Sparking the Fire (3 page)

But . . .

Molly Cade was in his zip code. Or soon would be. Dubbed America's Sweetheart in all those dumb romantic comedies when she wasn't playing a macho loser's helpless love interest in the latest summer popcorn movie, her one step outside her wheelhouse had yielded that Oscar nod for some indie film. And then it had all turned to shit for her in the last year.

Not that he had kept track of her starry life or anything.

But before that, before she was
the
Molly Cade, she was the one woman who had snuck under his skin and burrowed in for the long haul. It would be mighty interesting to see if she had the means to make him itch like before. Come alive like before. Keeping her and her production company out of his sister's orbit would be a bonus.

He met Venti's gaze squarely, not caring what the cap might think about his sudden about-face.

“When do I start?”

“Y
ou have to admit, he has a great ass.”

Molly turned to the maker of that bald statement and gave her the slitty eyes. Calysta Johnson—bestie, gal Friday, and fellow ass connoisseur—remained oblivious to Molly's glare, too busy ogling the
ass
-ets of Gideon Carter, costar on Molly's latest movie venture,
Into the Blaze
. Molly followed Cal's gaze to where Gideon the Idiot stood just as . . .
sigh
, he rang the antique firehouse bell affixed to the wall of the Robert J. Quinn Fire Academy on Chicago's West Side. For the third time in ten minutes. At the clanking din, he whooped like a frat pledge and nudged the ribs of his right-hand dickhead, Jeremy.

“Sure, great ass. Pity it's on his shoulders.”

Cal chortled. “If I was ten years younger—”

“Or had a brain injury.”

“—I'd be all over those perfect globes.” Cal was equal opportunity when it came to her dating interests. Men, women, and IQs below seventy were all fair game. Grinning, she aimed a glance past the hulking steam-powered engine in the lobby and checked her phone again. “Our contact is late.”

“You make it sound like a special military op. We're just meeting the Pabst Blue Ribbon–drinking, potbellied hose hauler who's going to make sure this movie is more authentic than a Ken Burns documentary.”

Cal squeezed Molly's arm. She could always tell when Molly was nervous. “Hon, this is going to be a huge success. Your ticket back onto the A-list, into the fickle public's hearts, and their big fat wallets.”

“I don't care about being A-list or making bank on the first weekend. I just want”—Molly balled her fists and placed them on her hips—“I just want people to hear my name and not think ‘Ryan Michaels's pathetic ex' or ‘Her tits look bigger on the screen than they do in those hacked photos.' ”

“Well, they do look bigger. That's the magic of Hollywood.”

Molly barked a reluctant laugh. Thank God for Cal, who always managed to shred the invites to the pity party.

“Speaking of photos, did you see them?” Cal jerked her chin to the west wall, where a battery of frames hung in a grid. They both moved toward them.

The Wall of the Fallen.

Feeling a touch ghoulish, Molly studied the pictures. Faces shone back at her, some smiling, most not, all of the men dressed in their CFD uniforms. Each of them someone's father, brother, son, friend. Their courage and sacrifice enveloped Molly to the point that the shitstorm she had endured this past year paled in comparison.

With reverent slowness, she walked past the memorial until she came to the two she recognized: Sean Dempsey and his foster son, Logan Keyes.

Sean was that stereotypical hale and ruddy-faced Irishman with a twinkle that not even his grim official photo could dull. Beside him, Logan stared out from beyond the grave, a hint of a smile teasing the corner of his mouth. A real heartbreaker, no doubt. Nine years ago, they'd given their lives, spawned a legion of bar tales, and inspired a family of foster kids to follow in their footsteps. One of those kids, Alex Dempsey, was as well known for her on-camera and romantic exploits as she was for her bravery. Her story of fierce familial loyalty, headline-grabbing heroics, and a love for the ages—the movie poster was already designed in Molly's mind—would add the human interest element to
Into the Blaze
's pulse-pounding action sequences.

Unfortunately, Alex and the CFD had stonewalled Molly's efforts to tell it. Months of no calls returned preceded a sternly worded letter from former Chicago mayor, now hotshot lawyer Eli Cooper, informing Cade Productions that Firefighter Dempsey's story was not for sale.

Six months of fighting tooth and nail with Ryan's lawyers for her rights and dignity had soured Molly on smooth-talking lawyers. While the movie would still get made, its success would be assured with Alex's endorsement, which is why she was here.

The Dempseys, as the foster siblings were collectively known, worked at Engine Company 6, so she had requested to meet with one of the company when the usual CFD media affairs rep was injured. It was a long shot, but if she could learn more about the Dempseys, find a way to connect with them, maybe she'd find a way in with Alex. Time was nipping at her heels, though. The adapted script was ready to go and shooting started in under four weeks. It just needed the imprimatur of America's Favorite Firefighter to varnish it with the sheen of authenticity.

This was to be Molly's comeback, and it would be spectacular.

“God, they are positively smokin'.” Cal held up her phone to showcase the ripped-as-shit body of Gage Simpson, one of the Dempseys, posing in the charity firefighter calendar that had taken the city and Internet by storm last year. “Two of them in those beefcake calendars, one of them a cut boxer, the hot-tamale sister. Wonder what the mystery brother looks like.”

So did Molly. Four of the Dempseys were unafraid of the public eye, but the fifth—Wyatt Fox—remained a shadowy figure who shunned the limelight. To be fair, she hadn't looked all that hard, but no clear photos of Mr. Mysterious had come to light. Not even on Facebook.

“Probably got thrashed by the ugly stick. But the rest of 'em . . .” Cal gave a low whistle. “Must be something in the Chicago water.”

As they were standing before a monument to the city's finest and bravest, Molly opened her mouth, ready to admonish her friend for her crassness, only to find Cal gaping and her gaze directed to a point over Molly's shoulder. “Or maybe it's what they're feeding them down at the firehouse,” she murmured.

A curious shiver thrummed through Molly's body a split second before she heard a deep, bone-penetrating baritone. “Miss Cade?”

The shiver magnified in intensity, though that wasn't quite right. It rocket-fuel-boosted every cell in her body to the level of a quake.

That voice. It couldn't be.

She turned.

The Marine.

Her brain tried to compute the vision before her. The same uncompromising blue-gray eyes, but more distant. The same fit body, but more space filling. The same rugged features, but more bearded. (Bearded!)

He was also in the wrong place at the wrong time, wearing the wrong . . . no, no, no . . . Chicago Fire Department T-shirt that stretched taut against chiseled pectorals, the sleeve hems pushed north by biceps she remembered gripping as he pistoned those trim hips into her over and over.

Five years ago.

Five years of climbing a pinnacle of fame to that coveted spot on the A-list. Well, four years. The last year had wiped out all that had gone before. Every high, every joyful moment.

But back in a simpler time, there had been a week—six glorious, sex-filled nights, actually—with the Marine. Who was not a marine at all, it seemed, or at least no longer was.

Cal, seeing that Molly had been struck stupid, donned her personal assistant hat and stepped forward.

“Hi, I'm Calysta Johnson. I've been emailing CFD Media Affairs about today's meeting, and this is—” She motioned toward Molly.

“Miss Cade,” he grated.

Oxygen was suddenly hard to come by, the floor moving beneath her feet. A thundering sound had started in her head and now echoed in her blood—and it had nothing to do with that 90 percent juice diet her personal trainer had her on. The Marine said something to Cal, maybe his name, but Molly missed it.

She had never known that name, had never wanted to. That was their unspoken agreement. No names, no history, no future. Just six nights of scorching passion and inhibitions annihilated. He had done things to her no other man had ever dared. Plumbed the depths of her pleasure and scaled her to orgasmic heights she had forgotten existed during the icy wasteland of her marriage. She used to like sex. She used to like the person she was during sex, but Ryan had drilled it out of her—literally—with his all-consuming focus on himself.

“Mol?” Cal's eyes were wide with concern. “You okay?”

Molly swallowed. “Yes! I'm fine!” Squeaky voiced, about to fall over, but otherwise okeydokey.

She met the cool gaze of the Marine. “Mr. . . . ?”

“Fox. Wyatt Fox.”

Hello, seren-freaking-dipity, it was
him. Not just him from all those years ago, but
him,
the elusive Dempsey. How was it possible that the man who had lit her on fire, body and soul, was also the man who could get her closest to her heart's desire—a straight shot at his sister?

Wyatt Fox. It suited him. Clean, masculine, not a syllable wasted. Like James Bond, if 007 included cowboy-marine-firefighter in his stable of personae.

Fox. Wyatt Fox. License to thrill—and send your panties plummeting.

A manic giggle bubbled up from somewhere deep, the same place where illicit laughter in church originated. The wicked, don't-you-dare-Molly kind of giggle she had never been able to smother in front of her gran whenever Pastor Morrison delivered his sermon with a booger hanging from his nose—every Sunday, without fail, at St. Peter's Episcopal Church in New Haven, Missouri.

She held out her hand, and to distract from her tremble, she parted with that giggle. Wily move, she thought.

He stared, no doubt wondering if she had lost her mind.
Don't worry, Marine, that train left the station long ago.
Only now was she starting to put the splintered mess back together again.

Drawing on Serious Molly, she cleared her throat, though she was quite enjoying this giddy version. It had been a while. “Mr. Fox. Thanks so much for meeting with us today.”

No reaction. What—so—ever.

This was priceless. The one guy on the planet who could probably map all her freckles and he didn't remember a single one—or her! But that was their game, wasn't it? Each night, they would circle each other in that hotel bar like predatory strangers, as though they hadn't already memorized every inch of each other's bodies, the pulse points, the weak spots, every breathy sound.

Could he be reverting to their previous dynamic? Is that why he was looking at her like she was nothing to him? Or had she truly made so little impact?

He dwarfed her hand in his giant one, squeezed once, and let go. As if her touch offended him.

She was reading far too much into this.

“Miss Cade.”

The third time he'd called her that. Something in his voice was hot-wired to the dampening center between her legs. “Molly. Call me Molly.”

The prickle of heat on the back of her neck could mean only one thing: Cal was staring at her and compiling a list of questions in her head to be brought out later over a bottle of Pinot.

“Hey, do you guys . . . know each other?”

Or, why wait? Just get it out now and clear the air.

Not a muscle moved in the Marine's face, not even an eyelash, but then . . . then . . . yes! A slight rise of his eyebrow, like the ghost of a breeze fluttering practically invisible molecules. He
did
remember. The enormity of his reaction, and what it meant, smashed her to the ground.

He was feigning ignorance, allowing her the freedom to admit or deny.

For the past five years, her life had not been her own. A Faustian bargain she had made knowingly, of course. Hello fame, good-bye privacy. But those hacked photos infecting the Internet, that
violation,
had not been her choice.

Her heart clenched at this small gesture of gallantry. So perhaps banging Molly fifteen ways from Sunday before she was famous might not be worth bragging about, but any other guy would be salivating at the chance to compose a headline of “Hot Nights in the Sack with Molly Cade!” Instead, the Marine was giving her the choice whether to reveal their past affair.

Tears pricked her eyelids at the unexpected kindness.

All things considered, however, this prior connection could not get out. She was trying to rehabilitate her sorry rep, not create more gossip for the gutter rags. Which is why she really should not have said in answer to Cal's question about whether they knew each other, “Depends on your definition of
know
.”

One razor-straight eyebrow shot up, hovered near his cocoa brown hairline, and lowered slowly. How gratifying to be able to throw him like that. He had always been so unshockable.

“We had some mutual interests once,” Wyatt said, a pagan gleam in those blue-gray eyes. “Bars. Shakespeare.” Sexy pause. “Elevators.”

Heat rose to her cheeks.
Point to you, Mr. Fox.

“How long have you been with CFD?”

“About four and a half years. Signed up after I left the marines.”

So she'd been right about his military service, and he'd joined the family business after they'd met. It was strange to think of him with a family. With the Dempseys.

Inward mental shake.
Did she think he sprouted fully formed from Lake Michigan, ascending in a seashell like a male Venus with maybe a fig leaf—or a Cubbies cap—over his manly magnificence? Toting a fire hose instead of a trident? No, that was Neptune. Or Poseidon. Whatever.