Turn Up the Heat

by Serena Bell

  “I’d never shame you. Not about this. Not about anything.”

  After the encounter in the alleyway, that might have been enough. It might have been all she wanted from him, and it might have been as heavy and satisfying as gold in her palm. But it felt painfully not enough right now, and that was really what she hated about herself. Wanting more from someone than that person could give. Wanting so much it felt like she was vast and hollow.

  She felt cold, much colder than she’d been lying in bed, even though there was a warm breeze blowing.

  “Look at me.” It was as hard-edged as any order he’d given her yet.

  It was harder to obey than she would have guessed. She had to raise her eyes slowly, and as she did, she was aware of how deep the vein of shame ran. Despite what he’d said, she was still afraid that she’d see mockery and distaste when she faced him.

  But finally her gaze came up high enough to meet his, and his was soft. Softer than she’d ever seen it. Outright tender.

  “I wanted that,” he said.

  She was hyperaware of the contradictions in him. Big enough to be brutish, dominant enough to tie her to a bed, and this. Quietly waiting for her to hear what he was saying to her, to see the gentleness and the wish in his face.

  “I just thought you should know. You weren’t alone. You aren’t alone. He was an asshole to make you feel that way.”

  Her heart gave a strange, uneven squeeze. That feeling she’d had in bed, that he was pulling her close with some strange magnetism, was strong again. She could move close to him, crawl inside. Curl up. She could lay her face against the soft cotton of his tee, press her body against his.

  But then what?

  “I have to leave.” She meant, I should go before I say something I regret, and she meant, I have to leave town because there are things I have to do, so I can be who I’m supposed to be. She didn’t seem to be able to be clearer. She didn’t seem to be able to say anything else. Like What is this, and what does it mean?

  “Don’t hate yourself tomorrow,” he said. “Promise me.”

  “I can’t promise that.”

  “Try. For me,” he said. “I wouldn’t be able to stand it. Thinking you were feeling bad about this when—” He stopped. “It was my first time in a long time. I should have said that. And it was good. Maybe the best ever. So—yeah. Don’t. Okay?”

  It was good. Maybe the best ever.

  He meant the best sex he’d had. She glowed bright with that, and for the first time since she’d gotten out of bed to put her clothes on, she felt like maybe she wouldn’t hate herself tomorrow. It was a good feeling. And a bad one, too, because she still didn’t have an answer to the question that was getting louder and louder in her head. What is this, and what does it mean?

  “Okay,” she said.

  He did that thing again. That thumping on the roof of the car. It didn’t feel quite as much like a dismissal as last time. More just—a pat on the back. She stopped the car and stuck her head out the window. “Caid,” she called, and he turned around.

  “Thanks.”

  “You, too, beautiful,” he said.

  Chapter 11

  “No.”

  Kincaid hadn’t expected Grant to be enthusiastic about the idea, but he hadn’t expected flat-out refusal, either.

  “Grant, come on.”

  “It’s a bad idea.”

  “I’m not asking you to threaten him or mess with him in any way. Just ask. If he’s got nothing to hide, he shouldn’t have a problem with it, right?”

  “Except that the laptop is his property.”

  “The laptop belonged to me.”

  “And when you went to prison you gave it to your grandmother, and when she died, it became your step-grandfather’s.”

  “Don’t call him that,” Kincaid growled.

  “It became Arnie’s.”

  “We can ask, right?”

  “Did you bring this up with your P.O.?”

  Kincaid sighed.

  “He said no, right?”

  “Not exactly.”

  “Kincaid.”

  “He said he wouldn’t help, that it wasn’t in the job description and wasn’t going to get us anywhere good. And he reminded me that it would violate the terms of my parole if I tried to do it myself. Which is where you come in. Please.” Kincaid had never begged for anything in his life. Not even in prison when a guy he’d pissed off had held a shank a skin’s thickness from his kidney.

  There were four rules to surviving prison. Be big. Be useful. Mind your own business. Don’t show weakness. Maybe they were rules for life, too, but he couldn’t afford them right now. Right now, if begging was what it took, he’d beg.

  “You don’t even know the will’s on there.”

  “I don’t,” Kincaid admitted.

  “You don’t even know it exists.”

  Kincaid crossed his arms over his chest. “Yes,” he said. “I do.”

  “And how would that be?” Grant asked.

  When Kincaid didn’t answer, Grant gave him a stern look. “You’ve been investigating.”

  “I’ve been talking to some of my grandmother’s friends on the phone. That’s not a violation of parole, either.”

  “What if someone accuses you of harassment? What if someone calls the cops and says they’re scared you’re going to come after them?”

  He had a moment’s gratitude that Grant didn’t know he’d also tied a woman to his bed this week. He could only imagine what either Grant or John would have to say about that. “These women were my second moms growing up. They’re not going to do that.”

  “You don’t know that. You assaulted a man some of them considered a friend, and many of them thought of as a good guy. With a deadly weapon. No one would blame them if they freaked out.”

  “Well, no one’s freaked out,” Kincaid pointed out.

  “Because you’re way too lucky for your own good,” Grant said. “So you got some intel?”

  He said the last casually, but Kincaid heard the curiosity behind the nonchalance. Grant might pretend to be the voice of reason in all this, but he’d been Nan’s friend, too, and he hated Arnie Sinclair almost as much as Kincaid did.

  “Sharlene Mirabili says my grandmother talked about it. They were talking about wills and my grandmother told Sharlene she had one and that she’d left everything to her babies. That’s what she called the kids, her babies.”

  “But that doesn’t mean she didn’t change her mind at some point.”

  “She didn’t change her mind,” Kincaid said stubbornly.

  “How do you know that? I can’t believe you have so much faith in her,” Grant said. “I can’t believe you’re tying yourself in knots over this, Caid. When she didn’t even show up for your—”

  “Don’t,” said Kincaid. He knew what Grant had been about to say. When she didn’t show up for your sentencing hearing. When she wouldn’t tell the world Arnie had been hitting her and you stabbed him in her defense. When her absence virtually guaranteed you’d get the longest sentence in the most dangerous prison. He took a deep breath and let it out, the same old pain welling high under his breastbone. The pain of knowing that far from finding a way to protect her, he had only hurt her more.

  I wish—

  But where he might have once wished he’d finished the job, he couldn’t quite find it in himself today to wish that.

  If he’d cut deep enough to kill instead of to show Arnie how serious he was—to show him that if Arnie ever laid a hand on Nan again, he would kill him—then he’d still be in prison. And if he were still in prison, he would never have met Lily.

  It’s just sex. Rough sex in an alleyway. A blow job on the couch. Some woman tied to a bed.

  But when he’d had the thought about never having met her, the first thing he’d thought of hadn’t been the sex in the alley or the ropes around her wrists and ankles. It had been the tilt of her head as she’d stood in the diner listening to her customers talk. The smile
on her face when he’d bitten into the burger she’d cooked. The look on her face, raw, open, and vulnerable, when she’d told him about the asshole ex who’d shamed her in every way he knew of to avoid his own shame.

  “If I don’t help you out, what will you do?” Grant asked.

  Kincaid frowned. “You don’t want me to answer that.”

  “Kincaid, no.”

  “I didn’t say anything.”

  “You didn’t have to.” Grant slapped his hand on the desk. “You can’t steal that laptop. You understand the potential consequences—”

  “I understand,” Kincaid said, but he thought again of Lily, the way she’d kissed him, afterward, when he’d freed her.

  He couldn’t let that keep him from doing what he needed to do. When he’d been sprung from prison, he’d known that going back would be worth it, if he could get anything that passed for justice for his grandmother. And he had to believe that, still. He had to be willing to fight for what mattered most, the woman he’d failed to save when he had the chance the first time.

  If Grant wouldn’t help, he’d find another way.

  “If I ask for the laptop,” Grant said hesitantly, “and he says no, will you leave it alone?”

  Kincaid closed his eyes. “I can’t promise that.”

  Grant groaned. “Promise me this, at least. That you’ll talk to me before you try anything else. Before you go to Yeowing to talk to him like you did last time, or break into his house under cover of darkness, or whatever.”

  “Why do you care so much what happens to me?”

  “You’re my client. I’m paid to care.” Grant crossed his arms.

  Kincaid stared him down.

  Grant sighed. “And hell. I don’t have so many friends in the world that I can afford to have one of the few I genuinely like and admire behind bars again.”

  It had been a long fucking time since anyone had liked and admired Kincaid. “Enough with the sappy stuff and emotional manipulation. I promise I’ll warn you before I get myself tossed back in the slammer.”

  Grant nodded. “Okay. I’ll try to get the laptop for you.”

  —

  “Those guys wanted to be seated in one of your booths,” Alma said. “They said they know you?”

  Lily looked where Alma was gesturing. A dark-haired man had inclined his head to whisper something to the woman he was with, who was plump and lovely and honey-haired, and because their faces were obscured, it took a moment for Lily to recognize them.

  “Tuck! Kristin!”

  She hurried to them, two of her best friends from Chicago.

  “You guys!”

  Tucker and Kristin were who she should have gone to stay with instead of fleeing Chicago like she was the one who deserved to feel ashamed, and once she had the money, they were the ones she’d stay with when she went back, while she looked for an apartment. They’d moved in together around the same time she and Fallon had—only their cohabitation had lasted longer.

  They stood as she approached the booth, and Kristin grabbed her for one of her soft and lemon-scented hugs, which involved shaking and rocking and patting and crying—on Kristin’s part. She was easy with tears and affection.

  Tucker slapped her shoulder and said, “Hey there, we miss you, Lilgirl.”

  That was as much emotion as Tucker ever showed, and it was that, rather than Kristin’s enveloping embrace, that made Lily’s eyes fill.

  “Sierra said you’d be here, and we thought we’d get some lunch, and then when you get off, maybe a hike and a picnic on the beach?” Kristin fished in her bag for tissues, handed one to Lily, and mopped her own face.

  Lily swiped her eyes. “Sounds really good. How long are you guys staying for?”

  “Coupla days,” Tucker said. “We’re going to Portland, too—I have a conference there.”

  Tucker was a computer guy. He was in the middle of making his first million with his restaurant point-of-sale system, which he claimed was going to replace the current systems. He’d grown up with restaurants—his dad owned a well-loved regional chain of family restaurants in Chicago.

  “But we couldn’t not see you while we were here. Particularly because—” Tucker turned to Kristin.

  “We have some news.” There was a shy sparkle in Kristin’s big blue eyes.

  Lily’s eyes went involuntarily to Kristin’s hand, where another sparkle echoed. “Oh my God!” Lily clapped her hand to her mouth. “You got engaged! Tell me the story. Wait—” She glanced around to make sure Markos wasn’t watching and glaring, then said, “Tell.”

  “So, he took me out for our two-year anniversary—” Kristin hesitated.

  “I knew she suspected something, so I knew I had to come up with something a little different—”

  “Creep!” Kristin pushed her hair behind her ear, and the ring sparkled cooperatively. “I waited and waited, and I was hoping maybe the waiter would bring a ring out with dessert, or something, and then there was nothing and I was just in that state where you’re ready to die from disappointment and from being so stupid—”

  “Which was what I was hoping for,” Tucker said triumphantly.

  Once upon a time, Lily and Fallon had been like this, tripping over each other in their haste to tell stories. And yet, when she tried to feel a pang of regret for what had happened to them, she only felt gratitude, like she’d escaped an unpleasant fate. That, and joy for Tucker and Kristin, who were glowing with their shared happiness.

  “Apparently, I always go to the bathroom before we leave a restaurant. I was not actually aware of this until Tucker pointed it out, but supposedly it’s true.” Kristin crossed her arms.

  Lily laughed. “You do. I usually go with you.”

  “I guess your real friends are the people who know you better than you know yourself, right?” Kristin ducked her head, blushing.

  “So after dessert when she got up to go to the ladies’ room, I put the ring box on the floor on her way back and had another customer grab her arm and say—”

  “She said, ‘I think you dropped something, ma’am. Something important.’ And then I looked down and there was a ring box, and then Tucker sort of swooped in and got down on one knee and—there was a whole speech, which I don’t actually remember, because I was shaking and crying, but apparently Tuck has it all written down somewhere.”

  “I think I mostly said I loved you,” Tucker said, beaming at her. His face was all happy pride, his eyes bright with pleasure. And Kristin, beaming back, was a mirror of his delight.

  “I am so happy for you guys! I love you both so much. I couldn’t imagine anything that would make me happier.”

  Kristin gave her a big hug. “We love you, too. And I miss you so much. You’re coming back, right?”

  “I’m working on it. A month more, maybe two?” Lily shrugged. “Now—can I recommend the meatball sub?”

  Kristin, who’d gotten an email update on the methods that Lily used to keep people from poisoning themselves, laughed. “You sure can,” she said.

  Kristin and Tucker slid back into their seats, but before Lily could head back to put her ticket in, Kristin grabbed her arm.

  “Who’s that guy with the paper bag?”

  Lily didn’t have to look to know the answer.

  “He can’t take his eyes off you.”

  She cast a glance at the counter, where Kincaid had just grabbed a take-out bag from Alma, and met the blue heat of his stare head-on. Her heart gave another of those uneven squeezes.

  She’d had some time to think, today, about him. Through her haze of confusion and fatigue, sexual satisfaction and renewed lust, she’d pondered what he’d said to her yesterday. Not much, really. Only that he’d had a good time and that she shouldn’t feel bad about what they’d done. It hadn’t been a promise of any kind, not even an invitation to do it again sometime soon. If anything, it had been a kind of dismissal, a way of bringing closure to their two odd, intense encounters.

  She knew almost nothing
about him. He studied law, lived in a cottage that wasn’t even his, drove a car that made her clunker look like a luxury vehicle, worked a landscaping job, and had enough leisure time to hang around the diner nights. She knew all that, and no more, because he’d refused to tell her, and he’d been quite frank and quite firm on that point.

  It didn’t make for an auspicious package, and all day part of her had hoped that they were done and that she wouldn’t see him again, because she understood that the longer this went on, the deeper in she got and the less able she’d be to walk away without pain. And there was no reason to think that this could end any other way.

  “Just a guy I’ve been seeing,” she told Kristin. “Nothing serious.”

  But she looked again, and Kincaid waved and smiled, his rare brilliant smile, and everything in her—heartbeat, pulse, breath, the swooping sensation in her belly—called her a liar.

  He ambled over, take-out sack in hand, and she told herself sternly that it didn’t mean anything. It was just good manners to acknowledge people you knew when you ran into them. It didn’t mean he was as happy to see her as she was to see him, or that he was having as much trouble as she was remembering the rules they’d made for themselves.

  “Hey, Lily,” he said.

  “Hey.” She matched his tone—friendly, casual. “Kristin, Tucker, this is Kincaid.”

  She was aware she hadn’t identified him, but what the heck was she supposed to call him? Stranger I had rough sex with in an alley? Guy who tied me up the other night? Friend?

  The absurdity of that last one almost made her laugh out loud.

  “Very nice to meet you, Kincaid,” Kristin said. Tucker shook Kincaid’s hand.

  “Kristin and Tucker are my friends from Chicago. Kristin and I were in school together, and she and Tucker just got engaged.”

  “You guys visiting?” he asked.

  “Yeah—Tuck has a conference in Portland, but we couldn’t come all this way without seeing Lily. Lil, you sure you can’t sit down with us?”

  “It’s not fair to Alma,” she said, gesturing toward the other waitress.

  Kincaid shook his head. “I should go. I’m just grabbing lunch for my crew.” He held his paper sack aloft.