Wilde at Heart (Wilde Security, #3)(5)

Ugh. That man was dangerous.

The fire truck screamed to a stop in front of the building, and they wasted no time hooking up their hoses. Streams of water filled the air and within minutes, they had the fire under control.

One of the firefighters came over to her with a blanket. It was just cold enough that the mist from the hoses was already freezing into ice on his helmet and, for the first time, she realized how cold she truly was. And here she thought it was only shock.

He draped the blanket over her shoulders. “Are you okay? Do you need medical attention?”

She shook her head. “I’m fine.”

“What happened here?”

She opened her mouth to tell him how she was preparing the bank deposits before leaving for the night—true—when she noticed smoke and escaped out the side exit—also true—but a car pulled up behind the fire truck, lights flashing in its grill. The fireman glanced over, and then did a double take when Eva and Cam slid out of the vehicle.

“Hey, Detective Cardoso. Someone call homicide?”

“No,” Eva said, and her tone was all omg-I’m-going-to-lock-Shelby-in-a-plastic-bubble-and-never-let-her-leave. “Deluca, this is my sister.”

Shelby managed to keep her wince internal. Someday she wanted Eva to say that without looking like she just bit into a lemon.

“Oh.” Deluca’s eyes narrowed as he looked from Eva—tall, thin, dark hair, and olive skin—to Shelby—petite, curvy, turquoise-and-purple-for-now hair and fair complexion—and then back again.

“Half sisters,” Shelby explained helpfully, then regretted drawing attention to herself, because Eva whirled on her.

“What the hell happened?”

Shelby sucked in a breath and gave her sister the story she’d been about to tell Deluca. When she finished, Cam frowned and scrubbed a hand through his dark hair. It was a thoughtful expression, which was so Cam-like she kind of wanted to hug him. Always steady and solid, he was the rock of Gibraltar in his family. She couldn’t wait until he became her brother-in-law.

“Anybody here with you?” he asked.

Oh, shit. Steady, solid, and way too frigging perceptive. “No, not now.”

“On the way in, I thought we passed…” He trailed off, shook his head. “Nah, forget it. Was it arson or an accident?” he asked Deluca.

Deluca shrugged. “Won’t know until the fire’s out and one of our investigators can get inside. But, I gotta tell ya, just between you and me, that broken front window is looking suspicious.”

“How so?”

“Well. If something had exploded inside the building and broke the window, there would be shards of glass on the sidewalk, but there aren’t.”

“Meaning something from outside the building broke the glass,” Cam said. “Something like a Molotov cocktail thrown through the window.”

“You got it.”

Arson? Shelby’s stomach flipped over, and she hugged the blanket tighter around herself. Oh God. If Reece hadn’t been here with her…

Someone wanted her pushing up daisies.

Maybe it shouldn’t surprise her, given the life she’d lived up until a few months ago, but it did. It really did.

Holy batshit, Robin.

“Shit,” Cam muttered, succinctly echoing her own thoughts. “Mind if I take a look?”

“Once the flames are out, sure.” As the two men started toward the fire truck, she heard Deluca add, “We’ll need to contact the owners—”

“I’ll do it!”

They stopped, turned, and Shelby realized she’d sounded far too eager. “I mean, the blow might be softer coming from someone they know. I’ll contact them.”

After a beat, Deluca nodded. “You do that.”

Stupid, she scolded herself as she watched them walk away. Stupid, stupid. Should’ve told the truth. Which, yeah, meant she’d have a lot of ’splaining to do. The kind of explanations she really wasn’t ready to give and some she couldn’t.

Behind her, Eva cleared her throat. “Shelby.”

She glanced over, saw her sister’s arms crossed, boot tapping out an impatient rhythm in the slush on the sidewalk.

“I can tell something’s going on,” Eva said.

“Besides my place of employment burning to the ground as we speak?”

“Besides that. Did you start the fire? It’s okay if it was an accident. You just have to come clean.”

Shelby blew out a breath. Of course Eva thought that. In her sister’s mind, she was a walking jinx. “No, I didn’t start it. You heard the hottie fireman. He thinks it was arson, and Cam seems to agree.”

Eva ran her hands through her loose, bed-tangled hair. Didn’t take a genius to figure out what she and Cam had been up to before they heard about the fire.

Which, of course, made her think of Reece. And the bone-quaking orgasm he’d been on the verge of giving her.

Despite everything, a blossom of lust unfurled low in her belly. The way he’d touched her had been…unrestrained. Sweet, a little clumsy, and uncharacteristically enthusiastic. So not what she’d expected from Reece stick-up-the-ass Wilde.

And, dammit, she wanted more.

Was there a female equivalent of blue balls? Because she had a mean case of it, which the adrenaline rush had only exacerbated.