Seeing Red Read online

  Her mother’s grip on the teapot became white knuckled. “She doesn’t remember the first fire.”

  “I remember more of it,” Summer admitted.

  Camille’s eyes widened. “You do?”

  “Some.”

  Camille looked as if maybe she wanted to say more but instead she pinched her lips together.

  Tina didn’t share her restraint. “What do you remember?”

  “Opening the door. Hearing—” Overcome by the memory, she dropped her face into her hands.

  Tina made a sound of sympathy and stroked Summer’s hair. “Oh, darling, I’m sorry. Don’t think about it anymore, okay? Let’s just stick with this fire.”

  “It wasn’t so bad, really.” She swallowed the horror. “I just can’t stand the smell of myself. It makes my eyes water.” Liar, liar. She wiped her eyes on the napkin Tina handed her. “Anyway, when I woke up I was surrounded by smoke and was a little disoriented, that’s all.”

  “Anyone would have been,” Camille said very quietly, giving the outer appearance of being as tranquil as the tea she began to pour.

  And yet there was worry and sheer terror in her eyes. Summer absorbed both and knew she couldn’t tell them how she’d panicked, how she’d gotten lost in her old nightmare. She couldn’t tell them that she’d had to dial 9–1–1 blindly because of the smoke, or that by the time the firefighters had found her, she’d given herself up for lost for the second time in her life. “At least they stopped the flames in time to save the building. That’s good news.”

  “No, the good news is that you’re alive and relatively unscathed.” Tears made Tina’s voice thick as she wrapped her arms around her niece from behind.

  Camille began to add sugar to Summer’s tea with fingers that shook so violently Summer was surprised the sugar even made it into the cup. “The insurance company is not going to be happy with us.”

  “They can go to hell,” Tina said fervently, placing a noisy kiss on Summer’s cheek. “We pay a fortune for that coverage and we’ve done nothing wrong.”

  Camille just kept adding sugar to Summer’s tea.

  “In fact, they’ll be lucky if Summer herself doesn’t sue us,” Tina said.

  “What? I’m not going to sue you,” Summer said, horrified. “The whole thing is my fault. The candles—” She broke off as her mom let out a choked sound and dropped a sixth teaspoon of sugar in Summer’s tea.

  Tina exchanged a worried look with Summer. “Maybe we should talk about something else.”

  But in Summer’s opinion, that was the problem. No one had ever forced Camille to face anything that bothered her. Including Summer. “I think we should get it all out.” She leaned close to her mom. “I’m so sorry, Mom. God, so sorry.” Her voice caught. “But I think I forgot to blow out a candle. I think I burned the place down.”

  “No. Oh, darling, no,” Tina said fiercely. “I lit those candles, because I loved watching them burn.”

  Camille’s teaspoon clattered to the table as she covered her mouth.

  Socks, sensing her mistress’s distress, jumped into Camille’s lap and butted her head against Camille’s belly.

  Summer scooted closer. “Mom?”

  “I’m okay.”

  “We all are, thank God,” Tina said firmly, taking each of their hands. “Because no one got hurt. Anything we lost can be replaced.”

  “I know you’ll still want to leave today,” Camille said to Summer. “No one’ll blame you for that.”

  Summer looked into her mom’s jade eyes, usually soft and relaxed, now dark with emotion. “You’ll need help through all this new investigation and insurance fiasco. I gained all that experienced with the warehouse fire. I’m too good at it now to pass the torch.”

  “Honey, no.”

  “I want to.”

  “You have your work.”

  “I’m going to call in and explain why I need more time.” She set a hand over her mother’s, stilling the tenth teaspoon of sugar from going into her cup.

  Camille began to stir her tea and didn’t say a word.

  Summer exchanged a helpless glance with Tina. “I thought maybe it was helping you, Mom, having me around.”

  “It is,” Tina said for her sister. “It is.”

  Summer wanted to believe that, but she wanted a lot of things. She also wanted to find her place in a world that she used to belong to. Ironic that she could find her way through a jungle, over a mountain, down a river, and yet right here in her own hometown, she felt so lost. “I’m so sorry about the store,” she whispered. “I’m so sorry. I wish—”

  “No. No regrets,” Camille said so forcefully it surprised everyone. “Trust me. Living with them is too hard.” She turned over her hand and squeezed Summer’s. Once, twice.

  Love you.

  Summer let out a half laugh, half sob, and squeezed her back three times.

  Love you back.

  And could only hope this was a sign of good things to come.

  Chapter 12

  By that afternoon, Summer was in the back of the original Creative Interiors. She sat surrounded by opened boxes, going through some of the stock that Bill had just brought in from his and Tina’s garage, secretly munching on the bag of cookies he’d sneaked her.

  Tina kept coming into the room to check on her, telling her that no one expected her to work today, she should be resting, taking it easy.

  Summer refrained from admitting that being alone, without any distraction such as a naked fire marshal in her bed, would drive her right into the loony bin.

  Braden sat behind her in a corner chair, working on the computer, muttering to himself. Chloe kept finding reasons to come talk to Summer, and every time she did, she took sidelong—and not particularly discreet—glances at Braden.

  He, on the other hand, kept working, not looking up from his screen, not doing anything, possibly not even breathing.

  “So,” Summer said to Braden after Chloe had left for the fifth or sixth or hundredth time. “You do have a thing for her.”

  Braden looked up. “A thing? Sounds like an infection.”

  She thought about what she felt for Joe, and how no matter that she wanted to be easy and light, it was so damn messy and complicated. “It can sure as hell feel like an infection.”

  A low rusty sort of sound escaped him.

  “Did you just laugh?” she asked, shocked.

  “Don’t flatter yourself.”

  “Tell me the truth. You missed the how-to-make-friends day in kindergarten, right?”

  “So I’m not social.” He shrugged a lean shoulder. “That’s not a crime.”

  No, it wasn’t. But his defensiveness was certainly interesting. “Does it have anything to do with why you don’t drink anymore?”

  His indulgent smile faded.

  “I’m not trying to pry or anything,” she said.

  “Like hell.”

  “Okay, I’m prying.”

  “My past is not relevant to this job.”

  “You’re right.” But she had a feeling it was relevant to why he was so cynical and sarcastic. And while she instinctively liked him, her first loyalty was to Chloe, brat or not. “Just tell me. Do you really like Chloe or are you playing with her?”

  “Do you really like your fire marshal, or are you playing with him?”

  Summer narrowed her eyes.

  Braden went back to his work.

  “I like him,” she said softly.

  Braden looked up in surprise.

  “I like him a lot.”

  “Well good for you.”

  “And?…”

  He sighed. “And you’re a pest.” When Summer just waited, he let out an annoyed breath. “Jesus, you’re stubborn too. Okay, listen, I like your cousin. Happy?”

  She grinned and he groaned. “Go back to work, Summer.”

  She did. But cataloging inventory was making her eyes cross and not taking up enough brain waves. She did like Joe, she always had. Liking him had never