Into The Fire. Anne Stuart
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for forty-eight hours, and she was feeling beyond grungy. As soon as she got away from here she’d stop at the first motel she found, take a two-hour shower and even try for a nap. And then drive straight back to Rhode Island, with no more answers than she’d had when she started on this idiot quest.
At least the room was warming up, and she could dispense with the sleeping bag. She shoved a hand through her tangled hair, scrambling off the thin mattress. And then she saw her suitcase.
She stared at it, not making the mistake of thinking it a good sign. If Dillon had managed to fix her car, then he wouldn’t have brought her suitcase up—he wouldn’t do anything to prolong her stay.
She opened the door to the long, narrow hallway. The bare lightbulb at the end illuminated the empty bathroom. All the other doors were closed, and she wondered where he slept.
Not that it mattered. At that moment the bathroom was looking pretty damned good, and a shower was becoming more and more appealing with the arrival of clean clothes. She wasn’t getting out of here until Dillon woke up and she was able to get Nate’s things, and there was no way she was going to sit around in these clothes for another minute.
At least there was a lock on the bathroom door. One of those old skeleton key things—if she’d had half a brain the night before she could have taken the key and locked her own door. And then Dillon couldn’t have come in the darkness to dump her suitcase. Had he stood there and stared at her while she slept? Doubtful.
The bathtub was a grimy, claw-footed antique with a shower overhead, but the water was hot and the grayish towels smelled clean. She combed her wet hair with her fingers and grimaced at her reflection. She’d thrown T-shirts and jeans in her suitcase instead of her usual professional clothes. She looked like a twelve-year-old, with her scrubbed, makeup-free face, wet hair and boy’s clothes. Any other twenty-eight-year-old woman would be happy to look so young. For Jamie it just reminded her of when she was sixteen and Dillon Gaynor was the terrifying center of her universe.
She’d had all sorts of fantasies about what it would be like if or when she saw him again. She’d be cool, calm, mature, with perfect hair and makeup, maybe a subdued suit and the string of pearls her parents had given her. The person she was raised to be.
Instead she’d shown up at his doorstep like a snowy waif. And he wasn’t going to look at her today and see the calm, professional woman she’d become. He’d see a kid, and he’d remember.
Maybe. Or maybe that night was just a blur, along with a thousand other nights. Maybe he didn’t remember.
But the problem was, she did.
The hall was still dark and silent, all the doors closed. She dumped her dirty clothes in a corner in her room, then glanced outside. It was getting lighter—maybe seven o’clock in the morning. She had two choices: wait for Dillon to get over his hangover and drag himself out of bed, or go down and start taking care of things on her own. It was a no-brainer. She needed to find out where her car was, get it towed, call Isobel, find some coffee, find something to eat….
The stairway was narrow and dark, and if there were any lights she couldn’t find them. She went down carefully, holding on to the rickety railing, feeling her way in the shadows. She got to the bottom, reaching for the door into the kitchen, when she stepped on something soft and squishy. Something big.
She screamed, falling back in the shadows, and then immediately she felt stupid. It was probably nothing, just a discarded piece of clothing….
The door to the kitchen was yanked open, and Dillon stood there, filling it, radiating impatience. “What the hell are you yowling about?” he demanded. “Did you fall?”
“I—I stepped on something,” she said, trying to control her stammer. “It was probably nothing….” She glanced down at the small square of floor at the bottom of the stairs. She gulped. “Or maybe not.”
“It’s a rat,” Dillon said, his voice as flat as his expression. “We get them every now and then.”
“You have rats?” she demanded in horror.
“Sorry, princess, but this ain’t the Taj Mahal. It’s an old warehouse, and rats come with the territory. They show up occasionally, but at least they’re dead. Someone must have put some rat poison behind the walls years ago and it’s still working. Every now and then there’s a nice fresh corpse, and I don’t have to worry about them getting into the food.”
Food, Jamie thought. She glanced down at the dead rat, but even a corpse wasn’t enough to distract her. “I’m hungry,” she said.
“Then go on into the kitchen and find yourself something to eat. Unless you were thinking of fried rat?”
She rose from her seat on the stairs and glared at him. Two steps up put her eye level with him, and the result was disconcerting. “Maybe you could move the rat first? I don’t want to step on it.”
Big mistake. Before she knew what he was doing he’d simply picked her up, swung her across the small square of floor and set her down in the kitchen. Letting go of her immediately, as if she weren’t any more appealing than the dead rat. Maybe less. “There you go, Your Highness. There’s bread on the counter and beer in the fridge.”
“Or course there is,” she said, hostile. “But I’m not in the habit of drinking beer for breakfast.”
“You oughtta try it. Good for what ails you.”
“Nothing ails me.”
“Nothing but that stick up your ass,” Dillon said pleasantly, picking the rat up by the tail. It swung limply from his hand, and she shuddered.
“I’ll save the beer for you,” she said, controlling her shudder.
“Good of you.” He carried the rat over to the back door, opened it and flung it out into the alleyway. “All taken care of,” he said.
“You’re just going to leave it out there? Spreading disease and God knows what else?”
“The bubonic plague is over. And if it comes back I’m willing to bet you’d be happy to have me get the first case.”
“You got me there.”
He seemed to consider the idea for a moment. “Besides, there are enough scavengers around that he won’t be there for long. He’ll either be eaten by his brothers or carried off by some stray dog.”
“What makes you think it’s a he?”
“That was for your benefit. I assumed you think all rats are male.”
“Good point,” she said. The kitchen didn’t look much better than it had last night. The bottles had been swept off the table, but the smell of cigarettes and stale beer lingered in the air, with the faint note of exhaust beneath it.
“Bread’s on the counter,” he said. “I’ll make coffee.”
There were exactly two pieces of bread in the plastic bag, both of them heels. “Where’s the toaster?”
“Broken. There’s some peanut butter over the stove—make yourself a sandwich.”
Isobel would have fainted with shock at the idea of peanut butter sandwiches for breakfast. Jamie was just grateful for the protein. She sat down at the scarred oak table to make her sandwich, watching as Dillon reached for the coffeepot. He poured out the dregs, filled the carafe with water and put it back in the machine.
“Aren’t you going to wash it out first?”
“Why? It’s going to hold coffee, and that’s what it held before. What’s the big deal?” He leaned against the counter, watching her lazily.
“The old coffee oils will make it bitter,” she said, not even getting to the cleanliness part. From the look of Dillon’s littered kitchen, cleanliness wasn’t high on his list.
“Maybe I like bitter.”
“I