Sparking the Fire (34 page)

“I care about him, too,” Molly said. Damn, she more than cared. She lo—

She loved him. Oh, God, she was in love with that hot, hunky, bearded Neanderthal former marine firefighter. He was the best she'd ever had—at everything—and she loved him. But how could she bring all the crazy that followed her around into this pocket of peace? As much as she craved a normal life, she'd made her bed in Hollywood, and Wyatt would not enjoy lying in it.

Gage looked sympathetic to her plight. Could he tell that her internal organs were currently switching places inside her chest cavity? “I don't mean to interfere—”

Brady snorted and got an elbow in the ribs for his trouble.

“But Wyatt is a meat-and-potatoes kind of guy. He wouldn't enjoy being anyone's arm candy, and a life in the spotlight would kill him.”

“Gage,” Brady warned again.

“I know. I know. MYOB.”

Brady stood and held out his hand. “Come on, for once we both have the same night off. Let's get busy.”

Gage grinned. “And they said romance was dead.” He turned back to Molly as he stood and leaned in to kiss her on the cheek.

“We still friends?”

She smiled, though inside her heart and lungs were flying apart. “Always.”

Watching them walk into the house, arms around each other, eyes locked in love, Molly considered Gage's warning. This was most definitely a case of love not being enough to conquer all, though she had no idea if Wyatt felt even one iota of what she felt for him. Gage's words echoed in her muddled brain:
He put himself out there and claimed you in front of a bunch of strangers.
Was that Wyatt's way of declaring his feelings? The man was a doer to the core.

But their lives were not on the same path. He had a relationship to build with his niece, a family to protect, and a life at the firehouse to return to post-rehab. The shoot would end in a week and there would be no reason for her to stick around. No reason at all.

Her phone buzzed and she frowned in surprise at the name that popped up on her screen.

“Roni?”

“Molly, are you alone right now?” Her whisper competed with considerable background noise. Music and laughter. Tonight, Roni was hanging with Darcy at the tattoo shop, with clear instructions from Wyatt not to come home with so much as a dot of ink on her skin.

“Is everything okay?”

“Could you come get me?”

Panic bolted through Molly's chest. “Are you not with Darcy?”

“No, I . . .” She lowered her voice. “I went to a party and now I need a ride home. But please don't tell the others.”

“Where are you? Gage and I can come pick you up—”

“No! Don't get Gage involved. Just you. Please.”

Damn, Molly had been drinking, so she couldn't drive. With her phone attached to her ear, she headed to her room to grab her purse and debated whether she should disturb Gage and Brady. She paused outside their bedroom door. Low murmurs, what sounded like a slap, and a throaty “Aw, yeah” made the decision for her.

She opened the Uber app on her phone.

“Roni, are you in danger right now? Because if you are, you need to call 911.”

“No, I just need a ride.” Something like fear colored her voice, and Molly's heart plummeted into her stomach. She hoped the girl had the common sense to recognize the different types of fear.

“Give me the address.”

Ten minutes later, Molly clambered out of an Uber car in front of a nice ranch house in Evanston, a middle-class suburb just north of Chicago and home to Northwestern University.

“Would you mind waiting?” she asked the driver.
Boom-boom
bass and raucous revelry echoed onto the street. No sign of Roni, but this was definitely the right place.

She approached the front door, ready to knock, though she doubted anyone would hear it above the music, when it was flung open and a man was flung outward. She stepped aside just in time to avoid his projectile hurl all over the porch.

“Watch the hydrangeas, dude!” a voice called out from the foyer. “My mom'll kill me if you frack those flowers.” A blond kid, no older than eighteen, stood in the entrance. His hazy focus semi-sharpened on seeing Molly. “My parents know about this.”

She had no time for this nonsense. “I'm here for Roni.”

“Who?”

She pushed past him. “Roni? Purple hair, multiple piercings, surly.”

“Half the chicks here, lady.”

The house was your typical underage partying and boozing nightmare, but Molly could tell this crowd was slightly older than Roni. As tempting as it was to call the police to break it up, she would much rather find Roni first, because once the police became involved, it would descend to untold levels of crazy. Meaning a night in lockup and multiple pissed-off Dempseys. She pushed through swaying teens, searching alcoves and corners. Checking her phone again, she tried calling Roni but it went straight to voice mail.

With an impending sense of dread, she pounded up the stairs, throwing open doors, shouting out Roni's name. Nothing but youthful bodies in various states of undress. She headed downstairs again, frantically searching, until she came to the back porch and—
thank God
. Roni. Who was not alone.

A tall figure loomed over her, imposing his brute masculinity with a tire-sized bicep positioned above her head. He might have been protecting or threatening her, and though Roni wasn't pulling away, her body language was shrinking. Molly was fluent in that particular dialect. Minimize, de-escalate, do whatever was necessary to keep the peace. Another bulker blocked her exit—or escape.

“Roni!” Molly called out, increasing her frenzied pace. Once she had closed the gap, she gathered the girl into her arms. “Are you okay?” Molly searched the teen's face for signs of injury. All she saw was heartache and trepidation.

At the foundation of this problem was a man.
Surprise, fucking surprise.

She turned to the man. A boy, really, but definitely older than Roni. Molly's label-sensitive eye recognized the Diesel jeans, Burberry shirt, and Prada sunglasses perched perfectly on sun-bleached hair. Must be slumming it from one of the wealthier suburbs on the North Shore.

“Who the hell are you?” she snapped.

“This is Dean,” Roni answered, her voice unsteady. “He's my . . . boyfriend.”

“Ex-boyfriend,” he said with a sneer.

“Yeah, 'cause I won't put out.”

Rage tore through Molly. How dare anyone hurt this lovely and amazing girl? Shoving Roni behind her, she got all up in Dean's personal space. “She's only fifteen.”

“Which I just found out. Told me she was sixteen.”

“Which is still underage, you limp-dicked asshole.”

The sidekick stepped in. “You watch your mouth, lady.”

“Or what? Are you going to knock me out with your halitosis? Yeah, that's a multisyllabic word, Groot. Look it up.”

He might prefer to snap her in two. She barely came up to his Northwestern Wildcats tee-covered pecs.

“Molly, let's just leave,” Roni said.

Dean did a double take. “Molly? You're . . . huh, I thought you looked familiar. Probably would've recognized you sooner if you were in the buff.”

“Good one,
Dean
. You know who I am and I know who you are. Know what else I know? I've got enough money, influence, and lady rage to bury your suburban ass in the middle of the lake. And this girl has a bunch of berserker firefighter uncles, but they're not the ones you should be worried about. It's her kickass firefighter aunt, Alexandra Dempsey, who you might recall made national news last year when a guy really, really pissed her off. That moron got off easy with only his car shredded. She'll probably remove your pea-sized nuts with the Jaws of Life and feed them to tree squirrels. You come near Roni again and I'll make it my personal mission to ensure your pretty-boy face isn't so pretty anymore.”

“And if she doesn't, I will,” a deep bass sounded behind her.

All heads turned and Molly sealed gazes with a very still, very pissed Wyatt Fox.

W
yatt had arrived in time to hear Molly giving a speech worthy of one of her movies. His woman defending his girl.

Proud. As. Hell.

But that pride was now being crowded out in his chest by a few other blood-boiling emotions. Not least of which was fury, equally divided between his niece and this POS who'd thought he could touch her.

Who might already have.

He rounded Molly, stepped in front of her, and gripped the asshole's throat. “What did you do?”

Through a strangled gasp, he shook his head. “Noth—nothing! I didn't lay a finger on her.”

“Wyatt, please!” Roni screamed. “He didn't do anything. I promise.” She grabbed his arm but someone pulled her back. Molly.

“I swear, man,” the kid sputtered. “I met her online, on Facebook. She said she was older.”

“It's true!” Roni cried out. “It's not his fault.”

A crowd had gathered around them, their energy fueling Wyatt when it should have warned him of the dangers of being seen. Filmed. Vilified. But he didn't care. This was his family, and no one fucked with his family.

He unhinged his paw from the kid's windpipe. Old enough to know better, but still just a kid.

Molly stood back, her arms wrapped around his niece, protecting her. Watching him. Her eyes flashed with pride, though whether it was because he had stepped in or dialed it down, he didn't know.

To the kid now holding his throat, Wyatt said, “Gimme your driver's license.”

“What?” At Wyatt's subtle lunge, the
what
quickly became
yes, sir, right away, sir
as he fumbled with his wallet and handed it over.

Wyatt noted the name and address. Almost nineteen, the same age as Logan when he knocked up Molly's mom. Just another dumb fucking kid. This one had signed up to be an organ donor. He'd get to keep his heart and lungs for now.

“You gonna fuck with me or my family again?”

“No. God, no.” He looked at Roni, his eyes the color of regret. “We're good.”

Wyatt wasn't so sure about that, but wordlessly, he led Molly and Roni out to the street and his illegally parked truck. He stood on the passenger side and held Roni by her shoulders, directing her chin up to face him. Tears streamed from black-rimmed eyes, down painted cheeks, and over red-stained lips.

“You met him online?”

She nodded.

“When?”

“A—a few months ago.”

“That's why you came to Chicago.”

She shook her head. “Grams sent me. Because I was trouble.”

“Because you
made
trouble.” Deliberately. And he had thought she'd planned it to meet her family. She'd played him for a fool. “How many times have you seen him?”

“A couple.” Her eyes slid to Molly and she bit down on her lip. “Four or five.”

“What did he do to you?”

Her cheeks reddened, glowing through the black rivulets. “Nothing. Just kissing. I didn't want to . . .” She tapered off, but at Wyatt's squeeze of her shoulders, she continued. “Tonight, he invited me to this party and he wanted more. I got scared and called Molly.”

“It's okay, Roni,” Molly said. “You did the right thing.”

His gaze snapped to Molly and she returned it with challenge. Yes, she'd done the right thing, but dammit, she should not have been in that situation in the first place. This was why she'd come to Chicago. Not to visit with her family, but to hook up with some guy. The Summer of Roni was exactly that—all about her.

Molly squeezed Roni's arm. “Did you send him any photos or videos? Anything you wouldn't want shared or seen online?”

He hadn't even thought of that.

“No,” Roni said with a panicked look at Wyatt. “I didn't. Nothing, I promise.”

“Okay,” Molly said, her relief palpable.

“Wy—” Roni started, but he cut her off.

“In the truck.”

“But—”

“Won't say it again.”

Sad eyes turned up to the max, she got into the truck's backseat. Molly was clearly trying her best to bite her tongue as she waved the idling Uber driver away, which was good, because the second she opened her mouth, he was going to go ballistic.

He walked twenty feet down the sidewalk, needing the space before he drove them home.
Home.
Fuck that. That's not how Roni saw it. Fury blistered inside him, waging a war against disappointment in his chest. The muted bass coming from the party house roused him to action. He made a call, snitched those boozy teens out, and returned to his truck.

L
uke, Gage, and Brady were waiting out front as Wyatt pulled up.

“Wyatt,” Roni started again. She'd been using the quiet time on the ride home to shine up her story, he assumed. Well, he'd run out of fucks to give.

“Not talking to you right now, girl. Go use your excuses on the rest of 'em.”

He heard a hissed breath from Molly, but she wisely kept her counsel.

“I'm sorry,” Roni said, her voice small and lost, and Wyatt almost reached for her, but anger stayed his hand.

She hopped out of the truck and rushed into Luke's arms, and Wyatt tried not to be hurt by that, even though he'd driven her there. He sucked ass at this whole family thing, and this night was the proof of it. All this time, she had been going behind his back. Probably planned it from the start. Pissed off her gran so she could land in the Big Smoke and meet this guy who'd almost raped her tonight.

Watching as they took his niece inside, forgiving arms around her like she hadn't just put them through hell, he tightened his grip on the steering wheel and started a ten-count.

About the time he got to four, Molly spoke his name. Soft, but not so soft that he felt she was trying to pander. He'd say that about Molly—she didn't tiptoe around anything.