Irresistible Stranger

Chapter 12

Lily woke up in a first-class grump, starting with the note on her pillow. Griff unwillingly had to return Jason to his mother, at least temporarily, and then he was headed for the sheriff’s.

He wanted her to rest and sit tight.

Right.

One look in the mirror sent her jogging for a phone. Her singed hair looked like something out of a horror movie. No matter what she wanted to do with her day, she was stuck getting a few chores out of the way first. As often as she’d ranted about getting a haircut since she got here, now she had no choice but to call Mary Belle. The sheriff’s daughter promised her she’d clear the schedule for ll:30-leaving Lily enough time to run through a few stores on Main Street.

Temporarily, she had nothing to wear but a shirt and shorts from Griff, which no amount of makeshift belting was going to pass for acceptable clothes. She had her purse, so at least she had a brush and lip gloss-and her phone. She’d barely headed out the door before getting the first barrage of calls from her sisters.

“I’ll send you money. Get all the clothes you need,” Cate started with. “And buy a first-class ticket to me. I don’t care what it costs. You either get out of that town, or I’m flying there to get you myself.”

Sophie’s call was more of the same, just in a softer tone.

The truth was, Lily hungered to see both her sisters. And she could hardly stay in Pecan Valley much longer. Once, her answers had seemed terribly important to her-but not as important as a whole town burning up because of her. Leaving needed to be her priority. It was just…leaving town also meant leaving Griff.

How a woman could fall so fast, so hard, so irrevocably, she couldn’t fathom. For her whole life, it had been so, so easy to stay untangled. She’d never risked loss-at least the kind of loss where the hurt might never really heal.

Damn it. How was she supposed to forget Griff?

Most stores on Main Street opened at ten. It took almost that long to pull herself together, between her bandaged hands and edgy mood. Clouds were bunching and punching overhead, threatening rain, adding humidity to an already gasping temperature. She hit the drugstore first, picked up the obvious toiletries, like deodorant and toothpaste and cosmetics, then stashed those in her car.

There were several clothing stores and boutiques on Main Street. She didn’t have a clue what they offered. She just wanted to pick up enough basics to wear for a few days. So she started with the first one-Jane’s Boutique, the sign said. Opening the door set off a tinkling bell, and almost immediately she panicked.

It wasn’t a day to be fussy, but the manikins were decked out in bows and prints and polka dots. She almost headed straight back out, but the thirtyish brunette behind the cash register spotted her and immediately approached with a smile. “You have to be Lily Campbell. I see those hurt hands, you poor thing. The whole town’s buzzing with how you helped saved Louella’s house and Louella…come in, come in. I’ll help you. I can see you can’t do much with those hands. I’ll bet they hurt like the devil?”

They did. Everything seemed to hurt like the devil-but it did help, coming in town today, being greeted everywhere, so far, with smiles instead of suspicion. Jane didn’t do much talking, but behind her pretty eyes was a shrewd saleswoman. Packages on the counter added up. No bows, no doodads. A white lace bra, a navy satin one. Matching underwear. A sundress in pale blues. A breezy skirt and cami that could go to dinner, or just about anywhere else. A coral top, cream shorts-those she decided to wear, with Jane’s help.

The shop had earrings, bangles, shoes, bags, all the “stuff” to put it altogether. Lily didn’t intend to buy so much-if she was flying home, she just didn’t need that much from here. But Jane seemed to sort through the fussy stuff and come through with exactly what Lily liked, and it all added up. When she headed back out, her arms were heaped with packages, and naturally, by then it was pouring. She only had minutes to stash the clothes in her rental car and dash through the rain to the hair salon.

To her surprise, the only body in Mary Belle’s was Mary Belle-who appeared to be pacing in front of the storefront windows when Lily ran in. “I told everyone to take a two-hour lunch break,” she greeted her with. “Give us some time to chat. And I didn’t want anyone handling you but me.”

It was a kindly thing to say-but somehow Lily felt a sudden shiver. Of course, she was damp at the edges from her run through the rain, and the salon was more than cool. The shop looked like its owner. No soothing décor for Mary Belle; she’d opted for bright slashes of orange and yellow, seats in shiny purple.

“I don’t need much. Just a trim,” Lily said immediately.

“You need way more than a trim, honey. That fire sure singed you on one side, didn’t it? But don’t you worry. You’ll look like a new woman before I’m through with you.”

Again, Lily felt a frisson of unease. It was stupid. The mix of air-conditioning and intense humidity were creating the chill, nothing else.

She followed the other woman to the back, where Mary Belle wrapped her in a wild polka-dot cape and motioned her to the hair washing chair.

“You’re going to love this,” she informed Lily. Which was the truth. It was impossible not to love the scalp rub, the massage of warm water and fragrant shampoo products.

“I love this place,” Mary Belle said conversationally, yet there was the oddest tone in her voice. Regret? Sadness? “I built the shop from scratch, all on my own. Was never much of a student in high school. Not one of those college-bound types of girls. I always attracted the boys, of course, with my looks. But all they ever did was break my heart, and leave me pregnant with the bills for divorce. This place…this was all mine. I never let a man’s name get on it. If it were my choice, I’d never let a man through the door.”

Lily’s eyes were closed as Mary Belle rinsed out the shampoo, then massaged in conditioner with expert hands.

“It’s a wonderful place,” Lily said, for lack of anything better to comment.

“It’ll kill me to lose it.”

Lily assumed she’d misheard her. The comment made no sense-but the water was running, the conditioner being rinsed out, then a towel plopped on her head and the seat raised.

“Now for the trim,” Mary Belle said. “And I do promise. You’re going to get the trim of your life.”

Fear dried Lily’s throat. It was the stress, she told herself. She wasn’t thinking clearly. Even if somehow she found out the arsonist from all those years ago, even if that same female arsonist was the one who caused her parents’ fire, it wasn’t going to be someone who’d openly talked to her from the day she arrived in Pecan Valley. It wasn’t going to be the sheriff’s daughter. How crazy was that?

Mary Belle pumped the chair higher, then tied the long plastic cape tighter around Lily’s neck. The scissors suddenly gleamed inches from her eyes.

“I saw your picture in the yearbook,” Lily blurted out.

“Yeah? I was quite a looker, wasn’t I?”

“You still are,” Lily assured her.

“There’s no point trying to be nice now, honey. It’s too late. I knew when you got into town that it could all come crashing down if I wasn’t absolutely careful. But I swear, you are the dumbest woman. You could have left after the first fire. After the second. But no, you had to keep digging and digging and digging.”

Snip, snip, snip. Lily saw the snips of hair fall. Then hanks of it. About the same second she froze up with panic, she realized that Mary Belle hadn’t just tied the cape around her-but around the chair as well. She could move her legs. She could move her bandaged hands under the cape. But she couldn’t get out of the chair.

“Don’t be squirming around now. I don’t want these scissors to slip accidentally. Don’t worry. I’ll make you look good. You’re going to be last customer, and I want your hair cut to look just right.”

“Mary Belle-”

“The place will go up fast. Losing this place is going to kill me, like I said. But by the time the firemen get here, I’ll be out in the street, screaming for help, and you’ll be the only one inside. They’ll think you set yet another fire, Lily. And that this one finally got you, too. I never wanted it to be this way, I swear,” she said sadly. “But something I want you to know…”

“What?” Lily had stopped breathing. Her gaze tracked the movement of the scissors, her mind racing, trying to find a way out. Trying to think of a way out.

“Your parents, they were never supposed to die. I felt terrible about that. No one was ever supposed to get hurt, not physically-whoa there, bless your heart. That was silly, your trying to move. You’re not going anywhere.”

The tip of the scissors nicked Lily’s neck, right at the throat. A thin crimson line shone in the mirror.

“We’re not done with this haircut,” Mary Belle told her. “And believe me, you don’t want me to rush.” She turned the chair, so Lily had a view of the products on the counter. “See there?”

Mutely, Lily looked. The counter of products hadn’t caught her attention before, but there was nothing she wouldn’t expect to see in a hair salon. But now she realized that Mary Belle had set up an altar. The hair sprays and potions, the nail polishes and nail polish removers, all had their tops opened, and were arranged prettily with a candle in the center.

Only one other item was included in the display. A hairdryer. A plain old, standard salon hairdryer-except that the back had been removed, revealing the naked heating coils.

Mary Belle smoothly plugged in the hairdryer, at the same time she spun around and competently, swiftly, wrapped adhesive tape round and round Lily, the cape trapping her arms and upper torso. “It’ll be a little while before those coils heat up. We’re not done with the haircut. And I need a few more minutes to brace myself before losing my shop. This is the one thing I valued in the world besides my daughters and my daddy. So don’t be feeling sorry for yourself, because I’m gonna lose a lot here, too. If you’d just never come back, this never would have happened. It’s your fault. Everything’s your fault.”

As if they were discussing the weather, Mary Belle looked at her haircut creation in the mirror, from one angle and then another. “I believe we’ll go just a little shorter on the left side, don’t you think?”

All Lily could think was, Griff. The one man she definitely wanted to love and live for, not die for.

The coils on the bald hair dryer started to glow…

When Griff dropped into the creaking office chair in Sheriff Conner’s office, he stretched out his long legs, calm as a spring breeze. “We need to have a little discussion,” he said lazily, and accepted the mug of battery-acid strength coffee that Herman Conner pushed toward him.

“Now, Griff. There’s no point in your getting mad over that boy.”

“I’m not mad. I never get mad,” Griff assured him. He realized Conner thought he was unhappy about Jason being returned to his mother’s house. And he was. But the dominating headlines in his mind were the images of Lily’s soot-stained cheeks and shocked eyes after yesterday’s fire.

At three in the morning, he’d still been pacing the floor, checking on her every five minutes, leaping up every time she coughed.

And since he hadn’t gotten a lick of sleep, he’d put all the information they’d gathered on the Campbell fire in his head. It was like watching puzzle pieces interlock. They knew someone had committed three or more acts of arson twenty years ago. That that someone was likely a girl. That that someone had gotten away with her crimes-and the only reason Lily’s appearance in town had started a rash of arson fires was if the guilty person then was the guilty person now.

If there was another way to put it together, Griff didn’t know how. What he’d realized, in the wee hours of the morning, was that someone else had all the puzzle pieces he and Lily had. Maybe more.

And that someone was the sheriff.

“Here’s the thing.” Conner poured himself a second mug, pulled out a drawer, propped his boot on it. “You and I know the score on kids like Jason. You’re too realistic to think there’s ever some magic answer for a troubled kid.”

“I don’t. But if Jason’s father wasn’t a relative of the judge, you know damn well he’d be in prison, instead of getting a free ride out of jail every few months.”

“True. But that’s one of the things you can’t change. So you either eat yourself up about it, or you do what you can do.” Conner tipped back his chair. “I don’t know if you’re aware of this, but I had five kids of my own. Two of them nearly cost my sanity. That’s how I know. All you can do is what you can do, Griff.”

Griff suddenly rubbed an itch at the back of his neck. “Which two kids? What happened?”

The sheriff sighed. “I had twins. Twin girls. And when Mary Ann died in an accident, I thought my wife would sink under the weight of it. She just couldn’t recover. I had a hard enough time myself. Nothing shook us out of that grief until we finally noticed that Mary Belle…well, let’s just say, she was barreling down the wrong path.”

“How so?” Griff asked lazily.

The sheriff’s eyes shifted away from him. “What I think now is that losing her sister, her twin, just rocked Mary Belle’s foundation to the core. It’s like she was trying to believe she didn’t care about losing her sister, about herself, about anything. She turned into this wild girl, out of control every which way.”

“I take it she partied quite a bit?”

Conner took another pull on the coffee. “To say the least of it.” He sighed again. “I blame myself for not paying attention. We were too wrapped up in our own grief to see it. She was wildly in love with a new boy about every month. It’s not as if a high school boy is going to say no when something’s offered free.”

“Not in this life,” Griff affirmed, although his pulse was suddenly slamming, slamming, slamming.

“So each of the boys she took up, they took advantage. And then they’d break her heart. Then she’d get so angry. And even more wild.” Conner shook his head. “The thing is, when I see a boy like Jason, or Steve, or any of the wild-eyed ones you’ve taken on…I always remember what we been through in our own family. You can love your kids. You can try to parent them right. But sometimes problems come up that just plain take time, a lot of time, to turn around.”

Griff said quietly, softly, “So…it was Mary Belle, wasn’t it? Who set those fires twenty years ago.”

“Say what? I was talking about the nature of teenagers, kids through times of trouble, how sometimes raising a kid just isn’t a neat, tidy, straight path-”

“She set the fires, didn’t she, Conner.”

The sheriff shook his head wildly, slammed his feet flat on the floor. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. “I only brought up my own family issues to share your frustration over Jason. I wasn’t trying to-”

Griff could see it in Conner’s face. The anguish. The guilt. Likely he would never have mentioned Mary Belle, his own troubles, if his daughter wasn’t such a huge, festering worry in his mind that he couldn’t always keep in.

“In high school. The arson fires that were never solved,” he said quietly. “She was in love with those boys. They took advantage, then jilted her. She was angry. She set those fires.”

“No, of course it wasn’t her!”

“Only then came the fire that killed the Campbells. Lily’s parents.” Griff eased to his feet, then crossed the room to quietly close the door. When he turned back, Conner’s ruddy complexion had gone gray, his eyes old. He lifted a hand to push it through his rumpled hair. The hand was trembling. He realized it. Griff saw it.

“It’s not like you think,” the sheriff said.

“So tell me how it was.”

“I didn’t know it was her. Not to start. It never occurred to me in a million years that it was my own daughter. “Once Conner started talking, it was as if a raw, festering boil had suddenly exploded.

“After her sister died, she just went searching for something, you know? She’d decide she loved some boy, sleep with him, probably scare the boy out of his mind with how fast and furious she was latching on. So he’d dump her. And then there’d be a fire.”

“Aw, hell.” Griff said it under his breath. He hadn’t known, not totally, not for dead sure, until the sheriff let loose.

“I didn’t associate those fires with Mary Belle. Why would I? At first I thought it was just vandalism. First one was in a school locker. I thought, probably pranks, a sports rivalry. It’s boys who set fires, almost never girls. And our Mary Belle, we were worried about her morals. But we weren’t worried about crime, certainly nothing like those fires. She’d never done anything like that, never got in any kind of trouble-”

“Why in God’s name did she pick on the Campbells?”

“She didn’t. But she was pregnant. I didn’t know. Her mother didn’t know. The house next to Campbells was empty, for sale. That’s where she and this boy were meeting at night. He had a way of getting in. Anyway she told him she was pregnant. Thought he’d marry her, they’d live happy ever after. He dumped her, called her a slut, said the only reason he was with her was for one thing…”

“And?”

“When the fire happened, when the Campbells died, I still didn’t know it was her. Nobody did. But she came crying to me, beside herself, guilty, ashamed, torn up. She never meant to hurt anyone else. She didn’t even mean to hurt him. She’d never harmed a person.”

Griff almost responded, realized every muscle in his spine was knotted tighter than barbed wire, and said nothing. Conner, he was pretty damned positive, had never told anyone about this. It had eaten him alive all this time.

“I’d do anything for my kids, you understand? I’d throw myself in front of a bus if I had to. When that fire happened-when she finally broke and told me-the Campbells, they were already gone. Nothing could save them. Nothing could make that right.”

“And you thought that made it okay to do nothing?” Griff had to keep the growl from his voice.

“No. Hell, no. But bringing it all to light was only going to ruin my daughter’s life, too-as well as the child’s in her belly. Her guilt, her responsibility, was to turn her life around. And she did that. She really did that. No, she didn’t make good marriages. But she’s been a good, fine mother. She pays her bills. She doesn’t play around at all anymore. She may look like she does, but she’s got her lights out at nine, just like her kids. She works hard, built that salon from scratch-”

Griff heard the word salon and a bullet went off in his head. He whirled around, grabbed the doorknob.

“What?” Conner said. “Where are you going?”

Adrenaline shot through Griff’s veins. Lily had babbled last night about getting some clothes, getting the soot and singe cut from her hair. Maybe there was another salon. It wasn’t as if Griff kept track of the women hairstylists in town. But the only one Lily had actually met was Mary Belle.

“What?” Conner repeated from behind him. “What are you doing? Where are you going?”

“I think Lily’s with your daughter. Right now.”

He didn’t look back to see what the sheriff did, he just ran.

He pushed through doors, down steps, past people. Torrents of rain bounced on the pavement, soaking him through before he’d made it a hundred yards. He passed his car-and yeah, it was right there-but to get three blocks, he could run faster, and did.

Enough had happened in the last three weeks to make the whole town jumpy. Griff running down Main Street attracted faces in windows, doors opening, a buzz of worried questions-and bodies in his way. He ducked and dodged, thinking that Lily had run through almost nine lives since she got here, but he was the one who wouldn’t survive if she wasn’t totally, completely all right.

He couldn’t be too late.

He couldn’t be.

Blinds were drawn on the salon windows; a sign at the door claimed the shop was closed for a few hours. That stopped him less than a second. Maybe the door was locked; if so, a sharp twist and push and it gave. He stepped in, had a heart attack. Damn near tripped over Mary Belle, who for some insane reason was curled on the floor crying her eyes out.

Lily was in a salon chair. Trapped. Tape circled her a half dozen times and her mouth was taped shut. Her eyes, her gorgeous eyes, were spitting tears-fear, rage, pain? In that first instant, he couldn’t grasp what was happening, the source of danger.

Lily made a muffled sound, bobbed her head over and over to the left. He crossed the room in long strides, saw in that single blink where she was trying to motion him…a hairdryer, plugged in, but the back off, revealing red-hot coils.

Then he got it. The counter of explosive products.

He yanked the plug, grabbed the dryer, heaved it into the farthest sink basin-traveling over the crazy heap of crying Mary Belle a second time. Then back to Lily. He ripped off the tape, heard her hoarsely cry his name. Then ripped at the tape wrapping her, unwinding it, his fingers fumbling blind, his gaze on her face, her lips, her eyes.

When he’d loosened all the miles of tape enough for her to break loose, she more than broke free, hurling herself up and into his arms.

His voice came out in rusty threads. “Damn stupid time to tell you, but I love you more than life.” More rust. His throat felt that raw. “I told you not to get a haircut here.”

“I know.” Her face lifted to his. She had to hear-so did he-the building commotion behind them. Bodies coming in. People talking. The sheriff’s voice. All he could see or hear was Lily. She took in a heave of a breath, a gulp of a sob. He soothed his fingers in her short hair, touching her, holding her, wanting to shield her. From everything. From now on. Forever.

“You won’t believe what stopped her,” she said. “Her youngest daughter telephoned. Mary Belle was all set to blow it up. To blow me up. And her daughter was just calling to ask about a spaghetti recipe or something that silly, and just hearing her daughter’s voice-that was it. Suddenly she caved. Curled up in that ball, started crying and couldn’t stop. Started rocking. But the coils on that hair dryer, Griff. They were hot. They were so red-hot. Another few minutes and…”

“Griff? Lily?”

A fire truck screamed from the street-this time, thank God, not needed-but Pecan Valley wasn’t going to risk not being ready ever again. A man’s hand cuffed his shoulder, trying to get his attention.

Griff wanted to get her out of here. Knew there were things that needed doing, saying, knowing. But for that instant, he just needed to breathe her in a little longer. Feel her hair, her skin. The frantic pulse in her throat was finally easing, that shocky glaze in her eyes softening. Her lips parted.

“You can’t mean it,” she said.

“Mean what?”

“That you’re in love with me. I mean…I know. We’ve been…two. I know we have something, are something when we’re together. But I told you it was all right, Griff.”

“Nothing’s been all right since you got here.”

“Which will make it easy for you to forget me.”

“Which will make it impossible for me to forget you,” he corrected her. “You’re going to have to give it up. Lily. Pretending you’re into flings. You’re not into affairs. You’re into me. The same hot, dangerous, risky, impossibly way I’m into you. And frankly, I’m expecting to be into you-”

“Through fire and smoke?” she whispered.

“Hey. We already know we can survive that part.”

Her lips curved on the start of a smile. It was all he needed to see. He ducked his head, sealed his mouth on hers. He closed his eyes and just took her in. The promise in her lips, the hope in how they fit together, the release of a lonely heart letting go. For her. With her.

Then, of course, they both lifted their heads. And turned together to face whatever questions needed answering, whatever issues needed resolving and explaining. Together.