Burning Up

by Susan Andersen

  Not since he was sixteen, at any rate. For a couple of years there, he’d been monkey wild. Fighting anything in pants. Screwing anything in skirts.

  But that was a long time ago. The man he was now was deliberate. In control. Master of his rare way ward impulse.

  So what had he been doing out in the hallway with the music-video princess? What the holy hell had he been thinking?

  He snorted. Yeah, right. Like thought had been a big part of the equation. He’d simply acted on instinct. Because he’d known in his gut that he couldn’t watch her close that soft, pink, smart-ass mouth around her finger. Still, he could have, should have just released her hand and walked away.

  Tossing his towels aside, he strode for the dresser. Yeah, well, you didn’t, so get over it. The deed was done. He thought of the series of garbage-can fires around town that he’d been dealing with for the past few weeks. That was what he should be concentrating on, tracking down the reason for those, not wasting his time rewriting a here-and-gone run-in with the new resident flirt. Either that or…

  “Shit!” Grace. How the hell had he forgotten his date with Grace, even if only for a few minutes? Guilt crawled down his spine. This was the second time he’d gotten so caught up in Macy’s sexual pull that it had blown every single thought of the woman he was actually dating clean out of his mind.

  Yanking open the second drawer, he collected a clean pair of jeans, then strode to the closet and ripped a cotton shirt from its hanger.

  As he dressed, however, he found that merely thinking of the teacher he was scheduled to take out for a glass of wine smoothed over the minor irritations of his day. Because Grace was aptly named. She was quiet. Restful. Nice.

  All of which were attributes he appreciated more than he could say considering his early life with his tumultuous party-girl mom, the fury years after she’d abdicated her responsibilities by dumping him on the system, and his time in the Detroit FD, the last six years of which he’d spent as an arson investigator forever juggling too many fires and not enough hours in the day. Taking this county fire-chief job had been the first step in alleviating the overload of stress he’d lived with for too long. Being with Grace, absorbing the tranquility she radiated, felt like the next.

  A little peace was something he’d been in search of for a long time. He’d had enough craziness and tension to last a lifetime. So, hell, yeah. Given even the prospect of a little serenity injected into his life?

  He’d be a fool not to latch on to Grace.

  MACY STRODE INTO the kitchen where her aunt was washing up the pans from breakfast. “Hey, Auntie Lenore,” she said, grabbing an apple out of the bowl on the counter and polishing it on her shirt. “Janna’s settled in our room for a while and Tyler’s over at Charlie’s. Charlie’s mom said she’d get the boys to their game, so I sent along everything I thought he might need.” She bit into the apple. Seeing her aunt in her natural milieu gave her a surge of pleasure every bit as strong as her first glimpse had last week.

  Lenore turned off the faucet and turned to face her, taking in Macy’s severe ponytail, bloodred lipstick and Goth eye makeup. “Let me guess,” she said dryly. “You’re heading into town.”

  Macy took another bite as her aunt inventoried her short pin-striped pleated skirt and stretchy black U-neck girl-T. The older woman’s gaze lingered for a moment on her black spiked dog collar before moving on to—

  “Oh, honey, no. You got a tattoo?”

  “Nah.” She smiled at the pained expression her aunt couldn’t hide, then glanced down at the flame-winged skull on her inner forearm. “Though I may be one of the few of my generation who hasn’t—at least in L.A. This is just for fun, a press-on/wash-off. And yeah, if it’s okay with you, I am gonna run into town. I won’t be gone long. I have a check I need to cash. I should have done it earlier in the week but I enjoyed just hanging around and catching up with you guys. Don’t worry, though, I’ll be back in plenty of time to get Janna ready for Tyler’s game. Do you need anything while I’m there?”

  “No, sweetheart, thanks. I’m good for a while.” Lenore flashed a crooked smile. “I actually remembered my shopping list the other day. It’s amazing what a difference that makes.”

  Macy laughed and slung an arm around her aunt, stooping to press a kiss on her cheek before heading out the back door.

  It was only a couple of miles to town, and within minutes she was whipping her Corvette into a parking space a few doors down from Sterling Savings and Trust. But then she simply sat in her car, staring at the gold lettering on the plate glass window of Smokey’s Grill.

  She’d reached the turnoff to Bud and Lenore’s boardinghouse the other day before the highway passed through Sugarville, so this was her first time in town in… Wow. More than a couple of years now.

  Not that anything had changed. It still looked like a town caught in a time capsule, with its lack of fast-food chains and its two-story-maximum historic brick or stone buildings that comprised the three blocks of Commerce Street. For the same reasons, it was an exceptionally pretty town.

  And despite her trying junior and senior years in high school or the fact that she’d barely flipped her tassel to the other side of her mortarboard before blowing town, there had been times she’d missed it dreadfully.

  But mostly, she acknowledged, leaving had been the best present she’d ever given herself.

  Sitting here patting herself on the back over it wasn’t getting her check cashed, however, and impatient with her procrastination, she snatched her purse off the passenger seat and climbed from the car. She sauntered to the bank on the corner, feeling as if prying eyes were watching her every move but knowing she was likely being paranoid.

  Air-conditioning pebbled her nearly bare arms as she stepped into the oak-walled, marble-floored lobby a moment later. Digging her check from her purse, she crossed to the nearest old-fashioned, iron-barred teller’s window. “Hello—” smiling at the maybe-twenty brunette manning it, she read the girl’s name plate “—Lucy. Can you cash this for me?”

  She signed the back of the check and slipped it beneath the iron grill, then pulled her wallet from her bag to root for the identification that, given the size of the check, she was sure to need. But as she withdrew her driver’s license she realized the girl hadn’t responded and, raising her head, discovered the brunette staring at her.

  “Omigawd,” the young woman breathed. “I can’t believe it. It is you. You’re That Girl.”

  Damn. She would’ve thought the teller was too young to remember her, but apparently her fricking reputation back in high school had filtered down even to the elementary level.

  “You’re that girl in all the videos—Jack Savage’s girlfriend.”

  Ah. It wasn’t her old rep the brunette was talking about but rather her newer claim to fame. Some of the tension went out of her shoulders. “Jack and I are just friends,” she said cheerfully. “We’re not—and never have been—lovers.”

  “No kidding? Wait ’til I tell my friends I got the inside scoop straight from the horse’s mouth! This is ginormous!”

  “I’m happy to help you one-up.” She inched the check farther beneath the grill with her fingertips. “Would you mind cashing my check?”

  “Oh! Sure.” But when the teller looked at it, she frowned. “Oh,” she said, glancing back at Macy. “This isn’t drawn on us. Do you have an account here?”

  “No.”

  “I’m sorry, Ms. O’James,” she said with patent regret, “but this is something I have to have approved. Let me just get our manager, Mrs. Thorensen.”

  The young woman let herself out of the teller’s cage and Macy turned to watch her cross the lobby to a woman in a black suit presiding over an ornate desk in the corner. The manager glanced across the room at her, then rose to her feet and came over.

  Extending a hand, she said, “Macy? You probably don’t remember me, but I’m—”

  “Kelly Sherman,” she supplied, recognizing the Sugarville
High class treasurer in the slightly plumper, ten-years-older woman standing before her.

  The bank manager gave her a surprisingly friendly smile for someone Macy remembered as perpetually desperate back in the day to please Liz Picket.

  Liz, who had hated Macy’s guts.

  “It’s Kelly Thorensen now. Why don’t you come over to my desk and we’ll see what we can do about getting you your money.”

  When they’d settled themselves across from each other, Kelly looked at her and said, “Are you in town for a while?”

  “Yes. You may have heard that my cousin, Janna, was hit by a car a while back. I’m here to lend a hand until she gets back on her feet.”

  “Yes, I did hear that, and I’m so sorry. The main reason I asked, though, is we can’t cash a check of this size for a noncustomer.”

  And there was the knife in the ribs she’d expected upon recognizing the banker. She had to hand it to Kelly, though, the woman managed not to let her satisfaction show. She was clearly worlds more sophisticated than she’d been in high school.

  But then the banker grimaced with genuine regret and said, “I truly am sorry, Macy. If you’re going to be in town for a while, though, perhaps you’d like to open a savings account with us. We still have to wait for the check to clear, but the balance will of course accrue interest from today’s date.”

  “That sounds fair,” she agreed slowly. She’d run into this situation a time or two; she’d simply forgotten about them because most of her employment checks were drawn on the bank where she had her account. She blew out a breath. “I meant to take care of this before I left home, but I forgot in my rush to pack and get on the road.”

  Kelly opened a form on her computer and started keying in information Macy supplied in answer to the manager’s questions. Within minutes, she’d sent it to the printer. Sitting back in her chair, she smiled at Macy. “What a glamorous life you must lead in L.A.”

  “I don’t know about glamorous,” Macy replied, because mostly the work she did was work. And there was a phoniness prevalent in the industry that often wore thin. “But it’s satisfying work.” Especially now that she was in the creative end of producing music videos rather than acting in someone else’s vision of a song.

  “You going to our ten-year reunion next month?”

  God, no. “Oh. Wow. Has it been ten years already? A reunion, huh? This is the first I’ve heard of it.”

  “Well, you should come. It’ll be fun.”

  Uh-huh. Because I had so many friends in high school. “I’ll keep it in mind, but so much depends on how well Janna’s leg improves. Did I tell you she’s starting physical therapy next week?”

  They exchanged a few more pleasantries before she headed back to the car. All things considered, she thought in bemusement as she climbed in, that hadn’t gone half badly.

  When she said as much to Janna a short while later, after recounting her experience, her cousin gave her a wry smile. “So maybe the good citizens of Sugarville have moved on more than you’ve given them credit for.” Then she teased, “I mean, I know you think it’s all about you—”

  “You mean it’s not? What’s with that?” But she wasn’t up to kidding about this, and rubbing her forehead, she stared at her cousin. “You know, I never gave it much thought, since I was only here for a few days at a time to see you and the rest of the family. But I guess I’ve sort of been braced for the whole hornet’s nest response to my return,” she admitted soberly, “and I’m grateful as can be that Kelly was professional and gracious instead. But I doubt it’s realistic to expect that everyone will be so nice.” She shook her head. “I just wonder how not nice they’re going to be.”

  Janna nodded, her expression troubled. “Yeah. That’s the million-dollar question.”

  “IS THAT MACY O’JAMES?”

  “I heard she was back in town.”

  “She’s got some nerve showing her face after all the heartache she’s caused!”

  “Hey, you know what they say. No-class white trash then, no-class white trash now.”

  The voices carried clearly in the hot summer air as Macy unfolded a lawn chair under the spreading oak trees next to the bleachers and helped her cousin settle into it. “Well, I guess that answers that big-bucks question,” she murmured and made a moue of distaste. “Apparently Kelly was a fluke.”

  “Oh, I imagine there’s more people like Kelly than you think.” Janna cautiously propped the heel of her cast on the plastic bucket Macy upended in front of her. “There are always going to be idiots in this town, though. So do as I do, sweetie. Ignore ’em.”

  “I intend to.” Knowing better than to expect an offer from the people on the bleachers nearest Janna to make room so she could sit next to her cousin, she snapped open the blanket she’d brought along for this precise contingency and spread it on the ground on Janna’s other side. Careful to keep her knees together in deference to the shortness of her pin-striped skirt, she lowered herself upon it.

  And swallowed a snort. Because wouldn’t that be just what she needed to round out this outing—to flash the young players warming up on the field? As if she didn’t have a bad enough name in this town as it was.

  It would have been smarter to wear a nice conservative pair of shorts, she knew, but she was glad she hadn’t changed her clothes. For a short while, in the wake of her better-than-expected encounter with Kelly, she’d considered it. But in the end, she’d decided that a girl could simply never predict when her armor might come in handy in this town. Outrageous clothing was her armor of choice. And it was coming in handy now.

  Then Janna’s words sank in, and she scooted closer to her cousin, leaning in to ask in a low voice, “What do you mean, do as you do?”

  Janna shrugged. “When Sean and I divorced, I lost most of my social circle,” she answered with matter-of-fact equanimity.

  Macy stared. “He screwed around on you with a barely legal bimbo and your friends took his side?”

  “Except for one or two of them, they were never really my friends, anyhow. Sean is a Purcell—I married up in their eyes.”

  “Are you kidding?” An incredulous laugh escaped her. “Someone actually said that?”

  “Nah, it wasn’t that blatant. But the cliques in this town continue long after high school.” She gave an impatient shake of her head. “No. That makes it sound like it’s a Sugarville thing, and it’s not. This sort of social maneuvering goes on everywhere. Everyone was friendly while Sean and I were married—and a few of them I’ve remained friends with. But for the most part, when he dumped me, so did the group we socialized with.”

  Macy blew out a quiet breath. “I’m sorry, Janny. That must have been rough.”

  Janna shrugged again. “Shit happens. You know that better than most.”

  “She’s wearing a damn dog collar,” a woman on the bleachers said loudly. “I’ve never seen anything so stupid.”

  Twisting around, Macy located the speaker and gave her a slow appraisal. “Interesting fashion criticism, sugar, coming from a woman who wears burgundy lip liner with pink lipstick.”

  Angry color scalded the woman’s cheeks. “Bitch.”

  “Yes. I am. Hence the collar.”

  She heard a muffled laugh and turned back around. Charlie’s mother, Shannon, stood nearby with another woman, but if the snicker she’d heard came from either of them she saw no evidence of it now.

  “Hey, ladies.” Shannon greeted them with easy cheer, flashing the ready smile Macy had noticed when she’d dropped the boys off at Charlie’s house earlier. She was a big woman with a big laugh and the same orangy-red hair as her son’s. “Mind if we join you?”

  “Please do.” She patted the blanket next to her.

  “Thanks. You’ve got a primo spot here.” The women settled on the blanket next to her, then Shan non leaned back so Macy could see the quietly pretty brunette on her other side. “Grace, this is Macy O’James. Macy, Grace Burdette.”

  “Hi, nice to meet
you.” She reached around Shannon to offer her hand, but froze midshake after the woman accepted it. “Wait. You’re Miss Burdette? As in the fourth-grade teacher?”

  “You’ve heard of me?”

  “I’ll say.” Belatedly, she released the other woman’s hand. And grinned. “My nephew Tyler’s going to be in your class this fall and he talks about it as if he won the lottery in the teacher sweepstakes.”

  Grace’s face pinked up. “Isn’t that nice? Not to mention flattering.” She smiled crookedly. “I mean, it’s not like I’m a famous MTV video star.”

  “No, you’re a teacher with serious word-of-mouth buzz going for her. That’s much cooler.”

  Grace smiled in pleasure, then the game started and their attention focused on the Sugarville Sentinels who, as home team, fielded first.

  Uncle Bud had given Macy the skinny on this league. Apparently, Little League sanctioned teams played in the spring, which tended to be a busy time in the farming communities. So several towns in the county had banded together to form a youth league of its own. The junior and high schools played teams from all over the state, so they had to adhere to the regular schedule. But the younger kids drew their competition from a smaller pool, which gave the parents more leeway to work around planting and harvesting schedules.

  Not that it would have ever occurred to her to question the timing if Uncle Bud hadn’t told her about it last night.

  Watching Tyler, who was out in right field, his baseball mitt atop his cap as he alternated gazing up at the sky and kicking tufts of grass, she grinned. She poked Janna. “I’m thinking Ty gets his attention span from the Purcell side of the family.”

  Janna laughed.

  Denser shade than that provided by the leafy trees suddenly blocked her light, and expecting to see rain clouds had blown in, she tipped her head back.

  Only it wasn’t clouds. Instead, she found herself looking up at Gabe. His dark brows pleated over the strong thrust of his nose, he stared back down at her.