Fake flame, p.1
Fake Flame, page 1
Fake Flame
Adele Buck
For John, aka Mr. B—my very own romance hero
Contents
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Chapter Thirty
Acknowledgments
Excerpt from Out of Office by A.H. Cunningham
One
Eva was in her office when the music started. At first, she didn’t pay attention, immersed in the paper she was grading. Then, the back of her neck prickling with dread, she recognized the tune. “Wonderful Tonight.”
Darren used to say, “They’re playing our song,” when he heard it anywhere. It wasn’t even a tune she liked. Just the one the band had been playing when he’d first asked her to dance back at Juliet and Mike’s wedding three years ago. But Darren had decided that it meant something, that song. That it was some sort of sign from fate or God or the universe that they belonged together.
Well, if he still thought that, he could just go fuck himself.
Grabbing her office keys and ID off her desk, she stomped out into the hallway, pretty sure actual steam was coming out of her ears. Slamming her hand into the crash bar of the door of Wooton Hall, she emerged onto the quad and stopped dead.
There was Darren, playing Eric Clapton’s asshole ballad on an actual baby grand piano on the grass. That was bad enough. Worse, there was a giant hand-lettered sign taped from the open lid of the instrument, wafting gently in the spring breeze. It read, I’M SORRY, EVA. PLEASE TAKE ME BACK. I’M PLAYING OUR SONG FOR YOU.
Eva realized her mouth was open and she shut it with a sharp click of her teeth.
“Oh, my God, that is so romantic,” someone in a small group of undergraduates a few yards away enthused.
Romantic? No. This was emotional blackmail. This was coercion. This was Darren being a manipulative little assweasel. In the past two months, she’d donated the flowers he sent her to the local hospital. She’d blocked his texts and sent his email to the spam filter. She’d taken a Sharpie to the handwritten letters and written RETURN TO SENDER on every envelope before shoving them back into the mailbox, unopened and unread. And that was just the beginning of his onslaught and her endless iterations of no.
He looked to the side, still playing, and caught her eye. And that fucker winked at her. He winked.
Eva took a deep, cleansing breath, and then another one for good measure. Then, she turned on her heel and stepped carefully back into the university building. Her first stop was Celia Petrov’s office. “Hey, Cee, can I borrow a lighter?”
Celia, a professor of Russian literature and someone who’d never been able to kick her pack-a-day habit, looked up at Eva and grinned. “Joining the ranks of the wicked?” she asked, rummaging in her pen drawer and then tossing a pale pink Bic over to Eva’s waiting hands.
“Something like that,” Eva muttered as she caught it. She could still hear that damn tune. Darren had run through it once and was starting again. What was that quote about doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results? “Thanks,” she said, saluting her colleague with the lighter and turning back into the corridor. Trying the door to the maintenance closet, she pumped a fist when it opened. “Score.” It took only a few moments of scanning the orderly contents before she found what she was looking for. She grabbed it and, after closing that door quietly, walked back out onto the quad, positioning herself a few feet from that ridiculous sign and raising her hands. Darren’s playing abruptly stopped, his eyes going wide.
“Eva, what are you doing?” His voice was a wary croak.
“Exactly what it looks like. If you don’t stop this shit, I’m going to use this lighter and this roach spray and make a fucking bonfire out of this piano.”
* * *
Sean was reading David Copperfield when the bells went off. He and the rest of the squad abruptly stopped what they were doing and slid into action, running out to the garage bay to gear up and hustle to their ladder truck. He put his headset on, catching the dispatcher saying something about a fire at the university. Well, that at least was very close.
“Any structures involved?” Thea asked dispatch as she steered the truck out onto the street, siren blaring, heading for the emergency.
“I don’t think so. Not yet. Possible arson, though. The caller is pretty flustered—I think it’s a kid—but fire was definitely mentioned.”
Burning a college building? Sean had seen a lot in the course of his career, but this was some next-level bullshit.
But when they pulled into the access road that enabled them to go to the center of the quad at Montgomery University, there were no gouts of fire, no billowing smoke.
No. Instead, there was a beautiful redhead with flaming cheeks holding a dainty pink lighter and a can of something. Whatever she was trying to do was obviously not working because she was visibly frustrated, yelling something at a dude standing by a piano that was draped with what looked like a hand-lettered sign. The dude had his hands up like she was a gunslinger in a stickup. He was speaking, too, but his voice was low and calm as if he was trying to talk her off a ledge.
Piling out of the ladder truck, Sean could see that there was no actual fire. Reading the sign, his heart sank into his stomach. No, this might be an incendiary situation, but it was a romantic one, not a blaze. Sean and his team looked at each other for a few seconds and then Felix said, “I think this is a situation for diplomacy instead of hoses.”
“You take the guy. I’ll talk to the woman. We’ll keep the hoses in reserve,” Sean said. Having four sisters came in handy sometimes. Felix nodded curtly and stepped forward, catching the guy’s attention and motioning for him to follow.
“Ma’am?” Sean called and the woman turned a pair of cool blue eyes on him. Yeah, she was mad all right. He gestured at the sign. “You’re Eva, I take it?”
“Yes.” She said it like she couldn’t unclench her jaw.
“Wanna follow me over there and tell me what’s going on?”
In response she raised up what looked like an industrial can of bug spray.
He flipped the face shield down on his helmet. “There’s no need for hostility, ma’am. I just want to keep this situation from getting out of control.”
“Then tell him to keep the fuck away from me for good.” She pointed at the piano guy, who was twirling his index finger next to his ear. Sean could clearly see his lips form the words crazy bitch.
Oh, joy.
“Ma’am, I’m going to need you to just come away with me for a sec. You’ll be in full view the entire time.” A little more distance between these two seemed like a really good idea, as well as making sure she knew she’d be safe.
A little of the fight seemed to drain out of her at that moment and she moved to the shade of a nearby tree. Also a good idea. Redheads with her kind of pale skin sunburned like hell and it was a warm, sunny day. When he reached the tree, he held his hand out for the can and flipped up his face shield after she gave it to him. Crossing his arms over his chest, he looked at her for a few moments. The flush had left her cheeks but she still looked mad as hell.
In the gentlest voice he could produce he said, “Want to tell me what’s going on?”
* * *
Oh, this giant man-child of a firefighter wanted to hear her side of the story, did he? Her glance flicked over the name badge on his—yes, predictably enormous—chest. Hannigan. Oh, an Irish firefighter. How original. Now that the face shield was up, she could see his eyes were green, too.
Great. She was being grilled by a walking bar of Irish Spring. A total cliché. Even worse, a gorgeous walking cliché with a cartoon-worthy square jaw and paradoxically soft-looking lips. He raised one eyebrow—something she’d never been able to do, and that somehow set the capstone on her annoyance, making it a full and complete structure of its own.
“You want to know what happened? Fine. I broke up with that asshole two months ago.” She gestured at Darren, who was talking with maddening calm to another firefighter. “And instead of taking the L and slinking off to a hole somewhere, he’s been ramping up a series of romantic gestures until he actually got I don’t know how many people to help him get an entire baby grand piano put on the quad in order to play the song that he’s always said is ours but I never liked in the first place.”
Wow. That was entirely more detail than she’d intended to give. But it felt kind of good, being able to talk about it. Since Darren was also a professor, she’d mostly stayed silent about their split, trying t
Hannigan looked into the distance and rubbed his chin, his sandpapery stubble audible even over the gentle noises of the few students on the quad. He turned an inquiring gaze her way and she steeled herself for whatever was going to come next. An invasive question like, “Why’d you break up?” or worse, maybe a, “Sounds like a great guy. Aren’t men supposed to do romantic gestures?” Or even the maddening, “What do you women want anyway? We just can’t win.” Typical male solidarity.
Instead, he said, “Do you think you need a restraining order?”
Oh. Wow. So he was going to take her seriously for a hot second? “No. He’s not a stalker. He’s just incredibly annoying and a grade-A gaslighter and liar.”
Hannigan nodded. “Sounds like he’s also a manipulative asshole.”
* * *
From the way Eva’s jaw dropped open, she was not expecting commiseration.
“Right?” She waved a hand at the piano, the sign now flapping vigorously in the freshening breeze. “He couldn’t win me back—sidebar, such a gross idea—in private, so he’s got to co-opt strangers into pressuring me to accept his ‘romantic—’” huge air quotes “—gesture. Ugh.”
“Sounds like this guy doesn’t know you very well.”
She closed her eyes at that, chuckling to herself. “No. And the sad thing is, I kinda thought he did at one point. Shows what I know.”
The way her head was angled, he now saw that there was a strand of silver in her hair, threading through the red. Oh, damn. She was like a rage-filled amalgamation of Bonnie Raitt and Amy Adams in a cardigan and sensible flats. If he’d met her anywhere else, he’d be asking if he could get her number. But no. You don’t take advantage of someone’s vulnerability like that. At least, he wouldn’t.
“Okay, so tell me what you were thinking when you rocked up with the pink Bic and the—” he examined the label on the can “—industrial roach spray?”
She sighed, rubbing her forehead and looking at the ground. “I don’t know.” Her voice had a frustrated snap to it, like a plucked rubber band. “I was angry and I just wanted him gone.”
Sean’s senses sharpened at that. He wasn’t a cop and didn’t want to be one, but he was interested in keeping people safe. “Gone permanently?”
She looked at him like he’d missed a step. “Yeah.”
He needed to get this right. If he got things wrong, the cops might need to be involved. “So you wanted him dead?”
Her freckles seemed to pop off her face as she paled. “What? God, no. I just want him out of my life. Go cheat on someone else, jackass, leave me alone.”
Ah, there was the reason for the breakup she didn’t want to convey in that initial rush of narrative.
“Okay. So we’ve established that you didn’t intend to harm...” He trailed off, not remembering the guy’s name.
“Darren,” she supplied.
“Darren. Okay.” He already hated this guy who’d hurt Amy Raitt. Or was it Bonnie Adams? No. It was Eva. But he still had a job to do.
“I just wanted him to leave me alone. And actual conversation didn’t get me that. So it seemed like making a flamethrower out of a lighter and roach spray would send that message.” She cringed and scrubbed her face. “God. It seems so foolish now.”
“But you were driven to the edge.” A suspicious eye emerging from that face scrubbing made him raise his hands. The last thing he wanted was to add to her obvious distress. “No judgment. People can be driven to the edge. It’s a thing.”
She laughed faintly at that, her hands dropping to her sides. “Yeah. It’s totally a thing.”
Sean sighed. “Okay. I’m glad the police didn’t get involved.” Her eyes widened in alarm. “Right. You’d probably be okay. Pretty white woman and all that, but next time think before you threaten arson, okay?”
Impossibly, her face got even paler, the cinnamon freckles practically 3D. “Oh, shit. You’re right.” She covered her eyes with her hands. “I am the worst.”
The worst? Hah. “Nah, I think cheating Darren is actually the worst. But think before you fly off the handle next time, okay?”
She peered at him from between her fingers again. “Why are you being so nice to me?”
Two
Hannigan paused at the question, his square jaw set a little more firmly. “Well, I have four older sisters. They tell me stuff about how hard it can be to be a woman.”
She stared at him. Was he a unicorn? “And you actually listen. That’s rather remarkable.”
He looked at the grass of the quad at his feet, seeming embarrassed. “It shouldn’t be.”
“You’re right. But unfortunately, it is. The bar is so low it’s in the Mariana Trench.” Most men, even if they did listen, seemed to discount how bad things could be or accuse women of outright fabrications. Anything to not have to see the world through anyone’s eyes but their own.
Lifting his head, he said, “Getting back to your more immediate problem, I hope your job will be safe when this story inevitably gets around.”
Her spine straightened. “I have tenure,” she replied, registering the surprise in his eyes.
“Impressive.”
“Which isn’t to say I won’t get a stern reprimand from the dean or something for making the university look bad with my unhinged behavior. But I can handle that.” She could, but she still felt a pang of sick dread in her stomach at the thought.
“What are you a professor of?”
He was seriously interested? “English literature and pop culture.”
An honest-to-God grin spread over his face at that. “Cool. What’s your favorite book?”
Eva paused, the turn in the conversation making her head spin a little. “Well, in terms of classic literature I’d have to go with Austen’s Persuasion. But on the pop culture side it keeps changing. Authors putting new stuff out all the time and really doing interesting things, you know? Picking favorites in a constantly changing landscape seems like an exercise in futility.”
“Cool. For Austen, I think I’m more of a Pride and Prejudice man, but maybe that’s because I have four older sisters.”
She barked out a surprised laugh. “Does that make you Lydia? You don’t seem flighty to me.” She shook her head. This conversation was possibly the most surreal thing that had ever happened to her.
He chuckled at that himself. “Never thought of it that way. I’m not planning on running off with an army deserter, at any rate.”
“Yeah, I can see that not being a good look for you,” she mused, rubbing her chin in a mock-thoughtful way. “Do you have a favorite genre book, though?”
“You mean like science fiction or something?”
“Sure. Or fantasy or romance or mystery or thrillers or horror...”
He made a face. “Read a lot of sci-fi when I was a kid. I’m trying to make up for lost time now. Classics. Trying to be well-read, you know?”
Interesting. “Okay, but there’s more to being well-read than the old-school literary canon.”
He looked like he was about to respond when a voice across the quad called, “Sean!” His head went up and he lifted a hand in acknowledgment to the colleague who’d been talking to Darren, a young Black man who was giving him a “wind it up” gesture.
“Be right there,” he hollered back. Turning back to Eva, he said, “I gotta run. It’s been nice talking to you. Lay off the homemade flamethrowers, though, okay?”
She laughed weakly, feeling more foolish than she had in a long time, and yet still wishing they could have prolonged their conversation. “Well, I couldn’t even figure out how the lighter worked, so I wouldn’t have made a very successful flamethrower-creator anyway. I thought you just pressed your thumb on the button and bingo—flame.”
He chuckled and they started to walk together in tandem across the grass as if they’d somehow mutually agreed to prolong their conversation as long as possible. “They’ve had safety features for a while now. I’d tell you how to use one, but I’m worried you’d use that knowledge in a way you shouldn’t.”
