by Janie Crouch
Chloe reached the door, holding a tissue to her nose, cursing when she realized she’d forgotten the key to the shack. But another step showed the door was unlocked, the padlock on it, but not closed. Thank God. There was no way she could manage another round trip. She wasn’t even sure she was going to make it through the door.
Shaky fingers reached for the padlock as tremors assaulted her. She needed to get in the hot tub. Try to get her body warm, her brain cool. Try not to panic at the suffocating pain of having someone else in her head she couldn’t ignore.
The tremors had her falling against the door, struggling to stay upright. Her leg muscles cramped, followed by her shoulders. Chloe felt like she was possessed. She couldn’t stop the sob that escaped her.
She was going to die alone right here. She needed to get back to her trailer, to a phone, to someone, but had no idea how she was going to manage.
She pushed herself off from the shack doorway and felt something she hadn’t been expecting at all: blessed coolness.
Not on her body, but on her mind. She could feel it. The change in the temperature inside her. And with that, her cramping muscles released, the bleeding in her nose stopped.
Shane.
He was here, she had no doubt about it. But all she could do right now was lean against the doorway and let the coolness filter into her. Suddenly, she could no longer hear Conversation Hearts. Could no longer hear any of the voices always present. All she could do was feel the cold, drag it in and use it to continue to put out the agonizing flames that had tortured her mind.
It truly was like an avalanche the way it poured over her. Her body temperature stayed the same but her brain felt so much better. Maybe she wasn’t going to die. Maybe she would live to see her next birthday. For too long she’d been wondering about that.
She didn’t say anything for a long time, but knew he was coming closer by the way the pain eased even further. She wanted to cry for the absence of it, but Chloe Jeffries didn’t do that. She’d never cried even when she was a little girl with no family. She wouldn’t now just because Shane Westman was helping her in a way neither of them could understand.
“Out for a midnight stroll?” he finally asked from behind her.
She didn’t get up from the doorframe. She couldn’t. She just needed a couple more minutes. “I thought I might get into the hot tub. Couldn’t sleep.”
“You want to tell me what is really going on, Chloe? Tell me why you were about to collapse a couple minutes ago? Tell me about that look that comes over your face sometimes when I get close to you?”
Damn him. Those blue eyes saw too much. How the hell was she supposed to keep private things private around him? Things there was no way he would understand. Chloe barely could.
“I have no idea what you’re talking about, Westman. I’m just here to use the hot tub.” The words to invite him to join her were on her lips but she swallowed them. That was a bad, dangerous plan for multiple reasons. She took a step towards the tub, further inside the door, her need to get away from him just as strong as it was to get close to him to feel the blessed coolness.
“Whatever secrets you’re keeping aren’t just hurting you, they’re hurting everyone. I can’t believe that’s what you want.”
“You don’t know me at all. Don’t try to act like you do.” She didn’t look at him as she said it. Was afraid to. Afraid he’d see too much. Afraid he’d see that she was so different and think her a freak.
Afraid she’d want to get close to him anyway.
She pressed the button on the outside of the hot tub to turn on the jets. “Just go away. I don’t want you here.”
She sighed. Now she was just being rude. Damn it. He hadn’t done anything to deserve that. If only he wasn’t so damned observant.
“I don’t get scared off as easily as you might believe. And I don’t think you’re as tough as you pretend to be. Don’t be a coward, peanut.”
Did he just call her coward and peanut in one sentence? Oh hell no.
Now Chloe spun around. His eyes widened slightly as he saw her face, probably not pretty with the blood and paleness, but she didn’t care. She strode towards Shane who stood his ground a few yards away with his arms crossed over his chest.
“Look, Ranger Rick.” Her eyes were narrowed to slits, even though she knew he was egging her on. “I don’t know who you think you are, jackass, but I am not, nor never will be a coward.” She reached him as she said the last word and poked him in the chest.
He tilted his head to the side. “It doesn’t look like it to me. Looks to me like you won’t —”
His words were cut off as heat and force, coupled by a loud roar, propelled her off her feet and into Shane. They both fell to the ground, Shane taking all her weight as the shack exploded behind her.
“What the fu—” She tried to look, but Shane rolled her underneath him, covering her head with his arms and the rest of her body with his, as what was left of the shack exploded in a second roar. As soon as the noise died down, Shane’s face was right next to hers.
“Are you okay?” he asked.
She nodded, still trying to get her bearings. “Did the shack just explode?”
He rolled off her. “Seems that way.”
They both sat up, staring at the burning wreckage of what used to be the shack. “How — How? Did I press the wrong button?”
“Yeah, the blow-the-entire-tub-to-kingdom-come button is right next to the on button, so you have to be careful.”
She smacked his arm, but still smiled a little. Then it occurred to her…
“I would’ve been in there.”
The small smile on his lips completely disappeared.
“If you hadn’t made such a jackass remark about me being a coward, I would’ve been…” She gestured weakly at the burning outline of the hot tub building, before rubbing her chest. Oh God, she would’ve been in there.
Anybody still on the set was rushing towards them now, trying to figure out what had happened, looking at Chloe to tell them. She and Shane got to their feet. She could already tell she would be sore tomorrow.
Not nearly as much as she would’ve been if she’d been in the shack.
Travis and Justin came running over to her.
“What the hell happened?” Justin asked.
“I have no idea. Electrical malfunction?” she asked.
All three men looked at her with eyebrows raised. Evidently not an electrical malfunction.
“What are you two even doing here?” Shane asked.
“We were writing in The Pit,” Travis said. “Justin wanted to try to work that psychic idea in earlier in the season. We both work better at night.”
“Miss Jeffries,” Noah, the intern, ran up to her. “I’ve called the fire department. They want to know if anyone is hurt.”
“No, no one is hurt,” she told him. Didn’t the kid ever go home?
She was beginning to shake. Oh crap, she’d almost been in there.
She felt Shane’s arm slide around her, pulling her up against him. “Hey, it’s okay. Breathe.”
“I-I…”
She felt his lips against her hair. “I know. But I’m a jackass so you weren’t in there.”
Unable to help herself she wrapped her arms around his waist, keeping the blanket tucked securely around herself. “I’m glad you’re such a jackass.”
It wasn’t long before the fire department showed up and had the flames under control. The shack was isolated for privacy so the fire had nowhere to spread. Shane’s arm stayed around her as she answered the questions of the police officer who’d also responded to the call. Noah brought out coffee.
She finally stopped shaking, but she still didn’t find herself pulling away from the comfort Shane’s closeness provided. Nor did he withdraw it.
She had a feeling it wasn’t the norm for either of them—leaning on someone else’s strength certainly wasn’t for her—yet neither of them seemed to be able to pull away.
Shane walked Chloe back to her trailer. She realized she didn’t know where he slept. Did he stay on the set? Have an apartment in town?
“Are you always on set at night?” she asked. “We have guards, right? So you don’t always need to be here, do you?”
“I have a house on the other side of town. It was my grandmother’s and she left it to me. But I’ve been staying here at night, trying to pinpoint any holes in security.”
“Don’t you ever sleep?”
A shadow fell over his face. “Not as much as I used to.”
She understood that. Had she gotten an entire night’s sleep since Conversation Hearts began blasting his thoughts into her head? She didn’t think so.
Evidently, Shane had his own demons. Which, damn it, just made him more appealing.
“Yeah, I get it,” she said. “Demons.”
He gave a half smile and shrugged. “Yeah. Sometimes I fight them, other times we just snuggle.”
She gave a rueful laugh. She completely understood what he meant. Sometimes it was too hard to fight, so you just survived until you could fight another day. She wondered about his demons.
They arrived at her trailer. She needed a shower and then to get to her office. The fire had just added five hundred things to her to-do list, beginning with a call to the studio.
She smiled awkwardly at Shane. She was great at writing, at thinking of creative scenes and witty banter. But she sucked ass at sincerity and attraction, especially in real life.
Double-especially with someone like him. Self-possessed. Powerful. Mouthwateringly sexy.
She held out the hand not holding the blanket towards him, cringing at how gawky it felt. “Thank you for all your help tonight. I was a mess.”
He took her hand, but didn’t shake it, just held it in his much bigger one. “I think you were fine, all things considered.”
She shrugged. “We can talk about all the ramifications of the fire later. After I’ve had a shower and coffee.”
When she began to withdraw her hand from his he gripped it more firmly and gave her a tug towards him. Not expecting it, she stumbled closer.
Then he let go of her hand and brought both of his up to grab the edges of the blanket that sat around her shoulders, pulling her so their faces were just inches apart.
All she could see was blue eyes.
“We will talk later. About the fire. About what you’re not telling me. And since we’re starting a list, we’ll add this to it.”
He kissed her.
Chloe had been kissed before, of course. She wasn’t a virgin. But men, kissing, and sex just hadn’t been a priority in her life. Day’s End took up too much of her time to try to find someone who didn’t annoy her. Plus, the voices had always made a relationship too difficult to focus on the man she was with.
Not this time.
He kissed her with a shattering absorption. As if he couldn’t get enough of her. Any voice inside her head, hell, any thought inside her head fled at the feeling of Shane’s lips on hers, his tongue tracing her lower lip before slipping into her mouth.
He pulled her closer with the blanket and her hands fisted the material of his shirt, hanging on for dear life as his mouth plundered hers.
When he finally pulled away, his forehead resting against hers, they were both breathing hard. He kissed her gently, softly once more before stepping back.
She couldn’t even form a word as she stared at him, the sun rising majestically behind his broad shoulders.
“Take your shower. Have your coffee. I’ll see you in a little while.” He took another step back, his eyes focused intently on hers. “And yes. We very definitely will talk. About everything.”
Chapter Eight
“No offense, Sheriff, but this is bullshit.”
It was two days after the hot tub building exploded and the sheriff had called Shane in and handed him the arson inspector’s report.
Accident due to faulty wiring and improperly stored accelerants.
The arson inspector had deemed the explosion of the hot tub structure an accident. Said that when Chloe had turned on the jets, a spark from a faulty wire in the electrical panel in the back had dropped onto a rug, catching it on fire. It wouldn’t have been an issue at all except that evidently someone had stored a dozen gasoline canisters at the back of the hot tub.
“Now, Shane, I knew your grandmother for a lot of years. She was awfully proud of you and your record with the Army.”
Shane closed his eyes for a second, regrouping. In a small town everyone knew everyone else’s business. And nobody ever forgot anything.
“You’re about to bring up the time you caught Sarah Winslow and me drinking under the high school bleachers.”
Sheriff Linenberger leaned back in his chair and smiled. “As I recall, drinking wasn’t the only thing you were doing.”
Shane shrugged, a smile tugging on his own lips. “Yeah, well, drinking was the only illegal activity we were doing since it was Sarah’s eighteenth birthday.”
“I’m sure her daddy wouldn’t have seen it that way. You wouldn’t have become an Army Ranger, that’s for sure.”
Sarah’s dad had been the high school football coach – still was, seventeen years later – and would’ve shot Shane outright, even though he’d been one of the coach’s best players, if he’d known how he and Sarah had celebrated her birthday.
“I always appreciated you not telling the coach or my Grammi what may or may not have been going on there that night.”
“Hell son, my job is to stop murders, not cause them.”
Shane shifted back in his own chair. “We can talk about the good old days all morning, Sheriff, but that doesn’t change the fact that this fire inspection report is bogus.”
“Not from his point of view. The spark definitely came from wiring in the electrical box on the hot tub. The spark definitely dropped on to a rug that happened to be very thick and pretty damn flammable. Once that caught, all it took was a little bit of gas leakage on the outside of the canisters, and one not closed properly – happens all the time – and you have yourself a nice big explosion.”
“Don’t you find it a little coincidental that all those things happened to line up?”
Sheriff Linenberger shrugged. “Me personally? Maybe. But the inspector’s job is to report exactly what he finds. He found no evidence of foul play. No suggestion that anyone deliberately placed any items or started the fire to begin with. So in the official report it goes down as accident.”
This had Hollywood PR spin written all over it.
“The studio called you, didn’t they? Asked you to keep it quiet.”
The sheriff shifted in his chair. “Shane, I like you. And you know I loved Miss Betty, God rest her soul, she was my babysitter when I was in first grade. But the people from Day’s End have been here a while now. They’re good for the town. Bring in revenue that we wouldn’t have otherwise. Honestly, I’m not sure that the town would’ve survived otherwise. Too hard for people to live so far away from any big cities.”
Shane wasn’t going to be deterred. “Did they ask you to keep it quiet?”
“They asked me to report the truth. To not speculate or elaborate if it wasn’t necessary. You know how the gossip rags love to report anything that can be blown up into something it’s not.”
Shane raised his eyebrow at the sheriff’s choice of phrasing. “You can’t ignore that it’s awfully coincidental, John. Especially given what happened last week with the stunts.”
“Look, I’m not saying the fire or problems in the lake don’t have someone behind them. I’m just saying in both cases, looking at the events ind
ependently, there is no reason to suspect foul play and that’s the way it’s written in the official report.”
“Because some studio executive is asking you to write it that way.”
“Am I the type of person who cares what some studio in California is demanding when it comes to law enforcement in my town? I don’t think so.”
It may not be someone in California asking him, but someone was. Someone who had more clout with Sheriff Linenberger than a faceless bigwig in a studio. Damn it. “Chloe Jeffries is asking you to write it that way.”
The sheriff smiled. “Have you met her? She’s a little firecracker.”
“Yes, I’ve met her.” Remembered the softness of her lips pressed against his. The tiny little sigh – sexiest thing he’d ever heard – she’d made as she’d given in to the kiss between them, pressing her smaller body to his. “And yes, a firecracker.”
“She basically took the town by storm. A lot of people from Hollywood might have just come in here and got what they wanted with their cameras and shots and never really cared about the town itself. But not Chloe. She and her friend, Nadine, have really gotten to know people around here. Almost like she’s putting down roots.”
Shane knew from the background check that Chloe owned a home in Malibu. “I agree that Chloe isn’t your typical Hollywood type, but I don’t think that means she’s applying for a North Carolina driver’s license.”
“Maybe.” The sheriff shrugged a shoulder. “But the people here like her. Respect her. And she respects them. So yes, when she asked me to keep the report as clean as possible so the press didn’t get wind of it, I agreed. She said there was an investigation going on, a security coordinator brought in. Mentioned your name.”
Because she knew his name would go further with the sheriff? “It’s true. I’m handling what I can. A friend of mine from Special Forces has a security company and asked me to step in since I was already here.”
“Then I’m sure Chloe and her needs are in good hands.”
“Sheriff, I’m not an investigator. Yes, I have some experience from my time in the Army, but it’s not the same as having official law enforcement on scene. And if things are escalating, they needs to be.”
