Chapter Two
Rico let his words hang in the air hoping to elicit a response, but Franco closed his eyes a moment before turning and walking away.
Repressed asshole.
Rico no longer had to wonder if Franco was attracted to him, not after that brief-but-steamy kiss. But what good would knowing that mean if Franco refused to do anything about it? Rico had been attracted to his best friend since high school, maybe even earlier. He’d often suspected that Franco might also be gay, so Rico had left the door wide open a number of times, but Franco had never walked through it. Instead, the man had spent a lifetime trying to prove to Rico and others he wasn’t into guys.
But Franco was grown now and had yet to come to terms with his authentic identity around family and friends. Why did he continue to worry so much about what other people thought? Dakota had just shown him she didn’t care, and Angie definitely wouldn’t. His little sister—not to mention Matt and Tony—had accepted Rico’s gay ass even back in high school and had never done anything to make him feel lesser than. And Franco’s mama had always treated Rico with respect and love.
Who the hell was he worried about? His brothers? Sure, guys could get a little weird about it when they found out a friend or brother was gay, but his brothers had never treated Rico like a pariah. They’d been his champion, in fact. The entire Giardano family had always been decent to everyone they met.
Rico sighed as he headed back to the tent to start packing up his catering equipment after one helluva wedding reception. His gaze immediately zeroed in on Franco, who was making an announcement from the stage. The man was hotter than anyone Rico had been attracted to before, but how could Rico want someone who couldn’t be honest about who he was?
He shook his head. Rico wasn’t going to solve the enigma that was Franco Giardano today. The two had been dancing around each other a long time. What would a few more days, weeks, months, or even years matter?
“You look like you lost your best friend,” Angie remarked to Rico. She and Pippa were busy breaking down the buffet spread and packaging up leftovers. When Franco’s sister went to lift a chafing dish, he brushed her hands aside.
“Let me get that.” Rico forced a carefree smile onto his face, hoping to convince her everything was fine. “You go send your brother and his bride off. Pippa and I can take care of this.”
She gave him a quick kiss on the cheek. “Thanks, Rico. And you too, Pippa. I promise I won’t be long, because my brother’s chomping at the bit to get his wedding night started.”
She ran off to the front of the tent where everyone had gathered.
“Those steaks were out of this world, Rico,” Pippa said, complimenting him.
“They were, weren’t they?” He might have to start offering pitchfork steak nights at his pub on a regular basis. “Dakota’s grandmother gave me the idea from something that’s done in a North Dakota town near her. The woman helped supervise us today to make sure we cooked them right too.”
“It’s fun learning about how people in different regions cook, isn’t it?”
Rico agreed, not that he ventured far from home very often.
The two worked side by side until most of the equipment had been loaded into their respective vans. Luke and Ryder helped Rico load the vats after he put the oil into smaller containers to dispose of later in Aspen Corners.
When finished, they turned to watch the bride and groom head toward the mountain on the backside of Matt’s ranch’s property in the horse-drawn buckboard Franco had been “decorating” earlier. They must be planning to camp out, something that held zero appeal for Rico.
His gaze searched until it lit on Franco, who seemed to be studiously avoiding eye contact with him. Earlier, Rico had welcomed the chance to catch Franco alone at the side of the barn, especially when the sparks had flown between the two of them leading to that—
Rico didn’t want to rehash how that ill-fated kiss had come about or what might have happened if Dakota hadn’t found them. He wouldn’t worry about Dakota mentioning anything to Matt, either. The newlyweds had other things to worry about right now, like the baby they were expecting. While nothing had been announced, Rico had special radar when it came to pregnant women. After all, he’d predicted his cousin Michelle Pellegrino’s pregnancy back in college, possibly even before she’d known herself.
And Dakota wasn’t the only Giardano expecting. Damn. Mama J—it took him a while to switch over from calling her Mama G after Franco’s mother remarried—was going to be over the moon when both announcements were made, if she didn’t know already.
The wedding guests dispersed soon after the happy couple, and Pippa left for Breckenridge in the van from Angie’s café. Only the Giardano family, Dakota’s relatives, and Rico remained.
“Have a glass of champagne, Rico,” Angie offered. “You deserve one.”
“Don’t we both, Baby?”
He accepted the flute and clinked glasses with her. “To our ever-expanding family and friends,” she toasted before both sipped their drinks.
Marc joined them, rubbing his wife’s shoulders. “Everything was wonderful. You guys did a fantastic job.”
“It was a group effort,” Angie said, closing her eyes and leaning back against her husband’s chest. Rico envied them being able to show their love publicly without worrying about what anyone else thought.
He scanned the tent until he found Franco staring in his direction, but Franco quickly looked away and back at Rafe, Paul, and Tony who stood nearby. They were probably talking shop, although Franco didn’t seem all that interested.
The man had to be one of the most serious guys Rico knew, which made them complete opposites. Then why did Rico find Franco so intriguing? Not that they’d be pursuing anything together if Franco didn’t come out to everyone. The man had transferred to Denver, almost two hours away. Rico had no intention of picking up and moving his pub anywhere other than Aspen Corners, their childhood home. He had a good business going in a town where he was accepted for who he was.
Still, Rico wondered if Franco was any more open in Denver. Did he live a double life, as so many in the LGBTQ community did? Was he into the clubbing scene? Did he date men there?
Rico ought to visit him sometime to see how authentic his friend chose to be in a place where he could blend in and be invisible.
Yeah. I need to test the waters. Because no way will I pretend that kiss didn’t happen.
The following Thursday morning, Franco sifted through the still-smoldering debris in the burned-out remains of a business in the LoDo neighborhood of Denver. Fire had roared out of control through the structure during the wee hours of the morning. Undetected until the entire building had become engulfed, firefighters hadn’t been able to contain the blaze. An accelerant almost definitely had been involved to create such an intense, quick-moving fire.
Water still dripped from the roof, even though all but one fire truck had left. Franco and his partner, Rick, a senior investigator, had been here for more than an hour examining the scene.
Studying the char patterns, they’d quickly zeroed in on an area in a corner near the street side of the building that appeared to have burned the longest. The storefront’s plate glass window had been broken. If heat from the fire had busted out the window, the glass would have blown outward onto the sidewalk. Instead, the shards of glass had been found on the floor inside the building. Franco had already spoken with the battalion chief earlier and learned the window had been broken out prior to the arrival of the fire department.
Had their serial arsonist struck again? Up until late May, most of the fires they’d attributed to the firebug had been incinerated cars and dumpsters. Those fires had been put out before there was any other damage.
Last month, fourteen fires had been set in trash cans in a two-block area, and two detached garages had burned in one night. Was their perp escalating? This downtown Denver fire was the most brazen yet and the first time they’d ventured into a business district.
Would this fire be linked to the same guy? Or did they have a new firebug at work here? Not unheard of to have a failing business owner torch their property to get an insurance policy payout.
Franco couldn’t determine anything until he and Rick completed their investigation. As always, their initial job was to ascertain the origin and cause, which would help determine where to go from here. If this was the same arsonist, though, he hoped they’d find evidence left behind to definitively link this scene to others that had been set in the Denver area since late last year. As much as he hated having fires deliberately set and the loss of property, his greatest worry would always be potential deaths.
Fire investigation gave Franco the best of the two careers he most wanted to be a part of. He’d given up his law enforcement career plans when Papa had been killed in an avalanche more than eleven years ago. Both in the middle of college finals, Franco and Rafe hadn’t returned to the university the next semester. Mama needed them to work to help put their younger siblings through college and to assist with household bills.
To honor their Papa, Rafe had suggested that all four brothers join the fire service. Eventually, Franco and Matteo had joined the fire department in Leadville while finishing their training at the nearby fire academy. Rafe and Tony served in their hometown of Aspen Corners.
Working as a firefighter had many rewards, but Franco had never lost his desire for investigation work and crime solving, so when he’d moved to Denver, he’d begun training to join the fire investigation unit. Six months in the police academy and further training with the National Association of Fire Investigators, and here he was working his biggest case yet. The move had been one of the best decisions he’d ever made.
“Find anything?”
Rick’s voice dragged him out of his head and brought his focus back to where it should be. Franco had been examining the charred two-by-four studs they’d determined had been the origin of the fire. He detected the faint smell of gasoline, which made this fire even more suspicious.
“Maybe. Looking for evidence of the accelerant I’m smelling.”
Above them, the drop-ceiling tiles had burned away, exposing a storage area that had probably been filled with paper and other combustible materials. The flames had ripped across the ceiling, rapidly devouring all of the fuel in its path until the entire building had been a total loss in a very short period of time.
“Have you taken photos of this area yet?” Rick asked.
“Sure have. Should I pull up the floorboards to see if any of it seeped through?”
“Good idea.”
Franco used a crowbar to pull up the boards before kneeling above the gaping hole and shining his flashlight inside the area.
Bingo.
“Definite drip marks, Rick.”
“Excellent. You’ve found proof of the cause, not to mention the probable point of origin. Good work.”
“Thanks.” Franco, who had been actively working with the unit about fifteen months, was encouraged by his senior partner’s words. He wanted to become a proficient investigator over time.
“Get some more photos below the floorboards before we remove the rest to look for further evidence.”
After those photos had been taken, he and Franco gathered up floorboards and other evidence to turn over to the police later on. Next, they would interview neighbors and eyewitnesses, and see if any surveillance video existed, before going back to the office to log the evidence, print the photos, and write the report. They’d also look into what insurance policies the property owner had and how much they might stand to gain if the business was declared a total loss, which it probably would be.
Two hours later, Franco finally left the scene. Rick had returned to the office a while ago. One of the witnesses Franco spoke to had taken photos of the blaze and had emailed those to him. He couldn’t wait to pull them up on his wide-screen monitor and see if he could catch a glimpse of the firebug as he watched the destruction he’d been responsible for. A woman who lived in an apartment over the storefront across the street had also indicated she’d seen a man in a gray hoodie wheeling a large cooler past the building about fifteen minutes before she saw flames and called 911.
In late May, Adam Montague, one of the founding members of the dungeon Franco belonged to and currently owner of a security firm, had shared some surveillance videos with Franco. One of the businesses that had hired Adam’s security business was a nearby nightclub in Five Points. A suspicious man in a hoodie had been spotted behind the nightclub about two doors away from where a dumpster fire had been started.
Could it be the same guy pulling the cooler?
Franco hoped to catch the same figure on the photos and videos from the eyewitness at this incident to see if the fire might be the work of the same arsonist who had been plaguing the city for almost eight months.
On the drive back, Franco’s mind wandered to Matteo’s wedding last Saturday. No, not the wedding really.
The kiss.
He hadn’t been able to get his mind off Rico ever since. When might he see him again? With their living two hours apart, Franco might need to initiate something.