the effect of a knockout punch on him? The whole thing was beyond ridiculous. Annoyed at his reaction and at her finding him this way, he shrugged.
“I was just about to throw it out.” But he continued to hold it.
Melanie merely smiled at the gruff protest. “If you were going to do that, you would have done it when you found it in your pocket.” She’d watched him a second before coming in. He’d picked up the dalmatian and looked at it, a sad expression on his face before turning his chair toward the window. What could he have been thinking of that made him look so sad?
No one should feel that sad, or that alone.
Instead of tossing it into the trash, he just dropped the dog carelessly onto his desk. There was enough paper spread all over to pad the fall.
“How did you get it into my pocket?” he wanted to know. He distinctly remembered seeing it in her hand after he’d taken his jacket from her.
It came so naturally to her, she had to stop to remember. “Sleight of hand.” The frown on his face deepened. “One of my mother’s friends was a magician. My Aunt Elaine put him up at the house for a while when he was down on his luck. He paid her back by teaching me a few tricks.”
Sounded like she’d grown up in the middle of a circus. That could go a long way in accounting for her attitude.
“Like coming into a firehouse and trying to get your fines taken care of?” He assumed that she thought she would have another go at him to try to make him change his mind about filing the violations. If so, she was out of luck and too late. He’d filed them as soon as he’d returned, dalmatian in his pocket notwithstanding.
“Already done.” She realized he probably thought she’d asked someone to rescind them for her. She could tell by his expression. What had made him so cynical? “I paid them,” she added to clear up any lingering doubt.
He didn’t understand. Fines were paid at city hall. “Then what are you doing here?”
“Seeing if someone has John Kelly’s new address.” That had been her original intent, although when she’d walked into the firehouse, she’d asked to be directed to Lance’s office instead.
He rocked back in his chair, studying her. He had patience and an eye for detail, which made him a good investigator and the likely choice to fill in for Kelly until they could find someone. But right now, none of that was within his grasp.
“Why?”
Why did he make everything sound like it had to be defended in order to exist? “Because I wanted to send him a gift.” She saw the question forming, and answered before it rose to his lips. “He was always nice to me.”
In his experience, women who looked like Melanie McCloud were nice to men for one reason and one reason only. “Yeah.”
“Like a father,” Melanie clarified, wondering whether or not to take offense at what he was clearly implying. She decided not to. He looked as if he was suffering enough as it was. He didn’t need someone snapping at him. What he needed, she thought, was someone to listen. And maybe even to care a little. “How dark is the world you’re in, Lance?”
He wasn’t prepared to have the tables turned on him. With the worn heel of his boot braced against the metal leg of his desk, he shoved his chair back, away from it. It hit against the wall as he rose. He didn’t like being analyzed. Served him right for doing a good deed.
No good deed went unpunished, he thought. “It’s not dark, it’s realistic.”
“Then you should understand that a man like John Kelly might just be friendly without compromising his job—or compromising the person he’s being nice to,” she added significantly.
He’d met Kelly just before the older man had left. A singularly unimpressive, talkative man with premature wrinkles and yellowing skin from years of being addicted to smoking. They each played with fire their own way, he supposed.
Lance’s eyes washed over her slowly, still trying to decide whether or not she was for real. So far, with the exception of his aunt and possibly the mother he just barely remembered, no woman had been. “Did he teach you any tricks?”
There was a point where easy-going just ceased going. Melanie had reached that point. Not for herself, but for the regard, or lack of it, that Lance had for John Kelly, a man she’d truly liked.
Her eyes darkened. “As a matter of fact, he did. He taught me that it was possible to be a fire inspector and not to be a rude, suspicious know-it-all. Otherwise, I would have thought that was what the breed was all about.” There was no use talking to him. At least, not until she cooled down a little. “Good day, Inspector Reed. Enjoy your work.”
She was almost out the door when he spoke. Part of him was willing to see her walk out. But part of him, some tiny part that sought to justify, to find logic in a world that continued not to have any, pressed him to ask, “You ever see a fire?”
His voice was so low, she almost thought she imagined it. But she turned around, anyway. The expression on his face told her she hadn’t imagined the question.
Melanie nodded. “Sure.”
He knew exactly what she meant. Lance shook his head darkly. “I’m not talking about something contained within a circle of rocks you roast marshmallows over,” he said contemptuously. “I’m talking about afire mething that roasts flesh. That has no respect for who you are or how old you are, it just destroys everything in its path, getting stronger, bigger, defying you to stop it.”
The problem with growing up the way she had, the merest suggestion brought vivid images to her mind. She could see exactly what he was talking about. See it and feel it. Melanie licked her lips before answering. They’d gone completely dry.
“No.”
“I didn’t think so.” Lance kept his distance from her, because he wasn’t sure what he would do, just now, if he were close. Shake her or hold her. The latter worried him more than the former did. “I don’t enjoy my work, Ms. McCloud. What I enjoy is knowing that if I do my work right, that destructive son of a bitch called fire isn’t going to get a chance to get a toehold on the property I inspected.” His eyes held hers. “And then no one needs to die.”
Melanie blew out a shaky breath as the pain he felt became evident to her.
“How bad was it?” she whispered.
He shook himself free of the memory that haunted him, mentally cursing his lack of control. “What?”
She knew, or thought she knew. “The fire you were in. How bad was it?”
Lance stared at her. Did she profess to gaze into crystal balls, too? “Who said I was in a fire?”
Why did he bother denying it? “You did. Not in so many words, but you did.”
The sympathy in her eyes unmanned him, sending him to a place he had no desire to be. He didn’t have time to waste talking to her. He had work to do.
“Thompson can give you Kelly’s address if you’re interested in sending him something. He’s the guy looking in and staring at you.”
Then,
