Turn Up the Heat

by Serena Bell

  He shook his head. “It won’t be.”

  Between stories, between the careful litany that went with the scars and marks on their skin, the topographical maps of their imperfect lives, they made love—often rough, sometimes gentle, different every time, but above all honest and together.

  Then it was the day before her rescheduled flight and she made up her mind to ask him what lay down the road for them and how they would make this mad mélange of cravings and affection into a relationship.

  “What are we doing, Kincaid? I mean, really?”

  He smiled. “Funny you should ask that right now. Stay there a sec.”

  He disappeared.

  He came back with a pillowcase, which he tore and then tied around her head, blindfolding her. “This is kinky.” She laughed, and stumbled as she took a step. “I like it.”

  She was a little frustrated that he was diverting her serious question, and a little frightened that he didn’t want to answer, but she’d meant what she said to him the other night—she’d rather live big and afraid than shrink away from risk. So she kept quiet and waited to see what would happen. Where they were going.

  She lay back on the couch, blindfolded, and put her wrists together, waiting.

  “Not that.” He laughed. “Stop that. You’re distracting me from my mission.”

  He scooped her up, and she was sure they were going back to the bedroom, and happy for it, but instead he brought her outside into the cool, salt-smelling air and carried her to the car.

  “Where are we going?”

  “I have a surprise for you.”

  She could follow the route well enough in her head to tell they were in town when the car stopped. And anyway, the smells and sounds of Tierney Bay were distinctive—ice cream and saltwater taffy and the fading-with-the-end-of-summer tourist clamor.

  The burger and french fry and clam strip smell of Markos’s realm. They were standing in front of the diner.

  Kincaid stood her up and removed her blindfold. She looked at him quizzically.

  “Go in.”

  She opened the door and stepped in, and people—people she knew, people she loved—exploded out of their seats. “Surprise!”

  Ben grabbed her arm and shook it hard enough to jolt her shoulder, but she couldn’t say a word. She was trying to figure out what was happening.

  They were all here, her little world of people, Sierra and Reg, her nieces and nephew, Alma, Hadley, Grant, Jeannie, Markos, and—peculiarly, Kristin and Tucker.

  They crowded around her and said, “Congratulations!” and hugged her, and she kept looking over at Kincaid, who grinned back at her and didn’t explain.

  Finally it got quiet, and Markos stepped forward. “Take good care of my baby.” He took a ring of keys from his pocket and laid them in her hand. And then he clapped her on the back and said, “Maybe keep just one recipe of my dad’s, for old times’ sake? So when I come back from Arizona to visit, I recognize something?”

  She looked from one beaming face to the next, trying to make sense of what was happening. “I don’t understand.”

  Sierra stepped forward and put an arm around her sister’s shoulders, brushing Lily’s hair back from her face. “Kincaid’s buying it. The diner.”

  Shocked, she turned to him, and he nodded, and led her to a table, where there were plans laid out, plans he’d drawn for how they’d redo the counter and the paneling and the windows, how they’d build a new three-season deck with fire pits and heat lamps. There were photos of posters he’d printed out from online, and pages snatched from websites with lighthouse statues and life ring buoys. There were paint samples and mocked-up menus and events calendars. “So you can picture it redone,” Kincaid said.

  Her own eyes filled with tears.

  “Kincaid?”

  “With Nan’s money. I’ve been in conversations with the timber companies, and there’s more than enough money—for Safe Haven, for me to go to school, for you to do this, and for both of us to live comfortably for a good long time. I want to do this for you. I want—I want you to have a place here. I want you to stay here—if you want to.”

  She was choked up. She could barely get out, “It’s too much. Too much money.”

  “I can’t think of anything I’d rather invest in than your cooking. And besides, I wouldn’t have the money at all if it weren’t for you.” He touched her cheek. “Anyway, technically, I’ll own it. Because I talked to Sierra and Kristin and both of them told me what I already suspected, that you wouldn’t accept it as an outright gift. But Grant helped me write a tentative contract for how you can cook your way to half or full ownership over time. And there’s no obligation for you to stay. If you bail, you get back the money you’ve put toward ownership.”

  He gave her a stern look. “I didn’t want to put that part in. I wanted to stipulate that you belonged to me as a slave for life.” He gave her a dark look that teased a slithery circle low in her belly. “But your girlfriends are very good advocates for you.”

  Tears were pouring down her face. Kristin and Sierra were crying, too. Even Grant didn’t look entirely dry-eyed.

  “And I know Nan would approve. I know—I know she would want me to be happy, and Lil—nothing would make me happier than to be able to watch you cook for people here. Stay,” he said again. “Be with me.”

  She looked frantically around the room, as if the four walls would have an answer for her, as if they would tell her it was okay to grab on to what he was offering and hold fast. Because that was what she wanted to do. He was offering a way to have everything she wanted, without having to give any of it up. She could have him, and not just this mishmash that they had now, but something real, something permanent, something long term. A business to build together, a town they both loved, people around them—just a few for now, but more and more as time passed—who cared for them.

  A life. A community. She wouldn’t have to choose between making a life and living. She could do both.

  “When Nan died—” He took a breath. “And when Grant told me there was no will and that Arnie was taking the house and the land, I said to myself, that’s it.”

  How could she have ever thought of his eyes as cool? They were so warm now, with love and affection.

  “I thought, I don’t have a home anymore, and I don’t have a family. Whatever happens to me, it’ll be just me. And I was okay with that. I mean, I wasn’t happy about it, but I had plenty of time to come to terms with it, and I convinced myself that it was all I deserved.”

  She was vaguely aware that their friends were drifting away, giving them space. He took her hand, wrapping it in both of his warm, callused palms. “But you gave me back everything. You gave me back my grandmother, and you gave me back the land, but that’s only part of it. Even if you hadn’t done that, you—”

  He broke off and gathered her into his arms. “You’re my home, Lily. You’re my family.”

  She leaned her face into the strong, solid wall of his chest and hugged him tight. He felt so good, big and warm, something she could hold on to but bigger than that, too, something she couldn’t contain because the way she felt about him couldn’t be contained or held back or fit into the space of her arms.

  “Lily.”

  She tilted her face up to find him looking down tenderly into her eyes.

  “I want to make sure you hear this. You don’t have to stay. You don’t have to take the diner. I will find someone else to do it. You’re my first choice, and it would make me the happiest man on earth if you decided to stay in Tierney Bay. But—look. There’s no yes if you can’t say no. Do you understand what I mean? There’s no trust if uncle doesn’t mean something.”

  She found his big hand and squeezed as best she could. “God. I do understand. God.” It was hard to speak, because she was still crying pretty hard, but she got it out, somehow. Sierra had gone and gotten a box of tissues from somewhere and was handing them to her one at a time. “And thank you. This is the most amaz
ing, wonderful gift. I’d say it was the best thing you’ve ever given me, but I think you know that’s not true.”

  She smiled a sneaky secret smile at him and his pupils flared dark.

  “Does that mean you accept?”

  “I accept.”

  He swept her off her feet and kissed her until she was breathless. “She’s gonna do it!” he announced, and their friends gathered around them, hugging and congratulating and—in Kristin’s case—crying.

  When everyone had settled down, Sierra cut the cake and handed out slices to the guests.

  Kincaid and Lily leaned against the counter eating Markos’s slightly stale cake and surveying their newly won territory. She felt like a queen—powerful and a little frightened of her good fortune and responsibility.

  “So,” he said. “I’m tearing out the paneling first thing.”

  She crossed her arms and mocked anger. “Aren’t you going to consult me first?”

  He smirked. “You like it when I take charge.”

  “In bed.”

  “And on the beach. And in the alley.”

  “And pretty much everywhere,” she admitted.

  “In all seriousness,” he said, “this is your baby. You tell me what you want, when you want it, and I’ll make it so. You just put me to work. You want me to wait tables, I’ll wait tables. You want me to fix traps, I’ll fix traps.”

  “I want you to go to law school,” she said. “And sit at that booth in the back and do your homework.”

  He seemed to have to catch his breath. “I guess—I guess I could, couldn’t I?”

  She nodded. “I hope you will.”

  He crossed his arms. “Even if I’m studying law, I could still fix traps in my free time.”

  “I have some other plans for your free time.”

  “Oh, yeah?” Kincaid growled.

  Lily smirked. “Yeah. Where’d that blindfold go?”

  Epilogue

  “Well?”

  Kincaid dug his fork into the embarrassment of culinary delights on his plate: fresh-roasted turkey, homemade gravy, buttered biscuits, apple-and-bacon stuffing, cranberry preserves, and creamy, garlicky mashed potatoes. He took too big a bite and it was a while before he could do anything other than just open his blue eyes wide and stare at her in pleasure.

  “You like it?” she asked, as pleased as he was.

  “It’s fucking amazing,” Kincaid said. He had to take a few more bites in rapid succession before he could say, “The stuffing.”

  “Cider,” she said. “The secret ingredient.”

  All around them, diners were digging into Lily’s Diner’s First Annual Thanksgiving Supper and Safe Haven Fundraiser. It had been a little over a year since Kincaid had bought the diner, a little over six months since he and Lily—with Sierra and Reg and Grant’s help—had finished the diner’s interior and spacious back deck.

  Inside, the restaurant was completely transformed. In place of the dark paneling and lodge decor, Kincaid had hammered up bright white beadboard and new nautical blue-gray trim. He’d found the posters and lighthouses and life rings they’d envisioned. The coils of rope, too—with plenty left over after decorating for other purposes. They’d replaced the old Formica tables and cracking vinyl booths, and for this occasion, they’d strung tiny white Christmas lights around the interior.

  Kincaid had been true to his word. He’d done everything she’d asked with near perfect obedience—even if sometimes it had maddened him. “Later,” he’d threatened on more than one occasion. “As soon as we step out of that door, I’m in charge.”

  For months, the diner had been so packed at dinnertime that people had lined up outside, and during the height of tourist season, the wait for a table had hit an hour and a half. The Food Channel had featured Lily’s Diner on Low-Fi Highlights, and Lily routinely served tourists from Portland who’d driven out to Tierney Bay “just to grab a bite and do a little shopping,” which had made her a popular addition to the town’s chamber of commerce. Tourist traffic was up, shops were staying open more hours, and the empty storefronts had begun filling.

  The diner overflowed with regulars, too—community members gathering for book clubs and volunteer group meetings, work-from-homers taking advantage of the new free WiFi, moms and kids gathering for mid-morning muffins. And Kincaid, of course, sometimes barely visible in the back booth behind his laptop and a stack of textbooks, highlighter in hand. Grant had promised that if it was within his power to ensure Kincaid was allowed to sit for the Oregon bar, he’d make it happen.

  Meanwhile, the law was grinding away elsewhere, slowly chewing Arnie Sinclair up for tampering with Nan’s will. He would probably spend at least a little time in jail. Lily tried not to feel gleeful about that. Most of the time, she succeeded.

  There were no textbooks at Kincaid’s place now, only the plate of food he was obviously savoring.

  “Lil. Sit.”

  She sat down across from him. At the next table, Sierra and Reg fed the kids, and a few tables down, Grant was eating with Markos, who had come out of gloriously happy retirement in Arizona to give Lily extra kitchen help for the big event. He’d grudgingly followed Lily’s recipes, but he’d never stopped griping the whole time.

  She let him make his dad’s creamed corn recipe, though she tricked him into using corn she and Kincaid had fire-roasted the day before, which, it transpired, was the key to making the dish a humongous hit with her customers.

  Hadley, on the other hand, had been nothing but cooperative since the turnover of ownership, and recently had even started chiming in with recipe ideas. It turned out he was an excellent source of creative food inspiration, now that he wasn’t suffering under Markos’s rigid regime.

  “I can’t sit long,” Lily said, although Kincaid had her hand under the table and was tracing her fingers, and it was sending tingles through her body. So getting up wasn’t actually that high on her list.

  “Any sense of how much you’ve made?”

  “With Jeannie donating all the food? A lot.”

  He stroked her fingers, moved up to her wrist. She had to close her eyes briefly, partly because of the intensity of the sensation and partly because the way he was looking at her, with so much open love in his eyes, was making her giddy.

  “You know I suck with words.”

  “You say that, but you’ve done okay.” And besides, you don’t really need words when you can reduce me to jelly by running your fingers along mine.

  “Well, brace yourself, because I’m totally going out on a limb here.”

  She sat back expectantly and gave him a wry grin.

  “This means so much to me,” he said. “Like, so much. Like if I were the kind of guy who got all teared up about stuff, I’d be all teared up right now.”

  That made her laugh. “That is a very high compliment.”

  “And I’m really proud of you. Maybe it would be better to say I’m impressed by you. But it feels like pride. Like I want to stand up right now and point to you and say, She’s mine, everyone. Got that? She’s doing all this, she’s making this work, she’s doing what she loves and she’s helping people, and she’s mine.”

  He looked faintly chagrined. “I mean, you’re yours,” he said. “But you’re mine, too, if you know what I mean.”

  Now she was really laughing.

  “You’re laughing at my big speech,” he said. “You’re laughing at my big moment, and when we tell the kids—”

  Her heart came to what felt like a dead standstill, then picked up again at a gallop.

  “When we tell the kids, Mommy laughed at Daddy when he proposed—”

  She clapped her fingers to her mouth.

  He slid out of the booth and got down on one knee.

  The diner grew silent around them.

  “I’ve done some terrible things,” Kincaid said into the silence, and she wanted to tell him, You don’t have to do this. You don’t have to bare your soul in front of all these people, but then s
he thought, Yes, he does. These are his people too, and he needs to tell them he knows what he’s done and that it isn’t the only thing that defines him.

  And she didn’t want him to stop. Didn’t want him to stop smiling at her that way, the face that she had once thought rough and mysterious now an open book to her, bright with mischief and affection, and then, suddenly, dead serious: “I’ve done terrible things, for the right or the wrong reasons—that’s not for me to decide. But you’ve inspired me not to think of myself as the sum of those things and to keep moving forward. I want to do a lifetime of wonderful things, for the right reasons. And I want to start out by doing the most wonderful thing I can think of. I want to marry you, Lily McKee. Will you marry me?”

  While she wasn’t looking, while her attention was fixed on him, on the waves of his hair and the fierce blue of his eyes, on the laugh lines forming at the corners of his eyes, someone had poured champagne and Hadley was passing it around on a tray, and everyone in the restaurant—people she knew, people she didn’t know, people she loved, people she would someday love as friends and fellow citizens—waited expectantly, all eyes on her. It should have been terrifying, all that pressure, but she knew her answer, knew it as well as she knew the feel of his mouth on hers, the fullness of having him in her, the clasp of his fingers around her wrist, as well as she knew his voice, dusky with exhaustion, lulling her to sleep as they talked late into the night, never running low on things to say to one another. She knew it as well as she knew the word no, which she said to him frequently, sometimes in a way he heeded and sometimes in a way he ignored—

  “Yes.”

  The restaurant exploded in cheers and toasts.

  Acknowledgments

  To Emily, Sue, Mr. Bell and the kiddos, Charli, Amber B, Rachel, Shari, AJ, Ruthie, Amber L, the teams at Loveswept and Prospect, and everyone else who has supported me at every step along this delightful and crazy journey, THANK YOU. Huge thanks to Chrissy Hanisco and Melinda Young for help at the research stages—any errors in legal judgment (or flights of fictional fancy) are mine and mine alone.