Chapter Fourteen

 

Ash took a deep breath of springtime once outside the fire station. Poor Kev was in a bad spot. All of those arson-caused fires had occurred inside his jurisdiction. The press was eating him and the department’s arson investigators for breakfast, lunch, and dinner.

‘Twas a tough job putting out fires around the clock, then having to confront his buddy for the heinous crime of burning another’s property, endangering life and limb. So far, no one had died, but the fates were gradually moving the stars in the universe. It was only a matter of time before an innocent was caught in the line of fire.

Ash kept his hand at Colby’s waist, surprised she hadn’t elbowed him or told him to knock it off yet. She turned at the door to his car he’d just opened for her. “Where are we going?” she asked, nodding at his wheels, “and since when did you own a Lexus?”

A different light glowed in her eyes tonight, and it glowed up at him as she sank into the seat. He winked and shut the door in her face. Strolling around the rear of the vehicle, he tossed the Lexus’ key fob into the air just for the sake of catching it. The vehicle wasn’t his, but there’d come a time, maybe sooner than later, that he’d drive one just as fine. But if he never did, well, he’d be just as good as he was right then, wouldn’t he? Because now—he knew.

It’d been a long day, but with Bella and Tula safe at a fancy five-star hotel in town, he felt reborn. His warehouse burning like it did had dealt him a blow he’d not seen coming, but the fire at Bells’s home on Beacon Hill did something just as unexpected. As the day wore on, he’d come to realize what her mother’s death would’ve done to Colby. He’d seen the devastation in her eyes out there on the street when she’d run to her mum. She’d been a scared little girl in those few seconds it took her to get to Bella, her tears running unabashedly down her cheeks.

Ash couldn’t get the look of blessed relief that he’d seen on her pretty face when she’d caught up with her mum, out of his mind. Colby was a puzzle to him, a mix of muscle and grit over a heart as big as the Atlantic. He had to wonder at the hardness to her, if it wasn’t more a shell game she played, and if it wasn’t mostly herself she was fooling. Normally outspoken, brash and bold, he’d seen a different side of her today, a fragile rose that could’ve easily been crushed had the morning gone badly.

He snapped the key fob out of the air and opened his car door, feeling worthy for the first time in—forever. Because he, Ash Callahan, the ne-er do-gooder, had been reborn, baptized and confirmed in that one lightning bolt of scorching revelation. It was nothing less than an epiphany, one he should’ve seen coming. He’d read the good book often enough to know it was true. Sweet Mother Mary and Joseph, he’d been an altar boy for Christ’s sake. Some days he wondered how hard his head really was. The truth had finally sunk in. Sinners could change. They could repent and be forgiven, and drunkards could be reformed. Even he…

Folding his angular frame into the Lexus, Ash joined his woman in the plush confines of modern technology, soft lighting, and that new car smell. He hit the ignition, then turned his eyes on the one—true—good thing in his life.

He knew it now. His success as a man was not defined by his livelihood, or his ambition. It was not found in the passion in his soul, the one he let loose with his hands when he pulled mermaids and beautiful women out of wood. Nah. His success, his one true dream was her. Colby.

For years he had thought he had to change, that he had to be strong enough or rich enough. Man enough. But now he knew. He could nah change the passion in his heart for the love of this fierce woman. He was, by all the saints, good enough just the way he was.

She still smiled, her shoulders turned to him. “Okay, give. You’ve had a smug smile on your face since you picked me up at the hotel. Where’d you get this car?”

Ah, so the expensive car impressed her. He shrugged his annoyance at that discomfiting discovery away. But a woman born into luxury would notice a fine automobile. “It’s not mine. Hammer loaned it to me for the duration.”

She pinched her lips into a pout, one he wanted to run his thumb over. Or bite. But not yet. “Where are we going? Where’s this thing you want to show me?”

He hummed. He hawed. Then he decided to stick with his plan. He checked the rearview and pulled into traffic. “You’ll see.”

The best sound a man can hear? His woman’s sigh of contentment. When Colby leaned back into the buttery softness of good leather with a sigh, that simple exhalation whispered up Ash’s spine like the lazy finger of forever. He just hoped she was as content with him as she was the Lexus.

Tonight had the potential of being one of those rare nights in a man’s life when whatever happened next would either make him or break him. It all depended on Colby.

The vehicle handled smoothly to the right, past the New England Aquarium, and across the bridge to his flat. He wanted her to see what he’d kept for himself, the single masterpiece that had escaped the flames because he’d been too selfish to share it, much less sell it. He might yet have to, if that insistent bloke from Cape Cod didn’t stop calling, wanting what he’d ordered, but Ash could carve another. He could. It might not be precisely the same, but aye. He’d do what he had to do—for her.

Once off Seaport Boulevard, he jockeyed past road construction and the dark waters of the Reserve Channel at his left to First Street. Just blocks to the east, his woodworking shop lay in smoldering ruins and charred timbers with police tape fluttering to warn looters and mischief-makers to keep back.

But did that burned husk of his old dreams matter in the grand scheme of this new day? Not anymore. Ash pulled alongside his flat, the second door on the right in a complex of sturdy, well-used row houses. Before Colby could comment on stopping at what she knew was his place, he scrambled to open her door.

“Why are we here?” He could’ve kissed that stern raised brow of hers.

“‘Tis not what you think.” But it could be. He placed one hand at the small of her back and urged her forward with his other.

They climbed the twelve steps to number eighteen-fifty-three, First Street. He unlocked the deadbolt, and for the first time in his American existence, he’d brought a girl home. Maybe not home to Mum and Da, but still. This was one of those moments.

Flipping the light switch just inside the door, he welcomed Colby into his dingy little corner of the United States. Okay, so now he was wishing he’d put a little more forethought into this ruse and done a bit of proper housekeeping, but honestly. What did she expect from a man, Martha Stewart-type decor? His clothes hung up in proper order in some unseen closet? Maybe a sprig of lilacs on his table instead of books and tools and the groceries he had yet to unload? Not happening.

He ignored Colby’s confusion and steered her, wordlessly, into his small living room, past the tiny kitchen at his right, and to the bedroom opposite his at the end of the narrow hall. Her feet dragged with each step, her body growing more resistant, but she needed to see this. Once and for all, she needed to know what she’d always meant to him.

With his heart beating as loud as the thunderous bass drums in Saint Paddy’s Day parade, he reached around Colby and opened the door. Another light switch and another gasp of what he hoped was surprise-and-awe instead of shock-and-awe.

He swallowed hard, his mouth dry and in desperate need of a creamy gulp of a cold Guinness now that his soul was on the chopping block.

She ventured a step into the crowded little second bedroom turned woodworking shop. “W-what…?”

Aye, he knew she’d be speechless. So the bloody hell was he.

She cocked her head, first to one side, then the other. “H-how…?”

The poor thing was as flummoxed at the sight of his creation as he often was at her.

Ash held his breath, needing her to spit out whatever it was she was feeing. For all his thirty years, he still felt as giddy as a schoolboy. Did she like it? Would she be angry? Would she think he’d violated her in a creepy, stalker kind of way? Gods in heaven, he couldn’t think with his blood thrumming through his body like it was.

She entered the room cautiously, her head still cocked as she took in the only treasure that had not burned to its death yesterday morn. Sweat beaded at his temple, and he licked his lips. Maybe this was nah such a great idea. Was he daft thinking this would ever—?

Her voice was as quiet as the dust motes hanging in the air over her pretty head. “It’s… it’s me.”