Fahrenheit

by Capri Montgomery

  She didn’t understand. Mitch still wrote stories for the Times, and other big papers. Why did he feel as if he needed this one story to get back there? He could go knocking on their doors this second and they would welcome him with open arms.

  But it wasn’t just his desire to leave Palm Coast that had her questioning things. He had said they would be connected in “every way,” and she didn’t understand that. Her mind had started to form all sorts of crazy thoughts. Maybe she had those crazy thoughts because of his position on bended knee. A man didn’t just get on bended knee for any old reason—did he?

  “Think about it. You, me, a great story. You crave it as much as I do Eve. I know you do because we’re connected.”

  “I don’t know,” she shook her head.

  “Are you telling me you want to stay here in this small southern town? Palm Coast, Ormond Beach…please,” he snorted. “This paper is doing well, but it’s not worthy of your talents, Eve. Don’t waste your life away with getting stuck here. If you do, you’ll never get out.”

  “I just…”she hadn’t thought of staying in Palm Coast forever—or even Florida for that matter, but she hadn’t really given much thought to when she would be leaving. Mitch made it sound as if the ship was going to be sailing by the end of the year and she could either be on it and reach bigger destinations, or she could stay on dry land and go nowhere. “I’ll think about it.” She agreed because she really did want to go to different places with her career. She loved the job they did in Egypt, most of it anyway. She loved the thrill of the story and she wanted that adventure again. Beyond Flagler allowed for some adventurous stories, but she would be kidding herself if she thought she would ever go as far with this paper as she could go if she worked for something like the Times. But was it what she really wanted? That’s the part she wasn’t sure about. That was the part she needed to figure out. Just how much did she want to be at the top of the photojournalistic ladder? Just where exactly did she see herself going with this career? Once she knew her end goal maybe she would be ready to pursue it. She had been seriously considering Discovery or National Geographic. With her photography skills she could easily do some wildlife nature shots, or even some serious news story shots for either company.

  Her thoughts went back to Adam. She had been worried about him, worried for him. That house had been like an inferno and he was inside of it. Sure, he had made it out alive—barely in time. She thought about what might have happened and she felt her chest tighten with fear. She would never ask him to give up his job. It wouldn’t be right. It wouldn’t be fair. But seeing him today made her realize he was a lot like her brother Thomas. She realized he, just like Thomas, would put his own life in any type of dangerous place just to do the right thing. She always knew firefighters worked without putting themselves first, but knowing it and seeing it were two different things. For a brief moment she thought back to Thomas, lying in that hospital bed, trying to recover, trying to survive. She thought of the pain she felt then and she wondered if she was truly strong enough to face that pain again. But how could she not? Even if she and Adam weren’t dating, weren’t involved, if something happened to him it would still hurt her just as deeply as it would now.

  Well shoot, she thought, how on earth had she ended up falling for a guy with a suicide career? She shook her head. Love wasn’t biased, that’s how. Love? There was no way this was love. It was too soon. Love didn’t happen that fast. Did it? Now she was in trouble. Before Adam showed up at her door she knew exactly what she was doing and where she was going—almost exactly. Love was never in the cards, at least not right now, but he had put it there. Whether she wanted to admit it or not, what she felt went beyond lust and infatuation. What she felt was strong, frightening, and alarming. It was alarming because it felt so natural, as if he were the only man she would ever have those feelings for. It wasn’t just sexual desire; although she did have that, it was him, the man, the friend, the potential lover, the potential husband.

  She refrained from slapping hand to forehead. Now she really was in trouble. She had just introduced the H word. Adam had tilted her world off balance. Good, bad or indifferent, things would never be the same for her again. She thought about which sibling would be best to give her some much needed advice. Her choices were Alyssa or Thomas. She didn’t have to think long on that one. She would call Thomas because she saw mirrored in him the feelings she had now. Whether he was ready to act on his feelings right now or not, she was sure he was thinking of being married to Thena. She could see the love in his eyes every time he looked at her. She just needed to think of the best way to broach the conversation with him. Thomas may be level headed in most things, but she was still his little sister, and maybe, just maybe, this wasn’t the conversation they should have with each other. But, he was her big brother, and if she couldn’t get his advice as a man because she was afraid of the big brother in him surfacing, then maybe they were all right to think of her as a kid. She was a woman and she needed to woman-up and be one. She needed advice, and she was going to ask for it—later, she thought. Right now she needed to focus on work. She had some big decisions to make here and she couldn’t risk distraction right now.

  Eve rotated her schedule between working and trying to get things situated in her new home. There was still so much she needed to do that she was kind of glad Adam was planning to work straight through the next few days. “Work-a-holic,” she shrugged. She couldn’t say much. She worked all types of hours too.

  She wasn’t expecting Adam to show up at her home that evening, and she certainly wasn’t expecting him to show up angry. He hadn’t even waited for an invitation in. He just barged in like he owned the place.

  “Again! Seriously, Eve. Are the two of you trying to put me in the doghouse or what?”

  “I don’t pick the pictures that are used with Mitch’s stories. I just take them.” She raised her voice to match Adam’s.

  “If you’d stop taking pictures of me he wouldn’t be able to use them.”

  “Are you kidding me? This is my job, and I’m not going to stop doing my job just to appease you.”

  He was livid. Maybe his anger wasn’t with her, but it was because of her. The guys at work took it with a grain of salt. Of course they loved teasing him about it, but it was all good natured teasing. The problem was the mayor, who was now browbeating the chief with it, and that meant now the chief was becoming a problem. “I’m not asking you to stop doing your job. I’m just saying you can stop taking pictures of me.”

  “I don’t tell you how to do your job. Don’t tell me how to do mine.” She snapped at him as she moved closer he could feel the heat from her anger.

  “Take a picture of somebody else,” he yelled. “Just stop taking them of me.”

  “Then stop saving lives!” She was so close to him now that he could feel her rage literally oozing out of her body. “I take the pictures that matter, that count. And while you might not like it, your saving that little boy’s life was the story that mattered. If you don’t want your picture in the paper then stop doing things that will get it there. Stop running into burning buildings. Stop helping put out wildfires. Stop saving lives, Adam. Because the only way you’re going to avoid getting your picture in the paper is if you stop doing those things.” She tacked her hands to her hips. “So stop doing it. Stop saving lives.”

  He looked in her eyes. Something in her determination, in her kick butt and take names attitude, had him going hard as stone. Jeeze this woman could turn him on even when they were arguing. He laughed and shook his head. “What are we arguing about?” Thinking about his current state of arousal, about those plump, luscious looking lips just waiting for him to devour them, had his mind completely off course.

  She laughed. “You know, I don’t know. But I think you were mad at me for doing my job.”

  He laughed again. “Ah hell,” he reached out, although as close as she was standing to him he didn’t have to reach far, and he pulled her into
a tight embrace. “I’m sure that couldn’t have been it.” He stroked a hand up and down her spine. “I’m sorry I yelled, Eve.”

  “I’m sorry too. I guess we had that one coming, huh?”

  “Pent up energy,” he agreed. “You didn’t deserve that.”

  “It’s okay,” she pulled away just enough to look in his eyes. “Look, the next time the mayor pitches a fit just tell him if he wants his picture in the paper then all he needs to do is get out on the front line of one of these fires and his picture will one hundred percent for sure be there.” She smiled at him. He couldn’t help but smile as well. The mayor on the front line was the biggest joke of the year.

  “And how do you think he’ll take that?”

  She shrugged. “I just come up with the ideas. It’s your responsibility to figure out how they work.” Her lips turned upward into a smile that had him wanting to taste her lips even more than he had before. Since that night, their first date, they hadn’t shared a kiss, and even that night the kiss was chaste compared to what he was feeling for her. Well tonight he wasn’t going to hold back. He wanted to devour her mouth, needed it more than he needed the air he was breathing, and he planned to do it, hard, fast, slow, explorative…all of it.

  He dipped his head and covered her mouth with his. Her lips were soft, just as he remembered them to be, and her mouth…that mouth could drive him crazy with words and with action. He let his tongue slip inside, caressing her, learning every crevice of her mouth as if he possessed the right to own it so completely. He did possess the right. Whether she knew it or not he planned to marry her. That thought alone should have sent him running scared, but it didn’t. His mother had always told him when he met the right woman he would know without any doubt, without any reservation he would just know. And with Eve he knew. She was the one woman he wanted forever with. She was the only woman who intrigued him, excited him, aroused him just by simply being—and she didn’t even know it. She didn’t know the power she had. It was like a sword that could cut a man in two or save his life.

  He pulled her closer to his body, tightening his hold on her as he slipped one hand in her hair and pulled her head back, exposing her neck to his mouth where he placed succulent kisses trailing down the soft contours of her delicate column before regaining possession of her mouth. She moaned and he answered her by deepening the kiss that much more.

  When he pulled away they were both breathless, both clinging to each other as if they could never let go.

  “You have to stop kissing me like that,” she whispered breathlessly in his ear. “I might forget how to breathe if you don’t.”

  “I know how to administer mouth to mouth,” he grinned. She laughed a husky laugh.

  “I bet you do. But what if my heart stops before you can breathe into me?”

  “I know CPR too.” He let his hand slide up and down her back.

  “Well then I guess I have nothing to worry about.” She kissed his cheek before pulling out of his embrace. He reluctantly let her go.

  “Can you stay for dinner?”

  “Yeah. The chief let me leave early.”

  “Oh, Adam. I hope you’re not getting in too much trouble…”

  “No. It’s not that. I have a lot of hours logged and overtime is stacked high on my time card right now. The budget won’t allow for more. So, I have the rest of the week off.” He smiled at her. “I wonder what I’ll do with it.”

  “Dinner,” she caressed his arm. “For starters. Then I can figure out how to help you enjoy your time off.”

  “Yeah? What did you have in mind?”

  “A little time at the beach could be fun. Marine Land, not Flagler. And maybe a trip into Orlando for a little shopping.”

  He laughed. “Shopping isn’t exactly what I want to do with you, Eve.”

  “I know, but I need to see if I can find a comforter to match these drapes.” She pulled him into the bedroom, where only an air mattress sat taking up space.

  “Didn’t you just buy a comforter?”

  “Yes,” she nodded. “But it doesn’t match the drapes—and I love these drapes. See,” she pulled a deep wine red set of drapes from the packaging. “I like these because they have the energy efficient backing. It blocks out light, keeps down on noise and keeps the heat and cold from seeping through the windows into the room. But I can’t find bedding to match up here.”

  “I can take you down to Orlando.”

  “I still have the rental. I can drive.”

  “I have a truck. If you buy a lot we’ll have more room with my truck.”

  She shrugged. “Good point.”

  “Now, about the beach. If we go will you be wearing a bikini?” He wiggled his eyebrows.

  “I might be so inclined; if you’re good.”

  “Yeah;” his voice lowered. “And what are you planning to do if I’m bad? Spank me?”

  “Nah, you’d like that too much.” She took his hand and led him out of the bedroom. “I’ll think of something.”

  Mitch loved the thrill of the story. Clandestine meetings with sources was the thing that really got his blood pumping through his veins. It had been a long time, too long, since he had really had this type of action. He was well aware that people still thought he was the big cheese in reporting, but his absence from places like New York or D.C. had put a dent in his negotiating power. There used to be a time when he could walk into a CNN studio and everybody knew his name, bent over backwards to cater to him, and wanted him for the story. Now he was lucky if the receptionist knew him. Some of that was just the change in staff, but the rest of it was the change in his status. He was just a small town news man now. Sure, Beyond Flagler had some killer opportunities for big stories, but the paper was nothing in comparison to the bigger New York players. He needed to get back there.

  His work in Egypt had pushed him back into the sites of some of the New York power players, but, and there was always a but, the real story had been the pictures. “She comes with you or you don’t come at all,” Derrick Owen, head of National Affairs—a network of print and television media that rivaled the Times and CNN—had told him point blank what he thought of him. Back in the day just being Mitch Decker had been enough. Now, he needed pint sized Eve McGregor to go with him to get through that door.

  He liked Eve. She was cute, would probably be a wildcat in the sack if she ever gave up that virgin ‘till marriage stance she had adopted; and she was, by far, one of the best photojournalist he had met in years. He knew from the moment she had interned at Beyond Flagler that she had potential to be great and so he snatched her up. He made sure she was assigned to him during her internships. He made sure she felt a strong, highly compelling reason, to come back and work in the small town south when, had she been thinking bigger, she would have taken her portfolio straight to the Times and they would have given her a job in a heartbeat. Instead, he had assured her that the two of them, his stories and her pictures, would make a knockout combination. She had known of his work, knew of the awards he had won, the stories he was so well-known for, and she jumped at the chance to work with the “Mitch Decker.”

  What he liked most about her wasn’t just her good looks. He could shag the receptionist and be done with it. No, what he liked was her talent, and her willingness to get the story. She had put herself in the thick of some heart-stopping dangerous situations just to get a photograph, and he loved that. She wasn’t a sissy photographer. She was a hardcore photojournalist who was going places. He just needed her to help him get back to where he wanted to be before she realized just what opportunities she had awaiting her.

  This story was going to help him get back. Forget the fires. Those were small fries compared to what he was working on now. That apartment complex bomb had nothing to do with the recent string of fires. If he could uncover the truth, expose a bigger story…God, he would be back on top so fast it would make their heads spin. He was ready. He needed this. When the cops pushed the bomb off on the arsonist he knew
they were wrong. He figured they probably knew it too, so he poked around trying to find out if there was a secret investigation going on. To his surprise, there wasn’t one. Maybe he could crack this story wide open and show up how stupid the local authorities were all at the same time.

  He thought he had hit a dead end until he got a call from an unidentified woman. She agreed to meet him, to divulge what she knew, but she wouldn’t do it in daylight. She wanted safety, and to her that meant meeting under the pier under the cover of night. He shrugged it off. He had, without a doubt, met stranger people in far more dangerous places, at far more dangerous hours of the night for a story. She seemed harmless.

  So when he drove to Flagler Beach and parked he had no reservations. His blood was pumping hard. His adrenaline was rushing. This was going to be the story to put him back on top. Well, he would of course need Eve. That was still a requirement for the job he wanted. He was close to getting her to be able to think the decision to leave Palm Coast was hers. He needed her to believe, even if only for a little while, that he was doing her a favor by taking her with him, and not the other way around. The only complication right now was that firefighter. Before him, Eve would have never thought twice about an opportunity like this. When he mentioned going to London and covering the riots she was ready to go. The only thing that stopped them was that the paper wouldn’t go for it. They wanted him to stay behind and cover the fires. As if the fires were the big story! Nobody outside of the area even cared about the fires. They had been burning for months and not one stitch of national coverage had arisen. He had to get out of there. He had to come back. And he had to do it this year. His window of opportunity was closing—fast—and he couldn’t have that.

  “Mitch Decker?”

  “Yeah,” he looked at the short, slender woman in front of him. She had bleached blond hair with a hint of black roots showing. He resisted the urge to grin. She was attractive enough—except for the hair. She should have gone a shade of blond darker because the bright, almost yellow, color she had just wasn’t working with her alabaster skin tone.