Slow Burn (Forbidden Heat Book 3)

by Bella Winters

  I’d just made the most epic love to the woman of my dreams, the woman I wanted for eternity by my side, and she was not really there. It had all been a damn dream.

  “NO!” I yelled in my dark room. I was breaking down then. I was losing control and I had nothing to help me. There was nothing in the world that could heal this sort of heartbreak. I felt like my love had been taken from me suddenly. It was almost, not quite, but almost as bad as if I’d lost her in a tragic accident. One minute she was here and we were happy; the next minute she was gone forever.

  Except, I still knew she was alive. As far as I knew, she was just fine. I had no way of knowing this for sure about her anymore because it had been almost a month, but I had been pretty certain that Shelly was fine.

  But I wondered how fine she was. I mean, was she at least hurting the way that I was hurting? Was she wishing that she was back with me? Did she think she might have made the worst mistake of her life? Or was she riding off into the sunset having a blast and not giving me a second thought?

  I doubted that the latter was true. But I had no way of knowing how she felt or how she was doing. I was lost without her and I would stay lost until I knew what happened to her. No matter what, I had to find her. I had to talk to Shelly. She owed me an explanation at least. You didn’t just do this to someone that you loved. You did not shut them out and just take off. That was not right.

  I resolved within myself right then that I would not rest until I found Shelly and I got the answers I needed. There wasn’t any way I could truly function until I did. This was not the way my life was supposed to turn out. It was affecting my job performance and it was affecting both my mental and physical health.

  If I found nothing, then I found nothing. But at least I was going to have the peace of mind in knowing that I tried.

  I got up and got a drink of water. I tried to go back to sleep, but it just wasn’t happening, so I fired up the laptop and went about searching for ways that I could find someone who didn’t want to be found. With the internet nowadays, it was logical that you could find someone regardless of whether they wanted to be found or not. It was almost impossible to hide.

  That’s what I was counting on anyway. I would find Shelly and I would make her talk to me. There had to be something that had driven her away, something beyond her control. I knew her better than that. She would not have left that way without a good reason. And while at times it was easier to say that she just decided to leave because she wanted to and that she didn’t care about me, at the same time I did not really believe that.

  I knew Shelly.

  And come hell or high water, I was going to find her.

  Chapter Twenty

  Shelly

  Three years later…

  I leaned back in my chair and groaned out loud. It had been a hell of a long week. Thankfully, it was Friday and I could spend some time this weekend relaxing. We’d had three fires that week and all of them had been huge. Thankfully, nobody was hurt badly and no one in the crew had been injured either. We’d saved lives and property, so we could all consider it a great win.

  Still, weeks like this left you physically exhausted and drained. In many units with such a busy week going on, the Chief would take it easy on assigning training, but Chief Josephs was different. He was a stickler. It was his belief that if you rested on your laurels then you were doing the job for the wrong reasons. And it would soon come to pass that you were really just going to phone it in next time. I wasn’t sure I understood his logic, but he was a complicated, mean spirited little man who loved to abuse his power. I disliked him for the most part, but working for him was really not that bad. He just expected hard work and results. If you gave him those things he would forever sing you praises. They would be silent praises sung with his eyes and minute facial expressions, but they would be praises nonetheless. And sometimes that was enough.

  I was lucky enough two months after Amber was born to get another job as a trainer here in Columbus. It was a city I’d fallen in love with and it had become my home over the past three years. It had seen me through my pregnancy, giving birth to the most amazing little girl (Amber was two now and walking and talking like mad), some good friends, and also a new life. That didn’t mean that I missed the old life any less, but it did help ease the pain a bit.

  There was not a day, an hour even, that I didn’t think about Gary. I wondered what he was doing now, who he was with, and I wondered how often he thought of me. That beautiful, sweet face…I stared at it on my phone every single day and every night before I fell back to sleep. I hadn’t so much as thought of dating another man, even though I’d had offers here and there. I politely declined and said I was involved with someone. And in a sense, that was true. My heart would always belong to Gary.

  Even three years later, I still wrestled with that choice that I had made, and three years later I still did not know if I’d made the right one or not. Of course, the question that Lucy pestered me with constantly was when I was going to call up Gary and tell him the truth. He had a little girl that he deserved to know about. It wasn’t right that I was keeping his child, our child, a secret from him.

  But it had been so long now. I’d waited so long that I thought there was no way I could tell him that wouldn’t just crush his heart and soul and cause him to hate me forever. Even though I’d left out of the blue like that, I still held onto the belief that Gary did not actually hate me. He was most likely just very hurt.

  I packed up my things and headed out the door locking the office behind me. I said goodbye to a few of my crew and then headed out to the car. I had to pick up Amber from preschool. She had just started and she was already doing great. It was mostly a daycare, but at least a portion of the day was spent on learning. She was the sweetest little girl and everyone who came in contact with her fell in love with her instantly. I just hoped that one day when she did meet her father, he would, too.

  But when would that be? “You’ve got to stop beating yourself up here, Shelly,” I mumbled out loud as I got behind the wheel. I fired up the engine and drove out of the parking lot headed towards the school.

  The traffic was fairly light and I was glad to get ahead of it. I had worked out my shift so that I could be done by midafternoon and actually spend some quality time with my little girl before she got too tired and sacked out sometime around six or seven. I would usually put her to bed then and she would sleep soundly through the night. She needed at least eleven or twelve hours of sleep a day or she was not happy. She could turn in to a little demon child if she didn’t get sufficient rest.

  When I picked her up, Amber was a ball of energy. She was cheering and clapping, trying to squeeze my nose and pinch my cheeks, as I strapped her into her car seat.

  “Momma, we go?” she asked with a giggle and a big clap of her hands.

  “Yes, sweetie. We go,” I said.

  “Yay!” she yelled loudly. Wow, the kid had a set of pipes on her. I wasn’t sure how such a loud scream could come out of such a little voice box, but she had it in spades.

  When I got her home, we went through our normal routine of snack time (an apple) and then we did some story time. She loved it when I read to her. Dr. Seuss was her favorite. I’d loved those books as a kid as well.

  After I read a story to her and she ate her snack, we played some games with her dollies and her little miniature vacuum, which she used in her space as I vacuumed the floor for real. It was fun when she tried to be like me. I never understood the love a parent could have for a child being so extreme, but now I totally got it. I believed that she was part of the reason I’d never told Gary about her. What if he handled the situation badly and sued for partial custody? A judge might see how I just never told him about his child as being some sort of neglect on my part and award Gary at least partial custody, or even full custody. There was just no telling with something like that. It was a terrifying thought.

  But I never thought Gary would be that type of person.
Then again I had lied to him, and he would have thought this was a big deal. This was the type of thing that Gary might actually lose his shit over. And I wouldn’t blame him one bit.

  I’d bought the new house about six weeks after Amber was born, right before I’d started work at the fire station. I’d done well with advertising, and I even enjoyed it, but my heart was not really in it and I swore I was always going to go back to what I loved. And I had done that. I hated that I had to dust off the fake resume again, but it had done its job once more. It had gotten me the job I loved. I just hoped I could hang onto it this time.

  After dinner, it was bath time. Then another story and finally bed time for Amber. Now I had the house to myself. It was too quiet. I actually dreaded this time of the evening, mostly because it reminded me of how lonely I was outside of Amber. I had some friends, several of them I worked with, and occasionally I would hire a sitter, but most of the time I just didn’t feel comfortable leaving Amber that much. I knew I was being a bit overprotective, and I figured that this feeling might leave me one day when she was a bit older. Right now, she still seemed so helpless that I hated to leave her with anyone.

  I decided to call up Lucy and see what she was into. As I did so, I grabbed beer from the fridge and sat down on the couch. Lucy answered on the second ring. “Hey, girl,” Lucy said. “What’s up?”

  “Not much,” I said. “I just put the munchkin to bed.”

  “This early? Are you one of those parents who is always going to be looking for ways to get rid of your kid? You know, like summer camp all summer, relatives on holidays, and absurdly early bed times?”

  I laughed. “No, but she is two and she needs her rest. She will sleep a good twelve hours and still be a bit tired and cranky when I wake her up. But if I let her sleep beyond that then she will be a holy terror. There is a very scientific thing going on there. I have to find that sweet spot, you know?”

  “I have no kids, so no. I have no idea what you are talking about,” Lucy replied.

  “Speaking of which, why aren’t you out with what’s his name?”

  “Really? You got to call him what’s his name? You’ve met him several times. We’ve been going out for three months now. His name is George.”

  “Ok, I’m sorry. Why aren’t you out with George.”

  “He said he was playing poker with his friends tonight,” Lucy replied.

  “He would rather do that than hang with you? That sounds weird,” I said.

  “Yeah, he is probably cheating on me,” Lucy said.

  I almost choked on my beer. “How do you always go to such an extremely illogical conclusion?”

  “I don’t think it’s that illogical. The man is doing something out of routine. If this turns into several things, then it becomes a cluster. That’s what we look for.”

  “Who is we?”

  “We… us… people who suspect they are being cheated on.”

  “Not us. I’m not in a relationship. There is no way for me to be cheated on.”

  “Ok, fine. But yes, I think it is a possibility. I always look for this. I have a history.”

  “Well, that’s because you usually go after bad boys. I’m not sure why.”

  “Because they are fun. Most nice guys are boring and predictable and whiney—“

  “And secure and stable…” I said.

  “Yeah, they have that, but bad boys are always more fun. You know I’m right.”

  “I do not know that,” I said.

  “You meet a guy who is dark, mysterious, with an edge to him, someone who will make you think that he has bad things on his mind, and he might just do some of those bad things to you.”

  I couldn’t stop laughing. Lucy always made me feel better. She was so out of it that it was hilarious.

  “That is why you always get burned, but George isn’t one of those guys. He is so good to you. That is what you deserve.”

  “Yeah, but I’m so bored with him that I’m actually relieved he isn’t bugging me this evening. That’s a problem, isn’t it? Aren’t you supposed to want to be with the one you’re with?”

  “Yeah, but not all the time, I don’t think. People need time to figure themselves out and to not be bothered by others. You need some alone time, too. But now when you have alone time you know it’s because you chose it, not because some guy is going to run off for several days and do whatever he wants and probably whomever he wants, right? Bad boys have a tendency to be always on the move.”

  “You’re right. Hey, was Gary a bad boy?”

  I was shocked that she’d changed the subject. “Um, no. I wouldn’t say that, but he had a lot of the good bad boy qualities, if that makes sense.”

  “I’m intrigued.”

  “Well, he was rugged, strong, spontaneous, fun, and he didn’t take any guff from anyone. He would put you in your place in a heartbeat, and that included me. There were very clearly defined boundaries with him. I always enjoyed that. But he was also very loving and very loyal, almost to a fault. I knew that he would never do anything to hurt me and he would never lie to me. Which, is one of the reasons I feel so horrible about the way I left him.”

  Bringing up all of the great qualities in Gary really was not fun for me at that moment. I could feel the pain knifing through my heart. It was sharp and it pulsated through me. What had I done? Why did I leave everything this way? I hated myself for doing this and it was getting worse. The longer I watched my little girl grow up without her father, and knowing it was my fault, the worse it got.

  I had to wipe the tears from my eyes. I tried to keep my crying silent, but I could tell that Lucy was picking up on it anyway. She didn’t say anything for a moment, just sitting there idly waiting for me to continue as I dealt with my crying jag. I felt so sad. I needed to do something about this, but I just couldn’t bring myself to do it. What was wrong with me?

  “Are you ok?” Lucy asked.

  “Yeah,” I said. “I’ll be fine. I just don’t know what I’m doing anymore.”

  “Why don’t you just call him? It will not be as bad as you think. All of that has been created in your mind. You are better than that, stronger than that. I know you pretty damn well and I know you can handle this. The guilt is eating you up inside. It has been for three years. I’ve seen it. You owe it to yourself and to Amber. She needs to know her father.”

  “You are right,” I said. “I have to muster up the courage somehow, the strength. I have to get through this. I just have to be strong enough to make that call. I can only imagine how his response will be. Should I even tell him something like this over the phone? Or would it be better to arrange to have him meet me in person?”

  “I think the phone call would be a good start. After that, you can gauge him on how well you think he would handle the news. There is no reason to delay it any farther. You will feel so much better after you do this.”

  “I’m not so sure about that,” I laughed. “I think I’ll probably end up with a hole in my head.”

  “You can do anything you set your mind to, and I know that you will eventually make the right decision.”

  I thanked her. We talked for a bit longer and when I ended the call with her, I stared blankly at my phone. I’d had my number changed when I started over here in Columbus, but I’d programmed his number into my phone in case I ever wanted to make that call. I hoped it was still the right one.

  I sighed and started to dial his number, but at the last moment, I stopped myself. Dammit. I couldn’t do it. What was wrong with me? It would have been so easy to just push that button and make that call, but no. I couldn’t bring myself to do it.

  But I missed Gary so much. I had dreamt of his touch, his love, and his sweet surrender for a long time. Even after three years, I still felt like I had been in his arms yesterday. I could still feel him and still smell his masculine scent on me. I wanted it again. I wanted him. Dammit, I wanted him.

  I started to call him again, and this time I was sure I would make it,
but once again the second my finger got close enough to touch the screen to select him from my saved numbers, I wasn’t able to go any farther.

  I sat the phone down and began to sob. I was so miserable without him. I was raising a little girl on my own and I knew that her father needed to be in her life, would want to be here, and that she would benefit greatly from it as well. I had a family; all I had to do was make a phone call. That was it.

  But I was terrified of how that conversation would go. I would have to admit to Gary that I’d lied to him for three years about something major in his life, possibly the most major thing he would ever experience. He had a child. He was a father. He just didn’t know about it.

  He would curse me and hate me forever. That was a given. Any normal man would react that way. I knew it. And I expected it. I deserved it. But I wasn’t sure I could stand it. What would he say? In his anger, what horrible things would he call me? I could just envision it. I could hear horrible words being thrown my way loudly in his voice and it would break my heart. It would tear me down in such a way that I wasn’t sure I would ever recover.

  I just could not stand to go through that. So, I was keeping the secret covered up for now. There would come a day when that might change, but for now that was all I could do.

  I just wished I had been given more strength.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Gary

  When the Chief called me into his office that day, I knew it was either going to be great news, or terrible news. And honestly, the way that I was feeling that particular day, I didn’t really care which news I received. It had been a crazy busy month and I was just getting over the stress of it all, hoping for a nice, long two days of rest in front of me. If those two days turned into some kind of a permanent vacation then I might have been a happy camper.