“Nice to see you here taking care of the plants again.” He leaned against the porch railing. “Did you have a nice time last night?”
Red rushed across her cheeks. “Sure,” she muttered, and she resumed watering so he wouldn’t see the guilty look in her eyes. Not that she’d done anything wrong by hooking up with Becker, but Travis surely didn’t need to know she’d gotten busy her first night back in town. Travis never liked the guys she went out with. The typical older brother, he didn’t ever think anyone was good enough for his sister, and he surely wouldn’t think well of a man she’d slept with after one hour of knowing him.
“You saw Jamie at the Panting Dog, right?”
She nodded as she watered. “Yes,” she said, then immediately her chest tightened. She hated lying to him. “No, I mean. It was too crazy in there, Trav. I just sat out back in the alley and read a book.”
Fine, so that wasn’t the truth, either. But it bore a semblance to the truth.
“Ah, you’re such a good girl, keeping your nose in books and staying out of trouble,” he joked. Then he narrowed his eyes. “You aren’t getting into any trouble while you’re back in town, are you?”
Megan scoffed. “Please.”
“Well?”
“What sort of trouble would I get into in one day back in Hidden Oaks? I’m going to the olive oil fair with Jamie in a little bit.”
“I mean things like skipping school to hang out by the river. Skinny-dipping in the waterfall. Making out with some boy behind Jamie’s parents’ vineyards,” he said, recounting her high school antics.
“Trav,” she chided. “I’m not seventeen anymore.”
He roped his arm around her neck and gave her a noogie. “Doesn’t matter. You’ll always be my baby sister, and it’s my job to keep you out of trouble.”
“You need to stop worrying about me,” she said, but she knew that was a futile request.
He’d always worried and had always protected her, stepping into the role of “man of the house” when their firefighter father had died. She’d been six, and Travis had been ten.
Her mom had been devastated for years over their father’s death, broken and hobbled by grief. He’d saved a family in a fire, but when he went back for one of his men, the home collapsed under the flames, pinning him beneath a burning beam. Megan hadn’t just lost a dad; she’d lost her mom for a time, too. She and Travis had grown up fast—the two of them together taking care of laundry, meals, and cleaning the house on the days their mom could barely make it out of bed.
Finally, years later, her mom had surfaced again. But she didn’t truly move on until she met and married a guy who ran a bookstore. There weren’t very many hazards to life and limb when you peddled books—a fact that her mom had pointed out numerous times to Megan’s brother when he decided to take up the mantle of their dad and add volunteer firefighter to his credentials. Her mom had argued and battled and bargained to try to keep Travis out of the firehouse, telling him his moonlighting job playing and teaching poker was all he needed, but had no such luck.
Travis was a gambler, and fire was in his blood.
In Megan’s, too. The aversion to it, at least. She had no intention whatsoever of following in her mom’s footsteps, and that’s why firefighters were eye candy only to her. That’s all they’d be for the next week as she shot the calendar, especially since she had real candy in the form of one very sexy bar owner.
“Want to get a cup of coffee?” Travis offered. “I’m meeting up with some of the guys from the firehouse. Smith is probably bringing Jamie along,” he said.
“Sure.”
“All right, let’s go, Miss Megan. There’s a great coffee shop a block away from the firehouse. McDoodle’s has the best coffee in Northern California. Maybe you’ve heard of it.”
She rolled her eyes. “Stop it. You know I love McDoodle’s. I used to live here, you know.”
“Yeah, and you act like you’ve never set foot in this town.”
If he only knew how much acting she’d done last night. She’d never even told Becker that she was from here and that she knew this town inside and out.
Maybe because she liked the idea of not settling down anywhere.
Chapter Five
Becker finished the day’s crossword puzzle in twenty minutes flat. It was damn near a record for him, but he wasn’t surprised. Puzzles made him focus on the simple action of thinking about clues, rather than about people. Puzzles kept his brain trained on the present, so he wouldn’t linger in the past.
But this distraction was done, and he didn’t have a new one handy. When he put down the pen, his mind instantly tripped back in time, revisiting that punishing loop in his head of one night last year when everything was lost. He ran through all the things he could have done differently. If I’d moved faster. Turned sooner. Grabbed harder. As if that would change anything. Still, hitting replay had become a habit for him, and one he showed no signs of kicking.
Memories flashed by, and he let them crash over him.
A frigid night in Chicago. A crackling on the scanner. A 911 call had come from a condo downtown. Candles left burning had toppled over, and just like that, the entire top floor of the building was consumed. He could still hear the hiss of the flames if he listened hard enough. Could see the wall toppling. Pain sliced though him, like it was happening right now as his hands couldn’t hold on to his men. As he watched them take their last breaths.