she began to jerk her head back, but he stopped her with, “You’ve got black flakes in your hair. I was just going to remove them. Unless you want them there,” he speculated, raising a quizzical eyebrow and waiting for a response.
Something had just happened. Something completely uncalled-for. She’d felt a very definite wave of heat as his fingers made contact with her hair and scalp. Her imagination?
Kansas took a step back and did the honors herself, carelessly brushing her fingers through her long blond hair to get rid of any kind of soot or burnt debris she might have picked up while she was hustling the children out of the building. She supposed she should count herself lucky that it hadn’t caught fire while she was getting the children out.
“There,” she declared, her throat feeling tight for reasons that were completely beyond her. She tossed her head as a final sign of defiance. And then her eyes narrowed as she looked at him. “Now, why are you so interested in the fires, and who did you just call?”
She was no longer being just nosey, he thought. There was something else at work here. But what? Maybe she was a reporter and that was why she seemed to resent his being one, as per her last guess.
If that was what she was, then she was out of luck. Nothing he disliked more than reporters. “Lady, just because I borrowed your phone doesn’t entitle you to my life story.”
She squared her shoulders as if she were about to go into battle. He braced himself. “I don’t want your life story. I just want an answer to my question, and it’s Kansas, not ‘lady.’”
Ethan’s eyebrows lifted in confusion. What the hell was she talking about? “What’s Kansas?”
Was she dealing with a village idiot, or was he just slow? “My name,” she emphasized.
Ethan cocked his head, trying to absorb this meandering conversation. “Your last name’s Kansas?”
She sighed. She was fairly certain he was doing this on purpose just to annoy her. “No, my first name is Kansas, and no matter how long you attempt to engage in this verbal shell game of yours, I’m not going to get sidetracked. Now, who did you call, and why are you so taken with this fire?” Before he could say anything, she asked him another question. “And what did you mean by ‘there’s been another one’?”
“The phrase ‘another one’ means that there’s been more than one.” He was deliberately goading her now. And enjoying it.
She said something under her breath that he couldn’t quite make out, but he gathered it wasn’t very favorable toward him.
“I know what the phrase means,” she retorted through gritted teeth. “I’ll ask you one more time—why are you so interested in the fires?”
“What happens after one more time?” Ethan wanted to know, amused by the woman despite himself. Irritating women usually annoyed the hell out of him—but there was something different about this one.
She drew herself up to her full height. “After one more time, I have you arrested.”
That surprised him. “You’re a cop?” He thought he knew most of the people on the force, by sight if not by name. He’d never seen her before.
“No. I’m a fire investigator,” she informed him archly. “But I can still have you arrested. Clapped in irons would be my choice,” Kansas added, savoring the image.
“Kinky,” he commented. Damn, they were making fire investigators a hell of a lot prettier these days. If she was telling the truth. “Mind if I ask to see some identification?”
“And just so I know, who’s asking?” she pressed, still trying to get a handle on his part in all this.
It was a known fact that pyromaniacs liked to stick around and watch their handiwork until the object of their interest burnt down to the ground and there was nothing left to watch. Since she’d begun her investigations and discovered that the fires had been set, Kansas had entertained several theories as to who or what was behind all these infernos. She was still sorting through them, looking for something that would rule out the others.
“Ethan O’Brien,” he told her. She was still looking at him skeptically. He inclined his head. “I guess since you showed me yours, I’ll show you mine.” He took out his ID and his badge. “Detective Ethan O’Brien,” he elaborated.
Like his siblings, he was still debating whether he was going to change his last name the way Brian and his brother Andrew, the former chief of police and reigning family patriarch, had told them they were welcome to do.
He knew that Greer was leaning toward it, as were Brian’s four stepchildren who’d become part of the family when he married his widowed former partner. Kyle was the last holdout if he, Ethan, decided to go with the others. But he, Greer and Kyle had agreed that it would be an all-or-nothing decision for the three of them.
As for himself, he was giving the matter careful consideration.
“You’re a cop,” she concluded, quickly scanning the ID he held up.
“That I am,” Ethan confirmed, slipping his wallet back into his pocket. “I’m on the task force investigating the recent crop of fires that have broken out in Aurora.”
“They didn’t just ‘break out,’” she corrected him. “Those fires were all orchestrated, all set ahead of time.”
“Yes, I know,” Ethan allowed. He regarded her for a moment, wondering how much she might have by way of information. “How long have you been investigating this?”
There was only one way to answer that. “Longer than you,” she promised.
She seemed awfully cocky. He found himself itching to take her down a peg. Take her down a peg and at the same time clean the soot off her bottom lip with his own.
Careful, O’Brien, he warned himself. If anything, this is a professional relationship. Don’t get personally involved, not even for a minute.
“And you would know this how?” he challenged her. How would she know what was going on in his squad room?
“Simple. The fire department investigates every fire to make sure that it wasn’t deliberately set,” she answered him without missing a beat. “That would be something you should know heading into your investigation.”
He’d never been one of those guys who felt superior to the softer of the species simply because he was a man. In his opinion, especially after growing up with Greer, women were every bit as capable and intelligent as men. More so sometimes. But he’d never had any use for people—male or female—who felt themselves to be above the law. Especially when they came across as haughty.
“Tell me,” he said, lowering his voice as if he were about to share a secret thought. “How do you manage to stand up with that huge chip on your shoulder?”
Her eyes hardened, but to his surprise, no choice names were attached to his personage. Instead, using the same tone as he just had, she informed him, “I manage just fine, thanks.”
“Kansas!” The fire chief, at least a decade older than his men and the young woman he called out to, hurried over to
