Beau was glad Maggie had the counter to lean on. All that blood rushing from her face couldn’t be good for her equilibrium. “Is there a problem with showing me the book?”
“No! No. It’s the bedroom.” She frowned. “I wasn’t expecting company. It’s a mess really, so why don’t I just bring the book down?”
Slowly Beau shook his head to veto that suggestion. Visiting Maggie’s bedroom was his reward for dragging himself out of bed in the middle of the night. He wasn’t about to let her wiggle out of the tour. Not until he was satisfied that she wasn’t lying to him. And he intended to enjoy every awkward moment.
“Maggie, darlin’, I won’t tell the home patrol you toss your dainties on the floor … if that’s what you’re worried about.”
“Yeah, that’s it.” Maggie wiped the palms of her hands against the seat of her jogging pants, but she didn’t move. To Beau she looked like one of those cliff divers psyching themselves up for the plunge.
“Maggie?” he prodded, eyebrow raised. “The book?”
“I know. I know.” She moved away from the counter finally, but not without protest. “But this is stupid. I told you I was reading. What else would I have been doing in bed at that time of the night?”
“You want a list?” Beau offered.
Much to his disappointment, she ignored the question, but she heard it and understood the subtext. The flush in her cheeks gave her away, so he relented.
“It’s not just the book, Maggie. I need to see your vantage point of the fire.”
“Vantage point?” The frown furrowed her brow and shadowed her eyes.
“You were reading in bed,” he explained. “I assume you first saw the fire from upstairs. So I’d like to see your view.”
“All right. That makes sense.” Maggie motioned to the wolfhound. “Stay here, Gwen.”
“Thank, God!” he whispered instantly. He caught her grudging smile at his fervent gratitude and added, “I don’t think she likes me.”
“I don’t imagine many people like you, Grayson.”
“It goes with the territory.”
“What territory would that be?” She led him toward a narrow staircase off the back hallway.
He answered her question with one of his own. “How did you feel when the engine arrived, Maggie? How did you feel when the first volunteer jumped off that truck?”
Puzzled, Maggie halted halfway up the stairs and twisted her upper body to look down at him. “Relieved. Glad. Maybe like the cavalry had arrived.”
Beau stopped with his foot on the step below her. Then slowly he transferred his weight. Her hip brushed intimately against his abdomen as he rose to claim the stair, but he didn’t avoid the contact. Didn’t want to. He liked the feel of Maggie snugged up against him. Maggie didn’t budge either, but she swallowed hard.
“And how did you feel when you saw me, Maggie?” he asked. The stairs had almost balanced their height, but Beau still had the edge.
“Truth?” The whisper hung in the quiet of the old house like a warning.
“Truth.”
She finally turned to face him, breaking the tenuous contact of her hip but still so close that air barely passed between them. “When I saw you walk up, I couldn’t breathe.”
“Why was that?”
“I don’t know.”
“Yes, you do,” he urged. “Why, Maggie? Truth time again.”
“Because you … scare me.” The words were obviously dragged out of some secret place inside her. She didn’t want to admit it any more than he wanted to know it. But it was a fact of his life for the last couple of years.
“I scare a lot of people, Maggie. Day in and day out. They’re all afraid that I’m going to ruin their lives or their plans, arrest them or someone they love.” He shrugged. “Guilt attaches itself to even the most accidental of fires. Firefighters? Well, they help. Whether the firefighter is a man or woman makes no difference to the public’s collective sigh of relief when that red truck heaves into sight. Arson investigators? That’s a different story. They hurt. That’s how people see us. It goes with the territory.”
“If you don’t like the job, then why not go back to fire fighting? Go be a hero.”
“Truth?”
“Truth.”
She clearly wanted a secret of his, so he gave her one. “Because I can’t trust the fire anymore. Can’t trust myself not to take impossible risks when she’s whispering to me. So I gave her up, put on the badge instead. This way I can still save a few lives, and the people who work for me can go home to their families every night. Each of them still in one piece because they didn’t follow me into hell.”
Maggie tightened her grip on the railing. That his team would follow Beau into hell was easy to believe. He inspired confidence; he had that trick of making people believe he could protect them. But what worried her was that he also talked about the fire as if it were a living entity. As if he knew it. As if it spoke to him.
Watch me.
She rolled her bottom lip inward to wet it, worried it with her teeth, just as she worried the impulse to tell Beau about the past. Maybe he’d understand. Maybe she could tell him. Maybe if he knew—
No! She couldn’t forget that Beau would play any role to get what he wanted. His job depended on winning the confidence of suspects, and he was so good at getting people to talk about themselves. At comforting a woman without revealing anything of himself.
“And who do you go home to, Beau?” she asked, realizing she had kissed him, but she didn’t even know if he was married.
“An empty bed.” Beau leaned, just a fraction of an inch. That’s all the room there was. With one hand he grabbed the railing beside her; the other he flattened against the wall at his side. “I go home to a great big lonely bed. Now, you tell me, Maggie May. Is that the answer you wanted to hear? Or does that scare you even more?”
Surprisingly, Maggie didn’t lean away; she held perfectly still. For a moment he thought she was issuing a silent invitation to be kissed. Lord knows that’s what he wanted to do. A second before he obliged, he realized the problem. His lips were almost on hers as he whispered, “Breathe.”
Maggie sucked in air and stumbled backward up a few stairs. Her eyebrows scrunched together as she struggled for words, pointing behind her head. “The … um … the … ah …”
Beau supplied, “Bedroom?”
“Yeah! The bedroom’s up there.” She inched away and then turned to flee in earnest.
He gave her a head start before he followed. Watching her rump sway in front of his face wouldn’t have improved his mood or changed the facts. He could have kissed any other woman and been done with it. Suspect or not.
But he couldn’t kiss Maggie. He still hadn’t forgotten the moment of panic in her living room. Or the haunted shadows in her eyes at the hospital. Because of that he couldn’t separate his need to touch her from his need to protect her. The problem was that he didn’t know what he was supposed to be protecting her from.
Maybe you’re protecting yourself.
Beau swore aloud. Thankfully, Maggie had already disappeared from the stairwell. He followed the noise and turned right.
Her room was at the end of the hall and like the rest of the rooms in the house—cluttered but comfortable. The furniture was a dark and heavy baroque style. The four-poster bed was swaddled in mismatched bedclothes. A red comforter was kicked into a pile at the end of the mattress, obviously unnecessary in the summer heat. One of the chairs was lost beneath a mountain of clothes, and a number of shoes were trying to escape from her closet.
On the nightstand, resting tent style over Maggie’s alarm clock, was a large green book.
Walking purposefully to the stand now that he was in the room to observe, she scooped up the book and held it out to him like exhibit “A.” Beau had to move closer and lean across the bed to reach it, but he took it, flipping through the color pages. “Economical Ireland. It must be hard to travel with Gwendolyn to worry about.”
“Oh, I don’t travel.”
Beau stared at her. “You have stacks and stacks of travel books. Of course you travel.”
She laughed and folded her arms, suddenly made braver by the expanse of bed between them. “I have a Cuisinart and instructions, but I don’t use it either.”
He tossed the book down on the bed. It sank into the folds of the plump red comforter. “Why?”
“I’m a lousy cook.”
“No. Why don’t you travel?”
“Because nothing is ever as good as the advertising.”
Thoughtfully Beau looked at a set of patterned nylon stockings she had draped carelessly around one of the bedposts and then back at her. “Meaning that you don’t like disappointment.”
Maggie hated people who played psychologist. Especially when they were on the mark. She’d had more than enough disappointment in her life. She didn’t need to go to a foreign country and pay extra for it. And she didn’t have to justify herself to Beau. He probably wasn’t as good as the advertising either, no matter how much she wanted to believe that he was.
Disappointment and irony pricked her as she faced that fact. Without realizing it she’d been counting on Beau. She was back to wanting someone who knew everything about her and still cared. How stupid could one woman be? Beau Grayson sure wasn’t that someone. She’d been a fool to make that telephone call.
Turning her back on him, Maggie stepped over a couple of doggie chew toys and headed for the balcony. “I’ve got to get up really early tomorrow—no, today,” she told him with a glance over her shoulder as she unlocked the door. “So do you think you could take your look around and leave?”
“First, you tell me what happened tonight.” Beau’s sudden and sharp request froze her. “Beginning to end.”
“What’s to tell?” she asked, straightening cautiously, but leaving her fingers on the door handle. “I got out of bed, walked to the balcony because the night air clears my head. I smelled smoke. Saw it. Panicked like any good citizen, and raced back in to call the fire department. Then I raced downstairs to get your card and called you from the kitchen. Why I felt compelled to call you escapes me at the moment, but after we hung up I grabbed some jogging pants from the dryer and went out to wait for the fire truck.”
“And you saw the fire from the balcony?”
“I didn’t see fire,” she corrected impatiently. “Not that I remember anyway. Not at first. I saw smoke. Over the top of the magnolias. And I’m getting really tired of you trying to trip me up, Beau. I didn’t have to call you, but I did. For that, at the very least, I ought to get some brownie points and some slack.”
Without waiting for a response, she jerked open the doors and walked to the ornate railing that rimmed the upper story. The wooden planks beneath her feet were slightly damp from the cooling night air, but Maggie didn’t care. Any sensation that didn’t start with Beau Grayson was welcome. Then she realized his socks would absorb the moisture. “You better not come out here. It’s—”
“Too late.” He slipped noiselessly up beside her, standing too close.
His attention was focused on the field beyond. At the tops of the magnolias. He was judging her again, assessing the truth of her story. The scent of fire was still on the night but diluted by river breeze. His arms were locked, supporting him as he leaned outward into the darkness.
Finally, he made his pronouncement. “It’s possible.”
“Well, thank you, Chief Grayson! Gosh, I know I’ll sleep better tonight knowing that you believe me.”
“I didn’t say I believe you.” Rounding on her, he took her arm. “And if I were you, I wouldn’t be sleeping at all. I’d be working on a defense. Let’s get down to it, shall we? Do you know what the odds are of your finding two fires in such a short period of time, and both before they raged out of control?”
Something about him had changed since stepping out on the balcony. His eyes, she decided. In the moonlight they were a flat, dark sienna, devoid of the compassion that lent them warmth. She pulled away, rubbing her arm, glaring. “I don’t know the odds, and I don’t care. It happened. Deal with it. That’s your job.”
“Oh, I am dealing with it. With you.” His assurance slithered up her spine and raised the hairs on the back of her neck. The next soft question did little to allay her apprehension. “Do you always carefully close and lock the balcony doors behind you?”
“W-what?”
“The balcony doors. They were locked.”
A mental alarm flashed at the edge of her consciousness. “Your point?”
“I’m in the business of details, and that detail does not suggest panic. You said you rushed in to call the fire department. And me. If that’s true, when did you stop long enough to lock the doors?”
She hesitated, knowing how irrational she’d sound telling him she locked the doors because she thought it would make the fire go away. Instead she gave him what she hoped was a plausible lie. Unfortunately, she waited a second too long. “After I changed. Before I went downstairs.”
“You grabbed a pair of jogging pants and changed downstairs. Try again.”
There was no mistaking the chill in his voice or the intent in his body language. He was waiting to pounce—anxious to spring the trap. Allowing her a second answer was just a formality. A game.
When she refused to play, he took her arm again, drawing her all the way to his chest. This time he was gentle, but the touch actually felt more dangerous than the one before. Their T-shirts didn’t offer much of a barrier to contact. Body heat seared her, and her head fell back to meet his gaze. That’s when she realized his anger was personal, that she’d somehow betrayed him without even trying. God help the woman who planned to betray him.
“Let me lay it out for you, Maggie. The way I see it. You liked the attention you got from the hospital fire, so you thought you’d do it again.”
She started to protest, but the pressure on her arm cut her off.
“You never walked out on this balcony. You didn’t see the fire from up here because you didn’t need to. You set it, Maggie. All you had to do was call it in. Call me in. And wait for the fireworks. That is what you wanted, Maggie, isn’t it? Fireworks? Like this?”
He bent his knees and shifted so that her breasts pressed into his chest, so that her body molded to his hard contours. He tucked her arm behind his waist and trailed one finger along her neck. As his thumb outlined her bottom lip, he mused, “The breathless act was brilliant, by the way. It suckered me right in. And the story about foster homes was inspired.”
His words took on a cruel edge, even as his touch seduced her. “What I can’t figure out is why you have to go to this much trouble to get a man in your bed.”
“Oh, my God,” Maggie whispered, uncertain whether she should be horrified, outraged, or just give in to laughter. “You think I’m a lonely woman with a faithful dog and nothing better to do than invent crises for male companionship.”
Beau didn’t know what to think. The locked door had triggered a sixth sense that kept him alive through more fires than he could count. The click of that bolt snapping back had filled him with dread. He’d seen the pattern of vanity fire setters played out too many times. In too many ways. All the pieces fit neatly into place. Maggie St. John was looking for attention.
Maggie inhaled deeply, struggling for control. Her fingers curled into the T-shirt beneath them, anchoring herself as the reality of Beau’s suspicions rocked her. “That is what you think. Isn’t it?”
“Convince me otherwise.”
“How could I do that? You’ve got everything figured out. You don’t want to be convinced. You don’t want to know why I locked the door. You want—”
Maggie didn’t bother to finish the sentence. Standing this close, it was obvious what Beau wanted. Each movement of his hips sent a fresh current of awareness rippling through her. Deep inside she could feel the chain reaction beginning. Her body wouldn’t listen to the outrage of her soul. A tiny pulse began to throb; the baseline of her body’s sensual rhythm.
“Convince me,” he whispered, and let his hands fall away from her face, sliding along her arm, her back, the curve of her hip. “Do it. Trust me. Tell me why you failed the polygraph. Tell me what scares you so much, you have panic attacks. Tell me why you fixed cookies and coffee like this was a date. Tell me about locking the door.”
Suddenly she found herself focusing on his mouth, remembering how he could make her feel. She was only inches away from a mistake. “Don’t do this, Beau.”
“Don’t do what? All I want are some answers. Am I making you tense, Maggie? Is that the problem?”
“You know exactly what you’re doing, and this isn’t about answers anymore.”
His face was so close to hers, close enough that she could feel his words against her cheek. “I’m not doing anything. I’m not even touching you, Maggie.”
Slowly, by excruciating degrees, she realized that the only force holding her to Beau was her own desire. Maggie disengaged and put some distance between them. Beau shoved his hands in his back pockets, waiting. The sound of a car grew loud as it approached. Irrationally Maggie wanted to yell for help, and then it was too late. The sound faded, leaving her alone with Beau’s questions.
“Why did you lock the door?” His voice was soft now, reassuring. For a moment she almost believed the lie that he cared. That he might accept what she had to say.
Maggie leaned against the railing, bracketing her hips with her hands. “It was just a foolish reaction. Fire scares me. Even more than you do.” The smile was weak, but she made the attempt. “It’s so stupid really. I thought if I locked the door and pretended I didn’t see the fire that I could make it go away. That it wouldn’t be my fault. Ridiculous, huh?”
“I don’t know. Is it your fault?”
“No! How many times do I have to tell you? I haven’t lied to you. I didn’t start that fire.”
“If you didn’t set that fire, who did? Why now? Why tonight? It’s a school night. Kids aren’t driving around, looking for a place to make out. The structure had no insurable value for its owner, so no insurance payoff.” Beau paused and shot her a speculative glance. “The only payoff in burning that barn would be for someone who wanted to cause you trouble. It’s certainly done that.”
Denial raced through her as she rejected the idea. “No. Why would anyone want to cause me trouble?”
“I don’t know. You tell me. Made anyone mad lately?”
“Open the phone book to ‘physicians’ and pick a name. I’d give you a list, but I’d get writer’s cramp.” She rubbed her face in frustration and shoved away from the railing to pace as she thought aloud. “No. Absolutely not. I can’t believe someone is trying to get me.”
“Maybe someone saw an opportunity to cause you some trouble. Maybe not. But the explanations that come readily to mind for tonight’s blaze are that you torched the barn or that someone wants me to think you did.”
“The hospital.”
Maggie hesitated, trying to gauge Beau’s reaction to her blunt assertion. Whether he believed his frame theory or not, being set up made perfect sense to her now. Perfectly horrible sense. She even knew which doctor.
“It’s Dr. Bennett,” she said venturing closer. “Today, he warned me that he’d have me fired if I made one wrong move. If anyone did this to cause me trouble, it was Bennett.”
“Maggie—”
“He’s a board member. He has the clout, and we don’t get along. Why not him? As a matter of fact, I’m sure it was Bennett.”
She looked up at Beau’s impassive face, expecting some spark of recognition that she was on to something. When she didn’t find it, she backed away. “You still think I did it.”
“I didn’t say that.”
“You didn’t have to,” she told him. “What happens now?”
“Nothing.”
“Wouldn’t that be a pleasant surprise,” she quipped. “A few dull days for the diary.”
Beau looked at her for a moment and then started for the bedroom door. “We’re done.”
She hugged herself as a soft breeze stirred the air, and followed him. Neither of them said anything else until they were back downstairs. Gwen didn’t growl this time, merely picked her head up and watched him carefully. Beau gathered his things, and Maggie was swamped by a sudden feeling of abandonment, which was ridiculous.
As he reached the screen door, she asked, “And what if something does happen? What then?”
He paused, as if debating with himself. Finally, he said, “Call me.”
Maggie watched him go and wondered how soon she’d have to pick up the telephone.