Braving the Heat

by Regan Black

  With that task done, she rooted through her belongings and found her boots, then eyed the clock. Now that she didn’t need to find a place and move her stuff, she could potentially get started flushing the fuel lines before heading to the club.

  She was almost—no she was definitely relieved when a call came in for a tow truck and he agreed to go pick a vehicle up. Relieved. Yes. If she went out to the garage and tried to work beside him now, with all this fizz, there was no telling what kind of stupidity her hormones would talk her into.

  Neither of them needed that kind of complication.

  * * *

  What the hell was wrong with him? Stephen wondered a few hours later, as he worked alone in the shop. Every time he thought he had his head on straight, the memory of Kenzie’s laughter sent him spinning, the echo of the sound rattling through his head. Cranking the radio didn’t help. He left the garage and went out to detail his sister’s van. Spoiling her with that kind of surprise was probably a mistake and his mood soured further.

  That mouth on Kenzie, he thought, so mobile and expressive. Her lips were quick with a smile and he couldn’t keep the images out of his head. Her laughter astounded him, the merry sound full and loud and rich, as if she didn’t care who heard her. He envied that wide-open spirit, even when it grated against the solitude he’d carefully built here.

  How could Kenzie laugh at anything with a civil suit that threatened her career hanging over her head? He shot a glance back at the garage, fighting off the urge to get in there and just do the work for her.

  She claimed she could handle it, and it wasn’t a complex task to flush a little sugar out of a fuel system. If only that was all that junker needed. He was almost embarrassed to have such a sorry-looking car in the shop.

  Not sorry to have Kenzie around.

  The errant thought startled him and he shoved it away. He didn’t like extra people milling about in his space, but having her answering calls had been a big help. Mitch was about the only other person he could work with. Even his dad got under his skin after a few hours.

  At least she wasn’t here tempting him into conversation just so he could hear her voice. The last time a woman intrigued him like this, he’d been engaged to her. Stephen fought back the unwelcome spark of interest. Kenzie was a temporary anomaly in his self-contained life. She needed a break and he could tolerate having her around for a few days as long as she didn’t start in on him with questions about the business or why he was a loner.

  Finished detailing his sister’s minivan, he parked it next to the cars he was ready to sell. While he’d been out with the tow truck, Mitch had called, claiming to have a buyer lined up for the Mustang. Stephen hoped his brother closed the deal on that one soon. The upholstery and paint alone had cost them a small fortune.

  He tried to work up irritation over having it sit here and failed. The car looked amazing and they’d get their asking price eventually. The swell of pride in the work drained enough of the persistent tension out of his neck and shoulders that when his mom’s sassy red sedan pulled through the open gate, he managed a rare smile.

  “Happy Saturday, sweetheart,” she said, drawing him into a hug. “You look good.”

  Her hugs never changed, no matter what was happening in his life. She must have just come from the salon, he realized, as a wave of feminine scents swept over him. Her hair was sleek and smooth and the gray effectively hidden by a perfect application of ash-blond color. “You look great, Mom.”

  “Nice of you to notice.” A little pink warmed her cheeks as she beamed at him. “Hopefully, your father can be persuaded to take me out tonight.”

  Stephen didn’t think it would be much of an effort. His parents were still in love after all this time and the challenges life tossed at them. While he knew that wasn’t in his future, he valued the rare treasure of their relationship. “Car trouble?”

  “Not a bit.”

  Her gaze slid past him toward the office and he realized his sister had tipped her off that a woman had been here. Answering phones and relaying messages. Stephen managed not to roll his eyes at his mother’s obvious agenda. “If you’re looking for someone in particular, she isn’t here.”

  His mom’s expression fell so fast he felt terrible for busting the bubble of hope wreathing her face. “What do you mean?”

  “Please.” He walked toward the office, urging her to come out of the heavy, late afternoon heat. “Megan called you, right?”

  Myra nodded.

  “There’s nothing to it, Mom. I’m just helping out one of Mitch’s friends. She had car trouble.”

  “You’re helping Kenzie Hughes,” she stated.

  “Nothing gets by you,” he said. It had been that way all his life. Myra Galway had a mysterious, maternal inside track on information involving her children. Wishing he had a better explanation for the stack of boxes near the wall and the folded linens at the end of the couch, he offered her something to drink.

  “Water, please.”

  He handed her a bottle of water from the fridge and waited for her to explain her visit. It didn’t take long.

  “Kenzie was Mitch’s classmate all through school,” Myra told him. “You probably don’t remember her at all.”

  “No.” He was tempted to ask what his mom might know about Kenzie’s dad, but that would only stoke her persistent hope that he would eventually open his heart to a relationship again. Not a chance. He couldn’t handle that kind of vulnerability again.

  “Well, the poor girl’s name has been splashed all over the news lately.”

  Stephen was very selective about when he turned on the news. Sometimes knowledge wasn’t power, only more pain. “Mitch told me some of it.”

  “Your brother says she’s one of the best firefighters around. He’s convinced the suit will fall apart.” His mother’s gaze took in all the things that were out of place in his office. “You let her sleep here?”

  He chose not to explain the precise definition of “here.” “Her landlord is fumigating or something. Her stuff was in her car.” He gestured toward the boxes. “Her car was here. It was late...” He pushed his hand through his hair. “Made sense to me at the time.”

  Her smile, a mix of maternal delight and concerned tenderness, put him on edge. “You turned out all right,” she said, clearly satisfied with her parenting skills. “Here’s another bit of sense for you. Bring her to Sunday dinner tomorrow.”

  No. “Mom.” He set his jaw against the persistent lance of pain searching for his heart. “She probably has plans,” he added. Kenzie at Sunday dinner was a terrible idea.

  “You’ll ask and find out,” she said breezily. “There’s always room for one more at the table.”

  Did she practice these careless phrases that eviscerated him? By now he and Annabeth should have been working on their first baby and joining his married siblings in testing their mother’s theory about room at the table. A lousy drug dealer had decided Annabeth had done enough good in this life, and snuffed her out with a cowardly ambush at the community center.

  Three years after her death there were still nights when Stephen was convinced he’d heard those gunshots. The community center was too far from the garage for that to be possible, but the sounds haunted him anyway. I should have done more for her, he thought, though there had been nothing within his power to do. Logic seemed to have no effect on overwhelming grief.

  Stephen turned away, wishing the water in his hand was a beer or a whiskey. Conversations like this one were better with a whiskey close by. Distracted by those dark memories, he flinched when Myra touched her hand to his shoulder.

  “I consider Kenzie a friend of the family,” she said gently.

  “Then you should be the one to extend the invitation.” Though the churlish tone shamed him, he wouldn’t take it back. She had to know she was asking too much of him.

 
“That is actually why I came by,” she pointed out. “Since I missed her, I trust you’ll handle it on my behalf. Politely and graciously as I would.”

  “Mom.” He gazed down at her, wondering why thirty-two years hadn’t been enough time for him to build up immunity to the mom voice. She wouldn’t drop it until he agreed. “I’ll text you if she can’t make it.”

  His mother’s eyebrows lifted and she tried and failed to suppress an amused smile. “Thank you.” She rocked back on her heels. “Do you have time to show me the progress on the Camaro out there?”

  He knew she was trying to put him back on his feet after dealing a blow, and he let her. “The engine is in and the transmission came together,” he said, as he walked with her around the car. “It needs a test drive and I’m waiting on a few more original pieces I found from a dealer in Ohio. Then it’s off for the finish work.”

  “Do you know what the color scheme will be?”

  At some point in the past, the paint had been a metallic champagne. “Silver with black rally stripes. He’s career army.”

  “Make sure you take pictures if I don’t get over here before your client picks it up.”

  “Sure thing, Mom.” She ignored the fact that he had a portfolio of before and after pictures online she could access anytime, insisting that he show her in person. He knew it was because she worried he spent too much time with the quiet thoughts in his head.

  If she had any idea how disquieting his thoughts were she’d have real reason to worry.

  Myra made a bit more small talk, and when she seemed convinced he wouldn’t do something stupid like take the rest of the day off and wallow in grief and alcohol, she left him in peace.

  Stephen closed the gate when she’d gone and set the emergency number to ring through to his cell phone. Too restless to work, he cleaned up his tools, gave Kenzie’s car another hard look and went to move more of his things out of the trailer and into the office.

  It felt rude to him to keep invading space he’d given her. Better to keep as much distance as possible between him and Kenzie. His gaze landed on the denim cutoffs and T she’d worn earlier, on a corner of the bed. A vision of her long, gorgeous legs filled his mind, followed closely by an echo of that bold laughter.

  Basic human nature explained why her legs got under his skin, but the effect of her laughter baffled him. Maybe the happiness of it, a sound foreign in the shop, was what bugged him. That sound shouldn’t fit in and yet something deep inside him wanted to make room for it. Damn, he needed more sleep.

  He closed his eyes and brought Annabeth’s serene face to his mind. A dark beauty with generous curves, his fiancée had had a steady, pleasant outlook underscored with integrity and grit that made her someone people trusted. The kids confided in her about things they were too scared to share with anyone else. On appearance alone, Kenzie was the polar opposite, not to mention the vast personality differences, and yet he had a random, discomfiting thought that they might have been friends.

  Twice he picked up his phone to text Kenzie about dinner with his family. Twice he stopped, deleting the messages before he could send them. If his mother caught wind of him taking the easy way out, he’d get a lecture and a heavy dose of that sad disappointment she wielded so effectively.

  He and his siblings agreed on one thing without fail: it was always better to make Myra Galway flat-out mad than to disappoint her.

  To do this right, and avoid a mom lecture, Stephen would either have to go to the club or wait up for her. Resigned, he took a shower and changed clothes to go back to the Escape Club. He considered taking the Camaro, to get a feel for the clutch and the suspension, but he was too restless to listen to the car.

  Instead, he grabbed a dealer plate, put the For Sale sign in the rear window of the Mustang they needed to move, and planned a route through the city that might spin up some interest. If that particular route took him by the community center where Annabeth had worked, that was just coincidence.

  Right. Not even he believed that.

  The community center was a central, positive influence working persistently to keep a toehold in a neighborhood framed with rough edges. The area was hard on the eyes and residents in broad daylight. Once night fell, those rough edges turned razor-sharp and mean.

  Since losing Annabeth, Stephen continued teaching the basic automotive class despite the vicious ache in his chest every time he came near the building. After her killer was acquitted, he’d picked up the habit of frequently driving through the neighborhood in various vehicles. Occasionally, he parked a block out and walked in, daring any of the local thugs to take a swipe at him.

  They often did.

  His walks and drive-bys were random. Sometimes they paid off and he caught a picture of a drug deal that he forwarded to the police, or he caught wind of a name while he wandered past on foot. For all the good it did. The police would pick up one dealer and another stepped up, keeping business rolling. Once in a while he timed his visits or ended his classes so he could walk other staffers to their cars, as he should’ve done every day for his fiancée. Sometimes he just circled the block, letting the deep purr of a big engine serve as a warning to the petty criminals skulking in the shadows.

  So far, the man he wanted to confront, the man who had killed his fiancée, had yet to make himself a target. Stephen didn’t have anything better to do with his life than wait him out.

  Tonight, he circled the block like a shark, generally being a nuisance and interfering with the fast deals that happened at the corner. The thugs tasked with backing up the dealer showed their guns on his third pass. The familiar dance put a kick in Stephen’s pulse. He was aware they knew who he was and where to find him when he wasn’t trying to interrupt their business. Just one reason he kept upgrading the security at the garage. He used to lie awake at night, praying someone with ties to Annabeth’s murder would come by and get caught on his cameras.

  Spoiling for a fight, he parked the Mustang under the floodlights and security cameras in the community center parking lot and went for a quick stroll. At this hour the facility, church and other buildings on this side of the street were deserted and locked up tight.

  He walked around to the front of the building and sat on the steps. Although the building owners tried to keep security cameras operational, anything aimed in the general direction of the dealer on the corner was repeatedly disabled. Stephen had decided he had to stand in whenever possible.

  Annabeth’s blood had long since been washed away from the area, but the fresh paint they’d used on the railings was peeling again after three years of weather. He knew where they stored the paint and he had a key to the center. He’d almost decided to take care of it now under the glare of the streetlights when a rusty station wagon from the nineties pulled up to the corner. It made Kenzie’s sedan look good by comparison.

  Stephen raised his phone and hit the record button, making sure the video light caught the driver’s attention. The car sputtered and rolled away, deal incomplete. From across the street, the thugs shouted a warning at him.

  Stephen lowered the phone and gave them a wave without leaving his post. He scared off another two cars before the enforcers stalked across the street with orders to make him leave.

  Finally.

  He waited for them, his weight balanced and his knees loose. They could just shoot him. Luckily for him, they knew as well as he did that two innocent people dead on these steps might inspire someone to actually come through this neighborhood and clean it up for good.

  “Get the hell outta here,” the first kid said. He couldn’t be more than twenty, probably younger. His T-shirt, emblazoned with a classic arcade game character wielding an AK-47, was partially tucked into dark jeans. Stephen noted the bulging biceps and the brands seared in faint patterns on the kid’s dark skin.

  At Gun-shirt’s nod a second man walked to the base of the stairs
to face Stephen. Bald, his pale head lit by streetlights, he wore a white undershirt and faded jeans that rode low on his hips, revealing the band of his boxers. Stephen assumed the open jacket must be hot in this weather. An unfortunate circumstance for Baldy, since the jacket did nothing to conceal the gun shoved into his belt.

  “You need to leave,” Baldy said. He drew the gun and took aim at Stephen’s midsection. “Go willingly, or go permanently, your choice.”

  Stephen raised his hands. “Willingly,” he replied, starting down the steps.

  At the sidewalk, Gun-shirt grabbed Stephen’s arm and drove a fist into his gut. Although Stephen was braced for it, the blow took a toll, stealing his breath. He gasped, doubling over, hands on his knees. When Gun-shirt leaned close to make more threats, Stephen punched him in the throat. The thug staggered back into the street, bouncing off the hood of a slowly passing car before he caught his balance.

  The bald man swore and aimed his gun once more, but Stephen was quicker. He kicked out, connecting with the guy’s knee. Baldy crumpled into a whimpering heap.

  Across the street, the furious dealer called for reinforcements. Stephen shouted out a crude suggestion before he ran for the parking lot. He knew none of these criminals wanted to get caught chasing an innocent civilian by those cameras.

  Safely in the Mustang, Stephen drove off. He was several blocks away before the pain started seeping through the adrenaline rush. He kept to the rest of his planned circuit, cruising through much nicer streets filled with people out for the evening at restaurants and posh bars. Hopefully, the sign in the rear window would attract some positive inquiries.

  The sooner they moved this car the better. He had other builds in mind and more plans to keep himself busy through the summer.

  Chapter 3

  Things were hopping at the Escape Club tonight and tips were already weighing down Kenzie’s apron pockets. It was a good feeling, although waitressing wasn’t nearly as much fun as fighting fires. Here, no one seemed to care about her gender or build as long as she kept the drinks coming. The lively atmosphere and the pulsing music were a bonus, filling the space with an energy that made the hours fly.