Playing With Fire: inspirational romantic suspense (Montana Fire Book 2) (18 page)

She had stopped and now stared at him.

“Fine.” Her voice emerged so deadly calm it reached out and took hold of him, a fist around his heart, turning him cold.

“I told you how my mom worked at a camp, as an art teacher, right? Well, that’s where she met my stepdad. We’d attended camp for eight years, every summer after my dad died and my one friend was Charlie Bissel. His dad was the director, so he was stuck there all summer, too, and although he was two years older, he took me under his wing. He taught me to fish and ride a bike, and I taught him how to paint and sculpt, and we were inseparable. Until my mom fell in love with his dad and they got married.”

She stepped up to the river now and lifted her binoculars. Scanned the bank.

“Mom and I moved back to Minneapolis with Charlie and Doug. I was thirteen, in eighth grade, and just starting to fill out. But you know how middle-school girls are, all knobby-kneed, buck-toothed, and generally terrifying.”

“I can’t ever imagine you terrifying,” he said quietly.

She blinked at him, then her face tightened in a frown. “Stop it.”

Huh?

“Charlie started bringing his buddies over after school, and suddenly they started paying more attention to me than to him.”

Lecherous, she’d said. He swallowed back a spur of darkness.

“They’d find excuses to hang out with me or invite me to watch television, and Charlie changed. He got angry and sullen, and pretty soon he started ignoring me completely. I was devastated, so I started hanging around him more, hoping he’d pay attention to me. Which only meant that I was hanging around his buddies. I just wanted them to like me. By the time I was in tenth grade, I was one of the guys, or so I thought. Charlie was a senior by then, and, well, I guess I wasn’t the gangly middle-schooler anymore.”

She gestured to the walkie. “Check in with CJ.”

He caught up with CJ on the radio, and no, they hadn’t seen Esther or any sign of her.

“Maybe we need to spread out or one of us climb down there—” Liza said.

“Let’s keep moving.”

She nodded, silent, as if maybe he’d forgotten.

“What happened, Liza?”

She made a face. Sighed. “Charlie had a bunch of his buddies over to the house one night, and they’d stayed up late watching a movie. I sneaked down in my pajamas to get something to eat and...” She sighed again.

Oh no. He couldn’t breathe.

“One of his friends came into the kitchen. I think he might have been drinking, I don’t know, but he cornered me, put his hands on me—”

A word formed in his brain, and when she frowned at him, he realized he’d said it aloud.

“Sorry—”

“Yeah, well, me too, because Charlie came in, saw us, and lost it. It was awful. Just—I was screaming, and Charlie was slamming his friend against the wall—”

“I suddenly have a great fondness for your brother.”

“Stepbrother.” She looked away, and he thought he saw her whisk her hand across her cheek. “Charlie did love me, I know it. But by then, it was too late. Mom and Doug were already on the rocks, so Mom called a friend who ran this private school and sent me away. She and Doug separated shortly after.”

Liza looked at Conner then, her eyes shiny. “Last thing I remember was Doug hauling Charlie off his friend and Charlie screaming at me like it was my fault. And maybe he was right.”

“He
wasn’t
right. How on earth was that your fault?”

“I got too cozy with his buddies.”

Conner couldn’t help it, couldn’t rein in his words. “A randy high school boy decides to feel you up because you were his friend?”

She recoiled. “Uh no, because—because—”

“Geez, Liza. You are you
not
to blame for the fact some jerk put his hands on you. You were vulnerable and hurting and, sheesh—” He turned away, his chest tight, his hands clenched. Shook his head.

“If you only knew how amazing and kind and beautiful—I’m
so
sorry that a couple of jerks took advantage of that.”

Silence behind him. Finally, he turned back to her.

He wasn’t prepared for the anger that lined her face.

“Stop it,” she said again, this time quietly.

He frowned.

“Please, just stop it.”

“Stop what?”

“Stop acting like you...like you care.”

“I do care. I—”

“Fine, you
care.
But stop being nice to me. Because you’re...you’re acting like you
like
me, and the fact is, it makes me too vulnerable. I wish I was strong, but I’m not. You do that, and I’m not strong enough to stay away from you.”

He couldn’t move. “I don’t
want
you to stay away from me.”

“Yes you do, Conner. You’re just too nice to say it. And I can’t go through that again.”

He stared at her. “What are you talking about?”

“I’m talking about the fact that you are who you are.”

“And who is that?”

“A great guy. But a guy who doesn’t want more than just right now. And I was too clingy.”

“You—
what
?”

“I read between the quotes. ‘I can’t make any promises,’
you said,
and I was an idiot not to see it, not to figure it out. Especially when you
told
me...”

Now he was really confused, trying to wrap his brain around a conversation he only vaguely remembered having. “Figure out
what
?”

“You didn’t want to hurt me by saying good-bye.”

From her expression, she was serious.

“But I
didn’t
want you to say good-bye. I
liked
you.” He swallowed, pushed out the rest. “I still do.”

There. He said it, and it felt good, even healing. “We simply miscommunicated.”

Which meant, they could fix it.
He
could fix it. Get them back to where they’d left off.

For the first time since her call, the noose around his chest loosened.

He unclenched his hand, the urge to reach for her coursing through him.

Except she didn’t respond, her face didn’t light up with sweet realization of his uttered feelings.

Instead, she offered him a sad smile. “I know you did. Just not enough.”

He gaped at her. Huh?

“See?”

“No, I
don’t
see. What does that even mean,
not enough
? Enough for what? To want to spend time with you? To call you every time I got off the fire line, hoping I’d hear your voice? To track you down in Arizona and drive a hundred miles just to take you out for dinner, or go hiking, or even skydiving? Because I did, Liza. I liked you
enough
.”

More, actually, than enough. And now he’d taken out his heart, put it right out there for her to see. The truth was, “You didn’t like
me
enough. You took off—twice—without telling me—”

“No. Conner. I was just trying to play by your rules. No promises, right?”

His mouth tightened.

“You didn’t like me enough to make an entire life with me,” she said quietly.

And despite her soft words, they landed sharp, brutal in the soft, still healing places inside. And right behind them, a rush of panic. That sense of having something amazing in his grasp. And, like a year ago when she’d said
, Now What?
, the same hand reached up, wrapped around his throat.

An entire life.

And that was the problem. If he promised her a future...well, his profession wasn’t exactly safe. He was ever more aware of that now after losing Jock and the team.

Frankly, he simply saw himself letting her down. A final epitaph to a slew of broken promises.

He couldn’t dodge that truth even now.

But wasn’t she the girl who embraced each new sunrise? He’d sort of thought, out of anyone, Liza was the one who wouldn’t expect more than just right now. Had never let on differently, really.

“Aw, Liza. C’mon. You know what I’ve been through. None of us knows how long that life is. We shouldn’t make promises we can’t keep—”

“What promises might those be? To live happily ever after?”

“I dunno. Maybe—yeah. Because you know I don’t do promises. Isn’t it enough to show up every day, one after the next, with you?”

“Maybe it should be. But not for me.” Her eyes glistened. “You’re right—it wasn’t my fault my brother’s friend came on to me. Or that the football player took advantage of me. But I didn’t do anything to stop them. I just let them, because I was too needy to know how to protect myself. I walked right into the situations, my heart open—and they took that and hurt me.”

She turned away. “But—I’m not that girl anymore.”

Conner couldn’t breathe with the tumult of her words rocking against him and the sheen of tears in her eyes.

“The thing is I wish I
had
misunderstood you. But we communicated perfectly. You can’t make me promises...and I can’t live without them. The worst part is that I
do
know what you’ve been through. I shouldn’t have expected more. This one really is my fault.”

“Liza—”

“So, please, stop saying nice things and calling me beautiful. I panicked. I called you. And yes, I needed you. I might even still be in love with you. But that’s my problem, not yours. When this gig is over, you’re going to walk out of my life, and I’m going to let you go, okay?”

Not okay.

I might even still be in love with you.

But before he knew what to say, she lifted her shoulders in a shrug, turned and kept trekking into the forest.

Liza—

Movement from in front of her caught him—forty feet away, a shadow at first, then the outline and a hulking form.

He caught her by the arm, whirled her back to face him.

“Conner, really—”

“Shh. Don’t move.”

She stilled. “What—”

“Remember what I said about the bear? About being scary and loud?”

Then of course she turned.

He felt, more than heard, the welling of her scream.

And then, because he had suggested it, and because he wasn’t sure what else to do, he joined her in an all-out yell at the grizzly, who reared up and roared.

Liza didn’t know which shook her more—the roar of the grizzly as he scraped the air with his razor claws or Conner’s primal shout behind her.

But she didn’t have time to sort it out. Not with her screams ripping through the shadowed forest, echoing against the folds of darkness gathering in the gorge.

Spittle cobwebbed from the bear’s jaws as it roared at them.

“It’s not running!” So much for
scaring
the bear.

Conner’s arm snaked around her and yanked her back, against his chest.

Her breaths tumbled, one over another, and she simply held onto Conner’s grip, her fingers digging into his forearms as she watched the animal’s hoary head swing back and forth.

“Is that—is he warning us? Is it—what did you say about him stalking us?” Sorry, but screaming seemed akin to throwing marshmallows at a charging rhino.

Conner edged her backward, still holding her tight. “Shh. I don’t know. Is that the same bear?”

“Maybe. I didn’t exactly stick around—”

He made a sound that might have been a harrumph.

The grizzly opened his mouth, roared again. Liza whirled around to face Conner and gripped onto his backpack straps. “What do we do?”

She barely knew a rattled Conner, had never seen him truly untucked, even after the near disaster in Deep Haven, but as he gripped her shoulders, his eyes widened. He glanced into the gorge below, back to the animal.