Summer Heat

by Carly Phillips

  “Tamara. She used to work at the bank when she was in high school.” Ty narrowed his eyes. “That’s not the woman you’re set on, is it?”

  “What makes you think I’m set on anybody? I told you I’ve been too damned busy to do any kind of dating.”

  “You never drink here. I figured there had to be a woman involved when you suggested we come here.”

  Lance chuckled. “Well, maybe I did notice her a little bit.”

  “Not a good choice, man. For one thing, she’s Valerie’s cousin.”

  “I heard.” He frowned. “How come nobody told me Valerie died, anyway?”

  Tyler rubbed his face. “Must have just been overlooked. That was when Kara was pregnant, Jake went to Iraq and Dad started living with his mistress. Pretty rough year all the way around.”

  “I guess it was.” He pursed his lips, watching Tamara turn out five margaritas, bam bam bam. Salt, ice, a whir in the blender, pour and garnish. Quick, clean, economy of motion. “She’s not Valerie, though.”

  “No, she’s not,” Ty agreed. “That’s the whole point. She doesn’t need some fast-talking rebel to sweep her off her feet and leave her in the dust. She needs somebody stable and steady who is going to be a husband for her and a father to that boy of hers.”

  “Where is Cody’s father, anyway?”

  Ty shrugged. “No idea. I don’t think anyone knows.” He gave Lance a level, cold look. “I mean it, Lance. She’s not the kind of fast woman you like.”

  Irritated, Lance stripped the beer bottle of its label. “Not everybody wants marriage every minute. Sometimes it’s nice just to take a break and have a good time. It isn’t like I go around pretending I’m something I’m not.”

  “Maybe not. Just don’t lead her on.”

  Lance gave him a half grin. “Or what? You’ll beat me up?”

  Tyler grinned back. “I’ll take a hammer to your windshield.”

  “Low blow.” Lance shook his head and sighed. “I feel bad for Valerie, but that was one crazy woman.”

  “She was just crazy in love with you,” Tyler said, tongue in cheek. The ordinarily sober eyes glinted with humor. “I remember when she wrote ‘Valerie Loves Lance’ with lipstick on the school windows.” He laughed. “Remember?”

  Lance winced. “Yep.”

  “And when she came to the house in the middle of the night and sang outside your window.”

  “Mmm-hmm.”

  Jake sat down. “Who, Valerie?”

  Lance drank, wishing like hell this topic had never been started.

  “We were reminiscing,” Ty said. “Remembering Valerie fondly.”

  Jake laughed. “I remember the time she called the house every ten minutes, around the clock, for three days. And the time she showed up at that Halloween party?”

  Lance ignored them, feeling a flush move over his cheeks. For two years, he’d gone with Valerie. They’d broken up at least forty times, only to get back together a day or a week or a month later. To say it had been tempestuous was like saying an earthquake broke a few glasses.

  “C’mon,” he finally protested. “I was sixteen and one raging hormone, and so was she.”

  Ty snorted. “I remember when I caught you guys in the barn.”

  “And there was the time in the locker room at school,” Jake said, practically chortling.

  “Excuse me, boys,” Lance said, standing. He made his way to the jukebox, hoping his brothers would have finished their parade of humiliating moments by the time he got back. Punching in numbers blindly, he remembered the craziness with a sense of bewilderment. It seemed like another life.

  It was another life. He had, at times, honestly thought he was in love with Valerie. She was unbelievably beautiful, a cross between Selena Gomez and Mariah Carey, with that rockin’ body.

  But mainly, it had been sex. Wild sex, crazy sex, the kind of drunken, rushing, dizzying sex only two hormonally crazed sixteen-year-olds could indulge.

  When he’d come home at Christmas a few years ago, he’d been lonely and out of sorts, and had run into Valerie in a bar. The same thing had happened all over again—three weeks of pure, mindless, practically nonstop sex.

  Hard to resist, but when her old tricks started, in little ways, Lance didn’t wait for her to trash his car. He left town and didn’t look back.

  Lance pocketed the rest of his change and looked at Tamara. He guessed she might have reason to hold a grudge against him. He’d used Valerie. Maybe Tamara didn’t understand that Valerie had used him right back. It had always been a two-way street.

  A man came into the bar and sat down on a barstool. Tamara gave him a sincere smile, laughing at some joke he made, and served up a Tecate with lime.

  Lance walked over to the man and clapped him on the back. “Hey, Alonzo! Let me buy you that drink.” He shoved a five-dollar bill over the counter at Tamara.

  Alonzo Chacon looked up with a grin. “Hey, boss.”

  Alonzo was a Mexican national who’d immigrated to Colorado two years before. Lance had just hired him to lead and teach a crew to make adobe bricks. Alonzo made them the old way, by hand and individually. With adobe in such high demand for the homes going up in the area, Lance knew he had a gold mine.

  Alonzo’s dark eyes crinkled in the wreath of lines wrought by fifty-plus years in the sun, and his thick black mustache shone in the low light. “Gracias.”

  Tamara took the money and made change without saying a word. Lance found himself watching her hungrily, the long long legs, the smooth sway of her hips and the faint, alluring movement of her breasts below the loose blouse. The green fabric made her eyes look like jade—deep and rich and mysterious.

  “Hi, Tamara,” he said. “How’s your car?”

  “Fine, thanks,” she answered shortly, and turned away to wait on someone else.

  He grinned ruefully at Alonzo, whose dark eyes glittered in amusement. “She not so nice to you,” he said with a wink. “But I see her watching you a minute ago. D’you make her mad?”

  “Afraid so,” he admitted. “Trouble is, I can’t quite figure out what I did.” He gestured. “Come and join my brothers and me.”

  Alonzo picked up his beer. “Lead the way.”

  Lance peeled another five and left it on the bar as a tip, lifting one wicked brow at Alonzo, who nodded sagely.

  * * *

  Friday nights were always a zoo in the bar, which was why Tamara had to work them. No one had Friday nights off. Tonight, the restaurant next door was full of diners, and a flurry of waitresses moved in and out of the bar, calling out orders for margaritas and “Red Bulls,” the house drink, made of vodka, cranberry juice, lemonade, and sweet and sour.

  The bar, too, was packed, and a steady stream of music poured from the jukebox, a mix of old rock and roll and country that so marked the mountain towns. Tamara liked most of it—the Eagles and Allman Brothers and old Jackson Browne tossed in the same set with Willie Nelson and a few, slow, dancing tunes.

  Tonight, Tamara was thankful for the crowd. It kept her busy enough that she didn’t eye Lance Forrest more than once every five minutes or so, and she got busy enough that for a good twenty minutes she almost forgot he was there.

  He danced. A lot, and she thought it was telling he didn’t seem to have to leave his table to do it. Women went to him, and he never turned any of them down.

  Women approached Lance’s brothers, too, but Lance was usually their first choice. Jake scared women a little—he was almost too good-looking, with those Zac Efron blue eyes and the obvious scent of money that clung to the cut of his shirt and the watch on his wrist and the Scotch he drank.

  And although Ty had a very sexy mountain man look, he didn’t get up once, just sat in the darkest corner and nursed a Guinness for two hours. He left after that, and Tamara felt a little sorry for him. Everyone knew he’d taken his wife’s death very hard.

  Not long after Ty cleared out, Jake left with the out-of-town blonde. Lance and Alonzo chatted awhile lon
ger, obviously about something work related, because Alonzo came up and asked for paper and a pencil, which he took back to the table and used to sketch.

  Then Alonzo, too, was on his way. Tamara’s stomach gave a little jump when Lance stood up. Maybe he’d go, too, and she could stop feeling so tense.

  But he didn’t. He tossed his jean jacket over his shoulder and picked up his beer. Ambling with that set-the-streets-afire loose-limbed grace, he crossed the room. To the bar, where he settled with a faint smile on his lips. “Get me another beer, please?”

  Without speaking, Tamara turned and fished one out of the cooler. Her hand trembled ever so slightly as she opened it and set it down beside him. She hoped he didn’t notice.

  It would all be a hell of a lot easier if he weren’t so wretchedly, exquisitely perfect. The glimmer in his eye, that lean and sexy body, the cut of his face. It wasn’t fair.

  And it wasn’t as if she were the only woman in the room to notice, either. A gaggle of woman in a corner booth eyed him, some covertly, one boldly. Tamara lifted her chin toward them. “I think you might be able to wrangle a dance out of one of those young ladies.”

  Lance grinned and lifted his beer lazily, taking a long pull before he settled it back on the bar. “I never had to ‘wrangle’ a dance in my life.” His eyes tilted mischievously. “I just go on out and claim one.”

  “I’m so impressed.”

  “I knew you would be.” He glanced over his shoulder at the table of women. “I have a feeling they’d be a lot more so.”

  He left his beer on the bar and strolled over to the table. Tamara crossed her arms against the slightly sick feeling in her stomach, trying to guess which one he’d ask. There were two possibilities. A brunette in a turquoise blouse, with earrings beaded to match the beads on her shirt; and a slim, tiny blonde in a bare nothing of a dress. They both eyed him with avarice, shifting in their seats to display their attributes to best advantage.

  Tamara was suddenly transported to a shopping mall in Denver, ten years before. She had been sitting with Valerie in a cafe open to the view of passerbys, and Valerie had preened just like this the entire time they sat there—pouting and leaning and tossing her dark, glossy hair to send it rippling over her snowy white and perfect shoulders.

  Tamara had felt then what she felt now. As plain as rice. Even worse, tonight she felt the stickiness of sweet and sour mix on her skin, and the faint sheen of sweat on her brow, and the limpness of hair pinned up. She wished she owned a single item of alluring clothing. Just one blouse that might make her look like something other than a hardworking mother with no ready cash.

  She didn’t wait to see which of the two pretty women Lance picked, but grabbed a bar towel and vigorously began to wipe down surfaces. It was hours before they closed, but the more work she did now, the less she’d have to do later.

  Turning her back to the room, she started wiping down liquor bottles, turning their labels to face front. In the mirror behind the bottles, she had a good view of Lance’s broad back, covered in red plaid flannel. She tried not to look, but traitorously watched as the woman stood up. The brunette. No, must be the blonde. No, it was another girl entirely, the only one at the table she would not have imagined Lance to pick.

  Her name was Marissa. Tamara knew her from school. She was pretty enough with thick, perfectly cut dark hair and big blue eyes. In coloring, at least, she was like Valerie.

  But Marissa was quite, quite heavy. Not merely plump. Not Rubenesque. She wore flowing, pretty fabrics, and carried herself lightly, but there was no denying the fact that she was at least seventy-five pounds overweight. Maybe even a hundred.

  Tamara dropped the pretense of watching in the mirror, and turned around. Marissa’s face was wreathed in an attractive flush and as she followed Lance to the dance floor. He took her hand and gave her a dazzling version of his killer smile.

  They danced. And danced and danced and danced. And against her will, Tamara was touched. And they were well matched on the dance floor—moving wildly and cheerfully and exuberantly. Everyone watching had to smile.

  When, winded and flushed and perspiring, they finally quit, Lance grabbed her arm as she started to return to her booth, and pointed to the bar. The girl laughed and nodded.

  Tamara met them, a tight knot of something in her chest. “What would you like?” she asked, putting a napkin down.

  “Hi!” Marissa said. “Weren’t you in my accounting class last semester?”

  “Yes. You were the one with the 4.0 average.” Tamara smiled ruefully. “I was the one who flunked the final and had to repeat the class.”

  “Oh, no!” Marissa reached over the bar and put her hand on Tamara’s. “You should call me. I’m really good at it. I can help you if you want.”

  She really was astonishingly pretty. Skin like porcelain. Tamara wondered how she kept it so flawless. “Thanks.”

  Lance winked. “I’ve been telling Tamara she doesn’t strike me as a math person. What do you think?”

  “Oh, really?” Marissa smiled. “That’s not something you can tell by looking at a person. Do you like numbers?”

  Tamara allowed a reluctant smile. “No. But a person cannot support herself with an English degree.”

  “That’s true.”

  “You can do anything you want to do,” Lance said, shaking his head. “You just have to believe you can.”

  “Right. It’s easy to say that when you’re born with a silver spoon in your mouth,” Tamara said. “Money makes everything easy.”

  To her surprise, Lance lowered his head, almost wincing. Oddly, Tamara felt a little ashamed of herself.

  Marissa looked at Lance, then back to Tamara, a more sober look in her eye. “Anyone who has money will tell you that it doesn’t do anything except make you feel guilty for not being happy or thin or perfect.” She chuckled. “My father has more money than God, and what am I doing? Studying accounting at a community college in the wilds of Colorado!”

  “I bet it drives him crazy,” Lance said.

  Marissa nodded cheerfully. “Bingo.” Turning back to Tamara, she said, “I’d like a margarita. Lots of salt.”

  “Coming right up.” Tamara moved away, feeling claustrophobic and left out and dismissed. A servant.

  As she prepared the margarita, she mentally shook herself. What was wrong with her lately? All she ever did was feel sorry for herself. Poor pitiful Tamara, who had to make her own way in the world.

  It got old after a while. She was beginning to sound like Valerie and her mother, who had taken the attitude that they’d been dealt a bad hand and the world had to make it up to them. That, as well as an incident with Valerie and a couple of boys behind the barn, had been the reason Tamara had been forbidden to associate with her cousin and aunt.

  Her mother would be so ashamed of her tonight!

  With special care, Tamara made the margarita, and grabbed a bottle of expensive beer Lance sometimes drank. She served them with a flourish. “These are on the house.” She wiped her hands on a bar towel self consciously. “My apologies.”

  Lance looked up, his dark blue eyes sober for once, searching. “You don’t have to do that, Tamara.”

  “I want to. Enjoy.”

  She moved away to take the order of a waitress, leaving them some privacy. Wryly she imagined them discussing the trials of having to go to prep school and the strain of international travel.

  For her part, she’d gladly trade places.

  Or would she? Would she really have traded her own mother for Olan Forrest? Tamara’s mother, who had passed away five years ago from cancer, had been a loving, cheerful woman whose only mistake had been an unexpected and devastating unwed pregnancy. She had made Tamara’s life very rich with her songs and cooking and loving hands. She had always had time for Tamara, time to help with schoolwork or cooking lessons or a stroll in the park. When other girls complained that their mothers simply didn’t understand them, Tamara had hugged the secret wonder of her
mother to her closely.

  In contrast, Olan Forrest, rich as he was, had been mean-spirited, hard to please and self-important.

  No contest.

  She looked back at Lance and Marissa, heads bent together earnestly, one dark, one light, and realized maybe there were things poor little rich kids had to complain about. It was an unexpectedly freeing thought.

  But as she gazed at the two heads, she felt a little lonely. Left out. That was the hard part of never having enough; you always felt like the world was inside a big, cheery room, while you stood on the outside in the cold, looking through the windows.

  As she was looking at Lance now. Even though she’d made up her mind to avoid him, it was painful to have him here, so close and yet so unavailable.

  Live with it, she told herself. Even if he’d never met her cousin, if he’d never crossed her path in any way, Lance Forrest was not the kind of man she wanted to waste her time with.

  She’d just put him out of her mind.

  Chapter Seven

  As the evening wore on, however, Tamara could not completely ignore him. It was impossible, like trying to ignore the honeyed sunshine pouring from a balloon-colored summer sky.

  And hard as she tried not to do it, she found herself wondering what had made Lance ask Marissa to dance in the first place. Had he felt sorry for her? Had it been some twisted way of showing just how desirable he was?

  He was obviously having a good time with her. They laughed and made jokes. Once Lance literally threw his head back and guffawed at something she said. A bright light shone in Marissa’s eyes then, giving Tamara a deep, wrenching twist in her gut.

  Tamara scowled. She didn’t believe Lance would really date a girl like this. She doubted any man with an ego like his would. They picked women for the way they looked—the best of the best, not even a little bit flawed, and God forbid any should be that great American horror: overweight!

  Was Lance simply being kind? If that were the case, it worried her. Marissa might take things the wrong way and get her heart broken.