Playing With Fire: A Loveswept Classic Romance

by Debra Dixon

  “Happens all the time. People love to be heroes.”

  “Not me.” She brushed past him and pulled open the door. “Shall I bring the rack on Monday or do you have your own?”

  “I think it’s a little too early in our relationship to use the rack. Just bring a couple of silk scarves and I’ll tie you tightly to your chair. Nine o’clock?”

  He thought she was going to leave without saying anything else, but she halted in the doorway and gripped the jamb with a ringless hand. Looking over her shoulder, she said, “I’ll cooperate. Even bring the silk scarves, if that’s what it takes to convince you. But I’d appreciate it if you didn’t voice your suspicions until you’re sure one way or the other. Dead sure. There are a lot of people here at Our Lady of Servitude who’d love to have an excuse to toss me out. Please don’t give them one.”

  “Ms. St. John, you haven’t been accused of anything.”

  “Be sure and tell that to everyone you talk with. The speed of Internet information doesn’t even compare with a hospital grapevine.”

  She disappeared around the corner of the door, and Beau felt the energy in the room leave with her. All that remained was his conviction that Maggie had something to hide. He had no prints, no eyewitnesses as to how the fire began, and negligible physical evidence. On the other hand, he had opportunity and motive.

  As well as a couple of other people to see. He checked his notes. Bennett. What did Maggie call him? Dr. Just-Call-Me-God.

  Beau snapped his notebook shut. It was a place to start.

  Maggie checked in with Donna long enough to grab her purse and make her interview with Grayson sound like a boring Dragnet episode. Then she pleaded nausea from the smell of the smoke as an excuse to go home. That much was true. The odor was in her clothes, her hair, in her mind.

  As soon as the elevator doors opened on the ground floor, Maggie raced through the long, wide lobby. She wanted out, away from institutional walls that closed in around her. The pretense she’d put up for Grayson and Donna was crumbling fast, and falling apart in front of the entire hospital wouldn’t do her career any good. They wouldn’t understand. How could they? None of them had a clue.

  This wasn’t about the fight with Bennett. Or the suspension. Or the reassignment. Or even the linen-room fire. This wasn’t about the hospital at all. It was about a dead past that wouldn’t stay buried.

  Eighteen years ago she would have given anything for those memories. She’d spent so much time trying to get them back, thinking they would give her peace of mind. Finally she’d quit asking questions that had no answers and accepted the night was gone. She’d learned how to live in the present without regretting the past. So, why was she remembering now?

  Hot, humid air blasted Maggie as she stepped into the steam bath masquerading as July in Baton Rouge. The shock was welcome. She needed something to ground her in the present.

  The employee parking garage was to the right, the emergency parking lot to her left. Waves of heat rose from it, distorting the images of the cars. That’s what her brain felt like—one image overlaying another and distorting them both. As far as she was concerned she’d rather the images never got any clearer.

  In fact she was going to do her best to prevent it. All she needed was a little rest, a little quiet, and a big bowl of cookie dough. Everything else would sort itself out. Maggie was halfway home, and halfway to believing there wouldn’t be any more memories when the wail of an ambulance siren in the distance triggered one. The present vanished, and she was alone in the Louisiana night.

  “Sarah!” The word rang in her mind, superimposed over the sound of the approaching ambulance, its siren at full cry.

  Then the angry blast of a car horn jolted Maggie back to the present and splintered the image into a thousand pieces. Her heart stopped and thudded painfully into a rhythm that was too fast. Instinctively she swerved to avoid a collision, but her attention was far from the road.

  “No, no, no,” she whispered, flexing her fingers around the wheel. “No more. I don’t want to know.”

  It wasn’t her fault. It couldn’t have been her fault. They said it wasn’t her fault. Over and over she tried to reassure herself that they were right. So what if she remembered? It wouldn’t change anything.

  Yes, it would.

  Maggie checked her mirror, yanked the wheel hard to the left, and made a U-turn. She didn’t care. She had to see Carolyn. If anyone could understand, it would be Carolyn. Maybe if she talked about it, the memories would lose their power.

  She hadn’t realized how deeply a ten-year-old could feel terror. Or how many details could be crammed into a split second of time. She had smelled freshly cut grass. Remembered how the front of the house looked at night. The hydrangeas were in bloom. In the daylight they had been big blue balls of tissue-paper flowers. On that night they were just gray, washed out by the moonlight.

  Maggie’s foot settled heavily on the pedal. She cranked up the volume on the radio and tuned it to an oldies station. She could sing the words to the old songs, and if she could sing, she could stay focused on something else besides that night.

  She sang all the way to Carolyn’s beauty shop.

  The parking lot was full, and the receptionist was new. When Maggie smiled and started to the back without stopping, the girl jumped up. “Oh, no! You can’t—”

  Carolyn’s horrified exclamation cut her off. “Good Lord!” She had a bottle of color in one hand and a small mixing bowl in the other. Otherwise she would probably have pressed her hands to her carefully made-up face in dismay. “Maggie St. John, you look like something the cat wouldn’t even bother to drag in! Well, obviously this is an emergency, so don’t you worry. I’ll fit you in somehow. We better start you with a facial steam. You look gray, darlin’. I mean gray!”

  “It’s coming back,” Maggie said without preamble when Carolyn finished. She didn’t know how else to say it. “The night Sarah died. The fire. I remembered something. It’s coming back.”

  As Maggie finished, she realized the place was as quiet as the morgue at Cloister. Shop gossiping had ceased the moment the customers and operators had turned to see what Carolyn classified as an emergency. When Maggie blurted her secret, everyone had hung on every single word. Good manners had kept them from gasping as she dropped the bombshell about death and a fire, but any number of them now sat with open mouths.

  Great. Maggie pulled in a deep breath and let it out slowly. What else could she screw up today?

  Maggie adjusted the strap on her purse and waited for Carolyn to say something. That’s what good friends were for. They filled in awkward silences and shined a three-hundred-watt flashlight called “perspective” on problems. Carolyn Poag was a gem at that job. She was seven years older, and in all the years Maggie had known her, she had yet to panic over anything.

  “Beth Anne!” Carolyn called. “I was about to start Mrs. Pierce’s color. Could you be a sweetie and do it for me? She needs extra developing time, so don’t rush it.”

  “Sure.” A tiny woman with spiky moussed hair came over.

  Carolyn handed off the items without ever looking at Beth Anne or even smiling at Mrs. Pierce. “I’ll be in my office.” She cocked her head at Maggie in invitation.

  “Jesus, Carolyn,” Maggie told her quietly as she followed the hennaed redhead toward the back of the shop. “This is not what I hoped for. You were supposed to laugh, not rearrange your appointments. You were supposed to look at me blankly and ask, ‘So what’s the big deal?’ ”

  The door clicked behind them. Carolyn gave her a hug that looked casual and felt solid. Then she shoved her toward a chair. “There are some great big ears and itty-bitty minds out there. If I’d said a word to you, you would have kept on spilling your guts. You are primed like a pump, ready to gush. This is better. So, tell me, kiddo. What’s the big deal?”

  “Didn’t you hear what I said?” Maggie’s voice rose more than she intended. Her stomach flipped unpleasantly. Suddenly she
wasn’t sure she wanted to tell anyone, but it was too late to hide her head in the sand. “It’s coming back.”

  For the first time emotion registered on Carolyn’s face. Her brown eyes took on a sad quality as she untied her shop apron and lifted it over her head. “Yeah. I heard. You knew this might happen someday. Chances are a few isolated sense memories are all you’ll ever get back without more intensive therapy. You gave that up years ago. Swore you’d never go back to those quacks. Amen. So you got one tiny memory back—”

  “Three. Three tiny memories. All of them just as clear as a movie still.”

  Shock replaced the sadness, and Carolyn sat down on the edge of the desk. “Three? This happened three times?” She spread her hands. “H-how?”

  Maggie started with the fire and stumbled through her interrogation by Grayson, surprised at how uncertain she was of what to tell and what to leave out. Her encounter with the man had felt personal, intimate. He lingered in her mind, a strong presence amid the chaos. Finally she told Carolyn about the siren and the near wreck.

  “I’m afraid to go to sleep tonight,” Maggie confessed, dragging a hand through her hair, pulling it back from her face. “Jesus, Carolyn, what if I started the fire that killed Sarah? I don’t know if I can live with that.”

  “It was a grease fire!” Carolyn was adamant, speaking with the conviction of someone who’d been down this path before. “Sarah got the munchies. She started to make french fries, and she fell asleep in the den. That’s how it started. It wasn’t you. They called it accidental.”

  “Everyone just assumed it was Sarah’s fault.” Maggie got up to pace, but the room only allowed her a couple of steps. She paced anyway. “What if she was already asleep and I started it? Why else would I block the memories of that entire day all these years?”

  “You were ten years old. That’s why. It would have scared anyone. You were a foster kid with problems for God’s sake. You’d been shuffled around for years. I can only imagine what went through your mind when you saw your first real home go up in flames. You adored Sarah. She was like a big sister to you, but she was my best friend since grade school. I knew her better than anyone. She was careless sometimes. It wasn’t you.”

  “Don’t be too sure.” Maggie stopped pacing and finally voiced what had been eating away at her. “You know what my problems were.”

  “So you played with matches! Maybe you lit a pile of leaves or two. You didn’t set this fire, Maggie. I know it. I know you. Believe me if you won’t believe your own heart.”

  Maggie slid down in the chair and leaned her head back. “Boy, I would love to.”

  “Then do. Look. My own Andrea is barely older than Sarah was then. I’m telling you—seventeen isn’t a very bright age.” Carolyn plopped down behind the desk. “She does dumb stuff all the time like leaving the iron on. She could burn the house down.”

  “Oh, really? Last week you told me how clever Andrea was.”

  “She is. She can twist and fold condom packets into roses and wire them to sticks. Imagine how proud that makes me. My only hope is that she can sell enough safe-sex bouquets to support me in my old age.”

  In spite of herself, Maggie smiled. Andrea was the joy in her mother’s life, and a surrogate niece to Maggie. For a second she thought about Andrea’s age—Sarah’s age. When she’d been ten, seventeen had seemed to mature to her. Now that she was pushing thirty, seventeen seemed barely out of diapers.

  Seventeen-year-olds did dumb things. Carolyn was right.

  Lifting her head up, she asked, “So, you don’t think these memories are the beginning of the end?”

  Carolyn shifted a pile of paper so she could lean forward. “If you hadn’t opened that closet door and found that fire, none of this would have happened. It won’t happen again.”

  “What if it does?”

  “If it does, then we’ll have to deal with it. But if you stop opening up burning closets, you won’t have to worry. The memories can all stay buried, and you can get on with your life.”

  “It’s not that simple.” Maggie confessed the last of the bad news. “The arson investigator—Grayson? He thinks I’m responsible for that burning closet.”

  “Maggie! No!”

  “Oh, yeah. He’s got his eye on me. He’s not going to let me put this behind me or go away. Not until he’s good and ready.”

  “Has he accused you?”

  “Not in so many words, but then he doesn’t use a lot of words. He’s the strong, silent type that gets you right in the knees. I have to go down Monday and give my formal statement. God only knows what information he will have dredged up by then.”

  “Call me when you’re done?”

  Maggie grabbed her purse and stood up again. “Sure. Why not? I’m allowed one phone call. Might as well call you. Then you can call the lawyer.”

  THREE

  When Maggie St. John walked into the squad room of the Baton Rouge arson unit, every man who had lifted his morning cup of coffee, including Beau, choked as they took their first swallow. The only difference was that the assistant chief choked quietly in the privacy of his office, which was separated from the bull pen by a glass wall and door. Beau grabbed for a napkin and held the now-dripping mug away from him.

  The lady definitely knew how to make a fashion statement, if not a police statement.

  Long, creamy legs that were bare and toned were revealed by a short pastel skirt, the color he suspected her nipples would be—the first blush of a ripening peach. But the real problem was the vest, sleeveless and cut from some soft ivory-colored material. He didn’t think she had a thing on underneath it.

  She dressed for the Baton Rouge heat. Or to take his mind off the business at hand. He suspected the latter.

  “Damnation,” he whispered as he dragged his eyes away and looked down at his chest.

  Sloshed coffee had missed his shirt but zapped his favorite silk tie. A gag gift from his fire company when he transferred to arson. None of them thought he’d actually wear it. He wore it. Hand-painted sepia palm trees grew on a person, he found out.

  After a couple of halfhearted dabs at the stain, he wiped the mug and set it back on the desk. Outside his office, two of his men were approximating his cleanup actions. The third, Russell Michaels, was smugly asking Maggie how he could help.

  Beau pushed away from his desk and walked to the door. Before he’d finished pulling it open, Maggie looked up. Their gazes collided, and electricity that hadn’t been present before crackled. Beau caught himself wishing the tension represented something other than her animosity. He also wished she had on scrubs instead of that vest and skirt.

  “The lady’s looking for you, Beau,” Russell said without turning, his voice filled with longing and regret. Using a resigned arm motion, he waved her through the room. “Go ahead on, ma’am. The chief’s obviously expecting you too.”

  She gave Russell a dazzling smile, noticeably charmed by his pouting. “Thank you, but I think it’s more like he’s lying in wait for me. I’m this morning’s sacrificial lamb. Will you promise to rescue me if I need help?”

  “Just crook one of those little fingers.” Russell had a way with the ladies—any lady, anytime, anyplace.

  “Thank you, Russell,” Beau said, his voice both commanding and soft. “I’ll handle it from here.”

  “Yes, sir. I imagine you will.”

  Maggie stifled a laugh and started toward him. The exchange with Russell seemed to have taken the edge off her anger, but she raised her eyebrow at the .357 automatic in Beau’s shoulder holster. People were always surprised the arson squad carried guns, badges, and had law enforcement authority. He had purposely left off his gun yesterday to maintain a low profile around the hospital.

  “Is it true what they say?” she asked, her Southern heritage evident in the soft drawl.

  “What is it they say?”

  Leaning closer she whispered, “Big gun, little … heart?”

  A wry smile twisted Beau’s lip
s. “I believe that saying is—big gun, big … bang.”

  The smile faded from her face as he stepped aside to let her enter first. She took one of the two chairs across from his ancient metal desk while he slipped the gun out of his holster and stowed it in the file cabinet outside his office. After he’d added his cuffs, he joined her.

  “You didn’t have to do that,” she said as he closed the door behind him.

  “Yeah, I did. We have a few rules around here about the interview process. We don’t like witnesses to feel intimidated or coerced when they’re giving us a statement.”

  “Checking the gun at the door might work for some of the guys out there, but not for you, Grayson. That firearm has nothing to do with why you scare the hell out of people. It’s those eyes, and I don’t think you can check them at the door.”

  “Are you telling me that I intimidate you?”

  “If I was intimidated and you couldn’t do anything about it, would that mean I could leave? Or just that you’d forgo tying me tightly to my chair?”

  Beau studied her face. She didn’t look intimidated.

  At first glance she was gorgeous, but now that she was closer he could see that the magic of makeup hadn’t been able to erase the shadows beneath her eyes. He wondered if they were from guilt. Or just a late night in someone’s arms.

  The stab of jealousy rocked him. Beau never mixed business with pleasure, but Maggie got to him on a personal level. Not that he had to worry about overstepping the boundaries of their professional relationship. Maggie’d see to that. She knew exactly which one of them wore the white hat and which wore the black.

  “Why do you insist on painting me as the bad guy?” he asked.

  “Gee, I don’t know. Is it because you insinuated that I tried to burn down a perfectly good hospital?”

  “Perfectly good?” Beau reached across his desk and grabbed the tape recorder. “According to your colleagues you wouldn’t rate anything in that hospital above ‘adequate’ let alone ‘perfect.’ ”