Flash and Fire

by Marie Ferrarella

  Pierce allowed himself to indulge in the fantasy for a second longer, then caught up to her. “Mandy, is that any way to treat a fellow worker? By the way, did you find the magnum of champagne?” He knew she had, but he wanted to hear her say it.

  She whizzed past the soda section, her hand darting out to snare a six-pack of something green that promised to add only one calorie to her life. She refused to stop and talk to him again. If he wanted a conversation, he would have to settle for snatches. “Find it? I nearly broke my foot on the damn thing.”

  He watched Amanda as she reached high on a shelf, her breasts rising in unconscious invitation. He felt his gut tightening.

  Soon, Mandy, soon, Pierce promised both of them silently.

  “Sorry, I’ll put it to the side next time.”

  Amanda disappeared down the next aisle. Her voice rose over the partition. “There isn’t going to be a next time.”

  Pierce followed her to the frozen vegetables. “We’ll see.”

  She hated his slow drawl. It slipped so easily under her skin. Like a velvety anesthetic, it threatened to render her powerless. Powerless against the events that he seemed to know were coming.

  Well, he was wrong. There wasn’t anything coming, because she wasn’t going to allow it.

  It was her body that was attracted to him, nothing else. And if she allowed that attraction to govern her actions, then she damn well deserved whatever happened to her.

  “No, we won’t see, because there won’t be anything to see.”

  Amanda turned away to choose between two different brands of frozen dinners. She deposited one of each into her cart. Pierce poked at the packages and frowned. He was passing judgment.

  “Just what do you think you’re doing?” She grabbed his wrist, stopping him.

  He looked at her, his mouth sensual. Amanda pulled back her hand.

  Pierce shook his head as he held aloft a loaf of white bread. “No wonder you’re so volatile. You’re filling your system with garbage.”

  She yanked the loaf away from him and cursed inwardly as she accidentally crushed one end of it. She stopped short of throwing it into the cart and set it down instead. Christopher clapped his hands and laughed, approving of the new game.

  “It’s my system and I’ll thank you to butt out of it.”

  He didn’t seem to hear her. “You see, if you ate sensibly”—he removed one of die dinners she had just put in her cart—“you wouldn’t be so uptight.” His eyes mocked her.

  “I am not uptight.” She pulled the frozen dinner out of his hands.

  He raised his eyebrow.

  The man was lucky she didn’t punch him. “Okay, okay, maybe I am a little, but it hasn’t got anything to do with what’s in my basket. It has something to do with what’s next to my basket.”

  But even as she spoke, Pierce was putting the second dinner back into the frozen section. She was going to have to hit him over the head with a two-by-four before she got through to him, she thought in exasperation.

  “Damn it, Alexander, are you deaf? I want you to leave my cart alone.”

  He just shook his head. “You’ve got too much sugar and salt and God knows what else going into your body.” It was a ploy to bait her and get her worked up. He wondered what she would say if she knew that the freshest thing in his refrigerator yesterday had been a can of beer.

  Pierce looked at her son. “Don’t you realize that you’re feeding Christopher an enormous amount of chemicals?” Pierce picked up another frozen entree from the cart.

  She grasped the edge, trying to wrench it back. Her fingers brushed against his. Smooth. He had long, artistic fingers. Fingers that could ...

  Damn it, what was the matter with her? “If you don’t mind, I’ll feed my son the way I see fit.”

  “Fit is the last thing he’ll be if he keeps on eating that junk.”

  Christopher was completely oblivious to the conversation going on around him. As his mother verbally dueled with the man who was quickly becoming the bane of her existence, Christopher diligently worked to set a can of diet soda free from the plastic that bound it to five other cans.

  Suddenly, Amanda felt a small, thin stream of liquid hitting her in the middle. It took her a minute to figure out where it was coming from. A geyser was squirting out of the aluminum can, aimed straight at her blouse. Within a second, a dark, damp spot had mushroomed right over her breast.

  “Christopher!” Her son had sunk his teeth into the side of the can and bitten a hole in it.

  Pierce commandeered the can and put his thumb over the hole. “See what I mean?”

  “See what?” She had to struggle to keep from shouting at him.

  They were beginning to attract attention from the other shoppers. The girl at the second register, Amanda noticed, hadn’t stopped staring at them since Pierce had begun flinging things out of her cart.

  He gestured toward Christopher with the can. “If he ate a little less refined food, maybe he wouldn’t be so hyper.”

  Perhaps if the observation had come from someone else, she might have been willing to consider it. But she wasn’t about to let Pierce think that he was racking up any points.

  The contents of the cart rattled as Amanda pulled away from him. She headed for the nearest checker. “My housekeeper doesn’t have time to fix elaborate meals. She’s too busy trying to just keep up with him.”

  And that, Amanda figured, settled that.

  Chapter Ten

  Tenacity had always been the hallmark of his existence.

  Though he gave the impression of being easygoing, someone who didn’t worry about outcomes, in reality the opposite was true of Pierce Alexander. Whether it was a story, or an answer, or, as in this case, a woman, if he wanted it, he dug in and hung on until he finally attained it. No matter what the roadblocks, he never lost sight of his goal.

  As of now, Amanda Foster had officially become his goal.

  A niggling little feeling in the back of his mind warned him that if he wasn’t careful, he might just get more than he bargained for.

  He was quick to dismiss the thought. Things, he felt, had a way of working themselves out if you gave them enough slack—as long as you never let go of the rope or got yourself tangled up in it. He had no intentions of getting tangled up.

  Distance, with the illusion of closeness, was the basic key to all relationships.

  And the key to Amanda, he mused, studying the situation, might just be the hyperkinetic, bright-eyed little boy in her cart.

  Pierce moved into place behind the two of them in the checkout line.

  “You know,” he continued casually, as if there had been no break in the conversation, no attempt on her part to end it entirely, “if you need a break, I’m a fair hand at baby-sitting.”

  Amanda turned. The carton of milk in her hand was suspended in mid-descent to the black conveyor belt that was moving toward the redheaded cashier. The latter, Amanda had been quick to note, was trying her best to make eye contact with Pierce.

  Better you than me, Sweetie.

  “You?” Amanda asked Pierce.

  The word came out in a laugh. The image didn’t work for Amanda. The only kind of baby she could envision Pierce Alexander sitting with was the kind that fit into tight dresses with low necklines and breathlessly murmured meaningless monosyllabic words. Like Janice in the mail room.

  “Me.”

  He dug into her cart just as she reached for another item. He heard her annoyed intake of breath and smiled innocently. With cavalier aplomb, he tossed her frozen entrees onto the conveyor belt and invented a sibling. “My sister has five kids.”

  “You have a sister?” She couldn’t begin to picture him with a family. If Pierce had been created an animal, he would have been a wolf. A lone wolf.

  Pierce got into the spirit of the thing and rounded out the family he’d never had. “A mother and father too. One of each.” He arched a brow as he looked at Amanda. “Surprised?”

 
“Flabbergasted.”

  Something nagged at the back of her mind about this scenario, something she had once heard but now couldn’t quite remember. She placed the last of her groceries on the counter and began searching for her wallet within the cavernous recesses of her shoulder bag.

  She heard the checker suck in her breath and mutter to herself as she scanned her fingernails instead of the box of cereal. Keys clicked on the register as she rectified her mistake.

  That’s what you get for staring at him.

  Wallet in hand, Amanda glanced at Pierce. “I can’t even imagine you as a child.”

  As far as Pierce was concerned, he had only occupied that position for about five minutes before being forced to grow up. Hard and fast. There’d been no time to play, to be idle and enjoy it. His grandmother’s hand had been too swift for him to relax. But he had no intention of ever sharing that with anyone.

  He smiled at Christopher. “There’s a little of the child in all of us, Mandy. I could use my portion to entertain Christopher.”

  Christopher had snagged a bag of chocolate chip cookies from the conveyor belt. With a joyous squeal, he tore the bag apart. Chocolate chip cookies rained into the cart.

  Feeling her patience begin to unravel, Amanda pried the bag out of his hands. “You’ll forgive me if I don’t take you up on your tempting offer.”

  Working with her, Pierce gathered up the cookies from the bottom of the cart and handed them to Amanda. His hands closed over hers.

  “I can be very forgiving.” The words seem to drip from his lips. Amanda heard the checker sigh. If Pierce heard, he gave no sign. His eyes were on Amanda’s face, watching her intently. “Given the right set of circumstances.”

  “You’re not going to be given any circumstances,” she said with finality, fervently hoping she could live up to her words. With anyone else, it would have been a foregone conclusion. Not so with Alexander. She knew who he was, what he was, but she was beginning to suspect that it wouldn’t make a difference in the long run.

  That it wouldn’t help to protect her from him.

  For the first time, Amanda felt afraid.

  The source of the problem, she realized, were his eyes. They made her forget things she needed to remember. Averting her eyes from his, Amanda thrust several bills at the checker.

  “Thank you for shopping at Baker’s,” the redhead mumbled, depositing change into Amanda’s hands, or where she judged them to be. She was too preoccupied with Pierce to be sure of her aim.

  Pierce was not above smiling at the checker in return. The woman visibly dissolved. The coins she was giving Amanda fell between them onto the metal scale.

  Good, work on her, not me, Amanda thought.

  She didn’t even bother to gather up the change. Instead, she quickly pushed her cart out as the redhead turned her brilliant smile on Pierce full force.

  Amanda’s getaway was aborted in the parking lot. By the time she had reached her car and opened her trunk, Pierce was bearing down on her from the rear.

  “You forgot your change.” He jingled it in his hand before reaching for hers.

  Amanda turned her back on him. “Keep it.”

  A smile played on his lips, curving his mouth slowly. “I never charge, Mandy.”

  Amanda felt a string of words forming that she refused to utter around Christopher. Frustrated, she ignored Pierce completely and unlocked her door while Christopher beat his heels against the cart.

  “Mandy, I get the distinct impression that you’re running away from me.”

  “So, you’re not as dense as I thought.” She shifted a sack from the cart into the trunk. “Alexander—“

  “Pierce.” He mouthed his name slowly, sensuously, as if he expected her to mimic him.

  His lips looked to be in excellent condition.

  “Alexander,” she repeated doggedly as she tossed two more sacks into the trunk, “get this straight. I am not in the market for whole wheat, whole grain, or whole superstud.” She poked him in the chest to emphasis each point and hated the flash of amusement in his eyes. “See you at the office.” One last sack followed and then she slammed the trunk with feeling.

  When she turned around to take Christopher out of the cart and place him into his car seat, he was no longer there.

  Oh God, now what?

  “Christo—“

  His name had hardly formed on her lips when she saw that Pierce was slipping her son into the car seat. Without any trouble.

  She cursed his interference as she rounded the back of the car. Christopher was letting Pierce buckle him in with only a minimum of fuss. He was usually all waving arms and legs when either she or Carla did it.

  “That’s a big boy,” Pierce commended soothingly. Christopher said something unintelligible in response and beamed.

  Maybe Pierce was good with children, Amanda thought grudgingly. That still didn’t mean she was going to greet him with open arms and let him into her life. That would be courting trouble. She was a grown woman. She knew trouble when she saw it.

  Pushing Pierce aside, Amanda tested each of the two belts that held Christopher in place to assure herself that they were secure.

  Pierce watched her hands: quick, soft, capable. He thought of those hands on him and anticipation stirred. “Not a very trusting soul, are you, Mandy?”

  Her eyes met his. Hers were cold, flat, and filled with memories.

  “No.”

  For the first time, Pierce began to wonder what her story was. What had her looking at him with such suspicion, such wariness, as if she thought he were a wolf about to pounce on her.

  He was beginning to detect a certain vulnerability; there seemed to be more at play here than just the usual standoffishness.

  And he wanted to find out what.

  Maybe it was just the reporter in him taking over. Whatever the case, he was smart enough to know that he was going to need something more than just charm and guile to get her into his bed. He was going to have to reassure her. In order to do that, he needed to know about what.

  There was no way around it. Like a work of popular fiction, the woman intrigued him and kept him turning pages until he got to the ending.

  Before she could draw away, he slowly slid the back of his hand along her cheek. He was sure he saw the tiniest speck of desire glint in her eyes before the loathing choked it off.

  “Too bad. We’re going to have to see about changing that.”

  She gave him a tight smile that looked as phony as she meant it to. She rounded the hood of her car.

  “Not as long as you draw breath.” Amanda got into the driver’s seat and pulled the door shut.

  Whatever Pierce was going to say in reply was lost to her as she turned on the ignition and purposely revved the engine. Throwing the car into reverse, she quickly backed out of her space.

  Pierce had to jump back in order to avoid being run over.

  Amanda had been careful to watch him through her rearview mirror. Her depth perception was magnificent. Only giving the illusion of being careless, she had maneuvered the car close enough to almost press his clothing—and to see that his face had paled.

  Good, that’ll put the fear of God into the son of a bitch.

  Her foot pressing down on the accelerator, Amanda left the parking lot as quickly as the limit of the law allowed her to.

  Chapter Eleven

  “”Christopher, what’s come over you?”

  Amanda regarded her son with a reproving eye as she drove out of the parking lot. She knew it wasn’t his fault, but she felt an odd sort of betrayal at the child’s sudden shift in behavior. He was her son, not Alexander’s. She was the one who provided for him, who played with him, who read to him at night no matter how tired she was. How could he just take to Alexander like that?

  What was he, the Pied Piper of Hamlin, to charm Christopher like that?

  “You act like a little wild animal in the store and then that bast—man,” she amended, glancing at the boy
quickly to see if he had picked up on the word, “has you eating out of his hand.”

  Christopher looked at her in wide-eyed innocence for a moment, then turned his face toward the window. “Nice man, Mama.”

  “Shows what you know,” she muttered, her annoyance abating. People far brighter than Christopher had been taken in by that southern-boy charm that Pierce wielded so expertly.

  She glanced at Christopher again. If the car seat tether hadn’t been holding him in place, she was certain, he would have been hanging out the open window, trying to catch a glimpse of Pierce.

  Just what was it about that man?

  Amanda looked in the rearview mirror. In the distance, she saw a blue sports car following her. At least it appeared to be following her.

  She was sure it was following her after it mimicked her path, turn for turn, for the next two miles as she made her way home from the store.

  Pierce.

  God damn it, what had brought on this siege? He’d been at the station for six months. After she had rejected his initial attempt to ask her out, he had left her completely alone. What had renewed his interest, or whatever it was that he was displaying? What was she, the challenge of the month for him?

  Amanda chewed on that thought as she drove the rest of the way to her house, her anger unfurling like a huge red flag. Her mounting indignation was soon large enough to blanket and smother that tiny portion of her that was just the slightest bit intrigued.

  No matter how quickly she drove, squeaking through one yellow light that turned red at the intersection, Pierce managed to keep up and followed her all the way home. And when she pulled into her driveway several minutes later, he drove his car right up next to hers. He was out of his car first.

  Amanda glared at him.

  “What’s the matter, lost your way? I mean, more than usual?”

  He liked the way lightning flashed in her eyes when she was angry. She was going to be one hell of a bed partner, he mused, all fire and smoke in his hands. He could almost feel her now.

  Anticipation had him smiling as he rounded the hood of her car. Pierce opened her door for her before she had the chance.