Torch (Take It Off)

by Cambria Hebert

  “Takes a lot more than that to kill me.”

  “Thank God.” I laid my head against his chest. The EMT sighed and gave up, going to see about Mr. Goddard’s injuries instead.

  “How did you know where I was?”

  “When I came to, Dad told me two people forced you into a car and drove off. I knew it was about the money, and I knew you were meeting the lawyer here. I didn’t even wait around for the EMTs to check me out. I took Dad’s work truck and sped the entire way. I heard the gunshot as I was getting off the elevator.” His voice turned hoarse. “When I burst in here and saw her on top of you, I lost it. I would have killed her if the cops weren’t rushing down the hall.”

  “Thank you for saving me,” I whispered, reaching up to cup his jaw.

  “You saved me too. If you hadn’t come running out of the house, I would have been inside my truck when it blew.”

  I squeezed my eyes shut at the horrible image.

  “How did you know?” he asked.

  “I didn’t. I just had a really bad feeling all of a sudden. I panicked.”

  He hugged me closer, hunching around my body. “We came close, Freckles. We almost lost everything.”

  “But we didn’t,” I whispered, inhaling his scent that still clung to his skin even after he was the victim of an explosion.

  “We need to get you two to the hospital,” one of the police officers said, gesturing to the door.

  I looked up and noticed that Mr. Goddard and Caroline where already gone and there was a sheet draped over William’s body.

  Holt stood. When he didn’t put me down, I patted his chest. “I can walk.”

  He shook his head. “You have a concussion.”

  “So do you,” I reminded him.

  “Yours is worse.”

  “Why? Because I’m a girl?” I countered.

  “Because I want to hold you.”

  I couldn’t argue with that. So I didn’t.

  The ambulance was waiting when we stepped outside. Before lifting me up into the back, Holt leaned down and covered my lips with his.

  The heat was instantaneous, sweeping up inside me and igniting a fire of passion that only he could make me feel.

  “I thought fire fighters were supposed to put out fires, not make them,” I said when he lifted his head.

  He smiled. “Get used to the heat, sweetheart, because this is one flame I’m never putting out.”

  I liked the sound of that.

  EPILOGUE

  The ringing of the phone cut into my sleep. I untangled myself from Holt’s embrace and reached for my brand-new cell phone lying on the nightstand beside the bed. I liked it better when I didn’t have a phone to ring and wake me up.

  “Hello?” I answered, trying not to sound like I was sleeping in the middle of the afternoon.

  “Miss Parker?”

  “Yes?” I said, my mind going through the possibilities of who the woman on the other end of the line was.

  “My name is Anita Caldwell. I’m with First People’s Bank here in Wilmington.”

  “Oh yes, how are you today, ma’am?”

  “I’m doing well. Thank you for asking. I’m calling to let you know that the transfer of your funds has finally been approved. All the money has been deposited into your account and is now available for your use.”

  “Wonderful, thank you very much.”

  “It’s a pleasure banking with you, Miss Parker.”

  “Did the other transfers to the other accounts go through as well?”

  “Yes, ma’am, everything went through according to the way you set up your accounts.”

  “Thank you for the call, Mrs. Caldwell.”

  “If you need anything else, please don’t hesitate to come into the bank or call me directly.”

  “I will.”

  When the call was disconnected, I tossed the phone toward the end of the bed, hoping it would get lost in the covers and never be seen again.

  I felt a gentle hand stroke up the inside of my thigh and I smiled, glancing over at a still “sleeping” Holt.

  “That was the bank,” I told him as his fingers crept higher, lingering on the edge of my panties. “The money went through.”

  “So you’re filthy rich?” he rumbled, his voice still heavy with sleep.

  “Guess so.”

  He grunted. “I thought it would take longer.”

  “It’s been a couple of weeks.”

  He didn’t say anything, instead slipping his fingers beneath my underwear and teasing the sensitive skin there. My body reacted like it always did when he touched me. Desire pooled deep in my belly, my nipples tightened, and moisture gathered between my legs.

  I lay back down, opening up for him, for his touch. “You’re trying to distract me,” I murmured as one of his fingers slid inside me.

  “It’s working.”

  He knew it would. It always did. I knew he didn’t want to have this talk—the talk where we decide where our relationship was going. He had kept his word. He’d told me he wasn’t trying to pressure me and I didn’t have to answer him right away about what I wanted. But every time since then when I tried to bring it up, he silenced me some way or another.

  “I know what’s going on here,” I murmured between a lustful moan.

  His reply was to slip yet another finger inside me.

  “You’re scared.”

  He stilled and lifted his head off the pillow. “Excuse me?”

  I thrust myself against his fingers, which were no longer doing what I wanted them to do.

  Very carefully, achingly slow, he pulled them out, tugging my panties back into place and pulling his arm from beneath the sheets. Hooking me around the waist, he towed me closer so he was partly lying atop me, tucking his arms around me and playing with the ends of my hair. “You want to talk, Freckles? Let’s talk.”

  I took a breath. “I think you’re worried I’m not going to stay here now that I have more than enough money to leave.”

  I saw the acknowledgement behind his eyes, the insecurity. “I just haven’t wanted to push you. You’ve been through a lot.”

  “So have you,” I whispered, reaching up to lightly trace the slight scar above his eyebrow. Six stitches, that’s how many the cut on his head required.

  He caught my hand and pressed a kiss to my fingers.

  “For as long as I can remember, all I wanted was a solitary life, a life where I only had to worry about me and I wouldn’t have to worry about someone leaving me or hurting me.”

  He opened his mouth to say something, but I shook my head and he fell silent.

  “But then my house caught on fire and everything changed.” I smiled. “It wasn’t really in your job description to come visit me every day at the hospital, was it?”

  He shook his head. “I couldn’t stay away. I hated seeing you lying there like that.”

  “I love you, Holt.”

  He sucked in a breath, staring down at me with those incredible blue eyes. “Katie—”

  “I have for a while. I was just too afraid to tell you. But I’m not scared anymore. I love you and I want a life with you. I hope you still want that too.”

  His mouth was on me before I even finished saying the words. He crushed me against him, holding me so closely I wasn’t sure where my heartbeat ended and his began. I gripped his shoulders, holding on as sensation after sensation rippled through my body as his mouth moved over mine again and again.

  Then he was between my legs, burying himself inside me with one great thrust and making me cry out with need.

  “Look at me, Katie,” he demanded, holding himself above me with his elbows.

  I forced my eyes open and looked up. “I love you.”

  And then he began to move—slow, sinful strokes, in and out, in and out—until I was panting with anticipation.

  Neither one of us lasted much longer, both tumbling into ecstasy at the same moment. I felt him pumping into me, and the intimacy of that single act
had my heart squeezing with joy. He collapsed on top of me but caught himself and stiffened, trying to roll away so he wouldn’t crush me.

  I made a sound of protest and pulled him back, wrapping my legs around him to keep him close. I wasn’t quite ready to break our contact just yet.

  “Shit,” he swore softly into the pillow beside my head. “I forgot to use a condom.” He gazed down at me. “I’m clean, I swear.”

  I smiled. “Guess it’s time to get on the pill.”

  “Just the thought of my child growing inside you thrills the shit out of me.”

  “Me too.”

  “Yeah?” he said hopefully.

  I nodded. “But I’d like to have you all to myself for just a little bit longer before we start thinking about that.”

  “Deal,” he said and moved in to kiss me, but before he could, he drew back. “I love you.”

  “I love you, too.”

  “I don’t want you to move out.”

  “Me either. I talked to your dad. He’s going to rebuild my house and then I’m going to sell it. This is my home now.”

  The look on his face made my heart turn over.

  “But,” I warned, “I am going to be buying some more furniture for this house.”

  “I don’t care. You can paint the whole place pink if it makes you happy.”

  “You make me happy.”

  This time he did kiss me.

  “Holt? There’s something else I want to talk to you about,” I said when he lifted his head.

  “What?”

  “I want to use some of the money Tony left me to open up some sort of home or program for foster kids. I don’t ever want them to feel the way I did when I was moving through the system.”

  In the end, I decided to keep the money. I broke it up into several accounts so it wasn’t all sitting in one huge sum. I decided instead of just donating it all (but I did donate some), I would use it to make some of my own dreams come true. And Holt didn’t know it, but he was getting a brand-new truck.

  “That’s a great idea. You’re going to change a lot of kids’ lives.”

  “The way you changed mine.”

  He shook his head. “I didn’t change your life. You did.”

  “I couldn’t have done it without you.”

  “I almost forgot,” he said, getting up out of bed and going to his dresser. “I have something for you.”

  “You do?” I pushed up to lean against the headboard.

  He nodded and handed me a small velvet sack. I took it and gave him a curious look, then dumped the contents out onto my palm.

  “Oh my…” I gasped, looking up at him. “How did you…?” And then I promptly burst into tears.

  He gathered me into his arms and held me until the heaviest of my sobs subsided, and then I leaned away to hold my palm up between us. Brilliant sparkling silver shined up at me.

  It was my mother’s necklace.

  One of the very last things I had left of her. It was a locket, a silver heart with my birthstone in the center. My shaking hands fumbled with the heart until I got it open, fresh tears forming when I saw the picture of her and me was still inside.

  “I thought I lost this in the fire,” I whispered, running a gentle finger over our smiling faces.

  “I went to the house and dug around through the rubble, and it was there. Still in one piece. The clasp was broken and it was covered in soot, so I had it cleaned up at the jewelers.”

  “You have no idea how much this means to me,” I said, gripping the necklace in my hand. It was like that piece of her I thought I lost, the piece I’d been grieving since the night of the fire, was back. Now I had this and her letter to Tony (I still wasn’t ready to think of him as my father) to remember her by.

  I wrapped my arms around his neck, hugging him tightly. “Thank you, Holt. Thank you so much.”

  “Thank you,” he said softly, pulling back and wiping away a stray tear on my cheek.

  “For what?”

  “For withstanding the heat. For fighting for your life. Because without you, everything in my life would be cold.”

  I smiled. “You don’t ever have to worry about that. There will always be a fire burning between us.”

  And there was.

  THE END

  Keep an eye out for TEASE, the next Take It Off novel, in September 2013!

  You can look, but you can’t touch…

  Harlow is a broke college student. When her tuition assistance is taken away, she is faced with a choice: admit to her mother she couldn’t hack it on her own or make a lot of money fast.

  So she gets a good-paying job.

  As a stripper.

  She thought it would be easy, but it turns out being sexy is a lot harder than she thought. When a few mishaps work in her favor, she manages to hang on to her job and catch the eye of the Mad Hatter’s best-looking bartender, Cam.

  She’s also caught the eye of someone who wants to do more than look, someone who’s decided she’s nothing but a tease.

  As the clothes come off, Harlow finds herself caught between lust and murder. The only thing she knows for sure is that her new risqué job is a lot more than she bargained for.

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  I would like to thank the Academy for this shiny award that weighs more than my head… Oh wait… this isn’t some speech that bores everyone and their mother to death. This is the part where I ramble on about everything I did while writing this book and then I pull out a long list of names to thank people.

  Oh, you don’t want to read that either?

  Too bad.

  Okay, I will keep the list to a minimum. In actuality, this book took a lot less time to write than I thought it would. TORCH was my very first attempt at a new adult contemporary novel. I was excited to try a new genre (my other books are all paranormal), but I was also a little reluctant. Reluctant = me messaging my writer buddies Cameo Renae and Amber Garza to belly ache about how hard it is to write a new adult contemporary novel. Everyone kept telling me how easy they were to write, but I didn’t seem to grasp it at first. I guess I was so used to hellhounds and men that worked for the Grim Reaper that writing normal people was beyond my grasp.

  Side note: another reason writing “normal” people is difficult for me is because I highly doubt I have ever been considered normal. Ha-ha.

  But I just decided to dive in and give it a go. I figured if it didn’t turn out well, I could hide the pages under the bed and pretend it never happened. OR I could call up the Grim Reaper (he and I are buds) and have him come take care of the mess I made.

  Fortunately for me (and Holt and Katie), I didn’t have to do any of that. Turns out writing TORCH was really fun. I love the way these characters mesh. Holt is like a giant anchor and Katie is like a boat lost at sea. I love the simplicity of the story but how entertaining it is (at least I hope I’m not the only one who thinks this).

  I would first like to give special acknowledgement to Jessica Sorensen, who took time out of her incredibly busy schedule to read this book and graciously allowed me to quote her on the cover. Thank you so much, Jessica, for doing that. I know that you have a very demanding release schedule and it’s so awesome that you took time out of your life to give me a hand.

  I would like to acknowledge Amber Garza and Cameo Renae (you should read them—they rock) for being there to cheer me on. You two ladies are so awesome. I appreciate you both so much. Special thanks to Amber, who read TORCH for me to give me some early feedback and help calm some of my nerves about the book.

  To Regina Wamba of Mae I Design, thank you so much for sharing your incredible talent with me and everyone in the book world. Your design of TORCH is so incredible. I sometimes just stare at it and sigh. It is everything I wanted in a new adult cover and I can’t thank you enough for giving TORCH the heat it deserved.

  Also, to Cassie McCown of Gathering Leaves Editing, thank you so much for fixing all my bad habits, for always being on time, and for doing you
r job so well. An editor like you is extremely hard to find, and I feel really lucky that we have the chance to work together. Someday I will break my habit of using the word “that” in every sentence I write. Until then, keep your shovel handy.

  I would also like to give a shout out to the girls of Girls *Heart* Books for organizing a three-day release day blitz and an upcoming Take It Off tour. You ladies have been so wonderful to work with. Thank you for your support!