Their mother smiled. “I’ll get you a piece,” she offered.
But he shook his head. “I’d love to, but we try to watch what we eat during the fire season. We have to stay in shape.” Their lives depended on it.
Her face flushed. “Then I should probably stop bringing brownies by the fire station.”
“Don’t do that,” he said. “Your brownies are very much appreciated.” Some of the young guys could and did eat anything. Cody, for one, would kill him if he shut off their baked-goods supply.
Her face flushed a brighter red. “It’s the least I can do to thank you,” she said. “For saving them...” She wrapped an arm around each of her sons, squeezing them tight.
No matter how many weeks had passed, she apparently hadn’t recovered yet from the nightmare of nearly losing her children. Her pain strengthened Dawson’s resolve to find the arsonist—to see him punished for the damage he’d done and to stop him before he caused any more damage.
“Mom,” one of the twins protested as he wriggled away from her. The other one leaned into her, though. He hadn’t necessarily recovered, either.
“Dawson, do you want to see the Boy Scout badge we got for surviving the fire?” Kade asked.
At least he assumed it was Kade. During the fire Kade had tried the hardest to fight his tears. He’d succumbed, but it had bothered him more to not appear tough, as he’d thought he needed to be for his brother. Ian was younger than Kade was—by a mere five minutes.
Before Dawson could reply, hands wrapped tightly around his and he was tugged down a hallway by not just Kade, but Ian, too. They showed him every badge they’d earned in Boy Scouts along with every other memento of their young lives. And they did seem very young—younger than he’d been at twelve. He felt as if they’d brought him to show-and-tell; they showed him everything in their shared bedroom. Apparently their father traveled a lot and brought them back something from every city he visited.
He’d visited a lot of cities.
Dawson had expected Avery to follow them. But when he glanced at the doorway, only their mother stood there. Finally he managed to escape, after promising to take them camping later that week. When he walked back down the hall to the foyer, he discovered Avery was gone.
Kim followed him—probably to show him out. When she caught him looking around the living room, she uttered an almost pitying sigh as she told him, “Avery left.”
“I see that.”
Why? If she really wanted that special feature...
Kim seemed puzzled, as well. She glanced at the front door as if she expected her sister to step back through it.
Why had Avery left so abruptly? She’d said she wanted the real story of the fire. Dawson suspected that was actually why she wanted to interview him. But maybe she had another source. And what better source than the arsonist himself? Braden Zimmer could be right. Again. The man had excellent instincts when it came to his job; too bad he hadn’t had them when it came to his personal life.
Dawson wouldn’t make the mistake his boss had. He wasn’t going to risk his heart on any relationship—especially one with a reporter.
Reporters rarely revealed their sources, but if the sisters were close, Avery might have confided in her. Maybe Kim knew whether or not the arsonist had contacted her.
“Did she have to rush off to meet someone?” he asked.
Kim’s brow furrowed and she asked him, “Who would she be meeting here in Northern Lakes?”
“A man?” Arsonists were usually male.
Kim laughed. “You’re the only man I thought she was interested in meeting.”
“For a story,” he said.
But Kim’s eyes—so much like her sister’s—narrowed speculatively. “I’m not so sure that’s the only reason she’s interested in you...” Then her face flushed a bright red as she realized what she’d revealed.
Dawson laughed. Avery wasn’t really interested in him, only what information she could get from him.
But if she was attracted to him, Dawson wasn’t certain he’d be able to resist her. Because he was so damn attracted to her, too.
AVERY WAS USED to people watching her. That was, after all, what a reporter wanted—to be watched. To get the most airtime. To get the best ratings...
But she wasn’t on the air now. She wasn’t even out in public. She was walking the road between her sister’s house and hers, which was rural with just a few houses on her sister’s side. The houses on the other side sat far back—on the beach of one of Northern Lakes’s biggest lakes. Hers was just around the curve in the road, at the end of a long driveway.
Even though the sun set later now that summer had finally arrived, the tall trees blocked its light—making the day seem darker and later than it was. And colder. She shivered. She should have remembered how it got colder at night in Northern Lakes and dressed accordingly—the way Dawson Hess had been dressed. In jeans and a long sleeved black T-shirt. It wasn’t his Hotshot uniform, but he’d still been sexy as hell.
Remembering how he’d looked, how his light amber gaze had traveled the length of her body when she walked to the door, heat flushed her body. She didn’t need warmer clothes, after all—she just needed to think of him.
There was something about him...
Maybe she found him so attractive because he wasn’t trying to get her attention, the way men usually did. If she were to believe him, he hadn’t even stopped by her sister’s house to see her. He’d come over to see the twins.
Was he telling the truth?
Did he have no interest in his fifteen minutes of fame? No interest in her?
She shivered again, but it was because of that eerie feeling she’d had since she’d left her sister’s—the feeling that someone was watching her.
But who?
Nobody else was out walking. And the houses were set so far back from the road no one could have been watching her from their window. Were her instincts failing her? Or maybe she was just paranoid.
The trees thinned as she drew closer to her cottage. She’d painted the vertical wood siding a pale turquoise with white shutters and trim. As usual, she smiled when she saw what she’d had done to the place—how cute she’d made it. She didn’t live in Northern Lakes anymore, but she’d bought the cottage as an investment a few years ago. Most of the time she rented it out to vacationers. But occasionally she used it herself.
She should have stayed at her sister’s a little longer, or at least said goodbye rather than ducking out while Dawson was busy with the twins. But they’d been so excited to see him that she hadn’t wanted to interrupt their time together. And maybe her pride had been stung a little that he hadn’t come to see her. She wasn’t used to men refusing her requests or her kisses.
Of course, he had kissed her...
Maybe that was why she’d left—because she’d wanted him to kiss her again. And she couldn’t afford to be distracted right now. She needed to break a big story, so she wasn’t reduced to covering fluff pieces. She wanted to be a serious reporter, not eye candy for the network. Was the fire a serious story? Was there more to it than had been released to the media?
She needed to find out—which was probably why she should have stayed. She should have interrogated Dawson Hess.
Her hand trembled a little as she reached for her