by Lisa Childs
Tears stung her eyes, but she blinked them back. “But I thought you didn’t understand why I want to keep the house so badly.”
“I don’t,” he said. “It’s just a house, Serena. You’re accusing me of taking this job just to run. I think you want to keep this house just to hide.”
“What?”
“You feel safe here,” he said. “Because it’s all you know. You’re afraid to try anything new—to venture out.”
“Is that what Courtney told you?” she asked. Her twin had been the one who’d always urged her to try new things, to visit new places. She hadn’t understood how homesick Serena got—how much she missed Mama and the house. “Is that why she wouldn’t take the check?”
He shook his head. “She wouldn’t take it because she doesn’t want the money.”
“Then why sue me?”
“To get you to sell the house,” he said. “She blames it for killing your mother. She thinks if you stay here it’ll kill you, too.”
She sucked in a breath. She hadn’t considered how Courtney might feel—that she might see how hard their mother had worked to keep the house as the reason for the heart attack that had taken her life.
Serena shook her head. “That’s not true. My mother loved this house. That’s why she fought to keep it. That’s why I need to fight, too.”
“Then use that check to get a lawyer,” he suggested. “Maybe you can stop her.”
“Why would you help me?” she asked. Especially after how she’d treated him.
“Because I’m not going to tell you how to live your life,” he said. “If you think this house is all you need to be happy, then I want you to keep it.”
But she knew that even if she could stop Courtney from forcing her to sell, she wouldn’t be happy—not with Cody gone.
20
CODY COULDN’T GET the image out of his mind that he had seen out the window of his room at the boardinghouse. Serena had been so sweet with Stanley, so loving and patient with the skittish teenager. She would make a great mom. A great foster mom.
Hell, her house—that outrageously big house—would be perfect to foster kids. Maybe if she switched the boardinghouse to a foster home, she could get the financing she needed to pay off her stubborn sister and satisfy the lawsuit. Courtney couldn’t force her to sell if Serena could come up with the money another way. Her twin didn’t know Serena at all; she had no idea how strong her twin was. Taking care of that house and everyone in it was what Serena thrived doing. Keeping it wouldn’t destroy her.
Losing it might.
He stopped the truck outside the firehouse and grabbed his duffel bag off the passenger’s seat. He’d no more than stepped inside before Braden was in his face. “What the hell do you think you’re doing?”
He lifted the duffel bag. “What you told me to do,” he said. “Getting ready to leave for California.” But as he said it, his nerves prickled, lifting the hair on the nape of his neck.
He had a bad feeling about leaving.
“I’m not talking about that,” Braden said. “I’m talking about that position in North Cascades. First you accept the job, and then you call Mack McRooney back and tell him that you don’t want it?”
Cody had done that before he’d come down to Serena’s office—as he’d watched Serena and Stanley from his bedroom window. “Yeah.”
“I assured him that you’re not flighty,” Braden said. “I explained that you think you have to stay with us until the arsonist is caught.”
But that was only part of it. He realized that now. Before he could explain himself, other guys started walking into the firehouse. Wyatt and Dawson hurried with their gear.
“The plane’s ready,” Dawson said. “We’ve got to get going. They think the wildfire’s shifting. They need all the help they can get.”
But that eerie sense of foreboding increased and Cody said, “I don’t think we should go.”
“What the hell’s wrong with you?” Wyatt asked. “You’re the one who’s always raring to leave.”
“When we’re gone, we’re leaving Northern Lakes unprotected against the arsonist for at least a couple of weeks.”
“When we’re gone, nothing happens here,” Braden reminded him.
He didn’t feel reassured, though.
“You said yourself that you think the arsonist has singled you out now,” Braden persisted. “So if you’re gone…”
Cody agreed, “Northern Lakes—” and Serena “—will be safer.” He grabbed his duffel bag and followed the rest of his team out.
When he got back, he would tell Serena about his idea for how she could save her house—and a lot of kids like him and Stanley. Maybe he’d also tell her how he felt about her…if he could find the courage to admit it to himself.
Because she was right. When he’d accepted that smoke jumper job, he had been running. He’d been rejecting her before she could reject him. He’d been convinced that she would because he wasn’t the kind of guy she wanted.
But what if he could be that guy for her? If he could prove it to her, she might give him a chance. She wasn’t like the adoptive parents who’d returned him after a few years or the foster families who’d never let him stay.
She was loving and loyal. She wouldn’t reject him. She might even love him—if he let her.
If he had that chance…
The closer they got to the fire, the more dire the situation looked. They didn’t have to worry about the arsonist getting them now. They had to worry about surviving their current assignment.
*
“YOU ARE IN NORTHERN LAKES,” Serena said as she joined her sister at her mother’s graveside. There were fresh flowers lying near the granite marker; Courtney must have brought them, because Serena hadn’t been able to visit for a while.
She’d been too busy trying to save the house. And too embarrassed that she’d lost her heart to the kind of man Mama had always warned her to stay away from.
“Didn’t you see me the other night at the restaurant?” Courtney asked.
“I didn’t recognize you,” she admitted. Despite being twins, they didn’t look much alike beyond their coloring. Courtney’s black hair was short and stylish—like her clothes. With her skinny jeans and cropped top, she looked like she’d stepped out of a fashion magazine whereas Serena looked like she’d just stepped out of the kitchen, which was true.
If Courtney had seen her, why hadn’t she said anything? Because she was embarrassed over suing? Or maybe she’d been afraid Serena would be so angry about it she’d make a scene?
“It’s been a long time,” Serena said. Shortly after high school graduation, Courtney had left for college and never returned. Until now.
Courtney expelled a shaky little sigh. “Yes…”
“I thought you were never coming home.”
“It’s not home to me,” Courtney said.
“It’s where we grew up—where our ancestors come from,” Serena said. “It’s home.”
“Guess that’s just one more thing we’ll have to agree to disagree about,” Courtney said.
“Will you sue me over that, too?”
Courtney shook her head, and her hair skimmed across her cheek. With her more delicate features, she looked more like Mama than Serena did.
Pain clenched Serena’s heart. She felt like she’d lost them both.
Courtney murmured, “I shouldn’t have come back.”
“Why did you?” Serena asked. “Why come back now and not for Mama’s funeral?”
“It would have been too hard then,” Courtney said. “Too soon. I thought I could handle it now.” But tears trailed down beneath the lenses of her dark sunglasses.
Instinctively Serena reached out and clasped her twin’s trembling hand. “I understand.” And she did understand Courtney not being able to say goodbye to Mama.
“I don’t understand you,” Courtney said.
“I promised Mama and Grandma I would keep the house.”
Courtney sighed. “They shouldn’t have asked you to. It was selfish of them to decide what you had to do with your life.”
Serena shook her head. “I consider it an honor.”
“It’s a death sentence,” Courtney muttered as she gazed down at the grave.
“I don’t blame it for killing Mama like you do.”
“Cody told you what I said?”
She nodded. “He told me what you think—that you’re worried about me.” And because of that, Serena could forgive her for suing. Courtney wasn’t doing it for the money; she was doing it because she thought she was helping Serena.
“The house is too much work,” Courtney said. “It was too much for Mama and for Grandma, and it’s too much for you, too.”
She couldn’t argue with that. But that was why Serena needed someone who would stay beside her and work with her. But Cody wasn’t that man.
He was already gone. The whole team was. But unlike Cody, the rest of them would come back. Fiona anxiously awaited the return of her fiancé.
“I’ve handled the house for a year on my own,” she reminded herself more than Courtney.
“The guy who tried to buy me off—he hasn’t helped?”
Serena shook her head. “He’s already left. Like our father.” Fortunately she hadn’t gotten pregnant like Mama had.
“I found him,” Courtney said.
“Cody?” She’d thought he’d sought out her twin—not the other way around.
“I found our father.”
Serena gasped in surprise. “You did? Why would you bother? He abandoned our mother and us.”
Courtney shook her head. “No. He abandoned Northern Lakes. He hated it here. He asked Mama to leave with him, but she refused. And she never told him about us.”
“You believe him?” Serena was skeptical. It was easy for him to make these claims now, when no one was alive to contradict him.
“Yes,” Courtney said. “I found him the summer after our freshman year of college. When he told me, I asked Mama and she confirmed that everything he said was true.”
“I thought she loved him so much.”
“But why didn’t she leave with him?” Courtney asked.
Serena knew. “Because she was afraid.”
To leave Northern Lakes, to try something new.
“Is that why Cody’s gone and you’re still here?” Courtney asked her.
Tears stung Serena’s eyes, but she blinked them back—too proud to cry any more tears over Cody Mallehan. “Because he didn’t ask.”
Courtney laughed, but it was a bitter, humorless sound. “He and I agree about you and that house—the only way you’re going to leave it is in a pine box, just like Mama, and Grandma before her.”
Serena shivered. No. She wasn’t like her mother. She would leave it for love. If she believed Cody loved her…
She doubted he did, though.
But if he didn’t love her, why would he have given her that check? Why would he have wanted her dreams to come true even though he hadn’t understood them? He had to love her. She couldn’t love him as much as she did if that love wasn’t reciprocated.
But he was gone now—not just to that fire out west but to the smoke jumper job after it. She would have to wait until his Hotshot team returned to see how she could get a message to him—how she could tell him how much she loved him.
She loved him enough to leave her home and Northern Lakes—no matter how frightened that made her. But she wasn’t just frightened about leaving; she was more frightened that she might not get the opportunity. Had she waited too late to tell Cody how she felt?
Did he feel like he’d been rejected—as he must have every time he’d moved from one foster family to another?
That was probably why, even as an adult, that he had moved so often—not because it was habit, but out of self-preservation. He hadn’t wanted to get attached to anyone or anything because every time he had—he’d had to leave it behind.
She should have told him how she felt about him. She should have made certain that he knew she loved him.
21
THE FIRE OUT WEST had been so dangerous that it had needed their entire focus. So Cody had been able to put off the discussion he needed to have with his team until they returned to Northern Lakes. Braden had told everyone that Cody was taking the smoke jumper position. There’d been no time to talk about it, though. Usually, in a fire like that, he only worried about his team—about Wyatt getting home to Fiona, about Dawson getting back to Avery.
Everyone else to their families. He wouldn’t have worried about himself, or thought he had anything to return to—until now. Now he had everything: Serena.
And Stanley.
And even that damn dog.
He understood now how Dawson and Wyatt felt—why they were more antsy to get back than they were to leave. They were even more anxious now that they were close to home. But they’d respected his request to talk to them before they left the firehouse.
“You got us up here,” Dawson said as he paced the third-floor conference room. After their two and a half weeks in hell, they should have been exhausted. But they were all restless—on edge. “What do you want?”
Braden uttered a ragged sigh as if he knew. But he had no idea—at least not the right one.
Cody drew in a deep breath, bracing himself before saying, “I want to stay.”
There—he’d said it. The one thing he had always been too proud to say as a kid. Of course he’d known it wouldn’t have mattered then. It had never mattered what he’d wanted. Nobody had cared. Until now…
Now he suspected otherwise. He felt it when he was working a line with the guys. He felt that they really cared about him, not just the work. They had more than his back. They had his heart.
“What?” Braden looked more shocked than he should have been since he’d known Cody had turned down the smoke jumper position.
“I want to stay on the team,” he said. He stepped closer to his boss, and with his gaze steady, he added, “And it has nothing to do with the arsonist.”
“You love us,” Wyatt said, and he slung his arm around Cody’s shoulders, squeezing him affectionately.
Cody squirmed away from Wyatt and hotly denied it. “No!” But he did.
And from their grins, it was obvious that they all knew it. Hopefully Serena knew it, too. Maybe that was why she had accused him of running away—because she knew he’d been too afraid to admit to his feelings.
“We’re not the only ones you love, though,” Wyatt said. “You love Serena, too.”
He uttered the ragged sigh now. “Yes…”
And two and half weeks away from her—aching for her—had proved to him beyond any doubt that his feelings for her were real. And lasting. Now he just had to prove it to her.
Given the way he’d left, he doubted she would give him an easy time. He would have to work to prove it to her. But if it took him the rest of their lives to convince her, he wasn’t giving up.
He wasn’t giving up on them.
Dawson slapped his back. “That’s great.”
“Yeah,” Braden agreed. “Let’s go to the Filling Station and celebrate.”
Wyatt and Dawson laughed like they used to when Cody had ignorantly suggested drinks upon returning to Northern Lakes after a long absence. He understood now why he had been the last person they’d wanted to spend any more time with after 24/7 shifts. Now he knew how badly they wanted—they needed—to be with the women they loved. And he joined in their laughter.
“Not now, boss,” he said.
He had to get home to Serena. He had missed her too much. Hell, he’d even missed that house of hers. But before they could head out of the conference room, sirens blared.
Wyatt cursed as frustration overwhelmed him. “We just got back. We should let the volunteers handle this one.”
But even before he heard the address of the fire, Cody knew where it was. This was why he hadn’t wanted to leave Nor
thern Lakes—because he’d known the arsonist was still out there, waiting to strike again. Waiting to hit him where it would hurt the most: Serena.
*
IT HAD BEEN so hot and dry again that the woods surrounding the house could catch fire, too.
Had Serena gotten Mrs. Gulliver and Mr. Stehouwer far enough away? Would they be safe where she had left them, leaning on each other, in the middle of the street? Her heart pounded with fear and concern.
Maybe help would come soon. She had called 911. They might arrive in time to help the older couple but not her other boarders.
“Stanley!” she cried out for the teenager as she headed up the steps to the front porch. Smoke rose from the house—burning through the hole in the roof where her quarters had once been. The attic was nearly gone now.
The fire must have started there. As she stepped inside, smoke billowed down the stairwell and sparks rained from the ceiling. The wires were burning inside the walls, spreading the fire even more. She ducked the glowing embers and coughed and sputtered.
But she couldn’t leave—not without Stanley.
Mr. Tremont must not have been home when the fire started. His rental car wasn’t in the circular driveway. But Stanley’s old beater was. And when she’d been helping Mr. Stehouwer out, she had seen Stanley run back inside. She knew why when she heard the barking and the whimpering.
“Stanley!” she yelled. “Annie!”
The barking echoed down the stairwell. The dog had to be on the floor above. And the frantic sound of her barking suggested she was trapped.
Since Cody had left, the boy and the dog were solely her responsibility now. She had to make sure they were all right. She had a cloth in her hand—the damp one she’d held over Mr. Stehouwer’s face when she’d helped him from the house. He’d pressed it back into her hand when she’d left him. It was almost dry now. It wouldn’t provide much protection. But she held it over her face as she headed up the steps.
The wood creaked ominously beneath her. So did the ceiling above her. She feared the whole house was about to collapse on top of her. Tears stung her eyes, but it wasn’t just because of the smoke.
She was scared that she was about to die without ever telling Cody how much she loved him. She would have told Mrs. Gulliver or Mr. Stehouwer to let him know. But she had promised them that she would be right back—and that she would have Stanley and the dog with her.
