Free Scorcher by Celia Kyle Page A

reminded him brown sugar, her shoulder length dark brown hair that he loved to run his fingers through regardless of her screams, and her ass that he liked to squeeze and grasp whenever he could… Yeah, she was worth dying for. Permanently.
    * * * *
    Frozen pizza could not be that difficult to cook. Seriously. Only, for Phoebe, it seemed equivalent to cooking an eight-course gourmet meal.
    She read the directions again. The oven temp was set to three hundred degrees. The pizza was placed directly on the rack and the oven door was closed. Yet the damned oven wasn’t HEATING. Everything was plugged in, power running, doing its “power” thingy. What more could she possibly do?
    “ Gah !” She threw her hands up and stomped toward her living room. Calm was a necessity. Maybe she just needed to give the oven more time. Electronics, especially those related to cooking, didn’t work well around her. Perhaps she just needed to give the oven some “personal space”.
    In the living room, Phoebe snuggled into her favorite 1970’s plaid corduroy chair and clutched the matching pillow to her chest, watching the clock as the seconds and minutes ticked by. Who would have thought that little Phoebe Williams would end up in the middle of
Arizona
, a zillion miles from her family and friends? Well, obviously, her grandma did or Phoebe wouldn’t be living in the dead broad’s home.
    She rubbed her cheek against the pillow, the worn fabric sliding easily against her skin and soothing her with scents of her grandmother. The woman had been exactly like Phoebe in so many ways. They’d been two peas in a pod when she was growing up, and her heart still ached, two years later, with the loss.
    Phoebe glanced at the mantle clock and noticed that a good fifteen minutes had passed since she’d sat down. The stupid pizza was supposed to take eighteen, so she figured she’d pop over to the kitchen and take a gander.
    She padded down the hallway, fingers stroking the retro wallpaper that she couldn’t quite gather the courage to change. Everything about the house reminded her of times past and she still hadn’t been able to remodel. The old pictures of her parents as teenagers still hung on the walls, as did the baby pictures of her mother and aunts and uncles. Images of Phoebe also lined the hallway, the family’s brag wall.
    The slapping of her feet against the old cherry wood flooring was the only other sound in the dilapidated farmhouse. Again, cause Phoebe and electronics didn’t mix too well. No TV or radios. Didn’t matter though, she had her books and plenty of time to wander the plains of
Arizona
in the early evenings to keep her occupied. Plus, occasionally she made her way into
Winthrop
for some personal stimulation of the man-I’d-like-to-marry-but-just-fuck kind.
    Okay, he was a fuck buddy. There.
    But damn, what a buddy was he. And then there was the whole, “in love with him” thing she had going on. Damn it.
    If only…
    Inside the kitchen, Phoebe approached the stove carefully, as if it were a wild animal just waiting to pounce and devour her like its mid-day meal. And for all she knew, it was.
    She eased the door to the oven open slowly, careful of any heat that could come rushing out and felt…nothing.
    She poked her head into the oven and a burst of flames came spitting at her, singing her tank top. Thank God for her fiery nature. Instead of getting mad at the darned thing, she got even.
    Phoebe opened the door fully, making sure it’d stay ajar, and brought her palms together, rubbing them back and forth and curving her hands until they formed a ball in which flames began to build. Faster and harder she rolled her hands together, and bigger and bigger the ball grew until she held an orb of fire within her outstretched palms.
    Then she threw the ball at the appliance. And blew up the stove.
    “Take that!”
    No pizza for her tonight.
    And she’d have to come up with another reason to have a stove delivered