Playing With Fire: inspirational romantic suspense (Montana Fire Book 2) by Susan May Warren Read Free Book Online Page B

deliver.
    It wasn’t like she would uproot her life, come out to Montana. And he spent six months out of the year sleeping in the woods.
    They could never be anything more than friends.
    But he needed his friend tonight.
    Two local teenagers—Tucker Newman, who had the makings of a smokejumper someday with his go-to attitude, and his buddy Kirby Hueston—dropped Conner off outside Liza’s bungalow.
    The house was dark, but he knocked anyway. Waited, tried not to let his hopes fall.
    Just as he was turning— “Conner.”
    Liza stood on the path the led from the porch to the back of the house. She wore a pair of baggy overalls, a T-shirt, and an apron covered in paint. But her eyes lit, and she smiled, and something warm and dangerous crested through his body.
    “I thought you left town.” She held a rag, used it to wipe her hands as she came toward him. “I heard the doorbell and thought it might be the UPS man.”
    “Sorry—”
    “Don’t be silly. I’m thrilled to see you.”
    Thrilled. And for a second, she looked like she might hug him.
    He still had memories of that last hug and the feelings it raked up inside him, her curves against his chest, the smell of her as she held him.
    He could have held on much, much longer.
    Maybe that wouldn’t have been the best of ideas if he hoped to keep their relationship platonic.
    Which, right at this moment... “I’m not leaving for a few hours, so...I thought maybe you’d want to get a bite to eat. I heard the local VFW has amazing hamburgers. I could pay you back for breakfast?”
    “You don’t have to pay me back, Conner.” But she didn’t hate the idea, evidenced by the smile, the delight on her face.
    “Are you working?” He gestured to the apron. “Can I see your studio?”
    “Are you saying you want that demonstration?”
    Um. Sure . “Yeah.”
    “C’mon.” She led him around back along the trail, past the garage to another house, a shed, really. A stove pipe jutted out from the side of the house. “It’s getting a little tight—I probably need to find a new location in the near future. But for now this works.”
    She opened the door. Conner didn’t know what he expected, but not the shelves and shelves of finished, glistening plates, bowls, and pitchers. Liza walked over to a display of dark gray bowls. “These are drying, waiting to be fired.”
    Liza gestured to two stainless steel ovens on the floor. “I do all my firing here in my electric kilns. I learned on a wood kiln, but these are easier. Then they go here, waiting to be glazed.” She walked over to yet another rack, this one filled with more bowls, plates, saucers, cups, all a light bisque color. “I paint each one by hand.”
    In the center of the room sat what looked like a tub with an electric foot pedal and a metal wheel. “And here’s where I throw my bowls.”
    “You what?”
    She laughed. “Do you want to try it?”
    He had this sudden image of a Ghost replay, her hands on his as they formed a pot, and heat flushed to his face. He shook his head.
    “It’s fun.”
    He had no doubt. “You made all these?” He walked over to the painted bowls, picked one off the shelf. Painted orange at the base, a black ribbon ran around the rim, with a white trail etched along the edge. And along it, words. He can do more than you ask or imagine.
    “What’s this?”
    “It’s a verse. It’s my new line. I used to only etch a fish in the bottom. But now I’ve decided to create each unique piece with its own verse on the rim. I’m basing my new line on John 10:10. ‘I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full.’”
    Oh, how he liked her. And not just her smile, her beautiful espresso-brown eyes, that long sable hair, but everything inside, how she knew how to say the words that filled him up, softened the raw edges in his life.
    Nourished his sometimes fragile faith.
    “How did you come to be a potter?”
    “After my dad died, my mother went to work as an