Hearts on Fire Read online

  Becca tilted her head back to look up at Jack. Right on cue, her stomach rumbled. She was thankful the music drowned out the sound.

  “Yeah, kind of,” she answered. “Dinner was good but …”

  “A little too fancy for my taste,” Jack finished her sentence. She gave him a smile.

  “When this song is over, why don’t we go get something to eat?” he added.

  “Oh you don’t have to do that. You can just take me home.” She glanced around the dance floor. “Or I could go home with my parents. That’s probably easiest.”

  “I would never take a date home hungry.”

  “Yeah well, you weren’t raised by wolves, right?”

  Immediately, she wished she could swallow the words back. She tilted her head down, but not before seeing his adam’s apple bob as he swallowed hard.

  “I’m sorry. I wasn’t thinking.” You’re never thinking when you need to be. That was the joke his mom was fond of making; Becca had heard of it from her own mother. Way to go. Remind him that his mother is dying. Real swift, Becca. “You can just take me home.” She leaned out of his arms, but he pulled her back in and bent his head to her ear.

  “I think we’ve fulfilled our filial duty here. Unless you’re really digging this music.”

  He was trying to make her laugh, and there was something incredibly sexy about it. Brandon had never tried to make her laugh. On the contrary, she’d always been worried that she would laugh at the wrong thing around him. It was nearly impossible to predict what would piss him off. She didn’t miss him.

  And what else was sexy? The feel of Jack’s body against hers. Hard, strong, made for rescuing people. And his sun kissed hair in a room full of grey. His breath on the lobe of her ear, sending unvoiced whispers down her spine.

  But Jack Wolfe was way out of her league. She didn’t miss Brandon, but those were the kind of guys that were attainable for her. Jack might poke fun at the “nerdy fraternity” he’d belonged to, but at least he’d gone to college and gotten into law school. Becca was lucky she had enough days in attendance after suspensions to graduate from St. Caroline High.

  She felt his lips brush her ear again.

  “Becca, I asked you to this event because our parents wanted me to. But I’m asking you to go get something to eat with me because I want to.” His hand slid from her lower back, over her hip—for a mere instant—and to her hand, which he clasped. “How does Nick’s sound?”

  The sensation of his fingers threading through hers made the whisperings in her body grow louder. “Nick’s Burger Barn? Sounds like there could be a milkshake in it for me.”

  “There is. Any flavor you want.”

  The song they had mostly stopped dancing to a few minutes ago finally ended—and not a moment too soon. Because that was quite possibly the sexiest thing anyone had ever said to her. And if she didn’t put some space between their bodies soon, her dress was going to melt right off.

  They said their goodbyes to her parents and Jack had the valet bring his dark green SUV around. He helped her up into the passenger seat. He pulled out the seatbelt for her, closed the door. He walked around to his side of the car, started the ignition, fiddled with the air conditioning vents on her side to get them just so. All the things her dad still did for her mother.

  Nick’s Burger Barn was busy, as it always was on a Saturday night—even in the off-season. With good reason, too. Nick’s made the best burgers, fries and shakes in the area. Nick was a transplant to St. Caroline, formerly a high-powered executive who’d gotten tired of the rat race in Washington, DC, and chucked it all to open a restaurant. The Burger Barn was housed in an actual barn that Nick had found in Vermont, then had disassembled and trucked to Maryland. It was quaint, but noisy.

  Jack and Becca stuck out like sore thumbs in their formal attire, even though Jack had left his tuxedo jacket and bowtie in the car. There was still a chasm between their outfits and the shorts, tee shirts, sundresses, and flip flops everyone else wore. Although Becca imagined that, with Jack’s height, he stuck out everywhere.

  “Let’s get it to go,” Jack suggested.

  “Good idea.”

  While they waited for their order to come out, Becca took in the restaurant. The Burger Barn was new since she’d moved away. Her sisters had brought her here once, on one of Becca’s rare visits home from Ohio. In many ways, St. Caroline was the same town she remembered from childhood. There were things that remained unchanged even from hundreds of years ago. People still made a living from fishing. City folks still came here to escape the summer heat.

  But things were different, too. The college was growing so there were more young people around. On more than one occasion, Becca had found herself driving down a back road, surprised to see a new mansion there. The town felt personally different, as well, less claustrophobic than when she was a teenager. As she mulled over that thought, a familiar figure stood up from one of the long picnic tables in the back of the restaurant. Ian Evers. There were still some aspects of the town that made her feel hemmed in, and one of them was walking straight toward her.

  She plastered a smile on her face as Ian approached, and wished hard for the kitchen to hurry up. Ian winked at her, then slapped Jack on the back.

  “Getting a bite to eat after the prom?”

  She saw the annoyed look in Jack’s eyes, but it disappeared before he was fully turned around and facing Ian. She wondered, not for the first time, why Jack and Ian had ever been friends. Ian was smart, to be sure, and he and Jack had been in lots of classes together. Calculus. Physics. The college prep classes. But Ian had always been a little obnoxious.

  Ian glanced over at her again. “At least he upgraded from the dog costume to a penguin one, eh?”

  Even though there were a couple of inches between their bodies, she felt Jack stiffen. “I thought he was rather cute as a dog.” She shot Jack a reassuring smile.

  “Number eighty-seven!” one of the counter staff called out.

  “That’s us,” Becca said. Saved by the bell. She walked back to the counter to retrieve their food. She held up the white paper bag when she returned. “It was nice running into you again, Ian,” she said and took a few steps toward the door. Jack shook Ian’s hand and joined her.

  “He knows, doesn’t he?” she said in a low voice as Jack pushed open the door to the parking lot.

  It wasn’t until they were back in the car that Jack answered. “Yes, he knows. I’m sorry.”

  “He seems a little antagonistic toward you. Or maybe it’s me.” Becca settled the paper bag onto her lap.

  “Here. Let me take that. You’ll get grease on your dress.” Jack’s long arms easily set the bag onto the back seat—but not before his fingertips accidentally brushed her silk-covered knee. “I’m sure it’s me, though I confess to not knowing why. Ian and I haven’t seen each other in years.”

  “Is he married?”

  Jack shrugged as he pressed the ignition button. “Not that I know of.” He shifted the car into drive. “How about we go to Secret Beach and eat?”

  “Secret Beach is fine.”

  They were quiet on the drive back through town. She wracked her brain for something, anything, to talk to Jack about. But her mind kept circling back to Ian. Of course, he knew what happened at the party. He’d probably told other people, too. Though if he had, then her parents would surely have heard and there was no way her mother wouldn’t broach that subject.

  “Becca?”

  Jack’s voice cut into her worrying. She hadn’t noticed that he had parked the car and killed the engine.

  “Sorry. I was … thinking.”

  “Thinking or overthinking?” He popped his seatbelt open, then turned back toward her. “I don’t care if Ian has told people. I’m not embarrassed that I hooked up with you. Embarrassed that I didn’t know what I was doing and therefore couldn’t make it any good for you …”

  She waved his concern away and he caught her hand midair.

&nb
sp; “Just don’t tell Ian how awful I was, okay?” he added.

  When she lifted her gaze from their joined hands to his face, she saw the boyish mischief in his eyes. “Okay then, for the record,” she smiled, “you were amazing. A true studmuffin—”

  “Maybe not a studmuffin?”

  She laughed. “A lady doesn’t kiss and tell then. How’s that?”

  His lips halted her laughter. Immediately she knew this wasn’t a kiss like the one in her mother’s kitchen. This was a serious kiss, a confident kiss … a premeditated kiss. An oh-god-this-feels-so-good-don’t-let-it-ever-stop kiss.

  He pulled back just far enough to murmur, “I don’t think there was any kissing to tell about, was there?”

  “If you had kissed me like that, I’m sure I would remember.”

  She felt his lips curve against hers in a smile.

  “I’m sure I didn’t have that kind of kiss in me back then.” His lips brushed hers again and made it official: every bone in her body now had the consistency of jelly. He sat back and, by the tiny flare of his nostrils, she could tell he was doing exactly what she was. Trying to get air into lungs.

  “We should probably eat,” he said, glancing at the Burger Barn bag in the back seat.

  “Before it gets cold,” she agreed—though Jack could probably reheat the fries just by looking at them.

  They walked down the narrow gravel path in companionable silence, kicking off their shoes when they reached the sandy beach. She spread the blanket Jack kept in his car for emergencies—he was the son of a firefighter, after all—on the sand and they sat down. The breeze blowing in off the water was too mild to cool either the air around them or the heat his kiss had stoked in her body.

  He opened the bag and they began to eat, the food not as cold as Becca expected. As hungry as she was, almost anything would have tasted good at that moment. The beach was empty, save for another couple sitting closer to the water—too engrossed in each other to notice Jack and Becca. She had come here with a boy or two in high school. When the beach was empty, people often did a little skinny dipping and the St. Caroline police tended to look the other way. Literally and figuratively.

  “You’re different than I thought you were in high school,” she said, between sips of chocolate milkshake.

  “Oh yeah? How’s that?”

  She considered her words for a moment. “I always thought you had a giant stick up your ass.”

  He clapped a hand over his mouth so he didn’t spit his own milkshake all over the sand. When he stopped laughing, he said, “I did have a giant stick up my ass back then. You’re absolutely right.” He grew serious again. “Though I’m thinking that you maybe weren’t quite the way I thought you were.”

  “What way was that?” Though Becca was all too aware of what people thought of her back then.

  “Tough little girl, mad at the world.”

  Her laugh was soft, but laced with sadness too. “I really was that way back then. But I’ve grown up since. I mean, I’m still a whirling dervish of disaster, but at least now I’m not trying to be.” She sipped at her milkshake. “It just seems to be my biggest natural talent.”

  “Being the opposite isn’t always all it’s cracked up to be.”

  “Why did you drop out of law school?”

  “Didn’t want to be a lawyer. That’s a fairly common revelation among law students, actually.”

  “So what do you want to be?”

  “What I want to be and what I’m allowed to be are two different things.”

  “You seem like the kind of person who could be anything you wanted. You’re smart.”

  “I want to be a firefighter, but it would break my mother’s heart.”

  “Because of your uncle.”

  He nodded. “I was volunteering with a fire department in California, but what I really want is a full-time position.”

  “Your father won’t hire you?”

  “Not for anything more than running around in a dalmatian costume.”

  “Well, I don’t know what to do with my life either. I’m here for the summer until I pay back my parents’ insurance deductible. After that, I don’t know. The only two things I’m good at are tending bar and quilting.”

  She balled up the foil wrapper her burger came in, and Jack lifted it from her fingers. He dropped it into the paper bag, then lay back on the blanket. Becca joined him.

  “The stars are out tonight,” she said.

  She felt the weight of his hand cover hers on the blanket.

  “We were stupid kids,” he said.

  “We were.”

  “Can we pretend that never happened?” His fingers closed a little tighter around hers.

  Becca thought of the scars on her stomach, and the little girl in Ohio. Not really, no.

  “And then what?” she asked. She watched a spot of light move across the black ink of the sky. A plane headed off to somewhere. She swallowed a yawn. It was late, and this was turning into a serious conversation. One she was too tired to have.

  “And then we’re friends. So I don’t have to spend all summer hanging out with my brother or Ian.”

  “Well. I wouldn’t wish that on anyone.” She closed her eyes for a moment. Agree to be friends with Jack? Sure, why not? She doubted his interest in being friends with her would last the entire summer anyway.

  Jack looked down at Becca’s closed eyes and peaceful face. Had she just fallen asleep? He watched for another moment. Yup. She had. Her tiredness had been evident on her face when he picked her up earlier that evening. It sounded like she was burning the candle at both ends.

  In sleep, though, her face was relaxed and smooth. Her fancy hairdo had started coming undone in the night breeze. Truth be told, he had never particularly liked waking up next to a woman. It made him claustrophobic, the weight of all the possible expectations that morning could bring—beyond just pancakes and coffee. But the idea of waking up next to Becca Trevor held a surprising appeal, and not just because she was so damn beautiful right now.

  How had everyone not noticed how gorgeous she was before? How had it escaped his notice? That silky, cinnamon-colored hair … her creamy skin, not a line or blemish in sight … the long, graceful neck … she wasn’t just pretty for a town the size of St. Caroline. Becca would turn heads in San Francisco, for sure.

  Jack had dated pretty girls before, even let some of them spend the night. But it wasn’t just Becca’s general loveliness that was slaying him tonight. When they were dancing … it felt so completely, utterly right to have her in his arms.

  He looked up and down the beach. The other couple was gone now, and it was just him and Becca. Alone. He stared out over the dark water of the bay. So much had happened in his life in the past seven years. And there was so much that hadn’t happened. He was a different person, undeniably, but maybe not necessarily a better one. The more time he spent around Becca, the clearer it became that she had grown into a better person. Certainly, she was one of those people who could get more done in a week than most people accomplished in a month. She played a pretty good game of frisbee, too. He smiled into the darkness at the memory of her playing with Oliver’s boys in her parents’ backyard.

  There was a centeredness about her. His own life was anything but centered these days. In fact, it felt as though everything was coming apart at the seams. His mom’s cancer, his lack of direction, his inability to find something—anything—he wanted to do other than be a firefighter.

  He lay back down on the blanket and rolled onto his side to watch her sleep. Did he remember thinking she was pretty that night at the party? He peered deep into the recesses of his brain, looking for such a memory. To be honest, his memories of that night weren’t that sharp—and getting fuzzier the more time he spent around her. Maybe they were never that sharp to begin with. It wasn’t like he had spent a lot of time thinking about it—or Becca—in the intervening years. Really, the clearest memory he had was of that damn sock monkey staring at him wi
th those unseeing, plastic eyes.

  He brushed the back of his hand against her smooth cheek, then looked down at her body stretched out beside him. The fabric of her dress was so pliable it outlined every line and curve of her figure. The gentle swell of her breasts, the flat plane of her stomach, the points of her hipbones. Maybe it was just as well that he couldn’t recall any of that. She was damned hard to resist as it was.

  He touched her cheek again and she stirred. “Hey sleepyhead,” he said softly. “I think I should take you home.”

  Chapter 18

  Becca dropped red and white swizzle sticks into the tall glasses of bright blue liquid and slid the tray across the bar to the waitress. She ducked beneath the bar to open another box of swizzle sticks. The Yankee Doodle kids drink Mike had concocted was popular today. That Skipjack’s was so busy on the Fourth of July surprised her. She remembered going to picnics and swimming as a child on the fourth, not eating out at a fancy resort. But she was glad for the hours.

  When she stood up, swizzle sticks in hand, Jack was sitting there. She’d neither seen nor heard from him since the night of the hospital gala. The night she fell asleep on him at the beach. Exciting date I am.

  “Hey there,” he said. “Can I get one of those?”

  She held out a swizzle stick. “Just this or do you want a drink to go with it?” He smiled and her heart stuttered a beat.

  “I want one of those things you’re giving all the kids.”

  “A Yankee Doodle?”

  He nodded.

  “There’s no alcohol in it.”

  “I should hope not.”

  “Do you want me to put some in it? It would probably be good with a little rum.”

  “No, I want what the kids are getting.”

  She gave him a puzzled look, but set about making the drink for him. “What are you up to today?” She tried to keep her voice casual, as though she hadn’t spent even one minute since Saturday night thinking about him. Or that kiss in his car. A kiss he had repeated when he took her home and walked her right up to the door of her parents’ house.