Light My Fire: A Loveswept Classic Romance Read online

  He’d quickly abandoned his usual genial attitude, demanding that the tired technician repeat her statement twice before he let himself believe what he was hearing. She informed him that Ms. King’s ankle had been severely sprained but that there had been no serious damage to the earlier surgical repairs. Her hands had been cleaned up and bandaged. She’d checked out shortly afterward. The only information he’d been able to obtain was that she’d returned a phone call from her parents, made earlier to her at Paradise, before leaving. No address, no nothing.

  His behavior over the next week at the hospital hadn’t won him any friends, but it had gotten him released early and put on a plane to Denver. He’d contacted Scottie from Oregon and asked her to help him track Jenna down. Scottie had wisely kept her questions to a minimum. They managed to get her address in Missoula, but she hadn’t been back there. They contacted a few people who had worked with her, but all of them assumed she was still in Oregon. That left her parents. T.J. figured it was her call to them that had spurred her to leave Paradise so abruptly without letting someone know where she was going.

  He had to believe that. The alternative was simply not acceptable. He refused to believe he’d misinterpreted what he’d seen in her eyes that night. Something had to have happened.

  “But what the hell is it!” he demanded.

  Scottie had been steadily taking calls, speaking in hushed tones as T.J. prowled the carpet like a wounded animal. She ignored his outburst as she gently replaced the receiver from her latest call and pushed to a stand. Coming around the desk, she didn’t stop until she was right in front of him, forcing him to stop or plow her down.

  She simply looked at him. T.J. thought again how she was the only woman he’d ever met who could look up at him and down her nose at the same time. Nothing ever fazed her. He’d seen her take on a crew of angry men and calm them without so much as raising her voice.

  When Seve Delgado, the Dirty Dozen’s original team leader, had been forced to leave and adopt a new life after testifying in a drug trial, he’d handpicked Scottie to take over. No one on the team had disagreed with his choice. In fact, most of them had been relieved.

  She agreed only to a temporary assignment until a new leader could be chosen. But the team had suffered heavy losses over the years, some due to fatalities, others to casualties of the heart. Scottie had looked at these unforeseen developments and seen new possibilities. She’d taken the team in an entirely new direction, creating a home-based task force whose function was to coordinate things from Denver, where they would also train replacements so the team wouldn’t find itself in its current situation ever again. She’d done such an outstanding job that, after much pleading and downright harassment from the remaining team members, she’d recently agreed to take the job as leader permanently.

  But Scottie hadn’t been resting on her laurels. She’d heard T.J.’s announcement of his retirement and all of his carefully thought-out reasons for his decision with calm equanimity. And she’d spent every second since trying to convince him to come and work on the inside with the other “new hearts,” as she termed the two recent members of the team who had dropped out of fieldwork to marry. In fact, she’d gotten the wives involved also. She was a hard woman to turn down. T.J. thought he’d held up admirably.

  Looking at Scottie now, he thought his luck might have run out.

  “Sit down.” She didn’t wait for him to answer but moved toward a small grouping of sectional couches arranged around a large square coffee table in the corner of her office. She sat and crossed her long, jean-clad legs. Scottie may have “come in from the cold,” but she had her own ideas about what constituted “power dressing” and she’d held fast to them despite the gold lettering on her office door.

  Knowing he’d get nowhere until he did as she asked, T.J. followed, and after some serious negotiating with the coffee table and the hinges on his knee brace, finally settled across from his former boss.

  “Can I ask you something, T.J.?”

  Scottie rarely called him T.J. It was the only thing that kept him from exploding in frustration. “Ask,” he said tightly.

  “When I took this job, Del mentioned something to me that at the time I didn’t think about much. He was talking about his reunion with his daughter and said something about finding Diego in here pacing like a wounded bear. Since I took over for Del, I’ve come in here to find two more of you pacing this office in a similar condition. Come to think of it, you were all wounded literally as well. What is it with you guys? A woman has to beat you up to get your attention?”

  She surprised a smile out of him. “Personal questions, Giardi?” By necessity, the Dirty Dozen crew were all notoriously private. Scottie had long been acknowledged as the Queen of the Loners.

  “Curiosity. Is Jenna the reason you won’t come to work for me here?”

  “No. I explained all—”

  She waved a hand with uncharacteristic impatience. “I know what you told me. I’m not asking about what’s up here.” She tapped her forehead. “I’m talking about what’s in here.” She covered her heart with her hand.

  T.J. shook his head. “I’d already come to this decision before meeting her. Being back in Oregon …” He trailed off, suddenly unable to find the words. He looked out the window, then back to her. “It’s home. I didn’t expect to feel that. Never thought of myself as really having a home. He gestured toward the window and the sprawl of buildings stretched out below that was Denver. “I’ve lived here longer than anywhere and, hell, I was hardly ever here.” He paused for a moment, then said, “I never missed it when I was gone. I never even thought about it. Denver is just a base to touch before hitting the road again. It wasn’t until I got to Oregon that I realized I’d never let myself miss anything.”

  “How did you know?”

  “Because I was glad to be back,” he answered, the truth of it coming easily now. “But mostly because I didn’t want to leave.”

  “Leave Jenna, you mean.”

  He shook his head. “No, this part has nothing to do with Jenna. I mean leave home. I didn’t want to leave home.” He leaned forward. “Scottie, I’m done here. I want to go home.”

  She nodded in acceptance, but he could see she didn’t truly understand. Hell, a few months ago, he wouldn’t have either.

  “What are you going to do?” she asked.

  He shrugged. “Not sure yet.”

  She raised her eyebrows a fraction. “Good plan.”

  T.J. grinned. “Hey, you know they keep us too busy to spend any of the pile of money they pay us. I have time.”

  “You don’t sound too worried about it.”

  He’d been too worried about Jenna to think about it, but now that she’d said it, he realized she was right. “No, I’m not. I’m on the right path. I’ll find my way.” A part of his soul felt as if it had been set free. The other part was still locked away. Only one woman had the key.

  “You don’t know what you want,” she said. “But you do know who.”

  “I’m in no hurry to get to the end of this new path, Scottie. But yes, I do know who I want to explore it with.”

  “A woman you knew for less than twenty-four hours and who walked away from you without so much as a good-bye or forwarding address?”

  She hadn’t spoken harshly, and T.J. didn’t take it that way. In fact, she seemed to be genuinely interested in his answer.

  “Yes. Not a doubt in my mind.”

  Scottie’s shrug seemed to say she’d given up on ever understanding it. “What if her ‘path’ isn’t yours?”

  “That’s for her to decide. I’m betting it’s the same.”

  Scottie made a disgusted noise. “Men. If I had a million years, I’d never figure you guys out.”

  He grinned. “Funny, we’ve been saying the same thing about you.”

  That did elicit a smile from her.

  T.J.’s smile faded. “Thank you, Scottie,” he said quietly.

  “For what?” She
looked honestly surprised.

  “For taking the time to help me with this. I quit on you, and I know it’s a bad time what with all the changes and—”

  “T.J., that’s what friends do.”

  That shut him up. He sat there for a long moment, for the first time realizing that he might not miss Denver, but he would miss his team. “We work so hard at maintaining our rigid invulnerability,” he said quietly. “We’re all loners; no ties, no families. And yet there isn’t a person on this team who wouldn’t risk his life to save a teammate, and not just for the sake of the mission. We’ve become our own odd sort of family in spite of ourselves. I guess no one is truly alone.”

  Something bleak flashed in her eyes, but it was gone too fast for him to pin down. “Well, Delahaye, we are still human.”

  He was back to being Delahaye. The phone beeped, cutting off any comment he might have made. Scottie got up and crossed quickly to answer it. T.J. felt the tension return tenfold. By the time he’d managed to stand, she was done. “Well?”

  “I think we’ve got something,” she said in her crisp no-nonsense contralto. “Do you know someone named Bob?”

  Jenna heard a car in the drive. “Finally,” she said, and hurried to the front door of her parents’ ranch house to let the real-estate agent in. The woman had been due over an hour earlier. She was bringing a “Sold” sign and some papers for Jenna to sign. Only when Jenna swung open the door, it wasn’t the real-estate lady’s gleaming white Grand Cherokee she found in the driveway. Instead she found a dark blue one-ton pickup with a matching horse trailer attached to the back.

  She stepped out onto the porch, limping slightly on her almost-healed ankle, intending to tell the gentleman opening the driver’s-side door that the last of the stock had been sold a week before.

  But the man who unfolded himself from the oversized cab wasn’t a local rancher come to take advantage of a neighbor’s sudden decision to sell everything lock, stock, and barrel and move to Arizona. In fact, the man wasn’t a rancher at all.

  Jenna shielded her eyes against the bright winter sun, shivering beneath her sweater and jeans. “T.J.?” It came out as a whisper and sounded more like a prayer.

  He was wearing a sheep-lined jacket over worn blue jeans and Western boots. The battered Stetson he retrieved from the seat and plopped on his head completed the outfit. It looked so natural on him, she’d have sworn he’d been born on a horse. Even the ugly concoction of metal frames and padding strapped around his knee didn’t detract from the overall aura that he exuded. The aura of pure, unadulterated man. Her man.

  The very idea had her faltering at the top step.

  He made his way to the bottom of the wide porch stairs, moving fairly easily. He doffed his hat as he looked up at her.

  Her heart was pounding in her chest like a locomotive. She’d never wanted anything as badly as she wanted T. J. Delahaye. But a frustrating and ultimately fruitless month spent searching for him, expecting him to show up any second, while also dealing with the sudden upheaval in her family had her coming to terms with several harsh realities. The harshest being that he was never coming back. She’d lost him for good.

  “I was expecting the real-estate agent,” she said, proud of her flat tone.

  “I met her at the end of the drive,” he said.

  His voice was deeper and richer than she’d remembered. She locked her knees and resisted the urge to smooth her hair.

  “She gave me some papers for you to sign. They’re in the truck.”

  “I’m not sure I can say good-bye to you twice,” she said in response, already feeling her control slipping. “So why don’t you tell me why you’re here so we can get this over with.”

  “And here I’d worried that you’d pine away and go soft on me.” He took a step closer. “Hello, Jenna. Can I come in?”

  She narrowed her gaze, not willing to let hope take even a toehold on her heart. Yet. “Will it take that long?”

  She thought she saw pain and vulnerability flash across his face but decided it was probably the sun playing tricks on her. In their brief time together, he’d taught her so much. But the lesson she clung to now was the last one. Hope was painful.

  “It’s taken me a month to find you,” he said. “Can you at least give me a few minutes?”

  He’d spent a month tracking her down? “I’ve been here the whole time.” Except for the exhausting three-day vigil she’d held at the hospital waiting to see if her father would live or die. “You could have gotten the address and phone number from Paradise.” She’d gotten the message from her mother within minutes of her arrival that night. She’d left a message with the hospital for her mother to call back and then kept her word and gotten her ankle and hands looked after.

  “I called you the next morning,” he said. “I had emergency surgery. All they told me was that you were gone and you hadn’t said where you were going.”

  “But they knew I’d talked to my mother, they knew about my dad. They—”

  “They told me that. I’m sorry about your dad, Jenna. Is he doing okay?”

  She nodded numbly. “He and Mom are already in Arizona. He has emphysema and severe arthritis. His doctors have been recommending the move for years.” But it took almost dying in the arms of his wife and daughter to make him do it. The long hours spent waiting with her mother had given them both time to talk … and heal. For the first time they’d talked about Jonny. There had been tears and recriminations, along with hugs and vows of continuing communication. Nothing would be solved easily, but they’d made a beginning.

  “I agreed to sell the ranch for them so they could leave right away before Dad changed his mind. Stubborn fool.” She thought she caught T.J. stifling a smile, but he didn’t say anything.

  Then his expression grew serious. “It must have been hard coming back here.”

  His insight didn’t surprise her, but the warm feeling of security she felt did. Oh, what it was like to have someone to share with. Someone who truly understood. “At first. I left soon after Jonny died and have only been back a few times. I thought I hated ranching, hated everything about this place. But instead of loathing it, I found out that I’d really missed it. All of it.”

  “Did you talk to your folks about it?” he asked quietly.

  She stilled. All she could do was nod. She’d spent the last two weeks awash in feelings and emotions and not a few regrets. She was only beginning to sort through them all. But one thing she’d understood all along was how she felt about this man. That she hadn’t had the guts to keep fighting until she found him, the way he apparently had, shamed her. She thought she’d stopped playing victim. He’d been the one to teach her to trust again. She’d let them both down.

  “I’m sorry about the confusion, T.J.,” she said finally, all defensiveness gone. More than you’ll ever know. “I assumed they had my parents’ information and would give it to you. I … I looked for you too.” And assumed too easily you didn’t want to be found. Heat filled her cheeks.

  “I’ve had half my team out trying to hunt you down,” he said. “I’ve been to Missoula, I’ve—”

  “You went to Missoula?”

  “I knew that was where you were from. I spoke to your team commander.”

  “You talked to Bucky?”

  “Yep. He’s the one who put me in touch with Mrs. Ventura.”

  “Mrs. Ventura, but she’s—” Jenna’s hand flew up to cover her mouth.

  “Toby’s mother,” he finished. There was a pause, then he said, “I know how hard it must have been to talk to her. I’m proud of you, Jenna.”

  “I spent a long time talking with my mom at the hospital. I … I realized that was only the beginning, that to heal fully I had to face all of my demons.” And yet she’d given up on the man who’d taught her how to heal in the first place. She’d never felt less proud of herself. She loved this man, yet she’d given up, hadn’t trusted in him, or herself.

  “I know it helped Mrs. Ventu
ra a great deal.”

  She wanted to clap her hands over her ears. I’m a fraud, she wanted to tell him. Couldn’t he see she didn’t deserve this? He should be angry, not proud.

  T.J. studied her, and for a moment she thought he might say something. She realized she wanted him to, wanted him to once again show her how to heal when it was her own damn responsibility. She added cowardice to her list of sins.

  “Why did you come back?”

  In a sudden move, T.J. grabbed the railing and hopped the steps so swiftly, Jenna didn’t even have time to back up. He lifted his hands, to hug her or shake her she didn’t know, but he dropped them without touching her. “Because I want to go home. And I can’t go without you.”

  THIRTEEN

  Black velvet, that’s what his voice was. Soft and smooth, his words rippled over her, gathering her scattered thoughts, giving them a chance to fall back into an understandable pattern. And she did understand. He didn’t deserve better than her, he just deserved a better her.

  “I gave up on you, T.J.” She looked up into his eyes, a part of her marveling over the rush it gave her that she had to look up at all. “I shouldn’t have,” she said quietly. “Once I knew my dad was going to be okay, I called the hospital in Oregon, but you were gone. You weren’t at Paradise, and you’re not listed anywhere in Denver.” She held his gaze. “I did try, T.J.” She shivered and rubbed her arms as a cold breeze swept the porch. “But not hard enough. When you didn’t find me, I started thinking you didn’t want me.” Her heart broke and melted at the same time at the stab of pain she saw in his eyes. “It was easier to believe that than it was to trust my heart, face my fears, and risk finding the truth. I thought I was healing myself by moving on, but I was hiding again. You taught me better than that, T.J. I’m sorry. So sorry.”

  He framed her face with his hands. The healing force of his touch exceeded her memories. “Jenna, you’ve faced more in the last month than most people do in a lifetime. The only thing you’re guilty of is being too hard on yourself.” He crowded her back against the front door, blocking the winter wind. “You’re cold. Can we go inside now?”