shaped breasts were rising and falling, indicating life—not to mention a delectably appealing rack.

By the time he'd finished a complete study—legs were damned good, way, way better than he expected, a little Yankee white, but the calf shape was just that perfect arch of a curve. Anyway. By the time he finished, she had one eye open.

“Please,” she said. “Go on in. Leave me for dead. There are all kinds of people in the house. If you want someone, just pound on the door.”

“I was looking for you, actually.”

“No point. I'm useless. In a state of complete decline. I can't move, can't talk, don't even care anymore.”

“Are we…” he tried to think of a delicate way to phrase it “…having a little trouble adjusting to the heat?”

She closed the eye. “There's air-conditioning. That's what the ad said. It didn't lie. I bought a thermometer yesterday. My room's cooled off to eighty-seven degrees. Now go away. I can't stand anyone watching me while I sweat.”

“I brought ice cream.”

“Beg your pardon?” One eye slid open, then the other.

“Griff's Secret. A pint. Two spoons. Cold.”

“Say it again.”

“Ice cream.”

Silence. Then… “I don't know why you went to the trouble of tracking me down, but I absolutely don't care. You can have whatever you want. Just show me the ice cream.”

He lifted the pint container.

She swung around to a sitting position faster than a jet takeoff. “Spoon,” she said.

He produced two from his polo shirt pocket—as well as a hunk of napkins.

“Do not watch me eat this,” she instructed. “I intend to inhale. And I may drool. You need to understand. Thomas Wolff had it right: ‘You can't go home again.' I'm hot. I'm miserable. No one likes me. If I were you, I'd hide behind the veranda rail. Protect yourself from being seen with me.”

If she made love with half the enthusiasm that she ate ice cream, bless her heart, Griff might just have to propose. Of course, he'd have to test that theory. And at the moment, she definitely didn't look
in the mood.

When he didn't interrupt her ice cream inhaling to intrude with conversation, she piped up. “Did you hear the fire truck siren a couple hours ago?”

“Yup.”

“I set that fire.”

“Did you now?” He didn't lean over to clean up the dab of Griff's Secret on her cheek, but man, he wanted to.

“I'm not sure what street it was on. Or where it was. In fact, I didn't have any idea I'd set the fire until an old busybody four doors down came storming into Louella's kitchen to track me down. So, if that's why you stopped
by—to hear it from the horse's mouth, so to speak—now you've got it direct from me. The fire was all my fault. I did it. Fire setting's in my blood. I'm nothing but trouble. The only reason I came back to town was to cause trouble.”

“Thanks for sharing.” Okay. He couldn't stop himself. That bit of ice cream on her chin was too tempting to ignore. Her eyes shot to his when she felt the touch of his finger. His eyes shot clear-cut communication right back.

So. He didn't have to worry anymore that she didn't feel the same electric click that he did. Both of them knew—speaking of fire—that there were potentially explosive sparks.

“I took one look at you,” he said, “and before I had a clue about all that history, I just knew, right off that bat, that you were a wicked, wicked woman.”

“Watch it. A compliment like that could bring tears to my eyes. Most men who first meet me seem to immediately figure out I'm a pretty plain old ordinary schoolteacher.”

“Plain old ordinary? That never crossed my mind. I took one look and thought there's a breath of fresh air in this town. A gorgeous, sexy woman, who can make a T-shirt look like designer clothes, has eyes a man could drown in, with character and mystery surrounding her like magic.”

She almost choked on the last spoonful of ice cream. “All right, all right. You know I've been here a couple days, so as you might have guessed, I already know your story. You charm every female that's ever crossed your
path—whether they're two or ninety, married or single. You've gotten a marriage proposal from every single woman in a three-county radius—”

“Not every single one,” he corrected.

“Just most. And I can see why. You're adorable and all.”

“Thanks.”

“You started out in Savannah. Hard to imagine why you'd settle in this itsy-bitsy town. But lots of people have been happy to fill me in on why they think you came here—even if I never asked. And I really don't need to pry into your life or anyone else's.”

“I understand. Once you're inside the town limits, it hits like a wave. The hot air from people talking about each other. There's no escaping it.”

“Who knew? Anyway…let's see what else I was told. You can, of course, correct or deny any of this. You come from a good family—that means, a
Southern
family, a family that was established here long enough to fight in the War of Northern Aggression. You went to a good school, North Carolina, I think I was told. Played B-ball. Everybody remembers that you graduated, but not what field you graduated in. No one's sure if you ever had a real job. Somehow, you didn't feel like making anything special of yourself.”

“That's me. Just lazy as can be.”