Edge of Midnight (McClouds & Friends #4)(10)

She scuffed through the ashes, mind churning. Who was this guy? What did he have against her? She had no natural enemies. She was Miss Compromise. Sweetness and light. What you reap is what you sow, wasn’t that how it worked? Wasn’t there a goddamn rule?

That New Age fluff she’d been ordering had done a number on her brain. Or maybe she’d done something horrible in a past life. She’d left a swathe of destruction in her wake. The Countess Dracula, or some such. She’d just get her inner evil countess to hunt this guy down and serve his balls up to him on a plate. Here ya go, buddy. Open wide.

If he didn’t get her first. She shivered, despite the August sun, and the heat waves that rose, shimmering, from the smoking coals.

She dashed the tears away with grimy hands and blinked madly, staring at the mess. All those months of work, reduced to nothing.

It had felt so good, bringing her dream bookstore into reality. Like she’d finally come home. Books & Brew was her baby. Her idea, her investment, her risk. Her own miserable, incinerated failure.

Be grateful it happened at night. The fire didn’t spread. The staff was home. No one got hurt, she reminded herself, for the zillionth time.

A hand clapped down on her shoulder. She jumped. “Don’t worry,” came a familiar voice. “It’s no big deal. It’s all insured, right?”

It was Blair Madden, the VP of Endicott Construction Enterprises, and her father’s right-hand man. Blair had never possessed much of what you might call tact, but this was a bit raw, even for him.

Liv turned. “Excuse me? No big deal? Don’t worry about it?”

“All I meant is that it’s replaceable.” Blair took his hand off her bare, dirty shoulder and wiped it discreetly on his perfectly creased tan pants. “It’s not like it was a cultural landmark. Keep it in perspective.”

“Livvy? Good God! You’re still here?”

Liv winced at the razor tone of her mother’s voice. Amelia Endicott climbed out of the Mercedes idling on the curb and minced toward them, careful not to smudge her sandals. “You shouldn’t be out in the open!” she scolded.

“I’ll come when I’m ready, Mother,” Liv said.

The older woman’s hackles rose, visibly. “I see,” she said. “As always. You have to do things your own way. You must suit yourself.”

“Yeah, right,” Liv muttered. “As always.”

It took energy, opposing her mother. The woman had run her childhood like a dictator, picking her clothes, her schools, her friends.

Except for that one very memorable summer.

Yeah, right. Mother had cast the Sean debacle up to her for years as an example of what happened when Liv didn’t listen to her. For once, she’d actually had a point. It stuck in Liv’s craw even now.

She’d finally forced her parents to accept that she was an adult who made her own decisions. Enter T-Rex, with a can of kerosene, and suddenly her parents felt justified in bundling her into a suffocating gift box again. Tying her up with a big silken bow. Olivia Endicott, groomed to be a credit to the family name, if she would only: 1) lose that pesky fifteen pounds, 2) wear the right shoes, 3) dress like a lady, 4) marry Blair Madden, and 5) work for Endicott Construction Enterprises.

Blair chose this inopportune moment to throw his arm around her shoulder. She jerked away before she could control the reflex.

Blair folded his arms over his chest, affronted. “I’m just trying to help,” he said stiffly. “You’re being childish, you know. And bitchy.”

I’m under a wee bit of stress, in case you haven’t noticed. She bit the sarcastic words back. “I’m sorry, Blair,” she said. “I just can’t stand being touched right now.”

Her mother’s eyes flicked down over Liv’s body, mouth tightening. “I can’t believe you are out in public dressed like that.”

Liv looked down at her baggy pants, the shrunken tank top. She’d rushed to the fire right after she got the call, not bothering to change out of her jammies. She hadn’t had a belly flat enough for that look when she was twenty, let alone thirty-two. No bra, either. Woo hah, she could throw ’em over her shoulder like a continental soldier. And as for her pants, well…best not to focus on her big butt at all.

But the scolding made her chin go up. “I’m decent,” she said. “The important bits are covered. Nobody’ll faint from seeing my jammies.”

Certainly not Blair, she refrained from adding. He’d been badgering her for years in a half-joking-but-not-really way about giving into the inevitable, and marrying him. Sometimes, when she was lonely, she was a tiny bit tempted. Blair was smart, nice, hardworking. Her parents would have frothing fits of joy. And it would be company.

But there was no heat between them. Absolutely none.

Of course, her criteria of “heat” was based almost exclusively on her memories of Sean McCloud. Maybe she’d just imagined all that wild intensity, that giddy excitement. She’d been not quite eighteen, after all.

She swallowed, her throat raspy from smoke and suppressed tears. Maybe a marriage without heat would be more stable. After all, all she had to do was look around to see the damage heat could do.

“You’re making a spectacle of yourself,” Amelia said. “I’ll see you at home, when you condescend to come.” She flounced back to her car.