White Hot

by Carla Neggers

  Slowly, with a control he’d lacked ten years ago, he slid her back down onto her chair and stood back from her. Boiling still. Not simmering. Not even close to simmering. “I know a nice, quiet Cuban restaurant a few blocks from here. Inexpensive. Good food. It’s not much on atmosphere, but if we stay here…” He smiled, shrugged. “I’m afraid my picture’ll go back up on your dartboard.”

  She licked her lips, adjusted her shirt, cleared her throat. It was no use, and he suspected she knew it. Nothing she did could make him forget her response to their kiss, her body pressing wildly against his. “That sounds fine. And I don’t suppose you need Bennie and Albert and Sal to start thinking we’re going out together, which we’re not.”

  “No. Absolutely not. I only kiss women I have no interest in going out with.”

  “That was-” She searched for the right word. “-inevitable.”

  “Inevitable?”

  “We’ve had to get it out of our systems once and for all.” Her eyes fastened on him, as if she needed to make herself take a good, hard look at him. “So we’d know there are no sparks left.”

  “No sparks.”

  “Jeremiah, if you keep repeating everything I say like I’m not making any sense…”

  “Sorry, sweet pea, but you’re not. You know as well as I do that if we don’t get the hell out of here within the next ten minutes, we’re going to end up in the sack together. Then we’ll see about sparks and what’s really inevitable.”

  His frankness had her swallowing, and, he could tell, swallowing hard. Which only meant he was dead on.

  “I love being right.” He scooped up the lemonade glasses, set them on the tray, and started for the kitchen. “However, I shouldn’t have said that. I lured you into something you didn’t want ten years ago-”

  “No, you didn’t. It’s what I wanted to believe, but you didn’t. I knew what I was getting into when I went to dinner with you that first time. Jeremiah, I’m just as responsible for what happened between us then as you are. Yes, I was confused and twenty, but I wasn’t stupid. I understood very clearly what kind of man you are.”

  He grinned. He couldn’t help himself. “What kind of man I am? Mollie, Mollie. I’m a nice Florida boy out of the Everglades who investigates crime and corruption for a living.”

  “It’s more than a living for you.” She rose, her legs looking remarkably steady under her. Jeremiah’s own felt like Gumby’s on a bad day. The run, the self-restraint. Mollie tilted her chin up at him, dignified, pushing back any urge to delve into personal matters. “I didn’t come here to discuss our relationship. I want you to warn this Croc character that if I catch him tailing me again, I’ll phone the police.”

  Jeremiah set the tray on the kitchen table. “The message has already been delivered.”

  “Why don’t you suspect him of being the jewel thief?”

  “Who says I don’t?”

  She inhaled sharply, rigid, not moving, an unsteady mix of outrage and heat in her eyes, her mouth. Sparks. Definite sparks. It was like holding a magnifying glass over a dried leaf and waiting for it to burst into flames. He figured he had less than five minutes to get her out the door. She fisted one hand and pushed it into his chest, not hitting him so much as holding him in place.

  “Jeremiah, I have a right to know everything you know about this story. You’re not compromising your ethics. It’s not as if you’re going to write it.”

  “Mollie. Let’s go eat. We’ll talk.”

  His calm seemed only to inflame her further. “I don’t think this thief is about you-or even me.”

  “Mollie.”

  “We must be missing something-some clue-”

  “Mollie.”

  She paused, frowned. “What?”

  “Our ten minutes are almost up.”

  The restaurant was small, simple, and within easy walking distance of Jeremiah’s building. The good, inexpensive Cuban food reminded her of the lunches and dinners they’d had together ten years ago. Their waiter brought her cup of black bean soup, and Mollie, feeling more in control of herself, spooned into it as she cast Jeremiah a dubious look. “You were bluffing. You wouldn’t really have dragged me off to bed.”

  He smiled, amusement crinkling the corners of his eyes, reminding her he was no longer twenty-six. “I don’t think I’d have had to do any dragging.”

  “It’s because of our past.” She tried her soup, which was thick and spicy and steaming hot. She was being pragmatic. With Jeremiah Tabak, pragmatism was the only sensible approach. “If we hadn’t already slept together, you wouldn’t be tempted.”

  An eyebrow quirked. He’d ordered a margarita, no soup. “Mollie, that’s the most twisted logic-”

  “No, it makes perfect sense. One, I’m not your type. I’m a publicist. You’re a hard-news journalist. I live and work in Palm Beach. You work for a tough, urban newspaper, and you live with Bennie and Albert and Sal.”

  “I don’t live with them. We simply share the same building.”

  “Because you don’t care where you live. It’s immaterial. Jeremiah, I grew up with people like you.”

  “Are you comparing me to your parents?” He laughed, giving a mock shudder. “I need another margarita.”

  “You’ve never even met my parents.”

  “They’re violinists. Flakes.”

  “The point is,” she said, refusing to be distracted, “that you and I have and want different things out of life. I listened to Carmina Burana on the way down here. I looked at your CD collection while you were in the shower. Rock, blues, jazz. All stuff I like, but no classical, which I love, which I used to live.”

  He frowned. “How can you live classical music?”

  She threw up her hands. “There. I rest my case.”

  “Mollie, you have no case.”

  “I do. The reason you and I would have ended up in bed together is because of some kind of hormonal memory or something. Probably some chemical. A throwback to our week together. You know, it was so fast and furious that-” No, best not to go down that road. She grabbed the pepper shaker. “I’m sure it’s chemical.”

  “Right.”

  She felt warm and tried to blame the soup. “Well, that was the first reason why we wouldn’t have ended up in bed if we already hadn’t. The second reason is business. You’re more experienced than you were ten years ago. You wouldn’t sleep with me now because it’s too risky. It’d look bad. You’ve a reputation to maintain.”

  “Mollie.” He leaned across the table, the candlelight bringing out even more colors in his eyes. A fiery yellow, a gleam of black. “I don’t give a rat’s ass about my precious reputation. I do what I do because I think it’s right. Ten years ago, I thought it was right to sleep with you. Twenty minutes ago, I didn’t. Twenty hours from now…” He shrugged. “Who knows?”

  She swallowed, her throat dry. “What about me?”

  “You’ll have your say.”

  Just as she did ten years ago. She’d been caught up in her righteous anger over his duplicity for so long that she’d neatly forgotten how solicitous he’d been about making sure she knew what she was doing, wanted it. It was that same peculiar sense of honor that had compelled him, a week later, to tell her he’d used her to get his first front-page story when he hadn’t. He’d tried to spare her regrets that he simply didn’t realize he had no power to spare.

  The waiter brought their meals, and Mollie inhaled the delicious smells of the fried plantains, yellow rice, and grilled lime chicken. Jeremiah ordered another margarita. She asked for more water and seized the opportunity to make a smooth transition out of a subject she’d stupidly brought up. “Tell me about this Croc character and why he’s above suspicion and I’m not.”

  “I never said he was above suspicion.” Jeremiah sipped his margarita, his expression all business, the professional journalist at work. “I go where the facts lead me. I’ve know Croc for about two years. He thinks of himself as my secret weapon.”

 
“But you didn’t put him up to following me,” Mollie said.

  “No, that was his brilliant idea.”

  “Because he suspects me.”

  “Croc suspects everyone. It’s his nature. He doesn’t have much faith in people.”

  “He must in you.”

  Jeremiah set down his margarita, suddenly looking troubled, distracted. “That doesn’t give me a great deal of comfort, you know.”

  Mollie considered his words. “You don’t want to feel responsible for him.”

  “I’m not responsible for him. What Croc does, Croc does on his own.”

  “But if he’s living vicariously through you-”

  “He’s not. He just brings me what he hears.”

  “What’s his real name?”

  “He says it’s Blake Wilder. I don’t know if it is or isn’t. I don’t even know where he lives.”

  Mollie started on her food, which was hot, spicy, and perfect for her mood. She felt that Jeremiah’s relationship with his young source was more complicated than he was willing to admit. She wanted to press him, but when Jeremiah commented on the food, she took the hint and let the subject shift to innocuous things. Favorite restaurants, the weather, movies they’d recently seen, books they’d recently read. Mollie found him insightful, thoughtful, less black-and-white in his outlook than she would have expected. A man of many different facets was Jeremiah Tabak. She’d had such a straightforward, uncomplicated view of him for so long that getting used to him as a complex, real, live, breathing man wasn’t easy.

  He paid for dinner. He insisted, because if they hadn’t had to leave on short notice he’d have cooked for her. Mollie didn’t remind him that she’d never expected to stay for dinner at all.

  She relished the warm evening air on the walk back to his apartment, enjoyed the bustle of the crowded streets, imagined how different a late February night in Boston would be. A year ago, she’d have worked late, maybe gone out for dinner with friends, or to a concert with her parents or sister. There had been no steady man in her life. Jeremiah Tabak was a distant, if still very real, memory.

  There wasn’t a steady man now, she reminded herself, glancing at Jeremiah as he strode beside her, preoccupied with his own thoughts. She had no illusions. He was driven and utterly focused on one thing: investigating the Gold Coast thefts. Just because he couldn’t do the story didn’t mean it didn’t absorb him. The physical part of their relationship was just an extension of that focus and drive. If it became a distraction, something apart from the story, it would end. The story determined everything. And when it ended, so would his interest in her. As much as he might want to believe she was his reason for being on the jewel thief story, she wasn’t. He was the reason. His need to know things, his need to unravel and solve and figure out and just know.

  When they arrived back at his building, the guys were all still outside, Bennie smoking a fat, putrid-smelling cigar. “Old habit,” he said. “My wife never let me smoke inside.”

  Jeremiah turned to Mollie, his eyes flat now, lost in the shadows, his voice low. “I’ll walk you to your car.”

  She shook her head. “There’s no need. It’s right there.” She pointed across and down the street. She smiled. “Thank you for dinner. I enjoyed myself.” She drew in a breath, so aware of him standing close, silent. “Of course, it was business.”

  “ ’Course. I’ll deduct dinner from my taxes.” He winked, smiling. “You can sit out here with the guys for a while, if you want. Good night, Mollie.”

  She felt three pairs of old-man eyes on her. “Good night, Jeremiah.”

  He headed inside, and Mollie frowned, wondering what had possessed her to drive to South Beach in the first place. Sal, the ex-priest, settled back in his rickety chair and said thoughtfully, “He’s afraid to want something he doesn’t have because he might lose it.”

  “Nah,” Albert said, “he’s just got to be jerked up by the balls and forced to pay attention to what’s important. Reporters, you know?”

  Bennie shook his head. “Jeremiah’s an honorable man. He wants to do what’s right. He’s not going to press himself on a woman if he doesn’t think it’s right.”

  “Jesus,” Sal said, “you’re making the lady blush.”

  Albert grinned at Mollie. “It’s not like we have this conversation every week with a woman.”

  “He hasn’t been right lately,” Bennie said. “You can tell by his whittling. You see that?” He picked up a carved piece of something that looked vaguely like a palm tree. “He can whittle better than that. He was just hacking. His mind was somewhere else.”

  Meaning, presumably, Mollie thought, on her. But she expected it was more likely on the jewel thief story and her potential role in it, Croc’s behavior, his own next move. Jeremiah would love a story he could chew on, that would occupy him fully.

  “Go on upstairs.” Albert gave her an encouraging nod. “We have coffee and bagels down here at eight every morning. You can come sit with us and tell us how things worked out.”

  “You’re a dirty old man, Albert,” Bennie told him, his putrid cigar tucked between thumb and forefinger.

  Sal shrugged off both their comments and turned to Mollie. “Jeremiah needs more for company than reptiles and us old men. That much we know. I’m just not sure he knows it-or is willing to take the risk of hurting himself, and you, to admit it.”

  He seemed so sincere, so certain. Finally, Mollie nodded and without a word went back inside and upstairs to Jeremiah’s apartment. What happened next, she thought, happened. But she wasn’t ready to climb back into Leonardo’s car and drive north.

  12

  Mollie knocked on Jeremiah’s door with a calm that surprised her. She had no intention of changing her mind. He opened up, tilted his head back, his eyes half-closed, his expression unreadable. She thought she saw a twitch of humor but couldn’t be sure. “Forget something?” he asked.

  She shook her head. “I’ve been talking to the guys downstairs.”

  “Ah, the council of wise old men.”

  She smiled, noticing that he hadn’t moved from the doorway. “They observed your abrupt departure with interest.”

  “They observe everything I do with interest. I suppose they had opinions on my motives?”

  “Of course. They believe you’re being honorable or you’re scared-or a mixture of both-except for the one old guy who thinks you just need to be jerked up short.”

  “That would be Albert, and I’m sure he was more colorful in his choice of words. He thinks I have a one-track mind about my work and need a two-by-four upside the head every now and then to get my attention.” He shrugged, the amusement reaching his eyes now. “Which could be true.”

  “What about the honor and fear factor?”

  “I try to do what I think is right. I don’t know if that’s being honorable. As for fear-” He smiled, leaning in close to her. “I’m not afraid of you, Mollie.”

  She folded her arms on her chest in an effort to be cool, collected. “Does that mean I’m invited in?”

  He stepped back from the door, motioning her inside with a mock bow and a sweep of his arm. Mollie eased past him. His apartment was silent and still, no television or CD playing, no reptiles stirring in their cages. As stripped down as Jeremiah’s tastes were, she felt comfortable. She remembered waltzing around the pink bedroom in Leonardo’s house, picking out her dress for the ball, caught up in the luxury and temptation of diamonds and rubies and beautiful clothes, all fun, but, somehow, not as real as standing in Jeremiah’s apartment with his books, CDs, videos, newspapers, magazines, simple furnishings, lizard, turtle, and snake.

  “As much as I hate to admit it,” he said behind her, “I understand where Bennie, Albert, and Sal were coming from tonight. We’ve gotten to know each other, sitting out whittling, eating bagels in the morning, smoking an occasional cigar. They don’t know about you and our week together, but they know about me. The work I do, my commitment to it-and my determinati
on not to inflict myself on a relationship that can’t last.”

  Mollie turned to him, emotion and desire knotting her insides. A seriousness seemed to have enveloped him, darkening his eyes, bringing out the harsh angles of his face. But she didn’t regret her decision to walk back up to his apartment. “Jeremiah, right now I’m not worried about what can last and what can’t last. I’m not here about anything except tonight.”

  “I don’t want to hurt you again.”

  “That’s the risk we take, isn’t it?”

  “Maybe it is.” He moved to her, toe to toe, and curved an arm around her waist, his mouth finding hers as he whispered, “I’m awfully glad I didn’t have to follow you up to Palm Beach tonight.”

  “Would you have spied on me?”

  “Darlin’, I’d have found some way inside your gates.”

  He slipped his hands under her shirt and opened his palms against her warm, bare skin, sending waves of sensation through her as their mouths came together again, and she said between kisses, “I brought a change of clothes, just in case. They’re down in the car.”

  His eyes flashed, sending more tremors through her with their blatant desire. “What about my plan for us to steer clear of each other?”

  She drew her arms around him, felt the strong muscles of his back. “Did you think even for a half-second that would work?”

  “It seemed like a good idea.” Again, the seriousness descended. “Mollie, if I’ve brought trouble down on your head-”

  “It’s okay, Jeremiah.” She kissed him softly, easing herself against his chest. “I’m not twenty anymore.”

  “No,” he said, smoothing his hands up her back, triggering memories that she thought she’d suppressed forever, “but I wouldn’t be surprised if you still sit on a musical note towel and listen to opera on the beach. Mollie, Mollie…I’ve never known anyone like you.”