Too Hot to Handle: A Loveswept Classic Romance

by Chastain, Sandra

  “Sunday, huh?” John Henry said. He leaned his head into the van. “You take care, now, Callie,” he whispered. “I know what I said earlier about your needing a fellow. I wouldn’t want it to get out, but I’ve been known to be wrong about things once or twice. You be sure you know what you’re doing.”

  There was definitely a worried frown on John Henry’s forehead. Callie leaned forward and planted a kiss in the middle of it. “Everything’s all right, you old dear, and I’m trying to learn to love somebody. Don’t worry about me,” she whispered. “I’ll be careful.”

  “You feel all right? You look a little flushed.”

  “This is different for me,” she whispered. “Letting myself depend on somebody. I feel … cautious.”

  “Funny, that’s what Doc Campbell said about you when I asked him what you were doing in his office in the middle of the afternoon yesterday. All he’d tell me”—his voice was low in her ear—“was that you were a great believer in being cautious.”

  John Henry looked at her closely, and then, when she thought her face couldn’t burn any hotter than it already had, he winked at her, pulled his head out of the window, grinned, and added, “Have fun. You deserve it.”

  “What was all that whispering about?” Matt asked as he guided the van onto the steep two-lane road heading north.

  “Just words to the wise from an old sage. You know John Henry. A busybody’s always got to have the last word. I hope Lacey doesn’t come here while I’m gone. John Henry has that look in his eye again. He’ll be sending men up to court her.”

  The van moved smoothly along the highway, and soon they were climbing deeper into the Blue Ridge Mountains. Helen was a hundred miles northeast of Sweet Apple, and Callie normally would have made the trip in under two hours. But Matt seemed in no hurry. His steady pace and the comfortable silence that filled the van gave Callie time to think, yet it wasn’t easy to concentrate.

  She stole a glance at Matt, and found there was a broad grin on his face.

  “You know,” he said suddenly, “I’m thirty-five years old, and this is the first time in my life I’ve ever played hooky from work.”

  “Hooky? Surely you don’t work seven days a week, do you?”

  “Saturday, Sunday, and straight through the week. For as long as I can remember, since high school.”

  “Why on earth did you work that hard while you were in school? Especially since you come from a wealthy family.”

  He drove for a second without answering. Finally, his voice low, he said simply, “I told you a lie about my father’s leaving me a lot of money, Caroline.”

  Callie looked at him with a puzzled frown. “Why, Matthew?”

  “I don’t like melodrama any more than you do. The story sounds like something out of a soap opera, and I figured you wouldn’t believe me. So I just let you think my father gave me a bundle.”

  “Tell me the truth,” she said softly.

  “My father died when I was fifteen. Shortly after he died I learned that everything was gone. His partners in the paint company had taken it all.”

  Callie heard the bitterness in his voice. “I’m sorry, Matthew.” She reached out and touched his bare arm in concern. “Go on.”

  “His beloved company, which he’d spent every day of his life building up to the point where it was ready to pay for itself, was nearly bankrupt. It killed him. He really died of grief.”

  “You said his partners took everything. How?”

  “They outvoted him, and he was forced to sell the plant to a big conglomerate. Afterward he found out the conglomerate intended to use the plant as a tax write-off. They eased out most of the workers, let the business go to hell, then closed it down.”

  “And your dad got sick pretty soon after that?”

  Matt hesitated for a moment, slowed the van, and looked at her. “He killed himself with an overdose of sleeping pills.”

  “Oh, Matt.” She hurt as if she shared Matt’s soul. Callie closed her eyes. I do share his soul, she thought. And she understood his painful memories all too well, because they were an echo of her own.

  “And your mother, Matthew?”

  “My mother?” He shook his head. “She died a year later. Might as well call that suicide too. She killed herself grieving for father.”

  “Oh, Matthew. How did you manage?”

  His knuckles were white as he gripped the steering wheel. Finally he answered in slow, simple words that measured how hard this was for him. “I lived with a foster family, and I did the only thing I knew how to do. I worked. I worked my way through high school, college, and graduate school. I worked nonstop until I’d managed to get back everything my father lost, and then some.”

  He sounded apologetic. “If power and wealth and rigid organization are important to me, Callie, it’s because of the past.”

  “Matt,” she whispered unevenly, “do you think you could pull off the road, into that clump of trees up ahead?”

  “My Lord, Caroline, you’re white as a sheet.”

  Sudden concern for her erased the pain on Matt’s face as he maneuvered the van off the interstate and down the bumpy, overgrown road into a thicket of pine trees. He hurried around to the side of the van, opened the door, placed his hands around her waist, and started to lift her out.

  “You need some fresh air,” he told her.

  “No. I need you.” She kissed him tenderly and tried to smile. “I just need to hold you.”

  He guided her into the back of the van, and they lay down on the soft couch. She began to cry gently.

  “I hurt for you,” she told him as he crooned soft words against her ear and held her. “I hurt for you so much.”

  She opened her body and her heart to him, and he accepted both with the hunger of a starving man.

  • • •

  Matt was right. The van was much more efficient than the convertible, and wonderfully private as well. It was nearly an hour before they started up the road again.

  The sky was a fresh, cloud-smeared blue. The crisp mountain air caught Callie’s hair and shaped it into a dark mist around her face. She felt peaceful. She could tell from Matt’s smile and his frequent glances at her that he’d found peace too.

  They passed through several truck stops before Callie’s stomach finally sent out a protest that Matt couldn’t ignore. He glanced over at her again, his smile still going full force.

  “Why do you keep doing that?” she asked.

  “What?”

  “Looking at me and smiling.”

  “I just can’t keep my eyes off you. I’ve never known anybody who created such joy by simply being herself. I want to sit and stare at you. I want to yell to the world. I am going to yell to the world.” He stuck his head out the window and roared at a startled man driving an open-cab Jeep, “This is Ms. Caroline Carmichael, who craves my body and makes my soul delirious!”

  The Jeep driver shook his head and returned Matt’s grin with one of his own, and a thumbs-up sign of approval.

  Callie chuckled softly. “It’s hard to believe that this is the same man who stood on my porch a few weeks ago. You need a haircut and a shave. You must be intoxicated by mountain air.”

  “And you,” Matt retorted seriously, “haven’t once mentioned a new cause. I think you’ve run out of things to save, preserve, picket, or protest.”

  “But Matt, I haven’t had to look for a cause since I’ve had you. There’s an old saying—‘Don’t wish for water when you’re drowning in it.’ ”

  There was a sudden cold silence in the van. Matt’s fingertips drummed on the steering wheel. “You mean that’s what I am to you, just a new cause, a new project of sorts?”

  “Of course not,” she amended hastily. “That wasn’t what I meant. But”—she tried to think out her answer, her honest answer—“I suppose it is. Being with you has been a beautiful, wonderful experience that is new for me. Is that so wrong?”

  He didn’t know how to answer. Was he going to sa
y that he wanted to be more than a wonderful new experience? He drew a deep breath. It was time to slow down and consider the options, to quit pretending that he was simply playing hooky. Where was this weekend jaunt going to get him?

  “Matt? Matt!”

  “What?” He jerked himself back to the present.

  “I hate to have to tell a master of planning and organization that he just missed the exit, but unless we’re going to start a Tennessee adventure, you’d better turn around and go back.”

  Matt glanced in the rearview mirror and saw that not only had he driven past the exit he was to have taken, but the speedometer was recording a number much higher than he’d thought. Which wasn’t to say he didn’t like to drive fast—he’d been known to put the Corvette into superdrive when he was alone on a long stretch of road—but never when he had a passenger in the car.

  He looked over at Callie’s teasing expression and choked back what he’d been about to say. Her eyes, wide with mirth, clearly indicated she was waiting for an explanation.

  “Guess it’s a side effect of some kind, Caroline Carmichael. You’ve got me going in circles.”

  “Good. You need to loosen up. Even John Henry thinks you’ll ‘come around.’ ”

  “Oh, no”—he chortled—“you won’t get me on that one. Talking with you is like dealing with William. I never know what you’ve got on your mind.”

  “Good. Does that mean I’ll get some strawberry ice cream too?”

  “You prefer that to apples?”

  “Well, let’s just say I’m hungry, Matt Holland, and I’ve never been known to have a small appetite for anything I like.”

  Matt took the next exit, and threaded his way off the two-lane road and back onto the expressway headed in the opposite direction. He couldn’t concentrate on his driving and Callie and his feelings all at once. He’d always been accused of having tunnel vision. He was accustomed to directing his attention to one thing at a time, and Callie seemed to come at him from all directions, shattering any attempt at concentration.

  For this weekend, he’d simply forget about everything but Callie and the growing need he had to draw her back to Atlanta with him.

  “Strawberry ice cream for the lady, and a slab of apple pie for me,” Matt told the waitress at the first truck stop he’d found that announced homemade desserts.

  “An extra-large slice of apple pie,” Callie directed with a firm nod.

  The waitress brought their food quickly.

  “What exactly did John Henry whisper in your ear when we were leaving?” Matt asked casually as he dug into his pie.

  “I don’t think I’m going to tell you, Matt. Let’s just say he’s getting cold feet, now that he thinks his little plan to find me a man is working out.”

  “You think he doesn’t approve of me?” Matt hadn’t considered this possibility before.

  “It isn’t that, exactly. He’s concerned that maybe we haven’t found a common meeting ground yet.” Callie licked a frosting of pink from her upper lip and swallowed. Suddenly she couldn’t look at Matt. The conversation was becoming serious, and she didn’t want that. She didn’t want to think about where their relationship was heading.

  “Funny.” Matt reached out and caught a spot of ice cream she’d missed at the corner of her lip. His finger traced the lower edge and dropped to catch her chin and lift it, forcing her to meet his gaze. “I’d say we’ve found one very important common meeting ground.”

  His lips, still sticky with apple, touched hers, and they blended into a sweetness she never wanted to end.

  “Excuse me,” the waitress said. “Will you be wanting anything more?”

  Matt pulled himself away and answered the waitress without taking his eyes from Callie’s face. He winked. “Indeed we do, a lot more.” He looked at the waitress and winked again. “But we’ll have to go elsewhere or you’ll think we’re exhibitionists.”

  Callie hid a smile. The waitress giggled in delight. Matt put a handful of bills on the counter and tugged Callie out of the restaurant. Callie blushed when she saw the open grins of the patrons watching the two of them walk arm in arm out the door.

  “You know that waitress is in love with you now,” Callie said as he opened the passenger door for her.

  “I’m already taken.”

  “You’re a bad influence on womanhood, Matthew.”

  He chuckled, then pulled her into his arms. “Must be the apples. Remind me to see if there’s such a thing as apple ice cream. William would love it.”

  She kissed him fervently, and they rocked back and forth, smiling and kissing again. When he finally released her she heard scattered applause from the doorway of the truck stop.

  This time it was Callie who gave the world a sample of her joy, by throwing the group imaginary kisses and a smile of pure happiness.

  Seven

  “Callie, you mean you don’t even want a receipt for the merchandise—the craftwork, I mean—that you’re leaving to be sold?” Matt’s incredulous voice carried through the shop, and Callie winced as the owner, Perry Lawrence, looked up questioningly.

  “Don’t worry, Perry,” she called. “I’m with my new, self-appointed business manager who doesn’t understand our arrangement. Cool it, businessman,” she admonished Matt under her breath.

  Matt looked from Callie to the armful of kudzu baskets he was carrying, and shook his head. For the last hour he’d played stock clerk as he unloaded baskets and wreaths and followed Callie into one shop after another. He’d been amazed to learn that Callie worked without formal merchandise orders from the shopkeepers.

  They apparently never knew, and didn’t care, when she’d appear with goods. They were always happy to see her. As she accepted one check after another for past sales, Matt realized that her work sold extremely well.

  Surveying the items still piled in the van, he came to the conclusion that they had at least one more stop to make.

  “Let’s hurry,” he ordered as she stacked baskets and counted wreaths. She shot him a disgruntled look.

  “I wish William were here. I’d sic him on you. Teach you some manners, Mr. Holland. And some patience.”

  “Sorry.” He grinned an apology and started helping her organize her last delivery.

  Matt knew he was acting bossy, but he hoped she understood why he had so little patience. She shouldn’t need a crystal ball to figure out that he wanted to be alone with her, as they’d been in the cabin.

  “Look, Matt, one of Lacey’s clowns.”

  They were at the last shop. Matt had unloaded the final set of wreaths and baskets, and they were almost out the door when Callie stopped and lifted a happy-faced fabric clown from a child’s rocker.

  Matt took the clown and glanced at it quizzically. “When you said clown I thought you meant something like a doll. This is as big as a child.”

  “Wait until you meet Lacey. She thinks very big.”

  “So do I,” Matt warned. “And right this minute I’m ready to think about a shower, followed by a very big steak and a pitcher of iced tea, followed by a big bed.” He put the clown back into the chair and placed his hand possessively on Callie’s back, nudging her toward the door.

  “Shoot, and I thought that thinking big meant something entirely different,” she answered teasingly.

  “Big, large, enlarged—only a term, my dear, a state of mind that’s cussed, discussed, and rarely understood. W. C. Fields said something to that effect.”

  Callie laughed. “I don’t think he was referring to what you’re referring to.”

  “Hmmm.” Matt caught her arm and lowered his voice suggestively. “Wait until we get to our room, and I’ll tell you what Rudolph Valentino used to say.”

  “Rooms,” Callie corrected. “I always stay with Rosa Mitchell, an old friend of my grandfather’s. Rosa is seventy-eight, and I wouldn’t think of shocking her with immoral behavior.”

  “You’ve got to be kidding.”

  Callie hadn’t been kidding
.

  Matt looked ruefully at the heavy pine-log bed and the prim little washstand with the pitcher and bowl, and sighed in disbelief. They were in an old inn, a charming relic dating back to frontier days.

  The downstairs had the usual great room, complete with fireplace. The dining room had a couple of huge tables for family-style eating. Two upper floors with rooms opening off a narrow hallway made up the rest of the house.

  Rosa Mitchell’s quarters were on the ground floor, just behind the guest-registration area. Callie’s room was directly above Rosa’s on the second floor, and Matt was at the opposite end of the corridor on the third floor. The room was small and hot, and Matt was frustrated beyond belief. He was ready to head back to Sweet Valley—immediately.

  He glanced at his watch. He’d been fuming much too long. Callie had announced that she was going to take a long shower, then a nap.

  For some reason, she’d trilled lightly, she hadn’t slept well the night before. He should take a shower and a nap, too, she’d said primly, then meet her downstairs in the great room by six o’clock. They’d go out for dinner.

  Oh, well, if there was anything he’d learned, it was that Callie had her own way of looking at things and her own timetable to follow. He had the feeling that he was being tested, that if he weren’t in the lobby at the proper time, she’d simply leave without him. There were certainly enough people in the resort city willing to share their time with Callie. She wouldn’t lack for companionship.

  Matt pulled fresh clothes from his bag and headed down the hall toward the shower. He was surprised to hear the spray of water. He’d understood he was the only one on that floor, and the other guests had already left the inn for the evening. He leaned against the wall outside the shower and tried not to admit to his disappointment.

  He’d been leaning there for a moment before he heard the voice. The person in the shower was singing. It took him a moment to understand the words, something about not sitting under the apple tree with anyone else.

  Apple tree? Matt tried the doorknob. It turned beneath his fingertips, and he opened it cautiously. If the woman inside wasn’t Callie he was going to feel like an awful fool, in addition to which he was likely to spend the night in the local jail instead of alone in the pine-log bed.