Burning Up

by Susan Andersen

  Okay, hard to argue with that. Macy alone would have been a huge draw. Having Savage added the potential to finance extras for his crew for months—maybe even an entire year. So it’d be pretty damn small of him if he wasn’t exactly thrilled to see the guy, wouldn’t it?

  He must have been unresponsive too long, however, because Macy said, “That doesn’t mean we’re unwilling to work the tank if that’s what you need.”

  “No, you’ve probably got the right idea. And if you can recruit some volunteers while you’re at it, that’d be pure gravy. If we can establish a Fire Corp in Sugarville, it will make us eligible for the Citizen Corp Affiliate program, which in turn will expand our resources and materials.”

  She raised her brows at him. “You want more volunteer firemen?”

  “Oh. No. Sorry, I’ve had this in my head so long I tend to forget not everyone knows what I’m thinking. The Fire Corp is all about support personnel. We’re interested in men, women, boys, girls—anyone we can involve for any amount of time that they’re willing to give.”

  “What kind of stuff are you looking for them to do?”

  “Any nonemergency task or role. Here, let me show you.” Dropping into the folding chair beside Janna, he pulled over an open laptop and keyed in a couple of commands, glancing up at Macy when she bent over his shoulder to see. “This is their Web site. Take a look at it and use anything that seems applicable. Or feel free to come up with ideas of your own.” He drew in a breath of her scent.

  “Hey, Chief!” Charlie yelled. “It’s almost me and Ty’s turn. We wanna dunk you!”

  He grinned. “Guess I’m up.”

  She stepped back. Gave him a cool once-over as he climbed to his feet. “That might almost be worth giving my own pitching arm a try.”

  He threw back his head and laughed. Eyeing her slender arms, he said, “Bet you throw like a girl.”

  She seemed to freeze for a nanosecond, but he must have imagined it because she flashed that smile she wielded to such effect. “News flash, sugar. I am a girl.”

  “Yeah.” His voice went rough. “I’ve noticed.” Knowing better than to expect a sudden demand to blow off his duty to join her behind the fun house for a little one-on-one, he strode off, peeling his T-shirt over his head as he walked.

  “Holy shit,” Macy murmured, watching him go. Dammit, he looked like that, laughed like that, and it was hard to remember her vow to keep her distance. Taking a deep breath, she tore her gaze off his muscular back, took the seat he’d abandoned and turned her attention to the Fire Corp Web site.

  She hadn’t gotten far exploring the ways other fire departments utilized their Corp volunteers before word spread about her and Jack’s presence at the fire department’s booth. Turning the computer over to Janna with a murmured request to continue the research, she slid across a pen and the tablet she’d been notating ideas on.

  Then she focused on the crowd beginning to gather by their booth. A no-man’s-land separated the gathering from her and Jack as if held back by an invisible force field. Unfortunately, it caused the people waiting in line for the dunk tank to be jostled, and she called out with a friendly smile, “Hey, it’s good to see so many people turn out to support their fire department. Obviously you appreciate the importance of volunteer firefighters as much as Jack and I do.”

  “Bang on,” Jack agreed. “Volunteer being the key word here.”

  “Which—” she lowered her voice and was satisfied to see it draw some of the crowd away from the ticket holders “—we’d love to talk to you about.”

  “Right. So form a couple of lines.” Jack indicated the area in front of them. “Come talk to us. See what you can do to help your community.”

  To Macy’s frustration, nobody moved. “Can you imagine what it must take to run into a burning building?” Macy said. She waved a hand at the firemen, who just happened to be razzing Gabe, who—omigawd—just happened to be wet and half naked as he sat on the platform.

  She swallowed, forcing her gaze back to the crowd. “Look at them, ladies. Aren’t they just. So.” She patted her hand over her heart. “Big and strong? I mean, can you honestly look at them and not want to buy a ticket or twenty to support their cause? Even if you throw like a girl, like I do, where else you gonna get such a golden opportunity to ogle half-naked men?”

  Clearly Gabe could hear them, because he shot her a grin over her purloined throw-like-a-girl line. Then a softball hit the target and the platform under him collapsed. He plunged into the water.

  Simultaneously with him shooting back to the surface, his hands raising to slick his wet hair off his forehead, the curious paralysis that had held the crowd back suddenly broke, and its steadily growing mass surged toward them.

  Hoping to stave off chaos, she used the authoritative two-fingered gesture of an air-ground employee guiding a plane into its Jetway. “Like Jack said, form a couple of lines, please, so the people who’ve already purchased tickets don’t get trampled.”

  “And isn’t it just a bugger when that happens?” he said with that wry Irish accent. “Puts a damper on a party, that does.”

  Which is exactly what they sold for the next couple of hours—a party atmosphere. They laughed and joked and sold a ton of tickets for the opportunity to knock a firefighter into the tank. They also gathered a respectable list of names and numbers from people who expressed at least a tentative interest in donating some time to the fire department.

  Janna proved brilliant at presenting ideas she’d taken off the Corp Web site. They’d opened up a third line in front of her chair when they’d noticed they were losing a lot of the older people who didn’t want to brave the crush in front of Macy and Jack to purchase a ticket. Macy tuned in at one point to hear her cousin say to the newly retired bank president, “I’ve heard my dad say more than once that you’re one heck of an effective speaker. The fire department could sure use someone like you to speak to the community on a range of important safety topics.”

  “I’m not particularly knowledgeable on those topics,” he replied.

  “That’s one of the things we’re raising money for today,” she said. “To train Fire Corp volunteers to speak knowledgably on things like CPR and first aid, fire prevention and proper use of fire extinguishers, motor-vehicle crash safety and, ohmigosh, too many things to even list. Or I bet you’d be dynamite at writing proposals for grants.”

  The man looked down at her for a moment, then gave her a slight smile as he bent to pick up the pen. “You’re a pretty effective speaker yourself, young lady,” he said. And signed his name to the volunteer list with a flourish.

  “Way to go, Janna!” Macy crowed, high-fiving her cousin the moment the former bank executive walked away. She was pretty pumped over the afternoon’s work. She’d feared her presence might be more detrimental than helpful to Gabe’s cause. But except for the occasional dirty look or snide statement, people had been amazingly friendly.

  Screams from the Loop-o-plane and Scrambler on the other side of the midway floated on the air, and her stomach growled when she caught a whiff of cinnamon sugar from the elephant-ear booth. “Man, I just realized I’m really hungr—”

  “How ’bout getting some real action going in that tank,” a loud voice suddenly demanded. “Let’s see the MTV diva perch her little butt up there.” Macy sighed. Congratulated yourself too soon, didn’t you, girl. Andrew Mayfield and a few of his coterie, including—oh, goody—Liz Picket-Smith, had muscled their way to the front of the line.

  Jack started to rise, but she put a hand on his arm to stay him. “Ooh,” she said, giving Andrew a big-eyed look. “You think my butt is little?”

  The crowd laughed.

  Scowling, he yanked a hundred-dollar bill from his wallet and slapped it down on the countertop. “You’d be happy to accommodate me, I’m sure. Because this is for charity isn’t it?”

  Gabe caught the belligerent tone and looked over to see the same joker Angelini had chased away from Macy’s table
that night at the Red Dog. “Shit.” Hauling the suspenders to his turnout pants up over his bare shoulders, he strode over to the booth. “We got a problem here?”

  “No problem,” the man snapped. “I’ve got a hundred bucks here for the fire department’s cause. Just give me that bucket of balls over there and keep ’em coming. But I want her up there on the platform.”

  “She volunteered her time, Mr.—”

  “Mayfield. Andrew Mayfield.”

  He said it as if Gabe should know his name. And Gabe had heard the name somewhere, but couldn’t quite put a—aw, balls. Bud had mentioned it the night of Lenore’s impromptu dinner following Ty’s baseball game. He’d asked that Adam guy something about being one of those fools who’d believed Mayfield’s lies back in high school. What the hell kind of history did Macy have with this jerk, anyhow?

  Not having time to ferret out an answer, he shoved the question aside. “Mr. Mayfield, Ms. O’James volunteered her time to work the booth. She didn’t sign up for the tank.”

  Rising to her feet, Macy essayed a delicate shrug. “I’ll do it.” She winked at the crowd. “Some guys just gotta get their kicks where they can, ya know?”

  Gabe swore to himself, but signaled Johnson over to take her place at the booth. “You sure?” he asked in a low voice as he escorted her to the tank.

  “No. But what’s the worst he can do—get me wet? And like the man said, it’s for charity. I will give you my snood to hold, though.” She reached back to unhook the combs of the short black band that anchored the fishnet bag holding her hair. She handed it to him. “It’ll never be the same if it gets soaked.” Then she kicked off her shoes, climbed into the tank and perched on the platform. Crossing her legs, she struck a pose, grinning at the crowd when they cheered.

  A softball hit the target and dropped her in the tank.

  Surfacing a second later, she tossed her hair, which had lost its forties style, out of her eyes. “Good aim,” she said dryly, and climbed back onto the platform.

  She’d barely sat before a second ball hit the release trigger and dropped her back into the tank.

  And so it went until the bucket was over half-empty. No sooner did she regain her seat than Mayfield knocked her back into the tank. Her clothes dripped and clung and her face began to grow pale beneath its light tan, but she continued to smile and toss off one-liners, talking to the crowd, ignoring Mayfield.

  And except for one time when she said, “Here, I’m sure his pitching arm can use a rest,” and did a cannonball from the ladder into the tank, she kept climbing back up onto the platform.

  A couple of direct hits later, Gabe was stone-faced and feeling grim. He was ready, in fact, to go stuff the remaining balls up the guy’s ass. Holding on to his composure, however, he strode over to Mayfield but merely picked the bucket up and handed it off to his closest crew member.

  “Hey!” Mayfield protested.

  “Fun’s over,” Gabe informed him flatly.

  “Yeah, buddy, Jesus,” a nearby spectator muttered.

  “What a jerk,” said somebody else.

  “Jerk, hell. Guy’s an asshole.”

  “What is the matter with you?” a woman said indignantly, stepping forward to speak directly to Mayfield.

  “I’ll tell you what’s the matter,” someone called from farther back in the crowd. “Ms. O’James was right—the guy does have to buy his thrills.”

  “By abusing women?” another demanded.

  Mayfield whirled around. “What are you talking about, abusing?” he snapped. “I’m playing the same game the rest of you have been playing.”

  Gabe gave him a hard stare. “Everyone else has been playing in the spirit of fun. They haven’t continuously knocked their target into the tank before she can even regain her seat from the last time she was knocked in. I don’t know what your problem is, but there’s nothing fun-minded about what you’re doing here.” He looked at Solberg, who was holding the bucket of balls. “Tally up what’s left in there. We’ll refund Mr. Mayfield for his unused balls.”

  “That’d pretty much be the two he’s packin’ in his pants, Chief,” a male in the crowd drawled.

  “Keep the money.” Red-faced, Mayfield about-faced and shouldered his way through the crowd. His posse, Gabe noticed, had already melted away when it became apparent that no one else was finding Macy’s predicament as amusing as they did.

  He went over to the tank where Kirschner was helping her out. Grabbing a towel he looped it around her shoulders and looked down at her. “You okay?”

  Bringing the towel up from her shoulders, she bent to wrap it turban-style around her hair. There were shadows in her eyes when she came upright once again, but she met his gaze, raised her chin and gave him a cocky smile that probably only he, standing so close, could tell cost her.

  “Of course,” she said, and shrugged. “Great day for a dip.”

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  OKAY, THIS IS GETTING OLD. Gabe stalked over to Savage’s Airstream the next morning but didn’t pound on the door as his impulse urged. Because that would be fricking nuts. Man, what was it about Macy, anyway, that turned him into a… Hell, he didn’t even know what to call the behavior he’d been displaying ever since clapping eyes on her. But it felt dangerously like his teenage self, and if he was smart he’d turn right around and get the hell away instead of chasing after her like a randy seventeen-year-old.

  Currently, however, intelligence didn’t rank right up there on his atta-boy meter. But he did knock on the lintel like the grown-up he was when Macy wasn’t part of the equation. Melodic acoustic guitar drifted through the screened door.

  “It’s open,” the Irishman said from the dimness within and continued playing. He looked up as Gabe opened the screen and entered the compact trailer. “Hey,” he said, setting aside his guitar. “Do you believe that mentaller yesterday? A bigger bollox never put his arm through a coat.” Waving a hand toward the galley, he offered Gabe a cup of coffee, then returned to his topic when it was refused. “Bloody good thing you stepped in when you did, Chief, because I was seconds from belting that ball-bag.”

  “I have a feeling we would have had people lining up for the opportunity to beat the crap out of him if we’d let them. The guy was an ass.”

  Jack’s face went grim. “You don’t know the half of it, mate.”

  No, he probably didn’t, which didn’t exactly improve his mood. He shoved his hands in his pockets. “You know where Macy is?”

  “I think she took the boys to the baths.”

  He had to think about that for a second. “The pool, you mean?”

  “Yeah.” His brow furrowed. “Or, no, wait, that’s tomorrow. Today she’s headed over to check out a place she wants to use for the kickoff video for Aussie’s Vitamin G album.” He shot Gabe a wry smile. “I don’t know how she does it, man. When we first sat down to talk about the video, I was locked on the title song for our first release. Then before I know it, instead of making ‘G’ a bleedin’ deadly drinking song if I do say so myself, she’s got me talked ’round to making ‘Yesterday’s Gone.’ That song’s a departure for us—less rock, more…well, not country, exactly, but a story ballad, y’know? I sure as shite never considered it for the launch song. Macy, though, she’s got this grand way of visualizing exactly how a song should look on video, and I’m telling you, if we pull off feckin’ half of what she envisions, it’s going to be powerful.”

  Gabe knew he should care, but he was back to itching to run her to ground. “So where is this place?”

  “Got me.” Jack shrugged, picking up his guitar again. “She called it the old—what the hell was it? The Klemp—the Klim—”

  “The old Kilimner place?”

  “Yeah, that’s it.”

  “Jesus, the joint’s about one hot breath from falling down. She shouldn’t be anywhere near it.”

  “Then you’d best go rescue her before she gets hurt, hadn’t you?” Jack gave him a knowing smile and laughed whe
n Gabe immediately turned on his heel and headed for the door.

  Gabe heard him pick up the music where he’d left off before the screen door even slapped shut behind him.

  Twenty Minutes Earlier

  MACY HIKED ACROSS two sagebrush-dotted fallow fields to reach the old Kilimner place. She’d borrowed Ty’s backpack to carry her water bottle, digital recorder and a notebook, sketch pad and pencils.

  Driving would have been faster, but it felt good to stretch her legs in the fresh air before moderate morning temps gave way to the less-forgiving afternoon heat. She loved the warmth of the sun on her shoulders. And the scent of the rolling wheat fields paralleling the ones she trekked, with their combined aromas of the shorn summer stubble and the green haze of barely sprouted winter wheat, had her drawing in deep, appreciative breaths.

  It occurred to her that she hadn’t missed L.A. once since she’d come home.

  Maybe because, despite her last two years of high school, this was home to her. If someone had suggested that when she’d first come back she probably would’ve laughed in their face. But as long as Uncle Bud and Auntie Lenore lived here, it would likely always represent love, safety and stability to her.

  Not that she regretted the time spent away. She’d made a good life for herself in California. L.A. was everything Sugarville wasn’t—something she’d particularly appreciated as a young adult. She’d grown into a person she could be proud of there.

  But until this summer she hadn’t realized that she’d never quite felt the same connection to it that she did to this sleepy little farming community.

  That had been driven home yesterday in the midst of being continuously knocked into the tank. Andrew had done his damnedest to make her feel small or inferior, or whatever it was he’d intended—and to a degree he had succeeded. The sheer rapidity of being dumped in the water over and over again had shaken her right down to her foundation. It had literally stripped her of her armor and left her feeling naked and exposed. At first it was only sheer contrariness that had kept her climbing back onto that platform when she’d known damn well that she’d be knocked right off it again.