Picture Me and You: A Devil's Kettle Romance, #1

by Sey, Susan

  “Go, Demons,” Matty sneered and Peter actually smiled.

  “I haven’t put the hurt on anybody in years but I’d do it tonight. With pleasure.” He swung the door wide. “Now quit being such a little dick and get inside.”

  “Fine.” He shoved his numb hands into his pockets and slouched inside.

  He followed Peter into the stingy back hall of the tap room. The men’s and ladies’ rooms were to the right, Peter’s office was to the left, and the bar itself was on the other side of a dogleg. It smelled like beer and pee back here, and Matty wished with everything in him that he’d never left the house.

  Peter shouldered open the office door, nodded Matty to the chair in front of the desk. When Matty took it, Peter hitched a hip onto the desk and folded his arms. A long moment of sweaty silence strung out between them. Matty stared at his boots until they slid out of focus.

  “So, Matty,” Peter said finally. “I’m disappointed in you.”

  “Yeah? Maybe you and my mom can form, like, a club or something.”

  “You mean Bianca? Or your actual mom?”

  Matty blinked, uncomprehending. Peter laughed.

  “Come on, Matty. Connect the dots with me, huh? Think about it. A woman with Bianca’s build delivering a full-term surprise-a-baby? The odds on that are somewhere between slim and I-don’t-think-so.” He shook his head, amused. “You’re not Bianca’s kid. No way on earth. She claimed you, but you’re not hers. And you know it.”

  Confusion, hope and a blank white terror tangled inside him. He wasn’t Bianca’s son? More importantly, he wasn’t Diego’s brother? “Then whose am I?” he asked, his lips numb and strange.

  Peter tipped his head, a small smile playing around his mouth. “Does it really matter when you’re wearing that face?” He shrugged. “Then again, if you don’t live up to those bones of yours — and it sounds like you haven’t been — do you really think Bianca’s going to keep you around? Especially now that you’ve developed a taste for arson?”

  “For the last time, the carriage house was an accident.” Matty said the words automatically, his brain in a nauseating spiral. “But if she wants to disown me? Fine. Let her.”

  That small smile went indulgent. “You might want to think that one through, son.”

  “Like I care about being a Davis,” Matty sneered, even as the world tipped sickly around him. The family name had been his own personal prison for months now. He’d prayed for deliverance, and what do you know? He’d actually gotten it. And now he understood why people said to be careful what you wished for. Because it only just now occurred to him that being somebody — even a shitty somebody — was probably better than being nobody.

  Than being nobody’s.

  “Of course you care about being a Davis.” Peter chuckled, as if he really could read Matty’s mind. “Life’s expensive, kid. Team Money wants you? Sign the contract. It’s always better to be rich than to be poor, and believe me, I know.”

  “I do believe you.” Matty gave a jagged laugh. “Unfortunately, Team Davis is broke.”

  Peter stared at him, blank and astonished.

  “Good thing you don’t really need that dowry, huh?”

  Jax’s pants rang. Or the phone inside them did and Addy jumped in Jax’s arms, her skull cracking smartly into his chin.

  “Ow,” he murmured. She leapt off the bed like she’d been tased so Jax sat up and gave his jaw an experimental wiggle. “Remind me not to sneak up on you,” he told her. “You’re more dangerous than you look.”

  “Good lord.” She danced foot to foot and patted her chest. She was as naked as the day she was born, which he appreciated. “My heart.”

  “I don’t think my jaw is broken,” he told her. “But you’re sweet to be so concerned.”

  She closed her eyes and breathed. Evidently it required some concentration. “Answer your phone, Jackson.”

  He shrugged and found his khakis, fished the phone out of his pocket and inspected the caller info. His mom? At this hour? He punched the answer icon.

  “Hey, Mom—” he started, then broke off as his mother unleashed a high-speed, panicky tirade. He sorted through the sound and the fury to pick out a few key words — fire, Matty, and missing — then cut her off. “Five minutes,” he said. “Stay put.”

  He ended the call, tossed the phone onto the bed and snatched up his boxers.

  “What?” Addy said, her eyes huge. “What?”

  “Matty’s missing,” he said.

  “Oh no,” she breathed. “I have to—”

  “Get up to Hill Top House,” Jax told her and jumped into a pair of trousers. “Mom will need you.” He dragged a t-shirt and a sweater over his head. “I have to get to the fire.”

  “The what?”

  “According to Mom, somebody blew up the Dumpster behind the Wooden Spoon. I’m off duty, or I’d have gotten the call.”

  She dropped to her knees and swept up a jumble of socks and shoes and undergarments. She dumped it all on the bed and began sorting. “He wouldn’t,” she said firmly. “Matty wouldn’t do anything like that, Jax.”

  But her hand shook as she handed him a boot. He took it and watched her shimmy into her underwear and jeans. “I hope to hell that’s true.” He found his other boot, handed her that pretty purple sweater he’d enjoying taking off her so much. “I’m about to find out.”

  She dragged it over her head, shot an arm through the sleeve and grabbed his elbow. “Not without me, you’re not.”

  “Addy, I’ve got to go.” But the armpit of his sweater suddenly felt bunchy and weird, so he dug into it and came up with her bra. He handed it over and watched with some fascination as she wriggled into it without showing more than an inch or two of skin at her waist. How did women do that?

  “Fine. I’m ready.” She patted at the crazy bird’s nest of her hair. “Let’s go.”

  His phone screamed again, the old-fashioned fire engine wail he’d programmed for the station’s number.

  “You’re off duty,” she said, her eyes huge as he answered, listened grimly. “Why are they calling you in?”

  He hung up. “There’s a second fire.”

  “Where?”

  “The Hideaway.”

  “Peter’s Hideaway? The one he wanted to give Georgie for an engagement present?”

  “That’s the one. Girl’s got all the luck. If she’d just accepted the resort instead of trying to bargain for better, her wedding present could be burning down right now.”

  She sighed. “I don’t know if I’d call anything about tonight lucky. Not if Matty’s—” She broke off, unable or unwilling to voice the thought.

  “—there?” He met her eyes in the darkened room. “If he’s at the resort, watching it burn?”

  “He’s not.” Her pretty mouth went stubborn.

  “How do you know?”

  “He’s angry but he’s not an idiot, Jax.”

  “Debatable.”

  She folded her arms and glared.

  “Arsonists like to hang around,” he pointed out flatly. He didn’t like it any more than she did, but facts were facts. “They come back, Addison. They like to see their work.”

  “He’s not an arsonist,” she said sharply. “He’s a mixed up kid, laboring under the crushing weight of his grieving mother’s expectations.”

  He snatched up the keys to the mini-pumper. “I guess we’re about to find out, aren’t we?”

  Chapter 26

  IT WAS LATE. So late as to be technically early. The fire at the Hideaway was out but it had done a lot more damage than it should’ve. Protecting the businesses on Main Street had been a first priority, so Jax had opted to leave most of his volunteers on the Dumpster fire. He’d relied on the Hornby Harbor crew until his own crew could join him at the resort.

  If Peter could salvage anything from this place, Jax would be shocked.

  He headed back to the mini-pumper, which he’d moved down the beach a ways when the larger Hornby rig had
finally turned up. He was mildly surprised to find Addy still leaning against it right where he’d left her, her arms folded, her hair in the kind of crazy spikes that suggested she’d just rolled out of bed. Out from underneath the man in her bed, maybe.

  Which she had. Yeah, that had been him.

  A completely inappropriate grin threatened to split his face and he dumped an armload of wet hoses on the ground next to the truck.

  “He wasn’t here,” she said. “Matty.”

  “No, I know.” That was part of the stupid grinning, too. Sheer relief. He doubted the kid was blameless but at least Jax hadn’t seen his baby brother driven off in the back of a squad car tonight. He dropped to his haunches and started coiling the hoses into neat piles. “I looked, too.”

  “He didn’t start the Dumpster fire, either.”

  “How do we know that?”

  “I talked to your mom.”

  “How does she know that?” He looked up. Couldn’t be more than forty degrees out and he was down to a wife-beater but heat still pumped off him. He pushed a wrist over his sweaty forehead — his hands were filthy — and studied her. She looked unhappy but not panicked. So not awful news. But not good, either.

  “Peter brought him home,” she said.

  “Peter?”

  “According to Bianca, Peter was heading to his office at the Devil’s Tap Room to take care of some business and saw Matty in town. He was concerned, of course, it being so late, and brought him inside. He was planning to drive him home but thought maybe a man-to-man was in order. They were talking in his office when the Dumpster blew.” She shrugged. “Peter was understandably distracted for a while but eventually got Bianca on the phone and let her know that Matty was fine. He dropped him home an hour or so ago.”

  Jax absorbed that in thoughtful silence.

  Graham Graves appeared next to the pumper, his round, cheerful face shining like the full moon. “Hey, you want a hand with those hoses?”

  “Nah,” Jax said. “I got this. You get on home. You’re on duty in a couple hours.”

  “So are you.” The guy eyed Addy the way a dieter eyes a plate of nachos. “I’ve got time.”

  She smiled at him. “Hey, Graham.”

  “Hey, Addy.” He grinned back. “Looking good, girl. What are you doing here? You thinking about volunteering for the squad?” He paused, biceps flexed for maximum exposure. He dropped his voice to what he presumably thought passed for a sexy growl. “I could show you the ropes, if you know what I mean.”

  Addy bit her lip, clearly fighting a startled giggle. “Oh, goodness, no. Fire’s not my thing. I’m here for—” She stopped short. Jax sat back on his heels and watched her, curious. She was here for…what? For Matty? For Jax? Which secret was she planning to spill?

  “I’m waiting for Jax,” she finally said. She gave Graham a dazzling smile, all dimples and sunshine. “As soon as he’s done here, he’s taking me back to bed.”

  “Yeah?” Graham grinned back automatically, predictably blinded by that smile of hers. “That sounds like—” He broke off. “Wait, what?”

  “Well, we were in bed when he got called away to deal with all this.” Addy swept a reasonable hand toward the smoking ruins of the Hideaway. “I’m hoping to take him back there once it’s done.”

  “Almost done now,” Jax said easily, his heart bursting into song inside him.

  “Oh, good.” Addy turned that blinding smile his way. “I’m cold.”

  “Not for long.”

  Graham’s gaze bounced back and forth between them for a long, searching moment. The kid was sweet as pie, and strong as two mules, but he didn’t process quickly. Finally he said, “You two are…together? Like, Facebook official and all that?”

  Jax finished coiling the hoses and stood. Stretched the kinks out of his back. “Looks that way.”

  Addy gave him a cheerfully apologetic shrug. “Surprised me, too, honestly.”

  Graham nodded slowly. “I’d heard Bianca was on the war path about something, and I mean really on the war path, you know? Diego’s Angel jumping in the sack with anybody would be bad enough, but Jax is like the total opposite of Diego, isn’t he?” He folded his arms and chuckled, considering it. “Yeah, that would definitely put Bianca’s panties in a bundle.” He leaned in, lifted a leering brow. “Is she really going to put naked pictures of you on Main Street for Devil Days, though? Is she that mad?”

  Jax stepped forward and put one stern finger into Graham’s inflated pectoral. “You interested in seeing Addy naked?”

  “Sure.” The kid continued to leer at Addy with his usual bovine good humor. “She’s a girl, isn’t she?”

  “My girl.” Jax put enough bite behind that finger to break through the hormones clouding Graham’s better judgment.

  “Hmm?” The kid finally looked up, and Jax showed him his teeth. “Oh! Well, good deal, then.” He took a hasty step back. “You’re sure you don’t need a hand with the hoses?”

  “I’m sure,” Jax said and the kid turned and galloped away, his boots smacking the sand with big wet flaps. “Hey, Graham?” he called.

  Graham froze and turned with some reluctance.

  “Did you put in that call to the Fire Marshall?”

  Relief washed across his open face. “Sure did. She said somebody would be up to do an on-site assessment at two on Monday. Fastest she could work you in.”

  “Okay. Thanks. Go on home now. And Graham?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Don’t believe everything you hear.” Jax smiled at him again, made a warning of it. “Don’t repeat everything you hear, either.”

  “No, sir.” He sent Addy an apologetic glance. “I’m real sorry about the naked picture thing, Addy. I didn’t mean—”

  “I know.” Addy smiled at him, pure sweetness and sunshine, and Graham all but bloomed under the beam of it. “It’s okay, Graham. Go get some sleep.”

  “Right, okay.” Graham shook himself free from the dazzle of Addy’s smile, turned and galumphed into the night. The state trooper who’d responded had already taken off, so now it was just Jax, Addy, and a ruined lodge, sullenly smoking and cordoned off with crime scene tape.

  “The Fire Marshall?” she asked. “You’re classifying this as arson?”

  “Yep.” Jax began winding the hoses into the truck. He’d unload them at the station for cleaning and drying later. He cut her a look over his shoulder. “Resorts don’t blow up by themselves, Addy.”

  “Construction sites do. They come equipped with all kinds of flammable liquids — gas, oil, whatever.” She kicked at the ground and came up with a cigarette butt. “Smokers.”

  “They’d have to ash directly into the heating oil tank to cause what we saw here tonight.”

  “You have a more likely scenario in mind?”

  “Yeah. Arson.”

  “You really think Matty’s capable of something like that?”

  He looked away. “He blew up the carriage house, didn’t he?”

  “That was an accident.”

  “I know it was. Just like I know that, for some folks, a taste is all it takes to get hooked.” She stared at him, and the stricken shock in her face made him feel like he’d slapped her. “The kid is so angry, Addison. And if the carriage house was his taste…” She stepped away from him, rejecting what? The words? The idea? Him? He dragged a filthy hand down his face and blew out a breath. “Listen, you think I like this? You think I want Matty to be tangled up in this? Of course I don’t! He’s my brother! I’ll do everything I can to protect him, but I won’t conceal evidence.”

  “Good heavens, Jax, I wasn’t suggesting you should!”

  “Well, good, because it’s out of my hands. The Fire Marshall’s been alerted, and there’s nothing we can do until she processes the scene.”

  “Yes, there is.” She turned and jerked open the door to the mini-pumper, climbed into the cab. “Let’s go.”

  “Addy. It’s three o’clock in the morning.” He put a h
and on her door, stopped her from yanking it shut. “Go where?”

  “Hill Top House.” She stared straight out the windshield, her pretty mouth tight and grim. “We’re going to deal with this right now.”

  In the end, Addy arrived at Hill Top House alone, and about eight hours later than she’d hoped as Jax had flatly refused to drive her up the hill at three a.m. He had a literal mountain of paperwork to deal with the morning after two separate fires, and with the Fire Inspector due in less than 48 hours, he couldn’t break away. So Addy showed up all by herself, unless you counted the half-dozen doughnuts and the carry-out tray of coffee in her hands. Sugar and caffeine weren’t a solution, she knew, but they never hurt, either. She found Bianca in the breakfast nook that looked out over the bird feeders, a cup of tea in front of her going cold.

  She lifted her eyes, dark and worried, to Addy’s. “Oh, Addison. You’re here.”

  “Of course I am.” Addy dropped a kiss on her mother-in-law’s ruler-straight part, pried a paper cup from the holder and placed it on the table. “Skim latte, full caffeine. Drink up.”

  “Bless you, child.” Bianca pried off the lid, wrapped her hands around the paper cup and inhaled deeply. “Bless you.”

  Addy slid into a curvy little cafe chair, and pulled out her own to-go cup full of the coffee that Walt down at the Sugar Rush had pressed on her, loaded with so much cream and sugar she was almost happy to see it. “Where’s Georgie?”

  “Sleeping.” Bianca took a delicate sip of her latte. “It was a late night and Georgie’s not exactly a morning person.”

  Addy had to smile at that. Georgie wasn’t an afternoon or an evening person, either. “Matty?”

  “In his room.” Bianca’s lips twisted. “I check every half hour to make sure he’s still there.”

  Addy’s heart squeezed and she laid a hand on Bianca’s arm. “So...what happened?”

  Bianca barked out a humorless laugh. “You’ll have to ask Matisse about that one. He’s currently not speaking to me.”