Calder Pride (Calder Saga 5)

“Wonderful,” Jessy replied, beaming with happiness.

“Where was the fire, Grandpa?” Quint caught hold of Chase’s hand, claiming his attention. “Can we go see?”

“We will in a minute,” he promised.

“Don’t worry, Quint,” Sally told him. “Your grandpa wants to see it as much as you do. It seems we never quite outgrow our fascination with fire and its aftermath, no matter how old we get.” Sally’s astute observation drew a smile from Cat and a quick, admitting chuckle from her father. With a smile of her own, Sally started toward her restaurant. “I’ll see you inside.”

“Let me get the door for you.” Jessy went after her.

Cat fell in step with her father and Quint when they headed across the graveled parking lot toward Fedderson’s. Wooden barricades blocked off the fire-damaged pump island and kept the handful of onlookers well away from the site.

A couple of Dy-Corp workers stood at the far end of the restaurant parking lot, watching a man inside the barricades as he inspected the burned area inch by inch. Hearing footsteps behind them, they glanced around and nodded a silent greeting.

The taller of the two said, without preamble, “Guess you heard about the fire last night. The fire marshal just got here a little while ago. That’s him going over it now.”

But it was the lean and rangy man behind the barricades, standing beside Emmett Fedderson, who claimed Cat’s attention. He was out of uniform, dressed in boot-cut jeans, a white western shirt, and a lacquered straw Stetson, looking much as he had the very first time she’d seen him. Her pulse skittered, the memory of last night’s hard kiss surfacing abruptly, and the air temperature seemed to rise a good ten degrees.

“Is arson suspected?” her father asked, stopping to talk to the two men.

But Quint kept walking toward the barricades. Cat hurriedly caught him by the shoulders, drawing him to a halt. “This is close enough, Quint.”

He stopped reluctantly. But any hope that she might escape Logan’s notice vanished as his gray eyes cut to her. She made a point of ignoring him, although she couldn’t ignore the vivid and unsettling effect of his presence.

“How come it’s all black over there?” Quint wanted to know.

“The fire did that.” A lazy breeze carried the smell of smoke and burned rubber. “Remember how black it is inside the fireplace?”

“Uh-huh.” Quint nodded.

“It’s the same thing.”

“You mean, it’s like soot?” He tilted his head back to look up at her, and Cat found herself glancing into another pair of equally gray eyes.

“Very much like it, yes.”

Quint squared around and stared at the fire scene for a long minute. “What’s he doing?” He pointed to the balding man behind the barricades as Jessy rejoined them.

“He’s trying to figure out how the fire got started,” Cat replied.

“How can he do that?”

“Now that’s a hard question.” She glanced at Jessy, uncertain how to answer it in terms Quint could understand.

“I think he went to a school to learn that,” Jessy put in.

“Will I learn that when I go to school?” Quint asked, clearly intrigued by the possibility.

“Probably not right away,” Jessy answered with more than a trace of amusement.

Cat smiled in response to it, but it was an absent movement of her lips as she cast an oblique glance at Logan. She hated this achy need she felt whenever he was around. Last night she had fought it as much as she had fought him; in the end, she had surrendered to both.

It shamed her to realize that she now thought of Logan in that same heated way she had once thought about Repp. The memory of Repp was just that—a memory. The thought of him no longer stirred up any of the old quiver of longings. It shook her faith in her own judgment and somehow cheapened the love she had felt for Repp. But she would not let go of her loyalty to him. She absolutely would not.

A pick

up truck turned off the highway, skirted the wooden barricades, and pulled up alongside the building. There was the metallic slam of doors, one an echo of the first as Norma Fedderson stepped from the store and hollered at her husband that he had a phone call.

“Maybe that’s the insurance adjuster,” he said to Logan and hustled off to take the call.