Turn Up the Heat

by Kimberly Kincaid

  Bellamy sighed, her eyes starting to sting despite her pride screaming like a banshee for them to knock it off. “He lied to me,” she finally managed on little more than a whisper.

  Holly’s eyes widened with concern. “Oh, sweetie. After Derek? What a jerk.”

  “Believe me. What Derek did is nothing compared to this.”

  “God, B.” Jenna lowered her half of the éclair, uneaten, to grab Bellamy’s hand. “What did Shane lie to you about?”

  Bellamy’s voice quavered despite her very best efforts to kick it in the ass.

  “Everything.”

  Shane pulled up to the cabin, watching the midmorning sunlight stream around the trees as he pondered his words for the billionth time in the last twelve hours. He palmed his keys and made his way to the front door, pulse pounding with every step he took toward the tiny porch. Bellamy was just beyond the scuffed wooden threshold, maybe waiting to give him the cold shoulder, or worse, throw something at him. Not that he didn’t deserve it. Still, Shane was long overdue to tell her the truth; the words banged around his head in an effort to escape.

  Please, God, let them make sense.

  “Bellamy?” Shane squinted into the cabin, eyes adjusting too slowly to the dark interior. The quiet that Shane normally craved pinged off the amber log walls, making the hairs on the back of his neck stand at attention. “Bellamy?” he tried again, and the silence grew more eerie and twice as loud. Shane bolted through the stillness of the main room, past the wide-open bathroom door and into the empty bedroom. His bed was made, his cabin utterly still, and any sign that Bellamy had ever been there had vanished into thin air.

  Shane’s brain railed in a silent yell. Maybe she’d tried the trails behind the cabin to try to chill out. But then where was her stuff? The suitcase that had taken over what little room existed next to Shane’s dresser just last night was now gone, and the empty space where her things had been only hours before wrenched a hole in his chest.

  In a daze, Shane stumbled back into the main room. The sink sat, empty and clean, just like the rest of his small kitchen. Hadn’t there been dishes? The memory of Bellamy, so sultry and unassumingly beautiful as she stood in front of the sink full of bubbles assaulted his mind, and he sank into the recliner from weak knees. The answering machine blinked a knowing bright red, and Shane pressed the button as he repeated a silent, one-word prayer in his head.

  Please, please, please . . .

  “You have . . . one . . . new message . . .”

  The sound of Shane’s own voice, weary and soft, met his ears, and his heart dropped into the pit of his stomach. It was the message he’d left Bellamy earlier—God, how long ago had that even been? But she’d never heard it.

  She was gone.

  “Okay, think. Where the hell could she be?” He stalked over the floorboards, his mind tumbling with possibilities. Each one turned out to be more absurd than the last, and finally, he snatched up the phone, gripping it in frustration. He’d just call her cell phone until she picked up. Sure, it was a total twelve-year-old move, but what choice did he have? He was that fucking desperate. Shane settled into the Barcalounger, resolve hardening, when the phone rang in his hand, startling him clear out of his mind.

  “Jesus!” he barked, flipping it over to check the caller ID.

  Midtown Mazda. A chill rippled up his spine, leaving a bitter taste in his mouth on its exit path.

  “Hello?”

  “Oh, uh, sorry, is this . . .” There was a pause and the sound of some papers rustling on the other end. “Grady’s Garage on Pine Mountain?”

  Shane frowned until he remembered forwarding the garage phone to the cabin. “Sorry, yeah. This is Shane. Can I help you?”

  “I’ve got an order here to pick up a 2009 Miata from you, kind of a weird request. Owner said you’re replacing the tranny, and she wants us to tow it back here when you’re done. Ring any bells?”

  Shane’s entire universe pitched at an odd tilt, and he had to close his eyes just to keep his balance even though he was sitting down. “Yeah,” he said, trying to keep his voice steady. “I know the car. You said you have an order to pick it up?”

  “Yeah, a, uh, hold on . . . Bellamy Blake called it in a little while ago. Just between me and you, the tow is going to cost her a ridiculous amount of cash, but she was pretty clear she couldn’t leave the city to go get it and wanted it towed when you’re done. Anyhow, you got a time frame on it so I can get this on my books?”

  If Bellamy was making arrangements to have her car brought to the city, it was a good bet she wasn’t just blowing off steam locally. Somehow, she’d gotten the hell out of Dodge without hearing his side of the story. For a second, Shane was tempted to tell the guy that there had been a huge mix-up and that he should forget coming to get her car. If Shane drove the frickin’ thing to the city himself, then Bellamy would have to see him.

  But he couldn’t break his vow, especially not when his father had the upper hand. There was too much at stake for him to go back to Philadelphia now, and he couldn’t leave Pine Mountain. He couldn’t leave Grady.

  If he crossed those city limits, everything would change.

  The guy on the other end of the phone cleared his throat, jolting Shane back to the reality of the cabin and the finality of his next words.

  “I’ll be done with it by Monday. We’re open from nine to five. Just call me when you’re on your way.”

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  “What do you think? Not enough oregano, right?” Bellamy set her teeth over her bottom lip in determination and eyeballed the stockpot of sauce on the stove. Yeah, definitely more oregano.

  “Are you kidding me with this? You need to sell this stuff and make a fortune. It’s amazing,” Holly said, swiping a hunk of crusty bread into the bubbling pot.

  “Hrmph.” Bellamy frowned. She measured some oregano into her hand, crushing the dried herbs against her palm with a spoon before tossing them into the pot. “Meatballs should be done soon.”

  “Don’t take this the wrong way, but can you please kiss and make up with Shane? You haven’t stopped cooking all afternoon, and I think I’ve already gained five pounds over your breakup,” Jenna said, giving Holly a gentle nudge to the ribs. “Quit hogging the pot, would you?”

  Bellamy put on a nonchalant expression, giving the new version of the sauce a taste before bending down to the storage cabinet in her kitchen island. “First of all, you can’t break up with someone you were never with in the first place. And secondly, I’m not even going to see him again, much less make up with him.” Where the hell was that pasta attachment for her stand mixer? She knew she’d stashed it around here somewhere.

  “So you’re just going to let the dealership in the city go get your car and then what? You’ll mail Shane a check and that’s that?” Holly’s look broadcast her doubt, but Bellamy refused to budge.

  “That about sums it up, yeah. A-ha! I knew this thing was in here.” She gave the pasta attachment a nimble yank to unearth it from beneath her waffle iron. Bellamy stood up just in time to catch the tail end of the eyebrow-lift Holly and Jenna had exchanged over her head.

  “Don’t,” she warned without elaborating. She should’ve known better than to spill her guts to them. How was she supposed to forget about Shane if Holly and Jenna kept bringing him up?

  “Don’t what?” they chorused.

  “Don’t start.” Bellamy dragged the stand mixer from its perch on the granite countertop and started putting on the pasta attachment with a series of precise tugs for emphasis. “Everything out of Shane’s mouth is a lie, so talking to him would be a waste of time.” She felt her chest tighten up with sure, steady fingers of pressure around her ribs, and took a steadying breath to diffuse the sensation. No way was she going to start crying again. The huge handful of Kleenex she’d gone through as she told Jenna and Holly everything the first time had been embarrassing enough. No, she was done. Done with crying, and done with Shane Griffin.

&
nbsp; Her chest hitched. Fucking traitor.

  “You have every right to be mad at him.” Jenna punctuated her words with the bob of her blond head. Well, good. Her friends were on her side after all.

  “But are you sure he’s not worth hearing out?”

  Bellamy’s lips popped open in surprise, which didn’t waste much time morphing into anger. “Yes, I’m sure! Why would I want to do something as stupid as that?”

  “Because I think you’re in love with him, and I’d hate to see you lose a chance to be with the guy if he loves you, too.”

  “Whoa,” Holly whispered, giving Bellamy a chance to recover from the bolt of shock arrowing through her.

  Nope. Not happening.

  “Clearly, he doesn’t love me, since he couldn’t even be bothered to tell me the truth about who he really is.” Bellamy’s voice was more wooden than she’d have liked, but at least she was able to force the words from her mouth. Of course Shane didn’t love her. After all, he was the one who had said they should just spend the week together. She was the one who’d jumped the gun, following her foolish heart instead of facing facts.

  “Come on, B. He spent all that time with you, and he even asked you to stay with him. Don’t you think that counts for something?” Holly asked with a sheepish glance.

  “I don’t think any of it matters now. And it’s not like he’s trying to call me to explain things, anyway.” This little truth had picked its way into Bellamy’s brain somewhere between stewing the tomatoes and making the meatballs, and it lodged itself in good and tight.

  Shane didn’t want to talk to her.

  Fine and dandy, her pride snapped. That makes two of us.

  “Sweetie, I think Jenna’s right. Maybe you should give him another chance.”

  The ridiculous tremor in Bellamy’s chest started up again, as if to agree. Oh, for the love of all things holy, she couldn’t be yanked in two different directions forever. It was time to end this, once and for all.

  “Another chance at what? Lying to me some more? Look, the reality is this. No matter how I feel about it, what Shane and I had is over. All the maybes in the world aren’t going to change that.”

  As if on cue, Bellamy’s cell phone began to ring.

  “You look like hell.” Shane’s father stood in the entryway to the tiny hospital waiting room, his perfectly pressed dress pants and cashmere sweater making him look only casually imposing instead of all-out intimidating.

  Shane glanced down at his own attire, pushing aside the hollow thud in his chest. Funny, he’d heard that once already today, and that was before he’d taken a shower and changed into clean jeans.

  “Thanks.” Shane’s tone suggested how little he meant it. The last thing he was in the mood for after being jilted by a girl who hated his guts enough to leave without saying good-bye was another tangle with his father.

  “Is Grady settled in his new room?” His father tipped his dark head toward the hallway, and Shane noticed he was more gray at the temples than he had been last year.

  He shrugged. “Yeah. They took him for another ECG, and the doctor’s in with him now. Figured I’d give them some privacy.” Shane crossed his arms over his chest, adrenaline perking through him like an antsy pre-argument wake-up call.

  “I see.” His father sat down across from him, leaning his forearms on his thighs. “You and I are long overdue for a conversation, don’t you think?” The older man’s gray stare pierced Shane’s dark one, and for a moment, neither of them moved.

  “If your version of a conversation involves telling me what to do with my own life, I’m not really interested. You’ll get your money soon enough. I never planned to skip out on my debt. But I’m not coming back to the city.”

  His father’s mouth was drawn into a humorless smile, a network of worry lines creasing around his eyes. “You really think I care about the money?”

  Shane pulled up in shock. “Yeah.” Wasn’t that kind of the point of his father trying to drag him back to Philadelphia in the first place? He’d gone so far as to pay off Shane’s loan just to back him into a corner, for God’s sake.

  “You don’t even know what you don’t know,” his father muttered with a shake of his head.

  “What did you just say?” Shock prickled through Shane, and he stared, wide-eyed, at his father. Boy, you don’t even know what you don’t know. Grady’s gravelly voice rumbled through Shane’s mind.

  His father frowned, and he brushed off the question. “I don’t care about the money, Shane. I paid the loan off because I knew you were struggling. I thought . . .” He broke off for a breath, steepling his fingers together over his knees. “I thought it would be a wake-up call for you to come home. Clearly, you don’t want to leave.” A flicker crossed his features, one that his father was quick to erase, but Shane caught it nonetheless.

  It looked like remorse.

  “No, I don’t. This is where I belong.” He’d meant to deliver the words with a sting in his voice, but they didn’t come out that way.

  “I suppose it might help you to know why this is difficult for me.” His father drew in a breath while Shane did a terrible job of keeping the shock from his face.

  “People who are raised in small towns either love them or can’t wait to leave them. There’s really no middle ground. Your grandfather’s a lifer.” A small, wry smile crossed his father’s lips, but it didn’t last. “But I never was. The old man never quite understood why I wanted to leave Pine Mountain for the city. He’s a man of a simpler life, but I wanted more. At the time, and for a long time, I thought what I wanted was a better life. So the minute after I graduated, I left. My mother recognized that I just wasn’t cut out to stay here, but your grandfather could never quite come to grips with the whole thing.

  “So when she died, I felt there was nothing left here for me. My father disapproved of my choices, and I wasn’t interested in defending myself. I was an adult, with a career I’d worked hard for and loved, but to him, it never made sense. So I stayed angry, and stayed away. But I was foolish.”

  His last words snapped Shane’s head up, just in time to see that odd smile cross his father’s lips again.

  “You were what?”

  “I was foolish,” his father repeated. “All that time, I saw disapproval. But really, it was disappointment that my passion was for something else. Only I was too stubborn to recognize it, and he was too stubborn to point it out. Until today.”

  His father’s words scattered around him, all the pieces falling into place with startling clarity, and Shane kept listening, too mired in shock to speak.

  “In hindsight, I think I always knew you didn’t have a love for the law like I do; I just didn’t want to admit it. Don’t get me wrong. You were good at it, no doubt. But you never got that light in your eyes for it like you did when you talked about that car. And when Grady had his first heart attack, you were so quick to come out here, and even quicker to stay. I was too proud to admit that your passion might be for something else, for that simple thing that I left here. Let’s face it, working at the firm isn’t exactly low-pressure. I thought you were taking an easy out. But last night you showed me that’s not the case.”

  “Why didn’t you just tell me all of this when I left?” Shane asked, his mind buzzing.

  This time his father’s smile was more genuine. “Because I was mad. We Griffins tend to be a bit hotheaded and stubborn, in case you hadn’t noticed. I thought your grandfather would get back on his feet, you’d get being a mechanic out of your system, and things would go back to normal. But then you didn’t come back, and I said I’d be damned if I was coming out here to get you.”

  His father exhaled a long breath. “When the bank called my office last week and I found out how you’d been struggling to repay your loan all this time, I’ll admit that I initially paid it off so you’d owe me. I really thought . . .” He paused, letting out a gruff sigh. “I thought it was just the thing to make you come to your senses and snap out of it.
But I can see now what you’re made for. It’s not disapproval on my face when I look at you, son. It’s disappointment that I didn’t pass on my love for the law.”

  “I don’t know what to say,” Shane managed to breathe.

  “You can start by thanking the old man. He’s the one who pointed it out to me, even though I didn’t want to hear it. He said he couldn’t live with himself if another twenty years went by and two more Griffins didn’t make amends.”

  Make it right . . . make it right . . . Jesus. Was this what Grady had meant last night? And all that talk about making amends?

  Suddenly, it made all the sense in the world. Shane hadn’t realized it, but he’d spent the last fourteen months, hell, the last seven years, covering up who he really was. It was time for the out loud truth, no matter what the consequences.

  “I owe you an apology,” Shane said, and although he expected the words to stick to his throat, they flowed easily. “I should’ve been honest with you from the beginning, but I didn’t think you’d understand.”

  His father arched a dark brow. “Before now, I doubt I would’ve.”

  “I will pay the loan back,” Shane insisted.

  His father chuckled, and in that moment, Shane could see something familiar cross the man’s features. There was no rasp in his father’s laugh, but it was a reflection of Grady’s nonetheless.

  “I know you will.”

  “Grady told you. About the garage.”

  His father nodded once. “He did. All things considered, it makes sense for you to run the place. After all, it’s a family business.”

  “And you’re okay with that?” Shane’s eyebrows puckered, his face laced with doubt.

  “I’m not going to lie to you. It’ll take a bit of time for me to be truly okay with it. But it’s the right thing, for you and for Grady.”

  “I’m just not cut out for the city, Dad. I’m sorry, but I’m never coming back.”