A Firefighter in the Family. Trish Milburn
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I ask myself the same question.” He stood and stalked back toward the bar. This time, he was the one who needed a drink.
RANDI WATCHED the power in Zac’s movements as he zigzagged through the crowd. Heat surged to her face when she realized she was watching him in a purely I’m-still-attracted-to-him way. Only it wasn’t the same as before. While he’d been young and exuberant then, now he was all man and rough around the edges. Accusation and the loss of a dream did that to a person. But why did she care? Hadn’t he just received a little of his own medicine? He was no stranger to turning his back on someone he supposedly cared about.
She needed to ask Eric about the other side of Zac’s story. Lord knew most of her brothers were aces at holding a grudge, but she hoped Eric would give her the honest story, one not tainted by hard feelings. It was one thing to hold a grudge when someone had done something to deserve it, quite another when they hadn’t.
And she couldn’t abide a wrong—even if it had been perpetrated against someone who’d once wronged her.
Someone who’d broken her heart.
Chapter Four
Randi slept badly. She wasn’t sure if it was the less-than-comfortable bed, her inability to stop thinking about her family or the disturbing nightmare in which Zac was trapped inside a burning house while her brothers stood back and watched, but it didn’t matter. Bad sleep was bad sleep, and Randi rolled out of bed as daylight was creeping into Horizon Beach. She changed into her running clothes and shoes, pulled her hair into a high ponytail and roused Thor. He yawned wide and tried to sneak a few more winks.
“If I have to get up at the crack of dawn, so do you.”
The horizon was as pink as some of the beach homes when Randi and Thor hit the beach at a brisk jog. Thor chased shorebirds and frolicked in and out of the surf.
Gradually, the kinks in Randi’s back and her headache ebbed. She’d missed running along the beach at dawn, the way the world seemed to be asleep and the day full of possibility. She sometimes managed to get over to Pensacola Beach for a morning run, but even that had become more rare as her job took her all over Florida and required increasing amounts of her time.
She wasn’t complaining. Someone had to make sure the firebugs didn’t get away with their crimes. Few things were more destructive than fire. Victims lost their homes, their businesses, their very lives. Unfortunately, there were people out there whose fascination with it led to all kinds of loss—including that experienced by her father.
The latest arsonist, if indeed the Horizon Vista fire was declared arson, had put her brothers’ lives at risk. So she’d be particularly happy to send him to prison.
Dissecting the case brought her thoughts back to Zac—and how he’d looked in the bar the night before. Tall, lean, corded muscles lining his strong arms. Attractive in that carefree, tanned sort of way. Maybe not so carefree. Her appearance had erased that.
When her mind focused on his physical attributes and her involuntary flushed reaction to them, she increased her pace, running instead of jogging. She ran until her muscles screamed at her to slow or move to a surface easier to run on than the packed, sloping sand. She ignored the plea, instead pushing harder. Her strides eventually brought her to the scene of the crime, causing her to slow then stop.
She stared at the hulking, black frame of Oldham’s building, the suspect list running through her mind. Slowly, she circled the building, looking for anything she might have missed in her initial survey. She completed the circle empty-handed, finding herself on the side next to Zac’s bar.
Despite her gut feeling that Zac couldn’t be the arsonist, she’d have to thoroughly investigate the possibility. She’d depended on Cooke instinct once and it had cost her father the use of his legs and her the comfort and closeness of her family.
But when she officially cleared Zac, then what? Would she be tempted to act on her attraction? After his failure to stand up for her following the fire that had injured her father, how could she even consider that? Because part of her didn’t want to hold a grudge like other members of her family, no matter how hard it would be to trust him again.
She spent the next several hours interviewing potential witnesses, including the owner of the hotel behind Zac’s bar. Her instinctual belief in Zac’s innocence took a hit when the man said he couldn’t imagine Zac burning down Oldham’s condos, but that it was possible. Then he mentioned the old arson charge, even though Zac had been cleared of that. How often was she going to encounter that prejudice?
But no matter how she tried, she couldn’t believe Zac could be guilty. Zac had been a good firefighter, working as hard as the rest of them. She didn’t rely on instinct anymore. It made her nervous that she did now, believing Zac had nothing to do with the fire. She refused to think about being wrong.
ZAC THREW a line into the water, hoping a little fishing would distract him. Since Randi had shown up, any chance at peace of mind had vanished.
The first time he’d ever seen her, she’d been dressed in a little pink dress and on her way to a wedding. He’d been stunned into silence. Even when he’d later seen her sweaty and wearing dirty turnout gear, she’d still been pretty. He’d pursued her until she’d finally caved and agreed to go out with him.
He sighed. That bright, fun Randi didn’t seem to exist anymore. But while the years since her father’s accident might have hardened her, she was even more beautiful than before, damn it.
He watched as a couple of fishing vessels motored out to sea. The sky was blindingly blue, making the water the gorgeous blue-green that attracted vacationers to the Gulf Coast. If he’d left Horizon Beach after his first brush with arson accusations, he wouldn’t have had to deal with Randi Cooke or Bud Oldham, but then he’d miss mornings and views like this.
Zac glanced toward shore, where Adam lounged in his concession shack reading the latest issue of Sports Illustrated. To think that only a couple of days before, Zac’s life had been similarly carefree. Now, he spent the hours he wasn’t working or sleeping following in Randi’s footsteps, doing his own investigation. Asking witnesses what they had seen, finding out all he could about Bud Oldham. The sooner the real arsonist was caught, the sooner he could go back to his normal life, free of suspicion and frustrating feelings about Randi Cooke.
Movement at the beach end of the pier drew his attention. Randi stepped onto the pier, Thor at her side, and walked over to where Adam sat. Zac resisted the urge to jump into the water to avoid her and his mentally impaired desire to kiss her. He tried to ignore her, but found himself glancing toward her and Adam every few seconds. Was she asking Adam about the fire, about him? Or was he being paranoid?
The minutes crept by, Zac feeling trapped at the end of the pier and hating himself for the reaction. Why couldn’t he just walk by Randi as if he’d never seen her before? Acting as if he wasn’t concerned by her presence would be the best plan.
While he was looking back to where she stood in full investigative mode, something tugged on his line. The jerk surprised him, and he almost lost hold of his fishing pole. He reeled in the line, bringing the fish toward the surface, causing it to splash the water in a vain effort to get away. After a few minutes of wrestling, Zac pulled the flounder over the side of the pier. The large, flat, speckled fish flopped against the planking, desperate to free himself.
The fish represented some good dinners, but something about the crazed, trapped look in its eyes made Zac pause. He knew exactly how the fish felt. He stooped, freed the fish from the hook then let it drop over the side of the pier.
“Didn’t figure you for a catch-and-release kind of guy.”
Zac didn’t turn toward the sound of Randi’s voice behind him. “Just goes to show you never know everything about a person, no matter how good an investigator you are.”
She took a couple of steps closer. “You might be right, but it doesn’t keep me from trying.”