Did I do this? I’m just waiting for Landon to shake himself from his daze and start pointing fingers.
I’ve been known to be a bit of an absentminded klutz, especially when writing. I never lived down the shame of setting my dorm kitchenette on fire in college because I was so busy on a term paper I forgot the ramen I’d left in the pot. The pot boiled down and the ramen turned to char, and then turned into a little stinking glop of burning crud, setting off the fire alarms and forcing the entire dorm to evacuate.
Had I left the stove on when I went out for my burger? I’d made a pot of tea to calm myself earlier, but I was pretty sure I’d shut off the burner. I retrace my steps throughout the day, but there’s nothing. Nothing I did that would've caused this.
I didn’t even plug in my laptop, so I couldn’t be the culprit behind an electrical fire. If that’s what happened, then anything with faulty wiring was there before I showed up.
It’s not my fault, I tell myself. It can't be my fault.
And even if it is, it’s not like Landon can hate me more.
He hasn’t said a word, not even after the EMT patched him up with gauze across his knuckles and a slather of salve on his bruised shoulder, and let him put his dirtied, sweaty shirt back on.
He’s just alternated between watching the flames with a pensive look and watching me with something completely unreadable in his eyes. I’ve kept my gaze fixed on the beach house, ignoring the pounding of my heart.
When he speaks, it hits hard as a gunshot in a silence that isn’t silence at all, filled with the sounds of rushing water and calling voices and crackling radios, but somehow between us, the stillness is so absolute that breaking it is like shattering glass.
Shattering me.
“Come on,” he says. “We’re just in the way now.”
He prowls to his feet in a powerful flex of flowing muscle, the rear of the ambulance bucking upward as his solid weight leaves it, and turns to trudge toward the house, the set of his shoulders grim and weary, his crudely beautiful, large hands hanging helplessly at his sides.
I swallow hard, fighting the sensation that Landon's helplessness is my fault. And I’m frozen, not sure what to do. Unable to believe he’s actually inviting me up to the house.
But finally, I shake myself and scurry after him.
Back to being the tag along little sister, always trailing unwanted in the big boys’ wake.
He lets us in through the kitchen door. The house is the kind of massive thing I’d never have expected from him when we were kids, but it’s fitting for the owner of a prestigious company. It’s somewhere between Mediterranean and Doric. Really open and spacious with a floor plan that avoids feelings of claustrophobia, feelings of being shut in – arched doorways and large windows and white marble tile flooring give a welcoming sense.
That, I think, suits the Landon I know.
He wouldn’t be able to live in a dark, closed house that made him feel caged.
The kitchen itself is all white marble, granite, and pale honey wood tones. I tentatively slide myself onto a high bar-style kitchen chair in unvarnished pinewood, leaning my arms on the cool surface of the kitchen island.
“Listen,” I start, swallowing against my thick, fumbling tongue. “I...I don’t know what happened. I never touched anything. I made a pot of tea, but I know I turned off the burner before I left. I should've just...I should've –”
“Stop.” He cuts me off with the single cold, clipped, forbidding word.
My words dry up, my tongue rooting itself somewhere in the back of my throat. He braces his hands against the edge of the counter, leaning on them hard, staring down at the thick granite slab with his eyes stark. Strange. Intense.
He grinds his jaw back and forth, then bites off, “You’ve got the job, Kenna.”
I blink. “Pardon?”
He shoots me a glare bordering on resentful. “I said you’ve got the damn job. You don’t have to leave.”
“Oh.”
“That’s all you have to say? Oh?”
“I – sorry, I’m...” I’m fumbling. Cursing myself in my head.
Whatever happened to my vow to not be afraid of him? Damn it, damn it, damn it.
I take a deep breath, soothing my nerves, wishing my heart would stop flitting around like a butterfly in a glass jar. “I’m still trying to process all this. That's all. When I left, you wanted me gone. When I came back the beach house was on fire and now you want me to stay. It’s a lot to take in.”
“I’m stuck,” he admits grudgingly. “And this little fiasco just drove home how stuck I am. I’m heading out to Sonoma for the weekend soon. Big job. Imagine if that fire happened here in the main house, and no one was around to call 9-11.”
I don't want to. Clearing my throat, I look at him, promising I won't look away.
“You’ve got a security system,” I point out, then mentally kick myself for undermining my own case. I don’t know when I started wanting to stay here, but I’m not helping myself right now.
He shoots me a fiercer glower. “And the security team won’t get here fast enough for them.”
He jerks his chin toward the windowsill – toward the two near-identical slate gray, velvet-furred cats sprawled there, both staring attentively out the window at the small, distant figures of the firefighters still working around the beach house.
Now, I get it, and I kind of wish I didn’t.
Landon could be a hero in one of my books.
Snarly asshole with a soft spot for his pets.
And just like one of my heroines, I’m going all wibbly inside over it. Sometimes, it's the clichés that get a girl when she isn't looking.
Damn, I know this trope. I write it. I should know better than to fall prey to it.
Hell, I make my heroines smarter than this, don't I? And I’m smarter than my characters!
Then again, old history and dangerous men have a way of making a girl weak, too. Pair them up with a bad cliché, and it's a drama cocktail on the rocks.
I keep my eyes on the cats. Not on him. I feel like if I look at him, he’ll be able to tell all the weird stuff going through my head. “Well,” I say neutrally. “I mean, taking care of the cats isn’t a huge problem, I guess.”
“Good.” It’s harsh and tight like he’s back in the military and I’m one of his soldiers, and he’s just finished detailing a mission. “You’ll stay in the guest room. Don’t get me wrong, Kenna, this is a trial run. Just for the weekend. We’ll see how you do.”
Right. Trial run.
Because the Landon who screamed my name while tearing himself up to get to me is gone, and cold, angry, hateful Landon is back.
And cold, angry, hateful Landon can’t be caught dead actually giving ground. Especially not to me.
I close my eyes. “Trial run,” I repeat, trying to force the words around the knot in my throat. “Got it. Promise I won’t let you down.”
“I don’t want your promises. Just feed and water the cats, and try not to let this house catch fire.”
I wince. I know he’s not deliberately trying to say it’s my fault, but right now, everything hurts way more than it should. Even if I wasn’t in the fire, the whole thing is catching up to me in a rush of trauma. Cold shock.
My emotions are all poisoned on one raw nerve, and he’s scraping on it just by breathing in my space. Which is why I shouldn’t say anything else. Just accept it, and try to hunker down for some sleep.
I already know it’s a bad idea to open my mouth, and yet I do anyway, asking, “Since when do you have cats?”
Silence. It’s an innocent question, one that shouldn’t mean anything, but I can feel the tension bristling.
I risk a glance at him, and there’s nothing there. I see flesh, I see the shape of a man, I see a hard, forbidding stare, but there’s nothing there to make him a person anymore. It’s all walled away inside, completely shut down, and the only thing I get from him is a sense of expectation that says he doesn’t want me to be here.