Consumed (Firefighters #1)(74)

Danny knew Moose had bought the place without telling her, a Surprise, honey! that had been meant to show her he could afford big things. When she’d lost her shit, his response had been to lease a closeout BMW 3 Series for her.

When the oh-goody glow wore off that car, Moose was going to have a tiger by the tail, but that was his problem, not anybody else’s. Bad timing, though. Almost all firemen supplemented their income with second jobs in things like roofing or construction, and with the bad winter weather coming on, Moose was going to be forced to take on security work around the holidays to pay for keeping his wife in a good mood.

The guy hated walking warehouses alone, not because he was scared but because he needed constant stimulation.

Again, not Danny’s problem.

The road in was gravel, which had to be another negative in Deandra’s eyes, and as the curve rounded and the house was revealed, Danny laughed. A townie who was determined to elevate her status was going to see the otherwise perfectly nice ranch as a noose around her throat.

No Subaru parked off to the side on the mowed grass with the other trucks. But he hadn’t expected Anne to change her mind and come.

Parking himself next to Duff, he got out and tucked his shirt in. It was a brand-new button-down flannel, the kind of thing his boys wouldn’t notice and smack his ass about, but that he’d chosen in case Anne showed. And anyway, his mother had always said he should wear blues and grays because they brought out the color in his eyes.

Too bad the thing was green and black. But it did have a pinstripe of gray in between the—

Okay, he needed to quit the pathetic shit.

Walking over to the front door, he found things were open, a screen keeping out what few bugs were left from the hard frost the week before. He banged on the loose jamb and let himself in.

Holy. . . wow.

Even he, a confirmed bachelor with no fashion or decorating sense, knew the black and white furniture wasn’t appropriate—and not just because it was oversized, the bulky forms conceived for rooms that were three, four, five times the size of the single-story’s eight-by-twelves. The other problem was that everything was a cheap imitation: plastic made to look like leather, Plexiglas that didn’t fool the eye, and stretches of almost-chrome, like Deandra was trying to convince people that she was living in a Manhattan penthouse and working for a modern art gallery—instead of cooling her jets out here in the country and answering phones and taking messages at a second-tier spa and salon in New Brunie.

The knockoffs were striving rather than achievement. Which, on the theory that people’s houses reflected their identities, put paid to the couple.

And then there was the “art.” Christ, if he had to look at one more saccharine picture of her at their wedding from hell in a fake silver frame, he was going to hurl. The things were hung all over the walls and propped up on side tables, a shrine to the seven hours in Deandra’s life when she had been the princess, the winner of the beauty crown, the head of the line.

Did Moose ever notice that he had been cropped out of 90 percent of the photographs?

“Is that you, Danny?” the bride called out from the kitchen.

“Yeah. Hey, Deandra.”

He walked through to the back. The lady of the house was at the stove, a pair of pink hot pants upholstering her ass and legs, her silver lamé blouse so tight the only more revealing option was body paint.

As she turned around, he realized she’d gotten breast implants. And from the way she arched her back and pushed those bags of saline out at him, it was clear she wanted him to notice.

“Long time, no see.” She smiled, showing off caps. “Can I make you a drink?”

“Where’s Moose.”

“Out back. Where else would he be. It’s not like all of his friends are coming over and he’s expecting me to do all of the work by myself. Hey, why don’t you help me in here? I’ve got lasagna made with gluten-free noodles, and gluten-free bread, and I was just cutting up organic vegetables. You could toss my salad.”

Her hair was lighter by a couple of shades, and he wondered, if this trend kept up, whether she’d have a triple-H chest and Daenerys Targaryen’s coloring by Easter. And he knew exactly what she was playing at.

Danny shook his head. “I’m not good in the kitchen. Sorry.”

Deandra’s heavily lashed lids lowered, her smoky eye going down right stinky. “Anne’s not coming, you know. I spoke with her this afternoon.”

Ah, yes, all the charm I remember so fondly, he thought.

“She’s really busy.” He turned for the back door. “Let us know when the food’s on.”

If it had been anybody else, he would have stayed and helped because it was rude to have only one person cooking for five or six. But considering it was Deandra? He was going to follow Moose’s example.

Opening the slider, he stepped out into the unseasonably warm night. The back porch was half finished, the planks stopping halfway across the frame—and the project was going nowhere until after the winter, Danny was willing to bet.

Ah, yes, the sprawl was starting. The back acreage was all cleared meadow circled by a ring of forest, and Moose was starting to fill it with crap. The two-car garage had been turned into a car workshop and there was a commercial dumpster, a transport box trailer, two rusted-out cars, and half a dozen drums full of God only knew what metastasizing outward.