Irresistible Stranger

Chapter 5

Griff awoke with his heart pounding, the threatening smell and heat of fire invading nightmare after nightmare. Immediately, of course, he was fine. His bedroom was familiar, dark and cool and safe. And his bed damned lonely.

He vaguely remembered Lily bossing him around, bullying him into the shower, absconding with his clothes, ordering him into bed. He couldn’t recall ever being so offended…male-ego offended. The bossiness had charmed him. But then, she didn’t even seem to notice when he was naked in the shower, and later tucked the covers around his neck as if he were a boy instead of the sexiest man she'd ever seen in her life.

It was enough-almost-to destroy a guy’s confidence.

The bedside digital claimed it was 3:00 a.m. He’d only slept two hours, was still groggy with exhaustion. Still, he pushed off the covers, swung his feet to the floor. First thing in the morning, he needed to devote 100% effort to the fire and all the fire’s complications. But right now there wasn’t a prayer he could get any further rest without knowing where Lily was.

She could have gone home of course, just taken his car. That would have been a no-sweat. And when he checked the spare bedroom, the couches, and didn’t find her, he thought she’d had the brains to do that-but no. The bunched-up blanket in his favorite recliner had a body swallowed in it. He had no idea how she’d managed to curl herself into that small a ball-much less how she’d escaped being smothered.

When he peeled back the edge of the blanket, he found the gleam of her dark hair in the moonlight. But she didn’t awaken. He scooped her up, blanket and all. That didn’t awaken her either. Her cheek nuzzled against his shoulder, as if she’d been sleeping against him her whole life.

Halfway through the hall, he almost tripped because part of the blanket slipped, tangled with his bare foot. But he managed to compensate, pushed against a wall-none of that commotion woke her either-and finally made it to the bed.

He dropped her on his side, his pillow, and when the last of the blanket slipped away, realized she was still wearing clothes. He hesitated. This wasn’t about seduction, it was about…something else. Showing her that he didn’t need taking care of. Showing her that he could take care of her. Or something like that. Still, sleeping in clothes seemed bulky and uncomfortable. So he pulled off her knee-length shorts-or pants-or whatever they were. Then he re-covered her, and finally sank onto the other side of the bed, and discovered the strangest thing.

His body went bone hard the minute his skin touched hers-that was neither a surprise nor remotely strange. But somehow, just the act of wrapping his arms around her, her just being there with him, felt crazily, insanely right. In spite of the fire and all the troubling questions threatened by that attack of arson, he was able to forget it, really close his eyes this time, and zone out completely.

Lily woke to the soak of sunlight on her closed eyelids, her body all cuddled in a nest-warm cocoon-and the erotic, rhythmic stroke of a thumb on her shoulder.

A man’s thumb.

Her eyes popped open. In her immediate vision was a bunched-up blanket, a shoe twice her size, a shirt she could have used for a tent and a wide window overlooking a steep, green hillside. Only strips of sunlight made it through the tangled thatch of trees, but the verdant spice of pine scented everything. A bird suddenly landed on the windowsill-gorgeous, bright blue in color, an indigo bunting, she was pretty sure. It cocked its head, looked at her as if to say, “what on earth are you doing in his bed, you crazy woman?”

And still, that thumb kept stroking.

She knew perfectly well where she was. Griff’s. But she could have sworn she’d fallen asleep in his living room chair. A thousand unexpected sensations all seemed to require her immediate analysis. His bristly chest hair against her back. The weight of his hand. The width of his hips, spooning against her bottom. The hardness of his erection. The size of his erection. The throbbing warmth of his erection.

She strongly suspected that she wasn’t the only one awake. Not that she was willing to turn around and face him yet.

“I have to think up a strategy,” she murmured, and he picked it up as if they were in the middle of a conversation.

“For how you’re going to go back to the B and B?”

“Exactly. If I were back in Virginia, it wouldn’t matter. I’m an adult. Everyone around me is adult. But here…Louella’s going to grill me as if I were ten years old, the instant I walk in the door. Being absent for a night is one thing, but if I also walk in wearing yesterday’s clothes…” She lifted the sheet. “Uh-oh. I seem to be to be missing some of yesterday’s clothes. Something happened to my capris.”

“I was helping you.” Griff’s voice was still husky with sleep.

“Uh-huh. I’ll bet you say that to all the girls.”

“Lily.”

“Hmm?”

“I don’t say that to all the girls. In fact, there’s a giant list of things that I plan to say and do with you. That I’ve never considered doing with anyone else.”

Talk about a way to melt a girl. Griff’s Secret, she thought, wasn’t just an ice-cream flavor. It was this ingredient in him, a secret, insidious factor, that annihilated defenses and seduced a heart without half-trying. She turned in his arms, well aware they were suddenly breast to chest, tummy to tummy, danger zone teasingly rubbing against danger zone.

“Hey,” she murmured worriedly. “Where’s that kind of talk coming from?”

“I don’t know,” he admitted. “But you’re scaring me. I barely know you.”

“That’s supposed to be my line. I’m the girl, remember? I’m the one at risk if I fall in love with a guy who’s reported to have no settle-down or responsible genes in his entire DNA.”

“That’s me,” he admitted. “If I were you, I wouldn’t get involved with me either. I’ve never had a committed relationship in my life. Never bought a ring or shopped for one. Never had the energy or ambition to.”

Oh, for Pete’s sake. He’d been selling that snake oil since she met him. Being only a pinch away made it easy enough to…well, to shut him up. It was as simple as laying her lips against his.

On his.

With his.

Yearning shot through her bloodstream like a silky streak of surprise, crazy strong, achey wild. He tasted so good. He tasted like everything she’d been forbidden, everything she’d secretly dreamed of.

His tongue dove inside her mouth, combined tastes and textures, at the same time his knee eased between her legs. His hands swept her body-up, down, roaming, igniting the slope of her spine, her fanny, back up…

She twisted in his arms, not kissing him back-more-feeling inhaled. Taken in. Taken under. She’d liked kissing him before. She’d liked his touch. She’d liked that electric sensation of risk and desire, the rush of need and want. But this was different.

Recklessness. She’d never tasted it before. Heat. She’d never suffered from it before, not like this. She’d been afraid of fire her entire life-but somehow not with him.

Not this kind of fire.

She opened her eyes, saw his-dark, intent now, not playing. He looked at her as if she was the only woman he’d ever wanted, the only woman he’d ever needed. The hunger in his touch, his eyes, his mouth, was more than sexual. It was about loneliness. Gut loneliness. The kind where you knew there was no one else who could accept you, all of you, who could know you, all the way inside, and still want to be there.

She didn’t do fantasies like that. Ever.

But with him… Her breath caught when his palm found her breast, cupped, then squeezed. Her hand slid down his side, down his bare hip, knuckled inside, to cup where he was hard and hot. She squeezed.

“Okay,” he hissed. “You’re in real trouble now.”

His head disappeared under the covers. She didn’t quite remember when she’d lost her shirt, but her bra was still on, all a tangle, straps around her arms, cups pushed away. He got rid of it altogether, started sampling slopes and valleys of skin, found freckles between her breasts, found each nipple, analyzed each thoroughly with his tongue-until she was gasping for breath, and her legs reflexively clenching. He roamed down her tummy, found her navel and appendix scar…

“Hey,” she whispered. “Maybe…hold on there. Just for a second. Maybe…wait. Maybe I need to think about this.”

“No.”

“No? Huh? You can’t say no. If you vote no, we stop. If I vote no, we stop. Those are the rules.”

“Now, Lily, trust me. I know the rules. Come on, though. Give me a chance to be a hero. I’m in the striving class. Don’t know what I’m doing. You could help me learn. You could give me an achievement badge if I’m good. Or a whack upside the head if I goof this up. See? No risk.”

She almost laughed at his words. Only, Griff wasn’t a fledgling, and he knew-awesomely, brilliantly, inventively-exactly what he was doing. She didn’t. Oxygen locked in her lungs when he dipped lower, scooped her legs in his arms, and sampled tastes and textures with his whiskery cheek and his lips and his tongue.

She stopped thinking. Stopped breathing. Forgot her name. Forgot just about everything but that she was female, pure female, and Griff, damn him, was more man than she’d ever dreamed existed. She gulped in pleasure, greedily wanted more, needed more. Needed him. Yelped his name in her angriest tone, her bossy teacher tone. “Now, Griff, and quit fooling around-”

“Okay, okay, I’m coming up,” he promised her-only right then his landline rang.

Then her cell phone did its bell tone thing.

And then his cell phone did some kind of jubilant chime.

The three noxious sounds struck her as a blast from planet Earth. For a little while-for an insane, wonderful, breathtaking little while-she’d forgotten about reality. Her fire. His fire. The way that past seemed to be strangely spilling over into the here and now.

Maybe she’d been haunted all her life by fire. But she’d never been afraid…until coming home again.

Now she tasted fear. And the upsetting flavor of guilt-because somehow, her history with fire had managed to hurt Griff.

“I got a proposition for you.”

The only proposition Griff wanted was from Lily, but he turned around to face the new interruption. Debbie, from Debbie’s Diner, had straw-dry, big blond hair, boobs so big you wondered why she didn’t fall on her face just trying to walk and was decent to the core. She always chose the wrong men, made fried chicken so good it could make a rock salivate, never met a dog so ugly she wouldn’t take in. She was one of the best commerce neighbors on Main Street.

She peered into the burned-out shell of Griff’s ice-cream parlor and clucked in sympathy. “I was thinking, Griff, I got spare freezer space. We could put your ice creams on the menu in the diner until your own place is up and running again. That way, you could use up the ice cream so it’s not wasted, and I’d get more customers coming into the diner just for the ice cream. We’d both win.”

Debbie had barely left before Manuel Brook showed up, tapping him on the shoulder. Manuel came from a family of farm workers, and had gotten a business started cleaning carpets. He barely reached five-four, had beady little eyes, and a wife-some claimed-who regularly slapped him around. “Hey, Griff. You got a big mess here. I clean up fire and water messes before. Once you get the debris out, you call me. I’ll do the cleaning, my own time, on me.”

“That’s not necessary.” Griff said immediately, but it had been the same story all morning. Neighbors and friends stopped by, didn’t waste time sympathizing, just dug straight in with offers of help.

Margo, his insurance agent, had been on the site almost the minute he’d parked the car. “I know there are still questions as far as the investigation goes,” she told him. Margo was well over sixty, spare as a reed, hair the color of iron. “But I don’t want you worried about the claim. I sold you good coverage, and I’ll have a check to you as fast as we can get the details on paper and get it processed.”

Every kid who’d ever worked for him showed up through the morning as well-the ones who’d been in jail, the ones who couldn’t stop fighting, the ones who’d been drinking hard liquor since fourth grade. Not a clean-cut kid in the lot. Yet all of them showed up, offering to help, offering to shoot whoever did this, offering to stand guard, offering to hang with Griff in case anyone else tried to hurt him.

By noon, Griff couldn’t keep his eyes off the street. He hadn’t forgotten that wild body in bed with him this morning. For damn sure, he hadn’t forgotten what had unfortunately been interrupted by the blast of phone calls. He also hadn’t forgotten finding Lily sitting on the curb last night, waiting for him, hanging with his boys.

When they’d split this morning, she said that she was going back to the B and B, needed to shower, clean up, change clothes, and then she’d be here. It wasn’t as if either of them had set a timetable.

He hadn’t been worried about it-until the sheriff and fire chief had stopped by, taken him out back to have a quiet talk.

His fire hadn’t been accidental. Maybe Griff had already guessed that, but it was still another thing to have “arson” put in indelible ink.

His fire had started from a gasoline accelerant, exactly like the accelerant used in the deserted mill fire the day after Lily arrived in town. Exactly the same accelerant had been used in that long-ago fire that took her parents’ lives.

Gasoline was one of the most common accelerants arsonists used, the fire chief told him.

He got it.

But he’d never liked coincidences. And he didn’t like not knowing where Lily was.

Damn town was full of the best people a man could ask for in neighbors-friends, people who cared.

But someone wasn’t so nice. Two fires in less than two weeks? No record of arson in years, until Lily suddenly came back in town? It just didn’t make sense.

Lily couldn’t escape the B and B to save her life. As fast as she’d gotten here from Griff’s, she’d tiptoed in the back door, scooted up the back stairs in bare feet, and hustled inside her room. Trying not to make a sound, she’d peeled off her clothes, grabbed a satchel of toiletries and opened the door to go into the bathroom.

And there was Louella, standing there with a heap of fluff-dried pink towels. “I thought you’d might appreciate some fresh towels, honey.”

“Thank you so much.”

“The whole town’s talking about the fire at Griff’s. And I worried when you didn’t come in last night. But I told myself, Louella, it’s none of your business. She’s a grown woman, I told myself. But then I remembered, you don’t have any parents to watch out for you, and you’re young and pretty, and I don’t like to-”

“Louella, I absolutely have to take a shower.”

“Of course, you sweet thing. You just go on. I won’t say another word.”

And she didn’t, she just turned around and headed for the stairs-yet somehow, her beaming face was there when Lily opened the bathroom door twenty minutes later. “I wanted to tell you that I’d saved you some cinnamon rolls from breakfast. But also, since you missed breakfast, I thought, well, you might like a little sandwich with me.”

Lily had never lived with anyone so intrusive, but Louella was like an honorary grandmother. An unshakeable honorary grandmother. She managed to pull on clam diggers and a violet cami, swooshed up her hair with combs-she had to get it cut or she was going to go out of her mind. Louella watched her apply brush, lipstick, mascara.

And since Lily still hadn’t managed to shake her by then, she figured she might as well try grilling Louella. “Were you living here when the mill closed?”

“Of course I was. That mill closing almost killed the whole town.”

“Did you happen to know my dad? My mom?”

“Of course, honey pie. Your mom-she thought the sun rose and set on her daughters. She always had you dressed so cute. And y’all had manners, not like kids are raised now. All you girls could shake a stranger’s hand, say hello, sit quiet in church. You were angels, all three. Although I have to say, your older sister-”

“Cate.”

“Yes, that one. She had a little hellion in her. Used to make me laugh. I can remember one time, your mama must have wanted her to have a bath-she was maybe four? And Cate, now, she didn’t want it, ran out of the house stark naked with your mama chasing after her, carrying a baby under one arm, must have been you? And Cate, oh my…”

Lily wanted to laugh. She could easily picture her independent older sister being that kind of handful-but just then, she couldn’t be diverted. “Louella, do you know if there are people still living here who were connected to the mill back then? Anyone who might have known my dad?”

By then, Lily had herded Louella down the stairs, through the kitchen, had accepted a wrapped bag of something homemade and fragrant-but before Lily could leave, Louella had parked her ample body in front of the screen door.

“Well, yes,” she said slowly. “The owner of the mill back then was Webster Renbarker. Your daddy was his second in charge. The mill didn’t close because it wasn’t thriving, you know. The place did real well, once your dad took on the management reins. Everybody said so. The problem with Webster was that he got a brain tumor. Started acting goofy. Hid his own money from himself. Sabotaged his own shipments. Nobody could figure out what was going on until it was too late.”

“He died,” Lily assumed with a sinking heart.

“Oh, he’s alive. It was just nothing at that point could keep the mill from bankruptcy, between Webster’s shenanigans and his medical bills. Came a point, they took out the tumor. He lost the sight in one eye, as I recall. And he’ll never be what you’d call normal. Lots of days he’s fuzzy. That’s what I hear from the grapevine, anyhow-”

“I don’t suppose you know where he lives?”

“Why, sure I do. Lives in North Carolina, some place for seniors. Has some supervision. You know. That kind of place.”

“Okay.” For a few moments, Lily actually thought she had a real lead. She tried not to feel disappointed as she aimed firmly for the door. “Well, thanks for sharing all that, Louella-”

“A course, he’s here now.”

Lily whirled back. “Say what? You mean here? In Pecan Valley?”

“Well, yes, for a couple more days. He’s visiting his wife’s cousin, Barbara Marr, it’s an annual thing they do in the summer, bring him here for a week, take him back. You know the Marr house, the red-tile roof at the far end of Magnolia Drive? He was here last week at least. Remember seeing him at Debbie’s Diner. Not like he can’t do some things on his own. He just tends to be unpredictable, bless his heart. And when he’s home here, people look after him, not like anything was his fault. Right after…”

A minute later, Lily was gunning the engine of her rental Ford. If this Webster Renbarker was shortly leaving town, she had to try to reach him before the chance was gone. Griff was going to wonder where she was. She wanted to be with him, not gallivanting all over town on what was probably going to be a wild-goose chase.

But if there was even a small chance the long-ago fire had a connection to the immediate fires, she had to try.

She knew where the house with the red-tile roof was. It couldn’t take ten minutes to drive there-even less if she speeded, which she most certainly intended to do.