Not wanting him to find her up on the roof watching—and worrying about him—Maya started to make her way back toward the ladder, but it was harder going on the way down, and her progress was slow. She was halfway across the roof when she heard the loud clang of heavy boots on the steel rungs of the ladder. Logan's soot-covered face appeared above the gutters.
“Don't you ever listen?”
“Rarely,” she replied as carelessly as she could manage, but she couldn't push away the sweet feeling of relief that he'd returned unscathed.
“I guess I should just be glad you didn't come after me to make sure I was holding down the right button.”
She kept her face averted, uncertain how to respond to what sounded an awful lot like teasing. Especially coming on the heels of an adrenaline-soaked evidence run. How could he be so carefree and relaxed, while merely watching him risking his life had jumbled up her insides?
But she was so damn glad that he'd made it out in one solid, intact piece that she couldn't hold back a smile. “You can't blame me for wanting a front-row seat for the Logan Cain show, can you?”
He smiled back and it was like looking straight into the sun. “Hotshots aim to please.”
She was almost to the edge of the roof and he reached out for her, setting her heart racing again. She was so afraid of what she was feeling for him, had never been more scared of anything in all her life.
Wanting to keep some much-needed distance between them, she said, “I got up here by myself and I'll get down by myself,” realizing too late that she sounded like a petulant child instead of an independent woman.
He didn't move from the ladder. “I've never left a beautiful woman stranded on a rooftop and I'm not starting now.”
It was the second time he'd called her beautiful. He wasn't the first man to say that to her, but it was the first time she'd really cared.
No question about it. She was in way over her head with this man.
But when he reached for her on the roof, she couldn't push him away. Not when she'd just watched him walk into fire. She wanted to assure herself that he was really here, was still solid muscles and bones and unending charm.
His large, strong hands circled her waist and she ran one finger down the side of his face, leaving a thin line of tanned skin visible through the soot. She lowered her mouth to his, could almost taste the ash on his lips— when the ladder shifted, and she stiffened.
What was wrong with her? She was up on some stranger's roof in the middle of a raging wildfire and all she could think about was kissing a hotshot. If her boss could see her now, if her father was looking down at them, they'd both be horrified by her behavior. By her utter lack of self-control.
She pulled back, working like hell to rein in her body's disappointment. She'd wanted to kiss Logan more than she'd wanted to take her next breath. But although she couldn't kiss him, she could tell him what she knew he wanted to hear.
“I believe you, Logan. I know you're innocent.”
He was still holding her, his hands burning through her T-shirt, onto her back. “What made you change your mind?”
She could hardly believe they were having this conversation up on the roof. “So many things. But watching you out there risking your life …” She shook her head. “I don't know a single other person who would have done something like that.”He touched her cheek. “You were going to.”
“Once I saw how tall the flames were, once I felt how hot it was, I would have given up. But you didn't.”
Oh hell, she shouldn't kiss him again. But she was going to anyway. How could she not?
She pulled him closer and the ladder clanked hard against the gutter as she pressed her lips to his. She slipped her tongue between his teeth and moaned as he took what she was giving and gave it back tenfold.
I could love this man, she found herself thinking, and it scared her so much that she nearly fell off the roof trying to get away from him.
“I'm sorry,” she said, pulling away again. “I don't want to lead you on. And you know as well as I do that we can't do this.”
The look he gave her said he didn't know anything of the sort, but he was willing to wait for her to come around. He helped her climb down the ladder, and his hands steadying her body felt way too good.
When they were standing on solid ground again, he said, “Thank you for what you said up there, about me being innocent.”
She felt so nervous with him all of a sudden, like a schoolgirl talking to the star quarterback. “I'm just going with my gut, but you're welcome.”
She'd never been comfortable with the idea of his guilt, not for one single second. She wasn't any closer to knowing who the arsonist was, but it was a huge relief to at least feel certain it wasn't Logan. She wanted to get the okay from her superiors to take him off suspension as soon as possible, but first she needed more data. Running the evidence he'd procured from the explosion site under a microscope would help a great deal.
Wanting desperately to find some middle ground, she said, “Is the crime lab close by? I'm anxious to find out what caused the explosion.”
He pulled off his turnouts and dropped them into the cab of the truck. “I'll call David right now.”
He clicked open his phone just as she slid into the passenger seat. “David, I'm glad I caught you. It's Logan Cain. I need a favor. A big one.”
She was relieved when he quickly got a thumbs-up on using the lab. They'd have their data—and, hopefully, some answers—soon.
“So,” he said, turning his focus back to her as they traveled down the lakeside highway, “how'd you become a fire investigator?”
His low, sexy voice and his question jostled her. She couldn't think fast enough to respond as if she had more than a handful of brain cells.
“The National Fire Academy.”
“Sure,” he drawled, “that's the usual way. But why?”
For the past six months, she'd avoided firefighters like the plague. She hadn't dated them or hung out with them or helped out with their fund-raising raffles beyond what she could do on the Internet in the privacy of her apartment. She hadn't needed, hadn't wanted, any more reminders of the two men she'd lost.
But now that Logan was clearly trying to get to know her—who she was, why she did what she did—making out with him almost seemed like the safer option.