Irresistible Stranger Read Free Page A

fire could get out of hand.” The sheriff leaned back as if relaxed for the first time all day. “We all felt bad. The whole town. And he died trying to save you girls, you know.”
    â€œI know.” For an instant, the memory gripped her, the heat and choking smoke, her dad carrying each of the girls. The second-story drop. The firemen below. They were getting hoses and ladders and such, but that was all too late. She was the last one out the window, unwilling to let go of her dad, unwilling to leave him.Then the drop into the dark night, the hard thump into the fireman’s arms, and then…
    Her dad silhouetted with the fire behind him—then the sudden woosh of fire and her dad disappearing, her screaming and screaming for him….
    â€œThere, there, little honey.” Herman Conner lunged out of his chair, yanked a generic tissue from the box on his desk. “You need to forget about this all. It was a tragedy. An awful, awful thing. Hurt the whole town, too. But it just won’t help to dwell on it.”
    â€œI’ve tried to believe that. But I’ve come to believe the only way I can move past it is for me to see those records for myself.”
    â€œWell, I’ll see what we can scare up for you, of course. Where are you staying?”
    â€œLouella’s Bed-and-Breakfast.”
    â€œFor how long?”
    She couldn’t stay more than eight weeks, not without risking her teaching contract for the coming year. But the answer she gave the sheriff was the one she wanted to be true. “As long as it takes.”
    He sighed. “All right. Well, I’ll get Martha on it, and whatever we can chase up in the way of records, we’ll send over to Louella’s soon as we can. But my advice to you is, amble around town for a bit, remember the good times from when you three girls were little. If you’re looking for what they call closure, that’s the real stuff that matters. Remembering how folks cared about you all, your family, you three girls. Remembering what a nice town this was to grow up in, how loved you were.Everything that matters, honey, it shouldn’t be about that one unfortunate night.”
    â€œThank you for the advice. And I appreciate your getting those records to me.”
    Lily walked out of the police station with her stomach a-jangle and her mind all tangled up. In principle, she knew the sheriff was right. Her sisters had managed to move on, find great guys, get over the past just fine. She should be able to do the same thing. She loved her job, teaching ultra-bright, challenging kids; loved her apartment in a historic part of Virginia, had many friends and things she loved to do.
    But something inside her just couldn’t rest. A lot of it was about her dad. She never believed he’d started that fire. Every memory of her dad was wonderful and loving, including the very last one, when he sacrificed his own life to save hers. He was no coward…yet that’s what they’d always said. That he’d set the fire for insurance money, the act of a coward if ever there was one.
    Her dad was a hero, not a coward.
    She knew it in her heart.
    She just had to find some impossible way to prove it.

Chapter 2
    T wo nights later, Griff heard the rare sound of fire engine sirens, followed by a rush of cop cars down Main Street. It was just nine, the sun thinking about dropping and the air drowsy with heat.
    He was just shutting down the place. Jason had stuck with him, was pretending to do extra clean-up while Griff hunched over a table with the day’s receipts. The day’d been busy. Everybody stopped for ice-cream on a summer day. Even so, the ice cream parlor couldn’t support a cat, so it occasionally amazed Griff that folks actually believed he had no other source of income.
    Of course, it had always worked well for him to be seen as a generic lazy scoundrel and a womanizer. Nobody pried any deeper. Why would