Hearts on Fire Read online

  God, he loved that sound. Not that he was telling that to God. He and God were not on speaking terms at the moment. Her laugh made him think of the early morning cooing and chirping of birds. Not that she sounded like a bird, but that was the way it made him feel—that feeling of a new day, peaceful and calm, before any shit could hit any fans.

  He opened the door on his side and unfolded his body from the car. They passed each other at the trunk, and Becca slipped into the driver’s seat while Jack took the passenger side. Immediately, he realized his mistake. But he didn’t care. He even forgot about his father standing on the sidewalk mere feet away.

  Because the loveliest girl he could imagine was looking right at him, searching his face for … what? Truth be told, Jack’s experience with women couldn’t be classified as expert level. In bed, yeah, he thought he was pretty hot stuff by now. But the mysteries of a woman’s mind? Totally clueless. Whatever was going on behind Becca’s calm grey eyes right then, he couldn’t begin to fathom. He just knew that he liked having those eyes trained on him.

  “Your dad’s here,” she said at last. “Do you need a ride home?”

  He blinked. “No, um. Thanks though. I’ve got to go back up …” He made an upward movement with his hand, barely missing the low ceiling of her car.

  He felt like he should kiss her before he got out of the car. Rationally, he knew that was not the proscribed action for this moment. Or this situation. But the moment felt like the end of a date, somehow, and his hands itched to reach over and cup her face, draw her toward him, pull her soft lips onto his. The air was charged, and not from the storm that was still raging outside.

  “So, Saturday?” she asked.

  Her gentle question nudged him back to reality, and more realistic expectations. “Right. Saturday. What time should I pick you up?” They were definitely going in his SUV. More room for him. And he was not taking that damned monkey along. He fought the urge to glance at it. Bad enough that his peripheral vision allowed him to see its grubby stuffed paws clinging to the posts of the headrest.

  “When does it start?”

  “Cocktail hour is six to seven, according to the web site,” he answered.

  “Five-thirty then?”

  “Five-thirty it is.”

  He felt his head start to incline toward her before he caught himself. Right, no kissing. He unfolded himself from her car and watched as she pulled away from the curb, resisting the urge to flip his middle finger at the monkey. He shouldn’t feel such animosity toward a ratty old stuffed animal, but he’d taken intro psych in college. He was transferring his guilt over what happened in the back seat of her car to the monkey. Something like that.

  “Nice of you to get Becca’s car for her.”

  Jack turned toward his father. Good thing you didn’t kiss her. He’d completely forgotten about his father’s presence.

  “Yeah well, I wasn’t raised by wolves, you know.”

  His father stretched his arm around Jack’s shoulders and squeezed him hard into his side. They walked wordlessly toward the hospital’s automatic doors. You’re acting like you’re being raised by wolves. How many times had he and his brothers heard those words from his mother when they were growing up? Admonishment and joke at the same time.

  As the hospital doors parted before them, Tim Wolfe spoke. “We’re going to be so screwed without her, Jackie.”

  Jack reached his own arm around his father and squeezed him back, just as hard. Screwed! Do you hear that? If you don’t care about me, care about my dad. He doesn’t deserve to spend the rest of his life without the only woman he’s ever loved. Only woman!

  “I know. Totally screwed.”

  Upstairs, Angie Wolfe was alone again in the room. His father leaned over and kissed her forehead. Her eyes fluttered open and she immediately reached for his hand.

  “Sorry it took me awhile to get here,” Tim said. “Accident on the bridge and then I had to wait while Jackie here played valet downstairs.”

  “Oh? How so?” His mother’s eyes were soft as she glanced toward Jack, the fear he had seen in them earlier now gone. Of course. His father was here now. The man who had pledged to care for her until death do them part. A man who honored those vows for thirty-five years, and this is what he gets?

  “Jack went and fetched Becca Trevor’s car for her so she wouldn’t get soaked.”

  Jack lifted the hem of his wet shirt.

  “Well, my boys weren’t raised by wolves.” His mother managed a weak smile.

  A choking sound came from his father’s chest, before he covered it with a forced cough.

  “I was raised by wolves,” Jack said. That had always been his and his brothers’ standard rejoinder. We are raised by wolves! Followed by the laughter of kids who thought themselves clever … kids who knew even back then that they were thoroughly, unconditionally loved. Of the three Wolfe boys—Oliver, Matt, and Jack—only Mattie had inflicted a rough adolescence on their parents. Oliver had been the stereotypical oldest child, responsible to a fault. Jack, as the youngest, had been “pampered and privileged” (in his brothers’ words), with no reason to rebel.

  “She still has that sock monkey in her car,” Tim redirected the conversation.

  “Oh, she still has that old thing?” His mother’s loving gaze returned to her husband.

  “What’s the story with that?” Jack asked. When he asked Becca directly, she had said simply “sentimental value.” That seemed true of most stuffed animals, but he hadn’t pressed for a fuller answer. For a wild child, she was pretty reserved. Not that she seemed to be all that wild anymore.

  His mother lifted her stubbled head from the pillow. “When Michelle and Dan brought her home from Ohio, she wouldn’t let go of that stuffed animal for a week.”

  Chapter 16

  “Where’s Jack?” Becca’s mother joined her in the Grand Ballroom of the Kings Landing Country Club. All around them, the hospital’s annual fundraising gala was in full swing. “It looked like you two were having a good time at dinner.”

  Becca nodded. Her worries about not having anything to talk about with Jack had not come to fruition. Jack turned out to be surprisingly easy to talk to, one of those people who seemed to know at least a little bit about everything. And he’d been happy to tell Becca all about San Francisco, a city she dearly wanted to visit someday.

  “The food was good, too,” she said. She wanted to bypass questions about Jack or the ridiculous notion that this was in any way a real date. Something she hadn’t been able to get through Cassidy and Charlotte’s thick heads. Her parents and Jack’s had conspired to fix them up, that’s all. The evening was half over. They’d made it through the cocktail hour and dinner. A band was setting up at the end of the ballroom. She wasn’t sure whether Jack would want to dance with her or not. On the one hand, the last time she had slow-danced with someone was in high school and that would not have been in heels. Sneakers, probably. The odds of tripping over her own feet tonight were pretty high.

  On the other hand … Jack was looking especially fine in his tuxedo. He cleaned up nicely. Becca bit back a smile at that thought, then remembered her mother’s original question. She glanced across the ballroom.

  “I think he got waylaid by those men over there.”

  Her mother followed her gaze to where Jack was standing in a circle of older men. “Maybe he’s being pressed for legal advice. I lost your father to a couple who wanted to talk to him about vaccination schedules.” She reached out and adjusted the halter strap of Becca’s dress, the pretty blue and white one. “Let’s go peruse the auctions. Your daddy has his eye on a salmon fishing trip for six to Alaska.”

  “What are you bidding on?” Becca asked, as she and her mother left the ballroom for the smaller adjacent room where the auction tables were set up. Becca had no plans to bid on anything. Working as many shifts at Skipjack’s as she could was putting money in her bank account to repay her parents for the insurance deductible. She had splurged on
a dress for the gala, but it could be dry cleaned and taken to a consignment shop next week. Otherwise, she was spending as little as she could.

  “A Broadway weekend in New York. But I’m not going crazy with the bidding in order to win.”

  The auction room was crowded with guests looking for something to do between dinner and dancing. The gala was Talbot Hospital’s main fundraising event, and popular with well-heeled St. Carolinians, as well as some of the summer residents. Becca hadn’t been to the country club since the time she was invited to a pool party there in elementary school.

  “How much were the tickets for this?” she asked.

  “Mmm, your father picked them up this year.”

  “How much were they last year?”

  “Does it matter, Becs? I’m sure Jack can afford it.”

  No, he probably can’t. She knew how much security guards made. Brandon had been one for awhile. For twelve days, to be exact, before he got fired.

  “You and dad paid for mine, didn’t you?”

  Her mother’s sigh was audible. “Yes, we did. You need to learn to let people do nice things for you, Becca.”

  “Thank you. I’m glad you didn’t make Jack pay for it.”

  “Jack could have said no if he wanted to.”

  Becca knew that wasn’t true, not really. Jack would do anything for his mom right now. She remembered how strained his face had looked when they ran into each other at the hospital last weekend.

  They approached the first table, but Becca’s eyes were drawn to the far end of the room. The fire quilt, all one thousand seven hundred and fifty triangles of it, hung on the wall. She nudged her mom.

  “Did you know they were going to hang it?”

  Her mother looked up. “Yes. Cassidy and Natalie came over to advise them on it.”

  “Why doesn’t anyone ever tell me anything?” she said with a gentle laugh.

  “We wanted it to be a surprise. Looks gorgeous up there.”

  They moved closer to the quilt. It was amazing—put a quilt up on a wall and it looked like art. And yet, it was the best thing to sleep under. Becca could never sleep well in a hotel with their heavy, scratchy comforters. Even down duvets made her feel like her body was swimming in fluff. But a quilt with a thin, low-loft batting was soft and supple. It conformed to the body like a lover’s embrace in the middle of the night. Or what she thought that would feel like, anyway.

  She cocked her head and studied the quilt. “I think I’d piece it differently if I could do it again.”

  “How so? I think it looks fine.”

  Becca pointed to the left side of the quilt. “The balance between the light and dark fabrics is off over there. And see the—” She squinted and counted off rows. “—ninth row from the bottom? There’s a stretch there where the fabrics all have really small, dense patterns. I would break that up with some solids or larger prints.” She sighed. “I was in a rush to get it done.”

  Michelle shook her head, then hugged Becca into her side. “No one else would even notice. Come on. Let’s go see what the bidding on it looks like.”

  Someone could have knocked Becca over with a feather when she read down the list of bids. “It’s up to twenty-four hundred dollars,” she said quietly. At the carnival, the fire department was lucky if the fire quilt brought in five hundred dollars.

  Her mother patted her on the back. “And the night’s not over yet.”

  Jack watched Becca and her mom disappear into the auction room, desperately wanting to join them—if for no other reason than to extricate himself from his current company. The CEO of the hospital had pulled him into the circle of older businessmen to talk about tech stocks and the technology company Jack worked for.

  As a security guard—which, of course, the men didn’t know. Jack wondered how the CEO even knew what he was supposedly doing. He doubted his parents were in that social circle. Maybe the man’s house had caught on fire? Whatever the case, Jack needed to get away before his lie was caught out.

  Liar liar pants on fire.

  Some fires couldn’t be extinguished before they burned down everything you held dear. Like his parents’ respect.

  So far, he had held his own in the conversation. It wasn’t as though he knew absolutely nothing about the company he worked for. He kept up with the business press, but he certainly didn’t know as much as a person working in the legal department would.

  “So should I invest in Bumbershoot or not?” a balding, heavyset man asked. He owned a chain of restaurants in the mid-Atlantic and a summer home in St. Caroline.

  Another man laughed and slapped Jack square between the shoulders. “You can’t ask a lawyer that. He’ll qualify his answer with ten pages of legalese.”

  The men’s raucous laughter rolled over Jack. Pictures flipped past in his mind … the men smoking cigars outside later that night, playing golf here at the country club tomorrow afternoon, their wives putting their dry-cleaned tuxedos away for the next philanthropic event on the calendar. That was the future Jack had bailed on, the life he hadn’t been able to picture himself living. He didn’t care about the stock market or IPOs or whatever the next hot business idea was. If you were a good student, you were expected to want that kind of life. Sure, Jack was smart … and smart enough to know he’d be miserable sitting behind a desk all day.

  Becca and her mother returning from the auction room caught his eye. He hadn’t intended to leave her this long, but the conversation with these men had gone on and on. He wondered how high the bidding on her quilt was now. It was impressive, at least to his untrained eye. He admired people who could create things like that with their hands.

  The CEO noticed Jack’s diverted attention. “Looks like we’ve kept you from your lovely date.” He reached out his hand and pumped Jack’s in a firm handshake.

  Jack was relieved to get away before the men figured out he really wasn’t a lawyer. Crossing the room, he caught Becca’s eye just as the band struck a few warm-up notes. The thought of her in his arms as they danced set every nerve ending in his body aswoon. She looked beautiful tonight, and he told her as much when he picked her up at the Trevors’ house. Her dress had swished around her legs as she walked to his car, each step revealing a shapely calf. And those white-strapped heels gave her hips a sway that he’d barely been able to pull his eyes up from. He was lucky he hadn’t fallen off the curb of the sidewalk.

  The band launched into a slow song and couples began filling the parquet dance floor. He watched as Dan Trevor whisked his wife away from Becca’s side. In high school, his perception of her had been that of a wild child. How bad could Becca have been back then, really? With Dan and Michelle Trevor for parents? Her father was a pediatrician, for heaven’s sake.

  When he reached her, he held out his arm. “Dance?” he asked, not one hundred percent sure she’d really accept.

  But she did, allowing Jack to lead her into the middle of the dance floor. He was careful to stay away from her parents, guessing she’d feel more comfortable that way—and he wouldn’t have to worry so much about holding her too tight.

  Because thoughts of holding her tight were just about the only thoughts his brain was juggling right now.

  He pulled her into his arms. The top of her head barely came up to the base of his throat, even in her heels. That inch between her cheek and his pectoral muscles would be so easy to close. Her flower-scented hair was pulled up into some kind of swirly style, sexy and pretty all at the same time. He let his hand settle on her lower back, on the fabric of her dress—thin, silky fabric that let the warmth of her skin seep into his palm. She felt so right, so true, in his arms. He’d been too much of a nervous virgin to notice that seven years ago. Not a virgin anymore. And, surprisingly, not feeling that nervous either. As they moved to the music—some sappy eighties song his parents liked—he imagined himself peeling her dress off in a darkened room. He’d stand there for a moment and admire her body in lingerie. Although given that her back was completely
exposed—the dress simply didn’t exist between the tie at her neck and her waist—his imagination was leading him to believe that there was no bra in this scenario.

  He needed to stop thinking about this, or else he was going to end up walking off the dance floor with a hard-on. Right past her parents.

  Just as he was about to loosen his arms an inch, their feet collided and Becca stumbled. Automatically, he tightened his grip to keep her from falling.

  “Sorry,” she said, her voice sounding a little breathless. “I haven’t done this since high school.”

  When he felt her balance steady, he relaxed his arms around her. “The last time I did this was in college. In the basement of a fraternity house at a party.” He got the two of them back into rhythm. “It’s hard to dance when your shoes are sticking to all the old beer that’s been spilled on the floor.”

  Her body jiggled with laughter, a movement that sent his mind right back into the gutter.

  “You were in a fraternity?”

  “Yeah. I did eventually outgrow my nerdiness.” The song they were dancing to ended and another began. He didn’t recognize the new song, but who cared about music anyway? There was a pleasant enough humming coursing through his veins right now. “Well okay, so I pledged the nerdy fraternity.” Her body jiggled with laughter again, the exact effect he’d been going for.

  “You’re a good dancer.”

  Her compliment warmed his chest. He wanted to be a good dancer with her, wanted to be a good … this is not a real date. Their parents had set this up. But he was too old to let his parents determine whether something was a real date or not.

  He was starting to want real.

  Chapter 17

  “Are you hungry?”