Falling for Mister Wrong (8 page)

Wow.

Chapter Eight

Will took in the situation with a single
sweeping glance.

The fire seemed relatively contained—flames
licking up a five square foot patch around a light switch on the
exterior wall—but he knew how quickly that could change. Sprawled
on the floor in front of the fire lay a tangle of long alabaster
limbs and auburn hair, swathed in skimpy boy shorts, a clinging
green tank top, red heels and what appeared to be twenty feet of
wedding veil, twisted around her and burning in places.

He’d thought Ms. Gregg might have a
granddaughter. He just hadn’t expected her to be so gorgeous. Or so
obviously out of her mind.

First things first. Get the crazy lady away
from the fire.

Will dropped into crisis mode—calm and
focused. He lunged into the room as she gaped at him. Something
clear dripped down the base of the wall where she’d clearly tried
to put out the flames without success. He was at her side in a
blink. “Are you hurt?”

A wave of sticky-sweet alcohol scent fumes
hit him and she blinked as if trying to bring him into focus.
“You’re too sexy to be an angel.”

I’ll take that as a no.
He patted out
the tiny fires on the veil and lifted her to her feet, her slim
arms surprisingly muscular beneath his hands. “Where’s your
grandmother?”

She gazed blankly up at him. “What?”

He resisted the urge to shake her. Maybe Ms.
Gregg was a great-aunt. “Ms. Gregg.”

“Yes?”

Christ. “Is there anyone else here?” he said
with excruciating patience, herding her quickly toward the door
with a hand on one arm. “Anyone else we need to get out?”

“The piano.” She said it with such vehemence
it actually took him a moment to recall the piano was
inanimate.

“Right.” She was officially shitfaced to the
point of incoherence. He’d search the place himself. Right after he
got her out of here and contained the fire. It was small now, but
it might not stay that way for long. “If I were you I’d be more
worried about that Christmas tree catching.”

Will shoved the girl toward the door,
scooping an abandoned cell phone off the floor and tossing it at
her. She caught it awkwardly, fumbling it against her chest. “Go
outside,” he demanded. “Call the Fire Department.”

He ran back to the fire, shoving the
Christmas tree, the sofa and anything else that might catch farther
away from the blaze and grabbing a blanket to smother the flames.
He batted down the flames, but no sooner had he extinguished them
than they seemed to crawl out from inside the wall to reignite.
Shit. The fire seemed to be centered around a switch. Electrical.
It could be spreading through the walls to places he couldn't see.
He needed to cut the power.

Another pair of hands with another blanket
appeared beside him.

He shot an incredulous look at the crazy
redhead in the veil. She was lucky the damn thing hadn’t caught
again already. “What are you doing?”

“I can’t leave the piano!” she shouted.

“Jesus.” He did not have time to deal with a
drunk girl flinging herself on the flames to save a freaking
musical instrument.

He grabbed both blankets, bent and flipped
her up onto his shoulder in a single, practiced move that was made
somewhat less smooth by the yards of tulle that wrapped around both
of them like a boa constrictor. She squealed, but thankfully didn’t
fight him, one of her hands gripping the back of his jeans for
balance as he bolted out of the apartment and thundered down the
stairs.

He was just glad he’d been clothed when he
heard her scream. He tended to sleep naked and he didn’t want to
think about what she might be grabbing for leverage if he’d shown
up in the buff.

He swore as his feet hit the driveway, snow
instantly soaking into his socks and freezing his feet. The crazy
redhead’s smooth bare legs dangled in front of his eyes, red high
heels hanging off her toes, but she was just going to have to wrap
herself in that idiotic veil to keep warm.

Looking for someplace reasonably sheltered
but away from the potential spread of the fire—which wouldn’t be an
issue if he could get back in there and stop the damn thing before
it spread—Will jogged across the driveway to the carport, bouncing
Miss Crazy as he went. His Jeep and Ms. Gregg’s Subaru were parked
close to the building, but beneath a tarp under the carport sat a
massive sprawl of classic American machinery—his baby. A shiny red
Thunderbird convertible. The top didn’t go up anymore and one of
these summers he was going to rebuild the engine, but right now it
seemed like the perfect place to park his armful of trouble.

Will flipped Miss Crazy off his shoulder,
tossing her onto the tarp where the backseat would be. She yelped
as she sank down into it in a tangle of tulle, one of her little
red heels flopping off. He jabbed a finger at her. “Stay.”

A hard sprint back into the building. The
breaker box was in the basement laundry room. He’d found it the day
he moved in. Will bolted down the stairs, throwing open the laundry
door, and cursed a blue streak. The entire side of the room where
he remembered the breaker box was blocked with boxes. The owner was
using the space for storage. By the time he got back to the breaker
box, half the building could be gone.

“
Fuck
.” Will ripped the fire
extinguisher off the wall. At least the less-than-stellar landlord
had kept the damn thing full. It was a solid weight in his arms as
he took the stairs two at a time.

Back in the second floor apartment, the fire
still hadn’t moved beyond that one wall—though it was twice the
size it had been. Black smoke rose to the ceiling.

Why the hell hadn’t the smoke alarm gone
off?

“Ms. Gregg?” he shouted, with no reply. If
she was up in the loft, she was getting a lungful of smoke. He
wanted to check to make sure she wasn’t unconscious up there, but
seconds might count when it came to saving her home and he’d just
have to have faith that even the drunk veil lady would remember the
presence of another person in the house.

Hopefully Miss Crazy was using that cell
phone to call help.

There weren’t many house fires in Tuller
Springs. He’d been on the volunteer fire brigade for three years
now and only three times had he been called on to save someone’s
home. Other than that it was mostly helping out with regional
wildfires and responding to false alarms at the Lodge when some
high-off-his-ass snowboarder yanked the alarm or caught his sheets
on fire. And in all the fires he’d dealt with, he’d never been the
senior man on the scene, never alone, always just keeping a calm
head and following orders.

But this was different. This was all him.

He laid down a blanket of foam, liberally
coating the wall and hoping like hell that the fire ran out before
the canister did.

It felt like hours, but it must have been
only a matter of seconds before the scent of the chemical foam
replaced the scent of smoke and the last of the flames disappeared
beneath the white.

“You did it.”

Will spun around at the awed murmur. Miss
Crazy stood on the landing outside the broken door, snow clinging
to her feet in her little red heels, though she had gotten rid of
the boa constrictor veil.

Of course she couldn’t stay where he put her.
“Jesus, lady, do you have a death wish or something?”

“You told me to call the fire department.”
She held up the cell phone. “I can’t call on this phone. Besides,
you put it out.”

Shit. He must have tossed her a cell with a
dead battery. This was why people needed freaking land lines. Since
it looked like she wasn’t going to wait outside like a good little
civilian… “Come here. Make yourself useful.”

She rushed forward so quickly she tripped
over her feet a bit. He caught her with one hand, shifting the fire
extinguisher to the other. He frowned down at her huge black
pupils, framed by thin lines of blue. “Have you been drinking?”

“
Oh
yes.”

“Before the fire?”

“Mm-hmm. I’ve never seen it go whoosh like
that before.”

Great
. Now he was going to need to get
the arson investigator out here. But first things first.

He slapped the fire extinguisher into her
hands. “Do you know how to use one of these?”

“Yes?”

He frowned. “Is that a question?”

“Well, I mean, I know in theory, but I’ve
never actually done the spray spray thing.”

Jesus. She was drunk off her ever-loving ass.
He put her hands where they needed to be. “The visible flames are
gone, but I think the fire was electrical and it might still be
spreading in the walls. If you see sparks, aim at them and squeeze
this. Got it? And if it looks bad, you get your ass out of the
building, understand?”

She nodded, way too dazed for his comfort,
but he wouldn’t be relying on her for long.

Leaving Miss Crazy in charge of the fire
extinguisher, he scrambled up the steps to the loft, quickly
checking that there was no one up there unconscious from smoke
inhalation. Empty. “Where’s Ms. Gregg?” he called to Miss Crazy as
he descended.

“I’m Ms. Gregg,” she said, without relaxing
her vigilance with the extinguisher.

Will’s feet hit the floor at the base of the
steps with a thud that sent realization shuddering up through his
bones. Of course she was. If he hadn’t been trying to save her
crazy ass maybe he would have put the pieces together himself. He
didn’t know why he’d assumed his neighbor was a senior citizen when
he moved in—maybe the lack of visitors other than her students, or
the early-bird special hours she seemed to keep. He’d never even
seen the woman, but it had never occurred to him for a second that
she might be a hot little redhead in her twenties with more than a
few screws loose.

Or maybe that was just the alcohol
talking.

“Keep watching that wall,” he told her. “And
shout if anything happens.”

“Where are you going?” she asked as he
started for the door.

He kept one ear open as he jogged back down
to the basement, but didn’t hear a peep from the lovely Ms. Gregg.
Hopefully that wasn’t a sign that she’d passed out from alcohol
poisoning. With that lovely thought as motivation to hurry, he
fought his way through the boxes, finally managing to shove a path
to the circuit-breaker box. He flipped all the switches, shutting
off the electricity for the entire building. If a short at the
light switch had caused the fire, he didn’t want to risk running
power anywhere until the entire house was checked out.

Ms. Gregg squealed when the house suddenly
went dark and he cursed to himself. “Sorry!” He shouted up toward
her place. “Should have warned you about that.”

She should still be able to see a little,
thanks to the lights illuminating the mountain for night skiing. On
his way back up, he took a quick detour into his own apartment,
grabbing a flashlight and his cell phone, already dialing emergency
dispatch as he jogged back up the stairs to pretty little Ms.
Gregg.

Her door was hanging strangely, listing to
one side and he realized he’d busted one of the hinges and cracked
the wood when he kicked it in earlier.

Ms. Gregg was sitting cross-legged on the
floor in the low light, the fire extinguisher resting in the circle
of her legs as she stared at the ashy black patch on her wall.

He’d seen other people in the aftermath of
fires. Stunned. Horrified.

She just looked puzzled. Like she couldn’t
quite figure out how the burned area had appeared on her wall.

Will quickly filled the dispatcher in on the
situation and then tucked his phone into his back pocket when he
knew the cavalry was on the way. The fire could spark up again.
Technically they should wait outside, but it was cold and she
wasn’t exactly dressed for the elements.

He slowly approached the woman who had
unknowingly serenaded him for months.

“Ms. Gregg?”

“I think you saved my life,” she said softy,
without looking away from the wall.

“It wasn’t a big fire.”

She looked at him then, all big blue eyes and
pale, pale skin in the dim light from the mountain and the
moonlight. He frowned. She might be going into shock.

He knelt down in front of her. “How are you
feeling? Dizzy? Lightheaded?”

She blinked. “Who
are
you? Are you a
real person? I was freaking out and then
wham
, there you
were.”

“I’m Will. I live downstairs. I heard a
scream.”

“I’m Caitlyn. I don’t remember screaming, but
it sounds like something I would do if my house suddenly decided to
burn to the ground with me in it.”

He gave a half-hearted laugh at her attempt
at humor.

“How did you know what to do?” she asked,
staring at him so steadily he began to think she wasn’t in shock
after all.

“Tuller Springs is too small to have a
standing fire department, but I volunteer along with some of the
other citizens. We’re trained to contain fires until the big boys
from Aspen can get their asses out here.”

“I’m lucky you were here,” she whispered.
“Thank you.”

He settled down on the floor next to her. “No
problem. I figure I owe you for all the free concerts.”

It was hard to tell in the low light, but he
thought she blushed. “You can hear me?”

“I’m developing quite a taste for Classical
music.”

Now he was sure she was blushing, her gaze
flicked down. “I have a damper pedal. So it wouldn’t be so loud. I
can’t use it when my students are here, but when it’s just me—”

“No. I love hearing it.”

Her eyes lifted. “Oh.” Then her blush grew
even more heated and she couldn’t hold his gaze. “What happens
now?”

“The rest of my guys are on their way to make
sure the fire is really out. Then there’ll be an investigator from
Denver to tell us what started the fire and an electrician to make
sure the house is safe. Do you have some place to stay
tonight?”