Gold Fire (21 page)

Branded
. She went still, finally registering his distress. It was real to him, as if he’d seen it happen. She stared at him as a familiar fear crept out from the corners of her mind, spreading over it like a black cloud. Swallowing against the sudden tightness in her throat, she said, “It’s started again, hasn’t it?” Her voice was barely above a whisper. “People are talking about me, saying I set the fire, aren’t they?”

His eyes clouded with anger, answering her question even before he spoke. “I made it clear you weren’t involved, Zoe.” His voice was gravelly, holding back emotion. “I’ll repeat it to the whole town if I have to. But I can’t stop it from happening again. The Alpine Sky is determined to get what they want—they already have plans in place with the zoning board. They don’t care who gets hurt, or who gets blamed, even if it’s one of their own.” His eyes glittered in the faint light, as intense as his voice. “Get out, Zoe. Don’t let them hurt you again.”

She stared for several seconds, too numb to respond. This couldn’t happen! Not when it wasn’t her fault. She’d followed all the rules, outshone every shining example. Her wild past was just that—the past. Yet when something happened and they needed someone to blame, there she was, one of the Larkin girls conveniently in the middle of things. Suddenly, all those years of being a model citizen counted for nothing.

Tears burned behind her eyelids, but she blinked them away furiously. She wouldn’t cry. Feeling sorry for herself would just turn her into the victim they
wanted her to be. She wasn’t the town’s wild child anymore, and she wasn’t anyone’s victim.

She was a fighter. She wouldn’t let them do this to her again.

•  •  •

Vulnerability showed in her eyes, raw and painful. Jase had seen it. A second later it was gone, hidden behind that ever-present wall of determination. But it was too late for her to pretend the gossip and rumors hadn’t cut her to the bone.

“They can’t hurt me,” she muttered aloud as she lifted her chin. “I won’t let them.”

“It doesn’t matter how tough you are,” he said quietly. Gently, because he’d glimpsed that fragile side underneath. “Gossip and speculation hurt.”

She studied him for several seconds. “Is that what happened to you when Adam died—people jumped to their own conclusions?”

A twinge of the old pain stabbed his chest. He hadn’t expected her thoughts to go that way, but he wouldn’t back away from it. “No. There were no rumors about me, Zoe. Just facts. I goaded Adam into a stupid race, dared him to reach beyond his ability. He couldn’t. The accident was my fault.” He reached out, smoothing the hair away from her face, running his thumb along the line of her jaw. “It’s not the same, Zoe. You haven’t done anything wrong, but you’re going to get blamed if you’re connected in any way. You’re too convenient. I don’t want that to happen.”

“You want me to run away from a fight.”

He frowned, stopping short of running his thumb across her lower lip, the temptation almost overwhelming. He hadn’t realized how determined she
was to salvage her reputation in Barringer’s Pass. “It’s not running away when it’s not your fight to begin with, Zoe.”

“Whoever set that fire
made it
my fight.”

“If you leave and the incidents continue, like we both know they will, people will realize you weren’t involved.”

Her mouth pursed into a stubborn pucker. “If I leave, I’ll look like I’m guilty, and hiding from the police.” The imaginary criticism stiffened her back. “I don’t run and hide, and I don’t quit just because things get tough.”

Her accusing look stabbed clean through him and made the unspoken part as obvious as if she’d said it aloud. “Like I did?”

She didn’t hesitate. “Didn’t you?”

His concern for her feelings obviously wasn’t reciprocated. That brief flash of vulnerability was buried so deeply now that he wondered if he’d imagined it. Maybe he’d tried to see softness where there was only cold, hard determination.

“I wasn’t hiding,” he ground out. “I was avoiding causing any more deaths.”

“If you believe that, you’re the only one who does. Why won’t you give Adam his share of the blame?”

He nearly rocked from the blow. She wasn’t just cold, she was out of line. “You don’t know anything about it,” he said, the menace in his voice obvious even to him.

She didn’t appear to be fazed. “I know Adam wasn’t stupid. He knew what he was doing, and he knew the risks. You hid from life, Jase. But life includes mistakes. Everyone makes them. You, Adam, me. I don’t
know about you, but I’m going to overcome mine. I’ll convince people that I’ve changed. If I have to be even more straightlaced and proper to do it, then I will.”

“
More
straightlaced?” He barked out a laugh in disbelief, using it to cover the irritation he felt when she’d brought up Adam’s death. “Hell, Zoe, you’re already so straight you’re as rigid as a steel rod. I suggest you learn how to bend a little before you break.”

He’d never torn into a woman like that, and he wasn’t proud that he’d done it now. But holy Christ, Zoe could press his buttons! And she’d needed to hear it. Not that she’d appreciate it—most women would probably slap his face and break into tears. He didn’t think Zoe would.

He was right, the glint in her eyes was pure hatred. “Thank you so much for pointing out my faults when you can’t even deal with your own. You’re a great example of how to overcome emotional problems.”

He gave her a level look. If he expected her to believe anything he said, he had to concede the truth. “You’re right. I’ve been avoiding life for too long. And that’s going to change. But you’re hiding behind your proper, professional image as much as I’ve been hiding inside this saloon.”

Criticizing her image would have been more effective if she’d been wearing her ubiquitous blue suit and sensible shoes. But for once she wasn’t dressed for work. Her skimpy top tied in front, leaving several inches of skin between it and her low-slung jeans. If he didn’t dislike her so intensely he would be tempted to rest his hands on her bare skin just above the curve of her hips and pull her against him, then mold his palms against the curve of her ass . . .

God, he was sick. Imagining foreplay at the same time he was verbally tearing her to shreds.

She didn’t look like she cared to speak another word to him, but she managed to bite out, “I want to go home now.”

“Fine.” Which meant he had to drive her. Shit. Well, the sooner he got her out of his hair, the better. “Let’s go,” he muttered.

The truck keys were in his pocket, so he led her around the Rusty Wire to the parking lot. He wanted to take her hand, but was sure she’d punch him if he tried. She followed without a word, getting in and staring straight ahead into the night. She’d probably be happy to go the rest of her life without speaking to him. He started the truck and backed out, speaking without looking at her. “Where am I going?”

“Eighty-four eleven Larkspur.”

The town was small enough that he didn’t have to ask where Larkspur was. Neither of them said a word as he drove through the well-lit downtown, still busy with the Saturday-night restaurant crowd, then up the darker residential streets where houses huddled on the wooded slopes above Barringer’s Pass. She sat in stony silence, letting him navigate on his own. He spotted her house easily when he saw her red Escape parked under the sketchy shelter of a carport. He pulled up behind it. The house was small, easily eighty years old, and the carport wouldn’t be much protection against the snowdrifts of winter. He didn’t know what kind of money Zoe made, but it obviously wasn’t affording her a luxurious lifestyle.

She was out of the truck without a thank-you or a good-bye, which he figured proved how furious she
was. Proper behavior was so ingrained in everything she did, the snub had to be deliberate.

He met her in front of the truck. She raised her cool stare to him. “I didn’t invite you in.”

“I’m walking you to your door.”

“Thank you, but I know the way.”

He stared back in reply and held his arm out toward the house. She narrowed her eyes in a final glare and walked past him. He followed. A pissy attitude wouldn’t stop him from seeing a woman to her door when he brought her home alone at night.

Her house was on a more level patch of ground than his, with only a small step up to the cracked slab of cement that passed for a front porch. He stood right behind her while she turned her key in the lock, questioning his own wisdom of being so close to her. He could have watched her enter from inside the truck if he was concerned about her safety. But no, he had to torture himself with the light, airy scent she wore and watch the porch light cast a shimmer of gold over her red hair.

This was crazy. He wanted her. Zoe was obstinate, contrary, and perpetually irritating, yet he burned with the need to strip her naked and make her scream with desire. If she tugged him close right now and, with a husky whisper, invited him to her bedroom, he’d gladly go.

She pushed the door open and turned to face him. He watched her hesitate the tiniest bit, her brows together and lower lip between her teeth, and his fantasies went on high alert. Then she stepped inside and slammed the door in his face.

He walked back to the truck and backed out of the
driveway, taking one last look at Zoe’s house. A flicker caught his eye. In the living room, a curtain peeked open, then whipped back in place.

Despite his annoyance, a slow smile spread across his face. Something impossible to ignore lay between them, just below the surface, and he’d bet anything she felt it, too.

•  •  •

Zoe barely had time to stomp to the bedroom and throw her boots at the shoe rack when the phone rang. She snatched it up without even checking the caller ID, snapping out, “Hello.”

“Hi, you got a minute?”

Sophie. She sat on the bed. “Sure, what’s up?”

“You can’t tell Mom we talked about this.”

A prickle of concern slipped across the back of her neck; it had been too long since she’d been to the commune. “Why, is something wrong with her?”

“No, nothing like that,” Sophie reassured her. “It’s kind of about you.”

A sinking feeling hit her stomach. “She heard I was questioned by the police, didn’t she? Who told her?”

“She was in town yesterday, at Maggie’s store. They went out to lunch, said hi to a few friends, the usual. It came up once or twice. Or more.”

Great, now her mother would think her daughter had taken a dive off the deep end again. “I’ll call her first thing tomorrow. She needs to know I didn’t have anything to do with the fire.”

“Don’t be silly, she knows that. But that’s the problem, she thinks someone needs to defend you against the establishment pigs.”

“Oh, crap.” Her mother’s outrage was nothing to be
taken lightly; no one could rally around a social injustice like a commune full of old hippies. “She’ll just call more attention to it.”

“I think that’s the point. She wants people to realize you’re being unjustly persecuted, and you’d never do a single thing to hurt others.”

“It’s a hard sell. I wasn’t exactly a Girl Scout, Soph. People remember.”

“Then they don’t know you. All your rebellious acts were self-destructive. You’d never target someone else.”

Zoe blinked at the insight. Drinking too much, sleeping around, skipping school . . . it had all been part of her personal war against rules, aimed at hurting all the authority figures in her life. In the end she’d hurt no one but herself.

“You’re pretty smart, you know that?”

She snorted. “Mom’s the one who said it. I think she’d like to say it to everyone in town, starting with the chief of police.”

Zoe groaned. “I don’t want that kind of attention. If we leave it alone, it’ll blow over.” She wasn’t so sure about that, but knew it didn’t stand a chance of blowing over if the commune got involved. “I’ll call her tomorrow. Thanks for letting me know.”

She hung up, pondering how she could keep her commune family out of it.

The sudden chime of the doorbell jerked her out of her thoughts. Zoe’s gaze flew to the clock beside the bed—after 11, too late for anyone to be at her front door. Unless it was an emergency.

Or unless Jase had come back.

She jumped up and rushed down the hall, not daring to admit that she was hoping to see Jase’s slow
smile and muscular body standing outside her door. She turned the lock and peered outside. No one.

Opening the door wider, she stepped onto the porch. A prank? Lame, but there were a few kids down the road who might be bored enough to—

She sucked in a gasp as she turned toward the side of the house. Flames leapt high into the night sky, coming from a large object in back of her car, just outside the carport. Acting on instinct, she ran across the grass in her bare feet, twisted on the faucet at the side of the house, and aimed the garden hose at the fire.

A stream of water hit the fire with little effect. It pushed the flames aside enough for her to see the source of the pyre—one of her large plastic garbage cans blazed like a dry tree in a forest fire, tongues of flame licking higher than the roof of the carport. Even as she sprayed it with water she smelled the gasoline and knew water would be useless. Twisting the water off, she watched, waiting for the fire to burn itself out. Already the fuel was nearly gone, and the stench of burning plastic filled her nostrils. When she couldn’t take the noxious fumes any longer, she went in the side door, found the fire extinguisher under the kitchen sink, and took it outside, spraying the melted wreckage of her trash can. It hissed out under a blanket of white foam. A hunched mound of melted plastic remained, dark brown topped with fluffy white foam, listing like a melted cupcake. She’d need a trash can for her trash can.

Belatedly, she looked around. The nighttime neighborhood was quiet; even her brief inferno hadn’t drawn anyone’s attention. If anyone watched, it was from deep in the shadows of a neighbor’s yard. She suspected they did; kids would stick around to
appreciate their handiwork. She didn’t discount that it could be connected to the fire and vandalism at the Rusty Wire, but if it was, she didn’t understand the message. She worked for the Alpine Sky, not the saloon. If someone thought she was too friendly with Jase Garrett, they really weren’t paying attention.