Sparking the Fire (13 page)

He'd liked her there.

“He highlighted his hair,” Molly said blandly. The makeup artist met her gaze in the mirror, a cross between pity and vulture.

“Yeah, he's filming that new Disney project,” Gideon said, eyes glittering malevolently. “Though we all know Ryan Michaels is the last person who should be representing the Mouse House.” He checked out the TMZ photo on his phone again and let out a low wolf whistle. “Although I wouldn't say no to being the meat in a girl sandwich with her on one side.”

Standing, Molly struggled to maintain a perilous grip on her fading calm. The nude photos had only fueled the tawdry rumors about Ryan's supposed oh-so-naughty proclivities, though that was about as daring as
their
sex life had gotten. Her husband hadn't been interested in Molly personally, just in using her as a prop. Of course it was assumed that she'd been party to his rumored drug-fueled orgies—after all, if a woman had so little self-respect that she'd allow her husband to take those photos, what else was she capable of?

For a long time, Molly had wondered if she had an existence apart from Ryan. Oh, she knew she had a career and that she inhabited her own body, but she had let him control her to the extent that she had felt transparent. A ghost of herself.

Only in the last few months had the shimmer started to coalesce into the solid form of the woman she once was. So her plan to get the rights to Alex Dempsey's story hadn't panned out—no worries, it was back to script A about the Chicago Irish Flynns with Molly playing flame-haired Kelly, the youngest daughter of firefighter royalty struggling to gain respect in a male-dominated world. Molly lived that shit every day, so it would be like playing herself. In bunker gear.

She grabbed the firefighter's jacket off the hook of the trailer door, then because she had to establish a baseline of appropriate behavior going forward, she turned back to Gideon, who was futzing with his hair. And this dickhead had earned twice as much as her regular payday on his last movie! Ensuring that the makeup artist was out of hearing range while busy rearranging her palates, Molly leaned in and whispered in her costar's ear.

“Some studio suit might have dumped you on my production but that doesn't mean I have to make it easy.” She squeezed his shoulder for emphasis. “Bring up Ryan again in my presence and I'll let everyone know about your micro-penis problem. Speaking from personal experience, it's amazing what can be done with Photoshop these days. You'll be lucky if you can get a hired escort to bang you, never mind any of the crew on this movie. We clear?”

He swallowed. “Sure, Molly. Just kidding.”

Uncertain as to whether she'd achieved anything apart from earning herself an enemy, Molly headed out toward the soundstage, one of several at Cinespace on Chicago's West Side. Outside the trailer, she was immediately swarmed by a bevy of crew: runners, assistants, assistants to the assistants. She already missed Cal. This morning, her friend had caught a flight to Tennessee to check in with her grandmother, who had slipped and fallen last night. She'd promised she would be back within a couple of weeks, but Molly's only thought was that Cal's grammy be taken care of. The best medical care, whatever she needed.

A week of interiors lay behind them, and today they would be filming the first action shots involving a rescue from a blazing fire. The first time the CFD tech consultant needed to be on set, too.

But it wouldn't be him.

She wondered how unclehood was treating him. It was one thing to visit weekly, quite another to have a surly teenage girl thrust upon you for an entire summer. But he had his family, that bastion of strength and loyalty. Roni was a very lucky girl.

And Molly was just a teensy bit jealous of a fifteen-year-old.

“Miss Hotshot Producer, so thrilled you could join us,” her director, Mick Santos, drawled in his British accent, then hugged her to let her know he was kidding. She and Mick went way back to her second movie, an action-packed bang-bang fest aimed at teenage boys that had cemented her status as damsel in distress and the subject of masturbatory fantasies. She was trying to change the former; she saw little hope of affecting the latter.

“Charming as ever, Michael,” she said, hugging him warmly.

“Okay, darling, we've got the first big rescue scene today.” While he ran through the details she already knew by heart, she cast her gaze over the soundstage, taking in the warehouse set entrance where the AD had corralled the second unit that would be working on this sequence.

“So, Molly, have you met the tech consultant from the Chicago Fire Department?”

“No, I haven't.”

She turned and of course, it was him, because evidently her not-so-subtle subconscious had wished for him to materialize.

“Miss Cade.” Wyatt's low voice rumbled through her like a 7.6 earthquake. She blinked, looked up, looked up some more. How had he become taller in three weeks? And broader? And . . . beardier? He was really allowing freedom to reign all over that handsome face. She bet he could wreak havoc between her thighs with that lush growth.

Good Lord, ten seconds in and she'd already given herself a facial hair–inspired orgasm.

“Hello,” she said, suddenly shy. “I didn't expect to see you.”

“Harder to quit than I thought,” he said cryptically. His blue-gray eyes seemed bluer than usual. And twinklier. All the -
er
s. “You dyed your hair,” he added.

“I did.”
I did? Don't use up all your witticisms in one go, Mol.
A blush stole across her body to match her newly colored auburn locks, which cemented her Irish American persona. They also happened to come astonishingly close to her hair color when they first met five years ago.

Even through the mat of hair, she could see his lips lifting. Those piercing blue eyes watched her with surprising intent. “Ready?”

Was she ready to take her life back? To make a fresh start, change the American public's perception of her, reestablish herself as the crème de la crème of the Hollywood elite?

Molly squared her shoulders and looked Wyatt straight in the eye. “Ready.”

He tucked a hand under her elbow—
sizzle
—and led her to her first mark on the movie that would signal her redemption. “Trust me, Hollywood. You're gonna do great.”

F
our hours later, Wyatt was done with the moviemaking business.

He was used to waiting around at the firehouse, sure, but he usually had entertainment or food, or, if Gage was on shift, both. Film craft required a lot of dawdling and repetition and retakes because someone had forgotten to move a cable or hit a mark or remember a line.

He'd tried to bail. Now that Roni was in the frame, working so closely with the woman who was one, walking temptation and two, completely out of bounds, was a train wreck waiting to happen. So he'd told Venti a little white lie: that the new responsibility of his niece superseded this gig. To which his captain had grunted companionably and nodded sympathetically and finally responded with,
Tough
. Well, he'd been a bit more vocal, citing the numerous projects CFD was already consulting on and how the cap couldn't spit without hitting a god
damn
Dempsey at Engine 6. In other words, Wyatt had a built-in support network and basically, he could shove his baby-sitting excuse up his ass.

So here he was, bored as fuck, that damn temptation dangling right in front of his face in her movie-issue firefighter gear. If someone had told him before today that bunkers could look hot, he'd have laughed them right off the lot. But Molly Cade's curves could sex up a potato sack.

She was the consummate professional, though, he'd give her that. The scene they'd shot involved a tricky rescue of a homeless man in an abandoned warehouse. Molly had listened, absorbed, and knocked it out of the park. After the director shouted “Cut,” she spent a few moments checking the playback on a screen before she was hustled off the set by an assistant.

That he missed her presence as soon as she was gone did not sit well with him.

“Firefighter Fox?” A girl not much older than Roni, dressed head to toe in black and holding a clipboard, approached with an inquiring look.

“It's Lieutenant.”

Evidently unimpressed, she went on. “Miss Cade would like to see you in her trailer.”

She gave him her back, his acquiescence a given, and who was he to argue with Hollywood? When he reached the trailer, which looked as big as some apartments, she gestured at the door. “She said to go right in.”

No sign of security outside. A quick scan picked up a guy wearing a suit, an earpiece, and sunglasses (indoors, so,
douche
) at one of the catering tables chatting with some blond piece doling out coffee. Wyatt supposed the set was considered safe, but all the same, he didn't much like the ease with which he could access Molly's private sanctum. He pulled open the door and stepped in.

His timing?
Perfection.

She was emerging from a cloud of steam, dressed in a bathrobe that unfortunately covered those dynamite legs of hers but dipped low enough to keep things interesting. Combing through her damp flames as she walked, she grimaced as she caught on a tangle, but her expression smoothed on seeing him.

“Hey, thanks for stopping by.”

“Didn't feel I had much of a choice.”

She raised an amused eyebrow. “Oh, did my sending an assistant come off as a diva move?”

He rubbed his thumb and forefinger together. “Just a touch, Hollywood.”

She took the jibe like a champ. He'd met a lot of drama queens in his life, most of them Dempsey, and Molly Cade did not fit the mold at all.

“I wanted to thank you for today,” she said. “I was nervous about how some of the set pieces were going to go down and you made it easy for me.”

“Just doing my job.”

She opened a small fridge. “Water? Or I could use my diva moves and get a Coke sent over.”

“I'll survive on H
₂
O.”

She passed him a bottle. “How's Roni?”

“Driving me nuts.” He took a seat on the sofa and a slug of water. Jen was right about how difficult she'd turned in the last couple of months, although this was also the first time he'd spent more than a couple of hours at a time with her. He supposed every kid went through a rebellious streak, but he had hoped Roni had outgrown hers and that surrounding herself with her family would bring out her shine. Instead, she preferred to hole up in her room, listening to music or watching videos all day. For a kid who had pulled every move in the book to land with her dad's family for the summer, she sure as shit wasn't acting like she wanted to be here.

There was something else, though, something that made him uneasy. The way she looked at him with troubled eyes the color of Logan's.

“She doesn't want to do anything. The greatest city in the world and she'd rather sit around at home.”

“I was like that during my summers in high school. But then my grandparents made me get a job at Dairy Queen.”

More of the so-not-diva business. Sometimes he forgot that Molly Cade had come from humble beginnings in a small Missouri town. “How'd that go?”

“It added ten pounds. All to my ass.” She pointed at her ass in case there was some confusion, then seemed to realize she had pointed at her ass. A blush climbed up her cheeks as he let his grin fly.

“Shut up,” she muttered.

“Didn't say a word.”

She sat in the armchair opposite, pulling her robe tighter. “How are things with everyone since the big reveal?”

“Alex is getting over it, but Eli's been shunted off to the guest room. Everyone else is coming around.” Everyone except Luke. On a surface level, his oldest brother would get over it for the sake of Roni and the family peace, but the resentment at Wyatt's call would always exist between them.

He looked up to find Molly watching him carefully. A sudden urge to confide in her overwhelmed him. He tamped it down.

“I'm sorry it didn't work out with getting the Alex seal of approval for the movie.”

She waved it off. “Family's more important, Wyatt. You have to protect Roni. It was a no-brainer.”

Perhaps, but he realized that it meant a lot to Molly to make this movie the way she wanted, and while keeping his distance was definitely the safest option for his niece, funny how he felt like shit about it. Like he'd disappointed Molly. He suspected her last year had been filled with disappointments.

“The movie's gonna be great,” he said. An inadequate tack-on, he knew.

The air thrummed between them, a crackle along a live wire, a whoosh of oxygen into a vented room. “Yeah, it will,” she murmured.

But it was as if they were talking about something else. Another missed opportunity. What else could be great if they were willing to forget themselves and pick up where they had left off with that kiss against his Camaro?

His gaze fell to her bare legs, and he quickly looked away. If he spent any time there, this was only going to end one way: with his face between her thighs.

She crossed her gorgeous legs, and he almost laughed. None shall pass.

Alrighty, then. He stood. So did she, and while she was a tiny thing, she still managed to project ten feet tall.

“I just wanted you to know that . . .” She trailed off, and that hesitancy drew him in. There was an invisible thread between them, sometimes the length of a hotel bar, sometimes as short as the inches between them now. His pulse quickened, the thud loud in his ears.

“Know what?”

“That I understand your need to keep your life ordered right now. Private. For yourself, your family, Roni.”

She sounded regretful, not because she wanted to blow up his existence—something she had been doing since the first moment he had reconnected with her—but because she could never go back to that. Private. Her life was a three-ring circus with no space for a dull moment. They couldn't return to the safe anonymity of that hotel. Their time had passed.