DISCLAIMER: Willow Point, Ontario, is a town of my imagination. Glen Nevis is a real place, but it’s absolutely minuscule – I don’t even think it counts as half a town. So I borrowed the name and made it into a bigger place. Also, I don’t own the Glengarry News (yes it’s real), or the Ottawa Citizen, or Glengarry and Ottawa for that matter. In any case, I don’t own anything I mention in here, and everything is entirely fictional.

Rated for language and for later scenes; and yes I know the summary is crap. Here’s a slightly better one:

Adrienne Hudson, never one to enjoy the spotlight, has always lived in the small town of Glen Nevis, Ontario, despite becoming a famous author. However, when her house burns down and the only person to offer her a place to stay is Gabriel Coulter, a man who’s lived in the spotlight all his life, Adrienne herself is inevitably dragged into it. It seems harmless at first, but what happens when signs begin to indicate that the fire that could have claimed Adrienne’s life as well as her home? The match has been lit, the flames are blazing... now we need only hope that nobody gets burned.

-----------------------------------------------------

The Unforgettable Fire

ONE

Thursday, July 26. Willow Point, Ontario.

A rotund, middle-aged woman bustled up the carpeted hallway, cordless phone, coffee tray and newspapers cluttered in her arms. Muttering to herself, the housekeeper stopped at the end of the hall, the last door on the left. She balanced her load in one hand, raised the other as though to knock, reconsidered and wiped it on her pants instead. Then she knocked and called, “Gabriel Coulter, wake yourself up. Phone’s for you.”

The soft snores that had been emanating from the room were silenced and she heard the soft creak of weight shifting on a mattress; then a muffled, irritated male voice called, “Tell whoever it is to go fuck themselves.”

The woman, used to this sort of reply, rolled her eyes and said mildly, “I doubt your mother would appreciate that.”

As before, there was a moment’s silence before the reply came. When it did, it comprised of two words:

“Aw, fuck.”

-----------------------------------------------------

What’d I do now? thought Gabe, annoyed, as he took the phone from Joanie and sank back against his pillows. Late morning sunlight streamed in through the open window and played over his bed, and though the view was normally one he enjoyed, on the morning of July twenty-sixth Gabe was nursing the hangover from hell and had no desire to see light of any kind – or to speak to his mother, for that matter.

“What’s up, Mom?” he asked mildly, rubbing sleep from his Arctic-blue eyes with his free hand.

“Gabriel Nathan Matthew Coulter, did you just wake up?” Renée Matheson-Coulter demanded of her youngest son.

Gabe glanced at the clock on his night stand. Eleven-thirty. Not too late, all things considered. Then he looked around at his surroundings – the espresso-coloured comforter and sheets on the bed with its high headboard of dark wood, a dresser of the same dark wood containing his clothes, a small desk... All were in dark colours.

All were part of his bedroom. Key word being bed, where he would have liked to remain.

“As a matter of fact, yes,” he answered tersely as he massaged his pounding temple with one hand. “Thank you, Mother dear, for being my personal alarm clock. Can you not bother your other four kids for once?”

“Don’t get smart with me, young man,” warned his mother affectionately before turning to business. “Have you seen today’s paper yet?”

“Which one? You read about a million a day,” he pointed out wryly. Having sighted the coffee tray Joanie had left on his desk, he heaved himself out of bed and stumbled towards it, thankful when he took a tentative sip of coffee and found it to be hot and strong.

“Your local paper, you big oaf,” teased Renée. “The weekly one.”

“The Glengarry Snooze?” he commented with a twinge of wry humour. “Nope, haven’t seen it.”

He could see it poking out from under the Ottawa Citizen, but saw no point in pulling it out since his mother would tell him all about it anyways.

The Glengarry News was the weekly newspaper – a dollar a paper, all week, at least until the next issue came out the following Wednesday – for the rural Ontario county of Glengarry. Gabe lived towards the north and west of the county, just outside a small town called Willow Point.

He enjoyed living in the little farming community, a welcome reprieve after the chaos of New York, but his mother had yet to comprehend that her youngest son’s idea of peace, tranquillity and safety had little if anything to do with knowing there was a taxi at the curb or department store just up the street, not to mention cops at every corner. Since she had finally realized that Gabe wouldn’t be returning to the Big Apple, she kept herself up-to-date on all that happened both in Glengarry and in NYC, probably in an attempt to make her son see how dull Glengarry was and come home.

Unfortunately for her, Glengarry was home to Gabe. He had zero intention of directly telling his mother so, though.

“Well, Adrienne Hudson’s home burnt down last Thursday.”

Adrienne Hudson. The name sounded vaguely familiar, but Gabe couldn’t think of a face to go with the name. “I’m afraid I don’t know who you’re talking about, Mom.”

Renée tsked impatiently. “How can you not know everyone in a place so small? Honestly, Gabe! She’s from Glen Nevis, just down the road from you!”

“Is she okay?” asked Gabe after another mouthful of coffee, still clueless as to who Adrienne Hudson was and why he was supposed to know.

“She’s fine, yes. But her entire house, Gabe. Thank goodness her notes survived.”

Now Gabe was well and truly confused, and paused with the coffee cup halfway to his mouth to frown at the phone. “Uh... her notes?”

“Yes, yes! She’s a writer, Gabe, one of my favourites. She wrote Freefall, the romantic suspense novel I picked up in that cute little bookstore when your father and I visited you this winter.”

“Oh, right. Well... that’s a good thing, then, that her notes survived.”

“Absolutely,” agreed his mother before going on to add in a more cajoling tone, “But, she still has a teensy little problem.”

He sighed. “What?”

“She needs a place to stay while her house is being rebuilt, and since you’re all alone in that big old house of yours, I just thought...”

Gabe, realizing instantly what his mother wanted, muttered a curse. “Fine.”

He hung up.

Heaved a sigh.

And headed to the door to ask Joanie to plan all this so that he could go back to sleep.

As he fell back into his bed, he thought broodingly that had he not insisted his parents visit that winter, or see the bookstore, and had his mother not picked up that particular book, it wouldn’t have made a difference to him that Adrienne Hudson needed a place to stay, because his mother, wrapped up in New York society, wouldn’t have known or cared.

But apparently Adrienne Hudson was a big deal.

Damn Adrienne Hudson, Gabe decided as he fell back into the sleep of the truly hungover.

-----------------------------------------------------

Monday, July 30. Ottawa, Ontario airport. Nine a.m..

Adrienne fidgeted impatiently while the plane landed, calming only when she had both feet back on solid ground. Even then, the calm she achieved was only superficial.

On the outside, she appeared calm, cool and collected.

On the inside, she was a nervous wreck.

Gabriel Coulter was a well-known bad boy, so to speak, who spent most of his weekends partying in Ottawa or Montreal before coming back home to sleep away the hangover. Unless they were warming his bed, he didn’t care for women. That was an unspoken but well-known fact around Glengarry. After all, he was thirty-one and still unmarried, without even a steady – or unsteady, for that matter – girlfriend. What did that say about him?

She was moving in with him. What did that say about her?

Adrienne made a face and tossed her honey-blond hair over one narrow shoulder, then sighed.

Now what?

As though on cue, a middle-aged man appeared in front of her, comfortably dressed in jeans and a T-shirt. Extending one hand, he asked politely, “Miss Hudson, I presume?”

She swallowed, nodded and set her hand in his. He held it briefly in a light grip before releasing it, then said with a kind smile to soften the order, “This way, please.” As he spoke he picked up her two suitcases, made no comment about their impressive weight and set off.

Adrienne followed, her high-strung, jet-lagged brain skipping miles ahead and wondering if this was Gabriel Coulter.

As if he were reading her thoughts, her companion smiled at her as he set her bag down on the sidewalk beside a sleek black sedan with tinted windows. “I’m merely the driver – Leo McKenna at your service,” he said as he lifted Adrienne’s things into the trunk, then moved to open the rear left door and motion for her to get in. “Mister Coulter is in the car.”

Adrienne hesitated, doubly nervous now that she knew who was in the car. Slowly she approached the car, jumping when an irate male voice growled, “Get in and shut the goddamn door.”

Looking down, Adrienne managed an undignified scramble into the car and tugged the door shut. Colour suffused her face as she sat in silent embarrassment, but inside she was seething. Chancing a glance from behind her hair as Leo settled into the front seat and put the car in motion, she got her first look at Gabriel Coulter.

The inside of the car was dark, despite the sunny morning outside. Gabriel Coulter was leaning against the opposite door, propping an elbow on the armrest and his head on the open palm of his hand. He was wearing jeans and a white dress shirt, open at the throat, with a pair of dark sunglasses over his eyes. Shaggy black hair fell forwards over his forehead which he ignored and made no effort to push back, his mouth was a straight, angry-looking line set below an aristocratic nose, and a tiny gold stud – Adrienne would have bet her car that it was real – glinted meekly in one ear. As his head bobbed due to the car’s movements, it caught what little light there was and reflected it, and Adrienne found herself staring at it.

“Annoys my mother,” he said abruptly, his voice low and smooth, and she started as she realized that he knew that she’d been staring.

Licking her lips, she managed to squeak, “Uh... what?”

“The earring,” he explained, tapping the piercing in question with one finger. He turned to look at her, a smirk pulling at his lips, and slid the sunglasses off as he repeated, “It annoys my mother. That’s mainly why I got it.”

It took her a moment to manage a reply, she was so surprised by his eyes. Instead of the brown or hazel she’d been expecting with his dark hair and tanned skin, they were a pale, icy blue – the lightest blue she’d ever seen.

And now they lit with amusement, his lips twitching into an expression that was half-smirk, half-smile. “Cat got your tongue?” he asked mildly, and she flushed and looked at her hands, clasped in her lap.

“When did you get it?” she asked, only realizing the double meaning to her words when the ghost of a smile pulled at his lips. Then she flushed all over again and clarified, “The earring, I mean. When did you get the earring?”

He chuckled quietly, apparently enjoying the sight of her in such a state, and then answered, “When I was fourteen and doing my damnedest to piss my mother off.”

Curiosity overcame embarrassment, and she looked at him again as she questioned, “They didn’t care that you didn’t have a parent with you?”

“I dunno,” he replied with a verbal shrug to the words. “They might’ve, if I’d actually gotten it done by a professional.” At her questioning look he went on to explain, “A friend did it for me. All we needed was an earring, a sewing needle, an ice cube, a slice of lemon, and a lighter.”

Adrienne shuddered in revulsion and he let out a short bark of laughter. “Nice reaction.”

“That’s disgusting,” she said, shaking her head and making a face. “Didn’t it hurt?”

“Like a bitch,” he agreed with a nod, sounding almost pleased as he added, “But Mother dear went through the roof when she saw it, so it was more than worth it.”

She eyed him for a moment, then said nonchalantly, “You’re one sick SOB, all right.”

He grinned, teeth flashing white, and sat back, studying her.

Adrienne turned her attention to the front, watching the back of Leo’s head as he drove, but she could still feel Gabriel’s eyes on her. She knew he was checking her out, and she tried hard not to give away her nerves by wiping her hands on her white shorts.

But damn, it was hard. After a few minutes of staring at the back of Leo’s head with a question forming in her mind, she turned and blurted, “Can you not drive or something?”

In the front, Leo let out a laugh; meanwhile, Gabriel shook his head slowly, amusement lighting the pale eyes once again. “Now, why would you ask something like that?”

She gestured towards Leo and replied, “Well, you’re obviously not driving, so...”

His grin flashed again as he answered, “I drive just fine, thank you very much.”

Leo snorted. “As long as ‘fine’ means ‘ridiculously fast.’”

Gabriel grinned. “There’s that, and of course let’s not forget that my blood alcohol level is usually well over the legal limit.”

She snorted and looked away. “Lovely.”

“Well, that and the fact that I don’t usually drive a sedan,” he added, waving a hand at the car they sat in. “I usually drive a 2008 Mustang GT.”

Adrienne, now very tired and very jet-lagged, gave an automatic sardonic response. “I’ll keep that in mind in case I ever start to care.” An instant after the words had left her mouth she clapped both hands over it, staring at him in horror. She could not believe she’d actually said that. The man was taking her in, for Christsakes, and she was mouthing off at him before they even got to the house? What was wrong with her?

To her complete and total surprise, he threw his head back and laughed, long and loud. When he finally stopped he grinned brightly and said, “Oh yeah, I think we might be able to get along.”

Adrienne considered the looks he’d been giving her, the rumours she’d heard, and decided that somehow, she wasn’t sure it was possible for a woman to ‘get along’ with Gabriel Coulter if it didn’t involve getting in his bed. And since she had no intention of doing that, this was going to be an interesting few months.

-----------------------------------------------------

END OF CHAPTER

-----------------------------------------------------

Those who know me, laugh. Most everything in here does exist, I’m just remodelling and renaming stuff to suit my purposes. Ain’t it great? (For anyone who lives in the same area as me, let me just tell you: Willow Point is basically my hometown, the one that starts with an ‘M’.) Um, yeah. I know I keep putting up new stuff and then never updating, and I’m sorry. I’m terrible, I know. But in my defense, I am still writing everything, it just takes a loooong time to post.

Okay, is it just me, or do I have a thing for making guys and girls live together for an extended amount of time? (Sasha and Alex in Life’s Little Chances, Kathleen and Adrian in The Disgrace, and now this. Honestly!) Ah well, it makes for a good story. At least, I hope it does. Please review and let me know. I’m writing the second chapter as it is, but when it’ll be up... well, that’s anyone’s guess.

So... laugh lots, drive on the right (as in correct) side of the road, and (this one I owe to Qzie) tip your waiter! You would be amazed what they will do to get back at someone who’s stingy with the tips! (Hey, I have a vivid imagination. You don’t want to know what my mind’s cooking up..)

- ML