Too Hot to Handle

by Aleah Barley

  “The Mona Lisa?”

  “No, the other one.”

  “Whistler’s Mother?” Jack’s mind scrambled, trying to come up with possible paintings. “Girl with a Pearl Earring?”

  “Marilyn Monroe. With the colors. Who’s it by? Andy Warhol?”

  “That’s not a painting. It’s a print.”

  For a moment, Jack almost believed the act she was putting on. Just another kid from the inner city who stole cars instead of cracking library books. He caught himself, though. Honey might have shown up to high school with a knack for getting into trouble, but she was smart. More intelligent than most of the trust-fund brats he’d grown up with. And she’d gotten a first-class education at the academy.

  “You know you don’t have to do that, right?” He reached out to smooth a lock of strawberry hair back behind her ears. “You don’t have to pretend you don’t know things. I know how smart you are, Honey.”

  “I’m not that smart.” Her laughter was a little too loud. “Not smart enough to stay away from Logan Burrows. I knew better.” She smacked her palm on the floor, a little too hard. “I knew he was trouble. They’re all trouble. All those rich, spoiled brats from Black Palm Park who think the rules don’t apply to them. Those trust-fund types think they can get away with whatever they want.”

  Rich, spoiled brats. Trust-fund types. Jack’s entire body stilled. There was a force behind her words—more than annoyance. Real anger. Rage at the system she didn’t quite understand and the people she’d been forced to deal with for so many years.

  He was one of those people. Captain of the high school soccer team, dating the head cheerleader, prom king. He knew he’d had certain advantages, but he’d never known how much Honey resented him for it. “You don’t like rich guys?”

  “As far as I’m concerned, the world would be a better place if they were all at the bottom of the ocean.”

  “I never knew you felt so strongly about it. A lot of your friends have money. You chose to attend Black Palm Park Academy.”

  “Those people aren’t my friends. The only reason I went to the academy is because—” She caught herself. “Never mind. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said anything.”

  “No.” Jack couldn’t let her stop. Not while the force of her words was making her shake with something between anger and despair. “Honey.” An emotion stirred in his chest, something he’d never felt before. Not about Honey.

  It was worry. A deep sense of caring. He wanted her to be all right. No matter what else happened, he needed her to be okay. It wasn’t only her physical safety he cared about, either. Her emotional well-being mattered to him. “You can talk to me about anything.”

  This wasn’t something that could be patched with antibacterial ointment and gauze. The only thing that would help Honey was to talk this thing out. Even if it made him feel like death warmed over. “Why did you go to the academy?”

  “When my father died—” Honey bit her lip. “My father’s death knocked me sideways. I had a hard time dealing with it.” She swallowed a ragged breath. “He wasn’t a criminal. Did you know that? Everyone knows the Moores are rotten to the core. As bad as they come. He was a college professor. He taught English at UCLA. Byron and Shelley. He wrote poetry.”

  Poetry. Jack wouldn’t have guessed that. Not in a million years.

  The entire time he’d known Honey, she’d always been her grandfather’s little girl. Jack had never thought about the man who’d given Honey the Moore name.

  A college professor who wrote poetry.

  “Was it any good?”

  “He got published in some anthologies. He’d just finished a book when he died. Orange Blossom Innocence by Henry Moore.” Honey’s voice shook. “He walked into a liquor store robbery. Freak thing. The thief was some druggie looking to finance his next high. No way that anyone could have known. One moment my dad was there, and the next I’m moving from Brentwood to the Valley.”

  “It must have been a hard transition.”

  Honey swallowed hard, choking back a sob. “I started acting out, misbehaving and skipping school. I failed eighth grade entirely. They were going to hold me back. Then my grandfather goes out one morning, and when he got back I was enrolled in the academy. Full scholarship.”

  “Do you know how he managed that?”

  “No, but I know Logan Burrows had something to do with it.”

  It made a strange kind of sense. Logan’s name was synonymous with money and power. If anyone could break the rules to get a girl with bad grades and a worse reputation into Black Palm Park Academy, it was Burrows. It would also explain the bonus he’d given Honey for bringing in his car. They had history together.

  “You were lucky.”

  “Luck didn’t have anything to do with it. Logan did. They forgave my bad grades, found me a tutor, and let me skate through classes until I got my feet back under me. You helped with that.”

  Had he? He’d never been able to tell what Honey was thinking—not the week they’d been together, and definitely not afterward. Not when she’d been more interested in making his life a living hell than pouring out her heart.

  “I hated it. Everyone in that school—they all knew I didn’t belong. My family didn’t have money, power, or influence. We weren’t from Black Palm Park, and no one ever let me forget it.”

  The experience Honey described was completely foreign to Jack. But then, he’d belonged, in every sense of the word. He’d never really thought about what might happen to the kids who didn’t. “I never treated you like an outsider.”

  “You were different,” she said. “You were special.”

  If he was so special, why had she turned him away after one kiss? It was a question he’d wanted the answer to for years.

  Nine days. Three dates. One kiss. Then his entire world had turned upside down.

  He’d asked her once why she’d left him, but she’d never answered. The possibilities were endless. Insanity, homosexuality, a vow of celibacy.

  Or he was a really bad kisser.

  Jack’s cell phone rang, providing the distraction he needed. He leaned sideways to pick it up off the floor, wincing at the pain in his ribs. “Hello?”

  The call was from a doctor he knew at St. Anne’s emergency room, where the other car’s driver had been taken after the morning’s crash. The doctor was calling to tell him who the victim was: a low-level thug. Not a name that Jack recognized. Not the kind of person who could orchestrate a villainous plot involving fires on two sides of town. The sort of guy who could be hired on a street corner and trusted to do something bad.

  The police weren’t interested in him. With Jack’s encouragement, they’d classified the morning’s crash as an accident. The most they could charge the thug with was reckless driving.

  A broken collarbone and a mild concussion meant the driver was one bad guy who wouldn’t be bothering them again for a while, but he could still use the phone. Jack could only imagine the kind of information he would pass on to his compatriots. Detailed descriptions—maybe even a license plate number or a name.

  Jack was a police officer, an active member of the community.

  He was in the phone book.

  “We need to go.”

  “Where?”

  “Someplace safe. Someplace with security.” His head was pounding. He desperately needed a cup of coffee and an Advil. Or twenty. There was only one place he could think of where he knew they’d be safe.

  “You’re not going to like it.”

  Chapter Eight

  Honey Moore had been going to hell for most of her life. Sitting poolside at the Ogden manse meant she’d arrived.

  Jack had promised he’d be gone less than half an hour, taking a cab back to the Valley to pick up the Super Bee. She could wait inside.

  She wasn’t a kid anymore. In another couple of months, she’d be twenty-eight, a fact too bizarre to believe. But walking through Jack’s palatial childhood home, she’d felt like she was five
years old and someone was about to yell at her for getting smudges on the polished table or—worse yet—breaking a vase.

  At least no one here was trying to kill her.

  After forty minutes spent pacing through the house, she’d gone outside. Now she was stretched out on a wooden lounge chair in a scarlet one-piece bathing suit the housekeeper had insisted on finding for her. It probably cost more than her truck.

  The pool was beautiful—clear blue water laid out like a blanket, long enough to make an Olympic swimmer happy—but she was more interested in the view. Across the backyard, down a small hill, and over a six-foot fence, Logan Burrows’s castle smoldered ominously.

  She’d never realized how close the two men lived before.

  She’d never seen Jack’s house from this perspective before, either. Some other time, she might have snooped in his childhood bedroom, looking for any indication that they had similar interests.

  But that probably wouldn’t be the polite thing to do. For the moment, she was content playing the guest, enjoying the relative safety of the Ogden mansion, and wondering what the hell she’d gotten herself into.

  Retrieving the Volvo for Logan was supposed to have been an easy job. More money than she’d ever seen in one place for a few hours’ work.

  Too good to be true.

  Her grandfather had always said that if something seemed too good to be true, it was probably a setup. “Run away, baby girl,” he’d chortled. “Something seems too easy, it means the police are around the corner waiting to bust your butt.”

  He should know. The old man had been taken down for everything from illegal discharge of a firearm to possession of stolen property. Not the best role model in the world, but the only one she’d had. He’d taught her loyalty to family and friends, a mean right hook, and always to follow her heart, no matter where it led her.

  The night Jack drove down to the Valley in the Super Bee for their big movie date, her grandfather had been waiting, preparing to pass judgment on a rich brat who was too big for his britches. He’d just ended up laughing. He’d liked Jack. He’d never understood why Honey had turned the older boy away.

  She’d never told him.

  That was something else Honey had learned from her grandfather. How to keep secrets from the people she loved. Especially if it was for their own good.

  The fire had been out for hours, but police cars and fire engines were ringing the Burrows house in every direction. Police officers walked purposefully around the property. Billionaires in Malibu were more important than retired car thieves in the Valley.

  For a brief moment, she considered going down there. Snooping.

  With her luck, she’d be caught crossing the yellow line and arrested for obstruction of justice.

  She stayed where she was and unzipped her backpack. She dumped the contents out onto the lounge chair’s white webbed seat. Photographs and the jewelry box. Her fingers skimmed across thick paper and thinning velvet.

  The envelope had settled near the bottom.

  The paper was good quality, heavy. Creamy cotton rag. A red wax stamp with the initials “L.B.” sealed it shut, and a message crossed the back flap in elegant script.

  Honey, please keep this safe. With apologies for past behavior. Logan.

  The envelope had been waiting for her when she’d dropped the Volkswagen off at the house, a paper clip securely attaching it to her check for services rendered. She didn’t know what “past behavior” the old man was talking about or why he’d suddenly elected her his secret keeper, but that hadn’t stopped her from taking it.

  There was something about the fancy paper and the weight of the envelope that made her think it was important. The heavy wax seal on the back said it wasn’t supposed to be opened.

  Maybe if she’d broken the seal, she’d know what was going on. Instead, she’d put it in her safe and waited for Logan to call.

  Please keep this safe.

  That meant he’d ask for it back. Didn’t it?

  Breaking the seal with her thumbnail, Honey opened the envelope and dumped the contents out onto her lap. A sheaf of papers, small type crowded onto sharp white pages. Her eyes took a minute to focus.

  The last will and testament of Logan Burrows.

  Air disappeared from her lungs. This definitely wasn’t what she’d expected. Why the hell would Logan give her a copy of his will?

  She scrambled through the pages, trying to concentrate, but it was confusing. Logan Burrows was a rich man with a battery of lawyers. He could afford to leave a will full of unfamiliar legal terms.

  Something on the fourth page caught her eye. Honey Moore. Her name, right there in black and white.

  To Honey Moore, I leave the trust that I have established on her behalf, my house in Black Palm Park along with its contents, and my collection of fine automobiles.

  “Honey.”

  She jerked to one side, shoving the papers into her backpack at the same time. Not just any papers. A will that gave her everything she’d never wanted.

  That wasn’t exactly true. She could have a lot of fun with Logan Burrows’s “collection of fine automobiles,” but the house would weigh around her neck like an anchor.

  “Honey,” Jack repeated, and this time it wasn’t her name at all. It was an endearment spoken in the husky tones of a lover.

  “You shouldn’t be out here.” He closed the distance between them in a matter of seconds. “Someone could see you.”

  “I’m too far away,” she insisted, even as fear made it hard for her to breathe. She wasn’t used to being a victim. Someone who couldn’t show her face without risking imminent danger or—worse—death. “No one would notice.”

  “I would notice.”

  “You always notice me.”

  It was supposed to be a toss-off, a snappy statement made to annoy him—but it was also the truth, real and unavoidable. It hung heavy in the air, making Honey suddenly aware of the tension that snapped and crackled between them.

  She’d been angry with Jack for so long—angry with him because he had money and opportunities she could only imagine. Since last night, she’d let go of that and started appreciating him on a deeper, more fundamental level.

  He always saw her, whether she was sneaking in someplace she didn’t belong or walking down the street.

  If she really inherited the house down the hill, he’d be able to stand up here and watch her swimming in the pool. Just thinking about it was enough to make her body tingle.

  She’d never been much of an exhibitionist, but she could imagine standing on the patio, shimmying out of a pair of shorts, tugging her T-shirt off over her head, and smiling with the knowledge that Jack could see it all.

  “How’s the car?” she asked.

  “Not bad. I made it all the way out here.”

  “Black Palm Park. The middle of nowhere.” Up in the Malibu hills, they were isolated, cut off. “You sure we’re safe here?”

  “Sure.” Jack shrugged, powerful muscles rippling beneath his black suit. He’d changed into his detective outfit before they left the apartment. “This isn’t the Valley. No homegrown bad guys. Out here, they’d have to import thugs, and I’ve put the security guards at the gate on notice.”

  “I’m sure there’s some bad element in the neighborhood.” Someone with the guts to burn stuff down and the stupidity not to know what he was taking. “Maybe a kid who needs money to pay for something he shouldn’t have?”

  “Tyler Beckman’s got a reputation for doing drugs, but I don’t think he’d come after you.”

  “Because only third-class reprobates from the other side of the Sepulveda Pass would ever think of attacking someone for money?” Honey snorted in disbelief. “There are no criminals in Black Palm Park?”

  “Not really.”

  “There must be a dozen bankers who live in this complex. You think they aren’t thieves?”

  “That’s not what we’re talking about. Anyway, Tyler Beckman got shipped off to mil
itary school. Not everyone in Black Palm Park is getting away with something.”

  “Not everyone.” She was only slightly mollified.

  Someone else might have apologized, but she didn’t bother. If Jack hadn’t actually accused her of anything, he’d get around to it soon enough. That was the way their relationship had been for over twelve years.

  Only, something had changed in the past twenty-four hours. It wasn’t simply the sexual connection—though that was pretty fantastic. It was in the way he looked at her when he thought she wouldn’t notice.

  Jack cared about her, and she was beginning to realize how important that was.

  She reached out a hand to touch him. Not a pat on the arm or even something more intimate. Just a flutter of fingertips against his knee.

  “What’s it like to live here?”

  “Excuse me?” Surprise moved across his face. “You want to know what it’s like to live in Black Palm Park? Why?”

  “Because I want to know more about you.”

  The way his eyes flickered and his hand clenched, Honey saw that Jack knew she was lying. It didn’t matter. She couldn’t tell him about the envelope, not without answering a lot of other awkward questions. Whatever they’d built between the two of them would be lost in a sea of confusion and mistrust.

  “It’s not like you think.” Jack took a minute to martial his thoughts. “Not entirely. I know you don’t like it here, but it’s actually kind of nice. It’s certainly beautiful, and there’s a real sense of community. Everyone knows everyone else.”

  “You mean they know everyone else’s business.”

  “Look, the view’s good, the ocean’s walking distance, and the people are friendly. It’s a little insular, but most communities are insular. That’s a fact of life.” Jack bent down slightly, leaning forward on the balls of his feet. “What’s this all about?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Sweetheart?” A deep, gravelly rasp.

  Heat ran down her skin before settling low between her thighs. Suddenly, she wasn’t thinking about what it might be like to live in Black Palm Park. The only thing going through her mind was the way she’d felt with Jack’s mouth on hers, his hands rough against her breasts.