Black Flame

by Ruby Laska

  “Strontium aluminate is a phosphorescent pigment. That means that the energy it absorbs in the form of light is released unusually slowly, making it appear to glow in the dark. They use it in highway signage and other applications where high visibility is desirable. You, uh, do that. I mean, you don’t glow in the dark, obviously, but you…glow. Long after everyone else has settled for ordinary. You never stop making things…”

  He was out of his depth now, talking nonsense out of a sense of acute discomfort, following his intuition. But wasn’t that what his mother had made him promise to do? Because wasn’t intuition just another way of saying that he was trying to speak from the heart?

  “You never stop making things prettier. Sparklier. Nicer. It’s—it’s more than what you do. It’s who you are.”

  “You’re comparing me to a glow-in-the-dark exit sign,” Deneen said slowly.

  “No, that’s not—I don’t—it isn’t—” This was coming out all wrong. The harder Jimmy tried to do what his mother had told him, what he thought would make Deneen feel better, the worse he was making it. He really wanted to find release through physical exercise. But he couldn’t very well jump out of the truck now and start doing jumping jacks. “Please just forget that I said anything,” he said faintly.

  “But I think I like it,” Deneen said. “An exit sign—it can be designed to be pretty, but it also makes the world better. Everyone’s always telling me to get a real career, to pick something worthwhile. But maybe it’s enough to just…make things nicer.”

  She smiled at him. And then suddenly her hand was resting lightly on his cheek, and she leaned across the console and kissed him.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  She’d meant to kiss him on the cheek. She really had. She’d puckered up and aimed…and then, somehow, her lips brushed against his mouth.

  The minute she touched his incredibly warm (what kind of man was that warm when he’d been outside in the arctic freeze shoveling snow with only a scraper?), soft, gorgeous lips, any hope of backtracking was gone. Especially when he kissed back. He didn’t even hesitate. Instinct was driving both of them—and driving them hard.

  Deneen made a sound as she pulled him closer. Her ribs pressed against the arm rest painfully, but she arched across the space, trying to get as close to Jimmy as she could, given the constraints of the truck’s cab. He kissed like a world champion, like he’d gotten a doctorate in the art of kissing, like he headed an institute for the advanced study of kissing. His tongue was neither too tentative nor too bold. His hands drew her closer; he tasted wonderfully of cinnamon and coffee and…well, and desire. He wanted her. And she wanted him.

  Ordinarily when she was kissing a man, Deneen wasn’t trying to analyze what was going on. But this was the second time in two days she’d completely lost her head and found herself in a clinch with Jimmy; after the first time, she’d sworn to resist even casual contact with the man. So her current situation—locked in an embrace with him in the middle of an emergency—bore some examination.

  Until he did a kind of low growling thing and nipped her bottom lip, then kissed his way along the underside of her jaw. After that, it was all over. No analyzing, no second thoughts, no regrets. She was all in, and if Jimmy Mason wanted to peel off her clothes one article at a time and throw them out into the snow, until she was stark raving naked on the edge of the highway, then she was game. In fact, she had tugged down the zipper of his parka and was trying to loosen the top button of that marvelously soft sweater when someone rapped on the window.

  Deneen jumped so hard her head hit the rear-view mirror. Jimmy uttered a very un-Jimmy-like curse. Then he had to wipe the window with the sleeve of his coat because they’d managed to fog up the entire cab.

  An elderly man in a fur-trimmed cap was peering in at them. He made the universal sign for “roll down your window,” circling his hand in its deerskin mitten. Jimmy turned the key in the ignition and complied.

  “Hello,” the old man said, his breath making clouds in the cold air. “Are you folks all right?”

  “We’re fine, sir, we just managed to lose the road there for a second and ended up in the ditch.”

  “Well, I can see that, son. Would you like me to tow you out?”

  “That would be great,” Deneen said, leaning across Jimmy.

  “I’ll get out and help you tie on to the hitch,” Jimmy said.

  “That’s all right, son. I already took care of that while the two of you were canoodling.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  They were back on the road in a little over eight minutes. It would have been even quicker, except that after the man had refused to accept any payment for his help, Deneen made him write down his address so she could send him a proper thank you note.

  “Do people still send thank you notes through the postal service?” Jimmy asked, mostly to avoid making conversation about what they’d been doing before their Good Samaritan came to their aid.

  “People with good manners do,” Deneen said primly.

  Before the events of the last half hour, Jimmy would have interpreted her body language—terse voice, rigid posture, averted gaze—as disinterest and even irritation. Now, however, he wasn’t so sure. The woman had, without provocation or warning, kissed him. And then continued kissing him, and he was pretty sure she was even beginning to remove his clothes when they were interrupted.

  Of course, Jimmy was aware that he’d played his own part in the kissing. He had kissed back—of course he’d kissed back. It would be asking too much of any man to overcome a biological imperative stretching back through the entirety of human history. When the most beautiful female in the tribe makes overtures, biology advised you to respond. And respond he had. In fact, he was still responding, in a certain uncomfortable, frustrating, needful way.

  But Deneen appeared to have shut down as completely as an interrupted circuit. If the kiss had affected her, she wasn’t letting on; she stared thoughtfully out at the passing scenery as though it was the most captivating tableau she’d ever witnessed. Even her earlier anxiety about her sister’s condition appeared to have vanished.

  As the miles rolled past, Jimmy ran through a dozen possible gambits to kick-start their conversation, and abandoned all of them. What he really wanted to say was something along the lines of, “So, you know that kiss we shared back there? What the hell was that about?” but she seemed determined to close down that avenue of discussion. He thought back to what they had been discussing right before the kiss—he had compared her to a phosphorescent substance, which probably wasn’t the best choice he could have made—and wondered if he’d said something either to trigger the kiss or to explain her reaction now that it was over.

  This line of thinking, unfamiliar to Jimmy and thus far more time-consuming than his usual mental exercises, kept him busy until the hospital loomed in view.

  “Here we are,” he said heartily, which wasn’t really necessary since Deneen was clutching her purse tightly, one hand on the door handle, apparently ready to leap from the truck the minute he slowed down.

  “Just drop me off at the entrance,” Deneen said. Then added, “Please,” as though it were an afterthought.

  “I think it’s best if I accompany you,” Jimmy said, turning not toward the circular drive at the front of the building, but to the parking garage. Deneen pursed her lips but stayed quiet as he found a parking spot.

  Then she was out of the car like a shot. Jimmy did his best to keep up in pursuit. He chased her down the stairs, out the door, down the sidewalk and into the sliding glass entry doors. By the time they reached the information desk she was short of breath. Due to his conditioning and strengthening regimen, Jimmy was more flummoxed than winded; he had no doubt Deneen would have left him behind if she could.

  “Jayne Burgess?” she demanded, breathing hard. “Admitted today?”

  The startled volunteer clicked away at her computer. “Second floor, room 235. Elevator on your left.”


  “Thank you!” Jimmy called over his shoulder as he followed Deneen. When the elevator doors didn’t open, she ran for the stairs, taking them two at a time. Down the hall, barely glancing at room numbers, until she arrived at the nurse’s station.

  “I’m here to see Jayne Burgess! Is she out of recovery yet?”

  The nurses at the desk glanced at each other. “Recovery?” one asked politely.

  “You know. After her surgery!”

  “Miss Burgess didn’t have surgery. She’s been released. You missed her by about ten minutes.”

  “Released?” Jimmy took hold of Deneen’s arm.

  “Released?” she echoed, trying to tug her arm back. “You mean she’s all right? She’s not…”

  “She’s fine. The doctor went over follow-up care with her, of course. She’ll need to rest for a day or two.”

  “Are you the auntie and uncle?” the other nurse asked, smiling.

  “Auntie!” Deneen recoiled in horror. Was the nurse blind? Surely she didn’t think that Jayne could be her niece. “I beg your pardon. Jayne is my older sister. Much, much older.”

  Jimmy tugged with a little more force. Deneen was showing signs of irrational thinking again. Maybe he could take advantage of the nurses’ confusion—they obviously thought he and Deneen were a couple—to coax her out of the waiting area.

  She had dug her phone out of her purse and was already dialing. Before he could get another word in, a familiar voice screeched across the lobby.

  “Neener!”

  Deneen wrenched her arm free and went tearing across the lobby. There were Jayne and Matthew, holding cups of coffee. Jayne had a large white bandage on her forehead, but otherwise, she looked fine.

  The sisters embraced as though they hadn’t seen each other in a decade or two. Matthew pried Jayne’s coffee from her hand and brought it over to Jimmy.

  “Hey,” he said, handing Jimmy the steaming cup. “You might as well have this. Those two aren’t going to come up for air for a while.”

  Jimmy accepted the coffee gratefully. The stimulant powers of caffeine might help clear his head—it was continuing to be a very confusing morning.

  “I’m glad you’re both okay,” he said after taking a sip.

  “Yeah, me too. It was a little scary, losing traction like that. I’m just glad no one was hurt.”

  “But Jayne—”

  “I mean, besides that—but it ended up being just a half dozen stitches above her eyebrow. And she’ll probably have quite a shiner. They kind of overreacted, sending two ambulances out, but they had to check her spine and…well…” Matthew grinned and shrugged.

  “And?”

  “And, just, I guess you can’t be too careful. Hey! Thanks for bringing Deneen out here. I know she’s not really your type of woman. She’s sweet as can be, but she can be a little…bubbly.”

  “Uh, I was happy to do it,” Jimmy said, suddenly very self-conscious. Matthew didn’t know that he’d been spending some very confusing interludes with his girlfriend’s sister. “She’s actually very…good at crafts. And entertaining.”

  “That’s kind of you, but you can’t have enjoyed having your peace and quiet destroyed by the glue-gun cyclone.” Matthew chuckled. “That’s just one of her family’s nicknames for her.”

  A small, unsettling feeling sprouted in the back of Jimmy’s head. Like a tension headache, but different. It was an unfamiliar sensation, but as Matthew continued to talk, it grew stronger.

  “And it’s not like she’s very deep, either,” he said. “After a couple days of her fashion magazines and pop music, I wouldn’t blame you for wanting a stiff drink.”

  “I actually find her…quite fascinating,” Jimmy mumbled.

  But Matthew didn’t appear to have heard. “And the way she dresses. It was bad enough when we were in high school, remember that? But at least then she kind of blended in with all the other pompon girls. Now she’s completely over the top. Man, when I went back to Arkansas with Jayne a few months back, she showed up for the big family dinner with a pink streak in her hair and a sweater that shed glitter wherever she went. I thought her mom was going to lose it.”

  More hearty laughter. The headachy feeling was bringing with it a buzzing fury, making it hard for Jimmy to hear, but Matthew plowed right on in a loud voice.

  “She’s cute, I’ll give you that, but she needs to grow up before anyone’s going to take her seriously. She can’t hold down a job to save her life. Did you know, in the last couple of months she’s been fired twice—once from a restaurant job and once from a beauty salon? Got to give her credit for diversity!”

  “Brow bar,” Jimmy muttered.

  “’Scuse me?”

  “It was a brow bar.”

  “What was? What kind of bar? You’re losing me here, pal.”

  “The second job she lost,” Jimmy said, getting the words out from behind gritted teeth. “She was employed to style women’s eyebrows. It wasn’t her fault that the wax heating implement overheated.”

  Matthew goggled at him, his jaw hanging open. “You sure seem to know a lot about her,” he said. “It must have been worse than I thought. Just the two of you, and her gabbing on and on. You couldn’t peel her off you, huh?”

  Jimmy felt his hands clench into fists. Matthew was one of his best friends, but the way he was talking about Deneen, it was clear that he didn’t know her at all. Not the way Jimmy did. And it was making him feel very upset.

  The two women had finally stopped hugging and talking and crying, and were coming toward them, arm in arm, beaming.

  “Quick, talk about something else,” Matthew muttered under his breath. “Or the ditzy princess might actually catch on that we’re talking about her.”

  The quivering, relentless pain behind Jimmy’s eyes burst in an explosion of rage. His clenched fist came up out of nowhere and connected with Matthew’s jaw—and his friend went down.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  “Don’t worry, Cal probably knows these guys,” Jayne said—but Deneen thought she sounded pretty worried herself. “He’ll get it all straightened out.”

  “I don’t think Jimmy would do very well in jail,” Deneen said.

  “No kidding.”

  The sisters rested in the comfortable seating area in the lobby of the hospital while two police officers conferred with Matthew. Jimmy stood a few feet away, glowering and rubbing his fist.

  “I just can’t understand what made him do that,” Jayne said, for the third time. “Jimmy is the gentlest guy I know.”

  Deneen had a sinking feeling that she might know something about it. Not about why he hit Matthew—on that score she was as mystified as Jayne—but about why he had a short trigger right now. “He, uh, had kind of a…well, you know he doesn’t like holidays, right?”

  Jayne turned to look at her with interest, and Deneen winced. That sisterly intuition—it was a dangerous thing to get in the path of. “No, I didn’t know that. How do you know that?”

  “Well, I’ve been cooped up with him for the last two days,” Deneen said defensively. “Cal had to work and Zane got stuck out by the rig, so it was mostly just me and him until Christmas dinner. And we did the holiday brunch together, so we were…you know, talking.”

  “Talking, eh?”

  Deneen didn’t like the change in her sister’s expression. There was a reason Jayne was universally acknowledged to be the bright one in Red Fork; she’d inherited their mother’s determination and their father’s analytical sense. And since they were small, Deneen had had very little luck ever keeping anything from Jayne.

  But that needed to change. After all, she was an adult now, too, and entitled to her own life—something that had been weighing on her mind. “Yes. Talking,” she said, a little sharply.

  “Well, excuse me,” Jayne said, and instantly the inquisitiveness was replaced by a slightly wounded tone.

  That was the thing with sisters: they could set each other off with a single word. Deneen an
d Jayne knew each other as well as any two people could.

  “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean it like that. It’s just—” Deneen shrugged, the adrenaline of the last few hours having drained away and left her exhausted. “Look, this has been a weird Christmas. First there was the whole getting fired thing, and Mom and Dad just assuming it was my fault. Then I wanted to do something really nice for your engagement. And one of these days I’m going to learn to plan better, but I just thought a surprise would be so much fun. Plus, you know, I kind of wanted to get away from the family Christmas.”

  “Aunt Ida and her creepy stories,” Jayne said, shuddering. “I can totally understand that.”

  “Right? But then I get up here and I couldn’t get you on the phone and then this, this guy shows up to pick me up at the airport and it takes me a minute to recognize him because, holy cow, have you seen the way he’s bulked up since high school? And he wasn’t exactly a hundred-pound weakling then.”

  “Jimmy does take his workout routine pretty seriously,” Jayne agreed.

  “But he was so—the way he is. Why use a simple word when you can use five syllables, right? And we just kept misunderstanding each other.”

  “Aw, poor Neener,” Jayne said, putting her arm around her sister. “Now that I think about it, I can’t imagine two people less suited for each other. It must have been horrible.”

  Deneen bit her lip. As explanations went, she wasn’t doing a very good job with this one.

  Part of her wanted to tell her sister everything. About Jimmy kissing her. About her kissing him. That was twice now, one for each of them, and she had to admit—just looking across the lobby where he was pacing like a tiger in a cage, his thick black glasses obscuring the frustration in his eyes—that she’d do it again in a minute.

  And part of her wanted to admit that she didn’t know what came next, and that she couldn’t bear the thought of getting back on a plane and returning to Arkansas. To the room in her parents’ house that hadn’t changed much since she and Jayne were little. To the stupid jobs that were never quite right for her. And worst of all, to the expectations of everyone she’d ever known, that she would never measure up to her sister.