Deep Burn (Station Seventeen Book 2)

by Kimberly Kincaid

  Shifting a little deeper into his jacket, he let his mind turn even as he surveyed the street and the sidewalks around him. Today’s case, and the frustrations that went with it, had him wound pretty tight. He needed to keep his brain occupied, but keeping the rest of him busy might not be the worst thing in the universe, either. Truthfully, it had been a while since he’d blown off any steam between the sheets, and if he was jacked up enough for Sinclair to kick his ass out of the building, maybe he should take the hint.

  Maybe, just maybe, if he got laid, he’d finally stop thinking about Shae McCullough’s smart mouth, and all the hot, impetuous-as-hell things she could probably do with it.

  “For Chrissake,” Capelli muttered, slipping the words far enough under his breath that he was certain no one on the sidewalk had overheard him. He needed to get his thoughts of Shae—and her sexy, overbold mouth—in line and out of his head, once and for all. Ordering his grocery list in his head, he made a beeline for the Stop ‘n Shop six blocks away. The place was essentially empty of other shoppers courtesy of his Friday night timing. But since that just meant a more time-efficient circuit up and down the usual aisles for the usual items, Capelli was all for the solitude.

  At least, he was…until he rounded the corner of aisle twelve and caught sight of the woman in front of him in the frozen food section.

  Her back was completely to him as she leaned down to drop a few ready-made dinners into her cart, but with a view like the one her low-slung jeans and form-fitting shirt were treating him to, Capelli was all too cool with that. The woman’s brown-gold hair spilled down her back in long, thick waves, her dark green top cropped just short enough to have revealed the sweet, muscular curve of her lower back when she’d bent forward. Heat rushed under his skin to head directly south, and damn, it looked like a more primal part of him than his stomach wanted attention.

  Hard attention. Fast attention.

  Right-fucking-now attention.

  Before he could cage the wild, sudden impulse pumping through his bloodstream, he covered the space between himself and the woman in a handful of strides. Her shoulders tightened just slightly, a sure signal that she’d heard him and he wouldn’t startle her or—worse yet—come off like a total creeper. Striking up conversations with strangers in the Stop ‘n Shop wasn’t exactly his MO, even if they were sexy enough to make him drop his normally cautious demeanor. He might like control—crave it, even—but come on. He wasn’t a monk. Especially not with a woman like this in front of him.

  “If you’re trying to choose between the Salisbury steak and the chicken piccata, I’d go with the steak. Although personally, I’m more of a spaghetti and meatballs kind of guy.”

  The woman shifted, just enough for Capelli to catch the vanilla and brown sugar scent of her body lotion.

  But the attraction making his heart beat faster and his dick half-hard turned into a bolt of pure shock when she turned on her three-inch boot heels, and he found himself nailed into place by Shae McCullough’s brassy, sassy smile.

  Shae wasn’t sure what surprised her more—unexpectedly running into Capelli at the Stop n’ Shop at nine o’clock on a Friday night, or the fact that her girly bits were currently an involuntary hot zone at the sight of the slow, sexy smile that had been riding his mouth when she’d turned around.

  “Spaghetti and meatballs, huh?” Shae inhaled to counter the thrum of her pulse, grateful that they were surrounded by wall to wall freezers on both sides of the aisle. “I’ll be honest, I didn’t have you pegged as a frozen dinner kind of guy.”

  In fact, all the leafy greens and bottled water and items in his cart boasting words like multi grain and organic suggested he wouldn’t touch a frozen dinner with a forty-foot pole. Which could only mean one thing.

  James Capelli was flirting with her.

  “Shit. I mean”—he cleared his throat, tugging a hand through his dark blond hair and taking a step back on the overly buffed linoleum—“I apologize. I didn’t mean to be so forward.”

  “Really?” Surprise of a more traditional sort rippled through her chest. “Because I’ve gotta tell you, you kind of nailed it.”

  She’d been trained to be more aware of her surroundings than most people, so she’d heard Capelli’s footsteps the second he’d turned the corner of the otherwise dead-empty aisle, just as she’d caught the darkly flirty intention in his smile when she’d turned around. He might not have ever aimed a look like that in her direction before, but Shae wasn’t thick. She knew attraction when she saw it.

  Just like she knew when she felt it back.

  “Yes, really,” he said, driving her surprise into confusion. “I didn’t recognize you.”

  Shae gestured to her jeans and long-sleeved top with a laugh. “I’m hardly in disguise. Look, I’m not even wearing a coat. Again.”

  The revelation seemed to unnerve him another notch. “Your back was turned, and you just…you normally wear your hair in a ponytail, is all.”

  He gestured to her hair at the same time she reached up to skim a hand through it. “Ah,” she said, her confusion waning slightly. “Must’ve forgotten to pull it back tonight, I guess.”

  At that, his brows tucked from behind his dark-rimmed glasses. “You don’t have a routine?”

  “You do?” Shae asked. She was about as familiar with routine as she was with astrophysics. Which, come to think of it, might be right up Capelli’s alley.

  “Well, yes. I…” He broke off with a wave of one hand. “It’s not important. Anyway, how come you’re grocery shopping? Aren’t you supposed to be on shift at Seventeen until tomorrow morning?”

  Just like that, her gut did a flawless impersonation of a rusty corkscrew. “Yeah, that’s a long story that should probably be told over one too many gin and tonics,” she said, tacking a smile over her face even though it was a poor fucking fit. A few seconds ticked by, punctuated by the strains of some pop song on the overhead speakers and Capelli’s chocolate-colored stare, and jeez, how had Shae not noticed the sexy-factor of those glasses before now?

  She shifted her weight from one boot to the other, trying to displace the warmth prickling between her thighs. “So how’s your murder investigation going?”

  It was a bit of a lame attempt to swerve the subject from her admittedly shitty day and her even shittier benching, she knew. But his shoulders loosened just a fraction beneath his black canvas jacket as he opened his mouth to answer, so score one for subterfuge.

  “Slow, but we’re still working on it. We don’t have a whole lot of evidence to go on though.”

  “With how quickly that fire moved through the house, I can’t say I’m shocked,” Shae said, a thought percolating in the back of her mind. “Hey, did you hear anything from arson yet on the cause of the fire?”

  He shook his head. “No, but the fire marshal has to do a scene inspection first. The only reports we have so far are the ones we took from you and Slater at the scene. Why?”

  “The fire was really intense, and the flame patterns seemed kind of…I don’t know. Wonky.”

  “Wonky,” Capelli repeated, dark blond brows lifted as if she’d just started speaking in tongues.

  She mirrored the expression right back at him. “Yeah, you know. Weird. I was wondering if they thought the fire had been set intentionally.”

  “Oh.” He paused for a second, clearly thinking. “Well, it definitely wouldn’t be the first time some dirt bag tried to use arson to cover up a murder, but we haven’t seen a proven case like that in Remington in the last five years. There were a ton of chemicals at the scene today, all of them volatile and highly flammable. That seems like the most likely cause of the fire, and it probably had a lot to do with how quickly the blaze spread.”

  Shae opened her mouth, set and ready to argue. Yeah, she’d responded to a good half-dozen fires that had been obvious meth-cooking accidents, but still. Proven arson was pretty uncommon, period—mostly because it required a lot of undisputable evidence, and fires didn
’t usually leave a ton of that behind. But burn patterns told stories just like DNA and blood spatter and anything else at a crime scene, and Shae knew what she’d seen. Even if all she had to go on was a weird gut feeling.

  Which would probably fly with Capelli about as well as a box full of bricks, and on second thought… “You’re probably right. I’m sure the fire marshal and the arson unit will look at everything carefully and let you know if the fire was deliberate. The scene this morning was pretty crazy. Guess my mind is just caught up in the adrenaline of the whole thing.”

  “Speaking of which”—he looked at her, his expression unreadable yet not unkind—“I should apologize for earlier.”

  “Okay,” she said, elongating the word until it nearly grew into a question. “I’m not sure I follow.”

  Capelli slid a hand over the front of his long sleeved T-shirt, his gaze dropping to the floor for just a breath before he lifted his eyes back to hers. “For our conversation earlier this morning,” he clarified. “I don’t normally conduct interviews for the intelligence unit, and I guess I’m not used to a lot of face-to-face, especially at crime scenes. I didn’t mean to offend you with anything I said, though.”

  “You didn’t mean to call me impulsive?” Shae’s disbelief edged out her surprise, but only by thiiiis much. She might not know him all that well, but she wasn’t blind, and she certainly wasn’t an idiot. She’d seen advanced algebra equations less calculated than this man. If he’d called her impulsive, it was because he meant to.

  “Well, no. I mean, yes.” Capelli paused. Took a breath. Let it out slowly. “You did behave impulsively on the call. But Slater was pretty rattled. You two are engine-mates. Logically, it makes sense that you were just looking out for him when we showed up to question the two of you about the scene.”

  A pang unfolded in her chest, swift and deep and completely unexpected. “I was,” she said, giving the odd sensation a second to dissipate before adding, “I appreciate the apology, but you don’t have to worry about offending me. At least, not over something like that.”

  “You weren’t mad?” he asked, his doubt obvious.

  “Oh no, I was plenty pissed,” Shae said. She wasn’t about to scale back on the God’s honest, no matter who she was talking to. “I just tend to burn bright, then burn out in the anger department. I don’t really see much point in holding grudges. Life’s really too short.”

  Capelli nodded, the fluorescent lights overhead glinting off his glasses. “I guess that’s good to know for the next time I piss you off.”

  Shae very nearly laughed, until his expression told her he wasn’t kidding. God, he was so serious.

  Suddenly, impetuously, she wondered what it would take to undo him.

  “We should probably stop meeting like this, you know,” she said, her legs taking a step toward him before her brain recognized the command to move.

  Her blood flared hotter when he didn’t take a step back to counter it. “Us running into each other is purely coincidental,” he replied. “I didn’t even know you shopped here.”

  “Relax, Capelli.” This time, she did laugh. “It was a joke.” At his continued lack of a smile, she added, “Because we’ve run into each other unexpectedly twice in one day.”

  “Oh. Right, of course,” he said, still going no joy on a smile.

  Rather than backing down, though, Shae tried again to get him to loosen up. “And actually, I don’t shop here, but I was out for a walk and I got hungry, so…”

  She gestured to the small grocery cart behind her, filled with a stack of frozen dinners, a six-pack of ginger ale, and the king-sized Hershey bar she’d been craving all damned day.

  “So here you are,” Capelli said. “Unexpectedly.”

  Shae’s pulse quickened, a deep pull of attraction spearing through her belly at the way his eyes had flared over the last word. Between helping each other at scenes from time to time and all hanging out at the Crooked Angel after hours, the cops in intelligence and the firefighters and paramedics at Seventeen knew each other both professionally and socially. A hookup or two had been known to go down between the group of friends—hell, Isabella and Kellan had even moved in together. Shae might have a pretty hard and fast rule against extra-curricular relationships with her fellow firefighters, but as she stood there on the linoleum looking at the hey-now angle of Capelli’s shoulders beneath that jacket and the serious/seriously sexy look on his handsome, clean-shaven face, she had to wonder why the hell she’d never slept with him.

  Then again, with the way his stare had just lingered on her mouth for a second longer than was cordial, she could probably remedy that gaffe right. Now.

  “So what do you say we trade this six-pack of ginger ale for a six-pack of beer and go heat up a couple of these mealsicles together?” She let her smile hang between them for just a beat, then tacked on, “I’ll even give the spaghetti and meatballs a shot.”

  “I’m not sure that would be such a good idea.”

  Surprised, Shae paused. “You never know. It might be fun.”

  Now it was Capelli’s turn to pause. “I’m sure it would be a lot of fun, actually.”

  “What’s the matter, Capelli? Aren’t you a fun kind of guy?”

  The tight spot between her legs filled with nine kinds of heat at the idea of just how much fun might be lurking under all that controlled composure of his. Again, his eyes lowered to rake slowly over her smirk, and oh God, how could she feel him so much when he wasn’t even touching her?

  Shae closed the rest of the distance between them save a scant inch, completely uncaring that they were smack in the middle of the frozen food section. “I mean, we’re not exactly strangers. It seems kind of silly for us to spend Friday night alone when we could be having a little fun, don’t you think?”

  “I think…”

  Capelli trailed off. Lifting one hand, he brushed the pad of his thumb over her bottom lip. The hot, unfettered sensations from the contact stunned Shae into place, turning her breath into a soft gasp and her nipples into aching peaks. He reversed the path of his thumb, the teasing, barely there touch making her sex clench. She parted her lips under his attention, pressing forward with every intention of letting him kiss her senseless right there in the grocery store, when the clack clack clack of shopping cart wheels filtered in from the next aisle over.

  Just like that, Capelli’s head whipped up. Yanking his hand from her lips as if she’d scorched him, he stepped back swiftly to regain a full bubble of personal space.

  “I’m sorry,” he said, his expression neutral and his brown eyes as cool as the freezer case behind him. “I really can’t. Have a nice night, McCullough.”

  He turned on his heels to walk a precise line toward the end of the aisle and out of Shae’s line of vision, leaving her more turned on and pride-stung than ever as she stood there trying to figure out what the hell had just happened.

  Chapter 5

  After three hours of working in the arson investigation unit, Shae considered putting her eyes out with a spoon. It wasn’t that the people were so bad; on the contrary, Natalie Delacourt, who’d showed her the ropes this morning, and Frank Wisniewski, who had worked in arson since the dawn of time, were actually rather nice.

  The glacial work pace and the never-ending policies and procedures, though? Yeah. Cue the utensil drawer.

  Blowing out a breath, Shae sat back in her desk chair and surveyed the mini-Mount Everest covering her small, makeshift work space in the corner of Natalie’s office. Yes, being kicked down to arson had put a dent in her normally bulletproof armor, but her two-week penance on the paper trail might not smart so much if she hadn’t been so summarily dismissed by Captain Bridges on Friday. Add in Capelli’s weird duck and run in the grocery store after what she’d been certain had been a sure thing, and her already precarious ego was about as brittle as it could get without breaking.

  “Want some confetti to go with that pity party?” Shae muttered under her breath, swiping
a file folder from the top of the pile by her elbow. Okay, so her pride had taken a pretty nasty one-two, but come on. She wasn’t exactly a stranger to being told she was too impulsive, too capricious, too brash. She’d been tough enough to field those beliefs from everyone around her for the last eight years.

  After all, watching your best friend die right in front of you when she’d been laughing ten seconds earlier tended to do a number on a girl’s fortitude. Not to mention her perspective.

  But backbone was the one thing Shae managed with any level of consistency. If she could handle a four-alarm fire, she could certainly handle a little dressing-down from her captain and a sexual Heisman from James freaking Capelli. Even if she had spent the majority of her weekend swinging between hot and bothered over the latter.

  Stupid melty brown eyes.

  Placing her elbows over her desk, she popped open the file folder between her fingers and read the report inside even though both her patience and her brain were halfway to tapioca by page two. Italian restaurant versus faulty wiring, a twenty-five-year-old building along the notoriously low-rent North Point pier, a grease trap that sounded like it hadn’t been cleaned since the turn of the century…yeah, the restaurant never came out on top in a case like that. Shae flipped to the next page, her report already halfway written out in her head per Frank’s instructions, when a glossy eight-by-ten photograph of the scene slipped from the back of the folder and drifted to the floor.

  Holy fire damage, Batman. Shae reached down low to pick up the photo and give it a more careful look. She might be far more used to seeing a scene during a blaze than after the fact, but the extent of the damage to the restaurant was damned close to unreal. Curiosity spinning, she moved the written reports from the fire marshal and the responding firefighters aside, dropping the folder over her teeny-tiny desk to examine the rest of the photos more closely.