anyone, even Luke. How could he tell him that this job offer gave him the perfect excuse to get away from Samantha Ellis? Or that he was running away from his heart because he was becoming more and more attracted to Sam with each passing day, and it scared him senseless? He was, after all, a cop, the chief of detectives, for heaven’s sake. How could one woman make him want to run fifteen hundred miles away for emotional cover?
It didn’t take much effort to find the answer: one failed marriage, followed by a failed engagement. When it came to women, he was batting zero in the relationship department and had learned not to trust his choices. Sam could just be another emotional disaster waiting to happen, and he could not take that risk. A heart could take just so much abuse, and commitment seemed to be his own personal battering ram.
“Damn! You’re going, aren’t you?” Luke asked, a thread of shock imbuing his voice.
A.J. shrugged. “I haven’t made any decisions.” But, truth be told, he was seriously considering it, and he’d been given some time to make up his mind. “I have to think it through.”
“What’s to think about?” Luke asked, standing and beginning to pace A.J.’s small office. “Good grief, A.J., all your friends are here. You have a good job. What the hell more could you want?”
A family. Kids. Love. Everything you have. Some kind of guarantee that Sam won’t be just another mistake to add to my list of personal screwups.
But he didn’t voice his thoughts. He didn’t need Luke lecturing him about his track record with women. He could run his personal life without any help from Luke.
And you’ve done such a splendid job so far.
A.J.’s nerves were drawn as tight as a bowstring. He’d had enough of Luke nudging him and reminding him of what he’d be leaving or what he’d never have. “Don’t you have work to do?” he asked, putting on his boss face and effectively closing the discussion.
Luke threw him an impatient look, then tossed the brown envelope he’d been holding facedown on A.J.’s desk. “You should see this.” Then he left the office, closing the door with more gusto than was needed.
A.J. shoved the envelope aside and leaned back in his chair, closed his eyes and sighed. When had his life gotten so complicated? He laughed aloud. The day he’d met Samantha Ellis outside the arson task force room. That’s when.
He could still see the blue highlights in her silky, raven-black hair shining in the sunlight and her sea-blue eyes twinkling up at him. He could still feel the tightening in his gut that always signaled the beginning of an attraction to a woman. He could still feel the wash of warmth that went over him when she’d smiled. If he’d been smart, he would have backed away then, distanced himself, but he hadn’t and now he was paying the price.
Most disconcerting of all was that when he was around her all his good intentions, all his firm resolutions to keep his distance, melted away like snow under a noonday sun. In his heart, he knew he was getting down to the wire. If he didn’t put distance between them soon, they’d both suffer the consequences. The offer he’d so coveted from the BCI just provided the escape route.
Heaving a sigh, he sat up, turned over the envelope Luke had given him, then—after reading Sam’s name scrawled across the front—tore it open. Carefully, he slid the scorched contents onto his desk. For a time he stared at it, unable to distinguish what it was, then it came to him. Sam gave this to Rachel? Why? He glanced at the front of the envelope again and read Sam’s address on it and the words incendiary device. His heart felt as if someone had reached into his chest and squeezed it as hard as they could. Then his anger began to bubble to the surface. What the hell was this all about?
He strode to his door, threw it open and bellowed for Luke to come back to his office.
Late the next day, when they’d returned from a small, drought-induced brush fire, the third one that day, Sam checked the pressure in her SCBA. She hadn’t had to use her self-contained breathing apparatus this time but, out of habit, she checked the pressure before stowing it away. Satisfied that everything was acceptable, she placed it back on the fire truck’s side rack, then turned her attention to her new partner, Kevin Hilary, a young rookie fresh out of the academy. He’d only been with the company for a few weeks, and Chief Santelli had asked her to keep an eye on him and teach him all she could. It was the first time in her life that someone had looked to her for knowledge, and not a means to an end, so she took the job very seriously.
She smiled at what appeared to be brown oil stains dotting Kevin’s hands and pants. Having met Kevin’s mother on several occasions, Sam knew for sure that when the domineering woman saw the stained pants, she’d probably chew him a new derriere. Poor kid. Sam wasn’t sure who had it worse: her with a mother that had only cared about the money she brought in winning children’s beauty pageants, or Kevin with a mother that oversaw every aspect of his life and dictated how he should lead it.
She laughed to herself. If his disheveled hair meant anything, Kevin was into getting his job done with dedication. One thing his mother hadn’t seemed to have dampened was Kevin’s eagerness to excel at his job.
A frown pleated her brow. There had been a time when that same eagerness had resided inside her, too, but lately, though she still loved her job, she’d detected a distinct waning of that zest she’d always felt for being a firefighter.
Taking a deep, cleansing breath, she leaned over Kevin. “How you doing, probie?”
Kevin looked up, his face screwed up in a serious expression. “I’m finished with the SCBA check. The other equipment is done, too.”
“Okay. Put it back in the rack. We need to get to the kitchen. It’s our turn to make supper and those vultures will be screaming like banshees if they don’t get fed.”
Their twenty-four-hour shift had ended an hour earlier, so Sam sent Kevin home. Before she left, she’d double-checked his equipment to make sure he hadn’t overlooked anything. Finding everything in order, Sam gathered her purse and turned to leave the firehouse. Her heart skidded into her throat. The one man on this planet she didn’t want to see was walking toward her.
A. J. Branson’s blond hair shone golden in the sunlight pouring through the open apparatus bay doors. The muscles in his thighs and arms rippled beneath his white shirt and navy slacks. His burgundy tie had been pulled to half-mast. Two open buttons on his white shirt revealed his tanned throat and the very top of his bare chest.
Sam caught her breath and tried to arrange her features in an expression that didn’t give away her sudden urge to jump his bones on the oil-stained floor.
Not until he was almost in front of her did she notice what he was carrying—the brown craft envelope containing the incendiary device she’d found under the chair and had dropped off at Rachel’s. Dammit! She knew, because A.J. headed up the arson task force, that Luke would eventually give it to A.J. and that he would come to her for details. She hadn’t expected him to be this mad.
A.J.’s tight expression sent a chill of dread racing over her. He was really upset that she hadn’t come directly to him. Company protocol dictated that the envelope should have gone to him and not a detective. As a firefighter and member of FIST, she knew that. She’d just been trying to get around what evidently was about to happen anyway: a face-to-face confrontation with the one man in Orange Grove who could raise her blood pressure several notches.
A.J.
