Hearts on Fire Read online

  She was wrong, a fact she admitted to herself within the first five minutes. The swamp was like nothing she’d ever seen before, like a place from a movie. The big, ribbed tree trunks rising from the river … their long branches stretching like arms across the water … the heavy green canopy of leaves that blocked nearly all the light. The swamp was dark and quiet, the only sounds those of the wind whispering through the leaves and the almost imperceptible splash of their paddles dipping in and out of the water.

  Imperceptible until Becca’s paddle smacked Jack’s paddle with a loud crack.

  “Sorry!” she yelped and a large white bird, hidden from view until that moment, spread its wings and lifted off from the shore. “I guess I lost the rhythm. I wasn’t paying attention. Sorry.” She glanced back over her shoulder at Jack, expecting to see a look of annoyance on his face. Instead, his face was perfectly calm and composed.

  “No worries.”

  “I’m not that coordinated.”

  She felt the touch of his fingers on her shoulder blade. “You don’t need to paddle at all, if you don’t want to. I can do it.”

  She let her paddle rest across the rim of the boat’s cockpit. Water dripped onto her bare thighs, prickling her skin into goose bumps.

  “Thanks for bringing me here,” she said quietly. She felt his fingers brush her shoulder again. It was almost magical—the swamp and his touch.

  “This was always my zen place. In a kayak on the water.”

  “You never seemed like the kind of person who needed a zen place.”

  She felt him smoothly steer the kayak around the knobby knees of the cypress trunks that jutted up from the water.

  “Everyone needs a zen place.”

  His voice was deep and comforting. Had she ever noticed that before? She could picture him as a lawyer, standing in a courtroom and addressing the judge and jury. People would believe everything he said.

  “Quilting is my zen place. Guess that’s not a place, though.”

  “The zen is probably more important than the location.”

  After a few more minutes of quiet paddling, she asked about the fire at the Secretary of State’s property. It was the talk of the town, even at Quilt Therapy. “I wasn’t there. I swear.”

  His voice broke into an amused chuckle. “You were on Oliver’s boat, too, and we weren’t set ablaze by any fireworks.”

  “True. Maybe the presence of a firefighter cancelled me out.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me you love fireworks? I would have gone below with Cam.”

  “Who told you that?” She lifted her paddle again and dipped it into the water.

  “Your dad. He was dropping off a casserole at my parents’ house the other day.”

  “Oh. Most people like fireworks, don’t they? Not the end of the world if I miss one year.”

  “You missed the chance to see them from the water. You might not be in St. Caroline next year.”

  “You might not, either,” she countered. Almost certainly won’t be. “So what caused the fire at the Barretts’?” Time to change the subject. Where Jack was going to be next summer shouldn’t matter to her. Didn’t matter, she mentally corrected herself.

  “A cigarette. Apparently someone tossed one into a bush next to the house.”

  “Hmm. Sounds like Max the Fire Dog needs to do some more educational presentations.” There was a playful poke in her side.

  “My father’s promoted me to a paid firefighter for the summer.”

  “I thought your—”

  “I haven’t told her yet. But the department is short-staffed and he’s getting a lot of grief from the governor over the Barretts’ fire.”

  “What could your father have done differently?”

  “Not much, probably. But it doesn’t look good to be short-staffed. St. Caroline’s in a bit of a bind. We don’t really have the year-round population to justify a larger fire department, but the summer residents expect a big city level of service.”

  “And after the summer?”

  He was quiet for a long while. Becca waited. What kind of answer did she want to hear? There was no long-term potential between them, unless they could be intimate only in the dark where he couldn’t see the scars from her pregnancy. On the other hand, spending time with Jack was … easy. Brandon was so much work all the time. His moods had to be managed. It was like walking on eggshells; she never knew what was going to crack the peace.

  Jack wasn’t like that. Everything about him said calm, steady, levelheaded. She would miss him when he went back to California. Miss him as a friend.

  But even being just friends seemed unrealistic, given the secret she was keeping from him. What kind of friendship was based on that?

  “After the summer,” Jack’s answer interrupted her thoughts. “I don’t know. I can’t even imagine what it’s going to be like.”

  He wasn’t talking about his career options or staying on at the St. Caroline fire department. If they weren’t squeezed into these two separate cockpits on the kayak, she would have turned around and wrapped her arms around him. He was in so much pain over his mother’s illness, Becca wanted to just take it all away.

  She looked back at him over her shoulder. His face was still composed, but tighter. He wasn’t in his zen place anymore.

  “When I think of leaving St. Caroline,” he went on, “I think of going back to my normal life. But life isn’t going to be normal again, no matter where I am.”

  Keeping one hand on her paddle, Becca reached her other hand back toward him. He took her offered hand in his and an odd sensation shot up her arm. She felt comfortable with Jack. Connected to him. Maybe it was just that she’d had his DNA in her body seven years ago, had grown his child—their child—in her womb. Maybe he was forever imprinted on her.

  But that didn’t explain the heated look she was seeing in his eyes right now. Or the fact that he hadn’t let go of her hand.

  “The minute we’re out of this kayak, I am kissing the everloving hell out of you,” he said, his face still composed. “Just so you know.”

  And he did. He expertly navigated the long boat up to the shore where his car was parked in the small lot. He climbed out, then took Becca’s paddle from her, and then took her hand to help her onto shore. He leaned over to lift the boat from the water. Becca stepped back to make way for him to carry the boat over to the car. Instead, he simply set the kayak on the ground and turned to her.

  “You can say ‘no.’” His long fingers wrapped around her biceps and pulled her into him. She looked up into his eyes, which were no longer a milky shade of chocolate, but dark with determination and desire. She knew that if she said “no,” he would respect that. His fingers would uncurl from her arms. He would step away from her. She would no longer feel the heat of his chest wrapping around her shoulders, her ribcage.

  “Yes.” The word came out more firmly, more confidently, than the whispered permission she had intended.

  Her heart fluttered wildly as he lowered his head to hers. Someone moaned at the first touch of their lips together. “Someone” was her. That tiny sound unleashed something in both of them, and she reached her hand behind his head, threaded her fingers into his soft blonde hair. She felt a strong hand on her lower back, pressing her hips into his. The kiss deepened and it was like the ground beneath her feet opened up and she dropped into it, weightless and untethered. He kissed her and kissed her, then kissed her some more. When it was over, they clung to each other, breathless and stunned, next to the cypress swamp with its eerie, sun-dappled gloom and trees’ knees. He cupped her head gently against his hard chest, and Becca knew she had just found her zen place.

  Jack’s pager went off the minute his car crossed the town line. He swallowed the groan that rose up in his throat. There went his plan to take Becca out to lunch. But after demanding that his father send him out on calls, he couldn’t very well be annoyed—even if the fire he really wanted to attend to right now was the one raging in his body.
He doubted the feel of her lips parting beneath his was going to fade anytime soon.

  He hoped not.

  He listened as the dispatcher relayed the details. Bay Acres Nursing Home. He looked at Becca, sitting in the passenger seat. The Trevors’ house wasn’t exactly on the way to the station. She was realizing that, too.

  “I can walk to the shop from the firehouse,” she said.

  “You sure?” Not that he had much choice. He couldn’t afford to be the last one there.

  “No problem. I’m sure someone at the shop will give me a ride home.” She smiled broadly at him, which did absolutely nothing to put out his own personal fire.

  At the station, he gave her a quick peck on the lips then ran inside to suit up and jump in the engine. Matt was waiting in the driver’s seat.

  “How’d the kayaking go?” Matt inquired as he pulled the engine out onto the street. “Anyone go in?”

  “No. And it was fine.”

  “Just ‘fine?’ You’re quite the loverboy there, bro.” Matt rolled his eyes.

  “If you weren’t driving, I’d hit you right now.”

  “Just kidding, Jack. Chill. It’s not like you and Becca haven’t …”

  Jack’s head spun to look hard at his brother’s profile. “Haven’t what?”

  “Hooked up.”

  Jack remained quiet, studying Matt’s face. “We’ve only gone out a few times.”

  Matt chuffed out his breath, and Jack couldn’t tell whether it was a laugh or a snort of derision. “You know what I’m talking about.”

  “Who told you that?” Jack already knew the answer to that question, or hoped he did.

  “Ian. Apparently he was there?”

  “Not there there.”

  “Yeah, I should hope not. I wouldn’t want to watch your scrawny ass—”

  Jack socked his brother in the upper arm, million dollar fire engine be damned. “Is this common knowledge around town?”

  Matt shoved Jack’s fist away. “I don’t know, man. What does it matter? I doubt she told anyone. She moved away that summer. Maybe she was too embarrassed to stick around.” He jerked out his elbow. “Don’t make me pull this truck over.”

  Matt pulled the engine up to the Bay Acres Nursing Home, a sprawling one-story brick building. Jack and Matt were directed to help evacuate residents. It was a kitchen fire and not big enough to likely spread, but the safety of the residents was paramount. As he quickly pushed a gentleman in a wheelchair down the hall, he remembered his mom saying there was no way they could ever put her in a nursing home unless it had high speed internet and a bookmobile came by every other day. And they brought her a cappuccino from Two Beans every morning.

  The crazy thing was, his father would have done all that and more. His father would have been one of those spouses who moved into the nursing home too, just to be with his wife. Jack wanted that kind of relationship. His father was right—he was different from his brothers. Mattie? It was hard to imagine him ever settling down. Oliver? He had a good, stable marriage with Serena and they were awesome parents to Mason and Cam. But if there was a spark there, Jack had never been able to see it. Oliver seemed to have been born middle-aged.

  Jack wanted a woman who took his breath away, a woman he couldn’t keep his hands off of, a woman he couldn’t stop daydreaming about. As he went back inside to fetch another resident, he tried not to count up all the hours he’d spent daydreaming about Becca Trevor. They were the unlikeliest pair, weren’t they? And yet being with her felt so right. Easy. Relaxing. Like he didn’t have to impress her or worry that she was judging him.

  Which maybe meant they were more friends than anything else. Except she had let him kiss the everloving hell out of her at the swamp. She had kissed him back, too.

  Chapter 21

  Becca sat in the comfortable upholstered chair in her bedroom, her lap and legs completely covered by Jack’s wedding quilt. A hoop stretched the section of the quilt she was working on. It was late afternoon and she was back in her zen place, her real zen place—not in Jack Wolfe’s arms. That could never be it, as good as it had felt to be there that morning.

  And it had felt really good. Scary good.

  She rocked the tiny quilting needle back and forth through the quilt top, taking several small stitches and then pulling the thread through. And then repeating the motion over and over, as though she were in a trance. Quilting was her safe place, as well. She could do this. Here, lost in a quilt, she was competent. She knew what she was doing. With Jack Wolfe, she was out of her depth.

  Sure, she had dated men before. Lived with Brandon for over a year. But none of them had been serious prospects for settling down—and that had been okay because she’d been too young to settle down. But Jack Wolfe …? Any woman would be lucky to settle down with him. Only she could never be that woman. She’d have to make up some story to explain away the c-section scar on her stomach. Brandon had gotten her pregnant and then she had miscarried late in the pregnancy. Except her parents and sisters knew she hadn’t been pregnant in recent years. As far as they knew, she had never been pregnant. And a lie like that was hardly a good basis for a relationship, especially one with a man like Jack.

  A good man.

  “Hey there.”

  She yelped and felt a sharp prick in her finger. She jerked it away from the quilt so she wouldn’t bleed on the white fabric. Then she looked up. The good man himself was standing in her doorway, looking good enough to eat. His blonde hair was damp ... his shoulders broad beneath his green polo golf shirt … his hips narrow beneath the leather braided belt looped through his shorts.

  “You look nice,” she said.

  “I’d say the same for you but, honestly, I can’t tell whether you even have anything on under all that.”

  If the innuendo in his words hadn’t fired the deep blush soaking her cheeks, the unmistakable innuendo in his smile would have. She secured the quilting needle in the fabric then lifted the quilt from her body to reveal the rolled up denim shorts she was wearing and now-wrinkled linen blouse.

  “Darn,” he said. Then he laughed. “If you blush any more, your face is going to burst into flames.”

  “I think there’s a fire extinguisher in the kitchen.” But something in his eyes said he wasn’t interested in extinguishing what he was starting. “To what do I owe the pleasure of your visit? And do my parents know you’re here? Or did you sneak in the back?”

  “Your mother told me I could come up.”

  He took a step into the room and sat on the edge of her bed. And didn’t that fire up all sorts of ideas? Becca tried not to go there.

  “I didn’t get to buy you lunch,” he went on. “So I’m here to offer dinner. Something nicer than the Burger Barn.”

  She looked down at her shorts and wrinkled shirt. “I’m not dressed for anything nicer than the Burger Barn.”

  “So put on a cute dress and meet me downstairs.”

  Her mouth fell open. This was a new side of Jack Wolfe—one she kind of liked. Flirty. Unexpected.

  Five minutes later, Becca did meet him downstairs in a button-down linen dress and strappy sandals, her hair pulled up into a loose chignon. Jack was discussing major league baseball standings with her dad, but he looked over as soon as she appeared.

  “Is Skipjack’s okay?” he asked. “Just kidding. I got us a table at the Blue Crab.”

  “Have her back by ten, son,” her father said. Her mother elbowed him in the ribs, and he winked at Becca. “Just kidding.” He made a shooing motion at Becca and Jack. “Just have her home by tomorrow evening.”

  “Hmm, you have quite a generous curfew,” Jack murmured as they walked down the driveway to his car.

  “Don’t get any ideas.”

  “Too late for that.” He opened the passenger side door for her. “Way too late.”

  “Inside or out?” the hostess at the Blue Crab Bistro asked.

  Becca looked at Jack. “Do you have a preference?” He shook his head.
“Outside then,” Becca replied.

  They followed the waitress through the crowded restaurant and out into the back courtyard. Becca tried her best to ignore the little voice in her head. You chose outside because it’s more romantic. But it was impossible to ignore the truth of that, because the Blue Crab Bistro’s brick-walled courtyard, softly lit by gas sconces, was one of the most romantic spots in all of St. Caroline. Countless marriages had begun with a proposal right here.

  She hoped Jack wasn’t aware of that particular fact.

  The waitress led them to a table near the back. Most of the tables in the courtyard were big enough for only two people, and spaced far enough apart to allow for private conversation. Jack pulled out Becca’s chair for her, then the waitress handed them menus.

  Jack looked around before opening his. “I’ve never been back here. Can you believe that? It’s … quaint. I feel like I should be plotting the overthrow of the crown.”

  They ordered drinks—white wine for her, a beer on tap for him. The waitress brought out a basket of warm bread and butter. They ordered their meals—salmon salad for her, the pecan-crusted trout for him. Then Becca held her breath in anticipation of the awkward silence she was sure was about to happen. The hospital gala? That was an arranged date. Kayaking this morning? Fun, but hard to converse with one person sitting behind the other in a boat. Right now? This was the most date-like date so far. She feared that, once he realized how date-like this really was, he’d see better of the whole idea. The two of them dating? Two people who weren’t planning to stay in St. Caroline forever? It was a crazy notion. What made sense was a good old-fashioned summer fling, a fun romp between two people that would end on Labor Day.

  But a summer fling was out of the question for them.

  The awkward silence never came, though, because Jack jumped right into the breach. “How long are you going to end up spending on that quilt my mom made?”