Read That Old Flame of Mine for Free Online

didn’t recognize, made the night come alive. She was a city girl, born and bred. She knew ambulance sirens blaring through the streets and car tires screeching at stoplights. A barking dog was as close as she came to identifying animal sounds. Ricky had told her the other sounds she was hearing were crickets and frogs.
    The hot tub steamed and bubbled at the other end of the deck. Her shoulder and the rest of her aching body wanted to drop her clothes and climb in. She sat in a rocking chair instead, and stared at the blackness that surrounded her.
    It wasn’t like she hadn’t lost people before. There had been others she, and a company of well-trained firefighters, couldn’t save. Mostly they were like Tory, dead long before the fire even reached them.
    But dead was dead. It was never easy no matter how many times it happened.
    This wasn’t even the first time she’d lost someone she knew. Mr. Esposito, the butcher from the next street up in her neighborhood, had fallen asleep with a cigarette in his hand. She wouldn’t even have known it was him if she hadn’t known it was his place.
    And there had been her third-grade teacher, Mrs. Ann Foley. She liked to light candles for her dead husband. One got tipped over and caught her drapes on fire. She’d climbed in the bathtub to stay safe instead of getting out of her apartment.
    Stella wiped away old tears with those memories. It was funny how you thought things didn’t bother you anymore until something happened that brought all the hurt back. She hadn’t planned for that here. There was no one she could talk to. Everyone was back home.
    She stumbled into the kitchen and made some hot chocolate. She decided to combine both therapies—chocolate and hot water—and took off her smoky clothes before she got in the hot tub.
    “You’re feeling sorry for yourself,” she said aloud to the crickets and the little bat that liked to swoop around the deck at night. “It’s stupid. It won’t help Tory. You need to go home. You’re in good shape now. You can go back to work. You don’t have to see Doug. But you don’t have to be here for this either.”
    “Cutting out already?” a deep, male voice asked.
    Stella dropped her cup into the hot-tub bubbles. She used her foot to feel around for it. It was the only possible weapon she could think of at that moment.
    “Get out now and I’ll forget you’ve been playing all these practical jokes on me.”
    “I knew it! You can
hear
me!”
    Great!
He wasn’t impressed by her threats. “Leave
now
!”
    He laughed. “I wish it were that easy. And I wouldn’t call turning on the light when I know you’ll be home late a practical joke. You can have a bad fall if you don’t get up the stairs safely.”
    “Look, I don’t know who you are or why you’ve decided you’re my guardian angel, but you should leave now. I’m expecting a police officer in a few minutes. I don’t think he’d be too happy to find you here.”
    Stella finally had the cup in her hand. She was one step short of breaking it and using the jagged edge to make her point. The porch was in darkness, but she could make out the man’s shadowy shape in the rocking chair she’d just left.
    How did he get in?
    He had to have a key. That’s what gave him access whenever he wanted to move things around or try to scare her.
    She didn’t recognize his voice—he definitely wasn’t one of her rejected recruits. She didn’t know what else to do to get rid of him. She could hardly step out naked and threaten him. Even in the shadows, she could see he was a big man.
    “A pretty girl like you shouldn’t be out here alone, moping.”
    “I’m not moping.” She checked herself. She didn’t plan to have a conversation with him. “I’m not joking either. John Trump is with the Sweet Pepper Police Department, and he’ll be here any minute. I’m sure you don’t want to go to jail. Leave now. Don’t come back. We’ll forget this happened.”
    Yeah, right.