Up in Flames Read Free

ratting her out so fast she didn’t get a chance to deny it.
    Sophie said nothing. It was true, even though Maggie didn’t know the reason she’d been so upset. She was glad now that she’d never told her. She felt her mother’s gaze burning into the back of her head, and rubbed so vigorously at a plate she was surprised the pattern didn’t wear off.
    “That’s an impressionable age for a girl,” Kate said. “Teenage love affairs can shape the rest of a woman’s love life for both good and bad.”
    By affair her mother didn’t mean sex. At least Sophie hoped not, because they weren’t going there. But it was still too damn perceptive. For the millionth time she cursed the misfortune of having a mother with a degree in child psychology. She wished the UC Berkeley hippies who’d moved to the Rockies to start the People’s Free Earth Commune had spent more time smoking weed and passing out flowers rather than getting graduate degrees.
    Not saying anything just prolonged their curiosity, so she put on a condescending smile and turned to face them. “God, Maggie, that was just a silly crush. I barely remember it.” She glanced at her mother, and put it in terms she’d appreciate. “He had that bad-boy appeal, you know how it is. It was a phase. Typical, right? I got over it.”
    Maggie looked seconds away from calling her a liar, and her mother was definitely not convinced. “I haven’t seen you cry since you were six.”
    Handing Feather the polished plate, she surveyed the group in the commune’s large kitchen. Her mom, Feather, Marcy, Pete, Header, not to mention six other commune members outside—her family, every last one of them. Even if they weren’t all related by blood, they’d helped raise her and her sisters. They loved her. And on a practical level, they’d contributed a lot of money to her education and deserved an explanation for why she was wasting it working for Zane Thorson.
    “Look, guys, I appreciate your concern, but it’s just a simple job and it won’t last long. Zane was hiring, and I need something to pay the rent until I find a permanent position.”
    “You know you can live here,” Kate said. Several others seconded the idea.
    Sophie smiled. “Thanks, but the commune is too remote. I need to be in town, and I need to be on my own.”
    Pete spoke up, his gruff voice matching the rough look of his long beard and gray ponytail. “We don’t want to see you waste your education, Sophie. You’re a smart girl.”
    “I won’t be wasting it, I’ll still be looking for work as an entomologist. I’m taking the job. Don’t worry, I won’t lose any IQ points by working for Zane.”
    Just some peace of mind, and maybe some sleep. She couldn’t fool herself—a few hours with him would be enough to remind her hormones of that summer ten years ago, when she’d discovered the sensitive side of the brooding, twenty-year-old loner, fallen hard, and ended up naked in the grass, giving up her virginity.
    She’d broken up with him a day later. The emotional pain had taken much longer to forget.
    Leaving him had been the right decision. Unfortunately, it had never stopped her from wondering what would have happened if she’d been brave enough to make the wrong one.

    Zane drove his pickup through the trendy downtown strip of Barringer’s Pass, Colorado, glad that most of the tourists were slow to venture out on Sunday mornings. It was the only time he could breeze through town without dodging pedestrians. He paid scant attention to the upscale specialty shops that catered to rich tourists and the Hollywood elite who used B-Pass as an escape. Some escape—everyone knew they were here, it was simply less convenient for adoring fans to follow them to the small Rocky Mountain town.
    The ridiculously high cost of living in B-Pass helped keep obsessed fans away. Shopping or eating at the restaurants here cost twice what it did in most other cities. Prices at the ski resorts were just as