LITMIR.BIZ

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      She seemed to recognize it, because smiling way too brightly, she said, “How about if I go order that pizza now?”

      “Oh, yeah, sure.”

      She retreated to the kitchen; he looked at the floors. With the extra weight on the sander, wood had disappeared quickly. The wood was bare, but wavy. If he put a level on it, it would probably rock like the little horse in one of her nursery displays. He was fairly certain that the damage caused by her wild ride on the sander was something wood filler could not fix.

      But he was aware of liking this kind of problem over the other kind. The baffling problems of the heart.

      “What kind of pizza?” she called.

      “The usual,” he said, before he remembered they really didn’t have a usual anymore, not since their lives had become unusual.

      But she didn’t miss a beat, and he heard her talking into the phone, ordering a half pepperoni and mushroom and a half anchovies and pineapple and ham.

      He went into the kitchen and watched her. The afternoon sunshine was painting her in gold. Even in that horrible dress, she looked beautiful. He remembered what it was to share a life with her and felt the pang of intense loss.

      And suspected she was feeling it, too. Jessica had hung up the phone, but she had all the old take-out menus out of the kitchen drawer—she’d actually allowed them to have a junk drawer—and was studying them hard.

      “You’re too heavy,” he said when she glanced up at him.

      “Excuse me? Then maybe pizza isn’t the right choice!”

      “Oh, for heaven’s sake. Not like that.”

      “Not like what?”

      “You,” he said, and could hear the gruff sincerity in his voice, “are perfect. You are too heavy for the sander! We dug some pretty good ruts in the floor.”

      “Oh.” She blushed and looked back at the menus. She was pleased that he thought she was perfect. And he was pleased that he had pleased her, even though the road they were on seemed fraught with danger. “You should have hired it out.”

      “Very unmanly,” he said.

      “You,” she said, and he could hear the sincerity in her voice, “couldn’t be unmanly if you were wearing this dress.”

      He was pleased that she thought he was manly, though the sense of danger was hissing in the air between them now.

      She was right, and not just about the manly part. He should have hired the floor job out. The truth, he wouldn’t have missed those moments of her laughter for the world. Even if the floor was completely wrecked, which seemed like a distinct possibility at the moment, that seemed a small price to pay.

      “I just need something lighter than you to put on the sander.” He deliberately walked away from the building tension between them and went out the back door to their toolshed. He found an old cinder block. He didn’t miss the look on her face when he came back in hefting it, as her eyes found the bulge of his biceps and lingered there for a heated moment.

      He slowed marginally, liking her admiration of his manliness more than he had a right to. Then he went into the living room and found and pitted himself against a nice comforting problem, one that he could solve. How did you get a cinder block to sit on a sander?

      Kade finally had it attached, and restarted the machine. It wasn’t nearly as much fun as waltzing around the room with Jessica. And it wasn’t nearly as dangerous, either.

      Or that was what he thought until the precise moment he smelled smoke. Frowning, he looked toward the kitchen. They were having pizza. What was she burning?

      He shut off the sander, and went into the kitchen doorway, expecting crazily to find her pulling burned cookies from the oven. She had gone through a cookie phase when she had made her world all about him. Who had known there were so many kinds of cookies?

      Once or twice, he had tried to distract her from her full-scaled descent into domestic divahood. He had crossed the kitchen, breathed on her neck, nibbled her ear...

      He remembered them laughing when he’d lured her away and they’d come back to cookies burned black. She had taken them out of the oven and thrown the whole sheet out into the yard...

      But now there were no cookies. In fact, Jessica was standing right where he had left her, still studying all the take-out menus as if each one represented something very special. Which it did, not that he wanted to go there now. Kade did not want to remember Chinese food on the front steps during a thunderstorm, or a memorable evening of naked pad thai, a real dish that they had eaten, well, in the spirit of the name.

      “Don’t distract me,” he snapped at her, and that earned him a wide-eyed look of surprise.

      “What are you burning?”

      “I’m not burning anything.”

      He turned away from her, sniffing the air. It wasn’t coming from in here, the kitchen. In fact, it seemed to be coming from the living room. He turned back in and the sanding machine caught his attention. A wisp of something curled out of the bag that caught the sawdust coming off the floor.

      And in the split second that he was watching it, that wisp of phantom gray turned into a belch of pure black smoke.

      “The house is on fire!” he cried.

      “That’s not funny,” she said.

      He pushed by her and opened the cupboard by the stove—thank God she had not moved things around—and picked up the huge canner stored there. He dashed to the sink, then remembered the canner didn’t fit well under the faucet. He tilted it precariously and turned on the water. It seemed it was filling in slow motion.

      She sniffed the air. “What the—”

      He glanced back at the door between the kitchen and the living room. A cloud of black smoke billowed in, up close to the top of the door frame.

      “Get out of the house,” he yelled at her. He picked up the pot and raced out to the living room. The first flame was just shooting out of the sawdust bag on the sander. He threw the pot of water on it. The fire crackled, and then disappeared into a cloud of thick black smoke that was so acrid smelling he choked on it.

      He threw the pot on the floor, and went to Jessica, who, surprise, surprise, had not followed his instructions and had not bolted for the door and the safety of the backyard. She was still standing by the menus with her mouth open.

      He scooped her up. He was not sure how he managed to think of her arm under these circumstances, but he did and he was extracareful not to put any pressure on her injured limb. He tucked her close to his chest—and felt a sense, despite the awful urgency of this situation, of being exactly where he belonged.

      Protecting Jessica, looking after her, using his superior strength to keep her safe. She was stunned into silence, her green eyes wide and startled on his face.

      And then he felt something sigh within her and knew she felt it, too. That somehow she belonged here, in his arms.

      He juggled her to get the back door open, then hurtled down the back steps and into the yard. With reluctance, he let her slide from his arms and find her own feet.

      “Is the house on fire?” she asked. “Should I call 911?”

      “I want you to make note of the technique. First, you get to a safe place, then you call 911.”

      “But the phone’s in there.”

      “I have one,” he tapped his pocket. “But don’t worry. The fire’s out. I just didn’t want you breathing that black guck into your lungs.”

      “My hero,” she said drily. “Rescuing me from the fire you started.”

      “It wasn’t exactly a fire,” he said.

      She

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