Black Heat

by Ruby Laska

  "It was...I ran into someone I went to high school with. Jimmy Mason. He told me they were all headed up here together to find work. He asked me if I might want to come along. Then he talked the rest of them into inviting me."

  He shook his head. It was still hard to talk about, even after everything had been worked out between them.

  "You look like he had to twist your arm."

  "No, it's not that...it's just that we ran in different crowds back when we were in school."

  She waited expectantly, her cup lifted halfway to her lips. As she blew on the steam, Cal couldn't help fixating on the way her lips pursed in an 'o', her eyes widened in curiosity. In the filtered light coming from the rainy sky, her eyes looked stormy; their navy depths were sparked with silver. And she had a scar that he hadn't noticed before, a tiny crescent high up on her cheek. He wondered how she'd gotten it—maybe a bicycle accident?

  He wanted to touch it. Wanted to touch her face so badly that his fingers twitched.

  Instead, he cleared his throat. "Jimmy is the smartest guy I've ever met. He and his friends...well, they were the good kids, you know? Teachers liked them, coaches loved them. Parents loved them. They dated nice girls."

  "And you?" her mouth twitched at the corner, as though she were trying not to smile.

  "Let's just say I was focused on other things." On detention hall, if he was honest with her. Though detention hall had been the least of his infractions. "Anyway, our paths didn't cross much. But then we met up again and the timing couldn't have been better. I'd graduated from the academy down there but I couldn't get on the force. There was a lot of competition for jobs."

  He shifted uncomfortably, because he wasn't telling the whole truth. Yes, there were more applicants than jobs, but he'd graduated at the top of his class. What was holding him back was that everyone in Red Fork remembered how troubled Calvin Dixon had been. More than a few of the Red Fork citizens had been inconvenienced—or worse—by his adolescent hijinks.

  And the police chief, who'd been a patrol officer back then, unfortunately remembered a very different version of Cal. Their first encounter was when Cal had been caught, at age fifteen, breaking windows in the high school's science lab.

  "Jimmy told me unemployment in Conway was down around three percent," he said, wanting to get off the subject of the past.

  Roan nodded. "It's pretty amazing."

  "I couldn't get that figure out of my head. I mean, you've got to be trying not to find work in a place with unemployment that low, right? So I started wondering whether there was a job for me on the police force. It took me a few days to get up the courage to call. Looked the number up online and when the duty sergeant answered, my voice cracked like I was thirteen years old. But when I asked if they were hiring, they said yes so fast I nearly dropped the phone."

  "So you've got the job?"

  "Not officially. But they're looking to add several officers so I've got a good chance. I don't know what the applicant pool looks like, but the chief has been very encouraging. They're announcing hires right after the last of the exams, the week after next."

  All he had to do was pass the exam and wait for his references to check out. And not run into any trouble over the next few days.

  "Are your folks happy to have a police officer in the family?"

  Cal felt a familiar ache in his heart. He didn't look at Roan as he answered. "It was just me and my grandmother. She took me in after my mom died." He left out the part where he lived in foster homes for a few terrible years before Nana took him in. "I think she would have been happy for me to get on the force. I just wish she had lived long enough to see it."

  "How long ago did you lose her?" Roan's voice was soft and husky, and Cal remembered that she'd lost all of her family as well, other than Mimi. Great. They were a pair of orphans, commiserating over their lot in life. Not exactly the conversation he'd meant to have with her.

  Somehow, it seemed very important that she not find out how low he'd once sunk. Roan only knew him now, as a man with a future. A man with a fresh start.

  "Seven years. By then I had a steady paycheck, and I was able to help her out a little with her bills." It had been a tremendous relief to be able to help her for a change, after she'd scrimped and saved to provide for him for so long.

  "What did you do? For work?"

  Cal felt his face color. He didn't have a lot to brag about, other than hard work and learning, eventually, from doing things the hard way. "Different things. I delivered pizzas for a while. Did some construction. After a while I got a job in a warehouse, and I made pretty good money on the overnight shift. Gram kept on me to go back to school. She could be pretty hard to argue with."

  "I know all about relentless old ladies," Roan laughed. "Mrs. Castleberry keeps telling me I should be married with a baby by now."

  Cal smiled. "Gram didn't want me to end up with a baby, she wanted me to get an education. It took me six years to get my associates degree at the community college, going part time, but she was as proud of me as if I went to Harvard."

  "I sometimes think of going back to school," Roan said. For a moment she looked like she was going to say more, but then she shook her head. "But I've got the shop and all. And I never was much of a student."

  "Don't give up," Cal said impulsively. "Don't make up your mind now. Maybe the time will come when you're ready to go back."

  "My life's fine the way it is," Roan snapped, suddenly defensive.

  Cal held up his hands. "Sorry. I didn't mean to tell you what to do."

  "I have everything I need." She glared at him, and he wasn't sure if he should keep up the staring match; he knew what it felt like to be backed into a corner.

  "I'm sorry if I said something to upset you," he said carefully. "All I meant was, for me, it was when I was open to things that my luck changed. I couldn't get on the police force in Red Fork, but I got to be a volunteer paramedic. And that was how I ended up being in touch with Jimmy, something I couldn’t have foreseen. One thing following another. That's all I meant."

  "Volunteering," Roan muttered, rubbing at a tiny spot on the table. "Going through the police academy. Someone ought to give you a halo."

  Her mood was plummeting fast, and Cal had been the one to send her down. He reached for her hand without thinking about it, meaning to comfort her. But when his fingers closed over hers, they were freezing cold.

  "Don't be so hard on yourself," he said, though his mind was quickly going somewhere else entirely. He closed his other hand over hers, enfolding it between his, trying to communicate some warmth to her chilled skin.

  "You wouldn't understand," she said.

  But he did. He understood entirely too well.

  "Roan, you have incredible potential," he tried, hating the look on her face—self-doubt and disappointment hidden behind a wall of bravery that tugged at his heart.

  "I hate that word," she said, tugging her hand back.

  "I'm sorry, wrong word, what I meant was..." He swallowed but didn't let go of her hand. His mind emptied of anything that made sense. It wasn't potential; he used to hate that word too, issued too often by his case workers and high school counselors and even one of the older cops who'd wanted to help him turn things around when he'd been picked up for vandalism.

  But what else could he offer this woman, with her fierce independence and all that long hair she hid behind? This woman whose best friend was a damaged dog named Angel, who had no idea the effect she had on him, even dressed in smudged work pants and an old sweater?

  Her hand warmed in his. Her lips parted and she caught her breath.

  And then, somehow, she was in his arms.

  He kissed her, his lips greedy for hers. Her back was lean and muscular under his hands; her hair fell across his neck. She made a sound in the back of her throat, a low cry that spoke of longing and sadness and need.

  "Roan," he muttered, his face against her neck, feeling her pulse race against his skin. "You have no i
dea how beautiful you are."

  "Quiet," she demanded, wrapping herself more tightly around him. "Don't say anything."

  She slipped onto his lap, her arms wrapped around his neck, his hands tangling in her hair, and all he wanted to do was keep kissing her, touching her, holding her. He also wanted so much more than that, his body responding as though he'd never touched a woman, as though he'd been starved for her, only her, always her.

  But then her eyelashes brushed against his cheek and he felt the dampness of her tears. She quickly wiped a hand across her eyes, but it was too late; the mood had changed.

  He drew back from her, his pounding heart drowning out what he needed to say. "I'm sorry," he managed, but he didn't even know what was wrong. "Did I—is it—"

  "I have to go," Roan muttered, scrambling away from him. She pushed her hair back from her face and grabbed her handbag from the table. "I have to get back to work. The door locks when you close it. Angel's fine where she is. If you could...if you could just go—"

  She was out the door, shutting it firmly behind her. Out the window he watched her run across her lawn, down the street, her hair flying behind her. No bicycle—of course, she'd left it at the shop. Still, it was a half mile at least. She had to know that he would have driven her, no matter what happened between them, no matter how upset she was at what they'd done. He slammed one fist into his other hand, uttering the kind of oath he'd given up a long time ago.

  Frustration. Not just the ache in his body, the tension of all that unreleased longing—but also the frustration of things ending this way. He hadn't meant to kiss her. Hell, he was pretty sure she'd started it—no, strike that, neither one of them had started it. It was like a pair of magnets, pulled together despite all the other forces acting on them—except instead of gravity and friction and distance, the forces that should have kept Roan and Cal apart included the fact that he'd found her breaking into the farmhouse, and the fact that they were both carrying around some serious baggage from the past. They had too much in common—parents who'd died, unimpressive school records, a history of trouble wherever they could make it. Wasn't it opposites who were supposed to attract each other?

  But when Cal looked in Roan's eyes and saw the turbulence there, the rivers of pain that emptied into her heart, there was a rush of recognition that felt like...home. He'd dated women whose biggest concern was the sale at the mall or the shade of their manicures; women who laughed easily and joked around and sent him funny text messages. And they all left him feeling like something was missing. They left him feeling even more alone, somehow, because though they often claimed to understand him, none of them really did. They saw only the version of himself that he pretended to be, now that he'd gotten his life in order—a reliable man, a volunteer, and soon, a public servant.

  He didn't blame them for what they couldn't see.

  But when Roan looked at him, it was like she saw straight to the center of him without even trying.

  A throaty growl issued from the kitchen. Angel was trying to get up, rocking back on her damaged hips and leaning against the wall for support, scrabbling with her front paws as she slowly, haltingly got to her feet. The growl, he realized, was her suppressed expression of pain.

  "Oh, girl," he sighed, and went to her side. Wary of touching her while she was in pain, he talked softly to her until she'd managed to get all the way to her feet, then held out his hand to her. She sniffed it gravely, then gave him a single lick and pressed her snout into his palm, begging to be petted.

  He did so, carefully, running his hands over the glossy fur around her ruff and shoulders. He scratched behind her ears and laughed when her whipping tail smacked his hand.

  "Think she’d let me give you another treat?" he asked the dog. Then he shook his head, chagrined. "I've never had a conversation with a dog. Just ignore me. I'm new to this."

  He dug in the cookie jar for one of the little bone-shaped treats, smiling to himself despite his heavy heart. He'd never had a pet. Gram had kept a tidy house for nearly fifty years by the time he moved in, and she wouldn't tolerate an animal indoors. And after, he'd believed it would be cruel to have a dog, given his long hours.

  He offered Angel the treat, and she took it carefully from his flat palm, her soft snout snuffling warmly against his skin. And he realized how much he might have missed out on.

  "Take good care of her, girl," he said softly.

  As he left the cozy apartment, he had a feeling that Roan and Angel were giving each other a reason to keep going.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Roan was almost to the cellar door when the owl started up.

  She froze, just a few steps away from the sloping old wooden doors, the ones her mother used to open in the summer to let light into the basement while she canned berries and vegetables from the garden.

  She knew it couldn't be the same owl that serenaded her outside her bedroom window when she was a girl, but she could swear the mournful "whoo, whoo" sounded exactly the same. Maybe this was a descendant of the original owl; the latest generation to nest in the same tree where her father had built his tree house when he was a child, to prowl the barn for mice, to perch in branches in the middle of the night, to fill the darkness with its eerie tune.

  But it was nearly four in the morning, past the time for even owls to go to bed, and Roan whispered loudly for it to hush. The hooting stopped for a few seconds, then began again.

  It figured that the owl on duty the night she returned to the ranch would be a late, late night owl.

  Roan crept forward, having no choice but to go through with this plan. She didn't think she could pull another all-nighter; she'd set an alarm but was too wired to sleep, and ended up spending the night watching television, with Angel snoozing on the couch next to her. She'd be no good to anyone in the shop tomorrow, asleep on her feet.

  But that didn't—couldn't—matter. Her mistake last time was coming out here too early, when the residents of the bunkhouse were still awake. She wouldn't make that mistake this time. Cal had said that he and one of his roommates were between hitches; they'd take advantage of the days off to sleep in. The roommate who was on the overnight shift wouldn't be back until after seven. She just had to hope the other two kept normal-person hours.

  The old cellar doors creaked like they always had. Surviving the fire that claimed the top floor of the house seemed to have warped the doors further—but Roan had come prepared. She doused the hinges with WD40. The hasp was so old that it snapped under pressure from the bolt cutters.

  So far, so good.

  She pulled the heavy doors open, using both hands. Then she took a deep breath and got ready to descend the steep stone steps into the basement. She wasn't afraid, not exactly—but it had never been her favorite place, not since her mother died and the shelves full of canned goods and the old washtub and drying racks and trunks full of clothes and linens had been cleared out. After that, it was just a sad, empty, echoing chamber of memories, strung with cobwebs and little else, and Roan had avoided it. Mimi refused to even set foot in it, insisting that her father build her a laundry room on the top floor.

  As Roan descended the steps, playing the beam of her flashlight on the empty space in front of her, she wondered how many people had even been down here since the fire. A few insurance adjusters, the firefighters. The rodents who'd decided to make it their home.

  Once down the steps, the room seemed smaller than she remembered. The shelves were dusty, but empty. The pipes sagged; paint flaked from the walls. The floor and walls were poured concrete, so there was no point searching for Grandpa's treasure down here.

  Roan put her hand on the banister leading up to the first floor. The steps were still remarkably sound; the door at the top of the stairs was standing open, just as it had been when she visited two nights ago. In fact, it was close to that door that Calvin Dixon had first confronted her...

  No. She wasn't going to think about Cal. The nagging sense of guilt—for lying to him, for
leaving him stranded in her apartment when she bolted...for kissing him, that most of all—would have to wait for another time. Tonight was all about avoiding him, not fixating on him.

  Never mind that she could still almost taste his kiss, that one of the main reasons she couldn't sleep was because she'd been imagining his arms around her, the way he pulled her into his lap with seemingly no effort at all. The effect he had on her was all wrong—it was rough and tender, and demanding and soft, all rolled into one.

  Which didn't change the fact that he was days away from becoming a cop, and he could turn her life upside down with very little effort.

  Or the fact that Roan didn't date—not seriously, anyway—because love had lost its appeal for her after her mother died and her father brought Mimi home— and her parents' perfect fairy-tale marriage was revealed to be nothing but a handful of ashes. If Earl and Elaine Brackens couldn't manage a lasting love, then no one could, and Roan wasn't going to be made a fool of for trying.

  She tread softly, even though there was no one there to hear. She had made it almost to the top when she heard a shuffling behind her.

  She whirled around in time to face a glaring spotlight trained directly in her eyes.

  "Don't go any further," an unfamiliar voice commanded. "I've got a gun, and I'm not afraid to use it."

  #

  "Wake up, man," someone was saying urgently. Cal blinked a couple of times in the darkness before the light was abruptly switched on and his room was filled with jarring bright light.

  He moaned, rolling into a sitting position on his bed. Jimmy was standing in the door with his hand on the doorknob. "I'm very sorry to wake you," he said.

  Cal took a deep breath and tried to clear the dream from his mind. In it, Roan Brackens had been—for some unknown dream reason—riding a bicycle with no hands, waving prettily at him while her long hair streamed past her. And she'd been naked, which was something that Cal would have liked to enjoy for as long as possible, even if it wasn't real.