Fire at Dusk: The Firefighters of Darling Bay (11 page)

That’s what she should do. She would show up, and like always, Grace would take care of her. It would feel good to be coddled, and then she’d go home and sleep like the dead.

Instead, she was here. Searching for a guy who probably didn’t even want her to find him. Before she’d come back to town, if she’d been asked, she would have said that she remembered Hank Coffee as a sweet man. Smart. Funny.

That was before she’d learned that he was also the three things she always fell for—good looking, dangerous, and sexy as hell.

Which was why it was a very bad idea to be walking up the path in the dark to his front door.

A low-slung green house, it was a fifties ranch style, the kind of house Samantha and Grace had always wanted to live in when they were kids. The kind of house where the garage was built to be full of bicycles and cardboard boxes holding old crafts: God’s eyes made of yarn and chopsticks, and snowmen made from cardboard and cotton balls. The light on the porch burned brightly, welcoming. The doorbell was loud inside. She heard laughter and a woman’s voice from behind the door.

Whoa. What if he
did
have a girlfriend and no one talked about her? What if they had an agreement, and Hank was welcome to make out with other girls in his car, just as long as he didn’t sleep with them? What if that was the real reason why he left the other night? What if a pretty, petite, well-mannered woman opened the door? What was Samantha's excuse going to be?

Training! Sure. They had a few more moves to go over before the next class. That was it.

The door was opened by a woman, all right, but she most likely wasn’t girlfriend material. Eighty-five if she was a day, Samantha knew her as one of the women who knitted in the back booths at Mabel’s Cafe. She was wearing a lemon-yellow sweater with an embroidered blue rocket on the front, and her gray hair was flying out of its bun.

“Hi, I’m Samantha Rowe.”

“I know,” the woman said.

Then, without another word, she shut the door in Samantha's face.

Oh. Well, that was one answer to the question of whether this was a good idea or not. Samantha turned to leave, but her steps faltered when her foot was on the second step.

She turned back around.

This time she knocked instead of ringing the bell.

The door jerked open. “Yes?”

“Is Hank home?”

“Yes.” The older woman started to close the door again, but Samantha wedged her boot in the crack.

“Good,” said Samantha. “Can you tell him I’m here?”

“No.”

Really? That’s what she got for screwing up her courage to find him? She probably deserved a lot, but as far as she knew, she didn’t deserve this. “Good grief, lady, what did I do to you?”

The door opened a few inches wider but Samantha didn’t pull her foot back. If she had, she knew the door would have been shut and locked again in a heartbeat.

“You didn’t do anything to me,” said the woman.

“I didn’t think so.”

“You hurt my grandson. A long time ago.” The woman scowled. Her eyelashes looked crooked and sparkly. “But I’m still mad at you for it.”

That was totally fair. “Yeah, well, me too.”

A surprised look played across the woman’s face. “You’re mad at yourself?”

“Completely. I was a stupid kid who didn’t know a good thing when I saw it.”

The door opened another eight inches. “You’re right. You didn’t. He’s the best boy in the world.”

Samantha wrinkled her nose. “I wouldn’t call him a boy anymore. Would you?”

The woman clutched the door jam. “Of course. He’ll always be my boy. You can’t blame me for trying to protect him.”

Hank’s voice rose from somewhere inside. “Gramma? Who is it?”

“No one,” said the woman over her shoulder, but then she appeared to relent. “Just that girl who smashed your heart into tiny little pieces when you were twenty-one.”

“
Samantha?
”

Hank came into the hallway, and Samantha lost her breath. He was barefoot, wearing a white tank top that showed off every one of the sizable muscles in his upper torso and bulging arms. Faded black sweat pants hung from his hips. He was carrying a plate that looked like it had held pasta of some kind. A strand of too-long dark hair dropped over his eye, and Samantha wanted to rush him and kiss, grandmother notwithstanding.

And the way his eyes had heated to see her, she was pretty sure he might allow her to.

“Gramma, let her in.”

“Over my dead body.” But the words weren’t said as roughly as they could have been, and it was the woman who pulled the door all the way open, not Hank. “Just for a minute. But then you have to go, girl.”

“My house, my rules, Grams.” Hank bent to kiss his grandmother’s cheek, and Samantha's heart grew two sizes. “Samantha, this is Maureen, my pistol-packin’ grandmother. Maureen, this is Samantha.”

Maureen trundled ahead through the hallway, grumbling something about pasta sauce and a waste of meat. Hank and Samantha let her go into the next room.

Samantha's newly huge heart pounded heavily.

Hank leaned against the wall, appearing comfortable in his own skin.

His eyes smoldered darkly. “What’s up, trouble?”

“I thought…” What had she thought again?

“Yeah?” His voice was a purr. Damn him.

“About class. A thing. I, um, just wanted to go over a couple of things.”

“Uh-huh.” He wasn’t buying it, she could tell.

“But I can just catch you up later. At the next class.”

“Okay.”

From around the corner came Maureen's voice. “Are you two coming into the kitchen, or should I just go home by myself in the dark?”

Never taking his eyes off hers, Hank stepped forward. He got so close to Samantha that her breathing hitched in her chest, and she could feel the heat coming from his body. He lifted her hair from where it lay on her shoulder and put his mouth on her neck, just below her ear. It was the softest touch, the lightest caress of his lips, and it made Samantha’s legs tremble. He brought his mouth up slowly, so slowly, up the curve of her jaw, pressed a final kiss against the top of her cheekbone, right next to her temple. She could hear him breathing next to her, and his breath was as ragged as hers.

He dropped her hair back to her shoulder and stepped back.

“Coming,” Hank called, never taking his eyes off hers. His gaze heated to the point where Samantha thought she might melt into a puddle on the spot. His eyes promised something that, heaven help her, she was going to stick around to take. Hank was heated steel tension, his body taut, rigid with need.

If his grandmother wasn’t in the next room, Samantha would have walked right past Hank, shedding clothes as she went, hoping to find the bedroom, and not caring if she didn’t find it. The living room would be just fine. The kitchen. The laundry room would have been hot at this point.

How had she
not
slept with him back then? Had he looked at her this way? There was no way he’d had that heavy-lidded gaze back then. He’d been just a kid, and so had she.

But the Hank Coffee who stood in front of her now was raw need, barely controlled lust. A muscle in his jaw tightened. He was all man. One hundred and twenty masculine percent.

“Excuse me? Can you hear me or not?”

“Sorry,” he grated. “She’s not going to stop calling us.”

“Didn’t figure she would. I’ll just see you later, okay? She doesn’t want me in there.”

“Maybe not. But I do.”

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

THE KITCHEN WAS all male, dark green walls with deep blue accents. It also looked like a kitchen that was used. The two pots sitting on top of the stove looked well-loved, burnished with age and scrubbing. There was a clock made out of a record above the stove. Samantha tiptoed to read the disc label.

“Prince’s Purple Rain,” Hank said. “And I make no apology for it.”

“Nor should you,” said Samantha in admiration.

“He’s stuck in the 80s,” said Maureen, her back to them as she scrubbed a plate.

“She’s stuck in the 90s,” said Hank easily. He moved in next to Maureen, dropping his plate in the soapy water. He looked at Samantha. “Have you eaten?”

“Oh, I’m fine,” said Samantha. Her stomach took that moment to grumble loudly. She put her hand over her belly. “Whoops.”

“You like mostaccioli? Gramma makes the best.”

“We’re out,” grumped Maureen. “All out.”

“Bull.” Hank pulled out a foil-covered glass pan from the fridge. “Still warm. Grab me a plate from that cabinet.” He gestured with his chin.

Samantha complied, wondering how handy Maureen was with her needles. Was she going to stab her with them? Or was she handier with a knife? Samantha resolved to keep all her extremities to herself.

Hank dished out a huge portion.

“I can’t eat all that.”

“We’re carbo-loading for class,” he said.

“I teach. I stand there and yell. You’re the one who might want to eat a few more calories. Those women aren’t joking around.”

Hank caught her gaze again, sending her that look, the one that sent a shiver of lust through her body right down to her very toes. When he handed her the full plate, she caught his scent—he smelled faintly of wood shavings and pine, as if he’d been sharpening pencils in the woods. It was both a comforting and heady scent.

“Sit,” he said. “Eat.”

It was easier to just comply.

Maureen, her hands dripping with soapy water, turned and fixed Samantha with a stare. Her fork stilled in mid-air.

“You still drinking?”

It felt like a slap. But it was a fair question. It just hurt that the recovery she’d prefer to keep hidden was common knowledge for the whole town. She knew how gossip worked. She was—dimly—aware of the way she’d acted in the Wooden Duck on the few occasions she’d come back to town before getting sober. One Christmas Eve, she’d walked to the bar and she hadn’t made it back to Grace’s until the day after Christmas. The actual holiday itself was lost to her—she’d met a guy during her blackout and if she’d woken up to find out they’d gotten married, she wouldn’t have been surprised. The feeling of embarrassment was still so painful that she could almost not bear to think of it. But that was part of how she managed to stay sober. That pain.

“No, ma’am.”

“Will you start again?”

“I hope not.”

“Can you promise you won’t?”

Wouldn’t that be nice? Samantha would love to be positive she wouldn’t ever take another drink. She was pretty sure she wouldn’t. But she knew that the one thing she had to do was look at one day. Today. “I can promise I won’t today.”

“Do you think that’s good enough?” Maureen folded a red dish towel over her arm.

“It’s the best I can do.”

“Humph.” But Maureen's voice had softened a bit. “I guess you’re trying.”

“I am.” Samantha decided she’d take a risk and take a bite of the woman’s food. The knitting needles were still in their basket and the worst that Maureen might do right now was snap her with the wet towel. A forkful of the mostaccioli proved to be as delicious as it had smelled. “This is wonderful.”

Maureen didn’t answer but took a plastic-wrapped block of parmesan out of the refrigerator and grated some over the top of the plate. “Needs more cheese.”

“Thank you.”

Maureen said, “I’m leaving you the dishes, Hank. Come see me tomorrow.” She straightened her sweater which was wet at the belly button area.

“I thought you were going to make me watch that dancing show you like.”

Raising an eyebrow at Samantha, Maureen said, “I think you’re busy tonight. I can’t say I approve of you, girl. You know he hasn’t fallen in love since you? I blame you for that. For scaring him.”

That couldn’t be true. Samantha tried to catch Hank’s eye but he busied himself drying a fork meticulously. “How is that possible? Hank?”

“Come on, Gramma, you know I’m not scared of anything but a scolding from you. Love just isn’t for me. I fall in deep like as often as I can, though.” He gave Samantha a cheeky grin and tossed the fork in a drawer with a flourish.

Maureen wasn’t done. “How do I know you won’t hurt him all over again?”

“It’s just like the drinking,” said Samantha. “I can only try not to do that again today.”

Maureen picked up her knitting basket and held it to her chest. “Try hard. As hard as you can.” She went up on tiptoe to kiss Hank’s cheek goodbye. “You be good, too. Don’t either of you let me down.”

She slammed the door on her way out.

Hank laughed. “That was her last word. I’m sorry about that.”

Samantha spoke around another mouthful. “This pasta would be worth her giving me a sharp punch to the nose.”

“It’s my favorite. You picked a good night to come by. To train, I mean.”

But there it was, in his eyes again. That banked, quiet heat, the look that seemed to say so much more. Samantha’s appetite suddenly fled. “Train,” she repeated weakly. Like the one that was about to hit her.

“That’s what you said you came by for, right?”

“Um. Yeah.” That’s what she’d said. What she’d
meant
to do was kiss him. She’d meant to march in, wrap her arms around his neck and not stop kissing him until he ran out of protests and took her to his bed. They’d work out what to do the next day. Samantha knew that leaping before you looked might not be the best game plan in all cases, but in sex? Sometimes you just get something out of your system. Maybe it would help her get over these jangling nerves she felt whenever he was near, the sense that nothing else mattered but touching him, getting her skin next to his.

Hank angled his head like his neck hurt. “Or we could just go to bed.”

Samantha's mouth fell open and she forgot how to speak, which was fine, since she wouldn’t have known what to say, anyway. She’d planned to make it happen, not to talk about. And that was before she’d been derailed by an angry grandmother.

“You know. Get it out of the way.”

“Yes!” Samantha felt light with relief. “That’s it!”

“Way I figure it, we’ve had it building up between us for what, thirteen years? Might be time to just jump right in the sack.”

Samantha coughed and took a sip of the water he’d given her.