Trish Milburn - A Firefighter in the Family

“So there was opposition to the construction?” She’d once known every piece of gossip in town, but not much Horizon Beach news made it to her present home in Pensacola.

“You could say that.”

“From whom?”

He gestured inland. “Damn neighbors, a park ranger, some of those freak greenies. Hell, might even be that stupid bar guy,” Oldham said. “Don’t think I’m his favorite person, either.”

She asked about each potential suspect and took thorough notes on them.

“You mentioned a ‘bar guy.’ Can you be more specific?”

“Parker. Owns a little shack of a bar on the beach.”

Her heart beat wildly for a moment at the mention of the name Parker, until her mind caught up and struck the possibility of it being Zac Parker. Zac was a firefighter, not a bartender.

Oldham pointed to the southeast. “I tried to buy him out, wanted to put a pool where he’s at, but he wouldn’t budge.”

Randi cloaked herself in her professional persona instead of memories. “Sounds as though your condos weren’t too popular. Why build them here?”

He directed his “watch your smart mouth, girlie” gaze at her, but she didn’t look away. She’d interviewed too many people who’d torched their own homes and businesses for the insurance money to let this guy bother her.

“Have you seen the rest of the Florida coast?” he asked. “High-rise condos are a dime a dozen, hard to make them stand out among the hordes. Here, it’d be the only one.”

“For now.”

“That’s what matters.” Oldham looked at the heap that used to be his investment. “You really think you can find out how this happened?”

Thor barked, deep and throaty, the distinctive bark that meant he’d completed a mission. She and Oldham looked to where Thor stood at a spot close to what had been the southwest corner of the building.

Randi nodded toward Thor. “That’s a step in the right direction.”

ZAC PARKER CURSED under his breath when the breeze shifted, bringing the smoky smell of the burned building into his open-air bar. Once, he’d considered that smell a part of everyday life. Now, it just brought back bad memories.

“Guess he ticked off one too many people, huh?”

Zac looked up from where he was pulling a cold Budweiser from the bottle cooler beneath the bar. Adam Canfield, his friend and regular bar patron, stared at the remains of Bud Oldham’s controversial venture into Gulf Coast realty.

“Maybe,” Zac said. “Could have been wiring or someone forgot to turn off a torch.”

Adam looked back at Zac and accepted the beer. “You don’t really believe that.”

Zac shrugged. “Don’t know. Not my problem.” He would not admit to any instinctive curiosity about the fire. Or the sliver of satisfaction he’d experienced thinking about that pompous jackass Oldham getting a little payback. He didn’t like the feeling. He’d spent nearly a decade of his life fighting fires, first in Tallahassee, then in Horizon Beach, before he’d walked away.

And the Beach Bum, with its thatch roof and position next to the condos, could have been destroyed if the wind had blown the opposite way and carried embers in that direction. Fire had destroyed his life once. He was damn lucky it hadn’t performed an encore.

“Well, it’s gonna be somebody’s. Hell, maybe Oldham got tired of all the opposition and burned it himself.”

Wanting to steer the conversation away from Bud Oldham and fires, Zac pointed at the fishing pier jutting into the Gulf of Mexico. “They catching much?”

Adam glanced toward the pier, which was already lined with people and their fishing poles. “Mainly pompano and channel bass,” he said as he gave Zac a look that showed he knew he was deliberately changing the subject.

That was Adam—Mr. Observant. He was also the closest Zac had to a best friend. After a dozen years of the army telling him how to dress and sending him to one hot, dusty location after another, Adam had said “screw it” and returned to Florida where the sand actually had some water next to it. He’d plopped down in the Beach Bum after his first day as a Horizon Beach resident and announced, “Sand, surf, fishing, cold beer and bikinis as far as the eye can see. I’ve died and gone to heaven.”

Zac had laughed and given him a beer on the house.

The two of them had a similar take on life—the less stress and responsibility, the better. For Zac, the Beach Bum was a bar where he could listen to the ocean all day and call the shots. For Adam, the fishing pier concession paid the bills and afforded him the opportunity to watch said bikinis all day and fish to his heart’s content.

“Now what is wrong with this picture?” Adam asked.

Zac looked up the beach. A woman with a blond ponytail and one heck of a big black Lab walked toward the bar. “You mean that there’s a woman on the beach who isn’t wearing a bikini or the fact that the dog looks like he might be part horse?”

“There’s a dog?”

“Jeez, you’re incurable.”

“Thor, stay,” she said from the edge of the bar.

“Thor, huh?” Adam evidently thought noticing the dog would win him points with its owner. “That seems appropriate.”

Zac was about to make a smart-ass comment about Adam’s flirting when he realized he recognized her voice. He looked up as she stepped into the bar and shoved her sunglasses onto the top of her head. His hand tightened around the edge of the bar.

Randi Cooke.

She ignored Adam and turned her attention toward Zac. Her forehead scrunched, and he could nearly hear the gears turning behind those gorgeous blue eyes of hers. She had that out-of-place expression on her face—like when you go on vacation and bump into someone from back home.

“Zac?”

“Randi,” he said with as little emotion as possible. Not as easy as it sounded.

“You two know each other?” Adam asked from his scoping-the-hotties perch.

“We’re acquainted,” Zac said. He turned his back and straightened bottles of liquor that didn’t need straightening. He ignored the awkward silence behind him. What he wouldn’t have given for some warning of her arrival.

“Well, I’m not,” Adam said.

“Randi Cooke with the state fire marshal’s office,” she said, her formal introduction and tone quashing any hope that she’d just happened by for a drink.

A Cooke investigating a fire. Not to mention a Cooke he’d wronged and who had fled town partly because of him. Just what he needed. Time to nip this in the ol’ bud and send her on her way.

He turned toward her and leaned back against the metal sink. “Before you ask, I wasn’t around when the fire started,” he said as he nodded toward what remained of the condos.

She raised her eyebrows.

“Doesn’t take a genius to figure out you’re here to ask if I saw anything suspicious, not to ask for a martini,” he said. “The bar closes at one. The fire started after that.”

“The call came in at one-seventeen, to be exact.”

Zac stiffened. He scanned the few patrons at the outer edge of the bar. They apparently hadn’t heard her. “You’d better not be accusing me of anything.” Been down that road with her family, didn’t want to revisit.

Surprise widened her eyes for a moment. “I don’t recall doing so. Is there a reason I should?” she asked, a coolness seeping into her words.

“Runs in the family,” he muttered.

“What?”

“Well, gotta go,” Adam said as he grabbed his beer and fled.

Zac barely noticed Adam leaving. Instead, he stared at Randi. Damn her for standing so close while being so distant, as if they’d never met, while he wanted to crush something with his bare hand at the thought that suspicion might touch him again. What irked him even more was that in the midst of the chilly reunion, he couldn’t help noticing she was even prettier now than when he’d seen her last. Her bright eyes seemed wiser, her body more toned, her hair even more blond and silky. Every aspect of her physical appearance made it more difficult to deal with her.