Touched By Fire

“Afternoon.” A.J.’s deep voice roused her from her painful memories. He tried to take the heavy evidence case from her hand, but she resisted his help and retained a tight grip on the handle. Without argument, he stepped back. “You’re right on time.”

She’d have to take his word on that. Several times that morning she’d caught herself counting the minutes until she’d meet him. Only by taking off her watch and shoving it in her pocket had she been able to get a grip on herself.

“Let’s get this show on the road,” she said stiffly and stepped inside the burned carcass of what was once a quaint little bookstore. “Watch where you’re walking so you don’t inadvertently step on evidence,” she called over her shoulder to A.J.

He knew the drill. Why did she find it necessary to remind him of the basic rules of fire investigation? Power, she told herself. She’d had so little of it over her life lately, it felt good to get back even that much, and that it was with him…

Though it had been a week since the bookstore’s fire, the smell of wet, charred wood was still strong enough to make her catch her breath. Sam led the way through the debris of what remained of the building. Wood crunched beneath their feet. Puddles of water that hadn’t yet completely evaporated sloshed black mud on the cuffs of their pants. Books, their pages burned and blackened, lay everywhere. A brown, mixed-breed dog rooted through the charred timbers, probably in hopes of finding some food. When his search turned up nothing, he cast them a wary glance, bounded over a sagging ceiling beam, then shot off down the street to renew his quest for nourishment.

They slipped on plastic gloves and went deeper into the front room of the building. Sam stared up at the only remaining interior wall.

“Hell of a mess,” A.J. said, stopping beside her, his foot knocking against the aluminum evidence case she’d set on the floor at her feet.

While Sam did a quick check of the room, A.J. watched, his gaze shaking up her usual methodical efficiency. When she’d finished with her preliminary walk-through, he dug in his pocket and pulled out a piece of paper. “Rachel sent this insurance report over for us to use as a guide as to what their inspectors found.” For a moment, he scanned the report, then looked around. He pointed toward a window with the glass missing. “The inspector said he thought maybe a thief or an arsonist came through that broken window. We didn’t agree.”

Sam walked over to just below it, shoved some of the debris on the floor aside with her shovel and then sighed. “This is a no-brainer. Either the inspector did this blindfolded, or he’s just plain stupid. There’s no glass on the floor around the window. A first-year fire academy probie would know that if someone broke in, there would be glass all over the floor. My guess is the heat blew the window out.” She straightened and looked at A.J. “Did they find glass outside?”

A.J. glanced at the police report. “Yes, and according to the investigating officer, enough to make up the missing window.”

Sam shook her head. “I’m surprised the insurance company didn’t catch that. Then again, maybe it served their purpose to overlook the obvious. Wouldn’t be the first time. You get an owner who doesn’t know and they can pull anything on them to keep from having to write a big settlement check.”

She glanced at A.J. He grimaced and nodded knowingly. Then he smiled. Her stomach did a crazy flip.

If all the so-called proof was as flimsy as this, they’d be out of here before her hormones had a chance to embarrass her, and she’d be heading back to the desk, which, although she hated it, was a far safer prospect than spending the afternoon with A.J. But as long as he kept his distance, she was fairly certain she could handle her hormone eruption. “What else does the insurance report say?”

He scanned it again. “There’s a note here about frayed wires in an electrical outlet behind the counter.”

Sam slid behind the partially burned divider. She inspected the wiring inside an electrical outlet box dangling from the wall. The coating on the wire wasn’t melted. Since fire didn’t damage unexposed wiring, she had to assume the electrical box was removed after the fire.

As she checked the wire, she felt A.J. squat beside her. Instantly, her nerve endings came to life. She dropped the wire. A.J. was pressing lightly against her. A tingle raced down her side. She wanted to move away, but with all the debris that had been torn from the walls by the firefighters, she couldn’t move without pushing him backward.

She took a deep breath, then curled her nose against the musty odor of burned materials that had been wet, then grown moldy in the Florida heat. She turned her head slightly. Instead of the musty smell, she encountered the smell of a man: woodsy, rugged and way too virile for her peace of mind. Waves of desire washed over her, nearly swamping her with their intensity. She struggled to keep her head above the emotional flood waters.

“So, is the wiring the culprit?” A.J. hadn’t looked at her. Instead he remained squatting beside her with his pen poised above his notebook to make notations. “It doesn’t look bad.”

Thankful that he had unwittingly released a bit of his emotional hold on her, Sam reached for the wire to show him the lack of evidence of fire damage, but instead of grabbing wiring, she grabbed warm, masculine fingers. A.J.’s.

Electricity, so strong she wondered if the outlet were live, shot up her arm. She closed her eyes against the yearning that was building inside her. It swelled and threatened to erupt. She couldn’t let anything happen. She couldn’t. She had to be strong. Fight it. She had to—

Then she felt his thumb drawing small, slow circles on the back of her hand. The electricity returned, shooting to all points of her body, bringing them to life in a way she had never experienced, even with Sloan. She tried to pull away, but he tightened his hold.

In a last-ditch effort to stop what seemed inevitable, Sam made a feeble attempt to force him to halt. “A.J…. I…we…you… Don’t—”

“Why, Sam? We both want it.” His breath feathered her face, warm and sweet. His mouth… Lord, help her, his mouth. It was so close, so very close. So tempting, so—

She closed her eyes.

Then it happened. A.J. was kissing her, and she was kissing him back with all the pent-up desire she’d buried inside her. She knew she should be fighting, but all common sense had been swamped by the heat coursing through her. And suddenly, she didn’t want it to stop. She wanted more, much more.

Then he was gone, and she found herself cold and empty. She could hear him on the other side of the counter. He was pacing, and she could imagine him raking his fingers through his hair. From the sound of his hurried footsteps, the kiss had shaken him as much as it had her.

Slowly but surely, she gathered her wits about her and, even more slowly, the deluge of conflicting hot flashes and chills brought on by the devastating kiss faded. Her heart rhythm slowed.

When she had herself under control again and felt as if she could face him, she crawled from behind the counter, then straightened. “I guess we can leave. We’ve done all we can do here.”

As soon as the words passed her lips, she realized the suggestiveness they inadvertently transmitted. Her gaze shot to A.J.

He smiled. “Not quite.”

Instantly, her pulse rate accelerated.

A.J. steered the car into his designated slot in the parking lot of the OGPD, where he finally allowed himself to think about what had just happened with Sam at the bookstore. He licked his lips and could still taste her on them. His fist doubled up and pain shot through his arm. Only then did he realize he’d slammed his hand against the steering wheel. With a long sigh, he laid his head back against the headrest.

What the hell were you thinking?

And there lay the crux of the entire situation. He hadn’t been thinking, not with his head anyway. If he had, he wouldn’t have kissed her. Problem was, when he got that close to Sam, his brain shut down, and his body took over his thinking process. That offer of a job with the BCI was looking better all the time.

Worst of it was, he still had to face Sam later that night at Luke and Rachel’s. He picked up his cell phone, intent on calling Rachel and telling her he couldn’t make it. Before he’d punched in the last number, he snapped the phone closed and squeezed it in his fist.

He was many things, but he wasn’t a coward. He’d go, and he’d face Sam. Hopefully, he wouldn’t do anything else that could be added to his stupid-things-I-did-today list.

Even in the dark, Sam never had a problem finding Rachel’s house. She’d recently taken up gardening as a hobby, and her flowers were the most profuse and prettiest on the entire street. As Sam pulled into the driveway of the Sutherlands’ house, she noted a vehicle parked in the shadow of the house beside Luke’s pickup. She got out of her car and, as she rounded the bumper of the pickup, she recognized the other vehicle as the same make and model that A.J. drove.

Involuntarily, her heart rate sped up. She paused in the driveway. Had Rachel said he’d be there and had Sam pushed it from her mind so she wouldn’t have to deal with it? Did she want to see him after the kiss at the bookstore? What would she say? Calling herself every kind of a coward, she decided to act as if nothing had happened. After all, what good would come of bringing it up and embarrassing both of them in front of Luke and Rachel?

If she’d known he’d be here, she would have dressed differently, but it was too late to change that now. At the front door, she tugged on the cuffs of her white linen shorts and adjusted the pink camisole top to cover most of her midriff. Satisfied she looked presentable, she pushed the doorbell half-hidden beneath a spray of dried flowers hanging on the door frame. Seconds after she heard the chime echoing inside, the door flew open.

“Aunt Sam!” Maggie cried and threw herself at her.

Over the child’s head, Sam could see Rachel watching them closely from midway down the hall. Though Maggie was doing better, Rachel still hadn’t gotten over her being kidnapped and kept a vigilant eye on her child.

Missing from Rachel and Luke’s daughter’s arms was the patchwork teddy bear that had been her lifeline during the time she’d been the captive of arsonist and kidnapper Charlene Daniels. When she’d given up possession of the bear to her baby brother Jay, it had heralded a big milestone in Maggie’s psychological recovery from her ordeal.

Over a year had passed since Maggie had been returned to her mother and father. With the help of a very good child psychologist, she was rapidly turning into a happy little girl again. Rarely did any of them glimpse a shadow of the silent child who’d been taken from her parents’ apartment, kept for two years as the arsonist’s child, then found in Daniels’s bedroom closet.

Sam leaned over, engulfed the little girl in a tight hug, then planted a loud kiss on her cheek. “Hey, angel. Where’s your dad?” she asked, tucking one of Maggie’s blond braids over her shoulder.

“He’s in the living room.” Maggie latched on to Sam’s hand, giving her just enough time to close the front door before pulling her into the entry hall. Before Sam could take a breath, Maggie had hauled her into the living room. “Uncle Jay’s here, too,” she announced as they crossed the threshold.

Sam stopped dead. Uncle Jay was Maggie’s name for A.J. She’d been hoping he was in the garage with Luke tinkering with the car or something so she’d have a little prep time before she had to face him. However, by the time the words had passed through Maggie’s lips, Sam found herself staring straight into A. J. Branson’s mesmerizing blue eyes.

Good God!

It had been hard enough ignoring the man in a business suit. Seeing him in body-hugging jeans that outlined all his male attributes, and a muscle-defining T-shirt, she’d be lucky if she didn’t melt into a puddle right in the middle of Rachel’s brand-new beige carpeting. To draw breath, she had to give it conscious thought. His lips, the ones that had expertly claimed hers that very afternoon with a possessiveness that, in retrospect, scared her, were curved in a smile. Heat suffused her body, making her grateful for her brief attire.

Sam dragged her gaze from A.J. to Rachel, who was standing in the circle of Luke’s protective arm grinning like a delighted child who had just pulled off something on her parents. Great. Give the woman one little glimmer of an idea and she takes it upon herself to build it into a matchmaking mountain.

Sam threw Rachel a look that said she’d deal with her later, then turned back to A.J. Their eyes met and once more, all the sensations she’d experienced that afternoon in the bookstore came rushing back. She fought for control.

“Evening,” she said, her voice forced and formal. A.J.’s thick brows furrowed over his captivating Nordic blue eyes. “Nice to see you, too.” His deep voice rolled over Sam like ocean waves washing over a sandy beach. The man’s charm just oozed out of his pores. A.J., she decided, should be declared harmful to any woman’s mental health, especially hers.

“What are you doing here?” Sam blurted at A.J.

He stared at her for a long time, then lowered his voice to a faint whisper. “Sam, about this afternoon, I—”

“Don’t worry about it. It was nothing,” she bit out before he could say more. “Nothing.”

A.J.’s mouth snapped shut. His brows furrowed into that frown that she knew meant he was not happy. The two of them remained in the middle of the floor glaring at each other. She stood her ground, but she had a sneaky suspicion that he didn’t believe her, that he knew that kiss had rocked her world and that it had taken her a good part of the afternoon to get her feet back under her.

Rachel stepped out of her husband’s sheltering embrace. “Okay, kiddies.” Rachel inserted herself between them. “Now that we’ve all exchanged cordial hellos…” Taking Sam’s arm, she led her to the couch. “Let’s sit down and chat, shall we? Luke, Sam needs a drink.”

Luke smiled. “What’s it gonna be?” He winked at Sam, and his conspiratorial grin matched Rachel’s in exuberance.

Terrific! An ambush. Sam glared at him. “How about hemlock for two?” She looked pointedly from Luke to his wife.

Luke laughed and headed for the bar along one wall. He lifted a bottle of clear liquid for her to see. “Gin and tonic?”

Sam nodded. Then, leaning close to Rachel’s ear, she warned between clenched teeth, “First chance I get, I am going to seriously maim both of you.”

Rachel tossed Sam a playful smirk, as if she’d just complimented her on her shade of lipstick, then steered her around the glass-topped coffee table to a tropical turquoise sofa. “Please, not in front of the child,” she whispered, then she gripped Sam’s arm tighter to get her attention. “It won’t kill you to be nice. You might even be able to finally admit that you like him.” She smiled sweetly and left Sam sitting awkwardly on the edge of the sofa, then took a seat in a wicker chair with turquoise and mauve cushions that faced Sam. A.J. stood to one side. “Why don’t you sit by Sam, A.J.?”

Sam ground her teeth. Rachel had no idea what she was doing. Like him? How she wished it was as simple as that. She looked longingly at the door. But she knew she would have to either sit here quietly or make a scene. Reluctantly Sam scooted over to make plenty of room for A.J.

Trying not to show the reluctance he felt, A.J. slid onto the sofa. When Rachel had stopped by his office to make sure he’d be at the meeting, he’d confirmed that he would and had looked at it as an opportunity to apologize to Sam for what had happened in the bookstore. Now that he was here and Sam was here, A.J. would have felt more comfortable sitting on a burning stick of dynamite.

It took every ounce of willpower he had to keep his gaze off that little top, which clung to her like a second skin as it flashed sections of her bare midriff at him, and Sam’s endlessly long, tanned legs, the longest legs he’d ever seen on such a petite woman. Sweat broke out on his forehead despite the air-conditioning in the house.

He quickly averted his gaze to the toe of one of his scruffy sneakers. This was going to be a very long night.

Luke brought Sam her drink and gave A.J. a fresh bottle of beer. Fighting the urge to down the entire contents, he sipped at it instead. As Luke walked past on his way to sit on the arm of Rachel’s chair, the breeze from his passing wafted a hint of Sam’s soft, flowery perfume to A.J. His groin tightened. He pulled the throw pillow from behind him and laid it casually on his lap.

“Now, Mommy? Can I ask now?” Maggie begged Rachel.

Lovingly, Rachel brushed a strand of blond hair off Maggie’s cheek. “Yes, baby. You may ask now.”

“Aunt Sam?” Maggie said, sidling up to Sam. “Will you come to my birthday party Sunday after next Sunday?”

Sam frowned as if doing a quick calculation of Maggie’s time frame. “Wouldn’t miss it for anything. Let’s see now,” she said, appearing to be deep in thought, “what kind of present do I get for someone who’s gonna be twenty-nine?”

Maggie’s face grew concerned. “Aunt Sam, I’m only gonna be seven.”

Sam laughed and hugged her. “My mistake. You look so much older.”

When she let go, Maggie stepped back, her blue eyes dancing with excitement. “Mommy and Daddy are taking me to swim with the dolphins, and then we’re gonna have a birthday picnic. We’re gonna have cake and deviled eggs and hot dogs and balloons and—” The child took a fast breath. “Uncle Jay’s coming, too.”

A.J. watched as Sam’s smile melted as fast as ice cream on a hot day, then was quickly replaced by one obviously forced for the child’s benefit. “Of course, I’ll have to check to make sure that I don’t have to work.”

“Oh, please, Aunt Sam. Please. It won’t be any fun without you.”

A.J. silently agreed.

“Well, we’ll see.” Sam chucked her under the chin.

A pang of disappointment arrowed through A.J. She was trying to back out because he’d be there. Then he recalled something.

Nice try, Sam, but you’re not gonna wiggle off the hook that easy.

“You don’t have to work that Sunday,” he said.

Pink flooded her cheeks. “Oh? How do you know?”

He grinned. “I saw the duty schedule in Santelli’s office.”

She glared at him for a moment, then turned to Maggie with a smile. “Well, then, I guess you can count me in.”

“Yippee,” Maggie yelled. “Aunt Sam’s coming, too, Daddy.”

“Yes, we heard, and I’m sure everyone in the neighborhood did as well.” Luke looked at his daughter as if she were the most important thing on earth. “Okay, Magpie, time for bed,” Luke said.

Maggie frowned. “Aw, Daddy. Can’t I stay up just a little more time?”

“Bed,” her mother repeated more firmly. “We said you could stay up long enough to invite Aunt Sam. You’ve done that, so now, it’s time to say good night.” Rachel waited patiently while Maggie reluctantly hugged and kissed A.J. and Sam, prolonging each endearment as long as possible.

A sinking sensation invaded A.J.’s stomach as he watched both Luke and Rachel disappear down the hall with their daughter, leaving him and Sam alone. He suddenly felt as if the rug had been pulled out from under him. Why did this woman have the power to make him feel like a kid fresh out of the tenth grade on his first date?

Sam sighed.

“Bored?” he asked for lack of anything else to say.

She looked at him and shook her head. “No, just thinking. I was kind of hoping they’d have a regular birthday party for Maggie. You know, the kind with lots of kids, balloons, ice cream, noisemakers, a clown and all the regular kid stuff.”

“Sounds as if you’ve been to a few of these shindigs yourself.”

Her blue eyes lost their sparkle, and she turned away. “No. I’ve never been to a birthday party.”

A.J. frowned. Surely she had been to a birthday party sometime in her life. “Not even your own?”

Sam shook her head, then rose and went to the bar. “Especially not my own.” Busying herself by adding ice to her glass, she avoided his gaze. “The Tiny Tots beauty pageant in Phoenix was on my birthday every year, so there was never time. Besides, my mother thought birthday parties were a waste of money.”

He cringed at the sadness that tinged her voice. “So, you were a child beauty queen, huh?” Why hadn’t he known that? But then there was so much about Sam he didn’t know. So much he wanted to know. Like everything that had happened to her from the time she left the birth canal to when she’d walked into Rachel’s living room tonight.

As she walked back to the sofa, she tucked a stray hair back into the knot at the base of her neck. His fingers itched to release the confining hairdo and watch the night-black strands fall over her shoulders while he—

“That was my other life,” she said. “One that I gave up when I stowed the trophies and certificates in my spare-room closet.” She took a long gulp of her drink, then glanced anxiously down the hall where Luke and Rachel had disappeared. “Can we talk about something else?”

“Sure.” The conversation about her childhood may have ended, but A.J. could see by the frown lines between her eyes that she had not stopped thinking about it.

A pain cut across his heart for the woman whose childhood consisted of nothing more than a few trophies and certificates stuck away in a closet. But mostly it ached for the little girl who had never blown out candles on her own cake, never taken part in a game of Pin the Tail on the Donkey, never dove into stacks of presents while her excited friends looked on. How many other things had she missed out on because her mother had evidently never considered the importance of having a childhood?

Sam squirmed under A.J.’s watchful gaze from across Rachel’s dining-room table. She added her empty cake plate to the stack Rachel was collecting. After depositing them in the sink, Rachel refilled Sam’s coffee cup. Adding cream and sugar, Sam stirred the light brown liquid and tried to block out thoughts of that kiss she and A.J. had shared that kept popping into her head every time she looked at him. If she allowed herself, she could still feel how warm and sweet that kiss had been. How her heart had cried out for him to take her in his arms and never let go. How—

She blinked away the daydream and checked her watch. “It’s getting late. Can we get down to the reason for this little gathering?” she asked, hoping to distract A.J. and get this evening over with.

Rachel laid a manila folder in front of them. “Sam’s right. We need to talk FIST business,” she announced. “What did you two find at the bookstore?”

In the year since Rachel and Sam had founded FIST, they had investigated several arson sprees, a serial arsonist and at least a dozen insurance fires. Though they’d started slow, word was rapidly spreading around the state that if a fire chief or an insurance company had a fire that required special investigation, they called FIST.

“This was an easy one,” Sam said, brushing a strand of hair from her cheek.

“What do you know about Bayside Insurance?” A.J. asked.

“Rachel?” Luke looked at his wife.

Rachel opened the folder and scanned it. “They’re an old company that was absorbed into the Florida Life and Property Company. When they merged, most of the Bayside employees were pensioned off and the company installed their own people in the jobs. According to this, their business has been less than stellar this year. I think the bookstore was a tax write-off and they needed the deduction, so…” She frowned at Sam and A.J. “Why?”

“Because A.J. and I think the insurance company is trying to get out of paying. There’s no evidence of arson there. I went over the outlet wiring that they claimed might have started it, and there’s no evidence of it. The window they said was broken into was blown out by the heat, not in by any intruder.” She glanced at A.J. then looked away. “I checked around the store for the point of origin and found a water leak in the back wall, right above the circuit breakers. The wall above it was black. Textbook V Burn mark. Bottom line is, these guys don’t want to cough up the settlement check.”