Fire at Sunset: The Firefighters of Darling Bay 4 (16 page)

Bonnie looked around the large room—she could almost feel her heart get larger, more expansive. These were her people. Her family, both of blood and of choosing. Her father, over in the corner, had a hand on her mother’s shoulder and she watched her mother smile at him. Her first-grade teacher, Mrs. Hawkins, much older but still dear to her, shot her a smile. Bonnie’s heart lifted.
 

Then Lexie said, “Caz Lloyd and Bonnie Maddern to the stage, please! Ladies and gentlemen, you’re in for a treat. Caz Lloyd is our quietest firefighter, and one of the newest members of our department. Let’s drag him out of his shell. And you probably all know Bonnie, born and bred in Darling Bay, and you know she’s scared of nothing. Except
maybe
of what’s coming up next.”
 

Bonnie looked at Caz, and even across the room, she could see the tightness at the corners of his eyes. Her heart dropped into her boots. This was going to be the worst thing ever.

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

This was going to be the worst thing
ever
. Caz settled onto the hard plastic chair a few feet away from Bonnie on the small stage and gritted his teeth. Maybe if he concentrated hard enough, he could have one of those out-of-body experiences people were always talking about on late-night TV. He’d just float up and look down on what was happening on stage and when it was all over, he could rejoin himself and get himself the hell back to the ranch.
 

Bonnie, on the other hand, looked positively chipper. How did she do that? Did she actually
like
being up here, with all eyes on her? They deserved to be on her, that was true. She looked incredible, like all her features had been dipped into something iridescent. It wasn’t makeup—he could tell that she had more on than usual (though she wore way less than the gobs piled on Tox’s face right now). It was something else. An inner glow. She was heated inside—he could feel it from where he sat.
 

And blast it all, how he wished he could touch her skin to feel it himself. But he couldn’t. He’d wrecked any chance of that when he’d kicked her out of his house. That had been his plan, after all—to damage that chance, to kill any glimmer of hope he could possibly have of having her, being near her.
 

How he was going to survive being in the rig with her, next to her, for months and months to come, he didn’t know. He was going to lose his mind as well as most of his traitorous heart.
 

Transfer. He’d ask—no, beg—Chief Barger for a transfer.
 

On the floor below their seats on the stage, Lexie grinned. She was loving her role in this, obviously. If it hadn’t been them up there, Caz could have taken pleasure in it, too. It was a fun thing to do, an amusing premise, unless you were the one on display next to the woman who heated you to diabolic temperatures without even trying.
 

Lexie held up a yellow card. “I’m going with a dare next. Let’s see what we can get these two to do, shall we?” Slowly,
way
too slowly, she pulled out a card, and then she laughed. “Okay, whoever wrote this gets an official fire explorer sticker because this is awesome. The dare is: Spend the next round sitting on the other’s person lap. Who’s going to start the bidding?”
 

No way. It was a ridiculous, dumb, childish dare. Who would bid on it? But Caz was wrong. The bidding was fast and furious, and for a moment, it hung at five hundred dollars for Caz to sit on Bonnie’s lap, which was entirely out of the question. Sure, Bonnie was strong, her arm muscles as defined as her bike-riding legs. But he’d crush her. The pause went on too long. Lexie was raising her hand to call it, when Caz heard a voice say, “Six hundred dollars to Bonnie.”
 

It was his own voice doing the talking.
 

A delighted sound rose from the crowd, half laughter, half
ooohs
.
 

Lexie said, “Well! Didn’t see that coming! Anyone want to bid against Caz Lloyd, who’d like to donate six hundred smackers to have Bonnie sit on his lap?”
 

An electric silence. Bonnie’s lips twitched as if she might say something, but then she looked down at her hands.
 

“Going once, twice, sold to the man in the suspenders on the stage!”
 

Caz felt something lurch in his chest, something with hooves that was moving too fast. He was about to get run over by a stagecoach with short blond hair and the sweetest eyes in the west, and he wasn’t sure he liked it.
 

But he sure wanted it.

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

Bonnie could do this.
 

She could
totally
do this.
 

Looking out at the audience, she said, “Can someone get me a tequila shot? Maybe two?” Laughter rang. She looked down at her uniform. “Oh, wait. Crap, no alcohol for me. Fine, let’s get this over with.”
 

Over with.
As if she’d ever wanted anything more than to sit in his lap. That was exactly the problem. Her whole body craved it, to the point of ridiculousness. She wanted to touch him even if they were in front of the whole dang town.
 

And that was dangerous.
 

Beyond dangerous. It felt suicidal.

But she stood. She faced the audience, her thumbs tucked under the front metal buckles of her suspenders. She gave them a cheeky snap and then sat on Caz’s knee. The room showed its approval with another roar of laughter. Caz’s face stayed deadpan, which made them laugh harder, but his expression wasn’t quite still. Bonnie could feel the tension in his thigh muscles, an electric tautness that set her own nerves alight. And just there, at the corner of his mouth, she could see a small twitch, almost a tic.

So he wasn’t in total control. Thank goodness it wasn’t just her.
 

Lexie said, “All right, round two! This one is for the Truth. Here, Chief, now that you’re off the stage, would you mind drawing a blue card for me?”
 

Chief Barger’s mustache lifted in approval. He still looked a little pale, Bonnie noticed. The chief did well under pressure—no one better. But the political arena wasn’t his favorite area, and he looked abjectly grateful not to be on the stage anymore. If Bonnie could pry her awareness away from how Caz’s muscles felt under the backs of her legs, she would empathize with him.
 

Lexie took the card from the chief and laughed. “Oooh, this is a good one, too!”
 

Bonnie met Caz’s eyes for the first time since they got on stage. Instead of finding the commiseration she’d been hoping she might find, she instead felt his hand go to the small of her back, where no one could see. His blue eyes darkened, and she couldn’t read anything in their depths. She took a quick, indrawn breath at his touch and prayed she held it together.
 

Lexie said into the microphone, “The question is: What is the main thing that attracts you to the opposite sex? Do I hear a hundred for Bonnie to answer this one?”
 

The bidding flew upward—apparently the fact that she was sitting on Caz’s lap was enough to titillate the easily-stirred (and rather liquored-up) crowd. Terry Dunlap, who owned the boat yard, finally yelled, “Five hundred, and they both have to answer!”
 

A satisfied silence followed, and heads nodded in the room.
 

Lexie said, “Sold to Terry! Who’s first? Bonnie? Tell us truthfully, from your precarious position on that handsome firefighter’s lap, what attracts you to a man?”
 

“His shoe size,” said Bonnie as vampily as she could, dropping an eyelid in an exaggerated wink.
 

Over laugher, Lexie said, “Well, judging by the size of those shoes your feet are dangling above, you’re doing just fine at this exact moment, ain’tcha? Moving on to Caz now. How about you? What draws you to the fairer sex?”
 

Caz didn’t hesitate, and he didn’t need the microphone for amplification. “Honesty.”
 

The room’s laughter fizzled. Caz’s face was still, his voice cool. Bonnie wanted to stand, but the round wasn’t over yet.
 

Lexie looked flummoxed. “Okay, well, I can bet you that’s not what my boyfriend Coin would have said, but…”
 

“I thought this was Truth or Dare.” Caz’s voice projected to the back.
 

“It is.”
 

“Then I want to hear the truth from Bonnie Maddern.”
 

There wasn’t a sound in the huge room, not even the rustle of a shoe on the concrete floor.
 

Bonnie’s fingers flexed and she curled them tightly. “What are you doing?” she whispered.
 

“My shoe size isn’t why you’re attracted to me.” His voice was still loud.
 

A delighted gasp rose in the audience and Bonnie could almost feel them leaning forward. She didn’t dare look over where her mother and father were sitting. “Caz,” she hissed.
 

“It’s not a big deal. It’s not like it’s against policy, and neither of us are married. What made you kiss me in the first place?”
 

Another titillated buzz came from the audience.
 

“You kissed me first!” It wasn’t true—another thing that wasn’t true. That first kiss at Bud’s Bar had been completely mutual—agreed to and acted upon together by both of them at the very same instant, she knew it.
 

Caz raised his eyebrows and stayed perfectly still, but he lowered his voice so that only she could hear him. “Okay, then. Why did you kiss me back?”
 

Bonnie’s voice quieted, too. “I don’t know.” She wasn’t sure if it was the truth, but she knew one thing—she didn’t want to discuss it there in front of God and everyone.
 

His low voice teased, prodded. “Come on, Mad. ’Fess up. Why did you kiss me?”
 

“I’m not going to tell you.”
 

“Fine,” he said, leaning back, away from her, pointing at the crowd watching with greedy eyes. He raised his voice again. “Tell
them
why you kissed me.”
 

Her mother sat openmouthed. Lexie covered her mouth with the rest of the stack of cards, her eyes dancing.
 

“You are
infuriating
,” Bonnie said, steaming.
 

“
That’s
why you kissed me?”
 

“And you’re pompous and rude and you have no idea how to get along with anyone unless they’re bleeding or seizing.”
 

“So what you’re saying is you’re drawn to my bedside manner?” He nodded and smiled into the room. “I can see that.”
 

More laughter. Caz had them in his pocket, and it was enraging. He went on, “As I remember it, we made out like teenagers after
you
touched my lips, wiping away mustard that wasn’t actually there. You just said it was.” He leaned back, putting a fraction of space between them, and looked her square in the eye.
 

Something icy slipped down Bonnie’s spine, right along the pathway that had just been so heated. She scrambled off his lap, almost tripping as she pushed away from him. He grabbed her arm to steady her and she hated that she had to touch him. When she was upright, she jerked herself away from him. No,
no,
the only answer to this kind of attack was to leave the stage, to stop talking to him entirely. Not only was he wrong, but he was completely out of line. “Can we finish this outside, please?”
 

He still looked easy in his skin, as if he didn’t mind the stares. “I’m okay with hashing it out here.”
 

“Well, I’m not.” Bonnie stalked past the front tables, wading into the audience. The faster she got through the room, the faster she’d be able to suck in a breath, to grab the anger and hurt and force it into a shape she understood. The closest door was on the south wall, thankfully, so she didn’t have to pass her mother’s table. If she had, she probably would have just crawled under the tablecloth and clung to her mother’s ankle like a three-year-old.
 

She heard Caz’s footsteps following her. One of the homeless Pete’s stage whispered, “I don’t
get
it, man.” Other than that, the room was perfectly silent.
 

The heavy metal door crashed open as Bonnie hit it with all her weight. Outside, the rain had slowed to a fine mist, and a thin moon struggled to shine through the eucalyptus trees.
 

“What the hell was that?” Bonnie felt attacked, and more than that, she felt humiliated. “You shouldn’t have…”
 

“You lie in almost everything you do.” Caz went on, his voice almost relaxed in its confidence. “You lie to your coworkers when you wake up, when you’re that special kind of grumpy.”
 

Bonnie was so angry her throat felt tight. She wasn’t sure she could manage to speak, but the words came out: “What are you
talking
about?”
 

“That’s how you
start
your days. With untruth. You chirp your good mornings like a bluebird but all you want to do is stab the firefighter between you and the coffee pot. Your face is all wrinkled and your hair sticks straight up and you’re trying to pretend your natural morning look is happy but it’s not. You’d rather scowl till you’ve put away your second cup and nothing helps but that.”
 

That was, infuriatingly, true. Just as she had when she was a child, Bonnie hated mornings with a purple passion but she faked her way through them at work. Lying in bed until ten and then taking a long bike ride was pretty much her idea of heaven on a day off. “But—”
 

“And when you have to drive the ambulance, instead of acting disappointed, which you are, you get all fake-chipper.”
 

“I do not.”
 

“You do.” What
was
that lurking at the back of Caz’s eyes? He continued, “You have this whole passive-aggressive cheerfulness thing that you drag over your head like you’re hiding under a blanket. That whistle.”