Touched By Fire. Elizabeth Sinclair

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СКАЧАТЬ to work that Sunday,” he said.

      Pink flooded her cheeks. “Oh? How do you know?”

      He grinned. “I saw the duty schedule in Santelli’s office.”

      She glared at him for a moment, then turned to Maggie with a smile. “Well, then, I guess you can count me in.”

      “Yippee,” Maggie yelled. “Aunt Sam’s coming, too, Daddy.”

      “Yes, we heard, and I’m sure everyone in the neighborhood did as well.” Luke looked at his daughter as if she were the most important thing on earth. “Okay, Magpie, time for bed,” Luke said.

      Maggie frowned. “Aw, Daddy. Can’t I stay up just a little more time?”

      “Bed,” her mother repeated more firmly. “We said you could stay up long enough to invite Aunt Sam. You’ve done that, so now, it’s time to say good night.” Rachel waited patiently while Maggie reluctantly hugged and kissed A.J. and Sam, prolonging each endearment as long as possible.

      A sinking sensation invaded A.J.’s stomach as he watched both Luke and Rachel disappear down the hall with their daughter, leaving him and Sam alone. He suddenly felt as if the rug had been pulled out from under him. Why did this woman have the power to make him feel like a kid fresh out of the tenth grade on his first date?

      Sam sighed.

      “Bored?” he asked for lack of anything else to say.

      She looked at him and shook her head. “No, just thinking. I was kind of hoping they’d have a regular birthday party for Maggie. You know, the kind with lots of kids, balloons, ice cream, noisemakers, a clown and all the regular kid stuff.”

      “Sounds as if you’ve been to a few of these shindigs yourself.”

      Her blue eyes lost their sparkle, and she turned away. “No. I’ve never been to a birthday party.”

      A.J. frowned. Surely she had been to a birthday party sometime in her life. “Not even your own?”

      Sam shook her head, then rose and went to the bar. “Especially not my own.” Busying herself by adding ice to her glass, she avoided his gaze. “The Tiny Tots beauty pageant in Phoenix was on my birthday every year, so there was never time. Besides, my mother thought birthday parties were a waste of money.”

      He cringed at the sadness that tinged her voice. “So, you were a child beauty queen, huh?” Why hadn’t he known that? But then there was so much about Sam he didn’t know. So much he wanted to know. Like everything that had happened to her from the time she left the birth canal to when she’d walked into Rachel’s living room tonight.

      As she walked back to the sofa, she tucked a stray hair back into the knot at the base of her neck. His fingers itched to release the confining hairdo and watch the night-black strands fall over her shoulders while he—

      “That was my other life,” she said. “One that I gave up when I stowed the trophies and certificates in my spare-room closet.” She took a long gulp of her drink, then glanced anxiously down the hall where Luke and Rachel had disappeared. “Can we talk about something else?”

      “Sure.” The conversation about her childhood may have ended, but A.J. could see by the frown lines between her eyes that she had not stopped thinking about it.

      A pain cut across his heart for the woman whose childhood consisted of nothing more than a few trophies and certificates stuck away in a closet. But mostly it ached for the little girl who had never blown out candles on her own cake, never taken part in a game of Pin the Tail on the Donkey, never dove into stacks of presents while her excited friends looked on. How many other things had she missed out on because her mother had evidently never considered the importance of having a childhood?

      

      Sam squirmed under A.J.’s watchful gaze from across Rachel’s dining-room table. She added her empty cake plate to the stack Rachel was collecting. After depositing them in the sink, Rachel refilled Sam’s coffee cup. Adding cream and sugar, Sam stirred the light brown liquid and tried to block out thoughts of that kiss she and A.J. had shared that kept popping into her head every time she looked at him. If she allowed herself, she could still feel how warm and sweet that kiss had been. How her heart had cried out for him to take her in his arms and never let go. How—

      She blinked away the daydream and checked her watch. “It’s getting late. Can we get down to the reason for this little gathering?” she asked, hoping to distract A.J. and get this evening over with.

      Rachel laid a manila folder in front of them. “Sam’s right. We need to talk FIST business,” she announced. “What did you two find at the bookstore?”

      In the year since Rachel and Sam had founded FIST, they had investigated several arson sprees, a serial arsonist and at least a dozen insurance fires. Though they’d started slow, word was rapidly spreading around the state that if a fire chief or an insurance company had a fire that required special investigation, they called FIST.

      “This was an easy one,” Sam said, brushing a strand of hair from her cheek.

      “What do you know about Bayside Insurance?” A.J. asked.

      “Rachel?” Luke looked at his wife.

      Rachel opened the folder and scanned it. “They’re an old company that was absorbed into the Florida Life and Property Company. When they merged, most of the Bayside employees were pensioned off and the company installed their own people in the jobs. According to this, their business has been less than stellar this year. I think the bookstore was a tax write-off and they needed the deduction, so…” She frowned at Sam and A.J. “Why?”

      “Because A.J. and I think the insurance company is trying to get out of paying. There’s no evidence of arson there. I went over the outlet wiring that they claimed might have started it, and there’s no evidence of it. The window they said was broken into was blown out by the heat, not in by any intruder.” She glanced at A.J. then looked away. “I checked around the store for the point of origin and found a water leak in the back wall, right above the circuit breakers. The wall above it was black. Textbook V Burn mark. Bottom line is, these guys don’t want to cough up the settlement check.”

      Rachel had been taking notes while Sam talked. “Well, that’s going to make our clients very happy. You took pictures, right?” Sam nodded. Rachel collected Sam and A.J.’s written reports and added them to her folder. “That’s about it then. I’ll call the bookstore owner tomorrow.”

      Quickly, before Rachel could find an excuse for her to stay, Sam rose to make her exit. She’d had about all of A.J.’s sexual aura she could take for one night. “Well, I’m gonna hit the road. Thanks for everything,” she said, making her way to the door.

      “Good night,” Rachel and Luke called as she hurried out of the air-conditioned house and into the humid Florida night.

      Without turning, she waved at them over her shoulder.

      “I’ll walk you to your car,” a deep voice said from just behind her.

      She spun and came face-to-face with A.J. “Ah, thanks, but I’ll be fine.”

      “That wasn’t a question, Sam.” Her name rolled off his tongue like a СКАЧАТЬ