Playing With Fire: A Loveswept Classic Romance

by Debra Dixon

  “You do get around, don’t you? I suppose you’ve talked to everyone in the hospital.” Her tone made it clear the thought of his interviewing people about her background bothered her. “Obviously you believed everything the administration had to say about me. Too bad you didn’t talk to the nurses too.”

  “I did. To your friends you’re some kind of crusading hero. Like Joan of Arc.”

  “Charming,” Maggie said. “You’ve just compared me to a heretic who was, not so coincidentally, burned at the stake. So … is this the part where you read me my rights, and ask me if I want an attorney before talking to you?”

  Something in her eyes, an anxiety that her tough-girl facade couldn’t quite mask, changed Beau’s mind about the interview. Suddenly he was interested in more than a statement of facts. Intuition reminded him that she had something to hide.

  “Witnesses aren’t usually given Miranda,” he explained carefully. “That’s not required. But since you’re concerned, I think maybe it’s a good idea. That way there won’t be any misunderstandings later.”

  Beau signaled one of the men in the squad room. In front of the witness he read a stunned Maggie her Miranda rights and asked if she understood them. When she nodded, he offered to halt the interview. “You aren’t in custody or under arrest, but I want to be real clear with you. I’m investigating the hospital fire as a set fire. If you would like to have an attorney present, we can stop until you obtain one.”

  “No.” The answer was quick and sharp. “Let’s just do this. A lawyer isn’t going to change the truth.”

  Beau sent the officer out and put the tape recorder on the desk between them. As he sat down in the second chair, he turned it on and gave the date, time, and subject interviewed before addressing Maggie. “I prefer to record interviews rather than make notes. Do you have any objections?”

  “Yeah, but not about the tape.” Maggie recrossed her legs, either accidentally or on purpose angling them so that he’d get the best view of her thigh. She leaned back and rested her arms along the sides of the old wood and leather chair. Her upper body was as far away from him as she could get.

  He noticed the mixed signals—open arms but a withdrawn body. Token cooperation. Her posture dared him to take his best shot. Then he realized that her posture, her attitude, the clothes, the whole image was one of subtle rebellion.

  Before he could censor himself, he asked the question that had been nagging him since yesterday. “Do you have a problem with authority? Or is it just me?”

  “Both. But mostly you at the moment.” She reached over and shut off the tape. Her nails were blunt and buffed; her fingers gripped the recorder as she spoke. “Off the record—I don’t like being ordered down here or accused of things I haven’t done. So you’ll just have to excuse me for being testy.”

  Beau reached for the tape recorder, covering her hand with his in the process. Touching her was a mistake, he realized, but he didn’t pull back. Didn’t want to. The contrast of her small, feminine hand beneath his made him forget the suspect and remember the woman he couldn’t have. The forbidden was always tempting and only made more so as she slid her hand away. The movement was awkward and innocently sensual.

  “S-sorry.” Her apology underscored the two facets of her personality—one bold as brass, and the other uncertain and vulnerable. Beau wondered how many people saw the softer side of Maggie St. John. And why she felt the need to act so tough.

  The vulnerability might be an illusion staged for his benefit, but Beau felt himself falling for it anyway. He did something he never did; he gave her advice. “Okay, off the record—if you didn’t set that fire, stop fighting me and let me do my job. I haven’t arrested an innocent person yet.”

  Then he pushed the record button. Pertinent data and the facts surrounding discovery of the fire were easily covered with a dozen short questions. Every answer tallied with Friday’s answers. No embellishments. She said nothing that would trip her up later. Nothing she hadn’t said already.

  Then he got to the meat of the interview, and the reason he had decided to offer her an attorney. He had a fire of undetermined cause, and she had the only clear motive for setting the fire—revenge. He wanted her comments about her adversarial relationship with the hospital on record.

  “I was told,” he said, “that before the suspension, squaring off with the administration was just another day in the trenches for you.”

  “What if it was? There’s no law against being an advocate for your profession.”

  “No, there’s not, but according to Dr. Bennett you were more than a nursing advocate, Maggie. He said you took on every cause that came down the pike at Our Lady of Servitude. That is the nickname you coined for Cloister, isn’t it?”

  Maggie leaned forward. “Yes, sir. To the best of my knowledge that nickname originated with me, but there’s no law against sarcasm either. Where are you going with this?”

  He didn’t answer, but he leaned forward, matching her posture, holding her gaze. “Do you think the administration listens to you?”

  “Only when I yell, ‘Fire!’ ” she deadpanned, and settled back in her chair.

  Beau bit the side of his jaw to keep from laughing. God, why did he have to like the woman? This one had a mouth on her. No question. It was bad enough she had a body hotter than chemical fire, but she had to be sharpwitted too? Beau was a sucker for a woman who gave as good as she got when cornered. Humor was sadly missing in his life, he realized, and wondered why he hadn’t noticed before.

  Sighing, he leaned back and tried to get his interview on track again. “Would you describe yourself as burned-out?”

  “Why? Did someone else describe me that way?”

  Beau didn’t comment, but his pregnant silence told her everything she needed to know.

  “Great!” Maggie shot to her feet and paced away from him to stare through the open vertical blinds. “You listened to Bennett, didn’t you? Or Donna. She worries about me.”

  When she turned, her hands were on her hips.

  “Look, Grayson, burnout goes with the territory. Cloister is a thousand-bed public facility. We get people through our ER with blood sugars over eight hundred every day. Every day. In a private hospital ER a blood sugar over six hundred will cause a staff riot. I’m talkin’ a thermonuclear meltdown. At Cloister that same patient would have to hit nine hundred before we broke a sweat. Crisis medicine is the norm for us. You get used to it.”

  She flung an arm out as if trying to pull just the right words from the air. She found them, and her hand settled back on her hip. “Working for Cloister is like joining the Peace Corps to work with third world countries. Altruism only takes you so far before reality sets in. It’s true that nurses don’t last long at Our Lady of Servitude, but I’ve been there eight years. I can handle it. It’s not the work that burns you out. It’s pigheaded administrative policies that cut patient care and short staff the place. Not to mention doctors like Thibodeaux who think nurses are a fringe benefit.”

  “So you are burned-out.”

  “Everyone at Cloister is burned-out. It doesn’t make me special.”

  Beau could have disagreed with her, but he didn’t. “Is there anyone else who worries about you? Someone who might have wanted to get even with the hospital on your behalf?”

  “No. I don’t have any family, and I doubt any of my friends would deliberately set a fire for me to find.”

  “Boyfriend?”

  “No.”

  “No—you don’t have one? Or no—he wouldn’t have set the fire?”

  “No.” She swept a hand through her hair. “I don’t have one. I haven’t had a boyfriend since I was sixteen. I’ve had the occasional male friend since then, but nothing serious and nothing for a while.”

  So far this answer was the only one that satisfied Beau. Forcing himself back to the topic, he asked, “Have you ever smoked in that closet?”

  “No.”

  “To your knowledge does anyone on s
taff smoke on the premises or use that closet to smoke?”

  “Oh, joy! An opportunity to shift suspicion from myself by knifing my friends in the back. Thanks, but no thanks, I don’t know anyone who uses that closet to smoke.” She folded her arms around her midriff. “Look, Grayson. How long are we going to do this? The answer to everything is no. You’re barking up the wrong tree. Or the wrong pyromaniac.”

  Beau clicked off the recorder. “Then I guess that does it for now.”

  “You and I are done?” Maggie asked, relieved that she could escape. Sitting so close to Grayson had made her conscious of her every movement, every word, every expression. The man had the eyes of a hawk.

  “Done for now,” he said as he stood up.

  A shiver crept through her. He made everything seem so intense, so important, yet he never raised his voice. Maggie wondered if the man ever lightened up or lost his temper. A couple of times she’d seen the beginning of a smile, but it always disappeared. Especially when he looked at her.

  “Don’t I have to sign a statement or something?”

  “I’ll have it typed up and bring it around to the hospital for you to sign this afternoon.”

  Maggie plucked her purse from the back of the chair and settled the thin strap on her shoulder. “Isn’t that a little unusual?”

  “I’ll be over at the hospital for the polygraph results anyway,” he explained as he walked to the door and opened it for her.

  “W-what polygraph results?” A dark lump of dread settled in Maggie’s stomach.

  “Didn’t you know? The board’s taking the fire very seriously. You said there were … what? A thousand beds? That’s a lot of dead people if a fire got out of hand. A lot. The board decided to polygraph everyone who worked in the morgue, ER, and the outpatient clinic on Friday.”

  “They can’t do that.” Maggie shook her head. “They can’t force employees to take polygraphs.”

  “Of course not. It’s voluntary.”

  “So is open heart surgery, but it’s not like the patient has any real choice!”

  “What’s the problem, Maggie?” he asked gently as she passed him. “Damned if you do, damned if you don’t?”

  Maggie turned to face him. She would have told him to go to hell, but surely any number of people told the cocky son of a bitch that on a regular basis.

  “Give it up, Grayson. You’re not going to rattle me.”

  A raised brow silently called her a liar, and Maggie thought of her hand beneath his rough one, of the scrape of his palm across the back of her hand as she pulled free. They both knew he had the power to rattle her anytime he chose.

  She could pretend the chemistry wasn’t there, but it didn’t change the truth. Beneath the carefully choreographed dance of the investigation was something more elemental than she wanted to admit. Men weren’t a hobby of Maggie’s. She didn’t collect them like Carolyn. Especially not dangerous men like Beau Grayson. He could devour a woman for lunch and be hungry again by dinner.

  Unexpectedly Maggie was thankful for her role as a suspect. Beau couldn’t add her to the menu. She was safe from the sensual undercurrent that swirled through her.

  Until he figures out you didn’t set that fire.

  Without saying anything else—even good-bye felt risky—Maggie walked away. Four pairs of eyes watched her leave, but she was aware of only one. They were dark brown. Intense. Suspicious. Powerful.

  Maggie wasn’t certain which she dreaded more—the polygraph that awaited her, or the man she was leaving behind, watching her every move.

  Maggie shifted uncomfortably and wondered why they couldn’t have picked an office with plump chairs. The chief of surgery’s favorite period for furnishings was early Stonehenge. Uncharitably Maggie decided the austere decor was the chief’s way of discouraging long consultations.

  “Just relax.” The polygraph technician bent over his equipment, totally oblivious to the irony of that statement. His hair was buzzed short in one of those swat team wanna-be cuts, but he was a nice guy. If a bit dense.

  Just relax. Yeah. Right.

  Maggie sucked in a couple of breaths and tried not to think about the pain in her rump or the gizmos and wires that hooked her up to his infernal machine. She’d already taken this test twice. A polygraph, she discovered, was actually a number of tests instead of one. Multiple results were better for accuracy, and she was all for that. Even if she hated the idea of the polygraph to begin with.

  She wouldn’t have consented to this witch-hunt if they hadn’t promised her the test was extremely narrow in scope and that results would be sealed and given to Grayson. The hospital got nothing from the tests but the bill. Not even a list of volunteer participants. That seemed fair even to her.

  After a final adjustment, the technician asked, “Are you ready? This’ll be the last one.”

  “Shoot.”

  “Just like before, I’m going to ask you a series of obvious questions to establish a baseline, and I want you to answer with a simple yes or no.”

  He bent back over his machine as he began, marking occasionally on the paper scrolling by. The questions were easy. Was Mary Magdalene St. John her name? Did she live on River Road? Was she employed by Cloister Memorial Hospital? Was her birthday in January? And a number of other simple questions taken from her personnel sheet. Interspersed with the innocent queries were the tricky questions, phrased a little differently each time he gave the test. Maggie knew the drill well enough by now to recite the important ones from memory.

  Do you smoke?

  Do you smoke filter tip menthol?

  Have you ever smoked in the utility room?

  Did you cause the utility room to catch fire?

  She was ready for them. No, no, no, and no. Only this time the last question tripped her up.

  “Have you caused a fire?”

  Maggie froze, her conscience caught between the past and the present. The heartbeat she waited to answer was too long, and she knew she’d failed the test.

  “No.” It wasn’t really a lie, but it wasn’t really the truth either.

  The technician never looked up, never gave any indication that she’d lied. Instead, he asked another question in the same monotone. It was a variation of the previous question. “Have you caused a fire in the hospital?”

  “No.” Maggie’s answer this time was sure and quick, but she knew it was too little, too late.

  “Do you hold a valid driver’s license?”

  “Yes.”

  “Is nursing your profession?”

  “Yes.”

  He looked up finally and gave her an all-clear smile as he flipped off the machine and reached to help her strip off the bits of electronic hardware. Maggie imagined he’d caught a lot of liars over the years, so many that his poker face never slipped.

  “Thank you.” Maggie didn’t know what else to say. The man knew she was a liar. She knew she was a liar. And pretty soon Grayson would know it too.

  FOUR

  Beau swore, first at the attorney who’d held him up in court testifying all day, and then at the black night, which had begun to spit rain at him. The winding road was obstacle enough; he didn’t need a downpour too. There hadn’t been a single streetlight to relieve the darkness since civilization disappeared from his rearview mirror—if the small sewage plant and the flock of apartments on Gardere could be called civilization.

  Finally giving up hope of man-made or moonlight, he flipped his headlights to bright and concentrated on the twisting black ribbon that would eventually lead him to Maggie St. John. For all its age and legend, River Road was little more than a two-lane country road going nowhere fast. The Mississippi River levee lay like a dark, malignant hump to the west. Desolate grazing pasture flowed away from the road to the east. Maybe “desolate” was too harsh a word to describe this stretch, but houses were definitely sparse.

  So was traffic. This would be one nasty place to break down, especially for a woman. Not for the first time Beau wondere
d why Maggie chose to live so far away from Baton Rouge. So isolated. Slowing the car, he checked the number on the oversize mailbox for one of the few plantation-style homes on the road. Maggie’s house couldn’t be much farther, a couple of miles at most.

  If she thought ignoring phone messages was going to make him go away, she was sadly mistaken. Beau wanted an explanation for the polygraph results. If she wasn’t at home, he’d wait, but he didn’t think he’d have to wait long. All her nursing pals agreed that Maggie worked too hard, played just as hard when the mood struck her, and spent a lot of her free time in what her friends called “that big old house she loves.”

  A number of the nurses had mistaken his professional interest in Maggie for personal interest. Mistaken? Sly winks had accompanied innocent observations that Maggie could generally be found at home most weeknights. That would suit him just fine since he wanted to settle this tonight.

  Settle what? There isn’t anything to settle, he argued with himself. Logic said she did it. One of the polygraphs agreed. Instincts that had never steered him wrong were suddenly screaming at him to steer clear of Maggie St. John.

  So why was he on River Road, steering right toward her—toward the inevitable—and hoping she could explain away the unexplainable? Because he wanted to see her alone. Away from the office, away from the hospital. He wanted to see the real Maggie and not the tough cookie she invented for the world.

  Beau pressed the accelerator almost to the floor. He wasn’t used to having a woman destroy his objectivity. That’s what Maggie had done with her one-two punch of vulnerability and sensuality. He was focused on her and not on the case. No matter how much he pretended, seeing her at her home wasn’t about getting answers or collecting evidence; it was about understanding Maggie. About wanting Maggie.

  And he hated that. He didn’t like wanting anyone.

  As he passed a ramshackle barn, Beau slowed his car, checked another mailbox, and braked to a sudden stop. Rain pounded the hood and roof of the car as he stared. Even in the dark, Maggie’s house commanded attention.