Struck by Lightning. Christa Maurice

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       STRUCK BY LIGHTNING

      Arden FD, Book Two

      By CHRISTA MAURICE

      LYRICAL PRESS

       http://lyricalpress.com/

      KENSINGTON PUBLISHING CORP.

       http://www.kensingtonbooks.com/

       To Jackie, Roxanna and Trisha for sticking with me through the good, the bad and the really, really weird.

       Chapter 1

      Rebecca perched in the gallery window, staring out at the rain, as unmoving as the sculptures surrounding her. The heat wave had broken about an hour ago with a sudden thunderstorm that drove away all potential customers. Rebecca scowled at the empty sidewalk. The gallery was her last shot. Part of the deal with her parents when she’d borrowed money for it was if she wasn’t earning a living by January, she would take the job in her uncle’s accounting firm, answering phones, filing papers, scheduling appointments. It sounded like a slow suicide, but her parents weren’t in the mood to just write checks with no strings attached anymore.

      She had opened the gallery with three friends seven months ago. The first couple of months she’d optimistically hung up her pencil sketches and watercolors. Bess’s landscapes had done better. Much better. So had Max’s ceramic objects. And Edie’s copper wire jewelry. When Rebecca hadn’t sold a thing in a month she’d decided to head in a different direction.

      Fine art.

      Rebecca turned away from the wet street and looked at her latest creation, Think Space. A couple of shelf brackets, a board, some white paint and a piece of white card stock with the word “think” printed on it in bold black letters. Ten dollars’ worth of supplies, half an hour of work, and she had the nerve to put a three hundred dollar price tag on it. Worse, the curator of the city art museum had been in and told her the price was too low for such a piece of genius. And then he’d bought one of her Broken Home pieces, which consisted of smashed dinner plates cemented to a board, for his personal collection.

      That reminded her, she had to make another one of those. She’d have to con Max into driving her to the Salvation Army for plates. Maybe this time she’d put silverware in it. She stood up and stretched. No matter how long she sat here, she wasn’t going to get another customer. Plus, she had to get home and make some more “fine art.” Last week she’d experimented with glitter and tinfoil based on the idea that people liked shiny things. The first two pieces had been snapped up. Disgusting.

      She walked around the gallery checking the doors and windows. The building had started life as a grocery store at the turn of the century when grocery stores stocked just the basics and housewives spent all day cooking. The windows facing the street were nearly floor to ceiling and the floors were thin planks of golden oak. Sometime later someone had walled in a room off the back, which they used for lessons and life-drawing sessions that they charged local artists to sit in on. Max had built a display shelf in the middle of the floor for his ceramic objects. He’d also refurbished a case for Edie’s jewelry.

      Rebecca paused at the heavy old wooden desk they kept next to the door and used as a counter. Taking the money out of the cash drawer, she spent a few minutes filling out the deposit slip so she could drop it in the night deposit at the bank on the way home. They had done about five hundred dollars in business that day, all her “fine art.” Flipping through the record book, she scowled. She wouldn’t have to take that job at her uncle’s accounting firm at the end of the year.

      Unfortunately, she couldn’t decide if she would be happier making crap that intellectuals told her was brilliant or filing papers in an accounting firm.

      She scooped her sandals out from under the desk and stuffed them in her bag before picking up the deposit, setting the security system and stepping out the front door. By the time she’d walked the block and a half to the bank, her black hair hung down her back in a wet, heavy rope and her purple skirt stuck to her legs. The way it was coming down, she would be just as wet with an umbrella. She turned onto Garfield to cut home the short way. About halfway down the block, the skies opened up and the rain started pouring down in sheets.

      Rebecca hesitated. About equidistant between the gallery and her apartment, the fire station up ahead had its garage doors open. She sprinted for the opening and ducked through before she realized someone was standing there.

      She smiled and watched him melt a little. Men were so easy. A wet t-shirt and a sweet smile and they would just about rob banks for you. Of course, he wasn’t bad-looking either. He had the face of a Botticelli angel framed with golden hair. His pale blue eyes studied her as she leaned over and wrung out her long hair.

      “Some storm,” he said.

      She reassessed her first impression. Just look at that grin. He thought he had her. He still had the features of a Botticelli angel, but if his mother was an angel, his father must have been Han Solo. That might make him a challenge. “It certainly is.” She squeezed the excess water from her skirt leaving pools of purple on the floor. “It didn’t seem so bad when I started out.”

      “Things change pretty fast sometimes.”

      Rebecca concentrated on shaking out her skirt so he wouldn’t see her roll her eyes. Too easy. She peered out the door. The rain still came down in buckets. She really did have a good excuse to stay, but she could almost see her place from here. Two blocks, a short alley and around the corner. Home, where all her “fine art” was. Uck. Taken from that perspective it was a lot more fun to stand here and dazzle this guy.

      “So.” She sat daintily on the push bumper of the engine. “You get to ride around town in this behemoth.”

      “Actually, I ride around town in that smaller behemoth.” He gestured toward the truck in the next bay.

      She leaned over to look at it. Studying the lights on top, she wondered how difficult it would be to wire little flashing lights into an art piece. If people liked shiny things, they would like flashing things even better. Christmas lights would do the trick. Wait, wasn’t she in the middle of teasing a guy? She glanced up at the guy so she could show him how thoroughly underwhelmed she was with his truck. He’d adopted that hero pose. Legs braced, arms folded, shoulders pulled back to show off his chest. Almost like he expected a photographer to pop out and take his picture for the annual charity calendar or bachelor auction. Rings? No rings. Definitely a bachelor.

      “So you’re like a professional hero or something?” she asked.

      He shrugged, suddenly seeming uneasy. “I guess.”

      The rain seemed to be letting up. Pretty soon she’d be able to make the dash for her place so she could create more stuff to pay her rent. She stood up. “And you get to wear that cute little uniform.” She dragged a fingernail under the corner of his collar.

      He frowned slightly. His lips, she decided, were really well formed. She’d love to draw them. Or maybe just kiss them.

      She adjusted the shoulder strap of her bag. “You know it’s supposed to be terribly romantic to kiss a man in uniform.”

      “It is?”

      “Sure. Don’t you ever watch movies? Or do you just like movies with big explosions?” She smiled to take the sting out of her insult, but he didn’t seem to notice that he’d been insulted. Far, far too easy. “It’s also supposed to be very romantic to kiss in the rain.”

      He glanced out the door and back at her. His eyes were on the verge of losing all focus.

      She walked out into the rain and stood in the drive halfway to the street.