Free Circumstantial Marriage by Kerry Connor Page B

need to do it. One person was more than capable of handling it. But he hadn’t wanted to risk missing out on anything, and he knew better than to think she would willingly leave it to him. It was only once they started that he realized he’d made a mistake. It didn’t look like there was much to miss out on. As was to be expected, there wasn’t exactly a lot of big news in a small town like this. The stories were a collection of slices of life that could only be interesting to the people involved, and were incredibly dull for anyone else.
    Not to mention he was finding it impossible to concentrate on what he was supposed to when she was sitting so damn close.
    He held himself stock-still, doing his best to avoid even brushing against her. It wasn’t easy. Their two chairs were wedged together as tightly as possible, so they could both see. It also didn’t really matter. He could still feel the heat of her body so strongly they might as well be pressed up against each other, could still smell her, the light, feminine scent filling his senses with every breath he took. God, did she have to smell so good, too?
    He tried to focus on the words on the screen, only to realize he’d scanned the same passage several times without it sinking in.
    “Look at this,” she said, thankfully pulling his attention back to the matter at hand. Leaning forward, she raised her hand and tapped the screen.
    Stone straightened in his seat, somehow managing not to brush against her. “What is it?”
    “A mention of the Bridgeses. It’s not much, but so far it’s the only one I’ve seen.”
    “Something is better than nothing.”
    “And I think this definitely could be something. A young man who worked on the Bridges farm died in a car accident late that July. His name was Tim Raymer. It says he was apparently driving home from the farm late that night when his car went off the road and struck a tree. The car burst into flames and wasn’t found until it was too late.” She swallowed, and when she spoke again, it was quietly, her voice thick. “He burned to death inside.”
    His eyes had reached the words on the screen just as she said them. The double impact of seeing and hearing them hit him like bullets to the chest. He couldn’t breathe, the air knocked from his lungs. The words he’d been reading vanished, replaced by an image that rose in his mind, so vivid he might as well be seeing it in front of him. A car in flames, burning before his very eyes. He no longer heard Audrey’s voice. He only heard the screams, echoing endlessly in his ears.
    Lisa. The girls. Burning to death before his very eyes.
    He’d tried to get them out. He still remembered the heat of the flames, of the metal against his hands. He’d heard them screaming, knew he had to get them out. Later he wondered if he’d really heard what he thought he had, or whether it had been his own screams or those of his neighbors trying to pull him away. They may have been beyond screaming by then, already lost in the time it had taken him to react to the sound of the explosion and rush outside.
    The feeling of something tugging on his hand finally broke through the emotions washing through him. Numbly, he looked down to see someone’s fingers wrapped around his gloved ones. He followed the arm they were attached to all the way up to Audrey’s face. She was looking at him, her eyes warm with concern and sympathy.
    “Are you okay?” she whispered.
    Anger sparked in his belly, piercing the numbness. He wanted to tell her no, to ask her what the hell kind of question that was. No, he wasn’t okay. He hadn’t been for more than two years, and likely never would again.
    The flash of irrational anger died as he remembered exactly who he was looking at, realized that the sadness in her eyes wasn’t just for him. Hal’s home had been torched with him in it, so there was a good chance he’d burned to death, too, if he hadn’t been dead already when the house had gone