Page 7 of Up In Smoke

For the first time, his smile worked on her—the shy one, not the overly charming one. The simple movements, where he grabbed for her beer right before she would have knocked it over, lifted it up, and handed it back spoke of attention. He’d carefully set it in front of her, his fingers lightly brushing hers as she reached to steady herself.

“Sorry,” she said, scrambling to say something to somber Luke.

“Too much to drink?”

She pointed to the glass. “This is my first beer.” And it was quite obvious that it was barely halfway gone. It shouldn't have been enough to make her drunk.

“Are you okay?” There it was again. The concern in his voice grabbed at her. And that was stupid—just stupid. It was worse than being charmed by his flirting. The concern wasn't even plausibly personal: It was hisjob.

So she told herself to stuff it down. “I don't know. How long was I without oxygen last night?”

She smiled as she said it, but Luke shook his head at her. “That’s not funny.”

Perfect, she thought. She’d been chastised by the man who was charming to every single person in town, apparently everyone except her.

“I was worried about you.”

Oh, hell. He shouldn't say that. She wasn’t dealing with anything well enough to handle the onslaught that was a truly concerned-looking Luke Hernandez.

She told herself heshouldn'thave been worried. His job was to detach himself from the fires and the victims. At least that's what Jo told her. Jo had the advantage of still being relatively new in town. The guys, especially some of the ones who'd grown up around here—like the Hernandez boys—apparently knew pretty much every address.

Dispatch had sometimes received calls that said, “Ted's house over on the East End had a fire in the garage.” And that had apparently been enough for the Redemption 911 operator to be able to send units to the right place. She and Jo had laughed about it. So she told herself that Luke knew everyone and he knew he wasn’t supposed to get personally involved in the cases.

Interestingly enough—though Ivy had grown up in a small, tight-knit community—even use of the fire department would have been considered an obligation to pay back.

“I’m fine,” she told Luke, having a sudden moment where everything in her rebelled at the concern in his voice. She bit off the words,I can take care of myself, and make my own decisions.But it was almost as though he heard them anyway, despite the fact that they had not come out of her mouth … not for some time.

She'd quit saying it, and started doing it, years ago, and it had cost hereverything.

That had all been her doing though. When she and Lily had gone out that last night, she'd known what it could set in motion. And though they'd rolled the dice before, and always come up lucky, that night they hadn't. She hadn't been prepared for the betrayal, though.

But at least when she left that place, she had been her own person.

Now her house burning felt like karma—Karma that she wasn't sure if she deserved or not. Karma that she wasn't sure why it had come at her.

Leaning closer to Luke, she ignored the way the scent of him made her breath catch. Surely, that was just leftover smoke inhalation, right?

“Was it arson?”

Maybe she’d caught him unprepared for that question. Hell, she’d leaned in and whispered, maybe he’d expected the kind of come on that he must surely get plenty of, the way he flirted.

He nodded and took another sip of his beer. He wasn’t really drinking it, she noticed, and filed that thought away for later.

“Why my place? What did I do?”

“It wasn't you.” The words came too quickly and too easily to be anything but the truth. She wondered how he could know that.

“Do I need to worry about bringing something to Jo's?”

Even though he told her it wasn't her fault, that didn’t change anything. It didn't matter whether it was or wasn't. If something was after her, it was after her.

He hesitated before he answered, and that spoke volumes.

Chapter Seven

“Are you ready?”

Ivy took a deep breath, but she didn’t move and neither did Luke. They stood on the front porch where she’d stopped, unable to take another step. Maybe she was close enough.

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