by Gina Wilkins
With a bittersweet smile, she replied, “No offense, but I can’t see the two of us having babies and growing old together. So, as fond as I am of you, we’ll stay just friends.”
“I’ll have to defer to your wisdom. Even if you do look incredibly hot in that dress.”
Because he sounded sincere enough about the compliment to give her a completely feminine little thrill, she went up on tiptoes to kiss his cheek. “If a no-strings, ungrown-up affair was what I wanted, you would be at the very top of my list,” she assured him.
“I’ll take that as a compliment.”
“It was intended as one.”
The music came to an end. Riley released her, but laid a hand on her arm to keep her still for a moment. “Seriously, Lindsey, if you need to talk, you always know where to find me.”
“Thanks, Riley.” She smiled at him, then turned away—only to find herself face-to-face with Dan, who didn’t look at all happy with her.
She and Dan hadn’t exactly parted on the best of terms earlier, she remembered. And it had been her fault, she admitted now. She’d been prickly and defensive, and she couldn’t expect him to understand why. She was the one who had suddenly changed. Dan hadn’t been acting any differently than he ever had—which, of course, was exactly why she was upset with him. It was no wonder he was watching her now as if he wasn’t sure what to expect from her.
She managed to smile at him. “Hi, Dan.”
“Hi.” Someone bumped him from behind as the dance floor began to fill again. Dan reached out to take Lindsey’s arm and walk with her to the side of the room, out of the way. “Are you having a good time?”
“So far, but I haven’t been here long. How about you?”
“Oh, you know. This isn’t really my sort of thing. Mostly I’m here because I’m expected to be.”
“You’d probably rather be at your desk.”
He seemed about to agree, then he smiled a little and shook his head. “To be perfectly honest, I’d rather be fishing.”
She placed a hand on her heart. “Why, Dan Meadows. You mean there’s actually something you like as well as your job?”
“I’m not quite the hopeless workaholic everyone thinks I am.”
The music started again—another slow song. Across the room, chattering townspeople gathered around the heavily laden refreshment tables. There would be live entertainment and drawings for door prizes later in the evening, but the first hour was set aside for visiting, dancing and munching. The event primarily provided an excuse for the locals to dress up and mingle, raising money for good causes in the process.
This crowd differed from the one she’d seen at Gaylord’s last night, of course. This was a somewhat more sedate gathering, with no alcohol served, so she didn’t expect to see Bo or Jimmy there. It wasn’t at all their style.
“Do you want something to eat?” Dan motioned toward the tables.
“No, not yet. Dance with me.”
He looked startled by her impulsive invitation. “Uh…dance?”
“Sure, why not? C’mon, the song’s just starting.”
“I’m not much of a dancer. Not like Riley.”
She caught his hand and tugged. “Dance with me, Dan.”
Though he still looked doubtful, he allowed her to lead him back on the floor.
Dan wasn’t a bad dancer, she quickly discovered. Just a stiff one. Holding her several inches away from him, he rested his right hand sedately at her waist and held her right hand loosely in his left. He would have danced just this way with the minister’s wife, Lindsey thought in exasperation, and deliberately moved a little closer to him.
After a few moments of silence, she tilted her head back to look up at him. “Do you remember the last time we danced together?”
Dan seemed to be counting musical beats in his head. “It’s been a while.”
“It was five years ago—on my twenty-first birthday. My family threw a surprise birthday party for me at the country club. They hired a band.”
Dan had attended the party with a date. Melanie. She of the perfect hair, teeth and breasts. Melanie had made little secret of the fact that she would rather have been just about anywhere other than at a college girl’s surprise party, and she hadn’t liked it at all when Dan had given Lindsey a brotherly birthday kiss after their dance. At least, Lindsey supposed he’d intended it as a brotherly kiss. It was a lot more than that to her. She’d replayed that kiss during a hundred daydreams afterward.
Three days later Dan and Melanie had eloped. And Lindsey’s young heart had been broken.
Was she really willing to go through that again?
Did she really have any other choice?
“I remember,” Dan said.
She doubted his recollections very closely mirrored hers. She wondered if thoughts of that night brought back painful memories of Melanie for him. Since he never, ever talked about his ex-wife, Lindsey had no idea how he felt about her now.
Letting the dance steps move her a bit closer to him, she slid her hand from his shoulder to the back of his neck. It felt so good to be in his arms.
Dan lifted an eyebrow, his smile faintly teasing. “Careful, princess. A guy could start getting the wrong ideas.”
“Or he could finally start getting the right ideas,” she murmured, tightening her arm just enough that their bodies brushed together.
The song ended, and Dan set her away from him so quickly she nearly stumbled. “Uh…thanks for the dance,” he said.
Before she could respond, they were surrounded by acquaintances and eventually separated by the crowd. Lindsey was left to wonder if he’d gotten the message or if he’d convinced himself it was only a joke. Knowing Dan, it was probably the latter. He would find that a much more comfortable conclusion.
She knew that eventually she was going to have to openly confront him if she wanted to find out once and for all if there was even a slight possibility that they could ever be more than old friends. She not only wanted to know—she very much needed to know. She didn’t want to spend the rest of her life wondering about what might have been if only she’d had the courage to take a chance.
Chapter Four
Dan had to leave the party early when a call came in about a domestic dispute that had turned violent on the other side of town. He wouldn’t have responded to just any call that came in for his officers, but he knew the couple involved and feared the situation was a powder keg. Edstown was a small town with limited resources—one of the other officers was the mayor’s nephew, another Dan’s own cousin—so Dan helped out whenever he felt needed. That was one of the reasons he’d earned the reputation of being a workaholic.
Fortunately, Dan and two officers were able to handle the domestic problem rather quickly and without an excessive amount of trouble. That time, anyway. Because he found several more things to do when he returned to his office, it was late before he got home. Maybe he’d just been looking for an excuse to avoid returning to the mixer, he mused, as he stuck his key into the front door of the trailer he’d lived in since his divorce.
Flipping on the overhead light in his living room, he closed the door behind him. He’d already removed his tie and jacket. He tossed them over the back of a chair as he crossed the narrow room and turned on the television. He usually kept it on just for the noise.
He fell onto the couch, pushing aside the newspaper he’d left lying there earlier. Other than that, the place was pretty neat. He wasn’t home long enough to make a mess between the twice-monthly visits from the woman who cleaned for him.
Kicking off his shoes, he propped his stockinged feet on the coffee table, crossing them at the ankles. The late news was on. He tried to pay attention, but his thoughts kept wandering back to the party. Specifically to Lindsey.
She’d been joking when she’d made that crack about him finally getting the right idea. She must have been. He remembered watching her dance with Riley—standing close to him, chatting so comfortably, finishing with a
kiss on the cheek. Her flirting with Dan must have been along the same lines—just harmless feminine teasing.
A man could finally get the right idea? That was what she’d said—as if she’d been trying to get a message to him for a while and he’d been missing it. He ran through a quick mental review of her behavior during the last few times they’d been together. She’d acted the same as always, right? Feisty. Argumentative. Exasperating. There was no reason for him to think she saw him any differently than she ever had—as a longtime friend.
She must have been teasing. But if she hadn’t been…
Lindsey Gray romantically interested in him? It was a possibility he’d never even considered. After all, she was young, pretty, vibrant, smart. She had an amazing future ahead of her, wherever she chose to settle. As for him—well, he was ten years older, still smarting from a bitter, ugly divorce, contentedly settled into a predictable routine here in generally unexciting little Edstown. She wasn’t the type for a curiosity-satisfying fling, so—
She must have been teasing.
Still, it was an intriguing thought, he discovered. Lindsey and him…if the possibility had ever flitted through his mind, he’d immediately suppressed it. First she’d been too young. And then he’d gotten involved with Melanie, making the incredibly stupid mistake of marrying her. When Lindsey had returned to Edstown—available and fully adult—he’d been newly divorced and admittedly bitter about it.
It had taken him this long to finally put that debacle behind him. He still wasn’t sure he was ready to risk his heart on another relationship. With anyone. Especially Lindsey—who, of course, had only been teasing.
A week passed with no more fires and no particularly newsworthy events. Lindsey’s reporting assignments consisted of a painfully dull city council meeting Monday evening, an equally painful junior high school talent show on Tuesday, a garden club meeting Wednesday afternoon and an assortment of other local-interest-only events.
Whether by coincidence or his design, she saw Dan only twice. Both times he greeted her amicably, exchanged quick, meaningless small talk and then made an excuse to leave. He was obviously avoiding her. And she would never know exactly why until she asked.
When she did run into him, it had nothing to do with either of their jobs. They met in the plumbing aisle of the hardware store early Saturday afternoon.
Dan was examining a display of supplies when Lindsey turned the corner into the same aisle. She stopped a bit too abruptly, then continued toward him. “Well, hi, there. This is a surprise.”
He seemed to freeze for a moment, then he turned with a smile that looked as forced as hers felt. “Following a hot hardware tip?”
“Actually, I’m here on personal business. Dripping faucet. Drives me batty at night.”
“I’ve got a leaking pipe under my sink,” he responded. “It’s going to take a new joint, I guess.”
“Fun way to spend a weekend, hmm?”
He shrugged. “I’d rather be fixing pipes than dealing with the McAllisters again.”
The McAllisters were the couple whose latest battle had been the reason Dan left the mixer early last weekend. Lindsey knew all about it because she’d written a brief report of the incident for the weekly police-beat column. She knew Dan hated that sort of ugly scene. She wondered if the sight of battling spouses reminded him too painfully of his own unpleasant divorce.
Because it was more comfortable for her not to think about that particular subject, she turned her attention back to the plumbing supplies. “Have you seen the—oh, here they are.”
Dan stepped closer to examine the faucet repair kits arranged on the wall in front of her. “Do you know what kind of faucet you have?”
“I wrote down these numbers,” she replied, showing him the slip of notepaper she carried in her hand.
He glanced at her numbers and then again at the display. Selecting one of the repair kits hanging there, he handed it to her. “This is the one you need.”
“Great. Thanks.”
He hesitated for a moment, then cleared his throat. “I’ve got some spare time this afternoon. Why don’t I come over and give you a hand with this?”
Lindsey was perfectly capable of making the repairs herself, and she opened her mouth to tell him so. So it almost surprised her when she heard herself say, instead, “That would be great. Thanks.”
He nodded, his expression unrevealing. “Are you going straight home from here?”
“Actually, I planned to pick up a few grocery items on the way.”
“I’ve got a couple more errands to run, and I need to stop by my place for my toolbox. I’ll meet you at your house in about an hour and a half, if that works for you.”
“Yes, that will be fine,” she said, studiously casual, pretending this was no different from the dozens of other times he’d dropped by her house. That, of course, had been before she’d decided to stop hiding her feelings and make a real effort to get Dan’s full attention.
Just forty-five minutes later, after a quick dash through the grocery store, she stood in front of a mirror in her house, atypically obsessing about her appearance. She had donned a baby-blue spring sweater, some jeans and boots to run her errands that morning. Not grubby, she decided, but not exactly seductive, either. Of course, she would really look ridiculous if she put on something slinky to fix the plumbing.
She brushed her hair and touched up her makeup—very subtly, of course, thanks to Connie Peterson’s expert tutelage. She debated between swingy silver earrings and big gold hoops, finally deciding on the silver. And then, deciding they looked too calculated, she took them off.
“Would you chill out?” she demanded of the harried-looking reflection in the mirror. “You’re acting like an idiot.”
Dan was only coming to fix her faucet, she reminded herself again. A very big-brotherly thing to do—certainly no indication that his interest in her had changed. It was unlikely that anything significant would happen between them this afternoon. So there was no need to get all bent out of shape about his impending arrival.
Maybe she should change her sweater, she thought, turning sideways in front of the mirror.
And then she covered her eyes and groaned. Maybe she should just sell the house and move away before he got there—thereby preventing another occasion for her to do something really foolish.
Toolbox in hand, Dan was just about to leave his trailer and head over to Lindsey’s house when someone knocked on his front door. He groaned at the thought that it could be a summons back to work. Lindsey would probably insist on knowing all the details if he called to cancel, and if she decided there was a news story involved, she’d want to be right in the middle of it.
Maybe it was just a door-to-door evangelist or something, he thought hopefully.
Instead, he found a pretty dark-haired teenager on his front step. “Polly?” he asked his sixteen-year-old niece in surprise. “Is something wrong?”
Her bottom lip bore evidence that she’d been chewing on it as she waited for him to answer the door, and there was a somber look in her brown eyes that were so like his sister’s. “I’m not sure, Uncle Dan. I found something that I think maybe you should see.”
He glanced at the tattered notebook in her hand, then behind her. “Did you come alone?”
She nodded. “Mom let me use her car to do some shopping. I didn’t tell her I was coming here, because I was afraid she’d get worried.”
Dan didn’t like the sound of that at all. He was very fond of his only niece and more than a bit overprotective when it came to his family. “Come in, Polly. Tell me what’s going on.”
He briefly considered calling Lindsey, but decided to wait until he heard what Polly had to say. This might not take long. Could be his niece just had some gossip to share with him about a school prank or something. She told him occasionally when she’d heard a rumor of a planned fight or vandalism or other juvenile mischief of that nature.
Closing the door behind her,
he asked, “Would you like a cola or something?”
“No, thanks. I’m supposed to meet Jenny at the shopping center pretty soon. I just thought I better show you this first.”
Because she still looked a bit nervous—which wasn’t characteristic of his outgoing, gregarious niece—he kept his voice gentle. “Show me what, honey?”
She held out the notebook she’d carried in with her. Tattered, bent and ragged, it looked as though it had been put through some hard use. “I found this on the schoolgrounds after school yesterday afternoon. It was behind a bush, almost hidden. I think someone might have dropped it there during that big fight at lunch.”
Dan nodded. He’d heard about the melee at the school yesterday. In fact, he’d had to send an officer over to help break it up. Such things were becoming more common even in little Edstown, he thought with a sigh of regret. “If you want the book returned to the owner, why didn’t you just turn it in to the school office Monday? I’m sure it could have waited until then.”
Her expression troubled, she shook her head, making her dark hair sway around her face. “I was going to do that. There isn’t a name in it or anything, so I decided I’d just hand it in at the office in case anyone asked for it. Then, this morning, I saw it sitting on the desk in my room, and I thought I’d look through it and see if there was any clue to the owner—you know, in case he needed it before Monday?”
“And was there a clue?”
“I don’t know. I didn’t get all the way through it. I think you’d better look at it, Uncle Dan.”
Struck by the urgency in her voice, he took the notebook without looking at it. After a moment he glanced down, opened the book and flipped through a few pages.
The first phrase that caught his attention was “burn it all down.” Written in large, dark, angry-looking letters. He started turning the pages more slowly. Fire was mentioned on every page—worked into poetry, imagery, artwork, random notations. The phrase “burn it all down” appeared hundreds of times—printed, scribbled, drawn in elaborate graphic lettering.
