Hot Under Pressure

by Louisa Edwards

  Beck shook his head. He’d always loved the innocent pleasure she took from life—but it drove him crazy, too, the way she refused to see the world as it really was, in all its harsh, ugly reality. Especially considering what she’d gone through while their relationship was imploding.

  Let it go, he told himself, gritting his teeth. You’re over this, remember?

  “Nothing. Forget it. Congratulations on making it to the finals.” Beck thought that was safe. Polite, distant.

  “You too,” Skye muttered as the judges exclaimed over Larousse’s handmade gnocchi with pea shoots and shiitake foam. “And hey, congrats on finally finding your balls again.”

  Beck felt his head snap back on his neck as if he’d taken a clip to the chin.

  “What?”

  Skye turned to get a better look at his face, brushing the flyaway softness of her red-gold curls against his arm. Beck fought not to flinch, not to grab her and shake her, not to betray his agitation by moving a single muscle.

  “Your balls,” she said clearly, eyes flashing darker than he’d ever seen them, even that last, awful night. “You must’ve found them, if you finally got up the guts to show your face in this city again.”

  The bitterness in her voice stung like lemon juice in an open cut, and Beck had to fight with everything in him not to react.

  “Nice talk,” he said, unable to help the hoarse thickness of his voice. “You kiss your mother with that mouth?”

  She looked away, back to the judges, who were finishing up with Larousse. “I’m not the sweet kid you left ten years ago, Henry. Don’t think for even a second that I’m going to go down easy. I’m here to win, not to make new friends or relive ancient history.”

  “Don’t worry,” Beck snarled under his breath. “Once this is all over and my team has won, I’ll be ditching San Francisco and heading back to the East Coast.”

  “Perfect,” she said. “Except my team’s going to be taking home the prize money and the Rising Star Chef title. And before you run back to New York, there is one little thing I’m going to want from you.”

  The judges were thanking Larousse and sauntering down the table toward Skye as Beck said, “What’s that?”

  He didn’t know what he expected—money, maybe, or a demand that he go to hell. In the farthest, undisciplined depths of his mind, there might’ve even been a hint of a thought that maybe she’d ask him for one last night together, for old time’s sake.

  Instead, what she whispered out of the corner of her mouth just before smiling brilliantly and greeting the judges knocked Beck off balance and stopped his heart.

  “I want a divorce.”

  Chapter 2

  How in the hell did we get here?

  Skye closed her eyes; but that just made it worse—the heat of Beck beside her, the wild, masculine scent of his skin, like pine needles and the wind off the water—and suddenly, without warning, vivid memories rose up and enveloped her.

  *

  The sign said DAY USE ONLY. Skye squinted up at the amber-orange clouds over Kirby Cove.

  It was sort of daytime. Okay, maybe the sun wasn’t technically still up, but the moon and stars weren’t really out yet, either.

  Staring at the metal gate blocking the steep trail down to the cove, Skye tried to imagine what Annika Valanova would say if a Golden Gate National Park ranger called her to come bail her daughter out of park prison.

  She could practically hear her mother’s throaty, dramatic voice pronouncing all rules petty and unimportant in the face of Art.

  Annika always said the word Art like that, with the kind of emphasis that let you know she meant it with a capital A, as serious as breathing.

  For sure, more serious than a piddling little park regulation or two.

  And then there was her father. Peter Gladwell had made a career out of breaking the rules and defying expectations. If he could see Skye now, waffling around and wringing her hands over going against posted signage, he’d probably disown her.

  Promising herself she’d get the images she needed and get out of the park before dark, Skye ducked under the metal bar and hurried down the path.

  When it came right down to it, she’d rather get a slap on the wrist from a park ranger than face her parents’ disappointment when she proved, for the zillionth time, that she hadn’t inherited their dedication to Art and civil disobedience.

  An hour later, she was still perched on the flat rock she’d found near the edge of the water, sketchpad abandoned beside her as she gazed out over the bay. The lights blazed up along the Golden Gate Bridge, a bright, straight line leading to the city of Skye’s dreams.

  San Francisco.

  She sighed, curling tighter over her knees as a crisp breeze swept the rocky beach. The skyline beckoned her, so close and yet so far, promising freedom. Anonymity.

  Man, what she wouldn’t give to walk down the street and be just one of the crowd, instead of the love child of a scandalous artist and a famous playwright.

  A sharp, shocking rustle in the bushes behind her startled Skye out of her daydreams. The city might be nearly close enough to touch, but the park was still home to a surprising array of wildlife. On walks with her mom, Skye had seen raccoons and skunks, and she’d heard of campers running into bigger stuff like bobcats, coyotes, mountain lions …

  Heart drumming in her chest, Skye scrambled to her feet, eyes on the dark tangle of tall grass and thick brush up the side of the hill. Why hadn’t she stayed on the trail?

  The bushes shook again, the crackle of twigs snapping and leaves crushed underfoot reminding Skye of the hiker who’d told everyone in town she’d seen a bear last summer.

  As Skye skipped backward, the heel of one of her flat sandals slipped against the rock and she toppled off, arms pinwheeling in a desperate bid for balance. She hit the ground below the rock, air rushing out of her with a woof as her back slammed into the gravelly sand.

  “Hey! Are you okay?”

  Skye blinked up at the moon and wondered if she was having an auditory hallucination. Bears didn’t talk, right?

  “God damn,” the voice swore. “Hello?”

  Although if they did, they’d probably sound a lot like that voice, Skye thought, lifting a heavy hand to probe at the spot of warm pain radiating out from the back of her skull. The voice was deep and a little rough, with a velvety earthiness that made Skye think of thick, luxuriant fur rubbing against her skin.

  Enough with the bear stuff, already.

  “I’m okay,” she called, sitting up and putting a tentative hand to her throbbing head. “Ouch.”

  She squeezed her dazzled eyes shut and wished she dared shake her head to scatter the strange cobwebs from her brain, but she had a feeling that would hurt.

  “Ouch doesn’t sound good. Here, give me your hand.”

  Skye tipped her head back and opened her eves as the world swirled around her in a dizzy rush of stars and clouds and moon, all blocked by the tall, broad-shouldered silhouette looming over her on the rock.

  She blinked, dazzled again, but this time in a much less cerebral, more low-down-in-the-body kind of way. Skye sucked in a breath, feeling everything inside her tighten up and throb a heated pulse of excitement through her jarred system.

  The man, because he was certainly a man and not a bear, leaned over one knee and held out a long-fingered hand. Everything about him was in shadow, with the moonlight behind him, outlining him in black, but Skye could see that he was big. And dark. Not all of the darkness came from the gathering night, either—his hair made wild, black waves around his face. Even his clothes were black.

  He was like something out of a novel, Heathcliff on the moors, and that thought had Skye scrambling to her feet without taking his hand, because she’d never really understood the attraction of a surly, bad-tempered, violently aggressive thug—even if he was smokin’ hot.

  And what kind of guy wandered around off-limits parks after hours, dressed all in black?

  Conven
iently ignoring the fact that she, herself, was wandering around the park after hours, Skye dusted off her jeans-clad rump, unusually grateful for her extra padding back there. Packing a lot of junk in the trunk meant she’d have nothing worse than a bruised behind. That skinny bitch from school, Laura Hayden, would probably have broken her tailbone taking a tumble like that.

  Not that anyone other than Skye would ever be such a gigantic klutz as to fall off a perfectly flat rock.

  “I guess you’re okay, then,” the guy said, straightening up. Skye narrowed her eyes, trying to make out some details of his face. She was supposed to be an artist. She was supposed to be good at this kind of thing.

  Too bad she’d never been very good at “supposed to.”

  “I told you I was.” That sounded kind of ungrateful. She didn’t really want to antagonize the guy, did she? “Thank you for stopping by, though. It was nice of you to make sure I wasn’t dead or concussed or something.”

  There. Polite, even in the face of potential mugging.

  “Oh, I don’t know.” The earthy voice sounded a breath away from laughing at her, and Skye wondered if she’d been right about him being a man.

  Well, he was definitely male, but maybe not as old as she’d originally thought. Crossing her arms the way that squashed her too-big boobs down a little, Skye lifted her chin. “What don’t you know?”

  The guy lowered himself to the rock and kicked his legs out in front of him, leaning back on his hands. “You might still be concussed. I’d better sit here with you a while, just to make sure.”

  Skye did some more waffling. He sounded reasonable, nice even, but he was wearing black jeans and clompy leather boots, and every time he moved moonlight glinted silver off the zippers and safety pins holding his leather jacket together over a black T-shirt. He looked tough, in a way that no one Skye went to school with in tiny, artsy-fartsy Sausalito, ever looked. But as her eyes adjusted to the dim light and she began to make out his features, she saw that he was young, too. Probably not any older than she was. Maybe a year older. He could be eighteen.

  Feeling jittery and weird, Skye glanced back in the direction of the path. He wasn’t blocking her escape in any way. And with him sitting like that, she could make a break for it, no problem. Skye was shorter and rounder than cheerleaders like Laura, but she was fast.

  “I’m not going to hurt you, if that’s what you think.”

  Skye whipped around at the guy’s quiet voice. He sounded … sad. Or something. Disappointed, maybe, and guilty shame flooded Skye’s chest. He’d been nothing but nice to her, and here she was, judging him by how he dressed and looked, just like those dumb girls at school always judged Skye, with her peasant blouses and paint-stained corduroys.

  “I don’t think that,” Skye denied stoutly. “I’m sure you’re a very nice person. It’s just that it’s getting late, and I should probably head home.”

  “Whatever.” The guy shrugged and leaned back on his hands again, looking off to the side, away from Skye, exposing his sharp, chiseled profile.

  Skye felt a little like she’d fallen off the rock again, the world tumbling around her for a brief, disorienting moment before she caught her breath.

  He was gorgeous. And all big and dark and scary. And gorgeous.

  The moon was higher in the sky now, casting a blue-ish light over everything. Skye could finally make out his expression, the way resignation had twisted his hard, sensual mouth into a flat line. He tipped his head down, just a little, and the shadows lengthened over his strong, uncompromising face.

  It was the face of a man Skye would’ve said she’d never want to meet in an alley, or alone on the moors, or in a deserted public park—but as she stood there and watched him realize that she hadn’t run off yet, watched the softening of his lips and the widening of his dark eyes as he turned back to find her still there, Skye knew this guy was telling the truth.

  He’d never hurt her.

  A surge of confidence had her rounding the rock and scrambling up the loose dirt and gravel of the hill to get to the top again. She plunked herself down right next to him, pulling her knees in to her chest and giving him a sidelong look.

  “Decided I’d better not risk it.”

  Confusion narrowed his eyes and made her notice his short, masculine eyelashes, black as soot when he blinked. “Risk what?”

  “Concussion.” She shrugged. “Not to mention how dangerous it is to run in the dark over bad terrain. Knowing me, I’d find the one rain gulley and sprain my ankle, or fall off a cliff into the bay.”

  “A little accident prone, are we?” The smooth amusement was back in his voice, and a warm glow filled Skye with fluttering wings of pleasure.

  The hottest guy she’d ever seen in real life was sitting in a secluded, romantic cranny of nature with her, talking to her. Maybe even flirting with her!

  “More than a little,” she said, aware of how breathless she sounded, but utterly unable to get a good, deep gasp of air into her giddy lungs. “My mom won’t even let me in the studio with her anymore, I’ve knocked over her easels so many times.”

  “Your mother’s an artist? That’s cool.” He said it so simply, like he was interested, but didn’t really care all that much.

  Skye strove to match his detached tone. “Yeah, she paints. Sculpts a little, works with metal. Whatever she feels like when the muse takes her.”

  His mouth twitched again, quirking one cheek into winking a dimple at her, so fast she almost missed it. “The muse. Is that what you were looking for out here?”

  “Who, me? What makes you say … hey, give that back!”

  Skye snatched at her composition book, but the guy held it up, his long arms easily keeping it out of her reach.

  “Are you an artist, too?” he teased, waving the notebook.

  Jumping to her feet, Skye lunged for the book, her only thought to get it in her hands before he opened it and saw her embarrassingly horrible chicken scratch drawings.

  The guy gave it up easily with a “Hey, okay! Sorry. Shit, I ought to know better—” but having braced for a struggle, Skye overcompensated and lost her balance.

  She clutched the notebook to her chest and squeezed her eyes shut, the words “Not again!” flashing through her brain as her entire body braced for impact—before she realized she hadn’t slammed into the hard, cold ground.

  In fact, she was sprawled on something hard, but warm. A firm surface that gave when she pressed her hand to the cool leather of the guy’s jacket …

  Oh my God.

  “I’m so sorry,” she squeaked, mortified, as she tried to heave herself up off the poor guy she’d just flattened. “I must be crushing you.”

  “Don’t apologize. You’re not crushing me at all.” His voice sounded strained, though, and Skye’s cheeks went scorching hot with a mixture of arousal and humiliation. She felt enormous and ungainly, wallowing in his lap like a walrus, unable to get her balance back and get off of him—but part of her wanted to stay right where she was, for the rest of her life.

  “Besides,” he continued in that same, tense voice, “it was my fault. I was being a dick.”

  Annoyance rushed back in, overwhelming her embarrassment momentarily. “Yeah, you were. An artist’s notebook is sacred, okay? You never, ever mess with that. Ever.”

  Never mind that Skye wasn’t an artist and never would be, no matter what her parents wanted.

  “I’m sorry,” he said again. “You’re right. Hey, I’ve got shit I wouldn’t want some stranger poking through, either.”

  “Please.” She couldn’t help but scoff. This boy radiated ‘cool’ like it was seeping from his pores. “What could you have to be embarrassed about?”

  “Right.” He looked away, out over the water. “Because a guy like me couldn’t possibly have depths.”

  Now Skye felt bad again. The yo-yoing of her emotions was wearing her out. “No, I didn’t mean—”

  “Well, I have depths,” he declared, swiveling hi
s head suddenly to give her a narrow stare. “You’re not the only one with a secret notebook, all right?”

  Skye felt a quickening of excitement. Something in common! “You’re an artist, too?”

  Fake it till you make it, baby. And if it would give her more to talk about with Tall, Dark, and Deep, here …

  But he shook his head. “Nah, can’t even draw a good Spider-Man. But I … write stuff. Sometimes.”

  Skye couldn’t believe how nervous he seemed all of a sudden. But kind of defiant, too, like he expected her to laugh. Deliberately keeping her voice very serious, she asked, “What, like stories?”

  He shrugged, staring down at his fingers picking at the frayed hole in the denim over his left knee. “Not really. More like … poetry, I guess. It’s lame, I know.”

  “It’s not lame!” Skye clambered up to her knees beside him. “It’s amazing.” Bracing herself to take a flying leap, she said, “Would you maybe read me one of your poems sometime?”

  There was a swooping feeling in her belly, as if she’d tumbled off the rock again, but it stilled when he glanced up at her from under his dark lashes. His hair fell over his forehead, almost hiding his eyes, but she could still see the way they crinkled when he smiled.

  “Yeah? Maybe. Sometime. Anyway, sorry again about trying to steal your notebook. But you look really freaking cute when you’re mad. Like a kitten with its fur rubbed the wrong way.”

  Skye huffed. Great. She was a kitten. Kittens were, roly-poly little balls of fluff—definitely not sexy at all.

  Crap.

  Skye gave him a disgruntled frown. “Yeah, thanks. And thanks for keeping me from falling to my death again, but I’ve got to go.”

  “Wait, don’t leave. I promise I’ll be good. What’s your name?”

  Skye paused, torn. She didn’t really want to leave—and it wasn’t like she had a curfew or a set of parents waiting at home for a family dinner or something. “I’m Skye,” she said, bracing for recognition. “Skye Gladwell.”

  “Cool,” the boy said, sitting up. He was watching her with interest, but nothing flared in his gaze at the mention of her famous father’s last name.