Free Controlled Burn by Shannon Stacey

have a few cocktails here and there at social events. But if things get roughhe...binge drinks, I guess you’d call it. He just disappears and spends days drunk. Sometimes weeks. He’s unavailable right now because my most recent stepmother is about to join my previous three stepmothers in the ex-wives club.”
    “Ouch.”
    “He’s not an easy man to live with.” That was a bit of an understatement.
    “Yet you’ve built your entire life around him.”
    There was no censurein his voice. No inflection implying she was an idiot. It was just a statement of fact, but it still made her wince inside. “I’ve built my life to suit me , but he is the only family I’ve ever had before now. We’re a team.”
    It was a habit to defend him, she supposed. She’d done it often enough with the staff and trying to play peacemaker with his wives. But it was also the truth. Other people,including her mother, had come and gone, but she and her father had always been a team.
    “Family should be a team,” Rick agreed. “And I’m glad you’re taking the time to get to know Joe and Marie because they’re your family, too. And they’re good people.”
    “I think so, too.”
    “Good. While I’m thinking of it, I’m going to check the filters on the furnace because I think it’s time tochange them out. It’s in the cellar, though, so I shouldn’t be in your way.”
    Jessica stood and pushed the puzzle book and pencil back to Joe’s end of the table. “I’m probably going to do some laundry or something, anyway. I’m not in the mood to sit in this chair today.”
    “Sitting at the desk doing paperwork is the only part of the job I don’t like,” Rick said, shaking his head. “I don’tknow how people who work in offices stand it.”
    “Well, I don’t have to climb giant ladders and risk my life in smoke and fire. So there’s that.”
    He laughed as he walked toward the door to the cellar. “Good point.”
    Because the rich sound of his laughter did funny things to her nerves, Jessica gave a little wave and walked out of the kitchen. Everything in her life seemed to have changedso much and so fast with that one voice mail from Joe’s doctor, so she knew she had to be careful about being vulnerable emotionally.
    She needed to squash this attraction she seemed to have for Rick, and the best place to start was probably getting out of the kitchen and not staring at the cellar door, waiting for him to reappear.

Chapter Five
    Jessica loved exploring the house. Every time she looked around, she seemed to notice something new. And since she was too antsy after her conversation with Rick to sit in front of her laptop, she went into the big living room.
    She’d already looked at the framed family photos scattered around. There weren’t many, and she got the sense Marie hadn’t been much fortaking pictures. The staircase wall had pictures of her dad, and she’d spent some time yesterday looking at them. There was very little of the boy growing up in the variety of frames in the man she knew. He’d been cute with no front teeth, but it was obvious he didn’t like having his picture taken. And there were no photos of him at all after his senior portrait, in which he glared sullenly at thephotographer in front of what looked like a department-store studio backdrop.
    It was the treasures that she really enjoyed. Her father wasn’t a knickknack kind of guy, and certainly wasn’t sentimental about things, so she’d grown up in a very uncluttered household. But on display in Marie’s curio cabinet was all manner of things. The bride and groom figurine from her grandparents’ weddingcake. A clay cup her dad had made them in elementary school. A gilt-edged teacup so old the fine age cracks made the flowers look almost mosaic. According to Marie, it had belonged to Joe’s grandmother and was the only piece of china left from the set that had come from Nova Scotia with her.
    Today she wandered to the bookshelf and, tilting