Playing with Fire by Debra Dixon

realized the problem. His lips were almost on hers as he whispered, “Breathe.”
    Maggie sucked in air and stumbled backward up a few stairs. Her eyebrows scrunched together as she struggled for words, pointing behind her head. “The … um … the … ah …”
    Beau supplied, “Bedroom?”
    “Yeah! The bedroom’s up there.” She inched away and then turned to flee in earnest.
    He gave her a head start before he followed. Watching her rump sway in front of his face wouldn’t have improved his mood or changed the facts. He could have kissed any other woman and been done with it. Suspect or not.
    But he couldn’t kiss Maggie. He still hadn’t forgotten the moment of panic in her living room. Or the hauntedshadows in her eyes at the hospital. Because of that he couldn’t separate his need to touch her from his need to protect her. The problem was that he didn’t know what he was supposed to be protecting her from.
    Maybe you’re protecting yourself.
    Beau swore aloud. Thankfully, Maggie had already disappeared from the stairwell. He followed the noise and turned right.
    Her room was at the end of the hall and like the rest of the rooms in the house—cluttered but comfortable. The furniture was a dark and heavy baroque style. The four-poster bed was swaddled in mismatched bedclothes. A red comforter was kicked into a pile at the end of the mattress, obviously unnecessary in the summer heat. One of the chairs was lost beneath a mountain of clothes, and a number of shoes were trying to escape from her closet.
    On the nightstand, resting tent style over Maggie’s alarm clock, was a large green book.
    Walking purposefully to the stand now that he was in the room to observe, she scooped up the book and held it out to him like exhibit “A.” Beau had to move closer and lean across the bed to reach it, but he took it, flipping through the color pages. “
Economical Ireland.
It must be hard to travel with Gwendolyn to worry about.”
    “Oh, I don’t travel.”
    Beau stared at her. “You have stacks and stacks of travel books. Of course you travel.”
    She laughed and folded her arms, suddenly made braver by the expanse of bed between them. “I have a Cuisinart and instructions, but I don’t use it either.”
    He tossed the book down on the bed. It sank into the folds of the plump red comforter. “Why?”
    “I’m a lousy cook.”
    “No. Why don’t you travel?”
    “Because nothing is ever as good as the advertising.”
    Thoughtfully Beau looked at a set of patterned nylon stockings she had draped carelessly around one of the bedposts and then back at her. “Meaning that you don’t like disappointment.”
    Maggie hated people who played psychologist. Especially when they were on the mark. She’d had more than enough disappointment in her life. She didn’t need to go to a foreign country and pay extra for it. And she didn’t have to justify herself to Beau. He probably wasn’t as good as the advertising either, no matter how much she wanted to believe that he was.
    Disappointment and irony pricked her as she faced that fact. Without realizing it she’d been counting on Beau. She was back to wanting someone who knew everything about her and still cared. How stupid could one woman be? Beau Grayson sure wasn’t that someone. She’d been a fool to make that telephone call.
    Turning her back on him, Maggie stepped over a couple of doggie chew toys and headed for the balcony. “I’ve got to get up really early tomorrow—no, today,” she told him with a glance over her shoulder as she unlocked the door. “So do you think you could take your look around and leave?”
    “First, you tell me what happened tonight.” Beau’s sudden and sharp request froze her. “Beginning to end.”
    “What’s to tell?” she asked, straightening cautiously, but leaving her fingers on the door handle. “I got out ofbed, walked to the balcony because the night air clears my head. I smelled smoke. Saw it. Panicked