Black Flame (2 page)

“Is there something I can help you with?” Jimmy said, even more uncomfortably, since the only thing more confusing than a besotted female was a distressed one.

“Yes,” she snuffled. “If you don’t mind too much, can you come pick me up? I’m fifteen hundred miles from home and I’m losing feeling in my fingers.”

By the time the shiny white truck pulled up, Deneen had practically disappeared inside her coat, cinching the hood so only her nose was exposed and pulling the cuffs as far as possible over her hands. The coat wasn’t holding up well to the cold, which wasn’t surprising since she had bought it in a vintage shop and it was thirty years old, but she hadn’t been able to resist the hot pink puffy quilting or the faux-fur trim. Also, it had been cheap, and Deneen had never imagined that any place on earth could be so cold that the coat wouldn’t be adequate.

She definitely should have bought better mittens; the pink ones with the appliques in the shape of kitten faces did almost nothing to guard against the incredible cold.

She watched people coming and going from the terminal, marveling that her sister had willingly come to such a barren and unwelcoming place. The locals clearly knew a thing or two about surviving in arctic conditions: they wore heavy boots, down-filled pants that didn’t look like they would do much for one’s figure, voluminous parkas, and wooly hats and scarves. They got into enormous trucks and SUVs with massive tires, vehicles that looked like they could flatten the bumps out of a road, and took off in clouds of exhaust.

The white truck looked just like all the others, but it slowed in front of her and the window rolled down a couple of inches.

“Deneen?”

“Yes!” She smiled brightly and started tugging her suitcases toward the passenger side.

The door opened and a man jumped out. He was wearing a fleece hat that covered everything but his eyes. He jogged over in his snow boots and grabbed the suitcases as though they weighed as much as boxes of tissues, and whisked them into the back of the truck.

Then he loped to her door and held it open.

Deneen cautiously clambered into the passenger seat, impressed by Jimmy Mason’s manners. It was hard to tell, in the winter gear, if he still had the legendary physique that had got him recruited for the Fighting Bulldogs football team his sophomore year. The rumor had been that he didn’t even know how to hold the ball, but that Coach Emerson had gotten the physics teacher, Mr. Blount, to explain the dynamics of the passing game. Whether it was true or not, by the time Jimmy was a senior he was on the varsity starting line, and girls lined up outside the gym to watch him come out after practice, freshly showered and often shirtless.

She’d never been one of them. Jimmy was too weird, awesome torso or not. He talked like a Wikipedia entry and he barely seemed aware of his fellow students unless they were talking about quantum physics or space travel or something equally uninteresting.

But he
had
just driven through the snow to rescue her, so Deneen supposed she should make an effort.

“So, you work on an oil rig,” she said, holding her frozen hands over the heating vents to warm them. “That must be, um, interesting.”

“Oh, yes,” he agreed. “The new technology is fascinating. Multilateral drilling in particular lets us branch out from the main well and—”

“That’s…wow,” Deneen said. She tried to think of an intelligent question to ask and came up short.

“And you came up here to spend Christmas with Jayne,” Jimmy said. He sat very straight, his hands exactly on the ten and two, like they taught in driver’s ed.
A real rule follower
, Deneen thought disapprovingly, and then mentally chastised herself. No more judgment, that was one of the many resolutions she’d made for this latest fresh start.

So she resisted saying, “That’s right, Captain Obvious,” and decided she might as well be charming.

“That’s right! And also, to plan their wedding. I’m going into business as a wedding planner, and this will be my first job.” Once the words were out, she realized that it was the first time she had voiced her plans aloud. Which was scary, because now she was committed. Quickly, she changed the subject. “Plus, holidays with family! The way it should be, right?”

Too late she saw his expression harden, and put two and two together. Matthew and Jayne were gone, but he was still here. Wasn’t there something in high school…she had a vague memory of Jimmy’s mother being sick. And it had just been the two of them. Her own mother used to cluck over “those poor unfortunate Masons.” Once, Marjorie Burgess had driven over to their run-down little house with a box of clothes she thought Mrs. Mason might be able to use; Jayne and Deneen, in the back seat, stopped fighting when they saw the thin figure come to the door and speak for a few moments with their mother. She was pale as paper, her thin hair twisted into a bun, but she’d had a dignity about her, even from afar. It was hard to believe she was related to Jimmy, who, despite his weirdness, was the picture of health and vitality.

The poor guy had been almost alone in the world then. Now, he had no one at all. The holidays must be terrible for him.

As eager as Deneen had been to get away from her parents this Christmas—not to mention her five aunts, four uncles, and eleven cousins who lived in Red Fork—it was only because she was going to be with her sister and Matthew.
Family
. And besides, after Deneen made her fortune and proved her brilliance up north, she assumed she’d make a triumphant return back to Arkansas, to be welcomed back into the bosom of the family home.

“I’m so sorry,” she said, sincerely. “I just wasn’t thinking. Well, look…it might be just you and me this evening and tomorrow, but we can…we can be festive together. Uh, did you happen to stock up on champagne?”

“I don’t drink alcohol,” Jimmy said. “And why are you apologizing?”

“Well, because…I mean, I’m sure it wouldn’t be your first choice to be here, alone, for Christmas.”

“I’m not alone. My roommates Zane and Cal are here—they’ll be back tonight, in fact. And you’re here.”

He said that last part as though it pained him, a fact that Deneen decided to ignore. “That’s the spirit! Friends are…good. They’re great! They’re really, really, great!”

Oh no, she was doing it again. When Deneen was out of her comfort zone, she tended to talk too much, emote too much, overcompensate. Her mother had been pointing that out since she was six years old, at her very first Girl Scout Daisy meeting, when the troop leader finally told her that if she didn’t stop interrupting she would have to spend the rest of the meeting outside the clubhouse door.

But all she was trying to do was brighten this poor man’s day. After all, what did he have going for him, besides a dirty, difficult job; a house full of male roommates (and her sister, who Deneen knew first hand could be very bossy); and apparently, some sort of social disorder.

They had turned off the main road onto a quaint country lane. Snow was beginning to drift lazily down from the steely sky, just a flake here and there, but the burgeoning clouds promised more to come. “Well! It looks like we’ll have a white Christmas. How, er, do you plan to spend the holiday? Do you boys have any traditions?”

“Traditions? A tradition is a practice in a group or society that has evolved over a long time,” Jimmy said, wrinkling his forehead in confusion. He had taken off his fleecy facemask, and Deneen could see now that he had a surprisingly nice profile. “While I suppose you could consider our cohabitation group a sort of society, since this is the first Christmas we are spending together, none of our practices could be considered traditional.”

“Well, I realize that,” Deneen said, exasperated. “I just meant…did you decorate the house? Are you going to put out food for the reindeer? Leave cookies for Santa? You know, to get into the holiday spirit.”

Jimmy gave her a sidelong glance. His expression was wary, as though he were still making up his mind about her. Deneen tried hard not to be offended, though the truth was that she wasn’t accustomed to having to work terribly hard to impress healthy heterosexual men. It was only her own family—well, and every boss she’d ever worked for and her teachers and that stupid Girl Scout leader—who generally found her lacking.

“I assume that you are making a joke.” Jimmy turned on the turn signal and took a very slow, cautious turn onto an unmarked road. On second glance, it was little more than an unpaved lane, which was quickly becoming obscured with snow. “While reindeer do exist, mostly in Russia, they do not, in fact, visit populated areas, especially in North America. As for the cookies—”

“Oh, forget it,” Deneen said. “Um, do you always drive this…uh, carefully?”

Jimmy grimaced. “I had a recent accident. I, er, miscalculated the clearance necessary to drive into a parking garage.”

“But this truck is practically brand new!”

“I am aware of that.” Faint irritation edged Jimmy’s voice, and Deneen was perversely proud of having finally stirred up his unflappable calm. “I paid my insurance deductible before my first payment on the vehicle.”

“Wow, that sucks.”

There didn’t seem to be much more to say after that, though Deneen wanted to add that she was painfully familiar with that kind of bad luck: the kind that makes you want to scream at the top of your lungs that it wasn’t your fault, that it could have happened to anyone. She felt that way herself every time something happened to reverse the course of her life just as she finally thought she had it on track.

Maybe she and weird Jimmy Mason had something in common after all.

Before she could think of a polite change of subject, Jimmy pulled into a fenced yard and parked between a beautiful, old, boarded-up farmhouse and a long, low, outbuilding with a porch and smoke curling from the chimney.

“Are we here? Is this the bunkhouse? Jayne has told me all about it!”
Without waiting for a reply, she jumped out of the truck and ran to the front door. It was just as Jayne had described it. The weathered wood siding had been patched in several places—Matthew was planning to paint it in the spring. The porch steps squeaked, and there were several old rocking chairs pulled under the overhang, out of the elements. From the porch there was a view of the farmhouse—Jayne had told her the most romantic story about the girl who had once lived there, who was now dating Cal, the police officer who lived in the bunkhouse—and the stand of trees beyond. And there, that had to be the Tar Barn, as they had nicknamed the big old long-haul trailer in which they’d driven up from Arkansas, now parked for good. No sign of her sister’s rig, but she probably had to park it in an official trucker parking lot somewhere.

She tried the door, and was disappointed to find it locked. Living in Red Fork, Arkansas, Deneen had been in the habit of leaving doors unlocked, yet another thing that drove her parents crazy. “Just because our community is small, it doesn’t mean there’s no danger of breakins,” her father nagged her. Deneen knew he was right, but she had still imagined walking into the bunkhouse as though she already lived there. As though it had been waiting just for her.

“This might help,” Jimmy said, unlocking the door with a key. Deneen looked at him quickly. Was that an attempt at humor? Maybe he wasn’t hopeless after all.

He opened the door and stood aside, holding her suitcases. Deneen walked inside—and immediately started coughing. The living room was just as pretty as Jayne had described it, with its newly painted walls and exposed beams and refinished floors, but the air was filled with smoke and the smell of something burning.

“Did you leave the oven on?” she asked faintly, going to open a window.

“I was, uh, trying to roast chestnuts,” Jimmy said. “It didn’t go that well.”

“Ah.” Deneen moved through the house, admiring the big farmhouse kitchen with its open shelves full of crockery and cookware, the long wooden table, the old stove and gleaming modern refrigerator. The burnt smell was stronger there, and a pan full of small charred lumps sat on the stove, probably the product of the failed roasting experiment. The table was covered with some recipe in progress, one which seemed to involve half a dozen bowls as well as every spatula and spoon in the house. More flour had landed on the table than in the bowl, and broken eggshells sat dangerously close to an open cookbook.

Deneen continued, reserving comment. Maybe Jimmy had been in a hurry, especially since her call had interrupted his work. Off the kitchen, down two steps, was the family room, just as Jayne had described. An enormous 70’s era console television shared space with plaid sofas and orange shag carpet.

At the hallway, Deneen paused. Would it be rude of her to check out the bedrooms? Especially since there was the delicate matter of her own lodging, something that she had expected to discuss with her sister, not an almost-stranger.

“Would you mind, er, showing me to the powder room?” she asked, figuring she could check out the bedrooms on her way back.

“Do you mean the bathroom?”

“Well, yes. I would like to freshen up. I mean, use the facilities and wash up,” she corrected herself. Jimmy was probably the most literal-minded man she had ever met; who knew if he’d understand “freshening up”?

“You’ll have to use the one at the end of the hall. Matthew didn’t get the remodel of the other one quite finished before they left. The grout seal is still curing and there’s wet paint.”

Jayne often talked—well,
bragged
might be a better word—about her fiancé’s carpentry skills. As the man in charge of cooking and cleaning for a household of six—and occasionally seven or eight, if Cal’s or Chase’s girlfriends were staying over—you would think that the Burgess family would look down on him. After all, Jayne and Deneen’s mother, Marjorie Burgess, was a fiercely committed feminist who spent her life decrying the gender politics of domestic labor. However, when a man did a domestic chore, it was apparently cause for celebration, not mockery. Which was perhaps why Jayne tended to focus on Matthew’s other job, which was renovating the bunkhouse for their landlady in exchange for a break in their rent.