Up in Flames [The Heroes of Silver Springs 10] (Siren Publishing Everlasting Classic) (12 page)

“You tried,” Regina finished for him. She folded her arms on the table top and studied him. “Why are you in town?”

“To see you.”

“Yeah, I kind of picked up on that when you came and found me at the fire station.”

“I stopped by your office first. Your boss said I might find you there.”

“And you did. Now, what’s with the visit?” Something was up. Gage didn’t come see her out of the blue, especially without calling first. When Terri first told her Gage was outside the firehouse waiting for her, her initial fear had been that something had happened to her father. Gage had been quick to assure her Ethan was fine, at least as fine as he got these days.

Gage sighed and opened his mouth to speak, but shut it again with Buddy returned with their orders.

Regina bid the man thanks, but didn’t touch her food or her drink. Until she got an answer out of Gage, she wasn’t sure she had much of an appetite.

“Ethan’s worried about you.” Gage apparently didn’t have a problem with his appetite. He cradled his sub in one large hand and took an enormous bite.

Baffled, Regina gaped at him. “My father is worried about
me
?” She poked a finger at her chest. “He’s the one who can hardly get around.”

“He’s gettin’ around all right.” Gage finished chewing and used his free hand to lift his glass for a sip of his drink to wash it down. “It ain’t easy for him. He’s in a lot of pain, but the doctor’s got him on some new meds that seem to be helpin’ a bit.”

“He’s alone,” Regina said quietly. “He’s getting older. The arthritis is getting worse. He’s not taking it well mentally either, Gage.”

“He’s takin’ it better than you think, Red.” Gage took another bite and then shot a pointed glance at her sub. “Eat.”

Regina sighed and picked up her sub. Despite her maybe-there-maybe-not appetite, the grilled strips of chicken covered with veggies and nestled in a whole-wheat hoagie looked delicious.

Gage waited until she took her first bite before he continued. “I talk to him several times a week.”

“So do I,” Regina said around a mouthful of her sub.

“I know but, when you talk to him, you’re focusin’ on his condition. You’re hearin’ how much he’s changed and thinkin’ he can’t possibly be happy with his life anymore.”

Regina nearly spit what remained in her mouth of the bite she had taken. “You actually think he’s
happy
with the way his life is now?”

“No, but he’s handlin’ it. He’s learnin’ to deal, to accept, and to make the most of it.” Gage put down his sandwich, rested his forearms on the edge of the table, and leveled a steady glare on her. “It’s exactly what you should do, too.”

“What happens if he needs something and no one is around? You can’t be there all the time. I’m an hour away. Who’s he going to call?”

“Ghostbusters?” Gage sighed at the narrow-eyed look she gave him for the lame joke. “Hell, Red. I don’t know. It’s not like he’s a freakin’ invalid. He just has more trouble walkin’ than he used to.”

“Walking, sitting, lying down, fixing his own meals, taking a bath…” Regina ticked off the points on her fingers. “He’s not in a position to live alone anymore.”

“I see where this conversation is goin’.”

“Yeah, you probably do. I’m signing on with the Kingsford office and moving home.”

Gage chewed the inside of his cheek as he studied her. “So you can become your father’s keeper. Do you know how pissed Ethan would be if he knew you were even considerin’ this?”

“I didn’t intend to tell him until I’ve got everything lined up to make the move,” Regina said stubbornly.

Gage nodded slowly. “Then you’re gonna take over his life, ruin your own, and you’re expectin’ both of you to suddenly become blissfully happy when it’s done?”

“He’s my father, Gage. He’s always been there for me, taken care of me, even before Mom ran off and left us. It’s my turn to be there for him.”

This time Gage shook his head. “You’ve got it all wrong, Red. Ethan loves you. You’re everything to him. Your
happiness
is everything to him, and he’s gonna know the minute you tell him you’re movin’ in and signin’ back on at the Kingsford office that you’re gonna be miserable.”

Regina started to argue, but he bulldozed over her.

“He understands why you took the job in Silver Springs instead of stayin’ in Kingsford in the first place. It doesn’t matter what reputation you’ve built for yourself here, you’re always gonna be Ethan Zimmer’s daughter there.”

“I don’t want to talk about this anymore,” Regina said stiffly, averting her gaze across the small restaurant.

“’Cause you know I’m right.”

Did she? The only thing she knew anymore was just when she had made up her mind, someone or something attempted to change it again. Christ, it wasn’t supposed to be so difficult to do the right thing.

“Tell me about the fire you investigated this mornin’.”

She leveled her gaze on Gage. He was only trying to help. Obviously, her father had sent him to Silver Springs for exactly that reason. She’d thought she’d been so careful every time she’d talked to her father, masking her concerns, and not giving him a hint of the turmoil she was going through. Leave it to her father to see right through her.

She sighed and picked up her sub again. “It was arson. I don’t have a doubt about that. I tracked down the owner of the business on my way here and have an interview set with him in an hour.”

“Do you think he’s responsible?”

She shook her head. “I haven’t ruled anyone out yet. Dean Wolcott, the captain of B-shift, turned me on to an interesting lead earlier. It seems one of the employees at the automotive shop that burned this morning was involved in a head-on collision last week. The Buick Regal he was driving caught fire under the hood, an improperly connected fuel line.”

“Interesting,” Gage said slowly, “but it don’t really put a link between the two incidents, does it?”

Regina shrugged. “It might. Apparently the guy was running off at the mouth to one of the cops at the accident scene about another mechanic helping him to work on the car. He put the blame on the other guy.”

“So, he stays pissed, waits a week, and torches the automotive shop?” Gage’s tone dripped with skepticism.

“If the two incidents are connected, I’m sure there’s more to it than that. Max, uh, Lieutenant Jasper, the firefighter that was outside with the laptop at the station, he said there was another MVA that happened two weeks ago in Station 4’s district just like the one this guy was involved in. It was another Buick Regal, same year, and the same thing happened with the fuel line.”

Gage’s eyes narrowed and took on a faraway look. “Call Ethan. Tell ’em everything you just told me.”

Startled, Regina angled her head. “Why?”

“I dunno. Somethin’ about all this is ringin’ my chimes. It’s like a déjà vu kind of thing, but I’m not sure why.”

Regina drew her brows together. “And you think my father will know?”

“Just call him. It can’t hurt.”

Max twisted off the shower spray and reached for a towel when he heard a knock at his apartment door. It was probably Rayne or one of her boyfriends. Geezus, that still sounded weird, but, apparently, ménage relationships weren’t as taboo as they used to be anymore. First his sister with Cory and Ford and then happy gay-boy Thaddeus had found himself not one, but two men to fill his heart.

Shaking his head, Max wrapped the towel around his waist and patted his still-dripping body to the front door. Anyone showing up at his place less than an hour after he’d ended a rotation at the fire station deserved to see him in his barely covered birthday suit.

Not bothering to look through the peephole, he thumbed the lock free on the knob, and pulled the door open. His heart stopped.

“Oh. My. God.” Regina made each whispered word its own sentence, her eyes growing huge in her face as her gaze fell down his body.

Max’s thoughts at the sight of her were more like
holy shit
, but he managed to keep his mouth shut. Memories of all the nights he’d lain in his bed fantasizing about this woman showing up at his apartment unannounced slammed into the forefront of his mind.

And who says dreams don’t come true.

“No,” he said slowly as his heart went from no beat at all to damn near pounding out of his chest. “I’m Max.” He thought about that for a nanosecond and added, “You can call me God though if it will keep you from biting my head off.”

Although, if you want to come inside, I won’t have a problem at all with you biting something else.

Son of a bitch. If he didn’t know better, he might have sworn a similar thought went through her mind. She was still staring at him, her gaze traveling up and down his front, and her light-blue eyes darkening with what he could only define as arousal.

Or fury. Her eyes darken when she’s about to lay into you, too, dumb shit.

She smiled, a slow, soft curve of her lips, and Max’s cock jumped to life beneath the towel. “I’m, um, not going to bite you…your head off.”

Hey, now.
Max kind of liked the way she had suddenly rephrased that statement. It almost sounded as if she wouldn’t mind biting him in other places.

“I, well, I thought maybe…I was hoping…” She made a frustrated face and stopped stammering. “I need your brain.”

She needed his…what? I need your body. I need you to kiss me. I need you to hold me. All of those declarations would’ve made Max’s head spin, but they would’ve made at least some molecule of sense, too. But she hadn’t said either of those. She’d said she needed his
brain
.

Max glanced at her hands, stupidly looking for some surgical bag or something that concealed the operating tools she would use to remove his brain from his skull. “Yeah, I’m not sure I want to part with that particular piece of my anatomy.”

She rolled her eyes. “I don’t want you to take it out and hand it to me. I need you to help me figure out something.”

Okay, that made more sense. Except, no, it really didn’t. Regina Zimmer was coming to him for help? When he put it in that context it made even less sense than her wanting to surgically extract his brain.

“You’re not drunk.” Well, damn. He hadn’t meant to say that out loud. The thought crossed his mind, though. He would’ve expected her to need a full keg and a bottle of Jack Daniel’s before she’d ever even get the notion to come to him, much less actually do it.

Her smile widened, and he thought he heard a soft laugh escape her amazing lips. “No, I’m stone-cold sober. Mental, probably, for showing up here like this,” she added quickly then made a face as her gaze slid down his front once more. “Mental,
definitely
, but not drunk.”

Max pushed the door open wider as he stepped out of the way. “Then come inside.”

“Thanks.”

She accepted his invitation, but she didn’t move. Her eyes did. Max watched her gaze dance over his living room before landing on his eyes and dropping down to the towel around his waist.

Max shifted, felt the towel give ever-so-slightly, and knew if it dropped he’d be watching her amazing ass as it raced right back down the stairs in the hallway of the apartment building. “Why don’t you close the door and make yourself comfortable while I go find some pants?”

Her tongue peeked from between her lips and licked its way along the bottom one. Max stifled a groan as his cock stiffened to the point of sheer agony. She couldn’t miss it. There was no way in hell a woman as highly trained in observation as her didn’t see the pop-tent going on beneath the towel.

Her shoulders shook in what might have been a silent laugh as her gaze snapped back up to his. “Good idea.”

Max held her gaze far longer than he should have for the sake of his throbbing cock, put a hand on his hip where he’d tucked the corner of the towel to keep it secured around his waist, and left her standing in the open doorway. He pulled the towel from his waist on his way into his bedroom, snagged a pair of sweatpants from the bottom drawer of his dress, and stepped into them on his way back out of the room.

He found her pacing his living room floor, her head turning this way and that as she took in her surroundings. For probably the first time
ever
, he said a silent thanks to Mom for instilling in him the need for cleanness when he was growing up. Oh, he’d grumbled about cleaning and tried like mad to get out of it, but he’d realized the necessity of a tidy apartment almost as soon as he’d moved out on his own.

Regina’s pacing took her to the window overlooking the parking lot. She paused there, her head inching forward as she gazed out and then pivoted on her heel to pace back. Her foot froze in midstep when she spotted him.

“You’re back.” Her gaze made a quick scan of his front. “And dressed…somewhat.”

Amused, Max bit the inside of his cheek. “Should I put on a shirt, too, socks, shoes, the whole nine yards?”

“No,” she said on a half laugh. “I can handle it. It’s distracting, but I’ll live.”

Distracting?
Max stared at her. He simply didn’t get the woman. Before, for freaking months, he’d known every time their paths crossed he was in for a snipping match. Lately, he never knew what to expect.