Chapter 3
It was the bouquet of white irises that got to her the most. The sneering, in-your-face rudeness of it. As if the guy had spit on her.
Liv clenched her fists and tried to breathe. Her belly muscles were so rigid, she had to deliberately unknot them to let her lungs expand. That coffee she’d drunk some time ago churned in her belly, threatening to rush back up the way it came. She might be better off without it, but barfing made her cry, and the firebug who had torched her bookstore might be watching through a pair of binoculars.
Giggling evilly to himself. Licking his slavering chops. Watching her out of his cold, beady little reptile eyes, like a Tyrannosaurus rex.
She scanned the buildings around her, their outlines blurred by the haze of smoke. He could be watching from one of those windows. She shivered. She would not let him see her snivel like a hurt little girl.
T-Rex had left the bouquet on top of the kerosene, right out front. No attempt to hide what he’d done. He’d even attached a letter. For Olivia, with love, from You Know Who, was printed on the front. Same font he’d used for his previous e-mails. The ones she’d tried to ignore.
Evidently, T-Rex didn’t respond well to being ignored.
Well, hell. She was paying attention now. He’d gotten the big reaction he was looking for. The police were completely disgusted with her for contaminating the crime scene. She hadn’t thought about practical details like fingerprints, etc., when she’d ripped the flowers apart and stomped them into the ground, shrieking at the top of her lungs. She’d put on quite a floor show. Her parents had been mortified.
Ah, well. Nobody was perfect.
She forced out a breath. Her mind kept churning out platitudes about the virtues of non-attachment. All things must pass, blah, blah. The stuff she’d so recently stocked her Self-Help, Spirituality and New Age sections with. Big sellers, all that woo woo stuff. It made her want to smack someone. Who cared about the illusory nature of reality when you were staring at the ruins of your lifelong dream?
She wasn’t evolved enough not to feel like total crap about it.
And she was so angry. She wanted to hurt the guy who did this. Hurt him bad. Make it last. Make him sorry his parents had ever met.
This, from a woman who caught spiders and put them in the yard because she couldn’t bear to kill them. Even the big, freaky, hairy ones.
God, it hurt. She’d invested so much of herself into this place. Everything she had, and a whole lot more besides. She’d never cared so much. Ever, in her life. About anything.
Except for one notable occasion, her inner commentator piped up.
Oh no. Uh-uh. No way was she going to let herself think about Sean McCloud. One charred disaster at a time, thank you very much.
She scuffed through the ashes, mind churning. Who was this guy? What did he have against her? She had no natural enemies. She was Miss Compromise. Sweetness and light. What you reap is what you sow, wasn’t that how it worked? Wasn’t there a goddamn rule?
That New Age fluff she’d been ordering had done a number on her brain. Or maybe she’d done something horrible in a past life. She’d left a swathe of destruction in her wake. The Countess Dracula, or some such. She’d just get her inner evil countess to hunt this guy down and serve his balls up to him on a plate. Here ya go, buddy. Open wide.
If he didn’t get her first. She shivered, despite the August sun, and the heat waves that rose, shimmering, from the smoking coals.
She dashed the tears away with grimy hands and blinked madly, staring at the mess. All those months of work, reduced to nothing.
It had felt so good, bringing her dream bookstore into reality. Like she’d finally come home. Books & Brew was her baby. Her idea, her investment, her risk. Her own miserable, incinerated failure.
Be grateful it happened at night. The fire didn’t spread. The staff was home. No one got hurt, she reminded herself, for the zillionth time.
A hand clapped down on her shoulder. She jumped. “Don’t worry,” came a familiar voice. “It’s no big deal. It’s all insured, right?”
It was Blair Madden, the VP of Endicott Construction Enterprises, and her father’s right-hand man. Blair had never possessed much of what you might call tact, but this was a bit raw, even for him.
Liv turned. “Excuse me? No big deal? Don’t worry about it?”
“All I meant is that it’s replaceable.” Blair took his hand off her bare, dirty shoulder and wiped it discreetly on his perfectly creased tan pants. “It’s not like it was a cultural landmark. Keep it in perspective.”
“Livvy? Good God! You’re still here?”
Liv winced at the razor tone of her mother’s voice. Amelia Endicott climbed out of the Mercedes idling on the curb and minced toward them, careful not to smudge her sandals. “You shouldn’t be out in the open!” she scolded.
“I’ll come when I’m ready, Mother,” Liv said.
The older woman’s hackles rose, visibly. “I see,” she said. “As always. You have to do things your own way. You must suit yourself.”
“Yeah, right,” Liv muttered. “As always.”
It took energy, opposing her mother. The woman had run her childhood like a dictator, picking her clothes, her schools, her friends.
Except for that one very memorable summer.
Yeah, right. Mother had cast the Sean debacle up to her for years as an example of what happened when Liv didn’t listen to her. For once, she’d actually had a point. It stuck in Liv’s craw even now.
She’d finally forced her parents to accept that she was an adult who made her own decisions. Enter T-Rex, with a can of kerosene, and suddenly her parents felt justified in bundling her into a suffocating gift box again. Tying her up with a big silken bow. Olivia Endicott, groomed to be a credit to the family name, if she would only: 1) lose that pesky fifteen pounds, 2) wear the right shoes, 3) dress like a lady, 4) marry Blair Madden, and 5) work for Endicott Construction Enterprises.
Blair chose this inopportune moment to throw his arm around her shoulder. She jerked away before she could control the reflex.
Blair folded his arms over his chest, affronted. “I’m just trying to help,” he said stiffly. “You’re being childish, you know. And bitchy.”
I’m under a wee bit of stress, in case you haven’t noticed. She bit the sarcastic words back. “I’m sorry, Blair,” she said. “I just can’t stand being touched right now.”
Her mother’s eyes flicked down over Liv’s body, mouth tightening. “I can’t believe you are out in public dressed like that.”
Liv looked down at her baggy pants, the shrunken tank top. She’d rushed to the fire right after she got the call, not bothering to change out of her jammies. She hadn’t had a belly flat enough for that look when she was twenty, let alone thirty-two. No bra, either. Woo hah, she could throw ’em over her shoulder like a continental soldier. And as for her pants, well…best not to focus on her big butt at all.
But the scolding made her chin go up. “I’m decent,” she said. “The important bits are covered. Nobody’ll faint from seeing my jammies.”
Certainly not Blair, she refrained from adding. He’d been badgering her for years in a half-joking-but-not-really way about giving into the inevitable, and marrying him. Sometimes, when she was lonely, she was a tiny bit tempted. Blair was smart, nice, hardworking. Her parents would have frothing fits of joy. And it would be company.
But there was no heat between them. Absolutely none.
Of course, her criteria of “heat” was based almost exclusively on her memories of Sean McCloud. Maybe she’d just imagined all that wild intensity, that giddy excitement. She’d been not quite eighteen, after all.
She swallowed, her throat raspy from smoke and suppressed tears. Maybe a marriage without heat would be more stable. After all, all she had to do was look around to see the damage heat could do.
“You’re making a spectacle of yourself,” Amelia said. “I’ll see you at home, when you condescend to come.” She flounced back to her car.
“I’ll take you home,” Blair said. “You’re aware that you have to be accompanied everywhere now, right? You should pack your things.”
The look on his face abruptly reminded her of why she kept saying no to Blair’s proposals. Pompous bossiness was so unsexy.
“Pack?” she asked. “Why am I packing? Where am I going?”
“You can’t stay at your place, Liv,” he lectured. “It’s too remote, up on the hill, and you don’t even have an alarm. You’ll be staying at Endicott House, where we can keep an eye on you. Bart’s contacting a security firm to provide you with full-time bodyguards.”
“Bodyguards?” Her smoke-roughened voice broke on the word.
“Of course.” His chest puffed out. “I’m going to tell Bart and the police where we’re going. Stay where I can see you, for God’s sake.”
She stared bleakly after Blair. Bodyguards? Full time?
Now her parents could monitor her night and day. Make sure she was constantly living up to the Endicott standard. She might as well just embalm herself right now, and save everyone else the trouble.
“Hey, Liv,” a low male voice said from behind her.
Oh, God. She knew that voice. She couldn’t turn. Her muscles wouldn’t move. It was like that time she’d gone rock climbing. She had looked down in the middle of a steep bit and frozen solid, fingers numb. Her bones, all rubbery and flexible. Her insides, vast and empty.
He didn’t speak again. Maybe stress had driven her to auditory hallucinations. And there was only one way to find out, so move.
She commanded her muscles to obey, and turned.
Oh boy. It really was Sean. Her insides tightened. She felt faint.
Holy crap, just look at him. He occupied so much space. The air around him seemed charged. He was so tall. So incredibly…big.
Had he really been that big fifteen years ago?
Certainly she herself hadn’t been. The thought stung like a spider bite. To think that with her bookstore trashed, her dreams in ruins and T-Rex to stress about, she was still uptight about her oversized bum.
And her tank top did nothing to control the jiggle and sway of her boobs, which were likewise bigger now, if somewhat, well…lower. Plus, the poochy side pockets on her pants had been designed by the devil himself to make her hips look even wider than they really were.
She tried to speak, but her voice was rough and hoarse from all the smoke. She coughed, and tried again. “Hi,” she squeaked.
She didn’t want him to see her like this. Wounded, bereft. It was too much like the last time he’d seen her. Except that then, the smoking ruin had been her heart. And he was the arsonist who had torched it.
They stared at each other. She felt empty-headed, exposed.
She’d pictured running into him after she’d decided to come back to Endicott Falls. Many times. But in her fantasies, she’d been thinner. Boobs hoisted high in a power bra. Romantic, swishy white skirt and poet’s blouse, showing a faint, tasteful hint of sexy cleavage. Eat your heart out, you brain-dead chump being the subtle non-verbal message.
She’d be bustling around in her crowded bookstore, looking trim, taut and fabulous. Hair swept up in a tousled twist. Skilfully understated makeup. Elegant gold earrings. Busy, happy, fulfilled Liv!
“Sean who?” she’d say. Then her eyes would widen, recognition dawning as she looked past the beer paunch, or whatever other defects he’d developed that had rendered him harmless. “Oh! I’m terribly sorry, I just didn’t recognize you!” she’d say, oh so sweetly. “How are you?”
This was not the current scenario. Her eyes kept dropping, darting up, trying to reconcile this man with the Sean of her girlhood memories. He’d been dimpled, laughing, gorgeous. A sinuous young panther on the prowl. The embodiment of dangerous male sexuality.
That succulent golden boy had become a grim, inscrutable man.
Faded jeans and a green T-shirt showed off a long, powerful body that seemed thicker, denser than she remembered. His face seemed carved out of something hard. Longish hair blew loose and shaggy around his face in the hot gusts of air. Sun glinted off the bronze ends. A diamond stud flashed bright rainbow fire in his ear.
His eyes were keen, shadowed. No twinkle. No dimple. No flash of white teeth. He looked tempered, and tough. Harmless, her ass.
He looked about as harmless as a long, sharp knife.
She had to tear her eyes away and look at her feet before her lungs would unlock and suck in a shuddering gasp of badly needed air.
Wow. He had a flair for the dramatic entrance. Deliberate or not, it was effective, how he’d framed himself in a fire-blackened brick arch of the turn-of-the-century brewery she’d converted into her bookstore.
Backlit by sun slanting through the arch, wreathed with billows of smoke, he was like a rock idol taking the stage. Accepting the adulation of his screaming fans as his right and due. He smiled at her, and she crossed her arms over tingling breasts. No, not like a rock star.
More like a fallen archangel, guarding the gates of hell.
“What are you doing here?” she blurted. “I thought you’d left. Everyone said—” She stopped, realizing how much her words revealed.
Bleak amusement flashed in his eyes. “My brothers and I keep Dad’s old place up behind the Bluffs for occasional weekends, but we all live in the Seattle area now.” He hesitated. “So don’t worry.”
“Oh, I’m not worried.” Embarrassment sharpened her voice. “So did you just come to gawk? Quite a spectacle, isn’t it?”
He looked around. “Yes, it is.”
“Must be a real satisfaction to you.” She regretted the words instantly. Everything that came out of her put her at a disadvantage.
His eyes flickered. “Not in the least,” he said quietly. “I never wished you anything but the best.”
Her vertebrae stacked, clickity-click. That snotty bastard. After all the horrible things he’d said to her, he dared to get up on his high horse and make her feel in the wrong. “Isn’t that sweet,” she snapped. “I’m so touched, but that doesn’t explain what the hell you’re doing here.”
He crossed his arms over his chest, and it took all her willpower not to stare at his ropy, powerful forearms. His long, graceful hands. The bulge of his biceps, distending his T-shirt sleeve. “I heard about the fire,” he said simply. “I wanted to make sure you were OK.”
She swallowed back an unreasonable quivering in her thoat.
“This place…” She gestured around with her hand. “This used to be my brand new, fabulous, beautiful bookstore. Did you know that?”
“Yeah,” he said, his face somber. “I did know that.”
“Some reptilian asshole burned it down,” she said. “On purpose.”
He nodded. “That sucks. You’ve got no idea who—?”
“None.” She struggled with the quiver in her throat. “I assume it’s T-Rex, though. The weirdo who’s been sending me the e-mails.”
His eyes sharpened. “Who’s T-Rex? What e-mails?”
“I’ve been getting e-mails for the past few weeks,” she explained wearily. “I call him T-Rex, just to call him something. Declarations of love, comments on what I’m wearing. He’s been watching me. Up close.”
“You told the police about the e-mails?” he asked.
“Of course,” she said. “What could they do? There was nothing particularly threatening in them. Just, you know, slime.”
“Did he leave a note today?” he demanded.
She choked off the laughter before it could become hysterical. “Oh, yes. Today he told me how I would twist and burn in the fire of his passion, and then…how did he put it? That soon we would be as one. That our union would be explosive. All written in this sticky, psuedo-poetic prose that makes my flesh crawl.”
Sean made a sound in his throat, like a wild animal’s growl. It made her hairs prickle up. “That sick fuck needs to be disemboweled.”
She gaped at him, then forced her mouth to close. “Ah. Thank you, Sean, for putting that lovely image in my head.”
“Sorry,” he murmured. “You haven’t been in town very long?”
“A few months. Ever since I bought the Old Brewery. I just opened the store about six weeks ago.” Her voice quivered again. “It was going well. It was a great location. I had the college crowd, the writing workshops at the Arts Center, and they’ve been spiffing up the historic downtown for the tourists, too. It would have paid off. I’m sure of it.”
“So am I,” he said. “I’m sure it still will.”
He was just humoring her, but it was all rushing out, dignity be damned. “I always wanted to do this. Always, since I was a little girl.” Her voice was almost defiant. “Bookstores are my favorite places. They’re like wonderland. Endless goodies. A candy shop for the mind.”
“It’s good to know what you want to do,” he said. “You’re lucky.”
“Lucky?” A bitter laugh hurt her. She looked around herself. “Excuse me? You call this lucky?”
“You’ll get past this,” he said. “It would take more than a can of kerosene to keep you down, Liv. This is just a blip on your screen.”
She felt her spine straighten, her chin go up, her lungs fill. His words gave her a jolt of energy and pride. She didn’t dare examine the feeling too closely. She might kill it, and she needed all the help she could get. “I did a lot of renovating myself,” she hurried on. “I’ve studied woodworking. I can handle big power tools. You name it, I can use it.”
“Wow.” His eyes widened, impressed.
“Yeah, my folks about had kittens. And there was the café. Picking out fixtures, bar equipment. Ordering books. I was in hog heaven. I’m so deep in debt, it’s not even funny, but I didn’t care. I just didn’t give a shit.”
“Good for you,” he said gently.
“I painted the murals in the childrens’ corner myself, did you know that? Of course you don’t. What a silly question. Why would you?”
She was barely making sense, at this point, but Sean was taking it in stride, his face calm and attentive. She rubbed furiously at her eyes. “They turned out pretty well, if I do say so myself,” she said, voice wobbling. “Scenes from fairy tales. I’m no Leonardo Da Vinci, but those murals weren’t half bad. They really weren’t.”
“I’m sure they were beautiful. I’m sorry I never got to see them.”
Oh, God. His words were so exactly what she had needed to hear.
Her parents had seemed hardly surprised by the disaster. What did she expect, when she went against their well meant advice? They’d been tapping their feet, waiting for her to fail from the beginning.
One crumb of genuine sympathy, and she fell right to pieces.
She covered her face with one hand and fished with the other one in her pocket for tissues. All that was left were wet, soggy wads. Bleah.
She would stay like this forever. A cautionary tale for unwary entrepreneurs. Birds could come to roost on her. She didn’t care.
Sean’s warm hand came to rest tentatively on her shoulder. Awareness sparkled through her nerves at the gentle contact, and the sobbing eased down. Startled into hiding, no doubt. She peeked over her hand. “I don’t suppose you’ve got a tissue? I’m leaking.”
“I’m sorry.” His voice was full of regret. “I’m not the kind of guy who carries packs of tissue around.”
“Don’t worry about it,” she mumbled. She couldn’t use her too short, too tight shirt to blot her face without flashing her bare tits to Sean McCloud and the rest of the Endicott Falls business district, but hey, why not offer the gawkers a final act of public indecency to round off the day’s array of entertainments? It was just that kind of a day.
She blinked to bring her vision into focus, and sucked in a bubbly gasp of shock. Holy crap. Sean McCloud was pulling his shirt off. Right out here, in front of God and everyone. Talk about public indecency.
“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” she hissed.
He stopped partway through the act, the tight microfiber shirt jerked up high enough to show off his thick, broad, muscle-bound chest.
Oh, man. Amazing. The tight brown oblongs of his nipples adorned hard, cut pecs. His fuzz of bronze hair thickened into a treasure trail over his washboard belly, vanishing into jeans that hung low on lean hips. Hard muscles moved beneath the gold skin of his abdomen. A jagged scar gleamed silvery, on his side. She wrenched her gaze away.
“It’s clean,” he said earnestly. “Just out of the dryer. And I took a shower and smeared perfumed goop over myself,” he checked his watch, “just three hours ago. Use it for a handkerchief. Go ahead. Please.”
Oh, yeah. Like he didn’t know just how stunning his body was. Dazzling her to distract her from her sobfest. The humiliating thing was, it was working. “I’m not using your damn shirt for anything.”
“I spent all that time in an air-conditioned car, so I’ve barely sweated.” He whipped the shirt off, and presented it to her. “It’s not worthy of your Divine Highness’s royal snot, but it’s all I’ve got to offer.”
No. She would not laugh, and let him score points at her expense.
“Go on,” he urged. “Just honk right into it. Never let it be said that I’m not willing to sacrifice my shirt for a lady’s convenience.”
He stuck it in her hand. Her fingers closed around it, leaving a greasy black splotch. The shirt was soft and incredibly warm. A spicy, woodsy smell rose from it. Smothered giggles made her nose run even more copiously. “You’re making it worse!” She thrust the shirt against his chest. “Put this thing back on before you get me in trouble.”
He took his own sweet time pulling it back on. Sure enough, he had a black handprint on the front of the T-shirt, as if she’d grabbed his pec and given it a tight squeeze. He looked at it. His smile made her toes curl.
“You’d do anything to make me stop crying, right?” she accused.
“Nope. Tears don’t bother me,” he said. “It’s just that once I get a laugh, I have to follow up and try to get another one. I just can’t help myself. It’s, like, an obsessive-compulsive thing with me.”
“I don’t want to hear about your obsessions or compulsions, thank you. That’s way too much information for me.” She sniffed violently, mopped her face with her hand. “Sorry about your shirt.”
He petted the black mark tenderly with his hand. “I’m not,” he said. “I’m never washing this thing again. I think I’ll frame it.”
Her breath stopped. She stared over the edge of her hand. His eyes looked straight into her mind, sifting through thoughts, memories, fantasies. Drawing his own inscrutable conclusions. His lips curved, as if what he’d seen had given him license to take any liberties he liked.
“The thought of you using power tools is really arousing,” he said.
“I—I cannot believe you just said that to me,” she floundered.
“So put me in my place,” he said. “You’re Her Divine Highness, the Crown Princess of Endicott Falls. Who dares to mess with you?”
Who, indeed. She realized, after it was too late to stop, that she was licking her lips. “You never stay in any place that you’re put.”
He shrugged. “True enough. I can just see you, in my mind’s eye, looking sleek and powerful. Using a table saw. Dominating the hell out of it. Muscles flexing. Sweat dripping. Sawdust flying. Metal screaming.”
“Oh, you are so full of shit,” she said. “Just stop it, right now.”
“Scold me. Show me who’s boss.” His eyes glinted. “I go for that.”
She covered her face again. “You can stop jerking me around any time now,” she forced out, between helpless, hysterical giggles.
“Not yet. I drop to my knees and offer you a cold beer. You tilt the bottle back. A drop slides down, trembles on your collarbone, keeps on sliding. That’s when I fall on my face…and beg for mercy.”
She remembered that coaxing charm, that could get her to agree to anything he wanted. But in the end, he hadn’t wanted it. Or her.
She stepped back. She couldn’t slide into this honey-baited trap.
“So,” she said brightly. “How are your brothers these days?”
Sean’s eyes went blank as he switched gears from full-out seduction to bland pleasantries. His mouth twitched. “Uh, great,” he said. “Davy and Con are blissfully married. Con’s about to have a kid.”
“That’s fabulous. What about Kev? Is he blissfully married, too?”
His face hardened. A cold flash in his eyes sent a chill through her. “No,” he said. “You never heard about Kev?”
Her stomach dropped. “Heard? What should I have heard?”
Sean’s throat worked. “Kev’s dead. Ran his truck off a cliff.” He paused, eyes boring into hers. “You mean you never heard about that?”
She tried to speak several times before her vocal cords would respond. “No,” she whispered. “I left that same night. They put me on a plane for Boston. No one ever said anything to me about it.”
“Of course they didn’t,” he said. “Why would you ask?”
That hurt. It implied that she didn’t care, which was unfair.
But his eyes were haunted with old pain. How petty, to get huffy about semantics in the face of his loss. “I’m sorry. Kev was special.”
Sean silently inclined his head, accepting her words.
She gulped before asking the next question. “So, um, was it…”
“Suicide?” Sean jerked his chin. “So they say. Who knows?”
“And that stuff he told me? About the guys trying to kill him?”
Sean paused. “We never found any evidence that it was true.”
She took a moment to process that. “So it was…he was…”
“Yeah. Paranoid delusions. Persecution complex. Like our dad. That was the official conclusion, anyhow.”
The bitterness in his voice prompted her to ask. “And your own conclusion?”
“My own conclusion doesn’t count for shit. I keep it to myself.”
She could think of nothing to say. Or rather, she could think of many things, none of which were appropriate. Like grabbing him by the throat, yelling that he shouldn’t have gone through that without her.
Stupid bastard. Her throat tightened, like a fist.
“What the hell?” Blair was loping towards her, his face alarmed. “Liv! Are you OK? You look like you’ve been crying. Did he—”
“My eyes were watering,” she said hastily. “From the smoke.”
Blair handed her a handkerchief. When she came up for air, Sean and Blair were having a curiously hostile staring match.
“I’m surprised you have the nerve to show your face,” Blair said.
Sean’s eyebrows lifted. “I wanted to make sure Liv was OK.”
“Liv’s fine,” Blair said stiffly. “We’ve got her covered.”
“I’ll leave you in his capable hands, then,” Sean said to Liv. “Take it easy, princess.” He nodded politely at her, turned, and walked away.
Like a scene out of an old western. Broad-shouldered guy strides off into the sunset. Liv felt perversely abandoned as she stared at his retreating back.