Sparking the Fire (18 page)

Agreed, but for now, Molly would handle it the best she could. In a fetal ball.

“I'm looking for somewhere else and the security outside puts my mind at ease.” She smiled big, trying to keep the shake out of her voice.
For your consideration, members of the academy, another amazing performance from America's Fallen Sweetheart, Molly Cade.

“The mall cops?” Alex asked incredulously. “Sorry, probably not what you want to hear, but Wy was unusually vocal about their skillset. About as upset as I've ever seen him.”

The damn phone rang again, and this time Alex hopped off the sofa and made a grab for it.

“No, you don't have—”

“Hello?”

Oh, God.
Molly's bones tightened in discomfort as she watched Alex's expression turn from open to curious to downright surprised.

“Whoa, hold up there, handsome! I'm guessing that crowbar of yours is
pret
-ty hard right now. Whatcha got for me? Five inches? Five and a half?”

Molly covered her face with her hands as Alex listened for a few seconds, then went on to explain exactly where the caller should shove his below-average-length penis. Anatomically impossible, but remarkably colorful.

Alex dropped the phone back into its cradle. “Who in fucktopia still has a landline these days anyway?”

“What did he—never mind. I appreciate you standing up for me, but it's really best to ignore it.”

Alex's brow crimped like a corduroy swatch. “I used to think that. I got a lot of hate where I worked, most of it insidious, because I was doing something that's traditionally seen as requiring male wedding tackle. I didn't want to rock the boat or look like I needed special treatment for my lady sensibilities. So I'm the first to admit I've had a hard time finding the middle ground. Either I'm going off the reservation cutting up chauvinistic assholes' cars or I'm biting my tongue worried I'll come off as too mouthy. Being a woman is pretty freakin' hard on a regular day, but there is no good reason why you should continue to put up with the shit you've endured this last year. Scum like that”—she waved at the phone—“needs to be wiped off the face of the earth.”

Molly's heart cheered at Alex's spirited inclusion of her in the sisterhood. “You want to be my publicist?”

She grinned. “Sure, if you don't mind your big comeback failing spectacularly.” Her expression faded to bleak again as she cast a troubled glance up at the cathedral ceiling. “This place is on the big side for one person.”

“I had a friend staying but she had to leave town for a family emergency.” And now Molly was alone, hyperaware of every sound: the shrill ring of the phone, the fridge's ominous heartbeat, the dramatic whoosh of the AC as it geared up into action.

She was afraid of appliances. A new low.

Alex frowned at whatever she saw on Molly's face. “You can't stay here, girl.”

True. It was time to admit defeat and check into a hotel, though that inevitably came with its own set of problems. Last year, she'd holed up in one after the photo hack occurred during a movie shoot in London and felt like she was under medieval siege, especially when a hotel employee leaked pics of her emotional coping methods, i.e., binge eating the entire room service menu.

“Go pack a bag, Molly.” From Alex's expression, Molly guessed a different plan might be on the table.

“If you're offering a room at Cooper Manor, I appreciate it but—”

Alex held up her hand. “You do not want to be in the middle of me and Eli the way I feel about him right now. Besides, he's such a manipulative prick he'll have you on his side with his lawyerly tricks within the hour.” She looked incredibly pleased with herself. “I have a much better idea.”

 CHAPTER ELEVEN

W
yatt walked into his kitchen just after nine in the morning and found Roni, her thumbs skimming a mile a minute over her phone.

“Hey, girl.”

Her head snapped back at the sound of his voice. A guilty blush suffused her cheeks, and she immediately turned off her phone.

“Talking to your friends back home?” Or maybe a boy. Better not be a boy because he would very soon be not-a-boy. He'd be a eunuch.

“Yeah.”

He leaned against the counter, projecting casual. “Miss them?”

“Not really. Lili's in summer school and Kat has a part-time job in her dad's restaurant. Wouldn't have seen them much anyway.”

So much for the Summer of Roni. He'd assumed she would enjoy Chicago more, getting to know her family. That she had planned this all along. But she'd shut down most efforts to fill her time, opting instead to hang around Wyatt's place and fill her brain with mindless TV on her iPad. “Some of the guys I work with have daughters your age. Maybe I could introduce you.”

She rolled her eyes and shot him a look of
Lame
.

Jesus, he was trying here. This was exactly how all his visits had gone over the last year. As soon as he met her and saw his brother's face shining back at him, he had made every human effort to connect. She'd demonstrated pretty much no interest, only a bored disdain. But she'd also shown up at his house this summer, so he knew there must be something she wanted—he just didn't know what.

“Okay, Roni, cards on the table here.”

Her blue-gray eyes—Logan's eyes—widened.

“Time for some truth telling. You can ask me anything you want.”

“Anything?”

This kid was his flesh and blood. His only living biological relative. It was a heavy responsibility and he didn't plan on shirking it.

“About your dad, his family, us. Whatever you want to know.”

She considered him intently. “What difference does it make? He wasn't around.”

“If he'd known about you, it would have been another story.”

But he didn't,
her hard expression said, and the result was the same. Just like the man she'd thought was her father had abandoned her when her parents divorced, then cut her dead when he found out she didn't share his genetic code. While she was fighting a killer disease ravaging her body. Roni was pretty much shit out of luck when it came to fathers.

She seemed to recognize that Wyatt wasn't going to let her go without some attempt at discussing Logan. “So what was he like, then? The sperm donor.”

“Don't call him that. He's more than just a scrap of DNA.”

Color tinged her cheeks, and he immediately regretted his testiness.

“Sweetheart, I'm sorry. I know this is hard. Logan was . . . funny. Warm.” The one tasked with charming the old ladies during Dad's grifter schemes while Wyatt stood around tongue-tied and awkward. Billy Fox's constant, heart-crushing comparisons of Wyatt's uselessness to Logan's appeal should have made Wyatt jealous of his half brother, but he was impossible to hate.

“He had a way about him. Magnetic. Drew people in.”

“Must be how he fooled Mom.”

Ignoring that, he drew a deep breath. “He would have been a kid when he”—
he knocked up your mother
—“met your mom. Nineteen. Just joined the fire department.” A year younger, Wyatt had joined the marines at the same time, needing to forge his own path. As much as he loved being a Dempsey, sometimes it suffocated him. He wanted to make something of his own.

Logan didn't understand why Wyatt would seek out separation from his family.
We landed on our feet with the Dempseys, Wy. Golden. You really wanna mess with that?
There had never been a word of recrimination from Sean that Wyatt had chosen another road, that he didn't buy into the hoopla surrounding CFD. Sean had squeezed his shoulder when Wyatt showed him the enlistment papers, those Irish eyes twinkling with pride. They didn't talk much, but they understood each other.

Which all added up to Wyatt as the worst person to be doing this; any other Dempsey would be better because he had never learned the language to emote. Logan's easy mouth would have known exactly what to say.

“I don't know what happened between your mom and dad, but I do know that if Logan met you now, he'd be so proud of you. How beautiful you are. How strong you've become. That's how we all feel.”

She blew out a breath through hair falling over eyes that looked suspiciously shiny.

“Kinsey's picking me up soon to go shopping,” she mumbled out of the corner of her mouth. “I need to get ready.”

“Sure, sweetheart.” At least she was doing something with one of the family. But had he made any progress here? 'Cause it felt like he'd slipped further into a mud pit of failure. And if she had actually asked the right questions, how would he have answered them?

Where did you guys grow up?
Crack houses and motels. Rust-bucket cars and bus depots. Everywhere and nowhere.

What were my biological grandparents like?
Well, Grandma was a junkie, Gramps was MIA, but no worries—Logan had a stepdad,
my
dad, who taught him the family trade. How to pass a fake hundred-dollar bill. How to bilk someone out of their life savings. How to get something for nothing.

A lineage to be proud of.

As he watched her walk out, it hit him full force: guilt at hiding Roni from his family; aching regret that he couldn't bridge the gap with his niece; sheer impotence at not being able to protect Molly properly; and to top it all off, his trusty pal, sexual frustration.

To have his desire explode like this with the one woman he couldn't use it on was one of life's crueler
fuck you
s. Christ, he needed off that shoot. Seeing her every day and having to call his lust to heel was a special brand of torture. A few strokes . . . of the rowing machine might distract him for a while.

After twenty minutes of “gentle” oar work in his basement gym, Wyatt was feeling the burn again in his shoulder. The PT had told him to ease into it, but Wyatt didn't want easy. He wanted to work it off. Punish himself.

Back in the kitchen, he opened the fridge and saw yet another reason why he was the worst guardian ever. Only coffee creamer and milk. Wyatt should be stacking the cupboards with nutritional goodness, because part of the contract in taking care of a teen was that they needed to be fed more than cereal. Thank God for Gage.

Who had better coffee than Wyatt. Usually those fun-sized one-cups with all the different flavors. Wyatt really liked the hazelnut one and he didn't much feel like loading his banged-up Mr. Coffee or heading down to the Dunkin' when there was a perfectly decent option going begging next door.

He stepped outside and that sense of failure struck him upside the head again at the sight of the piss-yellow grass and jungle growth. Compared to Gage's submission for
House & Garden
magazine, Wyatt's backyard looked like a landscaping apocalypse. Mating velociraptors, indeed. Shrugging it off, he headed toward the gate separating his yard from Gage's and stopped as a sound assaulted his ears.

Assaulted was probably overstating it. It was music, the kind that was supposed to be soothing. Pipes? Waves? A flutist on a kayak? A voice droned in a bland, genderless tone: “Now raise your body to greet the sun.”

Drawing closer, he peeked over the fence and the vista that greeted him did a damn sight better job than a cup of joe:

Molly freakin' Cade.

Wasn't it enough that she had a starring role in his dreams—must she haunt his waking hours, as well? Right now, the desert mirage before him was coming out of a down-on-all-fours position, pointing her very fine ass in the air. Stretchy material across her rear was currently being pushed to its limits as she held ass-to-the-sun pose.

The ethereal voice that was starting to creep Wyatt out advised deeper breaths, bunchier cores, and love for your fellow man. Well, not the last one, but Wyatt wouldn't have been surprised to hear it. Molly's bare arms, nicely tanned and toned, looked like they could hold that position forever. It had to be at least a minute he'd been standing there gaping like a horny teenager, assuring himself that the hallucination was very, very real.

“How's my form?” she asked, not breaking the pose.

“Looks great from this angle,” he managed.

He crossed over into Gage's yard and walked around the purple yoga mat stretched out on the patio. “Not bad on this side, either.”

Sadly, she pulled out of it and sat back, knees to her chest. “And how's your charge this morning?”

Huh. So they were going to pretend that Molly Cade's presence next door on a yoga mat at ten in the morning was completely normal. He guessed stranger things had happened.

“Surly, pissed, noncommunicative, or all of the above. She's currently inflicting her joy on Kinsey. Gone shopping.”

“And you didn't want to join them?”

“Next time.”

That earned him a saucy grin. She held out her hand, looking for help to stand.