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Chapter1
“I’ve had hookups go up in smoke before, but not this literally,” Sullivan O’Toole said, eyeing the charred remains of his small rental house with both awe and annoyance.
There was a lingering heat from the blaze, a smoggy haze from the smoke, and water everywhere. The firefighters were still inside, hosing down the interior at the point of origin. His bedroom.
Axl Moore, one of Sullivan’s best friends, and a cop, stood next to him in his uniform. He had been on duty when the call came in for the fire so he’d been one of the first on the scene to witness what Sullivan had to assume was going to become fodder for the Beaver Bend, Minnesota, gossip chain for the next few days. Hell, maybe weeks.
“What exactly happened?” Axl asked curiously, glancing over at him. “And I would also like an explanation as to why the hell your pants are so tight.”
Sullivan sighed. That was an understatement. He wasn’t even sure how he’d gotten the way-too-small pants on, but adrenalin could accomplish great feats. Some people had been known to lift cars off of loved ones in panic. Sullivan had stuffed himself into a woman’s pair of jeans to escape a fire without burning his bare balls.
All in all, this was an embarrassing night and possibly a low point in his life.
“They’re not mine. They are, um, my friend’s. I grabbed them off of the floor after she put my shorts on. I couldn’t exactly run out here naked and the fire was in my bedroom, so I couldn’t get to my clothes.”
“Where is yourfriend?” Axl asked, searching the street.
For midnight, in Beaver Bend, Minnesota, it was jam-packed full of people. The streetlight and the emergency vehicles had the night lit up like Christmas. Sullivan spotted the woman he had been with sobbing into the arms of an EMT, who was trying to gently push her away so he could give her oxygen.
She probably wouldn’t need oxygen if she wasn’t crying so loudly. Just an observation.
Sullivan had a sneaking suspicion he was never getting those shorts back. Damn it, he was fond of them. They were his lucky basketball shorts. Though maybe not so lucky after all, since his house had caught on fire. She was also wearing his hockey T-shirt from college, which was worse than the shorts.
“She’s by the ambulance,” he told Axl. “Do you think it would be rude to ask her for my clothes back? That T-shirt is not replaceable. It’s my hockey shirt from Minnesota State.”
Axl gave him a long look. “Let me ask you this — do you know her name?”
Negative.
Which sounded worse than Sullivan thought it actually was. He tried to defend himself.
“To be fair, I did, at one point,” he said. “Pre-tequila. For the life of me, I can’t remember it now, but I don’t think I should be judged for that. Some people don’t have a knack for names.”
Axl shook his head. “You’re a dog, man. I have to tell you. Let her keep your T-shirt so she can use it to remind herself in the future to make better choices in men.”
“That was rude,” he said, feeling offended. “She probably doesn’t remember my name either. We just met five hours ago.”
“Sullivan! Sullivan!” she yelled, waving both her hands, oxygen mask in one, to enthusiastically get his attention. “Come here! We need to give a statement.”
Axl coughed to cover up a laugh.
“Shut up,” Sullivan told his friend.
“I didn’t say anything,” Axl protested. “And trust me, I could.”
Sullivan gave a wave to acknowledge he had heard the woman, but he wasn’t ready to face her just yet. Or anyone. He was happy standing there sweating his ass off, bare-chested and barefoot, attempting to ignore the reality that his life was a complete mess.
Which was further reinforced by the fact that his cousin, Angel, who claimed to see ghosts, sidled up next to him like a ninja and looped her arm through his.
The contact was unexpected and he jumped. “Why do you always do that?” he demanded, leaning away from her. “You just appear out of nowhere. And why the hell are you out so late on a Tuesday?”
“I was working late in my shop and saw the commotion. So listen, I have to tell you—
“Nope. No way. Stop talking.” For a few years, Angel had been trying to give him a “message” from his wife, Kendra, who had died from breast cancer, and he was having none of it.
Kendra was off-limits. She was tucked away in his heart in a box that he only brought out for the sake of their son, Finn, who was four years old. The only time he talked about his wife, his one and only love, was to Finn. The rest of the time, Kendra was for his private thoughts only and there was no way he was going to let his cousin claim she had some kind of message from the beyond for him. He didn’t believe in ghosts and he didn’t trust his reaction to whatever bullshit she was planning to spout. He wasn’t even sure what would be worse—if he believed Angel or didn’t believe her. At any rate, it was going to stir up emotions he didn’t want stirred up. It was much easier to avoid his feelings than to deal with them.
Which was why he’d been enjoying a night of naked fun taking tequila shots from between his new friend’s tits. He couldn’t descend into deep thoughts when he was licking salt off of a tight pair of nipples. It was also statistically impossible to be depressed when you were sucking a lime while a woman was sucking you. That was just reality.
