Into the Flame

by Christina Dodd

  She hadn’t been so trusting before. Or maybe she hadn’t been so willing to let him take charge. ‘‘We’ll have the house salads and a medium chicken garlic pizza.’’ He waved the waiter away. ‘‘As long as we both eat the garlic, we’ll still be able to kiss later.’’

  She ignored that. ‘‘Garlic and chicken? The pizza sounds healthy.’’

  ‘‘No. Too much cheese.’’ He tucked the envelope into his shirt pocket.

  The door opened, and he watched two big, rough-looking guys step in. He hadn’t seen them around town before, and in one glance, he cataloged everything about them. Brown hair, blond hair. Square chins. Slanted, almost Asian eyes. Bulky shoulders and chests. Probably brothers. Definitely trouble.

  ‘‘What?’’ She twisted around in her seat, then immediately turned back to him. ‘‘Oh.’’

  ‘‘What does that mean?’’ Doug asked.

  Mario seated them by the bathrooms.

  ‘‘It’s the two construction guys from the diner this morning.’’

  Doug focused on Firebird, on the nasty twist of her mouth. ‘‘What did they do?’’

  ‘‘Whistled and looked me over.’’

  ‘‘I can’t fault their taste.’’ He sipped the wine and tasted notes of pepper and black cherry, of spice and sweetness, and thought how much the wine was like Firebird, complex and rich . . . and addictive.

  ‘‘Thank you, but there’s looking over and there’s looking over, if you know what I mean. These guys could learn a few things about being suave from, oh, King Kong.’’

  Doug nodded. ‘‘I’ll ask around about them. The town’s not big. Someone’s sure to know something, especially if they’re a problem.’’

  ‘‘I’m not trying to make trouble for them.’’ Firebird’s voice was low and firm. ‘‘I didn’t say there was anything wrong with them. I just said they were obnoxious.’’

  ‘‘I trust your instincts.’’

  ‘‘Do you? Why?’’

  Because you knew there was something wrong about me and ran away. But now wasn’t the time to admit that. Not when she was here, sharing his meal and his wine, showing him her pictures . . . giving him his son.

  His son. Of all the things he had imagined when she left, he had never imagined she left because they had created a baby. The idea of being a father . . . it choked him with pride, and with fear. What did a man like him know about responsibility, about raising a child? Going right to the heart of his doubts, he asked, ‘‘Why did you run away from me? Did you think I would be a bad father?’’

  ‘‘I didn’t think that at all. I didn’t know. How could I?’’

  ‘‘What do you mean?’’

  ‘‘I didn’t know anything about you. I told you about my father and my mother and my brothers. I told you about my best friend. I told you about falling in gymnastics and all the surgeries it took to make my bad leg viable again.’’ She leaned back, the red-wine glass balanced in her fingers, her eyes as stern as a nun’s. ‘‘And you told me precisely . . . nothing.’’

  ‘‘There’s nothing to tell.’’

  ‘‘That’s helpful,’’ she mocked. ‘‘You must have some experiences you can share. After all, you weren’t born the day I met you.’’

  He sat in the hard, straight-backed chair and stared at her.

  She wanted to know about him? All about him? He doubted that. He doubted that highly.

  But by God, she had asked. So let her know whom she had let into her life.

  ‘‘No. I was born twenty-three years ago. Sometime around the Fourth of July. They’re not sure exactly which day I was born, because my parents dumped me, naked, out of their car in the middle of the Nevada desert and drove away without ever looking back.’’

  Chapter Fifteen

  Firebird looked odd. Puckered around the lips, like she’d bitten into a lemon. And she actually put her hand on her heart, as if it hurt. ‘‘I was born on the Fourth of July, too. H-how did you survive?’’ Her eyes looked big and blue and sorrowful.

  ‘‘Some rancher was having problems with coyotes attacking his sheep, and he spotted a pack and started shooting. They all ran away except one.’’

  ‘‘A female.’’ Carefully, Firebird lifted her wine and took a sip.

  ‘‘Yeah. How did you know?’’

  ‘‘I understand pack dynamics better than most people.’’

  ‘‘I’ll bet you do.’’ He met her gaze, and for a long moment, they fell into silence as he willed her to trust him, to tell him—

  ‘‘What did the female do?’’ Firebird asked.

  Doug needed to remember—Firebird didn’t trust him. That was all too obvious. ‘‘She was lying on something. She wouldn’t budge. The rancher was ready to shoot—the news report said he figured she had to be rabid to face him down. But he heard something cry, thought it sounded like a baby, and went over to check. God bless the beast.’’ Most of the time Doug meant it, but sometimes . . . sometimes he thought it would have been better if he’d died.

  ‘‘There you were. The mama coyote was keeping you warm.’’ Firebird laughed a stuttering laugh. Then, as if she were answering herself, she said, ‘‘Well, of course she was. Doesn’t that figure?’’

  ‘‘That’s what the rancher said, too. He wrapped me up in his coat and took me to his truck, got out a sheep nipple, and fed me sheep’s milk.’’ Doug watched her, thinking he had expected shock that he’d been abandoned, maybe sympathy, maybe a badly hidden worry that her son’s father came from a less-than-savory family. He hadn’t expected her to act as if he were confirming her worst suspicions. ‘‘He called Child Protective Services. They picked me up and put out a call for my parents.’’

  ‘‘Was it a big news story?’’ She looked as if she were memorizing his every word.

  ‘‘No. A few notices in the local county rag, that’s all. Why?’’

  ‘‘It seems the kind of heartwarming story the news agencies would love.’’

  ‘‘It would have been heartwarming if my parents came forward. As it was, they didn’t, and I was almost dead—second-degree burns from the sun, malnourished, and pretty pissed at the world. Apparently I screamed my whole first year.’’

  ‘‘Not a likely candidate for adoption.’’

  ‘‘Nope. My first-grade teacher told me I was born with a chip on my shoulder, and that if I didn’t straighten up, and fast, I was going to go to hell.’’ Funny. He hadn’t remembered that until now.

  Firebird’s mouth thinned. ‘‘That’s not something to tell a first grader.’’

  ‘‘My first memory was of squaring off with a bully.’’ He set his teeth in what he called a pleasant smile. ‘‘But don’t worry. I kicked her ass.’’

  He caught Firebird by surprise, and she laughed. ‘‘You beat up a girl?’’

  ‘‘I was four. She was sixteen, one of those dogooders who volunteered to take care of the poor orphans so she could get community-service points with her church. She wanted to take care of the babies, not a bunch of snotty four-year-olds, so she picked on this one little girl who wore ashtray glasses and stuttered.’’

  Firebird’s smile faded.

  He could see that sixteen-year-old’s self-righteous, smug face even now, and hear her screams when he head-butted her right in her soft, flabby belly. ‘‘God, I hate a bully.’’

  ‘‘Is that why you went into law enforcement?’’ As always, Firebird saw more than most people.

  ‘‘No, I did it because I thought that was the easiest way to track my family without coming up on stalking charges.’’ Let her make of that what she would.

  ‘‘And because you don’t like bullies.’’ She smiled at him.

  He started to correct her again, then figured, if she wanted to think the best of him, who was he to stop her? ‘‘Sure. So anyway, nobody adopted me, and I lived in an orphanage and in foster homes until . . . I ran away.’’

  Firebird took the hand he had clenched into a fist on the table. ‘‘Was it all
awful?’’ she asked.

  ‘‘Not all.’’

  ‘‘I thought not.’’ She sat back and let the waiter place her salad before her.

  ‘‘What do you mean?’’

  She picked up her fork. ‘‘Someone taught you to be a good man.’’

  Yeah, honey, you go ahead and think that.

  But that was always the trouble with Firebird. She liked people. She wasn’t stupid about it; she was careful with strangers and knew how to protect herself. But on first impression, she believed the best about everybody, and when Doug had approached her at the campus library, she’d immediately put him on her list of good guys.

  The thing was, when he was with her, he tried to live up to her image of him. What the hell he’d been thinking, he would never know. . . . Well, yes, he did. He’d been thinking he’d act any way, do anything, to get between her legs.

  Simple. Direct.

  The trouble was, he was sitting here thinking the same thing now.

  ‘‘Good salad!’’ she said. ‘‘I was starved.’’

  ‘‘You’re always starved.’’ Yet built like a model.

  ‘‘Yes,’’ she agreed cheerfully. ‘‘I can’t wait for the pizza.’’

  When he thought how close he’d come this afternoon to making it with her, he wanted to yell at the driver who’d rolled it on the curve going into King Junction and sent him back to work for the Washington State Police. But the sight of the injured woman changed his mind. Instead he’d helped the paramedics load her into the ambulance, directed the cleanup, and hotfooted it back to his house like a puppy on a leash—and Firebird held the lead end.

  Worse, he had done so while thinking she was gone.

  He ate his salad quickly—a cop ate when he could, because he never knew when he would land the next meal—and pushed it away. ‘‘When I was eight, I got in trouble in Carson City. Something about organizing a shoplifting ring.’’

  Firebird froze, her fork halfway to her mouth.

  ‘‘In the state’s infinite wisdom, they decided to send me to Las Vegas.’’

  ‘‘Las Vegas? That’s brilliant,’’ she muttered, and put down her silverware.

  ‘‘To give the devil his due—’’

  She winced.

  ‘‘—the idea was brilliant. Because there was this lady there. Mrs. Fuller. She took the tough cases like me and reformed us.’’

  Firebird’s eyes flashed. ‘‘How?’’

  ‘‘She didn’t do anything. She just lived a good life and let us kids live it with her.’’ He hadn’t spoken of Mrs. Fuller since the day he ran away, but he remembered her warm, round, wrinkled face with the clarity of a hope long cherished and never forgotten. ‘‘She was a Christian. A real Christian, not one of the ones who are religious on Sunday and the rest of the week you can’t find a spit of kindness or charity in their souls or their actions.’’

  ‘‘Okay.’’ Firebird relaxed. ‘‘How many kids did she have?’’

  ‘‘She always kept three, and for emergencies like me, she’d put up a cot.’’

  The waiter brought the pizza and, with a flourish, placed it on the table. The smell of garlic rose in waves from the perfectly browned, bubbly crust. The chicken nestled in the white, soft cheese.

  As Doug watched, Firebird took a long breath and closed her eyes in appreciation. Later, he was going to put the same look of ecstasy on her face. . . .

  Glancing up, he saw Quentin watching her with the same fascination and longing he felt.

  The bastard.

  Doug slapped his hand over Quentin’s and squeezed. Hard.

  Quentin jumped. His guilty gaze flashed to Doug’s.

  Doug glared.

  Quentin blanched, poured more wine, asked if he could get them anything else, and hightailed it out of there.

  Firebird watched, puzzled. ‘‘What got into him?’’

  ‘‘He probably had another order up.’’ Doug picked up the server and slid a slice of pizza onto her plate. ‘‘Enjoy.’’

  She took a bite. Her strong, white teeth sank into the cheese, through the crust, and she sighed as she chewed. ‘‘That’s fabulous. In Blythe, we’ve got a café that serves breakfast and lunch, and that’s all.’’

  ‘‘You live in Blythe?’’ he asked smoothly. ‘‘Isn’t that a little town in the Cascades?’’

  She looked at him, looked hard, then relaxed, as if she’d made a decision about him. ‘‘Blythe is so small, the mice are round-shouldered.’’

  His mouth crooked up at one corner.

  ‘‘My family lives outside of town on six hundred and forty acres.’’

  ‘‘That’s . . . big.’’ He ate a bite of pizza, made sure she had another piece before she finished the first one, and kept her wineglass topped off.

  ‘‘We’ve got a valley planted mostly in grapes, and a lot of woods around us. My dad and mom got the land cheap because no one else wanted it. Now it’s prime property.’’ She smiled proudly. ‘‘They’ve done well for immigrants who came to this country with nothing.’’

  ‘‘When I meet them, I know I’ll like them.’’

  ‘‘Yes. They’ll like you, too.’’ Firebird’s eyes got almost teary.

  He couldn’t imagine why, but the idea of Firebird crying terrified him. What would he do? Sit there like a log? Pat her on the back? Kiss her and . . . ?

  ‘‘This Mrs. Fuller—how long did she work on you before you reformed?’’

  Man. Firebird recovered fast, and when she wanted information, she was like a heat-seeking missile.

  Luckily for him, he was the heat. ‘‘The first year was rocky.’’

  ‘‘What turned things around?’’

  ‘‘By the time I got to Mrs. Fuller, I was not about to be tamed. I was out there on the streets, picking pockets and running errands for the guys who owned the casinos. She kept telling me she could see the potential in me. She would tell me about great men who had risen above their tough beginnings. She told me to use my head, think things through, go to college and make something of myself. Be the boss, not the gofer. She said if I kept going like I was, I was going to get myself killed before I was twenty.’’ He finished off the last slice of pizza and settled back in his chair. ‘‘Most important, she told me I could talk to her about anything and she’d understand.’’

  ‘‘She sounds great.’’

  ‘‘She was, but I wasn’t listening. I would have sworn I wasn’t listening. I was such a smart-ass little shit. I thought I knew better than an old lady in a house crowded with those stupid little Hummels. God, I hated those smug, round Swiss faces, so sweet and innocent. I didn’t have a damned thing in common with them. Then . . . I landed in the wrong place, doing an errand for the wrong guy, and just about got myself raped.’’

  ‘‘Oh, Douglas.’’ Firebird reached across the table and took his hand.

  Not that he needed the comfort. That had been years ago, and over time, the horror and the helplessness had faded. But he let her hold him anyway, turning his hand to fit under hers. ‘‘Lucky for me I was a big kid, and I was mean and a fighter. I got away, no one was any the wiser, and I was not about to tell anybody.’’

  ‘‘Especially not Mrs. Fuller.’’

  Firebird was one smart woman. ‘‘Especially not her, because I knew she’d say, ‘I told you so.’ ’’

  Quentin appeared, carefully did not look at Firebird, and asked, ‘‘Dessert? Our tiramisu is world-famous.’’

  ‘‘There’s a lot of world-famous food here in Rocky Cliffs. But I couldn’t eat another thing,’’ Firebird said regretfully.

  ‘‘Coffee, then?’’ the waiter asked.

  ‘‘Decaf, please,’’ Firebird said.

  ‘‘Full octane.’’ Doug had had one glass of wine, yet the bottle was empty. He wondered if Firebird realized she was buzzed, whether she knew her gestures were freer, her eyes warmer, her voice slightly slurred. He wondered if he would feel guilty for taking advantage of a woman under the influenc
e. He suspected not. He didn’t care how or why as long as she would fall into his arms.

  Quentin placed the coffees, one caf, one decaf, on the table, with cream and sweetener, and faded away again.

  Doug watched Firebird pour half the cream into her cup, add three yellow packets, and stir vigorously. She offered him the cream pitcher, but he shook his head. ‘‘I take it black.’’

  ‘‘Of course you do,’’ she said. ‘‘So how’d Mrs. Fuller find out?’’

  ‘‘I curtailed my street activities—man, I was scared the molester would find me and off me in some horrible way. I hit the books. Behaved like a model citizen.’’ The coffee was hot and full-flavored, exactly what he needed after a day like today. ‘‘Thought I was being discreet about the whole incident.’’

  ‘‘I’ll bet.’’

  He lifted his eyebrows at her skeptical tone.

  ‘‘I know exactly how discreet a dumb boy can be,’’ she explained. ‘‘Remember, I have three brothers. You probably might as well have sent up fireworks.’’

  ‘‘Yeah. Well. Mrs. Fuller sat me down, gave me a cup of tea, some cookies, softened me up. . . .’’ He’d never thought about it before, but Mrs. Fuller would have made a great police interrogator. ‘‘Then, bam! She asked me what had happened, and I cracked. Made a total fool of myself. Sobbed on her lap. Told her everything, just like she said I could. I was so embarrassed.’’

  ‘‘Did she straighten you out?’’

  ‘‘She didn’t have to. After that, I pretty much straightened myself out.’’

  ‘‘You went to school, got smart, and gave up a life of petty crime?’’

  ‘‘Mostly.’’

  ‘‘What about the guy who tried to rape you? Did you still have to dodge him?’’

  ‘‘Interesting thing about him.’’ Doug’s eyes narrowed as he remembered. ‘‘Mrs. Fuller went down to the casinos, and the next day . . . he disappeared from Las Vegas, never to be seen again.’’