The Winter Lodge

by Susan Wiggs

  Fury flashed through him, an unreasoning sting. In one swift movement, Rourke’s arm whipped out, shoving the guy out of the way. “Step aside,” he barked.

  The firefighter didn’t say a word, just fell back with his hands raised, eyes darting behind his face shield. “Listen, we’re both on the same side. You saw what it’s like in there. You wouldn’t last thirty seconds. We don’t think the resident’s at home, honest, we don’t. If she was home, she would’ve gotten out.”

  Rourke unfurled his fists. Damn. He’d been about to clock the guy. What the hell was he thinking?

  He wasn’t thinking, that was the problem. That had always been his problem. He needed to figure out where Jenny was. Possibilities streamed through his mind. Maybe she was at her best friend Nina’s house. But at this time of night? Or maybe Olivia Bellamy’s? No. Though related, the two women weren’t close. Shit, was she dating some guy Rourke didn’t know about?

  Then it hit him. Of course. “Damn,” he said, and bolted for the car.

  * * *

  Jenny was still standing outside the bakery, waiting for the dawn, when a blue-white flash lit the sky. The sudden lightning was eerily out of place in the middle of winter. Then she heard the quick yip of a siren and realized it was emergency lights. The vehicle sounded close, as though it was in the next block. Busy night, she thought, heading back into the bakery. She passed through the kitchen, where Zach was wheeling more dough out of the proofer.

  She was about to get back to work when she heard an urgent rapping on the front door. “I’ll see who it is,” she called to Laura and Zach, and walked through the café, which at this hour was dimly lit only by the buzzing neon sign of a coffee cup with squiggles of steam rising from it.

  The electric blue of a squad car’s emergency overhead lights slashed through the empty café. Hurrying now, Jenny undid the lock. The bell over the front door jangled, and Rourke McKnight strode inside, his long coat swirling on the winter wind.

  Avalon’s chief of police looked the part. His square jaw was clean-shaven, his shoulders broad and powerful. Though he was blond and blue-eyed, a crescent-shaped scar on his cheekbone kept him from being too pretty.

  “I have a feeling you’re not dropping in for a cup of coffee,” said Jenny. These were probably the first words she’d spoken to him in years.

  He gave her a smoldering look, one that made her wonder what it would be like to be his girlfriend, a member of the parade of bimbos who seemed to march through his life with serial regularity. Right, she thought. Why would she want to join a parade of bimbos?

  Rourke grabbed her by the upper arms. “Jenny. You’re here.” His voice was rough, urgent.

  Okay, so this was interesting. Rourke McKnight, grabbing her, pulling her into his embrace. What on earth had she done to deserve this? Maybe she should have done it long ago.

  “I couldn’t sleep,” she said, and glanced at his hands on her. She and Rourke didn’t touch, the two of them. Not since...they didn’t touch.

  He seemed to read her thoughts and let her go, jerking his head toward the door. “We’ve got a situation at your house. I’ll give you a lift over there.”

  Despite the fuzzy edges of reality imparted by the pill she’d taken, she felt a deep, visceral disturbance. “What kind of situation?”

  “Your house is on fire,” Rourke said simply.

  Jenny formed her mouth into an O, but no sound came out. What did one say, anyway, when confronted with such a statement?

  “Go,” Laura said, thrusting her parka and boots at her. “Call me later.”

  The fuzzy edges did not alter as Jenny got into the squad car Rourke drove on the weekends. Even the swirling lights sweeping the area in an ovoid circuit didn’t make her flinch. Yet she was sharp with attention. The wonders of modern chemistry, she thought.

  “What happened?” she asked.

  “Call came in, a 911 from Mrs. Samuelson.”

  Irma Samuelson had lived next door to the Majeskys for years. “It’s impossible,” Jenny said. “I—how could my house be on fire?”

  “Seat belt,” he said, and the moment she clicked the buckle, he peeled away from the curb.

  “Are you sure there’s no mistake?” she asked. “Maybe it’s someone else’s house.”

  “There’s no mistake. I checked. God, I thought—God damn—”

  Was his voice shaking? “Oh, no,” she said. “Rourke, you thought I was in the house.”

  “It’s a safe assumption at this hour of the morning.”

  So that was why he’d grabbed her. It was relief, pure and simple. As they sped toward Maple Street, she became aware of a peculiar smell. “It reeks of smoke in here.”

  “You’re welcome to roll down the window if you don’t mind freezing.”

  “Where did the smoke smell come—Oh, God. You went into the house, didn’t you?” She could just picture him, pushing past firefighters to battle his way into the burning house. “You went inside to find me.”

  He didn’t reply. He didn’t have to. Rourke McKnight was always rescuing people. It was a compulsion with him.

  “Did you leave the stove on?” he asked her. “Maybe an appliance...?”

  “Of course not,” she snapped. The questions ticked her off because they scared her. Because it was possible she had been careless. She lived alone now, and maybe she was turning strange. Sometimes she couldn’t shake the feeling that she was doomed to live the life of a loner, an outcast with nobody to turn off the coffeemaker if she left it on. She could end up like that old cat lady she and her friends used to make up stories about when they were kids—alone, eccentric, with nothing but a smelly house full of cats for company.

  “...zoning out on me, are you?” Rourke’s voice broke in on her thoughts.

  “What?” she said, giving herself a mental shake.

  “Are you all right?”

  “You just said my house is burning down. I don’t think I’m supposed to be all right about this.”

  “I mean—”

  “I know what you mean. Do I seem anxious to you?”

  He flicked a glance at her. “You’re cool, under the circumstances. We’re not there yet, though. Do you know what it means when the fire department says the structure is fully involved?” he asked.

  “No, I—” She choked on the rest of the sentence when he turned the corner and she caught a glimpse of her street. Her heart tripped into overdrive. “My God.”

  The street was barricaded at both ends and jammed with emergency vehicles, workers and equipment. Amber lights on tripods blazed from the shadows. Neighbors in winter coats thrown over their pajamas were clustered in their front yards or on porches, their heads tilted skyward, their expressions openmouthed with wonder, as though they were watching a Fourth of July fireworks display. Except no one was smiling, oohing or aahing.

  Firefighters in full turnout gear surrounded the house, battling flames that lit up the entire two-story height of the building. Rourke stopped the car and they got out. A row of upper-story windows had been blown out as if someone had shot them, one after the other.

  Those windows lined the upstairs hallway, which had been hung with family photos—an old-fashioned wedding portrait of her grandparents, a few of Jenny’s mother, Mariska, who was eternally twenty-three and beautiful, frozen at the age she was the year she went away. There was also an abundant, fast-changing array of Jenny’s school portraits through the years.

  As a little girl, she used to run up and down the hall, making noise until Gram told her to simmer down. Jenny always loved that expression: simmer down. She would stand with her hands on her head, making a hissing sound, a simmering pot.

  She liked to make up stories about the people in the pictures. Her grandparents, who faced the camera lens with the grave stiffness typical of immig
rants freshly minted from Ellis Island, became Broadway stars. Her mother, whose large eyes seemed to hold a delicious secret, was a government spy, protecting the world while in hiding in a place so deep underground, she couldn’t even tell her family where she was.

  Somebody—a firefighter—was yelling at everyone to get back, to stay a safe distance away. Other firefighters ran up the driveway with a thick, heavy hose on their shoulders. On a raised ladder that unfolded from the engine truck, a guy battled the flaming roof.

  “Jenny, thank the Lord,” said Mrs. Samuelson, rushing to greet her. She wore a long camel-hair coat and snow boots she hadn’t bothered to buckle, and she cradled Nutley, her quivering Yorkshire terrier, in her arms. “When I first noticed the fire, I was terrified you were in the house.”

  “I was at the bakery,” Jenny explained.

  “Mrs. Samuelson, did someone get a statement from you?” Rourke asked.

  “Why, yes, but I—”

  “Excuse us, ma’am.” Rourke took Jenny’s hand and led her past the fire line to the rear of the engine. An older man was giving orders on a walkie-talkie, and another was rebroadcasting them with a bullhorn.

  “Chief, this is Jenny Majesky,” Rourke said. He kept hold of her hand.

  “Miss, I’m sorry about your house,” said the chief. “We had an eight-minute response time after the alarm came in, but this one had been going long before we got the call. These older homes—they tend to go fast. We’re doing our best.”

  “I...um...thank you, I guess.” She had no idea what to say when her house was going up in smoke.

  “Your neighbors said there were no household pets.”

  “That’s right.” Just Gram’s African violets and potted herbs in the garden window. Just my whole world, everything I own, Jenny thought. She was shivering in the wintry night despite the layers of warm clothes and the roar of the flames. It was amazing how hard, how uncontrollably, she shook.

  Something warm and heavy settled around her shoulders. It took a moment for her to realize it was a first-aid blanket. And Rourke McKnight’s arms. He stood behind her and pulled her against him, her back to his front, his arms encircling her from behind as though to shield her from harm.

  With an odd sense of surrender, she leaned against him, as though her own weight was too much for her. She shut her eyes briefly, hiding from the glare and the sting of the smoke. The fire was warm against her face. But the acrid smell nauseated her, made her picture everything in the house feeding the flames. She opened her eyes and watched.

  “It’s ruined,” she said, turning her head and looking up at Rourke. “Everything’s gone.”

  A guy with a camera, probably someone from the paper, stood in the bed of his truck and aimed his long lens at the scene.

  Rourke’s arms tightened around her. “I’m sorry, Jen. I wish I could say you’re wrong.”

  “What happens now?”

  “An investigation into the cause,” he said. “Insurance claims, inventory.”

  “I mean right now. The next twenty minutes. The next hour. Eventually they’ll put the fire out, but then what? Do I go back to the bakery and sleep under my desk?”

  He bent his head low. His mouth was next to her ear so she could hear him over the roaring noise, and his body curved protectively over hers. “Don’t worry about that,” he said. “I’ve got you covered.”

  She believed him, of course. She had good reason. She’d known Rourke McKnight for more than half her life. Despite their troubled history together, despite the guilt and heartache they’d once caused each other and the great rift that gaped between them, she’d always known she could count on him.

  Chapter Three

  Jenny’s eyes flew open as she was startled from a heavy, exhausted sleep. Her heart was pounding, her lungs starved for air and her mental state confused, to put it mildly. Her mind was filled with a grim dream about a book editor systematically feeding the pages of Jenny’s stories into the bakery’s giant spiral mixer.

  She lay flat on her back with her limbs splayed, as though the bed was a raft and she a shipwreck survivor. She stared without comprehension at the ceiling and unfamiliar light fixture. Then, cautiously, she pushed herself up to a sitting position.

  She was wearing a gray-and-pinstripe Yankees shirt, so large that it slipped off one shoulder. And a pair of thick cotton athletic socks, also large and floppy. And—she lifted the hem of the shirt to check—plaid men’s boxers.

  She was sitting smack in the middle of Rourke McKnight’s bed. His gigantic, California king bed that was covered in shockingly luxurious sheets. She checked the tag of a pillowcase—600 thread count. Who knew? she thought. The man was a sensualist.

  There was a light tap on the door, and then he came in without waiting for an invitation. He had a mug of coffee in each hand, the morning paper folded under his arm. He was wearing faded Levi’s and a tight T-shirt stenciled with NYPD. Three scruffy-looking dogs swirled around his legs.

  “We made the front page,” he said, setting the coffee mugs on the bedside table. Then he opened the Avalon Troubadour. She didn’t look, not at first. She was still bewildered and trapped in the dream, wondering what had caused her to awaken so quickly. “What time is it?”

  “A little after seven. I was trying to be quiet, to let you sleep.”

  “I’m surprised I slept at all.”

  “I’m not. Hell of a long day yesterday.”

  Now, there was an understatement. She had stuck around half the day, watching the firefighters battle the flames to the very last embers. Under heavy, gray winter skies, she had seen her house transformed from a familiar two-story house into a black scar of charred wood, ruined pipes and fixtures, objects burned beyond recognition. The stone fireplace stood amid the rubble, a lone surviving monument. Someone explained to her that after the investigators determined the cause of the fire and the insurance adjustor paid a visit, a salvage company would sift through the ruins, rescuing whatever they could. Then the rubble would be removed and disposed of. She was given a packet of forms to fill out, asking her to estimate the value of the things she’d lost. She hadn’t touched the forms. Didn’t they know her greatest losses were treasures that had no dollar value?

  She had simply stood there with Rourke, too overwhelmed to speak or plan anything. She added her shaky signature to some documents. In the late afternoon, Rourke declared that he was taking her home. She hadn’t even had the strength to object. He had fixed her instant chicken soup and saltine crackers, and told her to get some sleep. That, at least, she’d accomplished with ease, collapsing in a heap of exhaustion.

  Now he sat down on the side of the bed, his profile illuminated by the weak morning light struggling through translucent white curtains on the window. He hadn’t shaved yet, and golden stubble softened the lines of his jaw. The T-shirt, thin and faded from years of washing, molded to the muscular structure of his chest.

  The dogs flopped down in a heap on the floor. And something about this whole situation felt surreal to her. She was in Rourke’s bed. In his room. He was bringing her coffee. Reading the paper with her. What was wrong with this picture?

  Ah, yes, she recalled. They hadn’t slept together.

  The thought seemed petty in the aftermath of what had happened. Gram was dead and her house had burned. Sleeping with Rourke McKnight should not be a priority just now. Still, it didn’t seem quite fair that all she had accomplished in this bed was a bad dream.

  “Let’s see.” She reached for the paper, scooting closer to him. This was what lovers did, sat together in bed, sipping coffee and reading the morning paper. Then she spotted the picture. It was a big one, in color, above the fold. “Oh, God. We look...”

  Like a couple. She couldn’t escape the thought. The photographer had caught them in what appeared to be a tender embrace, with R
ourke’s arms encircling her from behind and his mouth next to her ear as he bent to whisper something. The fire provided dramatic backlighting. You couldn’t tell from looking at the picture that she was shivering so hard her teeth rattled, and that he wasn’t murmuring sweet nothings in her ear, but explaining to her that she was suddenly homeless.

  She didn’t say anything, hoping that the romance of the shot was only in her head. She sipped her coffee and scanned the article. “Faulty wiring?” she said. “How do they know it’s faulty wiring?”

  “It’s just speculation. We’ll know more after the investigation.”

  “And why is this coffee so damn good?” she demanded. “It’s perfect.”

  “You got a problem with that?”

  “I had no idea you could make coffee like this.” She took another sip, savoring it.

  “I’m a man of many talents. Some people just have a gift with coffee,” he added in a fake-serious voice. “They’re known as coffee whisperers.”

  “And how do you know I take mine with exactly this much cream?”

  “Maybe I’ve made a study of everything about you, from the way you take your coffee, to the number of towels you use when you shower, to your favorite radio station.” He rested his elbows on his knees, cradling the mug in his hands.

  “Uh-huh. Good one, McKnight.”

  “I thought you’d like it.” He finished his coffee.

  She drew up her knees and stretched the oversize shirt down to cover them. “It’s a shallow thing to say, but a good cup of coffee makes even the worst situation less awful.” Closing her eyes, she drank more, savoring it and trying to be in the moment. Given all that had happened, it was the only safe place to be. Here. With Rourke. Safe in his bed.

  “What’s funny?” he asked.

  She opened her eyes. She hadn’t realized she was laughing. “I always wondered what it would be like to spend the night in your bed.”

  “So how was it?”

  “Well—” she set her mug on the nightstand “—the sheets don’t match but the thread count is amazing. And they’re clean. Not just-washed clean, but clean like you change your bed more than once in a blue moon. Four pillows and a great-feeling mattress. What’s not to like?”