Edge of Midnight (McClouds & Friends #4)(9)

Add in the big puppy dog eyes and the bulging biceps, and voilà. Not too f*cking bad. If he would just lighten up, maybe even smile occasionally, he would look like a guy who could get laid with minimal effort on his part. About time, too. The guy was a volcano about to explode.

“Are these karate classes you’re teaching mixed?” Sean asked.

Miles snorted. “I’m working with little kids. Ages four to twelve.”

Sean shrugged. “There’s always hot and hungry single moms.”

“This might come as a shock to you, but some people actually do things for reasons which are not specifically aimed at obtaining sex.”

Sean widened his eyes. “Really? It worries me to hear a healthy twenty-five-year-old male say stuff like that. Either you’re ill, you’re pathologically screwed in the head, you’re a closet gay, or you’re lying.”

“I’m not—”

“Gay, yes. I know damn well you’re not,” Sean finished. “You’ve been obsessed with Cindy since I met you. You don’t look sick, either. That leaves screwed up, or lying. Take your pick. I’d buy either one.”

Miles’s mouth hardened. “I am totally over her. And I do not want to hear her name spoken for the rest of my natural life. Get it?”

Sean winced, pained. He’d overdone it again. He was used to kicking around his rawhide brothers. Sometimes their little buddy Miles was too soft for hard-core McCloud style teasing. “Fair enough. Sorry.”

“So, what’s the deal? Are you giving me a ride?” Miles gave him a crafty look. “You do want to check out this girl’s bookstore, don’t you?”

Sean let out a grim snort. Opportunistic, guilt-tripping little bastard. He turned back to the computer and read the articles again.

He wouldn’t, of course. He wasn’t that stupid, that masochistic.

But something inside him was buzzing, wide-eyed, totally zinged from hearing Liv’s name spoken aloud. He hadn’t felt that kind of buzz since he didn’t even remember. Maybe not since…

Since he’d seen her last? Oh, please. Give him a f*cking break.

He’d do a thorough and exhaustive inventory of every single high point in his life before he’d admit to that. Talk about pathetic.

Still. Who was she, now?

Not that this burning itch of curiosity would be mutual. On the contrary. Liv hated his guts. She thought he was the embodiment of all evil in the known universe. Rightly so. And getting disdained, spurned, scorned, or otherwise dissed by Liv Endicott, well…damn.

That would suck like a vacuum cleaner.





Chapter 3



I t was the bouquet of white irises that got to her the most. The sneering, in-your-face rudeness of it. As if the guy had spit on her. Liv clenched her fists and tried to breathe. Her belly muscles were so rigid, she had to deliberately unknot them to let her lungs expand. That coffee she’d drunk some time ago churned in her belly, threatening to rush back up the way it came. She might be better off without it, but barfing made her cry, and the firebug who had torched her bookstore might be watching through a pair of binoculars.

Giggling evilly to himself. Licking his slavering chops. Watching her out of his cold, beady little reptile eyes, like a Tyrannosaurus rex.

She scanned the buildings around her, their outlines blurred by the haze of smoke. He could be watching from one of those windows. She shivered. She would not let him see her snivel like a hurt little girl.

T-Rex had left the bouquet on top of the kerosene, right out front. No attempt to hide what he’d done. He’d even attached a letter. For Olivia, with love, from You Know Who, was printed on the front. Same font he’d used for his previous e-mails. The ones she’d tried to ignore.

Evidently, T-Rex didn’t respond well to being ignored.

Well, hell. She was paying attention now. He’d gotten the big reaction he was looking for. The police were completely disgusted with her for contaminating the crime scene. She hadn’t thought about practical details like fingerprints, etc., when she’d ripped the flowers apart and stomped them into the ground, shrieking at the top of her lungs. She’d put on quite a floor show. Her parents had been mortified.

Ah, well. Nobody was perfect.

She forced out a breath. Her mind kept churning out platitudes about the virtues of non-attachment. All things must pass, blah, blah. The stuff she’d so recently stocked her Self-Help, Spirituality and New Age sections with. Big sellers, all that woo woo stuff. It made her want to smack someone. Who cared about the illusory nature of reality when you were staring at the ruins of your lifelong dream?

She wasn’t evolved enough not to feel like total crap about it.

And she was so angry. She wanted to hurt the guy who did this. Hurt him bad. Make it last. Make him sorry his parents had ever met.

This, from a woman who caught spiders and put them in the yard because she couldn’t bear to kill them. Even the big, freaky, hairy ones.

God, it hurt. She’d invested so much of herself into this place. Everything she had, and a whole lot more besides. She’d never cared so much. Ever, in her life. About anything.

Except for one notable occasion, her inner commentator piped up.

Oh no. Uh-uh. No way was she going to let herself think about Sean McCloud. One charred disaster at a time, thank you very much.