Arousal came hard and fast to her body, and she shifted in her chair. “So I’m working on a fire just like ours, actually. I mean, our last one. You know.”
Danny sat back and crossed his legs, ankle to knee. Then he peeled off a piece of crust and offered it to Soot, who had curled up on his new bed. After a moment, the dog hobbled over and took it as gently as an English nobleman, whispering back to his bed and chewing it down on a oner.
“He’s so quiet,” Anne said. “And mild-mannered.”
“That’s a good dog, right here. You lucked out. Both of you.” Danny’s shoulders eased up. “So what about this fire you’re on. Which one is it?”
“Warehouse downtown.”
“The one on Harbor Street? From two days ago?”
“Yes, that’s it. Same vintage structure as the one we were—well, you know. Anyway, there are some similarities between the two. And get this, there have been others. I’m wondering if there’s a connection.”
“Lot of crazies in that area. Sometimes they burn shit for fun.”
“True.” She put some lettuce in her mouth.
“Is it safe for you to be down there? Do you go in a pair or something?”
“I have a handgun. I’m licensed to carry concealed.”
“Good girl.”
“Woman.” She chewed. “Not girl.”
“Sorry.” He smiled a little. “So can we go back to the elephant in the room?”
“Did Moose come into my house and I somehow missed him?”
Danny frowned and then laughed. “I already talked to him. He’s not going to bother you anymore.”
“This mean you’re going to turn over a new leaf and stop acting like an idiot on the job? Great. I feel this is a really good decision on your part. And I’m so glad you’re cutting down on the drinking and putting Uber in your contacts—”
“Can you ever really forgive me?”
Anne lowered her fork. God, with Danny, she kept falling into these holes of emotion, the floor of her logical side giving way and leaving her at feelings’ mercy.
“No offense,” she said, “but I’m not the one who has to do that.”
“Did I cut some other person’s arm off?”
She lifted her prosthesis. “This is not that big a deal.”
“The hell it isn’t.”
Anne studied his face and resented the shit out of the guilt she saw there. Abruptly, she put her fork down. “How much time do you have?”
“When? Now? I have no plans.”
“I’ll be right back.”
? ? ?
Sitting at Anne’s kitchen table, Danny listened to her move around upstairs. She was walking right above him, her footsteps purposeful and quick. Then again, when was the last time she had meandered about anything?
“More pizza crust?” he asked the dog.
Soot got himself up and came over, accepting the final length of crust with the softest mouth this side of a Labrador.
“Listen up, my man.” The dog went back to his red-and-black bed and curled up, looking over as he chewed. “I need you to watch over her, okay? She’s tough and she’s smart, but she lives here alone.”
Well . . . at least from what he understood she lived alone. And he didn’t want to think of the alternative. Had she dated anyone? Shit, the idea any other man had been with her made him want to go get an elephant gun so he could eliminate the competition.
“Okay, let’s go.”
He looked up. Anne was in leggings and a fleece, with a duffel hanging off her shoulder—and he couldn’t help but eye her strong, muscular legs. He had had them around his hips only once, but that was all it had taken for him to never, ever forget what it felt like to be with her.
“Where are we going?” he asked.
Not that he gave a shit. She could have been taking him to get his eyebrows waxed off and his toenails painted and he’d be in.
“You’ll find out.”
She snagged a dog biscuit and led Soot into his crate—which she had refused to let Danny help set up. “You be a good boy. I’ll leave the TV on for you.”
“Music is better.” When she glanced over her shoulder, Danny shook his head. “If an ad or a show has a dog in it, it can be a trigger for him. Especially if he’s enclosed and can’t run.”
“Since when did you learn about dogs?”
“Just picked things up from Jack. They work with the canine unit a lot.”
On her way out of the kitchen, she turned the radio on to the local PBS station. And as the dulcet sounds of the BBC World Service murmured from the little speaker, he followed her lead through the front door and over to the car.
Fifteen minutes later, they were pulling into the parking lot of Mounteria, a wall-climbing place he knew well—and hell, he’d liked the trip so much, he wished it had taken longer. It felt good to sit so close to her, to have excuses, as they talked about nothing, to study her profile, to smell her laundry detergent, to listen to the cadence of her voice.
“Am I going on the wall with you?” he murmured.
“That’s up to you.”
“I think I’ll enjoy the view from below.”
As they got out, she glared across the hood of her Subaru at him. “That is not the purpose of this.”
“Can I mention it’s a side benefit?”
She swung her duffel back into place on her shoulder. “Then I’ll tell you to not look at my ass.”
Yeah, he kept quiet on that. ’Cuz he shouldn’t make promises he couldn’t keep, should he.
The sky was getting dark as they walked through the packed parking lot toward the lit entrance. Mounteria had walls for every skill and age, as well as a juice bar, babysitting, and instruction, so there tended to be two kinds of vehicles outside: minivans that carried kids and roof-racked SUVs that carried serious climbers.
Beside him, Anne was all business and he felt as though he needed to catch up even though he was walking right beside her. Then again, Anne had always been like that: Out in front even when they were in the same place, and he supposed that part of her appeal was the fact that he always felt like he was chasing her. Other women? They tried to rope him in, chain him down, get him to sit, stay, roll over. Not his Anne. She was too busy living her own life to worry about what the hell he was up to.
God, she was amazing. He just wished . . . fuck, he didn’t know what he wished for.
As they walked in, the two guys behind the registration counter looked up and went Cheers on her.
“Anne!”
“Yo, Anne.”
They were younger, bearded, and in their stringer shirts, they were sporting all kinds of lean muscle. Which naturally made him think about that elephant gun he didn’t own yet. Too bad you couldn’t get that shit on Amazon Prime.
Narrowing his eyes, Danny marched up to the counter and stood higher on his spine so he looked even bigger than he was. “I’m with her.”
“He’s my guest,” she said as she offered her card for swiping. “Can he just watch?”
“Sure, Anne.”
“Anything for you.”
Danny’s caveman wanted to reach across the granite counter and do a little swiping of his own, but he overrode that and continued on through the turnstile, entering a cavernous space that echoed with chatter from the adults and squeaks from the kids. People strung on harnesses were crabbing up verticals, clawing and toe-stretching to hold themselves to multiheighted blue, green, red, and yellow tilted panels.
Anne went over to the black climb that was the only one with no traffic on it. Then again, the bitch started on the floor and quickly curved back on itself so that you were hanging upside in midair, only your grips and your strength keeping you from peeling free and falling to the mats flat on your ass.
She was going to climb that? he thought. Holy . . . shit.