Page 7 of Burning for Alexander
In my defense,I didn’t know the fire chief had the power to arrest someone. That was my bad.
“For the last time, he didn’t arrest you, the sheriff did,” Ella muttered, not looking up from her phone as she read my mind. “Which of these mug shots should I send to the family chat?”
“It was a tiny fucking fire!” I railed, pacing the old Persian carpet in front of the wide, stacked-stone fireplace in my family’s lodge. “Like… like… less fire than Aunt Tilly had on her birthday cake this year. What the fuck is that man’s problem?”
“I’m choosing the murder-face one,” she continued, tapping the screen. “What did Chief Kincaid even say to you that made your eyes pop out like this?”
I ignored her. “You can’t arrest someone for a minuscule accidental fire that only damaged my own damned property!”
My sister flicked our grandmother’s colorful afghan to cover her outstretched legs on the overstuffed sofa. “Westland arrested you for malicious mischief. You’re lucky he didn’t also cite you for disorderly conduct. Kincaid wanted him to throw the book at you. It’s only because you looked horrified the minute you slung the man’s iPad across the bar that he kept the charge to a misdemeanor.”
I flapped my hands in the air. “I’ll buy him a new tablet. I told him I would! It was anaccident.”
“Chief Kincaid is right. You sure do like to throw that word around,” she said with a snicker. “Accident, my ass.”
“Why are you so calm right now?” I shouted. “He could revoke my business license! The man has it out for me.”
“All you have to do for the fire stuff is to complete mandated staff training, submit to additional random safety inspections, and keep yourself out of trouble. He didn’t even charge you for lying in your testimony, or whatever that incident report interrogation was. It’s the malicious mischief that’s going to fuck you up if you’re not careful.”
“So I’ll pay a fine. Big deal. But if I can’t get the fire chief off my back, it’s going to be a problem.”
My cousin Lennon, who was quiet as fuck on his chattiest day, glanced up from the tattered paperback he was reading on a nearby armchair. “You’ll get farther with sugar cubes than a crop,” he murmured before going back to his book.
What the fuck?“I don’t know what that means,” I said.
Ella finally glanced up from her phone. “He’s talking about catching flies with honey. Try being nice to the new fire chief. Charm the man. Maybe then he’ll stop having it out for you and start giving you the benefit of the doubt.”
She tossed her phone on the sofa and stood up. “I’m in the mood for shitty mac ’n’ cheese. Who’s in?”
Lennon’s hand shot up, and I grudgingly agreed that I could go for a little toxic orange powder. “As long as you don’t tell a single soul I ate it,” I muttered, following in her wake toward the kitchen. “Because I will deny it to my dying breath.”
“Stop with the chef snobbery,” she said with a laugh. “Even Sam eats Kraft Mac sometimes.”
When we entered the large, sprawling lodge kitchen, the two of us immediately fell into the familiar rhythm of cooking together. Our dads had forced the three of us to contribute to the family meals from a young age, and we’d also grown up around our uncle Sam’s restaurant since it was part of our family’s property.
Ella, our sister Mattie, and I knew our way around a kitchen. I’d gotten so good at making quick, custom pizzas for everyone, I’d discovered a kind of meditative effect from it. So when I’d decided to leave Napa and start my own thing in Montana, I’d had an easy time deciding what that would look like.
I’d grown up on a vineyard, the only son of a winemaker. Wine and pizza were my life, but they were also my peace. My anchors. They were an integral part of what family meant to me. And now they were my passionate career pursuit.
A pursuit placed quickly in jeopardy by a new fire chief with something to prove.
“Do you think he’s trying to make an example of me?” I asked once the water was on to boil. “Or do you think he was so used to excitement in Philadelphia that he’s making shit up here in Legacy to keep himself busy?”
Ella pulled two boxes of mac out of the pantry and reached for the fridge door handle to grab the milk and butter. “Was it Tavo? Is that why you lied to the chief about the fire?”
I sighed and nodded. There was no sense in lying to my oldest sister. She’d get it out of me eventually anyway. And she knew the trouble Tavo was in. “It was an accident, though. Just like I said.”
“Maybe you should tell Kincaid,” Ella suggested. “Ask him to keep Tavo’s name out of the reports.”
“Are you kidding?” I squeaked. “The man probably makes love to his fire code rule book every night! No way would he leave a detail off his beloved report.”
I didn’t want to imagine Judd Kincaid making love to anything, so why that expression had come out of my mouth was beyond me.
“I wouldn’t mind him making love to me,” Ella said, flashing me a grin. “Man’s a snack.”
I sputtered. “Ella, what the fuck? How can you be attracted to such an uptight, overblown, by-the-book…” I struggled for the right word. “Fire safety fetishist!”
I winced. Once again, it was unnecessary to sexualize the asshole fire chief. The man was already the personification of sex. If you were into that kind of thing.
