The Comeback Kiss

by Lani Diane Rich

  “So, wait,” Tessa said. “What? Someone has been paying you to mess with us?”

  “Oh, wait just a minute, sweetheart,” Babs said, her voice dripping with glee. “It’s just about to get really good.” She gave Mary Ellen a sharp nudge on the shoulder. “Go ahead.”

  Mary Ellen rolled her eyes. “There are two ways we can handle this. One, you can go to the police, report me, have me put in jail, and ruin my entire life”—Babs cleared her throat, and Mary Ellen cursed under her breath before continuing—“which I richly deserve.”

  Tessa felt a smile start to spread over her face. She couldn’t help it. This was by far the most enjoyable interaction she’d ever had with Mary Ellen Neeley.

  “Or,” Mary Ellen went on, “we could keep this between ourselves, and I can make absolutely sure that you retain full and unquestioned custody of Isabella until her eighteenth birthday.”

  “And?” Babs prodded. Izzy giggled and whispered, “I love this part.”

  “And,” Mary Ellen said, “if you choose option number two, I will personally show up at your house every Saturday until Isabella turns eighteen and”—she took a deep breath, closed her eyes, and bit out the last part—“clean your entire house.”

  “Including toilets,” Izzy jumped in.

  Mary Ellen opened her eyes and pulled on a tight smile. “Including toilets,” she said through clenched teeth. Tessa looked at Babs. “So, when you asked me how to spell Mary Ellen’s name, that wasn’t for numerology, then?”

  Babs shook her head and held up the fax papers in her hand. “Derek Brown, P.I. We should send him a nice fruit basket. He went above and beyond for us, really.”

  Tessa couldn’t help it; she laughed. “I don’t believe this. I don’t believe this!” Her heart suddenly lightened as she realized what this meant. She looked at Mary Ellen. “So, what this means is, I can do whatever I want and you’ll protect us? You’ll make sure I keep Izzy?”

  Mary Ellen’s nose lifted. “Well, there’s only so much I can—”

  Babs cleared her throat again. Mary Ellen clamped her mouth shut, then slowly nodded yes.

  Finn, Tessa thought. Finn. I have to tell Finn.

  Tessa laughed and ran to grab her purse from where it sat on the cot. Finally, finally, she was going to have exactly what she wanted. Finally—

  “Wait a minute,” she said. “Who paid you to do this? Who would—”

  “Don’t tell them, Mary Ellen,” a sharp voice came from behind them. Tessa turned around to see a tall woman with shellacked platinum blonde curls and a long white coat step into the shack. Her lips were blood red, her eyes dark and angry, and she smelled vaguely of gardenias.

  Grace Tarpey kicked the door closed; it was then that Tessa saw the gun in Grace’s hand.

  Grace’s cold, beady eyes surveyed the entire group, falling finally on Tessa, her lips curling up into a tight smile.

  “I so like to be the one to deliver the surprises,” she said.

  Chapter Twenty-five

  When Finn pulled up down the street from Tessa’s house, all he could see past the crowd and the fire trucks and the ambulance was smoke billowing out of the first floor. His heart cranked into overdrive and he pushed his way through the crowd, stopping only when a firefighter grabbed him.

  “They’re not in there,” the guy said. Finn pushed himself away and looked up.

  Joe.

  “Tessa,” Finn said.

  Joe shook his head. “She’s not in there. We’ve been through the whole place. It’s empty.”

  Finn ran his hands through his hair. His heart was still pounding in his ears and he couldn’t get his thoughts straight.

  Except one.

  “Where’s Tessa?”

  “I don’t know,” Joe said. “But she’s not in the house. And even if she was, she’d probably be fine. The fire started in the basement, and we got to it quickly.”

  Finn stared at the black smoke rising into the sky. “It’s Grace.”

  “What?” Joe asked.

  “It’s Grace. Grace Tarpey. Matt confessed to protect her. It’s Grace and she’s after Tessa and Izzy.” Finn reached into his back pocket and pulled out his cell phone, dialing Tessa’s number.

  “I just tried to call her a few minutes ago,” Joe said.

  The phone rang for the fifth time, then went to voice mail. Finn cursed and flipped his phone shut.

  “I’m gonna go look for them,” he said, darting back toward the car.

  “Finn!” He turned around and saw Joe walking toward him. “Need any help?”

  Finn breathed a sigh of relief. “You’ll cut my time in half if you can look at Max’s. I’ll go to the shack.”

  “You got it, bro,” Joe said. “I’ll call you if I find them. You do the same.”

  “Thanks,” Finn said.

  Joe nodded, then they both went their separate ways.

  ***

  “You are a popular girl,” Grace said as the last ring sounded on Tessa’s cell phone, which sat useless in her purse. “Must be nice.”

  Tessa said nothing, just shifted on the cot, which was tight on the real estate since Grace made everyone, including Mary Ellen, sit on it. Meanwhile, Grace stood next to the woodstove, where the fire was still blazing pretty well.

  A crazy arsonist next to a raging fire. It wasn’t good.

  “The thing about fire,” Grace said, reaching into her coat pocket with one hand while keeping the gun leveled at them with the other, “is that it’s so hard to control. This woodstove, in a tinderbox like this? I don’t know what Dick Lowery was thinking.”

  Tessa tried to see what Grace had pulled from her pocket, but it just looked like a vial of perfume.

  “I don’t understand what you’re doing,” Izzy said. “You can’t just burn us all up here and think no one’s going to have questions.”

  Grace rolled her eyes. “Yeah, let’s talk about questions, darling Isabella. You and your incessant questions. I knew you’d have them someday, which is why I hired this nitwit”—she indicated Mary Ellen with her chin—“to keep you girls busy. But you, with your poking around and your questions. This is really all your fault, you know?”

  Tessa saw Izzy’s eyes widen, and she reached for her sister’s hand.

  “Don’t listen to her,” Tessa said. “This is not your fault.”

  “Oh, sure it is,” Grace said. “All I did was play a little bit, burn down a few places that no one really missed anyway. No one got hurt. Hell, when I took out that barn on the edge of town, Melvin Cheeters made a damn fortune on the insurance. But then Karen had to start in with all the questions. What business was it of hers, anyway?” She looked at Vickie and Margie. “Or yours. Or Sosie’s, for Christ’s sake.”

  “Sosie told you?” Izzy said, her voice wavering.

  “Did you think she wouldn’t?” Grace said, her voice dripping with contempt. “Although, granted, she didn’t until just yesterday. All sniveling on my porch.” Grace’s voice went up to an annoyingly high pitch. “‘I’m worried about Izzy, Aunt Grace. Izzy’s gonna get hurt. She’s my best friend.’ Blah blah blah.” Grace’s voice went back to normal. “Honestly, kid needs to strap on a pair, know what I mean?”

  Grace opened the vial in her hand and started to pour it in a long line on the floor. The cloying smell of gardenias filled the shack.

  “You know,” Grace said thoughtfully as she poured the liquid onto the dry wooden floor. “Perfume makes an excellent accelerant. You wouldn’t even believe how flammable this shit is. And virtually untraceable.” She held up the empty vial. “I didn’t even figure that out until I took out Karen’s craft shop, can you believe that? Man, she was pissed off. Clawing at me and yelling. But what did she expect I was asking her to meet me for at two in the morning? Not the brightest bulb in the box, your mother.” Tessa felt her sister start, and tightened her grip on Izzy’s hand. As long as Grace still had the gun on them, they had to keep their cool.

  “You’re not
going to get away with this,” Izzy said, her voice tight with fear and anger.

  Grace laughed.

  “I don’t plan on getting away with it, you stupid little bitch,” she spat. “My life is over. Once they start investigating those fires, they’re gonna know Matt didn’t do it, that he was protecting me. But the thing is, if I’m going down, I’m damn well gonna take you with me.”

  Deftly keeping the gun pointed at her hostages, she gripped a rolled piece of newspaper and dipped one edge into the woodstove. It caught, and she dropped it on the line of perfume on the floor.

  Which lit up like a line of black powder. Of course, the old warped wood of the shack didn’t help matters. Grace might have been crazy, but she was right about one thing—that place was a tinderbox.

  Grace stepped back toward the door, then stopped, keeping the gun trained on them. Tessa stood up as the fire started to edge toward her. Grace said nothing, just laughed. Tessa looked behind her to the window. She could block it while Izzy crawled out. The idea of taking a bullet to get Izzy to safety didn’t bother her in the least.

  “Izzy,” she said, nodding toward the cast-iron skillet that hung on the wall, “grab that. Break the window.”

  “I don’t think so,” Grace said. She cocked the gun, aimed it at Izzy. “Anyone moves, the kid gets it.”

  Tessa exchanged glances with Vickie, Margie, and Babs. Mary Ellen whimpered and took a step forward. Grace glared at her.

  “What did I just say? Anyone moves, the kid gets it. That includes you.”

  “But,” Mary Ellen whimpered, “I was on your side.” “You were on my payroll, and if you’d done your job, we wouldn’t be here.”

  “But—”

  Mary Ellen didn’t get a chance to finish the thought, because at that moment, all hell broke loose.

  Finn pulled up next to the cars at the side of the lake. There was Tessa’s Thing, the Mazda, Vickie’s little Ford, and a Subaru he didn’t recognize. When he hopped out and saw the Lucy’s Lake Fire Association sticker on the bumper, he cursed under his breath and scanned the lake. There was no sign of Tessa. He looked up toward the shack and saw black smoke coming from the woodstove pipe. It took him a moment longer to realize that the smoke wasn’t just coming from the pipe; it was also leaking through the walls, and he could see flames licking through the side window. He took off around the lake, skidding and sliding through the snow. The freezing air cut at his lungs as he ran, his only thoughts of Tessa. If he was too late...

  If he was too late...

  He shut off that train of thought and pushed harder, falling in the snow and pushing back up until he finally reached the shack, where he skidded to a stop, his breath raw in his chest.

  Tessa, Izzy, Babs, Vickie, and Margie stood in a circle around two other women. As Finn gasped for breath, he could see that Grace Tarpey was one of them, lying unconscious on the snow next to a cast-iron skillet. The other woman was a skinny blonde who matched the description of the evil troll social worker.

  Tessa looked up, saw him, and smiled. Finn rushed over to her and pulled her into his arms, kissing the top of her head.

  “Shit, Tess, you just took ten years off my life.” He pulled back and put his hands on either side of her face, looking into her eyes. “Are you okay? You’re okay?”

  Tessa smiled. “All things considered, I’m pretty great, yeah.”

  He wrapped her in his arms again and looked at Izzy, who grinned at him.

  “I hit her with a frying pan,” Izzy said, pointing to the unconscious pile that was Grace Tarpey. Finn had to laugh.

  “You what?”

  “Well,” Izzy said, slight concession in her voice, “first Babs charged her and got the gun away.”

  Finn raised an eyebrow at Babs. “Gun?”

  Babs gave a dismissive wave of the hand. “It’s not as brave as it sounds. I used Mary Ellen as a human shield to do it.”

  Finn looked down at the blonde slumped on the ground next to Grace Tarpey.

  “You’re Mary Ellen?” he asked. “The social worker?”

  “I could have been killed!” she sobbed.

  Babs sighed. “Yeah, she could have. But luckily, Grace was too surprised to actually shoot. Mary Ellen and I took her down, didn’t we, Mary Ellen?”

  Mary Ellen didn’t answer, just whimpered to herself.

  Finn pulled back and looked at Tessa. “You’re serious? She had a gun on you and you all took her down?”

  Tessa smiled. “How did you find me?”

  Finn shrugged. “I checked your house, Joe checked Max’s. That pretty much left the lake.”

  Tessa huffed. “I really need to get out more.”

  Finn looked down at her, let out an awkward-sounding laugh, and felt his heart catch in his chest as he fully realized that he’d almost lost her. Almost really lost her. Forever.

  “Oh, hell,” he said, drawing her close in his arms so she couldn’t see his face. He took a deep breath and blinked hard to ward off the...

  “Finn?”

  He swiped at his eyes quickly, then let her pull back to look at him.

  “Sorry,” he said. “Smoke was getting to me.”

  One corner of her mouth twisted up into a smile.

  “Yeah,” she said, “that can be a bitch.”

  He looked at her, taking in everything about her. The dark hair falling around her shoulders, the flush in her lightly freckled cheeks, the hint of laughter in her eyes, even when she’d just been through hell.

  She was his girl.

  He put one hand on her face.

  “I love you,” he said.

  She smiled up at him. “Yeah, I know. The question is, what are you gonna do about it?”

  Good question, he thought. Just then he heard footsteps behind him, and turned to see Joe running toward them, breathless.

  “Fire,” he gasped, gesturing toward the shack. He looked at Tessa. “Everyone okay?”

  Tessa laughed. “We’ve had heroes running to our rescue twice in one day. We’re doing great.”

  Joe straightened up, still gasping for breath, then pulled out his cell phone.

  “Calling in the troops?” Finn asked.

  Joe nodded.

  Finn looked at the flames shooting up into the sky from the shack.

  “Ask ’em if they got marshmallows.”

  Chapter Twenty-six

  Tessa stood back and surveyed her canvas, tilting her head a bit to the left. She looked at the bowl of fruit that sat on the three-legged table, then back at the oil painting in front of her, and decided she needed better lighting in the attic. Which meant another trip to the store. Between fixing up the basement, buying products to get the smoky smell out of the first floor, and all the paint she’d been snapping up, she was pretty sure she’d managed to jump-start the town economy in the course of the last week.

  Well, she thought, there are worse things to do with money.

  She put her brush down on the ridge of her easel and pulled off her smock, then gasped as she saw the figure standing behind her.

  “Sorry,” Finn said, a smile creeping up one side of his face. “I didn’t mean to scare you.”

  He leaned casually against the banister at the top of the attic steps, his eyes trailing around the space before landing on her again. “I like what you’ve done with the place,” he said.

  “Yeah,” Tessa said, “putting Mom’s stuff back around the house really cleared the attic out. It’s my art studio now.”

  “Sounds perfect.”

  She wanted to throw herself into his arms, but instead she quirked one eyebrow at him and tried to maintain a slightly pissed-off expression.

  It’d be no fun if she made it easy for him.

  “So, where ya been, Finnegan? A whole week. You don’t write, you don’t call. You attempt to save a girl from a burning building and then just disappear. What’s up with that?”

  “Had to see a man about a horse,” he said, then shook his head and grinned. “I s
till don’t know what that means.”

  “But you know what’s weird?” she said. “Everywhere I went, everyone I talked to, they all kinda looked like they knew something I didn’t. Little whispers. Little smiles. Very strange. You happen to know anything about that?”

  “Feeling out of the loop?” Finn took another step closer, put one hand on her waist, and pulled her to him.

  “Yep.” She pushed his hand away playfully.

  “Little cranky about it?”

  “Little bit,” she said, trying to hide her smile. Although, hell, if he could hear her heart bumping around in her chest like a mental patient, the jig would be up anyway.

  He leaned his head down and grazed his lips against her neck.

  Oh. God.

  No, wait.

  She pushed against his chest, moving him back, and he groaned, “Now you’re just being mean.”

  “You don’t get to leave me hanging for a week, breeze back into town, and kiss my neck like that. Where were you?”

  He sighed. “No kissing until I tell you?”

  She shook her head.

  “Okay, then,” he said with a smile. “I went to New York. Tied up a few loose ends. Sublet my apartment. Got a job.”

  She felt a stab of disappointment. “A job? A real job? In New York?”

  “A job. A real job.” He shook his head, his eyes playful. “Not in New York. I’m, uh...” He chuckled. “I’m gonna be a cop.”

  Tessa laughed outright, then clapped her hand over her mouth at Finn’s mock-indignant expression.

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “But... how?”

  “Marshall Evans was impressed by how I cracked the Tarpey case,” Finn said. “He gave me a call. I’ve been in New York, uh... securing my background check.”

  “You’re kidding? You committed fraud so you could be a cop?”

  Finn nodded. “For the low, low price of one macaw.” Tessa gasped. “You really sold it?”

  “To a good home for a great price,” he said. “And Vickie’s letting me pay it off in installments.”

  “Will wonders never cease?” she said.