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CHAPTER 1
The smell of smoke tickled Becca Trevor's nose. Not again. There was no smoking allowed in the bar but the jerk down at the end seemed to believe he was above the law. Just like Brandon had thought he was, right up to the minute he was arrested for embezzling money from the custom motorcycle shop he worked for. That was last week and hell would freeze over before she borrowed money to bail him out.
She sauntered down to the end of the bar. She wanted to be casual about this, non-confrontational. She paused halfway down to wipe up a non-existent spill on the bar top.
"Sir, there's no smoking in here." She smiled prettily at him.
He waved his lit cigarette in the air. "You don't have an ashtray."
Of course we don't. It's no smoking.
She pulled another bar glass from beneath the counter and filled it halfway with water. She set it on the bar in front of him. Water splashed out of the glass when he rammed the cigarette into it. She calmly wiped it up and took away the glass. This was the second time tonight she'd done this; a third time and it would be a comedy routine.
"Can you at least get me another beer?" he growled at her.
"I sure can." She pulled another draft of what he was drinking and slid it in front of him. After all this trouble, he wasn't going to tip anyway. The troublemakers never did.
She tried her best to ignore him for the next fifteen minutes, until a young woman climbed up onto a stool two seats away from him. It was the only empty spot at the moment or Becca would wave her elsewhere. The bar was busier than she had expected for Memorial Day. From what she could glean from snippets of conversation here and there, the baseball game at the stadium a few blocks away had been called for rain in the fourth inning. It looked like a lot of people had come here instead.
"What can I get you?" Becca asked the newcomer. She wasn't a regular. After three months working here, Becca knew all the usual folks.
"Just a sparkling water with lemon, thanks." She glanced worriedly at the door every few minutes. Clearly, she was waiting for someone. Maybe a blind date.
Somehow Becca wasn't surprised when the smoker leaned around the man sitting next to him and tried to strike up a conversation with the young woman. "They don't let you smoke in here, you know."
The woman nodded and gave him a weak smile. "I don't smoke anyway."
He dropped down off his seat and squeezed into the narrow space between her and the next patron. Becca could see the woman's posture tense. "Let me buy you a drink. What's that, soda? You need something better than that." His words were beginning to slur. He waved at Becca.
"No thanks," the woman said firmly. "I'm waiting for someone."
"Well so am I, sweetheart. Don't mean we can't enjoy a drink while we wait." He waved at Becca again. "Two more beers down here, barkeep."
Barkeep? How about wench while you're at it? Becca pulled another draft and placed it in front of the man.
"I'm fine," the woman said, holding up her barely-touched water. "I don't want one."
"Just one, sweetheart. Your date will thank me later."
Out of the corner of her eye, Becca saw a businessman-type vacate a seat at the other end of the bar. "Why don't you sit down there?" she said quietly to the young woman.
"What the hell!" the man shouted. "Can't you just mind your own business and pour drinks? That's what you're being paid for."
The young woman slipped off the stool and practically ran to the empty seat. Becca watched her until she heard the sound of breaking glass and then a sharp prick on her upper arm. She spun around. The entire room was still now, every conversation in the place paused.
"Look what you made me do now, bitch!"
People were backing away from the bar quickly, leaving Becca and Asshole Man in a standoff. The man had slammed his empty glass onto the bar, shattering it. Shards were scattered everywhere. That was what she'd felt prick her arm.
"Joe!" Another voice broke in.
"About time you got here. Your bitch of a bartender won't pour me the drink I ordered."
Your bitch of a bartender? Becca looked at the large man walking down the length of the bar. Shit. It was the owner, a man she'd never been introduced to but knew by sight. The sight right now was not that of a happy man. There was also, for Becca's immediate prospects, an unhappy familial resemblance between the owner and the asshole grinning ear to ear at her now. Across the room, the assistant manager hovered by the hostess station, too chickenshit to intervene.
Becca knew what was coming. She could see it unfolding in the minutes ahead of her like a slow motion scene in a movie. She was going to be unceremoniously fired in three ... two ... yep, one. Strangely, all of a sudden, she really didn't care. First Brandon. Now this. She calmly grabbed her purse from beneath the bar. Right as she pushed open the heavy door to the street, she heard the owner say, "We can manage with just the other bartender tonight."
What other bartender, idiot? He was too cheap to have more than one per shift. But whatever. She was out of there.
Outside the bar, it was raining cats and dogs. Becca raced to where her car was parked down the street. Inside, she let her body sink into the cloth seat and closed her eyes against the sight of rain sluicing down the windshield. No good deed goes unpunished. Story of my life, starring Becca Trevor. Once again, she was unemployed. Her boyfriend — well, ex-boyfriend now — was in jail. Also story of my life: poor choice in men.
She opened her eyes, inserted the key into the ignition and pulled out onto the rain-glossed street. She had packed a lot of mistakes into twenty-five years on this earth. What was one more? She'd go home, heat up a package of ramen noodles and fall into bed. Plenty of time to worry about her lack of gainful employment tomorrow.
She turned the final corner into her neighborhood — and slammed on the brakes. There was trash strewn all over the street in front of the apartment building. She glanced at the beige brick building's tiny lawn. Boxes and furniture sat on the swampy grass. A television. Piles of soggy clothes and ... Becca killed the ignition and burst from the car.
... and quilts.
All of her quilts had been dumped onto the lawn. In the freaking rain! And the television ... that was her television, and the furniture too. She'd been evicted. Shit! Brandon always paid the rent. She gave him her half in cash, he deposited it in the bank, and then wrote a check to the landlord. She was going to have to do that now since Brandon was in jail, but the rent wasn't due for another two weeks. Unless Brandon hadn't been paying the rent. And why did that idea not surprise her?
She gathered up an armful of her clothes and ran it back to the car, dumping it all into the back seat. They'd have to be washed later, but no time to worry about that now. She raced back to the grass, her sodden shoes squishing with each step. They'd been evicted! Damn him! She picked through the mess on the ground, searching. Most of it was ruined. The television, certainly. The toaster. The box of now broken dishes. She picked up the book she'd been reading to relax and decompress before bedtime, then let it drop from her fingers. It, too, was soaked clean through.
She kicked at a mound of fabric, Brandon's favored brand of boxer briefs and athletic socks. Laundry done! A bitter laugh escaped her lips before she remembered the one thing she absolutely needed to find. Her breath caught in her throat as she leaned down to dig frantically through piles and boxes. She owned nothing of value in the first place. Even if she did — and even if it weren't totally waterlogged by now — there wasn't enough room in her compact car to fit everything.
But the quilt. She needed to find the quilt she was making as a thirtieth wedding anniversary gift for her parents. She was so close to having it ready, and the anniversary party was in two weeks. Only a third remained to be quilted, then the binding sewn on and it was done. Not that Becca was planning to go to the party. She couldn't afford to take the time off, but she could spring for shipping it.
She wasn't finding it here in the mess on the lawn, though. She ran into the building and took the stairs two at a time, not caring about the noise she was making. It didn't really matter now if other residents complained to the building manager.
Damn it all. The locks on the apartment had already been changed. She leaned her forehead against the cold steel door. She'd never be able to get another quilt done before the party. It took her eighty to a hundred hours to complete one. She slumped down onto the floor and buried her face in her palms. When had this happened? They must have been waiting around the corner for her to leave for work that morning.
She sat in the hallway, listening to the rain pound the sides of the building and considered her options. No job. No apartment. No boyfriend. No reason to stay in Ohio. She pushed herself up from the floor. It was just after two in the afternoon. If she hit the road now, she could be home in St. Caroline before midnight.
*
Jack Wolfe had no sooner accepted the mug of coffee from his father's hands when the fire station erupted into choreographed chaos all around him. Suddenly everyone was dashing about, grabbing gear, getting into their trucks.
"Gotta' go, Jackie. We'll see you at home later, okay?" His father clapped a broad hand on Jack's shoulder, then followed his crew.
Jack watched longingly as the trucks pulled out of the bays and disappeared into the muggy night. Just like that, he was alone. Fireflies glittered in the dark outside the station. The ticking of the ancient clock on the station wall was loud in his ears.
The bay doors to the station began to lower automatically and he stood to leave. No point sitting in an empty firehouse, even though he had spent plenty of hours by himself in this very room, reading and doing homework. The station was like a second home to him. The Wolfe family — the Wolves, as they were called around St. Caroline — were firefighters across generations. His father had risen through the ranks to become the chief. His two older brothers were captains. His uncle Jack — twin to Jack's mother — had died in the line of duty before Jack was born.
At Jack's birth, his mother had put her foot down. Her youngest was not going into the family business. Little Jackie was the one who would leave town, go to college and become a doctor or lawyer or schoolteacher. Spend his life in a nice, safe job instead of rushing headlong into burning buildings and causing his mother years of worry. Finding out that Jack had dropped out of Berkeley Law, gotten a job as a security guard, and was a volunteer firefighter in California would kill her.
And she was dying already.
He went outside, got in his car and began to drive. He'd heard the address of the call when it came in from the county central dispatch. It was Michelle Trevor's quilt shop, closed at this hour obviously — just before eleven — so no one would be there. But his mother was a long-time customer of Quilt Therapy, so he drove out to see what was what.
He parked his car in the small shopping center parking lot across the street and jogged over to Michelle Trevor's shop. In the dark, it was hard to pick out his dad and brothers among the identically-suited figures aiming water at the small cottage that had housed the quilt shop for years. The structure would probably make it, but everything inside was going to be ruined. He noticed a car sitting in the small parking area off to the side of the house. It was a white four-door compact, nothing out of the ordinary. Not brand new, but not ancient either.
"Whose car is that?" he shouted into the din of the truck engines and noise of high-powered streams of water hitting the roof.
A figure turned. "What?" It was his oldest brother, Oliver. "What are you doing here?"
Jack cocked his head toward the small white car. "Whose car is that?"
Oliver looked at it like he was seeing it for the first time. "I dunno." Alarm bells went off in Jack's head. "Did you check to see if anyone's inside?"
"Shop's closed."
"Owners have been known to come back after hours."
"Michelle and her daughters are in Chicago for some big trade show. They won't be back until later in the week."
"So you haven't cleared the building?"
"There's no one in there." Oliver turned back to the fire.
Jack began running toward the back door. His hand was turning the knob — strangely unlocked for a shop that was closed for the week — when a big hand clapped him on the shoulder and yanked back hard.
"What the hell are you doing?" It was Matt, his other older brother.
"There's a car parked over there and no one seems to know who it belongs to. Hasn't anyone checked for someone inside?"
Matt frowned. "Who'd be inside? The whole Trevor family's out of town."
"Hell if I know! But there's a car there!" Jack was right in Matt's face now.
"Fine. I'll go in," Matt said.
"I'll go with you." The pull of the fire was too much for Jack. He wanted to be working this call, too.
"You sure as hell will not. If dad doesn't kill me, mom will." He shot a fierce glare at his younger brother. "You will wait out here."
Jack took a deep breath. Mattie was right. He was a Wolfe, but not a member of the St. Caroline fire department. He didn't belong here. He watched as his brother grabbed another firefighter and headed into the building. Two in, two out. Jack strode over to the car and cautiously touched the door handle. It was warm. If the fire got worse, it would be too hot to touch. He tried the handle, but the car was locked. No moving it now. He peered into the back seat, and recognition hit him like a backdraft.
There was a brown sock monkey hanging from the driver's side seat, its short arms clinging to the metal prong of the headrest. A memory he hadn't given a minute's attention to in years flared in his brain.
This was Rebekah Trevor's car.
He spun around at the sound of yelling behind him. Matt and the other firefighter were out of the building — and between them stumbled a woman, coughing and choking.
CHAPTER 2
From the parking lot across the street, Becca watched the firefighters wrap up their work. The small crowd of onlookers was beginning to disperse. She needed to call her parents but undoubtedly they already knew. St. Caroline was a small town, even when you added in the summer residents. It was part fishing village, part quaint vacation town for the rich and powerful in the mid-Atlantic. The Trevor family could trace their residence on the eastern shore of Maryland back to the early eighteen-hundreds. They were as historic as the buildings on Main Street.
She sat down on a narrow cement parking curb and crossed her ankles in front of her. Probably dozens of people had called her parents by now to give them the bad news. Both parts of it, in fact. One, Quilt Therapy was basically gone. Everything inside — from bolts of fabric to the sewing machines in the tiny classroom — was a total loss. And Bad News Part Two, the black sheep of the family was back in town — and within hours of her arrival, the family business had burned down.
Everything she touched turned to ashes. All her life, that had been the case. She often wondered whether Michelle and Daniel Trevor ever regretted adopting her after her mother, Michelle's younger (and wayward) sister, died young of a drug overdose. If they didn't regret it before, they surely would now.
From inside her canvas purse came the sound of her phone ringing. She took a deep breath. Time to face the music. She should be good at this by now. She dug out the phone and tapped the screen.
"Hi mom," she said glumly. Should she launch into abject groveling immediately? Or let her mother say her piece first?
"Bec! Where are you, honey?" Her mother's voice, soft with genuine concern, washed over her like a balm. She didn't deserve this family. Nor had they ever done anything terrible enough to deserve her.
"I'm in the parking lot across the street." A hiccup seized her lungs and the sharp bite of pain unleashed the tears she had held back for the past hour. "I'm sorry, mom. I am so sorry."
"Are you okay? You didn't get hurt, did you?"
"No. That's the least of your worries now."
"That is the absolute most of my worries, Becca." Concern was replaced by sternness. "Why didn't you go to the house?"
"I did." She wiped her eyes on her forearm. "When I got there, I realized that I didn't have a key. But I remembered the security code to the shop, so I just came here. I was asleep on the couch ..."
"Where's your key to the house?"
"I lost it." It had been in the nightstand next to her bed. She couldn't remember even seeing the nightstand outside the apartment. Maybe someone had already made off with it by the time she got there.
(Continues…)
Excerpted from "Hearts on Fire"
by .
Copyright © 2017 Julia Gabriel.
Excerpted by permission of Serif Books.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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