Page 49 of The Night Belongs To Fireman

“What are you doing tonight?”

“Um … the usual?”

“Studying up on three-toed sloths?”

“I think we can create an acceptable environment for it, if we just—”

“I have a better idea.” He strode to the couch and swung her to her feet. “We’re going out.”

“Out … what? Where? I can’t go out.” She pulled her hand from his.

“Why not?”

“Because … work and … Dad wouldn’t … Marsden already—”

He gave her a wicked smile. “But you’ll have your bodyguard with you. You’ll be perfectly safe. That’s what they hired me for, right?”

She gazed at him with something dawning in her eyes. Something wild and hopeful, daring and gut-wrenching. “What are we going to do?”

“Whatever you want. Whatever you’ve always wanted to do, but never gotten the chance. Sky’s the limit, baby.” He threw open the drapes, revealing the star-spangled indigo sky and pulsating lights of a busy Friday night. He tilted his head back and pretended to howl at the golden sliver of moon. “The night belongs to us.”

Chapter 14

The Kesslers hadn’t always been rich. Rachel could just barely remember the deliriously manic time of Kessler Tech’s IPO, when her father became an overnight billionaire. The next day her mother had taken her to a toy store and said she could buy anything in the place. She’d dashed from Barbies to toy pianos, to a miniature cotton candy maker, finally settling on a sparkly silver bike with blue fringe on the handlebars.

Now, with San Gabriel’s nightlife spread before her like a buffet of fun, she remembered that kid-in-a-candy-store feeling. It started with her outfit. When she’d first gotten to college, she’d bought a bunch of crazy outfits, but she’d put them away after the frat house incident freshman year. She dove into her closet and came out with skin-tight black vinyl pants and a belly shirt with the words “She’s So Vain” written in sequins. She added sparkly eyeliner and shook out her hair into a wild, fizzy black halo.

The expression on Fred’s face made her want to turn pirouettes across the floor.

“It’s a damn good thing you have a bodyguard,” he grumbled as he set the security alarms.

“Seriously, I don’t know why I ever resisted the idea,” she said cheerfully, which made his face go dark.

“It’s a good thing you have me as a bodyguard,” he corrected.

The possessiveness in his voice made her shiver.

“What’s the grungiest, nastiest dive bar in town?” she asked after they’d settled into her Saab.

Fred started up the car. He’d insisted on driving, so she could have a drink if she chose. “That’s easy. Beer Goggles. Used to be Katie’s bar, Hair of the Dog, but it burned down.”

“Beer Goggles? Yes, let’s go there. That sounds perfect.”

“No.”

“Why not? You said anywhere I want.”

“Because it’s … and you’re …” He scrubbed a hand through his hair, stealing a sidelong glance at her outfit. “Should have kept my big mouth shut,” he grumbled, turning the car around. “The minute I say we’re out of there, we’re out of there.”

“Fine,” she said meekly.

Inside Beer Goggles, it took crucial minutes for her smoke-induced coughing fit to subside and her vision to adjust to the murky darkness. By then she was seated in a booth, clutching a Sierra Nevada and shrinking under the weight of a bar-full of speculative male eyes.

“I thought smoking in bars was against the law.” She barely managed to hack out the question before another coughing fit struck. She downed most of her beer as if it were water.

“Beer Goggles claims to be on tribal land,” Fred explained. “There’s a whole lawsuit going on. Here, have some bar snacks.” He pushed a dirty dish of shriveled pea-like objects that might once have been pistachios. Or gallstones, for all she knew. Her stomach roiled. “Ready to go yet?”

“She just got here.” A giant wearing a black leather jacket and a Cyclops-eye tattooed on his forehead loomed over them. He had the voice of an emphysema patient. “Trying to keep her to yourself, kid?”

“Just giving the lady what she wants.” Fred didn’t seem intimidated by the man’s bulk, but Rachel sure was.

“We were just leaving,” she said quickly. Fred rose to his feet and faced off with the giant.

“Can you step aside, please?” His manner might be pleasant, but Rachel could sense the tension radiating from him. The man stepped aside a mere half inch, enough so Fred could squeeze out of the booth. He did so, his back to Rachel, his entire focus on the Cyclops-man. The next thing happened so fast, Rachel barely saw it through the smoke. The man reached for Fred, as if aiming to pick him up by the back of his jacket. Fred ducked, used the man’s momentum to flip him around, and toppled him to the floor. Then he twisted the giant’s arm in such a way that the man couldn’t budge without pain.

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