cleaner.
Chapter 3
It was the bouquet of white irises that got to her the most. The sneering, in-your-face rudeness of it. As if the guy had spit on her.
Liv clenched her fists and tried to breathe. Her belly muscles were so rigid, she had to deliberately unknot them to let her lungs expand. That coffee she’d drunk some time ago churned in her belly, threatening to rush back up the way it came. She might be better off without it, but barfing made her cry, and the firebug who had torched her bookstore might be watching through a pair of binoculars.
Giggling evilly to himself. Licking his slavering chops. Watching her out of his cold, beady little reptile eyes, like a Tyrannosaurus rex.
She scanned the buildings around her, their outlines blurred by the haze of smoke. He could be watching from one of those windows. She shivered. She would not let him see her snivel like a hurt little girl.
T-Rex had left the bouquet on top of the kerosene, right out front. No attempt to hide what he’d done. He’d even attached a letter. For Olivia, with love, from You Know Who, was printed on the front. Same font he’d used for his previous e-mails. The ones she’d tried to ignore.
Evidently, T-Rex didn’t respond well to being ignored.
Well, hell. She was paying attention now. He’d gotten the big reaction he was looking for. The police were completely disgusted with her for contaminating the crime scene. She hadn’t thought about practical details like fingerprints, etc., when she’d ripped the flowers apart and stomped them into the ground, shrieking at the top of her lungs. She’d put on quite a floor show. Her parents had been mortified.
Ah, well. Nobody was perfect.
She forced out a breath. Her mind kept churning out platitudes about the virtues of non-attachment. All things must pass, blah, blah. The stuff she’d so recently stocked her Self-Help, Spirituality and New Age sections with. Big sellers, all that woo woo stuff. It made her want to smack someone. Who cared about the illusory nature of reality when you were staring at the ruins of your lifelong dream?
She wasn’t evolved enough not to feel like total crap about it.
And she was so angry. She wanted to hurt the guy who did this. Hurt him bad. Make it last. Make him sorry his parents had ever met.
This, from a woman who caught spiders and put them in the yard because she couldn’t bear to kill them. Even the big, freaky, hairy ones.
God, it hurt. She’d invested so much of herself into this place. Everything she had, and a whole lot more besides. She’d never cared so much. Ever, in her life. About anything.
Except for one notable occasion, her inner commentator piped up.
Oh no. Uh-uh. No way was she going to let herself think about Sean McCloud. One charred disaster at a time, thank you very much.
She scuffed through the ashes, mind churning. Who was this guy? What did he have against her? She had no natural enemies. She was Miss Compromise. Sweetness and light. What you reap is what you sow, wasn’t that how it worked? Wasn’t there a goddamn rule?
That New Age fluff she’d been ordering had done a number on her brain. Or maybe she’d done something horrible in a past life. She’d left a swathe of destruction in her wake. The Countess Dracula, or some such. She’d just get her inner evil countess to hunt this guy down and serve his balls up to him on a plate. Here ya go, buddy. Open wide.
If he didn’t get her first. She shivered, despite the August sun, and the heat waves that rose, shimmering, from the smoking coals.
She dashed the tears away with grimy hands and blinked madly, staring at the mess. All those months of work, reduced to nothing.
It had felt so good, bringing her dream bookstore into reality. Like she’d finally come home. Books & Brew was her baby. Her idea, her investment, her risk. Her own miserable, incinerated failure.
Be grateful it happened at night. The fire didn’t spread. The staff was home. No one got hurt, she reminded herself, for the zillionth time.
A hand clapped down on her shoulder. She jumped. “Don’t worry,” came a familiar voice. “It’s no big deal. It’s all insured, right?”
It was Blair Madden, the VP of Endicott Construction Enterprises, and her father’s right-hand man. Blair had never possessed much of what you might call tact, but this was a bit raw, even for him.
Liv turned. “Excuse me? No big deal? Don’t worry about it?”
“All I meant is that it’s replaceable.” Blair took his hand off her bare, dirty shoulder and wiped it discreetly on his perfectly creased tan pants. “It’s not like it was a cultural landmark. Keep it in perspective.”
“Livvy? Good God! You’re still here?”
Liv winced at the razor tone of her mother’s voice. Amelia Endicott climbed out of the Mercedes idling on the curb and minced toward them, careful not to smudge her sandals. “You shouldn’t be out in the open!” she scolded.
“I’ll come when I’m ready, Mother,” Liv said.
The older woman’s hackles rose, visibly. “I see,” she said. “As always. You have to do things your own way. You must suit yourself.”
“Yeah, right,” Liv muttered. “As always.”
It took energy, opposing her mother. The woman had run her childhood like a dictator, picking her clothes, her schools, her friends.
Except for that one very memorable summer.
Yeah, right. Mother had cast the Sean debacle up to her for years as an example of what happened when Liv didn’t listen to her. For once, she’d actually had a point. It stuck in Liv’s craw even now.
She’d finally forced her parents to accept that she was an adult who made her own decisions. Enter T-Rex, with a can of kerosene, and suddenly her parents felt justified in bundling her into a suffocating gift box again. Tying her up with a big silken bow. Olivia Endicott, groomed to be a credit to the family name, if she would only: 1) lose that pesky fifteen pounds, 2) wear the right shoes, 3) dress like a lady, 4) marry Blair Madden, and 5) work for Endicott Construction Enterprises.
Blair chose this inopportune moment to throw his arm around her shoulder. She jerked away before she could control the reflex.
Blair folded his arms over his chest, affronted. “I’m just trying to help,” he said stiffly. “You’re being childish, you know. And bitchy.”
I’m under a wee bit of stress, in case you haven’t noticed. She bit the sarcastic words back. “I’m sorry, Blair,” she said. “I just can’t stand being touched right now.”
Her mother’s eyes flicked down over Liv’s body, mouth tightening. “I can’t believe you are out in public dressed like that.”
Liv looked down at her baggy pants, the shrunken tank top. She’d rushed to the fire right after she got the call, not bothering to change out of her jammies. She hadn’t had a belly flat enough for that look when she was twenty, let alone thirty-two. No bra, either. Woo
