Hot to the Touch

by Jaci Burton

  He realized everything she owned was probably in there, and probably damaged. He’d seen people crumble when faced with that reality. Becks was still standing. He walked back to her.

  “One step at a time. You can do this.”

  She gave him a quick nod. “Yeah.”

  He led her through the door and turned on his flashlight to high beam. “Power’s been turned off and will stay that way until the electrical has been repaired. A short inside the wall somewhere caused the smoke. You’re lucky a fire didn’t break out. This could have been a lot worse, you know.”

  Becks surveyed the room. Since the windows were now open, at least there was some light. Not that it helped much since everything seemed to be covered in dark gray ash.

  “This isn’t as bad as some places I’ve seen,” Jackson said.

  “Really? Because it looks shitty to me.”

  “I’m sure it does. But the damage is mostly to the structure. Walls, and internally. The owner will have to have it fixed.”

  Becks snorted. “Yeah, I’m sure he’ll be all over that. Like never.” That asshole Dave wouldn’t even replace a broken light fixture. This? He’d never fix this. She doubted he even had the place insured.

  As she took in a breath, the smell of smoke permeated the air. That same smoke had likely coated everything in her shop.

  She’d clean it up. And fortunately most of her equipment was kept in containers, so hopefully it had been spared the smoke damage.

  She opened the door leading to the stairs, hoping the loss would be limited to the business. But the odor of smoke and the gray clingy ash continued up the stairs. When she opened the door to her apartment, it was better, but the smoke had made its way up here as well.

  “Not as bad,” Jackson said. “But smoke rises and infiltrates. You still have damage up here.”

  She could see that. She picked up her favorite sweater that she’d tossed over the back of the kitchen chair. She lifted it to her nose and immediately threw it down. It reeked of smoke.

  Rafe had made his way upstairs. “Hey, how’s it going?”

  Becks turned to face him, then gave a casual shrug. “Everything I own smells of smoke.”

  He nodded. “I know how to get that smoke smell out of your clothes. It’s easy.”

  “Thanks. What about everything else?”

  “It’s just smoke damage, and all of it can be repaired. You have insurance, right?”

  She nodded at Rafe. “For my business, yeah. But I don’t own the building, and right now I have no place to work.” She looked around at her apartment. It was small, but it had been perfect for her. “And apparently no place to live, either.”

  “Oh, that sucks,” Rafe said, then offered up a fast smile. “Hey, you could bunk with us for a while, couldn’t she, Jackson?”

  Jackson blinked. “Uhh . . .”

  Rafe turned to Becks. “One of our roommates just got married and moved down to Miami, so we have an extra bedroom available. We have a big house with a huge garage where you could store all your stuff. And it’s got three bathrooms, so you could have one to yourself.”

  Becks shifted her gaze over to Jackson, who looked as if he’d just swallowed something that tasted terrible. Which meant he didn’t want her there.

  “I don’t think that would be a good idea,” she said. “You don’t even know me.”

  “What? Come on. We’ve known you forever, Becks. We used to all camp out together. I mean, yeah, it’s been a while, but you can trust us.”

  She laughed. “I wasn’t talking about me trusting you.”

  “Why? Are you untrustworthy?”

  She looked over at Jackson. “No. But . . . never mind. This will never work.”

  Jackson shrugged. “Up to you.”

  She didn’t know how much more not into it Jackson could be. But what she did know was that there was no way she was moving into their house.

  Then again, as she looked over her apartment, a sense of utter desolation rained over her.

  Where did she plan to sleep tonight? She knew people who would probably let her stay a night, maybe two. That would solve her immediate problem. But she’d constantly be hopping from one place to another. And her number-one plan needed to be finding another place to set up her shop. She couldn’t do that if she was homeless.

  She’d been homeless before. It wasn’t her idea of a great time.

  She had an offer, and she needed to be smart enough to take them up on it. It wouldn’t take her long to find a new shop and a new place to live, especially if she didn’t have to worry about a roof over her head.

  “Come on, Jackson,” Rafe said. “She needs us.”

  Jackson looked at her.

  She would not beg. She had never begged and she wasn’t going to start now.

  “Come stay with us,” Jackson said.

  “Fine. I’ll take you up on your offer. Thanks.”

  Rafe grinned. “Awesome. It’ll just be like old times again. Only this time, we’re not sleeping outside. It’ll be fun, Becks.”

  “Yeah, just like old times.”

  Only this time the guy she’d had a crush on when she was a budding teenager didn’t remember her.

  So fun.

  CHAPTER 3

  After packing up whatever she thought was necessary for both work and personal survival, Becks loaded up her truck. Kal had given her their address and directions. Fortunately, her phone had been in the back pocket of her shorts, so at least she’d managed to salvage that.

  She stopped at the grocery store, figuring the least she could do was buy some food for the guys as a way of thanks. After that she headed over to the house.

  It was a sprawling two-story house with cream-colored brick, dark blue shutters and a nice-sized front lawn with tall trees. The wide front porch was welcoming. This place wasn’t at all the shitty frat-boy-type house she envisioned them living in.

  She pulled into the spacious drive and parked, got out and grabbed her backpack. She took out her phone and punched in the code Kal had given her to open the main garage door since it was a three-car garage. When the door went up, she cracked a smile.

  There was plenty of room and the garage was well organized. No junk was tossed around. Obviously the guys took care of their space. She appreciated that since she did the same with her stuff.

  She went back to her truck and grabbed the boxes she’d put all her work equipment in, tucking all of them against one of the walls where her things would be out of the way of anything the guys would be doing in the garage.

  She’d already moved her chairs and tables and some of the bigger items to a storage building, since they’d take up a lot of space. Hopefully they wouldn’t be there more than a month since she didn’t want to pay for the storage longer than that.

  She took out the bags of groceries and went into the house.

  Wow. The house was open, with a nice kitchen, a big living room and a good-sized table where plenty of people could crowd around and eat.

  Considering the outside of the house, this wasn’t a new build, but everything inside spoke of having been remodeled. She wondered who had done that.

  Bedrooms were upstairs, but the first thing to do was unpack the groceries. She was surprised to find the fridge and pantry fairly well stocked, and not with junk food. There were vegetables and meat and some fairly nice seasonings. These guys weren’t at all like she expected. Most dudes she knew lived sparsely, foodwise. Clearly these guys liked to eat. So did she, so they’d get along just fine.

  She unpacked the groceries and put them away, then went out to her truck to grab her bag of clothes. She found the laundry room just inside the garage, so she started a load immediately since everything smelled like smoke. Hopefully the concoction that Rafe had told her about would remove the smell.

  In addition
to the address, the directions and the keypad code, Rafe had texted her the layout of the house, including which room would be hers. She made her way upstairs, turned left and opened the first door. She opened the shutters to let some light in. The room wasn’t huge, but she didn’t need much. It had a dresser and a nightstand and a decent-sized closet. There was a bathroom attached to this room. Convenient and private.

  She liked that, and it was way more than she expected.

  The queen-sized bed was stripped bare, but she found pillows, sheets and a quilt in the linen closet in the hall. After she made the bed, she went downstairs to grab her toiletries and set those up in the bathroom. There was no tub, but she never took baths anyway. The stand-up shower suited her just fine, plus it had a nice rainfall showerhead.

  She went back downstairs and wandered, finding another living space with multiple leather sofas, a huge TV and some gaming equipment.

  Sweet.

  From the kitchen, French doors led to a covered patio that contained a shiny grill. Chairs were scattered around one hell of an amazing pool.

  Wow. She had no idea if the guys owned this place or just rented it, but it was nicely renovated and had beautiful dark wood floors, good furniture, an abundant amount of windows to let in lots of light and plenty of usable living space so that four people wouldn’t feel like they were constantly running into each other.

  This place was exceptional, and nothing like what she’d expected. There were even living plants scattered around the house. And the best part about that was that they looked well-tended.

  Their mom, maybe? Because she’d never known a guy who took good care of houseplants.

  She could get used to living here. But it would only be temporary. The first thing she had to do was find a new workspace, because she knew her landlord. It took him months to get a light fixture repaired in the shop. Between his laziness, his cheapness and however long it would take insurance to settle the claim, she couldn’t be out of work that long. She knew she was probably going to lose that location for her shop, which meant she’d have to look for a new permanent location.

  That would be her first priority. Since the guys—or Rafe and Kal at least—had offered up this place as a temporary landing spot, she had a roof over her head for the moment. Not having to worry about where she was going to sleep at night was helpful.

  She knew how to stay out of people’s way. She’d learned that long ago in foster care. The smaller you could make yourself, the less likely you’d get noticed. And if they didn’t notice you, you might not get in trouble, and even better, you might not get booted out onto the streets again.

  But for tonight, at least, she had a bed to sleep in, and a washer and dryer to clean her smoke-filled clothes.

  And speaking of smoke, she reeked of it, so the next thing on her agenda would be to take herself up to that very nice bathroom and scrub herself clean. She’d stopped at the convenience store first thing to wash the smudges off her face, just so she wouldn’t scare anyone in the grocery store. But now she craved a shower and a hard-core loofah so she could scrub the top layer of her skin off and probably do several hair washings to get the smoke smell out.

  Then she could get some things done.

  CHAPTER 4

  After shift ended the next morning, Jackson decided to head home to check on their houseguest. Kal and Rafe were going out to breakfast with a few of the other guys, so they’d show up sometime later.

  He pulled into the driveway and saw Becks’s truck parked there. He assumed it was her truck since he didn’t recognize it. He was assuming she hadn’t invited her crew of friends over to party while they were on shift—or at least she better not have.

  He walked into the garage and laid his bag down, then opened the door into the house and smelled something cooking. Whatever it was, it smelled good. He supposed she’d made herself at home and took advantage of the well-stocked fridge.

  Figured.

  Becks was just pulling something out of the oven. When she turned and saw him, she jerked in surprise.

  She laid the casserole on the kitchen island and pulled the earbuds out of her ears.

  “Jesus, Jackson. I almost dropped this.”

  “Sorry. I didn’t mean to scare you.”

  He noticed the house was empty. So no crew of hers crashing at his house.

  “It’s okay.” She looked around him and down the hall. “Where are the other guys?”

  “They stopped to eat.”

  “Oh. Well, before I came here yesterday I went to the grocery store, figuring you didn’t have a lot of stuff in your fridge. Clearly I was wrong about that. Anyway, I made you breakfast.” She cleared her throat. “All of you.”

  Okay, so he’d been wrong about her using up their food. “You didn’t have to do that.”

  “I wanted to. You were all so nice about letting me stay here. I appreciate it.” She swiped her hands on her shorts. “I thought you’d come off shift hungry. Are you hungry?”

  His stomach growled so loud at the smell of whatever it was Becks had made, he was surprised she hadn’t heard it. “I could eat. But I need a shower first. We just came off a call right before shift ended. Do you mind?”

  “Of course not. I’ll just slide this back in the oven to keep it warm.”

  “Thanks. It won’t take me long.”

  He went into his room and shut the door, staring at the closed door for a minute.

  Yeah, he’d misjudged her. No crew. She hadn’t eaten all their food. In fact, she’d bought food. And cooked for them.

  But still, having Becks here was . . . weird.

  Not because she was a woman, but because she was part of his past. She seemed all right. Normal. Not fucked-up like a lot of them got after living on the streets.

  Then again, he’d known her for a sum total of about twenty minutes and had shared nothing more than a handful of words with her, so what did he really know about her?

  Nothing. And yet he’d let his brothers convince him to let her stay at their place.

  Stupid move.

  He stripped and got into the shower, scrubbed down and rinsed off, then got out, dragging his fingers through his hair as he stared at himself in the mirror, searching for answers about Becks.

  “Only way you find out anything about her is to go talk to her.”

  He hoped like hell she didn’t want to talk about the old days. Because as far as he was concerned, that shit was in the past.

  He didn’t like talking about the past. Or thinking about it.

  He pulled on a pair of shorts and a T-shirt and left his room. When he came downstairs he noticed she’d set the table. It looked nice. Smelled even better and there were all kinds of food. Like . . . a lot of food. Becks was sitting at the kitchen island, legs crossed. She hadn’t noticed him yet so he took a few seconds to ogle her long legs. She had tattoos running down both arms and a couple on her neck that he couldn’t really see all that well since her blond hair was down and loose and damn, was her hair pretty now that she’d cleaned up. It fell in loose waves around her shoulders and he wondered if it was as soft as it looked. For some reason he itched to run his fingers through her hair.

  He shook his head and came into the room.

  She looked up from her phone. “Oh. Hey.” She caught him looking at the food extravaganza she’d set up. She slid off the bar stool. “Sorry. I know guys like to eat a lot and fighting fires probably makes you really hungry. And I thought it would be the three of you.”

  She was nervous. He could tell by the way she bounced up and down on the balls of her feet while simultaneously chewing on her bottom lip. This couldn’t be easy for her.

  “It’s okay. It’s great, really. I’m hungry. What can I do to help?”

  “Nothing. Let me pull the casserole out of the oven and we’re ready to eat. Go ahead and take a seat
wherever it is you usually sit, of course.”

  Yeah, she was really nervous. And she hadn’t run off with the big-screen TV overnight, so he supposed she was okay. So far. He pulled out a chair and then waited while she brought the casserole over and set it in the center of the table.

  She stared at him. “You’re not sitting?”

  “I’m holding this chair out for you to sit.”

  Her brows lifted. “Oh. Well, that’s gentlemanly of you.”

  “My mom taught me—all of us guys, really,” he said after she took her seat and he took his. “When we showed up at their place it wasn’t like we came loaded with manners. Like, any manners. We were pretty much uncivilized.”

  She gave him a knowing smile and nodded. “I know. My foster parents—the ones who took me in after you all disappeared—did much the same for me.”

  He wanted to ask, but at the same time that was the past. And the past was always better left there since you couldn’t do much to change it. So instead, he scooped up some casserole onto his plate and said, “This looks really good. Thanks for cooking.”

  “You’re welcome. I don’t mind cooking, by the way. It relaxes me.”

  He filled his plate with fruit salad and an English muffin. “And, what? Tattooing makes you tense?”

  She had put food on her plate, too. “Not tense, really. I love what I do. It’s just detail work, so it’s time-consuming and creates tension in my shoulders and neck. Cooking is a way for me to let go of all that bodily tension. That and yoga.”

  She had a lean body. She was currently wearing shorts and a tank, showcasing her long, tan legs. He could imagine her stretched out on the floor doing all those stretchy moves. Not that he was thinking about her body at all.

  “I’ve never tried yoga. I don’t think my body bends that way.”

  She laughed, and the sound was like beautiful music.

  “A lot of guys say that. You don’t have to be bendy, Jackson. The more you get into it, the more flexible you’ll get.”