Page 39 of The Fire

“Hey! Is your name on that?” Parker said now from across the kitchen, in the exact tone of voice he’d used to say those same words back in the day.

I put the tin back in the box.

“I wasn’t going to open it,” I said now, just as petulantly as I’d said it then.

Parker gave me a small smile. “You promised me you wouldn’t, like…” He stared into space for a minute. “Eighteen years ago now, I guess? Damn. We’re old.” He shut off the water and wrung out the dishcloth, laying it neatly over the edge of the sink.

“Youpromised me that someday you’d show me what was in it,” I reminded him. “Once you knew you could trust me.”

“And I did. You saw all my Magic cards and Aunt Betty’s cookie recipe. I wouldn’t even show them to mymom.”

“So why not now?”

Parker busied himself wiping his hands on a dry towel. “I’d never show that tin to a polite stranger.”

I didn’t want to touchthatwith a ten-foot pole, so I pushed the box a few inches away and said, “Thought you told me your mom threw away all your shit when you left for school.”

“Everything I didn’t take with me,” he confirmed.

“But what—”

“I thought we weren’t talking about the past,” Parker interrupted. “Or is this another of those cases where it’s only okay whenyoudo it?”

For half a second I thought about taking it all back, the whole polite strangers bullshit, because I was insanely curious, but in the end I shook my head. “You’re right.”

“Polite strangers still? You sure?”

“Stillwould imply that we’ve managed to act like that for even one minute of the last two hours. But yes.” I stretched my arms up behind my head, trying not to read anything into the way Parker’s eyes tracked the movement, then I blew out a breath and took a step toward the living room. What the fuck would polite strangers do at this moment? “Wanna turn on the TV and see what the weather predictions look like?”

“No.” Parker was looking at me strangely. Not mad, exactly, but his eyes were hot in a way that made my breath catch.

“You sure? It’s fun when they send hapless reporters out into the storm to remind us what snow looks like, just in case we’re too lazy to look out the window.”

“I’m positive.” Parker pushed away from the counter. His pants were loose and hung low on his hips, and the t-shirt was flecked with little drops of water from the sink.

I had to look away. “A movie, then. I’ll even watch one of your DVDs.” I poked through the box and pulled one out at random. “Though God knows I don’t thinkDeath Comes to Pemberleyis gonna be a rollicking—”

“Jamie?” Parker’s voice was low, serious and tentative all at once, and when I looked back at him, our gazes locked. “If we reallywerestrangers—if we met on the road for the first time tonight and were stranded here together for just one night before we said goodbye forever—what would you want to do?”

Hisanswer was right there in his eyes, in the tilt of his hip, in the way his teeth were sunk into his bottom lip like…

“Fuck, Parker,” I breathed.

Parker smiled again, teasing and wanting and focused on me. It was more dangerous than a blizzard and everything I’d been missing for eleven years andalmostfive months. “Seems like a pretty good answer to me.”

Chapter Five

Parker

“Uh, no,”Jamie said, though his eyes said something else entirely. “No. That would be a terrible idea. The worst idea in the history of ideas.”

“You think?” I took a half step in his direction—more of alean, really—and Jamie swallowed hard, proving that he was no more immune to me than I was to him.

“Worse than all those guys who invaded Russia in the winter,” Jamie assured me. “Worse than anything any Darwin Award winner has ever done.”

“Hmm. Even the guy who ran toward the train after he got stuck on the tracks so he could save his car?”

“Worse.”