LITMIR.BIZ

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dropped the bags and caught her, wrapping his arms around her to steady her. Her breath heated the skin of his neck and he felt a dizzying flood of raw male awareness.

      “Hey, Aaron!” Blake’s voice, coming around the side of the house, broke the spell. “We’ve got something.”

      “I’ll be right back.” He released her and headed toward the back of the house. But he wasn’t surprised when Melissa ignored his implied request to stay put, grabbing the puppy and tucking him into her arms as she hurried to catch up.

      Perry and Blake were both crouched by the house, gazing up at a section of charred wiring, when Aaron and Melissa reached the backyard. Perry glanced up as they neared. “Definitely looks like the generator caught fire and set this side of the house on fire.”

      “So, not arson after all?”

      “I said it looks that way. Doesn’t mean that’s what happened.” Perry motioned Aaron nearer. Melissa stayed close enough that Aaron could feel her warmth against his side when they both bent to look at what Perry was pointing out with the beam of his flashlight. “See these wires?”

      Aaron followed his gesture and saw the protective covering of the main power input cable had burned away, leaving the charred wires exposed. “What am I looking at?”

      “Those wires have been cut, not burned,” Perry answered. “The fire burned away the protective layer or you’d be able to see the cut more clearly.”

      Aaron felt Melissa’s hand grab his arm. He turned to find her gazing at him, her face milk-pale in the ambient glow from the firemen’s flashlights. To his surprise, while she looked afraid, she didn’t look surprised.

      Perry cleared his throat. “Someone definitely set this fire on purpose.”

       Chapter Two

      Melissa felt all four gazes on her as Aaron and the other men waited for her reaction. Her skin crawled at their scrutiny. She’d made a career out of being a background player, the driven worker bee behind the scenes who got impossible things done but stayed out of the spotlight when it came time for accolades. She didn’t know how she was supposed to react, what she could do to ease the suspicion she saw in Deputy Clayton’s eyes or the curiosity in Perry Blake’s expression.

      She almost blurted out, “I didn’t do it,” until she realized a denial would make her look guiltier than silence.

      Aaron Cooper spoke first. “Do you know why anyone would set your house on fire?”

      She was grateful to find his expression devoid of suspicion. “I don’t know.” She wasn’t the sort of person who aroused murderous passions. She hadn’t had a real boyfriend since law school, didn’t sleep with married men or make cutthroat business deals. She was just a midlevel attorney at a small law firm in a small Alabama city.

      Who also defends women whose husbands and boyfriends like to knock them around.

      Aaron seemed to catch the change in her expression. “You do know something.”

      Her stomach tightened with a mixture of anger and alarm. She’d raised a few murderous passions in her pro bono work, hadn’t she? From men with hair trigger tempers and violent tendencies.

      “No,” she said aloud.

      There it was. The hint of suspicion she’d been waiting for in Aaron Cooper’s expression.

      She couldn’t tell him about her pro bono work. It would expose her clients. She worked hard to protect them from their brutal spouses and boyfriends, to hide them from further danger and give them chances at good lives. The last thing any of them needed was cops nosing around in their pasts to find a suspect in an arson that had caused only a minor amount of damage.

      “You said you saw someone moving around outside your house,” Deputy Blake said, skepticism oozing from every word.

      Aaron looked at Blake. “What?”

      “I couldn’t unlock the dead bolt on the front door.” Melissa was glad to focus on something that might help Aaron. She hated lying, even if she’d had too many opportunities to hone the skill over the years. “I saw a shadow through the window, moving out of view, like someone going around the corner of the porch.”

      “What about when you got outside?” Aaron asked.

      “I didn’t see anyone. But there was a twig or something like that wedged into the front door lock from the outside.”

      “We don’t know if it’s actually connected to the fire,” Blake said. “We got a few calls last night about wedges being put into locks. One of the complainants said she saw some kids running away just before she discovered the vandalism.”

      “Maybe they graduated to something more destructive.”

      “Pretty big step, from petty mischief to attempted murder,” Blake pointed out.

      “I’m not a shrink. I don’t have to know what motivated the jerks. I just have to prove they did it,” Aaron said.

      “Maybe they cut the electricity as a prank,” Melissa suggested. “Maybe it accidentally made a spark, igniting leftover gasoline in the generator?”

      “How much gas was in the generator?” Perry asked.

      She looked at him, wondering when the class clown she remembered had grown up to be this serious-faced firefighter looking at her with hard skepticism. “I don’t think it could be much,” she admitted. “Less than a cup. It emptied the last time I used it, and I don’t add gasoline until I need it.”

      “You don’t store the gas back here by the house, do you?” Perry asked.

      “No. I keep it in the shed.” Melissa pointed to the small work shed about twenty yards behind the house, near the edge of the woods that formed the border of her property.

      Perry looked at Aaron. “There are signs of an accelerant, probably gasoline, in the burn patterns here. The state’s arson investigation team could tell us more. Should we call them in?”

      Aaron looked from Perry to Melissa. “Yeah,” he said finally. “Let’s call them in.”

      Melissa’s heart sank. “I don’t want you to investigate it. Nobody was hurt. I won’t even make an insurance claim. Let’s just leave this alone, okay?”

      What was left of the compassion in Aaron’s expression disappeared, corroded by undiluted cynicism. “You’re a lawyer, right? You know we can’t do that.”

      She was afraid he was going to say that. “Okay, fine. Investigate.” She tightened her grip on Jasper, who’d started to whine. “Tell your mother I appreciate the offer but it’s best I just find a hotel—”

      Aaron caught her arm as she turned away, his strong grip just shy of painful. “The offer of the guest house stands.”

      She pulled her arm away, glaring at him. What, now that he saw her as a suspect, he thought he could manhandle her any way he pleased? Maybe the whole reason he wanted her at his mom’s place was to make it easier to keep an eye on her.

      But at this point, she was so tired and stressed she wouldn’t have protested if he’d suggested an ankle monitor to track her whereabouts. She just wanted to bathe off the soot in a scalding shower, crawl into a warm bed and sleep for a week.

      “Can we go now?” she asked impatiently.

      “Yeah, we can go.” None of the earlier gentleness remained in his deep voice. He was angry with her, clearly, and in no mood to pretend civility. Or gentleness.

      He nudged her toward the driveway when she started up the cobblestone walk to retrieve her suitcases. “I’ll get them. You go get in the blue truck.” He pulled a set of keys from his pocket and pushed a button. Lights came on at the end of the driveway, slanting light across Aaron’s grim features.

      She

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