Wild Iris Ridge

But Annabelle and Jess were both gone. Lucy was the only one left, the sole owner of this rambling old Victorian mining mansion she had never wanted in a town she had once been so eager to leave. Since her own dreams had just burned up hotter than any creosote fire, she had decided to borrow Jessica’s for a while.

“Like I said, spur-of-the-moment decision. I didn’t think things through.”

“How very unlike you,” he said, his voice dry enough to make her bristle.

She was too tired to fight with him tonight. Instead, she changed the subject. “How much damage do you think the fire caused?”

“We won’t know until we inspect things in the morning. From what I could see, the fire seemed to be contained to the chimney. I doubt you’ll see any structural damage but we can’t be certain until at least tomorrow. It might be Monday or Tuesday by the time we know anything.” He paused. “Are you planning to stick around that long?”

She glanced at the house, feeling that steady, relentless dribble of panic again. “Yes,” she said, lips tight.

She had no reason to tell this man who disliked her so intently that she would be here for the immediate future, that she had nothing left but this smoke-damaged house that sat in the rain like a graceful grande dame.

“You can call the fire station and leave the name of your hotel once you figure it out. I’ll get in touch with you as soon as I know whether the house is safe to inhabit.”

She could afford a night or two in a hotel, but she would have to come up with another solution if this dragged on longer than that—especially if she was going to pour all her resources into pursuing Jess’s dream. Again, nothing she was willing to share with Fire Chief Caine.

“Thanks,” she murmured.

He studied her for a minute longer and she knew she must be a mess—bedraggled and sooty and smelling of smoke and fire extinguisher chemicals.

“Welcome back. I guess.”

* * *

SOMETHING WAS UP.

Brendan frowned as he watched Lucy Drake slide back behind the wheel of her fancy BMW. She sat for a moment gazing out the front windshield into the darkness as if she couldn’t quite remember how to put the car in gear.

He was aware of a tiny, wriggling concern, like a slippery earthworm in the garden he couldn’t quite grasp.

Usually, she was brash and confident, striding through the world with her designer suits and leather briefcases.

On her rare visits to Hope’s Crossing before Jess had died, Lucy would blow in with a backseat full of expensive gifts for the kids and for Jess and story after story about her exciting life in Seattle as the marketing director at a hugely successful and rapidly expanding software company.

Yeah, the circumstances were rough tonight. It had to be a rude welcome for her to come back to Iris House and end up with a chimney fire five minutes later.

That didn’t completely explain the way she had been acting. The woman who had just headed away looking lost and alone didn’t seem at all like the fiercely driven go-getter who usually made no secret of her disdain for him.

Don’t you think you can do better than a washed-up jock with more muscles than brains?

He pushed away the bitter memory he hadn’t realized still haunted him somewhere deep inside to find he wasn’t alone in his contemplation of Lucy’s little red BMW.

Pete Valentine, one of his volunteer firefighters who ran a successful plumbing business the rest of the time, stood at his elbow. The other man licked his bottom lip with a greedy sort of look as his gaze followed her taillights. “Lucy Drake. She’s still as hot as ever. Man, she used to make my balls ache in high school.”

He glowered at the locker room talk which, unfortunately, wasn’t all that uncommon among his crew at times.

Pete was married to a nurse at the hospital. If she heard him talking like this, Janet would probably give him a whole new definition of aching balls.

Pete seemed to take his silence as tacit permission. “Something about that whole badass-Goth-girl thing just did it for me, you know? Especially because she was so smart on top of all that attitude. Honor roll, the whole thing. I sat behind her in Mrs. McKnight’s English class senior year, and I spent the whole semester trying to get a peek beneath all that black leather, if you know what I mean.”

He had always thought he liked Pete, but right now he wanted to take one of the attack fire hoses to him, for reasons he didn’t quite understand.

“Yeah, well, how about we don’t take any more visits down your horny teenage memory lane while we have a job to finish?” he growled.

Pete blinked at his tone and his glare. “Uh, sure, Chief. Sorry. I didn’t mean anything by it. I was just surprised to see her, that’s all.”

Yeah. Join the club, Brendan thought as Pete hurried away.

He never would have guessed when he tucked the kids in at home with Mrs. Madison and drove past this very house on his way to his shift that evening that he would be back here—and facing Lucy in the process.

Though her car was long gone, he still couldn’t help gazing down the road where she had traveled.

He hadn’t missed how evasive she had been when he’d asked how long she was staying. He had to hope it was only a day or two.

Some people just tended to shake things up wherever they went, to spawn chaos and tumult without even trying. Lucy had that particular gift in spades—as tonight clearly indicated.

He and Carter and Faith were finally digging their way out of the deep, inky chasm Jess’s death had tossed them all into. They were finally settling back into a routine, moving forward with one steady foot in front of the other. His kids didn’t need Lucy to aim all that chaos in their direction and shake up the world that was finally feeling calm for the first time in two years.

No sense in worrying about it, he thought as he turned back to the fire and all the details he needed to do in order to clear the scene and send his engines back to the house.

One thing about Lucy. She never stayed long in Hope’s Crossing. In a few days, no doubt she would be packing up her little red car and heading back into the fray, to Seattle and her high-powered career and the world where she belonged.

CHAPTER TWO

A MAN WHO had reached the ripe old age of thirty-six ought to have picked up a little sense along the way.

The next morning, Brendan sipped at his coffee at the counter of his father’s café, The Center of Hope, waiting for some of Pop’s delectable French toast. Though his cup was still half-full, Pop topped him off without asking the minute he set it back down.

“Lucy Drake! That darling girl.” Dermot’s weathered features creased into a concerned frown. “You’re certain, are you, that she came to no harm, then? Did you give her an examination?”

“I had a couple of the EMTs check her out. They reported all her vital statistics were normal. She was only exposed to the smoke for a few moments.”

“You didn’t check her out yourself?”

“No, Pop. I relied on the word of a couple guys who have a combined twenty years as emergency medical technicians. Maybe I shouldn’t have been so trusting.”

“She’s a family friend. Godmother to your children. You can’t be too careful with people who are that important.”

Did Pop mean it was okay for Brendan to provide subpar care to the various strangers he encountered in the course of his job every day? “You can put your mind at ease. She was fine when she left Iris House last night, I promise.”

“That’s a relief. And you’re sure she had no burns?”

“Positive.”

He should have expected this interrogation. By his very nature, Dermot was concerned about everybody in Hope’s Crossing, but he especially fretted over those he had taken under his wing. For reasons known only to him, Dermot had developed a soft spot for Lucy from the moment she showed up in town to live with her great-aunt, all black clothes and pale makeup and a truckload full of attitude.

Brendan sighed and sipped his coffee. When he’d decided on the spur of the moment to grab a quick bite of breakfast at the Center of Hope Café before he headed home, he had hoped he could avoid thinking about Lucy for five minutes—something he had found impossible throughout the night as he worked the rest of his shift.

Dermot wasn’t making that task particularly easy by bringing the woman up the moment Brendan walked into the café. He should have known his father would have heard about the fire the night before, that it would be a central topic of discussion in town.

Dermot knew everything that went on in Hope’s Crossing, from the precipitation level for the month to the color of Mayor Beaumont’s new suit. Owning the town’s most popular gathering spot meant he was usually privy to the best gossip and the most interesting tidbits.

Flashing lights and an assortment of ladder and pumper trucks showing up in the middle of the night to one of the town’s historic silver baron mansions would certainly have set tongues wagging.

The minute Brendan walked into the café, Dermot had demanded all the details about the chimney fire excitement at Iris House—and particularly about the juicy rumors that Lucy Drake had been the cause of it.

“Where did she spend the night, do you know?”

He sighed. “Can’t tell you that, Pop. Sorry I didn’t think to press her for more details about her lodging arrangements. I was a little busy. You know, putting out the fire and all.”

Dermot was unfazed by his dry response. With six strapping sons and a daughter, very little could faze his father, especially not a bit of mild sarcasm.

“I hadn’t heard she was coming back to town, had you?”

“No. She didn’t tell me.” A little warning would have been nice. Air-raid sirens, at the very least.

“How long is she planning to stay?”

“No idea,” he answered.

“Well, have you told the children yet?” Dermot persisted. “Carter and Faith will be thrilled to see her, won’t they? Why, Faith is always talking about her aunt Lucy sending her this or that, video-conferencing with her on the computer, emailing her a special note.”

He picked up his coffee cup with another sigh. So much for hoping he could eat a hearty breakfast without having to think about the woman for five minutes.

“I haven’t seen them yet. I had a meeting first thing when my shift ended and didn’t catch them before they left for school this morning. Mrs. Madison took them. My plan was to grab some breakfast here and then head home and crash for a few hours until school is out. I’m sure I’ll have the chance to tell them later.”

They would be over the moon at the unexpected treat of a visit from their favorite aunt. Lucy wasn’t truly their aunt. She and Jess had been cousins, linked mostly through their relationship with Annabelle, but his late wife had adored Lucy like a sister.

She had been the maid of honor at their wedding. In typical Lucy fashion, she had been too busy to come back for any of the pre-matrimonial events until the weekend of the wedding, where she had appeared late to the rehearsal dinner with apologies about a last-minute meeting she couldn’t miss and then had left early from the reception to catch a flight.

“They do love her,” Dermot said. “She’s been good to them, hasn’t she? As busy as they keep her at that outfit where she works, she still somehow found time to fly down for Faith’s birthday last year, remember? Just to take her to Denver. Faith didn’t stop talking about the ballet and the shopping for weeks.”

Right. Lucy was a saint.

“Faith didn’t make some plans with Lucy again to bring her to town, did she?”

“Not that I know about,” he answered. He only knew she had been in Hope’s Crossing less than eight hours and he was already tired of her.

“Pop, can we talk about something else?”

“Something else?”

“I don’t know why Lucy Drake is back in town, and to be honest with you, I don’t care much. I only want the little idiot to stay out of my way and to do her best not to burn down Iris House again.”

“Darn. I guess that means I’ll have to return all the cans of gasoline and the jumbo box of matches I just bought at the hardware store.”

If he hadn’t been distracted by the tantalizing smell of bacon after a long shift, he would have smelled Lucy come into the diner before she even spoke. She always wore some kind of subtle, probably expensive scent that reminded him of cream-drenched strawberries.

He swiveled, ignoring Dermot’s disapproving glower. She looked none the worse for wear after her adventures of the night before, fresh and bright and lovely.

She was wearing a leather jacket the color of deer hide, tailored and supple, with a scarlet scarf tied in some kind of intricate loose knot around her neck. She looked sophisticated and urbane and, as usual when he was around her, he felt like a dumb jock with more brawn than brains.

“If you saved your receipt,” he drawled, fighting back against his own stupid sense of inadequacy, “I’m sure Mose Lewis at the hardware store will take it all back.”

She made a face then plopped onto the stool next to him, leaned across the counter and gave Pop a big smacking kiss on the cheek.

“Dermot. You’re as handsome as ever. I’m still waiting for you to get tired of this one-horse town and run away with me. You’d never have to pour a cup of coffee again.”

The tips of his pop’s ears turned red and he smiled, pouring her a cup of coffee.

When he spoke, the traces of Irish accent that still sprinkled his speech intensified. “I have to say, that’s a verra appealing offer, m’darling, but I’m afraid I would miss my grandchildren too much.”

“Ah, well. I guess I’ll have to ease my broken heart with some of your luscious French toast. I’ve been dreaming about it since I left King County.”

Pop beamed at this, as his greatest joy was feeding people—especially those who held a soft spot in his big, generous heart, which certainly qualified Lucy.

“Coming right up. You just sit there and enjoy much better coffee than you’ll ever find in Seattle while you listen to my stubborn son apologize for his rudeness.”

“I can’t wait,” she murmured.

Apparently, Brendan wasn’t the only one who could wax sarcastic in the morning.

Since it had been rude and childish to call her names—and Pop likely wouldn’t be quick to let him forget it—he took his medicine like a good boy.

“Sorry I called you an idiot,” he muttered.

“Sorry you said it or sorry I happened to walk in just in time to overhear you?”

“Does it matter?”

To his surprise, she smiled a little, though she still had that unsettled, restless look in her eyes. “Not really, I suppose. Nicely done, Chief Caine.”

Even big, dumb jocks could use good manners at times, especially when their Pop was standing close enough for a good whack on the knuckles with a wooden spoon.

“So. This is how the fire chief unwinds after an exciting night of serving and protecting the good people of Hope’s Crossing.”

“Sometimes. It’s been a long shift and I’m starving. I didn’t feel like cooking breakfast for myself or pouring a bowl of cereal. Since I already missed seeing the kids off to school this morning, I figured, why not?”

He wondered, not for the first time, why he always felt compelled to defend his actions around her.

“If I had a father like yours, I would come here every morning for breakfast.”

He didn’t miss the slightly wistful tone in her voice. Her home life hadn’t been great, he knew, though only secondhand. Jess hadn’t shared too many details but he knew Lucy’s parents divorced when she was a girl, and she hadn’t had a good relationship with her father’s second wife.

“How is Iris House?” Lucy asked now. “Do you think it’s safe for me to return?”

Though she spoke casually, he sensed an undercurrent of urgency that gave him pause. What was the big rush? She had spent the four months since Annabelle died basically ignoring her legacy. Why was she in a hurry now to stay there? First she showed up after midnight to a dark, cold, locked house when any logical person would have gone to a hotel, now she was trying to hurry along the investigation.

Some tiny part of him was tempted to drag the investigation out as long as possible in the hopes that any further complication would make her turn around and head back to Seattle, but that would have been petty and small.

“You should be fine. We’ve had our inspector go through it from top to bottom and everything appears in order. All the chimneys could use a thorough scrubbing before you use them. I can get you the name of a couple of chimney sweeps in town.”

“That would be good. Thanks.”

“I relit the pilot light, so you ought to have no trouble running the furnace at this point. You’ll want to keep the windows open throughout the day to vent any lingering smoke. Should be a nice, sunny day for it.”

“I’ll do that.”

“Most of the smoke damage seemed to be centered in that den area. You may want to have a cleaning company come in to do a professional job. Sometimes the smell can linger for a long time. I can get you a few of those numbers, too.”

She wore an expression of vague surprise, as if she hadn’t expected him to be helpful. “Again. Thank you.”

“You’re welcome.”

They lapsed into an awkward sort of silence and he wondered once more why she had come back to town. This close, he could see a return of that fine-edged tension in the set of her mouth and the way she clasped a napkin tightly, as if to keep it from wriggling away.

“How long are you staying in Hope’s Crossing?” he finally asked. “I’ve had a half-dozen people ask me that already, including Pop.”

“Why would people automatically assume you know anything about my plans?”

“The very question I have asked myself numerous times, believe me.”

Her mouth lifted a little at the corner and he almost thought she wanted to smile but she only picked up her coffee again.

“So?” he pressed.

“I...haven’t decided.”

He leaned back on the stool. “Now that doesn’t sound like the Lucy Drake we all know. You’re the woman with the plan, right? Always looking for the best angle, the next big thing.”

Her fingers tightened around that recalcitrant napkin. “Not always,” she muttered.

Yeah. Something was definitely up. He remembered that strange impression of the night before, that she was lost and even a little frightened.

He didn’t like the sudden urge washing over him to wrap a comforting arm around her shoulder and tell her everything would be okay. That was more Dermot’s venue, not his. He was just the dumb jock who was once married to her cousin.

And who had once shared a couple pretty heated kisses with Lucy, long before he ever started dating Jess.

He pushed that memory back into the deep recesses of his brain, right where it belonged. He had done his best for more than a decade to forget about that night.

“I thought NexGen couldn’t get along without their hotshot marketing director. You don’t have some kind of vitally important meeting to get back to in a day or two?”

She was now not so much fidgeting with her napkin as mangling it beyond recognition. “NexGen and I have...parted ways. I’m taking a small vacation to consider my options. A few weeks. A month. I haven’t decided.”

“Here?”

It was a stupid question, but he was so shocked that he couldn’t think what else to say.

He figured when it came to jobs, people fell into four basic categories. Some hated them vehemently, others tolerated them, still others found great satisfaction in what they did. And then there was the fourth category, those passionate few who were basically defined by their vocation.

That was Lucy—and as a result, she had been amazingly successful for someone just barely on the north side of thirty.

Jessica used to always talk about what Lucy had achieved, her awards and honors and status. Sometimes his wife would glow with pride when she talked about Lucy. Other times she would be terse and moody after hearing about how far and how high Lucy had climbed in such a short time.

During those dark times, he wondered if she regretted her decision to marry him just a few years out of college and to give up her teaching career temporarily while the kids were young.

He hoped not. For the rest of their lives, his children would be without their mother. He would always be deeply grateful they had those first uninterrupted years with her.

“I needed a change of scenery,” Lucy answered. “And since I’ve been putting off dealing with the house, I figured now was a good time.”

He might not like Lucy much, given their complicated history, but he knew a little about loss. Leaving the job she had loved must be very difficult for her.

“Are you...doing okay?”

“You mean, am I going to be forced to live out of a grocery cart and a refrigerator box? I think I’m probably a few months out from that.”

“I meant, are you doing okay, um, emotionally. Change is never easy, even if it was something you wanted. Especially after you lost Annabelle just a few months ago.”

She looked surprised at the question and for a moment he saw a raw tangle of emotions in her expression before she donned a haughty sort of look.

“How refreshingly sensitive, Chief Caine. I never would have expected it of you.”

He could feel his skin heat. “Forget I asked. Not my business.”

Where was Pop with his breakfast, for crying out loud? All he wanted to do was eat his French toast and go home to sleep for a few hours before the kids got home. He wasn’t in the mood to make nice to a prickly porcupine.

After a long, awkward moment, she finally spoke. “The truth is, I got fired.”

Okay, he hadn’t been expecting that one. Fired? Ms. Can-do-no-wrong Drake? What had she done to earn such a dramatic response? Last he heard, she was being groomed for a vice president spot, and now she had been canned? There had to be quite a story behind that one.

Judging by way she didn’t meet his gaze after she dropped that little interesting bombshell, he had a feeling she hadn’t meant to tell him. So why had she?

“That’s tough. I’m sorry.”

She gave him a wary look. “What? No sarcastic comments about how I probably had it coming?”

What had he ever done to make her think he was the kind of jerk who would kick a woman who had obviously hit a personal low point?

“Not my business. If you wanted to tell me, you would have.”

“Our last product launch failed spectacularly,” she said after a moment. “It was a PR nightmare. Our entire marketing campaign focused on how much more secure our newest software was than its closest competitor. Within minutes of the product launch, hackers set out to prove us wrong. Our clients have lost millions and the lawsuits have only just begun.”

“How is that your fault?”

“Someone needed to take the hit, and after I got into a yelling match with the CEO and the product manager last week and called them both a few choice names, I was nominated.”

“Ouch.”

“As you can see, last night’s stupidity trying to burn down Iris House was just the latest in a string of brilliant decisions on my part.”

Before Brendan could come up with an answer to that, Pop came bustling out from the kitchen with two plates piled high with carbohydrates.

“Here you go. Two of the breakfast specials, French toast, just the way you both like it, with strawberries and almond butter.”

“I can’t believe you remembered that!” she exclaimed.

“You’ve only been coming in here for it since you were a wee girl.”

Brendan thought he was the only one on the planet who ate his French toast like that. How strange, to find that Lucy shared that particular affinity with him.

“I remember because I always thought it funny that you and my boy here liked it the same way, given that you don’t usually see eye to eye on many things.”