Heatwave

AS FAR AS Emily Dugan was concerned, New York City had the only decent cab drivers in the country. Case in point, the rude excuse for a cabbie who’d left her and her bags at the curb in front of the Norris Culinary Academy on the hottest day to hit Southern California in over a decade. Even at four in the afternoon, not so much as a whisper of an ocean breeze ruffled the palm trees high overhead, or dared to hint at the promise of relief from the blistering heatwave.

The thickening afternoon traffic on Santa Monica Boulevard whizzed past her as she fought back another wave of nausea. The last thing she wanted during her much-needed month-long vacation was another bout of the flu that had plagued her weeks ago, which had followed on the heels of the most wicked cold she’d ever suffered. She’d been looking forward to this visit with her grandmother for over a month. Nothing, she thought determinedly, not the flu or even the mess her life had unexpectedly become, was going to put a damper on a visit with Grandy. Besides, she had some big decisions to make. The relative peace and quiet would provide her ample opportunity to take the steps necessary to set her life back on track.

She pulled in a deep breath and let it out slowly in an effort to quell another bout of nausea. Tugging up the handle on the largest suitcase, she piggybacked the matching smaller case, then slung her carry-on over her shoulder. An acrid scent filled the air, like wood smoke or maybe burning charcoal from a neighbor’s backyard barbecue, only nowhere near as pleasant.

Since the parking lot to the right of the building was vacant this late in the afternoon, Emily avoided the front entrance of the cooking school her grandmother had started nearly fifty years ago, and wheeled her luggage along the side to the house in back where Grandy still lived. The sight of chipped stucco and peeling paint on the side of the school building took her a little by surprise, as did the thin wisps of grass growing between the cracks in the concrete path. The Norris Culinary Academy had always been Grandy’s pride and joy, and for as long as Emily could remember, had been kept in nothing but pristine condition.

She reached the wooden gate and pulled the handle with her free hand. The hinges creaked, as if unaccustomed to movement. Dragging her luggage behind her, she pushed through the gate and stepped into the courtyard. She frowned as she did a quick glance around the area. The acrid scent of burnt…something, assaulted her. The wonderland where she’d played as a child retained a mere shadow of its former beauty.

Small patches of dark moss dotted the putti fountain in the courtyard’s center, while the small pond below stood bone-dry. Weeds choked the flower beds running along the front of the house. Even the large white plastic urns, usually filled to overflowing with petunias, portulaca or begonias, housed nothing more than the shriveled remains of their original inhabitants.

Something was definitely wrong, but when she’d spoken to Grandy on the phone two days ago to reconfirm their plans, everything had appeared to be the same as always. Never had Emily expected to find the property in such a state of neglect.

She maneuvered her luggage up the two brick steps of the porch to the house and knocked on the door. The only sound came from the distant traffic on the boulevard behind her, and the gentle hum from the central air conditioning unit one of her uncles had installed for Grandy a couple of years ago. Emily didn’t hear a sound from the television or one of her grandmother’s Big-Band-era CDs, which Grandy often played while puttering around her house. Absolute silence.

Perhaps she’d gone out for the afternoon, but that, too, was highly unlikely. Her grandmother, a creature of habit, reserved errands and shopping for Saturday mornings. Emily decided to check the garage first, then she’d unearth the key hidden on the porch and let herself inside to wait.

She parked her luggage in the shade of the porch, then turned and found herself looking into the most stunning pair of sea-green eyes this side of heaven. Alarm skidded down her spine. She’d been so absorbed in her concern, she hadn’t even heard anyone behind her, something a New Yorker never did. She must be more upset by the recent and completely unexpected turn of events in her life than she realized.

“Can I help you?” she asked cautiously. She took a good look at him, committing his features to memory. With her luck lately, anything was possible and she wanted to be able to give the police an accurate description. She might forget the way his eyes skimmed her body, and she could have a hard time remembering her name, but she doubted she wouldn’t remember how his angular features seemed carved from granite. Too bad he wore a frown that would make Ebenezer Scrooge proud, she thought, because with this man’s chiseled good looks and his slightly wavy hair the color of rich mink, he’d be nothing short of scrumptious if he actually smiled. Not that it mattered to her. She was through with men.

“I was about to ask you the same thing.” He had one of those deep, smooth voices capable of coaxing a woman to do just about anything. Oh, she knew the type well. A charmer, and incredibly dangerous to women who made a habit of picking the wrong men. Not that she would ever fall for something so blatantly obvious again.

She smoothed her suddenly clammy palms down the skirt of her loose floral summer dress. “I asked you first.” Okay, could she sound any more childish?

“I’m here on official business. And you are?”

Official business? He wasn’t a cop. Cops didn’t carry shovels around with them. He did wear a badge, though, and a crisp blue uniform that outlined a body spectacular enough for a blue-jeans ad campaign. The man was one-hundred-percent enticing. Well, maybe if she was interested she might call him that, only she wasn’t. Much.

No, she firmly reminded herself. Men were a thing of the past for her. She was just too good at making the wrong decisions when it came to the opposite sex.

“What official business?”

He ignored her question. “Are you related to Mrs. Norris?”

“Yes,” she said carefully. Her roiling stomach took another dip and swirl before settling back down. Feeling none too steady, she reached for the porch railing. “I’m her granddaughter.”

He finally smiled and her breath deserted her. Scrumptious only scratched the surface. The laugh lines surrounding his eyes deepened, which told her that despite that earlier frown, this gorgeous man actually did smile, and often. “Then you must be Emily.”

Obviously, he knew something she didn’t, which made her feel a half step behind him in their conversation. When her stomach gave another lurch, she tightened her grip on the railing. “Who are you, and where is my grandmother?”

His smile widened. Was it really possible for this man to appear any more sinfully handsome?

Apparently so. Her pulse revved up, underscoring that very point.

He leaned his shovel against the porch before he moved up the steps. “Drew Perry,” he said, extending his hand in greeting. “And your grandmother is going to be just fine.”

That half step behind shifted into two giant steps as her vision went all funky and blurry on her for the space of two heartbeats. She shook her head to clear it. “Going to be fine? What happened? Where is she?”

“Hey, are you all right?” Drew asked. “You look pale.”

“I’m fine.” Except she didn’t feel fine. Her voice sounded distant and tinny, a perfect accompaniment for the dull ringing in her ears. Either she was about to suffer a recurrence of the flu or the cardboard excuse for chicken cordon bleu she’d been served on the airplane planned to make an unwelcome reappearance.

She swayed slightly. “Just tell me what happened to my grandmother.”

Warm, work-roughened hands settled over her bare arms as he gently urged her away from the railing to the brick steps. “Maybe you’d better sit down,” he suggested.

Feeling decidedly fuzzy and tingly all at the same time, Emily didn’t argue. She allowed him to assist her down onto the steps. Though she wasn’t exactly certain what she expected to happen next, Drew taking her pulse didn’t even make her list of possibilities. The feel of his fingers holding her wrist sent a chill down her spine and she shivered. A ridiculous reaction, especially considering the record hot temperatures.

“Your pulse always this high?” he asked her.

She tugged her hand away from him. “No,” she lied. “It’s not high, either.”

The look he gave her said he knew otherwise. “Your pulse is elevated, and you’re as pale as a sheet.”

“The airline food didn’t agree with me,” she managed to say around another wave of nausea. “Will you please tell me who you are and what you’ve done with my grandmother?”

“I’m with the Los Angeles Fire Department. Your grandmother had a little accident and was transported by the paramedics to the emergency room.”

Her stomach dipped and swirled again. “What kind of accident?”

He smiled again, causing her pulse to click up a couple more notches. “She’s going to be fine,” he said.

Why wouldn’t he give her a straight answer? She shook her head again. Too late, she realized the drastic error in judgment. Her vision blurred and the ringing in her ears amplified.

“Emily? Stay with me, Emily.”

She tried to tell him she wasn’t going anywhere until he told her exactly what was going on, but her peripheral vision faded to gray. In a matter of seconds, all she could see was a minute pinpoint of light, filled with the rapidly disappearing vision of the handsome stranger, until the lights finally dimmed.

DREW HAD BECOME an arson inspector for a reason—he absolutely detested hospitals. In his opinion, emergency rooms were the worst. But here he was, at the UCLA Medical Center for the second time in one day, hanging around a place he didn’t like, keeping a promise to an old woman he didn’t even know. A sweet old woman who could very well be an arson suspect.

He leaned against the wall nearest the electronic doors a few feet away from the ER’s waiting area. The space was crowded for a Thursday afternoon, with people hoping to be seen soon or anxious for word on the status of a loved one. A pair of sunshine-blond little boys played with plastic trucks on the asphalt-tile floor near the feet of a man Drew assumed was their father. The kids made car engine sounds and scooted their toys around in circles, seemingly oblivious to the worried expression on their father’s face, or the fear and despair mingled in the guy’s eyes.

Drew looked away as an old memory nudged him. He’d seen that look before, on his own dad’s face as the family had waited to hear if his mother was going to pull through. But Drew had known. He might have only been a little squirt at the time, but he’d known that he and his older brothers would never see their mother again. The score of firefighters that had hovered around the emergency room that night pretty much told a story that even Drew, at the tender age of six, had known would not hold a happy ending. As an adult, twenty-three years later, he understood that Joanna Perry had died doing what she loved, fighting fires and saving lives. As a kid, he hadn’t been quite so wise or understanding.

Like his oldest brother Ben, Drew had done his best to avoid doctors and hospitals ever since. As third-generation firefighters, they found visits to emergency rooms came with the job, but at least were somewhat minimal. Their brother, Cale, however, worked as a paramedic and passed through the electronic doors of the ER numerous times during each pull of duty. Since transferring to arson two years ago, Drew’s trips here were slim to none unless he needed to question a witness with regard to an arson investigation. He couldn’t avoid the sterile, antiseptic halls completely, but any time spent in hospitals now was routinely confined to the morgue or the medical examiner’s office.

“Hey, what are you doing here? Come to ask that new ER nurse out on a date?”

Drew looked up and acknowledged his brother. “Cale,” he said, straightening. “Speak of the devil.”

“And the devil appears,” Cale countered with a wide grin, something he’d been doing a lot of lately. Drew gave all the credit to Cale’s fiancée, Maggie. Or was it Amanda? Amanda, he corrected. Maggie had been her persona when she’d been suffering amnesia. He really liked Amanda, but it had been a lot of fun to watch Maggie keeping his brother on his toes.

“So why are you hangin’ around this place?” Cale asked. “Don’t you have a firebug to catch?”

Drew let out a sigh. How exactly did he explain his presence in the ER, especially when he wasn’t really sure himself how he came to be playing the role of knight in shining armor, not once, but twice in the same day? “Long story,” he said, hoping Cale would leave it alone, because he had no easy answers.

Earlier today he’d come to the ER to question Velma Norris, the eighty-year-old owner of the Norris Culinary Academy, regarding the outbreak of recent fires at the school. While the fires themselves were relatively harmless in nature, Drew had his suspicions. First, a grease fire inside a deserted classroom, seemingly caused by a grease spill and a faulty pilot light. Then, a short tower of crates filled with newspapers behind the school had caught fire, caused, at first glance, by a careless smoker. The most recent incident—involving a Dumpster—had also looked innocuous on the surface, except the fire had been the third in two weeks. With the blazes occurring so close together, Drew didn’t plan on dismissing the last case as accidental without proof.