“It’s signed, if you’re into that sort of thing. Author signatures, I mean.” BDSM wasn’t for me. I dated a guy who wanted to experiment with leather and whips and all of that. I was just trying to be nice. If he wanted to be whipped, that was cool with me, I just didn’t want to do it. To be fair, I did like biting him.
Another firefighter, his face shield thrown up and his jacket off, walked over to me. His name tag saidDylanin bold type. “It’s a good thing you called when you did. You’ve got minimal damage. It’s not nothing, but it could have been a lot worse.”
“That’s great news,” I said. “Thank you!”
“Let me show you what happened,” he said, walking over to the fireplace and beckoning for me to follow. “The chimney was blocked. Some kind of animal nest, I suspect.”
That seemed likely. “Is the house safe now?”
He looked around with an amused expression. “Well, I wouldn’t say that. The electric is off and there’s no heat. You’re not staying here, are you?”
“I just got back to town. This was my Aunt Mildred’s place.”
“You’re—” He stopped and gave me a careful look. “You know, I never thought I’d see you back in town.”
Here we go again. Never in a million years did I think I’d have to play the role of Tiffany Amanda Blair so often or so soon.
“Remember Homecoming our junior year?” He chuckled.
Uh-oh. I stared back like a deer in the headlights before saying, “We got so drunk, right?”
He laughed in a way that let me know I’d guessed right. Nothing to do in a small town but drink and have sex. That was true in the olden times and it’s true today. I suppose you could go canoeing or read the classics, but who does that?
In a more somber voice, Dylan said, “Sorry about your aunt. She was a nice lady. I don’t think she ever skipped a day of church.”
“I’m going to miss her,” I said, with downcast eyes.
“I’m just glad you’re okay.” A cloud passed over Dylan’s face and he leaned down. Darkly, he said, “A lot of people around here thought you were dead. It’s been a real long time since anyone’s seen you, Tiffany.”
For all I knew, the real Tiffany Amanda Blair could be dead. A foggy memory of a blond girl in a passport book surfaced. I’d watched the lady I’d bought the ID from scrape Tiffany’s photo off.
I certainly didn’t know what she was like in high school or why she ran away. The only information I had was her Social Security number, her date of birth, and the fact that she hadn’t wanted to be Tiffany Amanda Blair anymore. She might be in the ground, buried in an anonymous grave. Meanwhile, I was moving into her aunt’s bed-and-breakfast. A sadness washed over me. So many times in my long life, I’d seen young girls meet fates they didn’t deserve. I’d been that young woman a few times.
Dylan wandered over to the fireplace. “What were you burning, anyway?” He kicked the soggy pile of partially burned cottagecore items and religious paraphernalia.
Willing him to shift his attention somewhere besides the smoking Bibles, I asked, “Why didn’t the stuff in the fireplace burn to ash?”
“Sometimes the fire can get going in the chimney itself, leaving combustibles in the fireplace partially burned. It looks like that’s what happened here.”
Dylan, an upstanding small-town guy who apparently went to churchoften enough to know Aunt Mildred never missed a day, nudged a partially burned Bible with his steel-toed firefighter’s boot. “Is this a—?” he inquired, leaning down to read the cover of the charred Bible.
I looked around at the men with their crew cuts and clean-shaven jaws. Well, one of them had an out-of-control beard and a tattoo that saidMom, but that was just his “Sweet Home Alabama” beer-drinking right. Here I was on my first day in Valentine with a smoking guide to Christian courtship in my fireplace. All of Vlad’s warnings about small-town folks came back to me. Salem was probably only a few hours from Valentine. I’d seen it on the map, one state below. It was a flashing yellow reminder—be careful, Cotton Mather’s descendants are near.
I half wanted to call Heaven down to drain them and be done with it.
“Wow, is that a phone book?” I smiled innocently. “Remember when we used those? Probably not since last time we saw each other, or before.”
But then Dylan fished out a large portrait of Jesus tending to a flock of lambs. It was charred around the edges, leaving Jesus and a couple of lambs sooty but visible.
Dylan looked up from the portrait in shock. The guy to whom I’d gifted my BDSM manual joined him. “What’s Jesus doing in here?” Pete asked, his brow crinkling in concern.
“Oh, that’s not Jesus!” My flesh sizzled as his name passed my lips. Luckily, the smoke from my burning flesh blended with the smoke already lingering in the air. “This boy band member in a toga is definitely not our savior.” I laughed.
Dylan eyed me skeptically. “You used to be a prayer leader, Tiffany.”
“Which is why I can’t stand by a false Jesus.” I walked up to the painting and boldly announced, “This isn’t Jesus.” I dredged up a few partially remembered truths. “Our modern image is based on Leonardo da Vinci’s paintings, but he was really just painting his boyfriend and then everyone else copied it. Which is how we ended up worshipping sexy white cheeses.”CheesesandJesussound remarkably similar if you don’t enunciate too clearly, and I couldn’t say his name one more time without creating anoticeable cloud of smoke. To be fair, people also worshipped sexy white cheeses. I did in my day.
Dylan looked confused, which was better than angry.
