Smoldering Heart_Fleming Brothers [Book 1]

by Jennifer Vester

  I shrugged on my coat and nodded. Looking up, I gave him a sheepish grin. “Had to check on her.”

  He smirked. “And?”

  “Things are good. Really good. I go back to Denver tomorrow, though, and I’m really not digging this whole situation.”

  “Yeah, something doesn’t feel right. That’s another reason why I came. I wanted to check in with Bill and see what he knew about their house.”

  “It’s probably nothing, right?”

  He shrugged. “If we’re both feeling it, then it’s better to make sure.”

  “How long are you in town?”

  “I’m on vacation as far as the company knows. Hell, Mike and Dennis left yesterday and won’t be back until January.”

  I shook my head at him. “You’ve got the most cushy job on the planet. Take off for vacation for a month, travel, make money.”

  “Right,” he huffed. “Work till midnight every day, deal with asshole clients.”

  “Whatever. Can you stay and watch the girls until we figure this out? I have two more weeks at the academy.”

  He shrugged. “Shouldn’t be too hard.”

  “Right.” Nodding toward the door I said, “Let’s go see how bad it is and then we’ll go find Bill.”

  My phone rang as soon as we stepped out the door. Bill Calling.

  “Speak of…” I said to Noah and showed him the caller ID.

  “Hello?”

  “Hey, son. Are you still in Denver?”

  Looking out on the lawn, I noticed a lot of snow had fallen over night. The neighborhood was buried in it and the only car that wasn’t covered was Noah’s rented sedan.

  “No. I drove in last night to check in on Maddie and Rachel. Roads were slick as hell.”

  “Yeah, I figured you wouldn’t stay in Denver. The roads last night weren’t half as bad as this morning. We’ve had over fifteen car accidents already. I wish people would just stay home sometimes.”

  “Noah’s here with me. Not sure when he got in, but we’re here at the house. The girls are still sleeping.”

  “Sorry about that—”

  I cleared my throat. “I’m not.”

  Bill chuckled. “None of my business. I’m at the station today, and I want both of you to come by. Something I need you to see.”

  “Sure, we’ll be there. I needed to ask you about something anyway.”

  “No problem. Don’t tell the girls you’re coming over.”

  I looked over at Noah and frowned. He tilted his head slightly and started walking toward his car.

  “Okay. What’s going on?”

  “I’ll show you when you get here. Just go slow and don’t make us pull you out of a snow bank. See ya soon.”

  He hung up just as the dispatch in the firehouse started going off in the background. I looked at the phone for a minute. Odd.

  We drove down the sleepy snow-covered streets, winding our way through the city. On the way to the fire station we drove by the girls' house and had a look at the damage.

  With the snowfall, it looked like any other house on the block. The exception was that it was missing half the roof. It looked like the blaze had been centralized around the side of the house that their kitchen was at. Could have been as simple as something electric, the heater. With the snow it was hard to tell how bad the damage actually was.

  Still. Something didn’t feel right.

  We pulled up to the fire station and parked. The bay doors were open, and the trucks were missing. A shovel was laying on the ground beside a mound of snow. Someone had been in the middle of clearing snow off the sidewalk.

  Entering the building through the bays, I directed Noah to the left where the main part of the living quarters and offices were at. The television was still on, the channel set to news and weather.

  Walking into the kitchen, I found the pantry with the coffee cups and a fresh pot made on the counter. I poured Noah a cup as he looked around then took a seat at their table.

  He gave me a smirk when he settled in his chair. “Already know where the caffeine is at?”

  “Been here before. Do you have some cash?”

  “Yeah, why?”

  “Pay the kitty,” I said and pointed toward a jar with “A Shift” printed on the side. “They use it for extra groceries. Bill buys the good coffee so he makes everyone pay.”

  Noah laughed as he got up from the table, stuffed some cash in the jar and then sat back down.

  The table had a pile of maps on it, and I started sifting through them. District lines with zip codes, forestry grids, and locations of pumps were marked. One map to the side caught my eye. I pulled it in front of me and tried to understand the markings.

  “Hey, check this out.”

  We both stood up and stared down at the map.

  “It looks like dates beside each marking. But what do they mean?”

  Noah took a quick picture and typed something on his phone. “We’ll see if Brock finds it interesting.”

  I pointed to Maddie’s house and saw yesterday’s date. “I think these might be fires and someone has marked the dates beside them. Maybe when they happened?”

  He nodded. “Looks like it.”

  My phone chimed. Message from Maddie.

  Maddie: Did you leave already?

  Owen: No, babe I’m still here. With Noah. Do you want a Christmas tree?

  Maddie: I want you.

  Owen: I want you, too, but I’m not sure I want an ornament hanging off my dick.

  Maddie: Hmm...would it look like the ornaments in your nipples?

  I laughed hard and glanced at Noah who was still bent over the map. I cleared my throat and smirked at my phone.

  Owen: Naughty. Santa may have to spank you.

  Maddie: Haha. Have to go open the shop. Rachel and Kelly are going over to dad’s house to get some things.

  Owen: You should stay in bed and sleep. Your customers can wait.

  Maddie: No rest for the wicked.

  Owen: You’re an angel. You can be wicked in bed tonight. Love you. Always.

  Maddie: I love you, too. Always.

  I stared at the phone for a few minutes with a smile. Fuck, I loved seeing those words from her. After weeks of the most painful feelings of my fucking life, it was like having a huge weight lifted off my shoulders. The oppressiveness of my doubt felt like it was slipping away.

  This was right. She was right.

  And what the fuck was she thinking having unprotected sex with me? Something to talk about later, but I was secretly hoping the two other times I woke her up in the middle of the night got her pregnant. I told her I regretted some things, and that some things I’d never be sorry for. Trying to get her pregnant wasn’t on my list of regrets. Not telling her about it, yes. But the trying part I’d never be ashamed of.

  Mine.

  “Hey, dipshit, when you’re done looking like cupid shot you in the ass, look at this.”

  Clearing my throat, I turned to look at the spot on the map he was pointing to.

  It was dated for the prior spring. March to be exact. Noah’s finger moved to another spot. April. The next three spots in May.

  Confused, I asked, “So, what am I looking at? That seems normal right? I mean, it’s a busy time for fires in spring and summer months. I was told it was really dry this year in the area.”

  “Well, I’m seeing it move.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Look,” he said as he moved it closer to me on the table. “The earliest dated fire that’s marked is somewhere on the east side of the city. Looks like mainly a rural area. The next four are nearly on top of each other in the same neighborhood. Then the next set is grouped closer to the city. It’s like it was moving in progression from east to west. There are a couple that are out of order but if we eliminate those it looks like a pattern leading to your girlfriend’s house.”

  Frowning at the map, I looked at the clumps of dates and saw the same thing. Eliminating the random ones, it did l
ook like the fires moved across the city. The latest at Maddie’s house but there were plenty of neighborhoods beyond hers to the west. Including mine.

  “It may be coincidence, but it just seems a little too much like a pattern.”

  I leaned over the table and looked at the dates again. Definitely odd, if nothing else.

  The sound of the trucks parking in the bays, pulled me out of my thoughts. I wondered if Bill had put this together. If so, we had a few things to talk about.

  “Hey, guys.”

  One of the firemen, Len, came through the door. We’d met on a previous visit to the station, and he seemed like a decent guy. I gave him a nod in greeting.

  Four other guys walked in after him, one of them a paramedic, then Bill. There were two others that were still in the bay going over some logs on a clipboard.

  “I see you found my coffee,” Bill commented as he entered the kitchen. His face had a slight tightness to it that made him look stressed. “Hope you paid the jar.”

  “We did,” I called out. “Interesting map in here, Bill.”

  One of the older firemen took a seat at the table and pointed to the one in front of us. “We went through the last few months and marked the significant fires in green. Blue marks were trash fires.”

  “Owen,” I said, and stuck my hand out. “Nice to meet you.”

  He smiled and shook my hand. “Dale. Those two on the couch are Chris and Mike. Len was just here. And Paul just went into the office. He was complaining he needed to take a piss the entire ride.”

  I chucked. “This is my brother, Noah. We came in to talk to Bill and steal his coffee.”

  “I heard that!” Bill yelled from the kitchen.

  “So, I hear you’re dating Madison,” he commented.

  I looked over at Chris and Mike, who turned from the television to face us.

  Eyeing Dale, I suddenly realized who he was. “You were at the diner.”

  He laughed. “Yup. Doesn’t look like you need any help. But you break her heart again, and you might fall off a fire truck and break an arm.”

  I glanced over at Chris and Mike who were both smirking, but oddly looking as serious as Dale was. I had been warned about this fire department. As small as it was, rumors and news travelled fast. Apparently so did news about Bill’s daughters.

  “Uhm, deal, I think.”

  Dale smiled and said, “Just kidding.” Then his expression turned serious again, and he narrowed his eyes at me.

  I gave him a look like he was insane. People in this city were bizarre.

  Bill appeared to my right and leaned over the map. “Interesting isn’t it? The guys were putting it together, because it seemed like most of the fires were on the east side of the city. But I thought you might take a look at it given the stuff that happened last night.”

  Chris and Mike abandoned their television and wandered over to the table.

  I frowned at Bill. “Okay, we’re seeing something here but what made you—”

  “Arson,” Dale said. “They found two cans of gas outside Maddie’s house last night. The report isn’t back, but everyone could see where the fire started. Pretty obvious. Thing is, one of the investigators is a good friend. He mentioned finding the same type of gas cans at a campground fire over the summer. So, Chris, Mike and I started wondering about the other fires when we came on shift this morning.”

  Noah nodded beside me. “This is good. There’s definitely something here, I’m just not sure what it is.”

  I shrugged. “Okay, but what are the odds that the gas cans aren’t the same ones you can get at the hardware shop?”

  Dale smirked and leaned in toward us. “That’s the thing. The gas cans were made in the nineteen twenties. Not many places you can buy those. Antiques pretty much.”

  “It only ties the campground, and Maddie’s house together, then,” Noah said.

  “Maybe,” Chris chimed in. “But if you look at the dates as a whole, it no longer looks so random. And you don’t need a lot of gas to set a dumpster on fire. A house and an entire campground is a different story.”

  Bill looked up from the map and sighed. “The thing is, dumpsters and campgrounds are one thing. They’re nuisance fires. The campground got out of hand because it was a dry spring combined with hot temperatures. It was a closed site because of road work. No population. But my daughter’s house? That’s targeted.”

  “Have there been any other house fires in the area?” Noah asked.

  Bill nodded. “Sure, here and there. But if you look at the reports, there were normal causes. It certainly wasn’t arson. Or suspected arson.”

  I chewed on the inside of my lip as Bill and the others continued to talk. It was a lot to take in. The guys had pulled together and with all their research presented an extremely convincing argument.

  Bill’s insinuation that the girls had been targeted set my nerves on edge. Darren? Maybe not, if the dates were correct. A slim possibility. Someone else? Better yet, why?

  The only thing I knew for certain, was that I wanted to keep both Maddie and Rachel safe. And if anyone ever hurt Maddie, I would fucking kill them.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  ~Madison~

  Today had been hard in some ways. Then again, it was also really good, then hard, then good. My feelings seemed to be wandering back and forth along the spectrum of human emotion all at once.

  On one hand, we’d lost quite a bit in the fire. Terrible. Although, some very nice friends in the department were sifting through a lot of what was left and delivering it to a restoration company. It would be cleaned, salvaged and deodorized then returned to us. I couldn’t imagine the cost of the service. But Owen had arranged for it, and he said not to worry.

  I wasn’t worried about it, I just wondered how much money we were going to be indebted to him for doing it.

  Contrary to what he might think, Rachel and I would pay him back for it. Dating or not, I needed to do it. Otherwise it would be something that hung between us. Not in a bad way, necessarily, but it went against my nature to let someone take care of me financially.

  Charm bracelets and rings excluded. He could buy me plenty of those.

  The gesture, although extremely nice and well intended, felt off balance. I definitely wanted to feel on equal footing with Owen at this point. He might get it in his head next that I should stay at home. A home I didn’t have at the moment, but for now was located at Owen’s place. I needed the shop and the people that came by, so that wasn’t happening. But give an inch with Owen, and he was likely to take a mile.

  On the other hand, there was well…Owen. The things that he had said both in his letters, and in person last night, were still rolling around in my head. He was surprisingly tender in his feelings.

  Not that I would ever tell him that. He would likely start swearing and beating his chest to prove me wrong. Although I did like his dirty talk and could definitely listen to more of that.

  No. I would never tell him he was tender, but he was. And it made all the difference in the world to know that beneath that bravado and aggressive demeanor, he was a very loving, thoughtful person. I could amend my list of wanted attributes in a companion to just one word. Owen.

  I loved him. No doubt in my mind. And the things I loved about him were a mix of both his bad traits and good. Granted, the sex was near the top of the list and those nipple piercings, but it wasn’t everything. Mostly it was his determined nature.

  Those letters had been the last desperate effort of a lonely man to express how much he loved me. And I read it loud and clear.

  Thinking about him for most of the afternoon hadn’t made the time go by any faster. Rachel and Kelly had been in and out all day but the shop, for the most part, had been quiet. It'd given me some time to think, which I'd needed. I was grateful for the solitude.

  My door chime went off in the shop, so I set my scissors aside on my table. I had been working on an arrangement for an elderly gentleman that wanted to surprise his
sweetheart in the retirement home.

  “Maddie?” I heard Owen’s voice from the shop.

  “Back here!” I yelled, as I took off my smock.

  The doors leading to the shop opened, and Owen poked his head in.

  He gave me an enigmatic smile. “Hey, babe. Back here all alone?”

  “Uhm, yeah. What are you up to?”

  “Come look.”

  The backdoor behind me opened, and I turned to see Patrick walking in.

  “Hey, Patrick. How’s it going?” Owen smiled.

  “Fine, I guess,” Patrick replied. “What’s going on?”

  Owen wiggled his eyebrows, then disappeared into the shop.

  I laughed at Patrick’s expression which was a mix of worry and confusion. Owen had that effect on a lot of people.

  Grabbing his arm, I dragged him through the doors to find the shop empty.

  “Seriously, what’s going on?” Patrick asked.

  “I have no clue. Do you think he’s next door or just outside?”

  “Wherever he is, it’s annoying.”

  I looked up at Patrick and smirked. “Just because you didn’t win the dating pool, doesn’t mean you have to be grouchy. You’ve been surly for two months.”

  He raised his eyebrows. “Surly? Who uses the word surly?”

  “Apparently me,” I said and nudged him in the ribcage. “What gives?”

  He shook his head. “I guess it was the fire last night. Seeing your house go up was terrible.”

  “I didn’t realize you were there.”

  “Yeah, one of the guys buzzed me, I was about a block away. I took that last shipment out and was nearly back at the shop by then. Anyway, I dug out my gear from the back of the truck, threw it on and started helping. It was just crazy.”

  I squeezed his arm. “Yeah, it’s been a little hard to wrap my head around it, too. Thanks, for helping them out.”

  He smiled at me and winked. “Anything for you, Maddie.”

  Owen poked his head in the shop door and gestured outside. “Hands off my woman, man. And get your asses out here.”

  I let my hand drop from Patrick’s arm, and quickly walked toward the door. Owen opened it wide and gave me a chaste kiss on my lips as I passed. His eyes danced as he watched me step onto the snow covered sidewalk.