Burn for You (35 page)

If she only knew.

She’d tried calling him. No answer. She’d texted. No answer.

She didn’t want to give up on him. She saw his pain. She understood his confusion. She knew his fear.

But she couldn’t keep fighting a losing battle. She had no intention of giving up completely, but she was done banging her head up against a wall.

She stepped off the elevator and fumbled to get her keys in the lock. Inside her apartment, she dropped her key ring on the table by the door. And froze.

Jason sat on her couch, his elbows on his knees, holding his injured hand with his good one. “Your apartment has an appalling lack of security.” His voice was cold, his eyes glinting with anger.

Hand on her chest, she stepped further into the living room. “I think you just took ten years off my life. How’d you get in here?”

“Picked the lock.” He stood. “You want to tell me what the hell you think you were doing when you lied to Mac today?”

“Where did you go when you left?”

“Don’t answer my question with a question. What you did was reckless—Do you have any idea what could happen to you?”

“He didn’t Mirandize me. It’s not like I was under oath.”

“You need to take this seriously, Victoria. What the hell were you thinking?”

“I was thinking that you’d been gone all night and someone was asking me questions about your whereabouts as if you were a suspect. I knew you hadn’t done anything, so I told some half-truths.”

“Half-truths?” He threw his arms up. “Victoria, you
lied
. And you
don’t
know
I didn’t do anything.”

She laughed and finally set down her bag. “Jason, please. You didn’t set that fire at St. Athanasius.”

Hungry after a long shift, she turned toward the kitchen to start her breakfast, but he grabbed her hand and spun her back to him.

“How? How can you know that?” His voice was raw, his eyes rimmed with blue.

She stepped closer to him, lifting her hand to his cheek. “Have you even slept since I last saw you?”

“What if I did set that fire? What if I did do it, and you lied?” His good arm tightened around her waist. “Do you have any idea the trouble you’d be in?”

“But you didn’t do it.”

“You don’t
know
that. Maybe I did.”

“Jason, when I said ‘I love you’ the other night, it wasn’t a fleeting, romantic notion. It was a promise.” His hold was tight, his frustration evident in the tautness of his muscles and the tight lines of his face. She tried to smooth those lines with her thumbs, meeting his anger with all the love in her heart. “And I’m sorry—so incredibly sorry—that people have broken that promise to you before, but I’m not going to.”

She traced his lower lip with her thumb. “If you set that fire at the church, then I’d know you’d done it because of a pain that I’ll never quite comprehend, and I would stand by you while you took responsibility for it. I’d get you some help. A therapist. A good lawyer.” She pulled his head down to hers until their foreheads were touching. “But I wouldn’t stop loving you,” she whispered. “If you think there’s some mistake you could make that would make me cast you out of my heart, there isn’t one.”

He kissed her then. Hard and fast, backing her up against the nearest wall and invading her mouth with his tongue. Giddy with the knowledge that she’d won this round, she wrapped her arms around his broad shoulders and hitched a leg over his hip. His good hand caught her under the knee and held tight.

Breathing hard, he said, “If you love me, you won’t do anything like that stupid stunt with Mac again. If anything ever happened to you because of me, I’d go insane. Insane, Victoria. Do you understand me?”

She nodded, and he kissed her again. His kisses moved over her chin and down her neck then back up to her ear.

“I didn’t do it,” he whispered.

“I know.” She arched against the wall, pressing herself more firmly to the hard lines of his body.

He nuzzled her neck. “I went to Preston’s house to chew him out for telling you what he did, and he kicked me out. Said I didn’t deserve you.”

She laughed low in her throat, not just because of what Preston said, but because Jason’s words tickled her neck.

“He’s right, you know.” He leaned back and cupped her face with both of his hands, the thick bandages making his right hand a little awkward. “I don’t deserve you.” He caressed her cheek with his thumb. “But I want to.”

“Then break one of your rules for me.” Throat closing with emotion, she looked into his eyes—endless waters meeting limitless skies, his eyes were everywhere she’d ever wanted to be. “Stay with me today. Watch a stupid movie with me or something. Maybe sleepover if you want.”

He grinned then kissed her softly. “Anything for you, baby.”

She smiled when she realized he was breaking another rule.

He kissed her neck. “Sweetheart.” Then her collarbone. “Honey.” Lifting her t-shirt and pulling her bra down, he suckled at her breast. “Darling.”

Sighing, she let her head fell back against the wall.

He sank to his knees, holding her tight around her hips and kissing her belly. “My sweet Toria.”

By the time they made it to her bed, she’d been divested of her clothes and kissed over every inch of her body.

Breathless and frantic with need, she roamed her hands over his skin, and together, they made quick work of his clothes. He covered her body with his and entered her quickly, groaning and repeating her name over and over. Trying to prevent him from putting weight on his hand, she shifted underneath him, turning them to his good side and meeting each of his thrusts with a roll of her hips.

The peaks and valleys of their love-making were at turns frenzied and slow. He moved as if he couldn’t get enough, driving them toward the summit of ecstasy, and then inches from the top—as if he couldn’t stand the idea of it being over—he slowed the pace again, taking his time to kiss and caress every uncharted inch of her body.

Driven to distraction by the blissful torture, she couldn’t stop the words that fell from her lips. “I love you,” she whispered again and again. And each time she did, he rewarded her with a new pleasure—gently sucking one of her fingers into his mouth, kissing the sensitive skin on the inside of her wrist, licking the crease of her inner elbow.

He made his way up her body and whispered love words in her ear, but not one of those words was
love
.

And that was okay. She understood.

He deserved her. He deserved every ounce of love she could give, but it would take time before he believed it too. And maybe even longer before he believed it enough to risk saying it back.

She could wait. She’d already waited a lifetime for this man.

As her body ascended into pleasure, she remembered her favorite reading from her brother’s wedding.

Love is patient. Love is kind…love never fails.

Chapter 26

To an outsider, the gathering of thirty or so off-duty police and firefighters at Muldoon’s Pub might’ve appeared to be a celebration. But closer inspection and some eavesdropping would’ve revealed something very different.

It was September twenty-sixth, and other than knowing something was likely to happen tomorrow, Jason was no closer to knowing the who, where, or how.

Sitting across from Jason, Nick set down his beer. “Wilmette, Skokie and Chicago are all on standby for tomorrow with extra personnel coming in.”

Jason nodded. With Flaherty’s theory all over the fire department, there’d been no reason to keep it a secret anymore. “I suppose there’s a chance our advance response will scare him off.”

“That’s a best case scenario,” Nick said. “If nothing happens, no one gets hurt.”

Jason nodded again, glancing at Victoria, who sat at the bar with Nick’s wife, Sandra. The two were laughing over something, already fast friends. Victoria caught his gaze and smiled, her brown eyes lit with humor. He forced himself to return her smile, but a crippling fear gripped his chest. Her shift started at 7
AM
tomorrow, and short of handcuffing her to the bed—an increasingly appealing option for a variety of reasons—there was nothing he could do to stop her from going in.

It seemed selfish to ask God for one more miracle when he’d already been blessed with two. The first being Luke St. James. He’d been sent a protector in his foster father, someone who’d arrived just in time to spare Jason from a worse nightmare than his previous nightmares. Someone who’d stayed, patiently waiting for a little eight-year-old boy to trust him. Someone who’d made Jason a part of his family and given him a brother. He’d been lucky to have Luke in his life, even if it’d only been for a short time. Without him, Jason wasn’t sure what kind of person he would’ve become. Probably not a good one.

And then there was Victoria, his Toria, his second miracle. She loved him—which was something beyond a miracle.

It was still difficult to believe it was real. A part of him was waiting for the tragedy. Waiting for the miracle to be taken away. Just like his foster father.

And that’s why he needed a third miracle. He needed some illumination on this arsonist, and he needed it fast.

The door to the pub opened and Mac and his wife Emily came inside. Mac immediately spotted Nick and Jason’s table and pulled Emily over. “Good news,” he said, taking out a chair for Emily. “I’ve got confirmation from an electrician that the fire at St. Athanasius was accidental. Started from some bad wiring.”

Jason nodded. “That’s great. I don’t suppose you made any headway on my case, did ya?”

Taking a seat next to his wife, Mac shook his head. “Afraid not.”

“Hey, Emily. Mac.” Coming over to the table from the bar, Sandra greeted her friends warmly and introduced them to Victoria.

“Yes, Mac and I have met,” Victoria said. “But it’s nice to meet you, Emily.”

Nick pulled a chair from a neighboring table over for his hugely pregnant wife and helped lower her into it. With no more seats left at the table, Jason casually pulled Victoria down to sit on his knee.

“What Victoria means to say, Em, is that while it’s nice to meet you, it wasn’t terribly nice meeting me.”

With her arm around Jason’s shoulder, Victoria smiled sweetly at Mac. “Lucky for you, I’m not one to hold a grudge.”

Emily narrowed her eyes at her husband. “Mac, what did you do?”

“Me? Nothing. I just turned a blind eye while she perjured herself.”

“Don’t you have to be under oath to commit perjury?” Victoria asked.

“Tomato, to-mah-to,” Mac said, grinning.

While Victoria and Mac argued, he slid a caramel brownie toward her and handed her a spoon. As he’d hoped when he’d ordered it for her, she rewarded him with her gorgeous smile.

“Well,” Mac said. “You’ll be happy to know we just confirmed the fire was an accidental electrical fire.”

“Uh-huh.” She took a second to enjoy a bite of brownie. “Told you, didn’t I? I knew it’d be something like that.” One arm still around Jason’s shoulder, she gave him a squeeze and leaned closer. He breathed her in, loving the smell of her orange-vanilla lotion. It was that smell, her signature scent that allowed him to sleep at night.

His light-sleeper instincts had always kicked in at the slightest noise, the barest hint of movement. But his subconscious knew Victoria. When she moved restlessly in bed and those defensive reflexes kicked in, one inhale of her citrusy scent sent him instantly back to sleep. And after three nights of sleeping with her in his arms, he wasn’t even waking up anymore when she stirred.

Bringing him out of his thoughts, Pete, the owner of Muldoon’s, appeared next to the table. “We up for another round here, folks?”

“No thanks, Pete,” Nick said, holding up his half-full beer. “We’ll be out of your hair soon. I know you’re trying to close up.”

“Eh, trust me. I’m happy to have a bar full of cops. There’s been a rash of muggings in this neighborhood lately. Almost makes me not want to make my bank deposit tonight.”

“You just going to the drop box around the corner?” Jason asked.

“Yeah,” Pete said, nodding. “It’s not far. I probably shouldn’t be such a wuss.”

“Nonsense,” Jason said. “I’ll run security for you while you do the drop.”

“That’d be great. You want to go in about ten minutes?”

“Sounds good,” Jason said.

Victoria shifted on his lap, turning to look at him with concerned eyes. “Um, Jase? Have you forgotten that your trigger finger is a bit broken at the moment?”

He lowered his voice for her ears only, placing his lips next to her ear. “Baby, haven’t you noticed how good I’m getting with my left hand? I’m practically ambidextrous now.”

She smiled. “Less cocky. More careful. M’kay?”

“Yes, ma’am.” He kissed her cheek and excused himself to the restroom, pretending not to notice the surprised expressions of the other two couples at their table.

Standing at the urinal, he heard the bathroom door open behind him. Graham sauntered in and took the urinal right next to him.

Such a douche move.

Everyone knows the secret code. In a bathroom of six urinals, one does not choose the urinal right next to a fellow urinator. Unless one is a total douche.

Graham unzipped, glancing over at Jason, as if measuring himself against an opponent. “You and Vic looked pretty cozy just now. What’s the deal with you and her?”

Jason zipped and turned to wash his hands at the sink. Over the running water he asked, “What’s it to you?”

“Vic and I go way back.” Shaking himself off, Graham looked over his shoulder. “We’ve been sort of on-again, off-again for the last few years.”

Jason dried his hands on a paper towel. A paper towel he now wanted to rip into a million fucking pieces. “She didn’t mention that.” It was a lie, but Graham didn’t need to know that. Let him think that Victoria didn’t give a shit about him. Hell, Jason
wished
Victoria had never given a shit about the cocky son of a bitch.

“I’m surprised,” Graham said, washing his hands. “We’ve always been a pretty big part of each other’s lives.”

“That so?”

“Yeah, and I’m thinking it’s time to get serious about life. Time to grow up, ya know?”