Fahrenheit Read online

  Adam reached out and started unloading things from her hold. She hadn’t expected that. In fact, she hadn’t anticipated much of anything because with her arms that full she wasn’t sure how she planned to unlock the door. The only thing she could say is that she wasn’t thinking because she was in a hurry to get inside, away from him.

  “You haven’t changed your address at the DMV yet, but a friend who has a friend who knows your landlord told me the place had finally been rented and your name came up.”

  Small town magic, she thought. It wasn’t so small that everybody knew everybody’s business, but it was small enough that circles overlapped, especially with Adam’s job, and her job. “Why are you here?” She put down the bags on the kitchen floor and he did the same.

  “You didn’t return my calls.”

  “You didn’t call me.”

  “I called you.” He glared at her.

  She pulled out her phone ready to check the missed call section and prove her point. She was going to give him a piece of her mind until she pressed the menu button on the phone and realized that it didn’t spring to life with a bright blue glow like it usually did. “Oh,” she held down the power button. “I must have turned it off.” The only thing she could think of is that while she was trying to hang up on him she had held the power button down too long and had managed to turn off her phone. Well, that explained why she hadn’t had any calls at all today. Mitch was probably going to be angry if he tried to reach her and hadn’t been able to.

  “Sorry, I guess you did call.”

  “You hung up on me.”

  “There wasn’t anything left to say.”

  “The hell there wasn’t.”

  She tacked her hands to her hips. “Don’t use that type of language with me.” It wasn’t that she hadn’t heard cursing before; just that most people didn’t use that language when talking to her—especially not while they had that incessantly angry glare thing going on.

  “You break up with me and you can’t give me a chance to fight for you.”

  “Fight for me? Adam you’ve had every excuse in the book for breaking every date we’ve had since that night. A month; that’s how long it’s been since we’ve actually seen each other romantically. Sure, a phone call once a week, where we talk for what; ten minutes at best? It doesn’t take a genius to figure it out. It’s okay. I gave you your way out. Just take it.” Those ten minute phone calls had meant the world to her. She tried to really believe he was too busy to date her like most people dated, but at least they had managed to stop playing phone tag once or twice a week. And for ten minutes, before he had to be back on the job, or she got called out on assignment, they talked about him and his job, and his missing her. She believed him. Ten minutes and he had her suckered in. No, take that back, ten minutes once or twice a week and he had her hooked. Had she been smarter she would have realized that ten minutes wasn’t the stuff serious relationships were made of; he was probably just calling so he didn’t come off as being a jerk. Well, she had given him a way out. He was free and clear without any hard feelings, none that she would admit anyway, so why couldn’t he just take it?

  “No, you gave yourself a way out.” He inched closer to her and she stepped back. He kept walking toward her, like he was stalking his prey and he didn’t intend to let it, let her, get away. She moved back more until she couldn’t go any farther. She had expertly backed herself into the island in the center of the kitchen. “You are so afraid somebody is going to come along and upset your plan that the first sign of something happening you make a run for it.”

  She started to turn, to walk away and he placed both hands on the island, encasing her, trapping her within his cage. He looked at her, holding her eyes with his and she couldn’t bare the intensity in his gaze, the truth in his words, so she looked away.

  “You can’t look at me,” he leaned in close, “because you know I’m right. You’re so afraid that I’m going to be the man to make you drop your panties that you were just waiting for an excuse to walk away.”

  “You canceled, not me.”

  “I had to work. I told you that. You know what I do. You know how unpredictable things are right now. You know we’ve got fires burning all over Flagler County and you know our resources are low. When I’m called in, whether it’s my day off or not, I go.” His tone was angry, as if she should have understood.

  “I thought they were just excuses.” She had thought he was making excuses not to see her, but he was right that there was something more, something that went beyond cancelled dates.

  “No,” he leaned in so close that she could smell the mint gum on his breath, and feel the heat of his body nearly consuming her. Fahrenheit ninety-eight point six her behind. The man was off the temperature charts scorching. She felt her body tremble. “You,” he whispered near her ear as his body pressed closer to hers. She couldn’t go anywhere because the island behind her was just as unyielding as the hard body in front of her. “You felt the same electricity I felt when we touched, the same heat, the same desire, and it scared you. You’ve never felt that before; have you, Eve? You’ve never felt so strongly about a man that you feared your perfect control might break.” He slid his hand up her waist and her breath caught. “You’ve never wanted a man inside you the way you want me inside you.” She heard the whimper escape her lips, felt the trembling body that belonged to her and not him. She was in agony just feeling him this close to her, feeling his breath on her body.

  “You never thought you would feel it. When you made that promise to yourself to wait you never thought any man would come along to make you feel a passion burning so hot, so strong, that you weren’t sure you could resist it. And it scared you. You had to get away from it, away from me. My canceling on you gave you the reason you needed. Instead of staying and fighting you took the weak way out and you ran from it. You ran from me.” He ran his tongue up the curve of her ear and she felt her knees go weak. If it weren’t for the wood and stone behind her she wasn’t sure she would be able to stay upright.

  “Yes,” she whispered begrudgingly. “Yes. I needed to get away from you. Away from this. And your canceling just gave me the proof—”

  “No, it gave you an excuse, Eve. There wasn’t anything that I did that was proof of my not wanting to be with you.” He leaned his body into her and she whimpered with need and lust and desire. “I promised you that night that we’ll wait, that I could wait, and I meant it. Did you think I was lying to you?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Yes you do. You do know. Don’t lie to me. Don’t lie to yourself.”

  “Adam,” she brought her hands to his arms with every intention of pushing him away yet instinctually she felt herself holding on to him instead. “Please?”

  “Answer my question, Eve. Did you think I was lying to you? Or were you afraid that I might break your perfect world? Were you afraid that you might give yourself to me completely?”

  She exhaled sharply. “Please let me go?”

  “Why?”

  “Because it’s…”

  “It’s what?” His hand continued to stroke her body softly from hip to breasts and she cried out in agony.

  “It’s too much.”

  “Then answer my question, Eve. Did you think I was lying to you? Or were you afraid of something else? Were you afraid you’d break your promise to yourself for me?”

  She felt heat pooling between her legs and her heart was racing so fast. She never felt like this before, this intense need to be touched. Not just anywhere, but down there. She needed his hands to caresses her womanly folds, to stroke her and make the ache go away. “Yes, I was afraid.” She snapped. “I wasn’t sure if you were going to change your mind and I was afraid that you would because I knew that the way I felt when I was with you was so strong that I might not be able to resist it. That I might give up everything for you. And I can’t, Adam. I just can’t.”

  “So you ran,” he stroked his tongue up the side of
her neck.

  “Oh, God,” she moaned.

  “You ran.”

  “Yes.” The one word was weak, wrenched from her trembling voice with great reluctance. Admitting to him why she so easily walked away, when she wasn’t even ready to admit it to herself, was difficult. She didn’t want to be the one in the wrong here, but she was. She knew enough about Adam to know he would have just told her if he didn’t want to see her. He wouldn’t have made excuses, yet she used his work as her excuse to save herself. Because no matter what promise she had made to herself all those years ago, she knew this was the one man who might make her break it. Making the promise and keeping it was easy when there was no temptation, but now…now she was afraid that she might betray herself, and she couldn’t do that. She wouldn’t do that.

  “I made you a promise, Eve. And I don’t renege on my promises. I won’t pressure you. I won’t try to overpower your emotional side. We’ll wait because I know that’s what you want I’ll help you do it.” He pulled back just enough to look in her eyes—eyes that were still closed. “Look at me,” he commanded and she, reluctantly, opened her eyes to stare into the depth of his blue gaze. “I’ll fight for you, Eve, but only if you’re willing to fight for me too.”

  “I want you so bad it hurts, Adam. I’ve never felt that before, never wanted this before, and it scares me.” There, she had admitted what he wanted to hear—the truth. “I’m afraid.”

  “Then trust me to protect you,” he pressed his hand to her chest over her heart. “Your heart, your life, and your body. Trust me, Eve.”

  She stared into his eyes, searching the depth of them and seeing only his truth. “I trust you,” she whispered. He smiled at her before pulling back to give her the space she needed.

  “Good. Now, we’re going to bring the rest of your stuff in before somebody gets a look at your open trunk and walks off with the rest of your purchases, and then I’m taking you to dinner. I’m on forty-eight starting tomorrow and I am not going to waste tonight on staying away from you.”

  She laughed. “You don’t get many days off do you?”

  “No,” he brushed his hand through his hair. “With the fires burning all over the place we’re really getting maxed out on resources and men. It’s starting to be a problem. The entire state is on fire, but I’m more worried about Palm Coast. The city has cut the budget so drastically that we can’t afford to hire more men. We’re mostly volunteers now. And last night the mayor said he’s planning to cut more funding.”

  “After everything that’s been going on he still thinks that’s a good idea.”

  “He says with the celebrity on the team he can’t see why they need more firefighters.” He snorted. “What a jerk.”

  “Adam, I’m sorry. I swear I asked Mitch not to use the photo, but he did it anyway.”

  He nodded. “I figured you hadn’t been the one to do it. You know it really doesn’t matter and it wouldn’t be such a big deal if my picture wasn’t nearly a ten by ten while the other pictures are barely four by six.”

  She shook her head in understanding. “I really am sorry.”

  “It’s not your fault.” He guided her outside to get the rest of her things out the car.

  “So how did the rest of your day go yesterday?”

  “Like crap,” he admitted. “I was so worried about how we left things. Right before my shift ended we had a house fire I had to go help put out. It wasn’t anything serious. Some guy fell asleep while he had one of those microwave dinners in the oven—not the microwave, but the oven, and, well, you know the rest.”

  “Yeah, I do.”

  “He didn’t lose much to the flames, but the smoke damage…now that’s a different story. Then we had the meeting with the mayor by phone and after that I went straight to the hotel, but you were gone.”

  She felt a little guilty about that now. “I wanted to get a head start on the cleaning, so I came on over.”

  “Did you get new furniture?”

  “Yeah. They can’t deliver for two weeks, but I will soon have a real bed.” She pulled the air mattress out the car. “Until then, I’m sleeping on this.” She patted the box with the mattress inside.

  “I have a spare room.”

  “That’s not a good idea, Adam.”

  “Why not? I can keep my hands to myself—mostly,” he grinned.

  She looked at him seriously; her voice lowered at least an octave. “If I were to stay over, Adam, I wouldn’t want to sleep in the spare room. I’d want to sleep with you.” And with those words she turned and went back into the house while he kept standing there, staring after her as if she had dropped a bombshell on him. Did he think being a virgin meant she didn’t have fantasies? Because if he thought that then he was definitely mistaken. She had fantasies. Since meeting him she had a whole new set of them that involved his hot body and hers in very naughty, very compromising positions doing things she really shouldn’t be thinking of doing with a man she wasn’t married to. Recently she had started to wonder why she had made that promise to herself, why she had said she was going to wait until marriage. It didn’t really matter why she made that promise at the age of nine, it only mattered that she made it and she didn’t intend to break it. Promises should never be broken just because they became difficult to keep.

  Chapter Nine

  He hadn’t planned on setting any fires during the day this time. He wanted the photos to show his artwork against a blackened backdrop, but the house he had chosen as his first had been busy with life all night. He was angry because he had spent the month plotting and planning this fire and now that plan was falling apart.

  They were young and loud and their party had kept the neighbors up. He couldn’t very well start the fire with everybody awake. They would get out, and he didn’t think he wanted them to get out. Besides that, he needed to burn his name into the wall, which meant he needed some time to prepare the surface.

  They went to sleep well after five in the morning and he knew that other people would soon be awakening so he had to work fast. He didn’t like rushed jobs. An artist should never be rushed. He contemplated waiting one more night, but he couldn’t do that. If he waited then he might not have the opportunity again. So instead of backing out on his art project he snuck into their garage and went to work. Once he had his name spelled out in big, flammable letters, he went to work with setting his fire. He knew exactly how long he needed the fire to burn. He wanted to make sure all the men were on duty, especially the one man, the one who was trying to steal his glory. He wanted them to try to put out his fire before it consumed the souls inside. So, he took a stack of emergency matches and set them in the trash can. He laughed. These idiots had dead branches and leaves from where they had cleaned the yard, mixed in with rags that smelled of bleach. They deserved to burn, he thought as he stood the matches upright. He took another matchbook, one of the smaller ones he picked up at a bar down in Orlando and he tucked it in at the top of the emergency match stack. His plan was going to work. Once the one match book burned low enough it would set the emergency matches on fire and once those burned down it would ignite the debris in the trash can. From there, the wall would start to burn because he had been sure to place enough lighting fluid on the workbench to make the flames reach his message on the wall. After that the rest of the place would go up in flames. He knew this because he knew the fire codes, and he knew the building codes, and he knew the builders. Anything to save money was their motto and he knew corners had been cut in this development. Money bought everything, he thought. The right payouts got these shabby houses put up with a hefty price tag even though they weren’t worth the spit on the bottom of his shoe.

  He lit the match before quietly sneaking away from the house. He couldn’t take the chance of being seen, or heard. He wasn’t ready for the world to know who he really was just yet. He wanted a new name from the press, something artistic and memorable, but he couldn’t have them know who he was or his fun would be over. His art w
ould be stopped and he couldn’t have that. So he gave himself a new name, one of which they would see once they got the fire out…at least that was his plan. He loved his new name. Naming himself after one of God’s creations had been artistically brilliant. It was as if he were the keeper of hell—and he was. Palm Coast had always been his hell, and it still was, and now he was the keeper of it. His flames would consume this corner of hell in his due time. One fire at a time, he was going to burn the city down.

  This fire would be his first house fire in a long time. If the place burned longer than what he planned there might not be much left to recover. In that case, he would just have to try again. He hoped they got his message. He really was sick of being called something as trivial as the Palm Coast Arsonist. That was so small, so limited. He was more, much more than that and now they were going to know it.

  When Mitch picked her up from home Eve knew she should have said no. She could have just followed him to the apartment complex he once again wanted to check out, but instead, she got in the car with him. With gas prices beyond high, carpooling didn’t seem like the worst idea. But then she remembered how Mitch would drive when he was chasing a story—they were lucky if they got to their destination alive.

  When the call came over the emergency scanner Mitch had in his car they were close, very close, to the location of the emergency. A fire in a home that sat just off the golf course was burning strong. The concern, of course, was the home and the possibility that people might die, but also the threat of another wildfire starting. Beyond the golf course were blankets of trees and vegetation. That was the allure of the area for the people who purchased their home there. Golf course literally just off their backyard and lots of green beyond that ensured their home value would increase, or so they thought. When the market crashed it didn’t matter that their houses sat off the green, the homes still decreased in value. Most of the people were bottom up on their mortgage now.