Up in Flames (2 page)

“I don’t know,” Sophie said, mumbling the lie. “What difference does it make?”

“It’s part of the whole picture. For heaven’s sake, Sophie, Zane grew up with no mother, an angry, violent brother, and a father who was in and out of jail on assault charges until he finally took it too far. Nathaniel Thorson was full of hate, and practiced what he preached. That sort of upbringing has a lasting effect on a child.”

“I know,” she muttered. She’d seen it for herself ten years ago when Zane told her with a voice cold as ice that she’d proved his father right—women were just out to use men. The accusation still made her blood boil.

“I’m not dating him,” she said, biting the word out with disgust. “I don’t even like him. I’m just . . .” She gritted her teeth over Zane’s words. “Using him. For a job.”

“I don’t trust him,” Maggie said.

Sophie turned to shoot a disgusted look at her sister. “You don’t even know him.”

Kate’s head snapped up. “And you do? I thought you’d just met him.”

Crap. She didn’t want to have this conversation. “We met years ago when I was on summer vacation. He hung out with some friends of mine.” Another lie; he’d hung out with no one, and she’d had no friends in B-Pass. Her years in private schools and his family’s awful reputation had separated them from their peers, the first of many things they’d had in common. Oddly, it had been his unwillingness to try to fit in with the others that had attracted her. She’d recognized that strong sense of self, his refusal to compromise who he was in order to be accepted. She had a good-size portion of it herself.

To divert attention, she turned on Maggie. “Are you just going to stand there complaining about my new boss, or are you going to help clean up?”

Maggie wasn’t that easily fooled. “He hurt you,” she accused.

Sophie faltered, nearly dropping a plate, then recovered, hoping no one had noticed. It didn’t matter. They’d all heard Maggie.

Her mother had gone still and pale. “He hit you?”

“No!” She glared at Maggie. “Zane never touched me.” Not that way.

“Emotionally,” Maggie clarified, defending her position. “He broke your heart.”

Sophie dismissed it with a derisive snort.

“You cried for a whole day.”

Kate didn’t even relax a little. “When was this?”

“The summer between her senior year of high school and college,” Maggie said, ratting her out so fast she didn’t get a chance to deny it.

Sophie said nothing. It was true, even though Maggie didn’t know the reason she’d been so upset. She was glad now that she’d never told her. She felt her mother’s gaze burning into the back of her head, and rubbed so vigorously at a plate she was surprised the pattern didn’t wear off.

“That’s an impressionable age for a girl,” Kate said. “Teenage love affairs can shape the rest of a woman’s love life for both good and bad.”

By
affair
her mother didn’t mean sex. At least Sophie hoped not, because they weren’t going there. But it was still too damn perceptive. For the millionth time she cursed the misfortune of having a mother with a degree in child psychology. She wished the UC Berkeley hippies who’d moved to the Rockies to start the People’s Free Earth Commune had spent more time smoking weed and passing out flowers rather than getting graduate degrees.

Not saying anything just prolonged their curiosity, so she put on a condescending smile and turned to face them. “God, Maggie, that was just a silly crush. I barely remember it.” She glanced at her mother, and put it in terms she’d appreciate. “He had that bad-boy appeal, you know how it is. It was a phase. Typical, right? I got over it.”

Maggie looked seconds away from calling her a liar, and her mother was definitely not convinced. “I haven’t seen you cry since you were six.”

Handing Feather the polished plate, she surveyed the group in the commune’s large kitchen. Her mom, Feather, Marcy, Pete, Header, not to mention six other commune members outside—her family, every last one of them. Even if they weren’t all related by blood, they’d helped raise her and her sisters. They loved her. And on a practical level, they’d contributed a lot of money to her education and deserved an explanation for why she was wasting it working for Zane Thorson.

“Look, guys, I appreciate your concern, but it’s just a simple job and it won’t last long. Zane was hiring, and I need something to pay the rent until I find a permanent position.”

“You know you can live here,” Kate said. Several others seconded the idea.

Sophie smiled. “Thanks, but the commune is too remote. I need to be in town, and I need to be on my own.”

Pete spoke up, his gruff voice matching the rough look of his long beard and gray ponytail. “We don’t want to see you waste your education, Sophie. You’re a smart girl.”

“I won’t be wasting it, I’ll still be looking for work as an entomologist. I’m taking the job. Don’t worry, I won’t lose any IQ points by working for Zane.”

Just some peace of mind, and maybe some sleep. She couldn’t fool herself—a few hours with him would be enough to remind her hormones of that summer ten years ago, when she’d discovered the sensitive side of the brooding, twenty-year-old loner, fallen hard, and ended up naked in the grass, giving up her virginity.

She’d broken up with him a day later. The emotional pain had taken much longer to forget.

Leaving him had been the right decision. Unfortunately, it had never stopped her from wondering what would have happened if she’d been brave enough to make the wrong one.

Zane drove his pickup through the trendy downtown strip of Barringer’s Pass, Colorado, glad that most of the tourists were slow to venture out on Sunday mornings. It was the only time he could breeze through town without dodging pedestrians. He paid scant attention to the upscale specialty shops that catered to rich tourists and the Hollywood elite who used B-Pass as an escape. Some escape—everyone knew they were here, it was simply less convenient for adoring fans to follow them to the small Rocky Mountain town.

The ridiculously high cost of living in B-Pass helped keep obsessed fans away. Shopping or eating at the restaurants here cost twice what it did in most other cities. Prices at the ski resorts were just as outrageous. Zane wasn’t complaining. The higher the prices and the value of the real estate, the richer the celebrities who chose to live here. And rich celeb residents meant that money flew around as thick as snowflakes in January. It was that surplus that supported local businesses like his landscape design company and the downtown specialty shop run by one of Sophie’s sisters.

The local economy was thriving, good enough for even a Thorson to make a living. There were plenty of jobs available in retail, restaurants, and lodging. Just not, apparently, in entomology.

He gave an amused huff—a Ph.D. in entomology. Typically elitist, exactly what he should have expected from Sophie Larkin. A degree that in Barringer’s Pass was good for only one thing—making others feel inferior.

It wouldn’t work on him. Never again. Yesterday he proved he could talk to Sophie and know he was every bit as good as she was. It was something else entirely that made her dangerous to be around. It was the fact that, no matter how much he hated her, he still wanted her. Badly. He should have gotten it out of his system, but having had her for one night just meant his fantasies were that much more accurate.

And distracting. He’d have to get over that.

Leaving the commercial strip of stores that lined the center of the valley, he pulled into a generic-looking restaurant on the other side of Elkhorn Creek, the side not frequented by tourists. He preferred mixing with tourists who didn’t know him and had no grudge against anyone named Thorson, but his best friend liked this place. Will was already there ordering breakfast when Zane walked in. Zane added his order and settled into the other side of the booth.

“You left the reception early,” Will said. “Did you hook up with someone?”

“No. I didn’t know anyone there but you and Tracy.”

“I saw you talking to Sophie Larkin.”

He snorted in wry amusement. “Except her. I’d been hoping to avoid her.”

“Sister of the bride,” Will said, pausing to flash a smile and a quick thank-you at the waitress as she brought their coffee, slid a wary look at Zane, and left again. “You had to know she’d be there.”

Of course he’d known. He’d hardly been aware of anything else, constantly scanning the crowd for a woman with short blond hair. When he hadn’t spotted her, he’d been relieved, ignoring a vague pang of disappointment. The rich fall of long brown hair had taken him by surprise. “She looked different last time I saw her.”

“When was that?”

“Ten years ago.”

Will studied him as he sipped the steaming coffee. “You two have a thing?”

“Sort of.” Sort of an intense, mind-blowing thing that still haunted him. “It didn’t end well.”

“Huh. I don’t remember you being with her.”

“It didn’t last long.” And it hadn’t been the kind of relationship you talked about with your friends.
Hey, I just figured out what girls mean when they talk about soul mates and all that shit. Because it’s not really shit, and the right girl can rock your world clean off its axis.
Like he’d ever say that out loud. “Did you guys stay long?” he asked, trying to change the subject.

“Yeah, Tracy likes to dance. I think it’s going to ruin our relationship.”

Zane chuckled, then moved his elbows off the table to make room for the plate of eggs and hash browns the waitress set in front of him. They were quiet for the next couple of minutes as each put a large dent in his breakfast. He thought Will had dropped the subject until he asked, “So, what’s Sophie doing these days?”

“She just finished a doctorate in entomology.”

“Cool. The Larkin girls were all smart. Where’s she work?”

“No place, yet.” He chewed a forkful of eggs, debating whether to tell him. Smug satisfaction with himself won out. “I offered her a job.”

Will laughed. “Doing what, moving rocks? Driving a dozer? Like she’d do that.”

“She starts tomorrow.”

“Right.” His laugh died away as he stared. “No kidding?”

Zane took a bite of his toast. “Nope.”

“You’re not making her work with those two scumbags on your crew, are you?”

He shrugged. “No choice.”

“Damn. You hate her that much?”

“Hey, it’s honest work. If it’s good enough for me, it’s good enough for her.”

“It’s hard work and she’s not exactly a big woman. Plus, didn’t she go to some fancy private school?”

“So?”

“So she doesn’t hang around guys like that. She’ll quit in the first five minutes.”

“No, she won’t. She won’t like it, but she’s not a quitter.” That was the beauty of his plan. The girl who had excelled at everything had never learned the meaning of defeat, at least not the girl he’d known ten years ago. He doubted Dr. Larkin was any different. He would enjoy watching her dirty her hands with some real work for a change. Let her see what it felt like to be looked down on by clients, or worse yet, to be so far beneath others that they didn’t even notice you. Day after day after day.

But that every day part had him worried for himself, too.

Watching her trim little body work up a sweat as she wrestled with heavy rolls of sod or hefted a truckload of potted shrubs was going to send his mind right where he didn’t want it to go, to the memory of a different sort of physical exertion. Hell, it had already gone there. He knew what that tight little body looked like without clothes, and with the sheen of perspiration slicking her breasts as she gasped his name and climaxed beneath him. He got hard just remembering.

He’d been her first. Thankfully, he’d had some experience by then and had known how to make it good for her. The second time, an hour later, had been incredible for both of them. There was no way she’d faked those helpless moans or the startled cry of pleasure when she came. For one night, he’d been in heaven.

He couldn’t think about it. Instead, he had to remember the day after, when she’d told him, with that remote expression they probably taught at her fancy private school, that she didn’t want to see him again.

Will shook his head as he dug back into his food. “That’s harsh, Zane. She must have really pissed you off.”

She’d done worse than that. That was why he’d impulsively offered her a job, and it was why he was going to enjoy every minute she spent laboring alongside his seasonal help, listening to their crude jokes and enduring their crass comments. He hoped her high-class sensibilities were battered until they were raw and bleeding. No one deserved it more.

Ten years ago Sophie Larkin had used and humiliated him. It was payback time.

2

S
ophie pulled into
the gravel lot at eight o’clock Monday morning. Zane hadn’t given her a time, and eight had seemed early enough. Apparently it wasn’t.

The yard behind the small office was alive with the rumble of heavy equipment and men’s shouts. She parked her Jeep Wrangler near the office, the little red truck looking tiny next to four hulking pickups and a minivan. Walking around them, she noted the name
TERMINATOR TRUCK
on a tailgate that appeared to be in flames, and a bumper sticker on another reading,
BOOB MAN
. Maturity didn’t appear to be a job requirement.

She walked through the open chain-link gates, scanning the area for Zane. He wasn’t in sight, but the persistent roar from a large backhoe loader drew her attention. As she watched, it scooped up a boulder the size of a small car and deposited it on a flatbed trailer. The rock hit with a dull boom, shaking the trailer. Two men began passing huge chains over it, holding it in place.

Sophie chewed her lip, realizing her original impression of Zane’s landscaping company had been wrong. It seemed unlikely that she’d accepted a job planting flowers.

“You’re late, Larkin.”

She turned to see Zane striding toward her. He wore a faded T-shirt, dust-streaked jeans, and scuffed work boots, and she sucked in her breath at a sudden flashback to the twenty-year-old Zane from ten years ago. His clothes had been worn then, too, and often greasy from his job as a mechanic. His arms had been just as tanned—she remembered how he’d looked that night on the mountain when he’d pulled his shirt off, his chest pale in the moonlight in contrast to his arms. His shoulders hadn’t been quite as broad and muscled then, but his face had borne the same expression, distant and guarded, as if constantly prepared to defend himself should things turn unpleasant. In his life, they often had.

So he was hot, big deal. He was still a jerk.

“I’m not late. You didn’t give me a time.”

“We start work at seven. Go see Annie in the office; she has paperwork for you to fill out. Do it fast; I want you to go out with this crew when they’re ready to leave.”

She resisted saluting and saying “Yes, sir!” Turning without a word, she headed for the small building by her Jeep, glad to escape his presence until she got her erotic memories under control.

She’d already decided how to handle working for Zane. She would cause as few ripples as possible, keep her head down, do the job, and never question orders. She would do whatever it took to get along with Boob Man and Terminator, and she would most definitely stay the hell away from Zane Thorson.

When she walked out of the office twenty minutes later, Zane was standing next to an idling pickup, talking to the driver through the open window. The middle-aged man behind the wheel looked past him, grinning at her. Zane turned.

She was prepared this time, and felt only a slight flush of heat as his dark gaze landed on her. The lock of hair that dropped onto his forehead tempted her to brush it back, so she stuck her hands in her pockets.

He didn’t even smile, although serious was a good look on his sinfully curved mouth. “Sophie, you’ll be riding to the job site with these guys. I’ll meet you there. This is Hooter, he’ll tell you what to do.” While she was still blinking at Hooter, whose grin looked more like a leer, Zane walked away. She frowned at his back, then set her mouth in a determined line as she faced Hooter. Beneath unkempt hair, his face blended into his neck with little sign of a jawline, and she’d bet anything a large gut rubbed against the steering wheel. He looked her up and down, deliberately licking his lips. “You must be that bonus I was askin’ for.”

So that’s how it was going to be—throw her in the deep end and walk away. Fine, she knew how to swim.

“What bonus was that? You asked to get kneed in the balls?”

“You got a sassy mouth, sweetheart. I like that.”

“Name’s Sophie, not sweetheart.”

“Come on around, Sophie baby, we saved you a spot up front.” He patted the seat next to him.

She looked past Hooter to see a young man giving her a frank appraisal as he chewed on a toothpick. Behind him, she saw one man in the backseat of the extended cab. “Thanks, babycakes,” she told Hooter. “I don’t want to crowd you. I’ll sit in the back.”

The guy next to Hooter snorted and repeated, “Babycakes,” as she grabbed the handle for the back door and tugged. It was locked.

Hooter’s grin grew broader. “No room back there, sweetheart.”

“Looks like plenty of room to me.”

“Tools. But we can fit you in up front. Cory don’t bite, do you, Cory? Not hard, anyways.”

The young man smiled slyly. “I lick,” he told her.

Hooter chuckled in appreciation.

She felt dirty already, and irritated by the juvenile initiation ritual. “Yeah, that doesn’t work for me, Hooter, so just open the back door and we can get to work.”

“Can’t do that, honey, the lock’s broken. If you don’t want to come around here by Cory, I guess we’ll have to leave without you. Maybe Zane’ll give you a lift. Maybe not. Make up your mind, sugar, we’re running late.”

She didn’t know if Zane had told them to give her a hard time, or if they were just naturally jerks, but either way she figured he’d find it amusing. Any gratitude she might have felt toward him for giving her a job plummeted to zero. But she wouldn’t back down from the challenge. There was no way she’d suffer Zane’s sneers for not managing something as simple as getting into a truck.

Not to mention, she desperately needed the money.

Stepping onto the running board, she leaned in the open window, close to Hooter. As expected, he didn’t look at all upset to get a close-up look at her. “Hey, baby, you want to sit in my lap, that’s all right, too.”

She smiled at him, at Cory, and at the Hispanic-looking man in the backseat who was a good decade older than Hooter. “
Hola,
” the man said, grinning back.

“
Hola.
” She gave Hooter a disappointed look. “Hooter, sweetie pie, I do believe you were pulling my leg about those tools. There’s lots of room in the backseat.” Before he could lose his stupid grin or decide her closeness was an invitation to touch, she whipped her hand under the steering column, turned the keys, and snatched them out of the ignition. A quick step backward landed her a safe three feet from Hooter as she thumbed the key fob, unlocking the back door. When she opened the door, the Hispanic man laughed and gave Hooter a friendly punch on the shoulder as he scooted over, leaving plenty of room. She got in, closed the door, and dropped the keys over the front seat. “Let’s go, Hooter, we’re running late.”

He caught her eye in the rearview mirror as he picked up the keys. His expression was bland as he took her measure, the corner of his mouth curling up thoughtfully. Hooter wasn’t done with her.

Sophie turned to the man beside her, wondering if he was friend or foe. “I’m Sophie Larkin,” she said.

“Manuel Rodriguez,” he said with a slight Spanish accent. “You can call me Manny.”

She smiled and nodded, leaving it at that. No friendly chitchat. This group might take it as an invitation to get personal.

If they were curious about why she was there, no one asked. Hooter rolled onto the highway and took a winding side road up Tappit’s Peak. Cory started telling him about an eight-point buck he’d seen, and the two of them swapped hunting stories. She figured the detailed discussion that followed on how to properly gut and clean a deer was for her benefit.

Fifteen minutes later they paused for admittance at a security gate featuring a large letter
R
worked into the wrought-iron bars. Sophie looked out at the grounds, a groomed forest of pine and aspen, and asked, “Whose place is this?”

“Carl Reznick,” Cory said.

It sounded vaguely familiar. “Who’s that?”

Hooter and Cory laughed as if it was the dumbest thing they’d ever heard. “Director of the Alien Invader series? The best sci-fi flicks ever?” Cory asked it as if the information might jar some sense into her head.

It didn’t, so she just sat back and admired the lush estate the man had plopped into the middle of the Rocky Mountains. Hooter drove up to a brand-new three-story mansion, then veered onto dirt that had yet to be turned into lawn, curving around to the walk-out level at the back of the house. They parked off to the side of an excavated area and got out.

Sophie surveyed the extensive backyard. Down a steep slope, a stand of trees nearly hid a large building that Manny told her was Reznick’s new movie studio. Between the house and studio lay Zane’s job site.

A large pool and patio area graced the back of the house, or would once it was completed. Slate stones covered half of the terraced land around the pool, providing enough of an idea of the finished concept to make Sophie murmur a soft, “Nice,” in appreciation. Three levels of stone patio led down to the swimming pool, a secluded pond sheltered by trees, and rugged slabs of pink Rocky Mountain granite. At one end, exposed piping showed where a waterfall would tumble down the rock wall into the pool.

Sophie suddenly understood the purpose of the boulder she’d seen loaded onto the trailer. It would complete the unfinished corner of the waterfall. The design was beautiful, with the stone terraces fitting perfectly between stands of ponderosa pine. When it was done, the pool would look like a natural pond, formed from a clear mountain stream. Zane was doing an amazing job of bringing the designer’s vision to life.

“Sophie!”

She was jolted out of her openmouthed admiration by Manny’s call. He’d already unloaded shovels, trowels, and smaller tools she didn’t recognize from the bed of the pickup. When she joined him he shoved two pieces of dirty rubber into her hands. The dangling, attached straps didn’t provide much of a clue to their purpose.

“What am I supposed to do with these?”

“Put them on,” he told her. “They’re knee pads.”

She glanced at the tools. “What are we doing?”

“Finishing that lower patio. Hooter and Cory will build the outdoor kitchen on the upper level.”

A white pickup pulled up and Zane got out, striding up to them with a purposeful look. All business. It wasn’t an expression she ever remembered seeing on his face.

“Sophie, you’re working with Manny. He knows what to do.” He looked at her hands. “Did you bring gloves?”

She pulled a pair of gardening gloves from her back pocket, perfect for planting flowers. She offered him a weak smile.

Manny gave a good-natured laugh; Zane’s smile was more disparaging. “Manny, you got an extra pair in there?”

“Yeah, but they’ll be too big.”

Looking at his large, work-roughened hands, she had to agree, but Zane simply shrugged. “They’ll do.” He looked her over, taking in her pink-polished fingernails, jeans, and tennis shoes. “You might want to buy your own work gloves. And I’d advise wearing your oldest jeans, and some sturdy work boots.”

“You could have told me before.”

He looked amused at her annoyed tone. “I’m telling you now.”

He turned away as the truck and trailer pulled up carrying the granite boulder and a pile of paving stones behind it that looked like it would be part of the patio. As Zane waved and yelled instructions, she gathered her knee pads and a shovel, and followed Manny to the patio.