Page 2 of Tempting Fire

“Dammit,” he whispered.

He heard a commotion behind him.

“Hey Zoe!”

“Hiya Zoe!”

“Looking good Girlfriend.”

“He’s back there,” he heard Polly say.

He looked up and saw the vivacious brunette striding towards him. She barely came up to his chest, but she filled the room with her presence. Even now with her face lined with worry, people were drawn to her. Back in the day when it had been both Chloe and Zoe, every head in the entire diner would have turned and talking would have ceased as they stared at the duo in awe. Those girls were special, but to Zarek’s mind Chloe sparkled like a lake at dawn.

Even though the women were identical twins, Zarek had always been able to tell them apart. Zarek had met Chloe first when she had been defending an abandoned puppy from two older boys intent on tormenting it. She’d been holding the wriggling little yellow dog and was waving a stick, almost as big as she was, at the two teens. She couldn’t have been more than seven years old. He’d jumped into the fray and gotten a bloody nose for his troubles. After the boys had run off he’d turned to Chloe who told him she hadn’t needed his help. She’d been pissed that he’d interfered.

Maybe it was because of the way they’d been introduced that it was easy for him to always tell them apart. The Avery family thought it was a big deal, but for him, it was as simple as breathing.

“You came.” Zoe plopped down in the bench seat across from him. “You took long enough.”

Zarek raised his eyebrow.

“Fine, you got here fast,” she admitted. Zoe smiled as Polly dropped off coffee, OJ and biscuits.

“What do you want for breakfast?” Polly asked.

“I’ll have the lumberjack, eggs over easy,” Zarek said.

“The biscuits are enough,” Zoe smiled up at Polly.

“I’ll get you an omelet,” Polly told her as she picked up the menus. “No green peppers, right?”

Zoe sighed, then nodded. “Thanks Polly.”

“It’s going to be all right,” Polly said as she patted Zoe’s hand. Then she walked away from the booth.

“I can’t believe I hadn’t heard about all of this until you called me the day before yesterday,” Zarek said staring at Zoe.

“I know, the Avery’s are infamous again. Isn’t it great?” She had that fake Avery smile, her tone bright with sarcasm, but her hand trembled slightly as she put grape jelly on her biscuit.

“Cut the shit. I googled everything and then called my parents. What I didn’t find out on-line, they filled me in from the rumor mill that they’re still plugged into. For fuck’s sake, why didn’t anyone tell me what in the hell had been going on?”

“Hello? You were studying. You were finishing all your certifications so that you could be a firetruck driver.”

“Driver Engineer,” he corrected.

“Yeah, that. We didn’t want to do anything to break your concentration.”

Zarek slapped his hand down on the Formica tabletop. “Evie was almost killed in Turkey, then Chloe was held hostage and beaten in a cabin at Cherokee Lake. What the fuck, Zoe. Don’t you think I should have been clued sooner than Tuesday?”

She covered his fist with both of her hands, attempting to soothe him.

“The stuff with Evie happened so fast, and then those guys came out of nowhere. We had no idea.”

“That went down six weeks ago, and you just told me now. Chloe blew off my last two Skype calls. When I reached out to you, you ignored me. Now her I get, but why you?”

She turned away from him, but not before he saw a sheen of tears. “This was a family thing.”

“I’m family. You always said I was part of the family,” he protested.