Sparking the Fire (7 page)

“I can't be getting distracted when your safety is on the line.”

Error number two.

She folded her arms over her breasts—a deserved punishment—and her expression turned smug. She had him, and she knew it.

“That sounds like a ‘you' problem.”

True, but that didn't make it any less of one. “Just remember who's in charge,” he murmured, the last gasp of a drowning idiot.

“Yep. You da man.” On a soft laugh, she started to wriggle out of the rest of the harness.

They both knew he was in charge of shit.

I
f it made Mr. Stoic feel better to think he was running the show, Molly was happy to let his dude brain go there. That oh-so-tempting pressure she'd felt against her ass affirmed that she was the captain of this voyage. And she could so ignore the silky dampness between her thighs that might have bloomed when he brought her to heel like a Texas steer.

He had checked her body with a “leash” and she had
liked
it.

“Shit.” He dropped the rope and stepped out of her orbit like she leached toxins.

“Hey, bro,” came a smiling voice behind her.

Spinning around, Molly barely managed to suppress a gasp on encountering the prettiest specimen of male she'd ever laid eyes on—and she'd seen Joe Manganiello up close. Dirty blond hair dipped over a strong brow, framing blue eyes that sparkled with a puckish gleam. Sun-kissed skin made her wish sunglasses were included in a firefighter's standard gear. That calendar had not done him justice. Gage Simpson was a hundred times more dazzling in the flesh.

“Not even gonna ask why you're here,” Wyatt said laconically.

“I was in the neighborhood.” Gage's tee read: “All men are created equal, and then some become firefighters.” He held out his hand. “I'm Gage, but you probably already know that.”

As cocky as his reputation, then. She clasped his hand and shook. “I'm Molly, but I'm guessing you already know that, too.”

They grinned at each other, buoyed by that recognition shared by two people who know they are attractive but have no interest in each other whatsoever.

“Everyone's dying to meet you,” he said.

“Gage,” Wyatt growled from behind her.

“They are?”

“My sister-in-law Darcy is a huge fan. Rifle-through-your-trash, Norman-Bates-in-a-dress levels. When we heard Wyatt volunteered for this gig—”

“Was ‘voluntold,' ” Wyatt muttered.

“It sent everyone into a tizzy.”

“It did?” Molly slid a glance to Wyatt and found a muscle in his superhero jaw working itself into a tizzy of its own. “Firefighter Fox, I had no idea your family wanted to meet me.”

“It's Lieutenant, and they don't. My brother is projecting his own desperate neediness onto the rest of them.”

Gage grinned. “That's only half true. So how's prep for the movie going?”

Molly opened her mouth to respond, but Wyatt spoke first. “Moving along. Start shooting in three weeks.”

“Must have your script all settled.” Gage smiled again, but there was tungsten underlying it. Not such a pushover after all.

“We have
a
script.”

“But you'd like to amp it up with some ripped-from-the-headlines stuff. My sister's headlines.”

“It would definitely make it more appealing. Look, Gage, I just want a chance to present my case to Alex. The movie doesn't have to be an exact rendering of her story, but I want to get it right. I want to know what it's like to be a woman in this profession. What it's been like for
this
woman in particular.”

She could hear it in her voice. The desperation to fight back, to climb out of the hole she'd fallen into this last year. Attaching Alexandra Dempsey's name to the project would create Julia Roberts/Erin Brockovich levels of attention.

Neither Dempsey responded with any level of enthusiasm to Molly's pitch, so she changed tack. “I recognize your sister is a very private person.”

Both men snorted.

“She's not?”

Gage shoved his hands into his jean pockets. “You saw the video of Alex cutting up that car, right? My sister doesn't care who knows her business. She's too busy living and saying screw you to anyone who doesn't like it. Alex is not the obstacle here.”

“It's Eli,” Wyatt said. “Eli wants to protect her. Some negative things were said about her in the press back when they were dating and she doesn't care. But Eli does.”

Molly met Wyatt's gaze, and a frisson of something tethered them for a split second. Did Wyatt admire Eli's protective streak? That sort of defense was something Molly had always craved in a partner, but she had never received it from Ryan. Her husband had viewed her purely as a means to an end: whatever made Ryan Michaels, Superstar, look good.

“So who'll be playing me?”

Molly blinked back to the conversation and Gage's question. “You?”

“I recognize that it might be difficult to find someone to capture my grace, charm, good looks, and je-ne-sais-fucking-quoi, but it's a well-known fact that I'm Alex's number-one brother, her daily inspiration, and the reason she cut up that car in the first place. If it wasn't for me, there would be no America's Favorite Firefighter.”

Wyatt rubbed his mouth, evidently hiding a . . . smile? Surely not.

“In the adapted script,” Molly said, her tone careful, “we've conflated the brothers into just two. We ended up with someone who looks more like . . . uh, Luke.”

A robust laugh filled the room. Stop the Facebook updates, was that what joy sounded like from Wyatt Fox?

“Luke?” Gage exclaimed. “You have got to be kidding me. Luke's the completely charmless Dempsey!” He motioned to Wyatt. “And that's saying a lot because he's got this one for competition.”

To Molly's dismay, Wyatt was still smiling. It made her a touch dizzy. “When did I overtake Luke in the charm stakes?”

“You have your moments.” Gage was clearly still miffed that there were no plans to capture his daring exploits on the screen. “But now's not one of them. Dunno what you think is so damn funny.”

Wyatt gave Gage's hair a friendly rub. “Don't worry, Baby Thor. If you're good, we'll let you visit the set and see how your life is not being made into a movie.”

Molly perked up. “Baby Thor?”

“That's what my sister-in-law Kinsey calls him. She thought he looked like that actor from the
Thor
movies, but all fresh-faced and cute.”

Gage scowled, which did nothing to diminish either his fresh-facedness or his cuteness. “I'm ten times hotter than that guy. Like to see him blitz a ladder, rescue ten kids from a burning orphanage, and look this freakin' good while doing it.”

Molly caught Wyatt's eye, and again saw unmistakable humor warming those Arctic blues. What an enlightening day. The Marine had at least two weaknesses: he was still attracted to her and he was crazy in love with his family.

She would make it her mission to find out the rest.

Her phone buzzed in the pocket of her bunkers and she pulled it out. It was a text from Cal.

Call me ASAP!

Sometimes Molly questioned who was the diva here.

“Well, gentlemen, it's been a pleasure. Nice to meet you, Gage.”

“Likewise, Miz Molly.”

She picked up the SCBA, helmet, and jacket loaded with tools—had she actually climbed a ladder in this gear? Go, her!—and headed to the stairway that led down to the ground floor.

“Later, Lieutenant.” Refusing to meet Wyatt's gaze, she felt its sensuous weight all the same, heavy on her ass. Unsurprising. Guys always checked out her tush, and she knew she still looked damn fine and award-worthy—even in bulky bunkers.

A
s the fading
clop-clop
signaled Molly's descent, Gage turned to Wyatt with a shit-eating grin.

“Well, well, well, most
inter-est-ing
.”

Wyatt gusted a sigh, because when his brother had a point to make, there was no stopping him. Classic Dempsey trait.

“All those dates I set you up on and no joy.”
See?
“Then today I walk in and the sexual tension practically cannonballs me all the way to Indiana.”

Ignoring that, Wyatt circled back to the primary problem. “You didn't have to be so damn nice to her. That's not how we're supposed to play this.”

“The only people who have a problem with the movie idea are you and Eli. And we all know if Alex wants it, he'll cave.”

True. In fact, his sister's reaction on hearing Molly was in town and sniffing for the rubber stamp had been typical Alex.
I'm gonna challenge her to an arm-wrestling contest and if she wins, she can tell my story.
He almost believed her.

Taking on this consulting gig, he had to acknowledge that some overlap with his private life was bound to happen. He should feel guiltier about how he had stepped up here. How he had let his curiosity trump common sense.

He should.

The key was to ensure it stopped there and didn't enter the realm of complicated.

Gage was back to his favorite subject: who's sexing whom. “So, you and Molly Cade. Don't think I've ever seen you so . . . giggly.”

Wyatt had never giggled in his life. “Is there a point to this conversation?”

“She makes you laugh, she pisses you off . . .”

Surely there was an unsubscribe link, an off switch, a bolt of lightning that would shut his brother up.

“. . . she kept leaning into you. Spidey senses are a-tingling.”

“Just a job.” Been there, done that, and hell if he didn't want more.

“I worry about you being alone,” Gage said, all jokiness gone.

In a family where love was so freely given, it was assumed that everyone longed for a love connection that mirrored the great precedent set by Sean and Mary Dempsey. Despite Wyatt's annoyance with the constant sugar-to-the-max levels of romance in his family circle, he supposed he wouldn't mind having a woman to come home to, a couple of ankle biters wearing him out, a life that didn't revolve around work. But remarkably, women willing to suffer brooding lugs with the charisma of a hose bundle were thin on the ground.

So he sidestepped, as he always did when faced with Gage's loving concern. “I dream of being alone.”

Gage offered up a wry grin. “You'd miss us.”

“Like a tumor.”

Wyatt's phone chimed, and as he checked it, Gage leaned in because his loving concern often came with a side of nosiness.

“Who's Jen?”

A thorn in my fucking side.
“No one.”

As Wyatt declined the call, Gage eyed him carefully, a query evidently on the tip of his tongue about Wyatt's “secret double life,” as the rest of the family labeled it. Three or four nights a month, he made the trip downstate to Bloomington, overnighters that fueled his sibs' curiosity. Keeping secrets from the four closest people in the world to him was not his preference, but he had no choice.

Correction.
Jen gave him no choice.

“International man of mystery,” Gage said. “Luke said he asked you and it's not a woman, so I assume this Jen's your handler. CIA?”

“I'd tell you but then I'd have to kill you.”

Smiling broadly, Gage bounced off, leaving Wyatt to pick up the harness that had been wrapped around Molly's body. He ran his fingers along the edges, imagining the warmth of her still embedded in the nylon.

Idiot.

Shaking off that whimsy, he threw the harness over his shoulder and reflected on that cheeky grin she hit him with as she left. How the sway of her hips turned his brain to lust-mush.

The call he'd just received threw a vat of ice on that foolishness.

He'd thought he could control himself around Molly, yet every second in her presence loosed the granite hold on his emotions one more slippery, dangerous inch.

No more. All future interaction between them would be chaperoned on the set. He would do his job and keep his hands, eyes, and needy, greedy cock to himself.

 CHAPTER FOUR

T
he Camaro's undercarriage looked like shit. Comparisons could probably be made to Wyatt's own rusty undercarriage, but he'd rather not go there.

Forty-five minutes later, he'd worked off most of the dirt with a degreaser, but a couple of defiant rust spots still made his car-loving anal side wince. He'd need to jack it up and get a steam cleaner in there. Any more time staring up at it was going to result in a full-scale rehab: engine, trans, gas tank, and subframe connectors all out so he could expose the underside and do this properly. He was halfway through restoring her—had spent two years already—but he didn't mind how long it was taking. This cherry-red beauty, a '69 ZL1, the original
fuck yeah
muscle car, deserved her time to shine.