Craving Heat

by Adrienne Giordano

  “In the beginning, I was too embarrassed. Then I got angry. These people didn’t know anything about my marriage. Or my husband. He’s the strongest man I know.”

  “I think people misjudge him because he’s so calm. And easygoing.”

  “But he’s no pushover. Without him, I wouldn’t have had the career I did. Just because a man isn’t loud, doesn’t mean he’s not a man.”

  All this time, Maggie had been looking in the wrong places, choosing the wrong type of man, and winding up disappointed. “Do you think a man like Dad would be good for me?”

  “What’s this about?”

  “I’m not getting any younger.”

  “Nonsense.”

  Maggie looked out the window at the passing cars on Main Street and the moms pushing strollers to kill a morning or woo their babies into a nap. “I’m worried I won’t find someone. Quiet guys can’t handle that I’m a sheriff. That I lock people up and can kick the crap out of them. The chest-thumpers can’t handle it either. They want to jump in and save me. I don’t need saving. I need companionship. None of them, at least the ones I’ve dated, know how to handle being with a strong, independent woman.”

  “Honey?”

  “Yes?”

  “Does this have anything to do with Jayson Tucker?” Mom reached across the table and squeezed Maggie’s arm. “My sister isn’t dumb, sweetie. And she’s certainly not blind. She noticed, shall we say, a certain chemistry between you two.”

  “We had a fight,” Maggie blurted.

  “A fight. Already. Hmmm.”

  “It might have been my fault. But at the same time, not.”

  Mom held up her doughnut in a toast. “I’ll need another bite for this story. Tell me everything.”

  Maggie gave her the recap. Her call from Cameron, the hypothetical situation, Jayson overhearing the conversation after he’d trusted her not to speak of it. It was only Cam. Not like she called ESPN.

  “He feels betrayed,” Maggie said. “I get that, but I’m also trying to help him save his career.”

  “Did he ask you to do that?”

  “Mom!”

  Mom waved one hand. “I’m not saying you’re wrong for caring about him.”

  “But?”

  “You try to save everyone. Whether they want it or not. I love that about you. You’re unafraid. Not everyone sees it that way. Some might think you meddle. That’s all I’m saying.”

  “Wanting to help is a bad thing?”

  “When you’re up in everyone’s business it can be. Which makes me wonder why you’re always so worried about everyone else.”

  “Other than it’s my job?”

  Mom scoffed. “Oh, don’t give me that, Mandrell Margaret. What’s the truth?”

  Her mother’s use of her given name made Maggie cringe. What kind of lunatics give their children the last names of country stars as first names?

  Mom, the go-getter, the brilliant engineer, wouldn’t want to hear that her oldest daughter had, well, settled. Maggie had become the good girl who always went along, who always got it right, and chickened out on her own dreams of Quantico because she’d been too afraid of failure. Disappointing people. Being strong and independent in her hometown, where everyone loved and respected her, was easy. An absolute no-brainer.

  Stepping out of Steele Ridge? Totally different scenario.

  Her thoughts looped and looped and looped. All this time she’d been jumping into one crisis after another, avoiding thinking too much about her own life. And the lack thereof.

  After all, it was so much easier to fix other people’s problems than to turn her attention on her own issues.

  “I feel like I have to be a certain way. That people expect things of me. Jay says I need to set boundaries so people don’t take advantage.”

  “To an extent, I agree. Don’t let him change who you are if it’s not what you want. That’s where your father excels. He knows who he is and is secure enough to let me be who I am. That’s the key, honey. It doesn’t matter if you’re both stubborn mules. What matters is finding middle ground. Jayson confided in you. In your effort to save him, you violated his trust. I’m not saying you were wrong, but he set a boundary and you ignored it.”

  Ugh. She, of all people, should have recognized it. People violated her privacy constantly. Hello, Cash and Riley. What right did she have to do it?

  She reached across and clasped her mom’s hand. “Thank you. I was too mad to see it that way. Now I get it.”

  “Honey, it’s okay to make a mistake. You put so much pressure on yourself. You’re not responsible for everyone. Your priority should be you. When you’re happy, the people who love you are, too. Take some time with this. Don’t be afraid to figure out what you want. Even if people disagree, it’s not their life. It’s yours. And you have a right to it.”

  * * *

  Dressed in his workout clothes, Jay tugged on the front door of the training center. Locked. Of course.

  “Son of a bitch.”

  Where the hell were Reid and Gage when he needed to work off some steam? Reid’s truck and Gage’s SUV were both parked in the lot. Here but not here.

  Around back.

  Probably out on the property, so they locked the doors. Fine. Whatever. He’d go around back and flip tractor tires until he could hit the weight room.

  Anything to get rid of this burning, seething, absolute torture of rage tearing him up.

  Damned Maggie.

  He cut the corner of the building too close, bumped his shoulder and kept moving while an inferno fried his skin from inside.

  “Two tenths faster!” Reid’s booming voice carried on the air.

  Obstacle course. He must be back there with someone running the course. Perfect.

  He made the second turn and found Reid sitting on the picnic table. A slew of birds tweeted overhead, the annoying sound banging against his eardrums.

  On the obstacle course, Gage crawled under the barbed wire Maggie was so good at. Sensing movement, Reid swung his head in Jay’s direction.

  “Superstar, what’s up?”

  “Need another workout.”

  Reid cocked his head. “This morning wasn’t enough for you? Since when?”

  Since a hot sheriff pissed him off. “I’m ready to go again.”

  “You sure? You damn near puked this morning. Can’t have your pansy-ass getting injured. My brother’ll kill me.”

  If Jay had known there’d be an interrogation, he’d have figured something else out. “You can work me out or I’ll do it myself. Either way, I’m working out.”

  “Ho!” Gage called from the course. “I’m about to finish. Pay attention!”

  Reid glanced over Jay’s shoulder, waited a second and clicked his stopwatch. “You picked up a tenth. Nice job.”

  From what Maggie had said, Gage wasn’t anywhere close to breaking the course record, but he’d suffered a brain injury in the service that he’d battled back from. His goal wasn’t to break a course record. His goal was to compete against himself.

  Gage huffed and puffed his way to the table and downed half a water bottle. “Hey, Jay.”

  “He wants to work out again,” Reid said. “I don’t think it’s about getting a job, though. He’s kinda pissy. We all know what gets under a man’s skin that bad.”

  “Yeah,” Gage said, “but since your sister is the only thing that gets me that pissed, I’m not commenting.”

  A wise move, no doubt, since Gage was currently living with Micki, Reid’s younger sister.

  Jay gave Reid another hard look. He was big and could probably kick Jay’s ass with his hand-to-hand combat knowledge, but Jay was mad enough that he’d give the guy a good run.

  “Thanks for the analysis, but are we working out or having a therapy session?”

  “Depends.”

  “On?”

  “Do you need a therapy session?”

  “I need to kick the shit out of something.”

  Gage polishe
d off the water bottle and crushed it in his hand, the annoying crunch of plastic drowning out the tweeting birds.

  “Have him run the course,” Gage said. “He won’t tear anything trying to lift weight he shouldn’t be lifting after what you did to him this morning.”

  Jesus, these two. Everyone thought they could handle him now.

  He turned away. “Forget it. I’ll go to the gym in town.”

  “No, you won’t,” Reid said.

  These fucking people in this fucking family. Every one of them was bent on annoying him today. “Watch me,” Jay called over his shoulder.

  Reid let out a snort that had Jay contemplating knocking him right off that goddamned table.

  “Get your head out of your ass, Superstar. Might as well come back here because I’m dialing Tommy as we speak. FYI, he’s the guy at the town gym. I’ll tell him to barricade the door or lose his trainer. That’s me, by the way. You dickhead.”

  Small towns. With the way his shit luck ran lately, of course the guy who owned the only other decent gym in Steele Ridge was hooked up with Reid.

  Jay stopped walking, blew out a breath. If he didn’t get rid of this rage soon, he’d lose his shit. In a big way.

  He turned back, found Reid with a big-ass smile. So fucking annoying. Refusing to let Reid rattle him any further, he returned the smug grin. “Fine. Let’s do this. It beats breaking my hand when I connect with that concrete head of yours.”

  “Oooh,” Gage said. “I like it. I like it a lot. Unless you infants need me, I’m going back to work.”

  “You do that. If you order more moisturizer for the hotel, I’ll strangle you. That shit is expensive. Superstar, give me some Spidermans and inchworms. You’re not doing this cold.”

  “Wah, wah,” Gage said, clearly unconcerned with Reid’s threat.

  Jay made quick work of his warmup, methodically going through the motions, thankful for something to concentrate on other than Maggie’s betrayal.

  Damned women. This would be why he never got too invested. He couldn’t deal with the maintenance. Not when he had a career to tend to. The one slipping through his grip in record time.

  On his last inchworm, he stood, rolled his shoulders. The brief warmup got his endorphins started, signaling his body to go to work. Already, the sharp edge of his anger dulled.

  “You ready?” Reid asked.

  Oh, he was ready. He nodded and squatted into a sprinter’s stance. He’d blow the lid off this thing. Run the pissiness straight from his system. He had no time for female-induced bullshit when he had to find a job and get his life back on track.

  “On my count,” Reid said. “One.”

  Jay breathed in, controlled the urge to push himself too hard at the beginning and wind up burning through his energy when he’d need it at the end.

  “Two.”

  An adrenaline dump flooded his system and a hyperawareness set in. He focused on the first obstacle. No sweat.

  “Three.”

  Jay took off, his body responding to his brain’s signals. He hit the first obstacle, the log mounted on two beams. He vaulted over it and focused on the low wall. Done. Then came the ladder. He scrambled to the top, climbed over and halfway down leaped to the ground.

  Next. High wall. Maggie’s nemesis. Goddamned Maggie.

  He grabbed the rope, scrambled up, and swung over the top, landing flat on his feet. Done.

  Goddamned Maggie. Forget her. He forced her from his head, concentrated on the next obstacle. Behind him, Reid was silent. When did that ever happen?

  Even the birds had shut up.

  Thank you, sweet Jesus. He continued tearing up the course until he dropped to his belly, army-crawling under the barbed wire obstacle. Maggie.

  Focus.

  Clearing the wire, his body elevated to that state of euphoria that came with completing a physical task. Riding the adrenaline, he popped to his feet and sprinted to the finish line.

  “Son of a bitch.”

  Reid stared at the stopwatch in his hand and let out a grunt.

  Jay slowed to a jog, circling the picnic table as his heart pounded. He’d keep his feet moving for another minute until his breathing leveled out. “How’d I do?”

  Reid finally looked up at him, his mouth twisted into a scowl. “You flaming asshole. You broke my record.”

  16

  Once again, shit luck.

  “Seriously?” Jay asked.

  “You think I would joke about this? Dude, you fucking shattered it. A full second.”

  This wasn’t happening. All he wanted was to blow off steam and now Maggie, who’d worked so hard to break her family’s record, had his time to beat. And, really, he wasn’t family. His time shouldn’t count. Who the hell was he kidding? Maggie put so much damned pressure on herself, she’d never see it that way.

  Jay halted. Screw keeping his feet moving. “No chance. You stopped it too soon.”

  “My ass, I did.”

  Jay snatched the stopwatch and checked the number. Dammit. He closed his eyes, then ran a hand over his face, letting out a frustrated laugh. How did these things keep happening to him?

  “It’s a fluke,” Jay said. “Forget it.”

  “I will not forget it. You have the second best overall time. Your name goes on the board right behind the SWAT guy. The top three times go on the board.”

  “No, Reid. I don’t want it. I’m a professional athlete. I don’t count.”

  “It counts, asshole.”

  He jabbed his finger. “Do not put my name on that board. Forget it. I’m not doing that to Maggie.”

  “Maggie? What’s she got to do with it?”

  “She’s been working her ass off trying to break your record and I beat her to it.”

  As pissed as he was at her, he couldn’t deal with her finding out he’d trumped her. That would make the whole mess worse. Who had the energy for that?

  Jay grabbed a water bottle from the small cooler sitting on the bench and took a huge gulp. “Keep your mouth shut about this or I’ll bust you up. I don’t care how big you are.”

  * * *

  “Tell your client to get his head out of his ass.”

  Maggie stood in the doorway of Grif’s office in the Murchison building, watching her cousin pound away on his laptop. In keeping with his own version of dressing down, he wore a light blue dress shirt and no tie. The shirt alone probably cost more than she made in a week.

  “Can you be more specific?” he asked. “I have a lot of clients with their heads up their asses.”

  Had to love her Steele cousins. She laughed and moved to the window where she liked to look out over Main Street. “I’m speaking specifically of the one in Steele Ridge.”

  Fully attuned, Grif stopped typing and spun his chair to face her. “Jay? That’s a new one. He’s one of the levelheaded ones. What’d he do?”

  Not today, he’s not. “He’s mad that I reached out to Cam about this embezzlement thing.”

  Having no idea how much Grif knew about Jay’s past—and his confiding in Maggie—she had to be careful here.

  “He’s a private person.”

  “And your cousin is an FBI agent. Who’s Cam gonna tell?”

  Grif held up two hands. “Don’t get ornery with me. I’m only saying I can see his point. Mags, he’s hounded day and night by tabloids. As a result, he has a handful of people he trusts.”

  “Yeah, well, he thinks I betrayed that trust.”

  “In a way, you did.”

  She continued to look out over Main Street and the passing pedestrians. The moms pushing strollers, the retirees grabbing coffee at the B while getting their daily steps in, all of it normal, completely carefree.

  Maggie shook her head. “First my mother. Now you.”

  “I didn’t tell you to become sheriff. Your job sucks. Sometimes you have to do things that piss people off.”

  “I definitely did that. He walked out before I got a chance to explain about the handwriting exp
ert or the DNA results. Thus, I’m here. You can give him the results.”

  Griff sat back and clasped his hands on top of his head. “Do tell.”

  “The handwriting expert says he’s fairly certain the signature was forged. He doesn’t think it’ll stand up in court because we don’t have a big enough sample, but at least he’s on our side.”

  “Good. We knew Jay didn’t sign those checks. This only proves it. What about the video and DNA?”

  Maggie sliced her hand across her throat. “Not so lucky there. No hits on either.”

  “Crap.”

  Her feelings exactly. She was upset with Jay, but he didn’t deserve what was happening to him. “I knew the video was a stretch, but was hoping the DNA might get a hit. We’re not giving up yet. There’s one more thing we can try, but I need to talk to Jay about it. It creates a problem, since he’s not speaking to me.”

  Still with his hands resting on his head, Grif made a face and a horrifying realization hit her. He knows.

  “For God’s sakes, Grif, don’t look at me like that. I just saw my mother. I know this family well enough that if she and Aunt Joanie are gossiping about Jay and me, more than likely the rest of you are, too.”

  Finally, he brought his hands down and waved her to a chair. “Sit.”

  “I don’t want to sit. I only wanted to deliver the message.”

  “Have it your way, but first of all, we’re not gossiping. My mother raised four boys, she knows lust when she sees it.”

  Lust. Excellent. Maybe that’s all this was.

  “Mags, you’re a smart girl.”

  “I am.”

  “At the risk of sounding insensitive, I don’t think I need to tell you he’s not staying in Steele Ridge. This is a temporary stop for him. We’re talking to three teams from all over the country.”

  She knew all of this. Reminded herself on the daily. But hearing it, having Grif confirm it, stung like a drop of acid on her skin. “I know. And you’re not insensitive. Believe me, I’ve been telling myself the same thing. It hasn’t stopped me from getting involved. I like him, Grif. A whole lot.”

  “He’s a good man.”

  “Who’s not staying.” She shook her head, cleared the clog in her throat. Damned emotional clutter. “Do you know where he is now?”