Seeing Red Read online

  Socks hissed.

  Joe sighed. “Yeah. I know just how you feel.”

  Chapter 2

  Life was short, so grab it by the balls and run.

  This was Summer Abrams’s motto. As a result, she’d scaled mountains, traversed canyons, and kayaked down rapids not meant for humans.

  She’d survived it all, and more.

  But standing right here in the spot where her world had once fallen apart just might kill her. At the sight of the charred building, the confusing circle of fire vehicles, firefighters and cops milling around, her breathing quickened. Number one warning sign of a pending panic attack. She couldn’t control it, being here brought her back.

  She could only imagine how her mother must have felt standing in this very spot. Once upon a time, Camille and Tim Abrams had been everything to each other, sharing an all-inclusive love that had begun when they’d been still in school. Their bond hadn’t required a child, but Summer had come along anyway, when Camille had been only eighteen. She and Tim had accepted their fate, arranged a quickie marriage on a beach in Mexico, and for the next sixteen years, life had been bliss for them, pure bliss.

  Until the first warehouse fire.

  Summer knew her mother still missed her father, so much so that she’d never really invested herself emotionally again. There’d been men, but nothing deep, nothing emotional, a phenomenon that included the relationship she had with her own daughter.

  Summer knew she couldn’t have prevented what had happened that long ago day, no one could have, but she still felt responsible. If only she and Joe had gone inside the warehouse sooner, if they’d only smelled the smoke earlier, if only…

  So many if onlys.

  Her chest tightened with anxiety. Second warning sign. She breathed through it because she would absolutely not have a panic attack now. She hadn’t had one in years. Of course she hadn’t come back to this very spot either, but she could do this.

  To prove it, she smiled with remarkable calm at the firefighter approaching her. He was covered in a fine layer of dust so that she couldn’t tell if his hair was blond or gray, but oddly enough his face was perfectly clean. He wore black-rimmed glasses that magnified his light blue eyes and friendly smile. She let go of the lucky crystal in her pocket and held out her hand. “I’m Summer Abrams, the daughter of one of the owners of this property.”

  “Kenny Simmons, fire marshal, from the Metro Arson Strike Team.” He pushed up his glasses. “I’m sorry for the loss.”

  “It’s a total goner then?”

  “Most likely. We’ll know in a little bit.”

  Her stomach sank to join her heart at her toes. She felt sick for her mother and her aunt. Unable to tear her gaze from where the roof had collapsed, she kept seeing the original warehouse as it had stood twelve years before. Hearing her own screams, inhaling the smoke—

  That was all she had, all she could pull out of her memory. The rest was blank, like an unpainted canvas. She’d lost it all when she’d been hit by the falling debris, then trapped there. She didn’t remember getting out, she remembered nothing beyond that first lick of fear at the top of the stairs.

  She put a hand to her chest, as if she could pump her own air into her deflated lungs, but she couldn’t. Damn it, this always happened when she thought about the fire, or was enclosed in a crowded space. There were too many people around here, standing too close—

  The fire marshal’s brow furrowed in concern as he moved in closer. “Do you need to sit down?”

  “No, really. I’m good.” She straightened her shoulders and sent him the I’m-in-charge smile, the same one that allowed her to run crews on some of the fastest rivers and steepest mountains in the world with unquestionable authority.

  What she wouldn’t give to be on a trip right now, out in the wilderness, with only a handful of people around. In her element. In control. Where life was lived in the moment, with no time for thoughts of the past, and no need for thoughts of the future.

  Life was too short for either. “My mother said you found her cat.”

  “We did. Feisty thing too. She’s over there, in that truck. I’ll go get her—”

  “Oh, no, that’s okay, I can do it.” Needing to keep moving, needing to get away from here, she waved her thanks over her shoulder and walked toward the truck to which he’d pointed. The driver’s door was open, so she came around and peeked in, and hello, found another fire official. This one sat behind the wheel, shirtless, his coveralls shoved low on his hips, holes torn in each knee, a tube of antiseptic in one hand and a fistful of Band-Aids in the other, eyeing Socks with a healthy mistrust.

  From her perch on the passenger seat, Socks eyed him back.

  Then the man craned his neck toward Summer and said the oddest thing. “Are you okay?” he asked in an intimately low voice, suggesting such intimacy and familiarity that she blinked. “Sure,” she said, and shrugged.

  He just watched her. She couldn’t help but watch him back. He was filthy, but he had an extremely nice chest. Sinewy, tanned, with a spattering of hair from pec to pec that wasn’t too light, wasn’t too thick, but juuuust right. The Goldilocks in her wanted to smile. After all, she loved men, all shapes and sizes, but this man…yum.

  Unfortunately, all that extremely decent male flesh also sported a series of deep, nasty-looking scratches that appeared to be Socks’s doing. “Ouch,” she said in sympathy.

  His light, light brown eyes, with the impossibly long, dark lashes met hers with…amused cynicism?

  She went still. Wait. Wait. She knew that slashing scar above his eyebrow. She knew that dimple on the right side of his mouth. She knew that wry, slow smile, it had always made her day. “Oh my God. No.”

  He just kept looking at her.

  She took closer stock. Shaggy sun-kissed brown hair, still apparently untamable in thick waves framing his face. Light stubble over his lean jaw—lean jaw. That’s what was so different, besides the years that had turned him from boy to man.

  He’d lost his softness, every single bit of it, coming out with a rangy, leanly muscled build that spoke of long days in physical labor. He looked liked he’d lived each of the twelve years that had passed, every single one of them, well and hard. There were fine laugh lines fanning out from his eyes, and laugh lines around his mouth too. The thought made her heart leap. He’d smiled, laughed, and often. Oh I’m so glad, she thought, and felt the grin split her face. “Joe Walker.”

  “So you do remember.”

  “Of course I do.” She laughed, because just looking at him made her feel young and carefree, but the smile faded away when he didn’t do the same. “I can’t believe it’s you.”

  “In the flesh.” Twisting around, he reached for a dark blue T-shirt hanging over the back of the passenger seat.

  “Don’t you want to treat the scratches first?” she asked.

  “Later.”

  “But—” She thought of the herbal cream she always carried for blisters, cuts, and any other nasty surprises she encountered on a regular basis out on a trek, and reached for the little purse hanging off her shoulder. “I have—”

  “I’m good.” He pulled the shirt over his head, the muscles in his biceps flexing, his hard, ridged belly revealing a nice six-pack as he sat up straighter to pull the material down to cover his torso. A firefighter patch now covered his pec, making him look official. Grown up. And then it hit her. He looked right at home here. He’d lost the haunted, hollow look that had plagued him all his childhood, and had found something for himself, a place he belonged.

  So had she. Far away from here. Unfortunately, her basis for that distance had been a single tragic event, not a strong enough foundation, she’d discovered. She’d lived free as a bird, yes, and had loved it, but a very small part of her knew she’d missed something by walking away from everyone and anyone who’d ever cared about her.

  She just didn’t know what exactly.

  And yet standing here, looking at the warehouse, s