“How so?”
“Well. If something had exploded inside the building and broke the window, there would be shards of glass on the sidewalk, but there aren’t.”
“Meaning something from outside the building broke the glass,” Cam said. “Something like a Molotov cocktail thrown through the window.”
“You got it.”
Arson? Shelby’s stomach flipped over, and she hugged the blanket tighter around herself. Oh God. If Reece hadn’t been here with her…
Someone wanted her pushing up daisies.
Maybe it shouldn’t surprise her, given the life she’d lived up until a few months ago, but it did. It really did.
Holy batshit, Robin.
“Shit,” Cam muttered, succinctly echoing her own thoughts. “Mind if I take a look?”
“Once the flames are out, sure.” As the two men started toward the fire truck, she heard Deluca add, “We’ll need to contact the owners—”
“I’ll do it!”
They stopped, turned, and Shelby realized she’d sounded far too eager. “I mean, the blow might be softer coming from someone they know. I’ll contact them.”
After a beat, Deluca nodded. “You do that.”
Stupid, she scolded herself as she watched them walk away. Stupid, stupid. Should’ve told the truth. Which, yeah, meant she’d have a lot of ’splaining to do. The kind of explanations she really wasn’t ready to give and some she couldn’t.
Behind her, Eva cleared her throat. “Shelby.”
She glanced over, saw her sister’s arms crossed, boot tapping out an impatient rhythm in the slush on the sidewalk.
“I can tell something’s going on,” Eva said.
“Besides my place of employment burning to the ground as we speak?”
“Besides that. Did you start the fire? It’s okay if it was an accident. You just have to come clean.”
Shelby blew out a breath. Of course Eva thought that. In her sister’s mind, she was a walking jinx. “No, I didn’t start it. You heard the hottie fireman. He thinks it was arson, and Cam seems to agree.”
Eva ran her hands through her loose, bed-tangled hair. Didn’t take a genius to figure out what she and Cam had been up to before they heard about the fire.
Which, of course, made her think of Reece. And the bone-quaking orgasm he’d been on the verge of giving her.
Despite everything, a blossom of lust unfurled low in her belly. The way he’d touched her had been…unrestrained. Sweet, a little clumsy, and uncharacteristically enthusiastic. So not what she’d expected from Reece stick-up-the-ass Wilde.
And, dammit, she wanted more.
Was there a female equivalent of blue balls? Because she had a mean case of it, which the adrenaline rush had only exacerbated.
Eva waved a hand in front of her face. “Planet Earth to Shel, come in.”
Shelby shook her head, dislodging all thoughts of Reece. “Sorry. What?”
Eva frowned, concern etching lines around her eyes. “Are you okay? Maybe we should take you to the hospital.”
“No, you don’t need to do that. I’m exhausted and zoned out for a sec. No biggie. What were you saying?”
“Oh God. Shelby, you scared me, you know?” Eva stepped forward and wrapped her up in a hard hug. “You were here closing by yourself, and when I heard the call come across the scanner…”
Shelby held her just as tightly and breathed in the leathery scent of her sister’s jacket mixed with the clean scent of soap from a recent shower. It did wonders to calm her still-racing heart. “I’m so sorry, Evie. But I’m okay. Honest.”
“Whatever’s going on with you, you know you can tell me, right? I can’t promise I won’t get mad at first, but I’m always here for you, no matter what.”
“I’ve never doubted that.”
“So then what aren’t you telling me?”
Oh, so much. So very much that she didn’t even know where or how to begin.
She clung to her sister and watched the firemen douse the last of the flames. The front end of The Bean Gallery was nothing but a blackened shell now, and tears pricked her eyes. And for a heartbeat, warm and comfortable in her sister’s embrace, she considered spilling everything. All she had to do was open her mouth and start talking.
But then she caught sight of a familiar face in the crowd of bystanders that had begun to gather on the sidewalk, and her heart dropped to her toes.
Shitballs. And here she’d thought this night couldn’t possibly get any worse.
Chapter Three
“What are you doing here?”
Reece glanced up from the spreadsheets on his laptop to see his brother Vaughn lounging in the doorway of his office. It was a tiny room in the back of the Wilde Security building and Vaughn filled the doorframe with his body.
“I could ask the same of you,” Reece said, avoiding the question. “As best man, shouldn’t you be with the groom, making sure he gets to the plane on time tomorrow?”