Can't Stand the Heat

by Shelly Ellis

Cris nodded but still narrowed his dark eyes. “And why are the cabinets late? Is there a problem with the shipment?”

  “No, nothin’ like that. They’re on time. It’s just . . .” Bill nervously licked his lips.

  “Just . . . what?”

  “Well, the guy who measured the kitchen jiggered some of the numbers.” Bill dropped his watery blue eyes to gaze at Cris’s brown leather oxfords. It was easier to do that than to stare up at the man who towered over him by a good eight inches. “When I saw the numbers on paper later, I thought it looked funny. We had to measure it again. So we put a stop order on the first set of cabinets and ordered the cabinets again. They hadn’t started building the first set yet, so it won’t cost you extra. But it just messed up the time line a bit.”

  Cris sighed. Now he had the real answer for why his kitchen was delayed.

  Bill looked up and shook his head. “It wasn’t my fault, Mr. Weaver! I know I’m supposed to watch over these guys, but I can’t be a million places at one time! This is a big property with a lot of workers and—”

  “I’m not paying you to be a million places at once. I’m paying you just to make sure things run smoothly. This is the seventh time that something has been delayed because of some subcontractor’s mistake. I’m paying some of these guys to do the same job twice that should have been done right the first time. All of this means more time and more money—and believe it or not, Bill, I’m not made out of Benjamins. This is really irritating me.”

  Bill lowered his eyes again and grimaced. “Sorry, Mr. Weaver. It’s all just part of—”

  “Oh, come on, Cris! Lay off the man!” Cris’s friend Jamal suddenly shouted over the noise as he walked into the living room.

  Cris turned to find Jamal, a friend he had known since college, striding toward them in a pin-striped suit with a wide grin on his dark-skinned face. “Stop busting the man’s chops! Besides, what do you need a kitchen for? It ain’t like you can cook anyway!”

  Bill laughed at Jamal’s joke, but he stopped when Cris turned back around and glared at him. The chuckle froze in his throat.

  “Stop yapping and let the man do his job!” Jamal stood next to Cris. He clapped Bill on the shoulder. “Really, man, Cris is a good guy, but he’s always like this. I think it comes from having a dad who was in the army. He’s wound up tighter than a Swiss watch until you get a couple of drinks in ’im. Don’t worry about it. Just do your thing.”

  Jamal then thumped Cris on the back. “Come on. Show me around the place. I bet a lot of stuff has changed since the last time I was here.”

  Jamal steered his friend toward the doorway leading out of the living room and into a long corridor. Though Cris wasn’t finished with Bill, he let the conversation end. As the two men retreated, Bill wiped his sweaty brow. The contractor raised his pants again, turned around, and headed off to one of the downstairs bathrooms to supervise the tile installation.

  “Jay,” Cris said as they passed a group of lighting guys who were installing recessed cans, “why the hell did you tell him I’m uptight?”

  “Because you are! You have been as long as I’ve known you.”

  Of course Jamal would say that. Even in college, he had always argued that Cris needed to lighten up, to break the chains of his strict upbringing and chill out sometimes. Cris always had been the studious one, going directly from football practice to the campus library to work on an essay for American Lit or crunch for a biology test. Meanwhile, Jamal would be partying at some hangout on campus or hitting on a girl at the student union cafeteria, completely oblivious to whatever test or paper was due the next day. But the polar opposites were assigned as roommates their freshmen year and, despite their differences, they quickly formed a bond and had been friends ever since.

  “I’m not uptight,” Cris muttered. “I’m just tired of being stuck in renovation that never seems to end. They told me they could do this place in two months . . . three months tops! This thing is already into its fourth month. I’ve been renting that place in DC so I wouldn’t have to breathe sawdust while I slept and hear hammers banging all day! Half my stuff is crammed back at the town house. Hell, if I would have known it would take this long, I would have just ripped the whole house down and started from scratch!”

  “The house had good bones. That’s why you bought it. There was no reason to tear it down, and even if you did, that would have taken another year to build a new one.”

  “But that doesn’t change the fact that—”

  Jamal held up a hand and waved it gently like a symphony director, silencing his friend. “Just chiiiiiiiiiill, Cris. Do some meditation exercises or somethin’. They’re just building it the way you want it. What’s the rush? I mean, what else do you have to do? You’re a retired man with plenty of time on his hands. Right? Right?”

  “Yeah . . . but this just isn’t how I envisioned spending my retirement,” he mumbled sullenly as they walked farther down the corridor.

  “I see you have your shrine up already,” Jamal said, changing the subject. He gestured to a built-in cabinet encased in Plexiglas and filled with more than a dozen pictures of Cris with his old teammates, a football with all of their signatures, and his old football jersey.

  Jamal paused in front of the built-in and Cris smiled as he glanced at the tokens of his past.

  “Brings back memories every time you see it, huh?”

  Cris nodded.

  After fifteen and a half years in the NFL as a wide receiver and at the age of thirty-six (practically a senior citizen in football), reoccurring injuries and plain old fatigue had finally forced Cris to walk away from a game he loved so much. He had been playing football since he was seven years old. Back then, he had been an awkward half-black, half-Filipino kid who always had his nose in a book. He had decided one day to ask his father to teach him to play football so that he could make friends with the boys in his neighborhood who had treated him for months like his nerdiness was contagious. From that point on, he was hooked on football.

  “You miss it?” Jamal asked, turning away from the built-in.

  “In some ways . . . yeah. I miss my coaches. I miss my teammates.”

  “And the crowds, brothah! I remember being in those stands during the games. Those crowds were crazy!”

  “Yeah, there was nothing like that roar or the nervous energy before every game. There is no high that’s better than the one you get after a touchdown, Jamal. They need to sell that stuff in a bottle or in dime bags,” Cris said wistfully, running his hand over the glass.

  Jamal slowly shook his head. “How could you walk away from all this?”

  “Easy. I had to,” Cris said as they continued to stroll, passing a window where they could see the groundskeepers taming overgrown hedges. “My body couldn’t take it anymore, Jay . . . getting tackled by some three-hundred-pound linebacker . . . and all the bruises, sprains, and broken bones. In some ways, I’m . . . I’m glad to finally get my life back. I mean, for more than a decade, I was football’s bitch. It told me where to live, where to travel,” he said, enumerating the list on his fingers, “what to eat, and even how much to exercise. I’m looking forward to finally planting some roots”—he slapped his firm stomach—“and getting fat while I’m doing it!”

  “But what about the girls, Cris?”

  “What about them?”

  “You don’t miss the groupies? Hell, even I looked forward to your castoffs!”

  “You know groupies were never my style, Jamal,” Cris said with a laugh.

  While his other teammates collected jump-offs like they were Beanie Babies, Cris had always been one of the few monogamous guys on the team. But football didn’t make having a serious relationship easy. Because of the pigskin, Cris had had his share of women come and go. The sole exception had been his last girlfriend, Alex—Alejandra Marisol Delgado de la Cruz, according to the business card she proudly brandished to whoever asked. He had met the former Miss Dallas and current marketing executive at an ES
PY awards after-party three years ago. Of all his girlfriends, Alex had stuck around the longest.

  Most of Cris’s exes had hated having him disappear for more than half the year, but Alex had taken flights to games to be with him. She had always put him first. That’s why he was shocked when she broke the news that she was not coming with him to Virginia.

  She told him only two days after they had finished packing everything they owned in boxes and suitcases that she had too much family and too much going on in the Dallas–Ft. Worth area to just pull up stakes. If he wanted to move halfway across the country, she said, he would have to do it alone.

  They would have finally had unhindered time together. She would have finally gotten his full attention, and now she wanted them to go their separate ways?

  Cris had been disappointed and angered by the news, but he wasn’t resentful anymore. Besides, his relationship with Alex had been good, but not perfect. She had a fiery temper. Also, she was beautiful and she knew it. Her vanity could get annoying sometimes.

  “So is this the great room?” Jamal asked as they left the corridor and stepped through a doorway. Jamal looked around the cavernous space as they descended a series of steps. “Nice. Very nice, man! I’m diggin’ it.”

  The drywall had been finished days ago, the hardwood floors were almost done, and the timber beams had been installed along the ceiling a week before, giving the room the masculine, rugged feel that Cris wanted. A massive stone hearth stood in the center of the room, giving the space the look of an old Viking hall.

  Cris nodded and smiled as he gazed up at the ceiling. “Yeah, I like it, too. It turned out good, didn’t it?”

  Jamal nodded and nudged his shoulder. “You’re making some progress, Cris! The place looks hot!” He paused. “But you haven’t been cooped up in here every night that you’re in town, right? Have you had a chance to look around Chesterton? Walk around Main Street?”

  “Yeah, I went out to dinner yesterday. I was going to just pick up something quick, but decided to try one of the restaurants.”

  “Did you like the food?”

  “Oh, yeah,” Cris uttered distractedly as he walked over to the fireplace.

  Among other things, he thought as he ran his palm over the stone.

  For the first time in Cris’s life he had enjoyed a meal so much that he felt compelled to praise the chef personally, and later, he was profoundly glad he had. When he’d wandered into the kitchen looking for the chef at Le Bayou Bleu, he had expected to find one of those beefy Cajun chefs you always see on the food channels. Instead, he found a tiny woman (she didn’t even reach his shoulder) with a sienna-hued face, huge doelike eyes, and delicate hands that looked better fit for playing the piano or the violin than boning fish. She was certainly pretty—even in her stained chef jacket and jeans—but Cris was surprised by his reaction to her. All lingering thoughts of Alex had finally disappeared.

  He had told her that he would come back to the restaurant, and he would, but not just for the food. The petite chef intrigued him. He wanted to know more about her and take it from there.

  “Cris? Cris!” Jamal cupped his hands around his mouth.

  “Huh?” Cris said, suddenly coming out of his daze. He stepped away from the hearth he had been leaning against, lost in thought.

  “You drifted off for a second there, man. You’re thinking about her, aren’t you?”

  Cris did a double take. Am I that obvious?

  “You gotta let her go, man.” Jamal laid a hand on his friend’s shoulder. He squeezed it reassuringly. “It’s messed up that Alex didn’t come with you, but I guess she thought it was the best thing for her. You couldn’t force her to come.”

  “Uh-huh. I know.”

  He didn’t tell Jamal that Alex wasn’t the girl he had on his mind right now. He had only met this Lauren woman yesterday. He didn’t even know her last name. He wasn’t sure whether, if he told Jamal about how intensely attracted he was to her, Jamal would say he was crazy or just going through withdrawal from being away from Alex too long.

  “So the only thing you can do is get back out there. Have some fun. Meet some women.”

  “Oh, don’t worry about me, Jay.”

  I intend to get back out there soon. But for now his desire was intensely focused on one woman in particular and he planned to track her down.

  Chapter 6

  “That’ll be $68.54, Miss Gibbons,” the young woman said as she turned away from the electronic screen over the cash register.

  Lauren fought the urge to cringe. Even with her bonus card and coupons, her groceries still totaled almost twenty dollars more than she had budgeted. She stared at the bags now in her cart, at the plastic-wrapped boneless chicken and the head of lettuce. She thought she had bought the bare minimum.

  There’s no way I could have made my list any shorter!

  Her electric and phone bills were both due in a few days. She would have to pay those soon and that would definitely put her checking account into overdraft again. That would be another thirty-five-dollar fee.

  Lauren bit her bottom lip and dragged her debit card through the scanner. She punched in her password, half expecting the screen to suddenly flash red with the words, “Alert! Alert! Do not accept this broke-woman’s money!”

  “You know, you’re one of ten people in town that do their grocery shopping here at ten thirty in the morning on Wednesdays.” The eighteen-year-old cashier smiled as she turned back around to gather Lauren’s receipt, which was loudly printing with an automated hiccupping and screeching sound. “And it’s always the same people. I guess you guys like to have the store all to yourselves, huh?”

  “No, it has more to do with my work schedule,” Lauren said, trying her best to sound pleasant despite the knot forming in her stomach. “I work long hours both weekdays and weekends. My boss gives me at least one morning off to do my errands.”

  “Aww, that’s nice of him!” The cashier handed Lauren her receipt. “And here I was thinking you were just trying to stay out of the long lines.” The girl laughed and waved. “Have a nice day, Miss Gibbons!”

  “You, too, Shana. See you next week.” Lauren gave a distracted wave as she stared down at her receipt and scanned the line items. She slowly made her way to the sliding automatic doors, left the air-conditioned store, and walked into steaming heat of the nearly empty parking lot.

  Maybe I should finally break down and ask to borrow money from my sisters, she thought. I can ask for just a small amount of cash to hold me over until my next paycheck, then pay them back.

  But Lauren had decided months ago that she was no longer going to depend on a man to pay her bills and buy her things. No matter how hard it got for her, she wouldn’t get another sugar daddy. Unfortunately, whatever money she borrowed from her mother or sisters more than likely came from the pocket of one of their many suitors or ex-husbands. So if she borrowed money from them, she would be breaking her rule. It would still mean dependence on some man’s wallet—just vicariously through her sisters.

  If I’m going to do this, I’m going to have to do it on my own.

  “Even if it means I’m slowly going broke,” Lauren muttered.

  She sighed before shoving the receipt into the pocket of her jeans shorts. She picked up the pace and quickly steered her cart toward her Toyota Corolla, which she saw in the distance.

  Lauren had parked farther away from the store on purpose. She had put on a few pounds in the past few months after giving up her gym membership to save money. She had decided she could exercise instead by climbing steps more often and walking longer distances, a health tip she had read about in a magazine.

  She unlocked the trunk of her car and opened it with a loud creak that echoed throughout the parking lot. Lauren then loaded her grocery bags inside and shut the trunk. She glanced at her watch as she returned her shopping cart to one of the lot’s cart corrals and estimated that she had enough time to stop at a library and drop off a few books that were
dangerously close to being overdue.

  “It’s not like I need to pay another fine.”

  She unlocked the driver’s-side door. Determined to make the best of her day, she started to whistle a tune she had heard on the radio earlier. It raised her spirits a little. She reached for the door handle.

  “Hey, beautiful.”

  At the sound of her ex-boyfriend, James’s, syrupy baritone, Lauren instantly froze. Her hand stayed suspended just above the handle. Her leather purse dangled from the crook of her arm. She closed her eyes and took a deep breath to calm her racing heart, which now seemed to be making a valid attempt to pound its way out of her rib cage like a sledgehammer pounding at a steel door.

  It’s OK, she told herself silently. He caught you by surprise, but he can’t hurt you . . . not anymore. You won’t let him. It’s OK.

  She heard he had developed the habit of popping up out of nowhere lately. Stephanie said he had surprised her at a house blessing more than a week ago to ask her to “pass along a message” to Lauren. Lauren was none too happy to hear that. It was one thing to harass her, but trying to intimidate her family was something else entirely.

  After some seconds, Lauren finally regained her calm and turned to look up at James.

  He was wearing a suit, so she guessed he had probably taken a short break from the law office. His facial features were barely discernable against the glare of sunlight behind him, but she could clearly see his bleached-white grin. He stood less than two feet away from her, and his shadow seemed to loom over her like the shadow cast by a towering colossus.

  “Hello, James.”

  He chuckled. “Why so timid, baby?” His grin broadened. “I didn’t scare you, did I?”

  Oh, you’d just love to hear that you did scare me, you controlling bastard.

  “No, James, you didn’t. You just surprised me.” She pretended to keep her cool as she opened her car door and tossed her purse onto the passenger seat. “How did you know I was here? Were you following me?”

  He chuckled again, making her shudder. “Don’t flatter yourself. I just happened to be near here. I saw your car and came over because I had a gift for you.” He reached into the inside pocket of his tan suit jacket. “I’ve been carrying it around all week.”