Sparking the Fire (17 page)

Relations between them had been, to put it mildly, strained. In the three weeks since Roni made her dramatic entrance, the flurry of activity her stay had caused evened out everyone else's mood about the circumstances that had taken her out of their lives for so long. Everyone but Luke.

Luke straightened from putting the bottles in the fridge and faced Wyatt. “All the years I've known you and I've never seen you lose it once.”

“You still haven't.” Wyatt crossed his arms. “What you saw—”

“What the world saw.”

Wyatt suppressed a nascent growl. “What you saw was a surgical removal of a threat. No tempers lost, no theatrics.”

Luke cocked his head. “Will Roni's mom see it that way? Because according to you, that's the kind of behavior that kept our niece away from us in the first place.”

“Hey, guys,” Alex said in her mom voice, but this was past peacemaking.

Anger flared in Wyatt's blood. “Do you not believe me, Luke? Do you think I'd make that up?”

“Hell if I know.” He immediately held up a hand in apology. “I know you'd never keep her from us on purpose. I just wish we'd been told.”

“So you and Alex could go charging in? Jen would have hit us with a restraining order so ironclad it would have been years before we could have come within spitting distance of Roni, let alone get to know her as one of our own.” Wyatt unfolded his arms, aiming to come off less defensive than he sounded. Too late. “If I could have handled it another way, I would have. She's here now and we need to make up for lost time. Present a united front.”

“United front?” Sarcas-o-meter levels shot through the roof. “You just got done blaming Alex and me for why Roni was kept away from us because apparently we're magnets for drama. Yet
you
decide to go jogging with someone who has paparazzi following her around. Your face is all over the news.”

“No one ID'd me and she's . . .” Fuck, he couldn't even say it.
She's my past. She's nothing. She's someone I can never, ever have.

“You're full of it,” Luke said with a sneer. “On practically every squad run and night you work behind this bar, chicks throw themselves at you and nada. Woman repelling doesn't even begin to describe it. But Hollywood comes calling and all of a sudden, Wyatt Fox's dick accepts a new mission. You couldn't take your eyes off her at the cookout.”

“I know what I'm doing here,” he insisted, but the words sounded hollow even to his own ears. “Molly Cade is just a job and Roni will never be in danger. Half the time she's staying at your or Beck's place anyways.” Because she was in a perma-silent standoff with Wyatt. She didn't want to talk about Logan and that's all Wyatt wanted to talk about.

He missed his brother.

He also missed Luke, the man who had stepped up and shown Wyatt the meaning of family. Wyatt had tried to return the favor. When Kinsey had left Luke almost a year ago to head back to California, Wyatt told him to quit being a martyr and go after his girl. Luke laid it all on the line, told Kinsey he'd move to San Francisco to be with her, that he'd leave the Dempseys behind because she was now his number one.

It hadn't come to that, thank God, but Luke had chosen his woman—had chosen happy—and Wyatt had been so proud of his brother's bold decision. He deserved it after dedicating his life to the family when Wyatt had failed. Now it felt like Luke was testing him.
Where do your loyalties lie, Wyatt? Prove you're a Dempsey because you sure as shit haven't done much to make us believe.

Hell, Wyatt knew getting any more involved with Molly was a catastrophe in the making. No more fun runs along the lakefront. No more holding her close as she lost her shit. No more . . . selfish indulgence.

A scowling Luke headed back down to the cellar, leaving Wyatt to grip the edge of the bar, his annoyance at being dressed down still bubbling through his heated blood. He had wanted to spend time with a goddess, and yeah, he knew that was ridiculous—and not just because it equaled hassle for his family.

Alex set a black and tan on the counter for one of the cops from District 5. Once he'd moved out of earshot, she turned to Wyatt.

“So,” she said, all slyness, “you haven't explained exactly
why
you and Molly Cade are jogging besties.”

“Just trying to toughen her up for the shoot.”

Hilarity ensued. “What are you going to wow her with next, Wy? A rhumba with the kickboxing bag? A tango on the rowing machine in your basement?”

Suffer patiently. Patiently suffer.

“It was a onetime deal. Won't be happening again.”

“She must have been pretty scared, though,” Alex mused, worry he identified with threaded through her voice. He'd watched the video a couple of times, freeze-framing on an image that checked his heart cold each time he saw it: a terrified Molly as that guy tried to get all up in her business.

But Wyatt couldn't do anything except ask a couple of off-duty CPD buddies to check in on occasion. Let the diva pay her security team a fortune to keep weirdos from her door. After that kiss on the hood of his Camaro, the one he'd used to fuel every hand job since, and the sexy coda in her trailer, a line needed to be drawn in the sand.

Problem was he wanted to cross it. Again and again.

“She'll be fine. Woman like that's got plenty of resources to pay more rent-a-cops or find a new place.”

With those all-seeing eyes, Alex watched him for a protracted beat before a customer grabbed her attention and let Wyatt off the hook.

M
olly took a sip of a robust Malbec and ignored the townhouse's ringing landline. Again. Really, she should unplug it because nothing good was on the other end, but taking that step had all the hallmarks of panic. Surrender. She was trying to play it cool.

And failing.

Ever since the incident this morning, she'd been jumpier than a frog on a hotplate. Cal had called from Tennessee as soon as footage of Wyatt Fox, 1, Grabby Fan, 0 had surfaced on the Internet. Faced with her friend's concern, Molly had played it down—Molly's problems weren't worth spit in comparison to Cal's while she looked after her gran (who was out of the woods, thank God).

Maybe Molly should have pressed charges. She knew celebrities who had done it for less, but it seemed like an overreaction to a man who had wanted to—what? Talk? Hug? Since Ryan, she'd been trying not to sweat the small stuff or do anything that made her a target for the haters. The look on Wyatt's face when she told the detective she was
fine, absolutely fabulous, never better
said it all. Why was she accepting this as normal?

Because grasping on to normal was sometimes all she had. It's what she had wanted this summer. Now that dream felt as solid as smoke. She had a leasing agent looking for somewhere new, but these things invariably took time, even for someone with as many resources as she had.

Five minutes later, her mobile phone rang and Molly jumped half a mile into the air, spilling half her wine on her blouse. Enough! She needed to quit acting like a scalded cat.

It was a gruff Terrence. “There's an Alex Dempsey here. Says you're expecting her.”

She wasn't, but she was hella glad for the distraction. “Please let her up.”

Molly opened the door to find a beaming Alex in jeans, Converse, and a hoodie that barely contained her rumpus of hair.

“Top Cop here needs to work on his reflexes.
And
he got a bit handsy when he finally caught up with me.” Stepping inside, she shot Terrence a withering look over her shoulder that said his genetic line might end here if he dared to lay another hand on her. “Too much, too late, dude.”

Poor Terrence. He was really having a rotten day. Hiding her smile, Molly closed the big oak door behind her and made sure the dead bolt was re-secured. She hadn't used it before yesterday but now she was hypervigilant.

“At the cookout a few weeks ago,” Alex said, “I mentioned I'd be happy to chat with you about the trials and tribulations of being a Vagina American in the CFD. So here I am.” She looked up to the cathedral ceiling and gave a low whistle. “Nice place.”

An understatement. The three-story townhouse, impeccably furnished and loaded with modern art, belonged to a movie director friend who was currently filming in London. Molly loved the neighborhood, its proximity to the lake, and how it felt like a sorority house when Cal was here. Without the pledging. And the Jell-O shots.

There might have been Jell-O shots.

But now it felt cavernous and lonely. Oppressive.

“Thanks, it does the trick.” Molly was often a little weirded out by her own wealth. She didn't own this house, but she owned something four times as large in Malibu. The butt pinches she'd suffered as a cocktail waitress, even the rash she'd acquired while wearing that Lonnie the Lobster costume to hand out flyers on Santa Monica Pier, were war wounds in her struggle to the top. She had worked her ass off, and on occasion she had to remind herself that she deserved good things.

Alex was staring at Molly's chest. “Any joy juice left or are wine-stained shirts all the rage in Beverly Hills?”

Molly grinned, looking down at the mess on her blouse. It was shaping up to look like Texas. “I'll change and then we can open a new bottle. Damon's cellar can handle it.”

“Damon?”

“Damon Castello. He's letting me stay while he's filming in London.”

“The director? I didn't know he lived in Chicago.” Alex's gaze swept over the great room that led to the full-service kitchen and humongous dining area. “You move in pretty ritzy circles, lady. Not bad for—”

“A farm girl from Missouri?”

“I was going to say a no-talent hack.”

Molly's mouth dropped open.

Alex cracked up. “Just kidding! Sorry, I tend to say stupid shit to people, assuming everyone has the same sense of humor I do.” Translation:
Are you a tight-assed diva or can you take a joke?
She eyed the Mondrian hanging over the fireplace. “I'm guessing that's probably an original. I've no idea what of, but I'll take a stab and say it's an original ‘Look away and don't sully it with your filthy gaze.'”

“Exactly,” Molly said, laughing. An earlier work of the artist, it was a bargain at a paltry $15 million. “Come check out the wine cellar and let's pick something outrageously expensive.”

Ten minutes later, Molly had changed into clean clothes and was dispensing liberally from a bottle of 2008 Mouton Rothschild. “Dinner is poured.”

“Hmm, fruity,” Alex said after a healthy gulp. Somewhere a French vintner's heart cracked in half. “I need to take a picture of the label to prove to Eli I drank it. He thinks I'm such a heathen because I know nothing about wine.”

“Yet he's still crazy about you.”

Her face lit bright, and unreasonable envy tackled Molly's heart for a nanosecond.

“I kissed my fair share of frogs back in the day,” Alex said. “And then the biggest toad of all turned out to be a prince in disguise. Go figure.”

“What he did for you . . . when I heard about it, I positively swooned.” Molly and the rest of America. Eli Cooper's sacrifice of his mayoralty on the altar of love was up there with Edward VIII and Mrs. Simpson.

“Hey, so did I. And I'm not a swooner, I'll tell ya.” Alex looked at her phone as it chirped with an incoming message. Her cheeks flushed. “The man also knows his way around a dirty text. Of course, I'm not talking to him right now after he covered for Wyatt about Roni. I'd thought we were past all that underhanded bullshit. You wouldn't believe some of the stunts he pulled to get me in the sack.”

After dealing with Ryan, nothing could have surprised Molly. Most men were pretty good at looking out for their self-interest. She wasn't tipsy enough to confide that and neither did she want to put a damper on a woman so obviously in love.

So instead she used her words to defend Wyatt.

“Seems like your brother was in a pretty tough position.”

Alex arched a skeptical brow. “Perhaps, but I have to wonder when he was going to tell us. Wy's always been a lone wolf, and while I don't doubt his loyalty or love, I'm also aware that he's never seemed to need us as much as we need him. Knowing him like I do, I bet he could have waited out this call forever, maybe until Roni was eighteen.” She sighed heavily. “And then there's you.”

Molly froze. “Me?”

“Yeah, I mean, he's clearly into you, but will he do a thing about it? You bet your sweet—”

The house phone rang on the Chippendale sideboard, cutting Alex off. Predictably, Molly jumped. She made no move to answer it, though, preferring to let Alex finish whatever she'd been about to say.

You know, about Wyatt being
into
her. OMG! She wanted to draw hearts all over her diary.

Alex frowned at the phone. “Not going to get that?”

“It's Damon's line, so I've been leaving the calls. If it's for me, I don't want to hear it.” She laughed nervously as she waited for the ringing to stop . . .
five . . . six . . . silence.

“Why wouldn't you want to hear it if it's for you?”

She drew a deep breath. “Since people have found out where I live, I've had a few well-wishers checking in to tell me how much they enjoyed my photo spread from a few months back.” She left it at that, the implication obvious. Once her location became public knowledge, it was just a matter of time before someone found out the house's landline number. It might have been unlisted, but an enterprising stalker would always find a way. This afternoon, she'd picked up and the filth she'd heard spewed over the line made her skin crawl.

“After my brief hook-up with fame last year,” Alex said, “I had plenty of asshats crawling out the woodwork looking to light my fire, if you know what I mean.” She worried her lip. “But I didn't get any phone calls. That's not nice. It's much easier to ignore it online.”