Hot and Cold
Paige Notaro
Copyright
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or copied without the express written consent of the author. This book is licensed for personal use only.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
©2015
Paige Notaro
Cover Design:
©2015
SilverLight
Table of Contents
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
Thanks!
Other Books
Also by Paige Notaro
Storm’s Soldiers MC:
Black and White
Grey
Clear
Black and Blue:
Black and Blue
Hot and Cold
Other:
Uncaged
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Dedication
This book is dedicated to my loving family who suffer through my manic writing sprees.
It is dedicated to my friends and fellow authors who have helped so much through this journey.
Most of all it is dedicated to my fans. Thank you for reading!
CHAPTER ONE
When things are going good with your man, there’s nothing better than a night out in a nice, low-key steakhouse. Some people like elegant candle-lit things for a date night. Not me. I’ll take a noisy, packed place any day.
A full house makes you feel alive. It makes your love glow all the brighter to keep up with what’s around. It gives you and your guy the energy to chatter the night away, to see if you can’t find just one more way your hearts beat in sync.
When things are bad though, a place like that takes the silence at your table and turns it deafening.
Sean sat across from me, giving his undivided attention to the steak he was hacking on his plate. I gazed at his trim crown of blond hair, waiting second after second for his eyes to lift, to find mine. He just forked in chunks of meat and chewed without looking up.
Even angled down, his face looked gorgeous as ever. It made his inattention all the more hurtful. He was an amazing fighter in the ring, but this was the first time I noticed how the discipline even made it to meals. Even the high lines of his cheek and the broad cut of his jaw did their work fluidly.
Less than a dozen tables filled the sidewalk patio, but we were packed in like sardines. Voices and laughter poured out around us like steam. The sounds probably made it all the way to the lower levels of the high-rise apartments towering above.
Every moment we didn’t talk felt like agony. I had the urge to just blurt something out, but I’d been doing that all night. And also, the last time we went out. I couldn’t keep dragging him to the dance floor.
Sean glanced at other tables, still not noticing me. He had on a sea-blue polo and wrinkled khakis, the exact same thing he had worn when we went out last week. I wasn’t expecting him to debut a fashion line for me, but he used to mix it up. I had nothing else to do but notice these things.
I knew the crazy romance usually flickered out after a while. We’d been dating the whole fiery summer. Maybe it was just the cooling Detroit August bring us down with it.
But this didn’t feel like the end of the beginning as much as it did the other way around.
I couldn’t handle it anymore.
“Did they do your steak right?” I asked.
“Yeah,” he said, giving me the barest shot of his green eyes. “It’s fine.”
“That’s good. People say this place messes orders up more than usual. Just making sure that didn’t happen to you. I know you need that protein after the big fight.”
“Mmm.”
Sean loved talking about his MMA stuff. Now, he took a sip of beer and stared past me at another table. I shoved a piece of grilled chicken in my mouth and waited hopefully.
This rosemary chicken was one of my favorite dishes in all of Detroit. The breast meat came so tender, and I loved the bursts of garlic and thyme. Now I shoved it down - as if eating faster would spur Sean to action.
It didn’t.
I took a deep breath and asked, “Have you tried that steak au jus?”
“Nope. Sounds fancy.”
“Yeah, that’s what they want you to think. I guess it sounds better than pouring heated blood over your cut.”
That finally, finally got him to look me full on. “Sounds intense,” he said.
“It’s flavorful. You’d like it. It’ll get all that testosterone whipping into action.”
I bared my teeth in a tiger growl. Sean just gave me a polite little smile.
“Yeah, maybe. I’ll try it when I go out again sometime.”
When I go out. Not we.
No, that was too much. I was being full on paranoid now. He went out with his friends almost as much as he did with me. He’d see them before he saw me again.
Sean started to tuck back into his meal. I tried to keep the sand from slipping through my fingers.
“I’m thinking about what I should cook for the Cordon Competition,” I said. “It’s coming up so fast.”
“Oh yeah,” he said. “That’s soon.”
Soon. It was next Sunday. He’d known the exact date a month ago, when he showed me the site for it on the Internet. I’d completely refused to sign up, of course. I had almost no classical training to speak of, and this was a professional competition.
Sean had used skills…other than words to change my mind. I drifted to the memory of him scooping me into his lap and pulling me into his hard kiss, while his fingers tiptoed into my pants.
The heat of the memory just made the chill before me even colder.
“So what are you cooking?” Sean asked after a while. It might have been his first unprompted words of the evening.
“A gumbo recipe from my mom with some added flair.”
“Gumbo. You mean that okra soup?”
“Yeah, you had it that time you came over.”
“I remember. It had plenty of flair already. Why are you adding more?”
I’d wanted attention, but even this was cold. His gaze felt like a scalpel.
“I can’t use a recipe without making it my own.”
“Mixing things up might mess it up.”
If there was some darker implication behind that comment, I couldn’t make it out. But the words themselves weren't that great. I bit back a flare of anger.
“Maybe I’ll make a bit of each and you can do a blind taste test.”
“I don’t know, Gabi,” he said, studying his food. “I’ve got to hit the gym hard for a bit.”
“I didn’t mean like tomorrow.”
“Tomorrow, next week. It’s the same. Soup’s not going to fill me up.”
“It’s just a taste…”
He wasn’t listening anymore. His eyes flickered to the phone by his plate. I searched for any indication of a message, but all I saw on creen was the time.
He had nothing, and he was still ignoring me. That was a new low for the evening.
Maybe, in some messed up way, it was good that I’d be going back to school in just under a month. Flames needed air to burn. Ann Arbor wasn’t exactly Beijing in terms of distance, but it still sat a good forty, fifty minutes from Detroit. Maybe what we needed was just some space.
; Actual physical space. Cause it wasn’t like I was suffocating him now. We’d seen each other only twice a week this month. How little time together would be enough?
What I couldn’t understand was what had changed. It was only a month ago that we’d still been at it like bunnies. There’d been weeks where I’d woken up every morning tangled in his sheets, sometimes with one of his thick, warm arms tight around my bare chest.
A few times, he’d already been inside me.
It was like having this wonderful dream about being swaddled in a gentle warmth. It seemed to nestle your very soul.
Then you wake up and find it’s all real.
The perfect man is wrapped around you. You’re smothered in a cloud of his heat and his scent – the traces of his musk, his cinnamon cologne. His strength lands hard on all the places you can feel it the most: an arm clasping the flesh of your chest, his lips brushing the most tender part of your neck, a firm palm on your thigh fastening you to him where it matters..
The warmth at your soul? It’s physical – oh god, do you feel the hard certainty of it. When he started to move, it was the closest my soul ever was to being touched.
Those months had stretched into one endless wave of pleasure.
Then the waters stilled, suddenly and all at once. We hadn’t had sex in a week, and the last time had been about as cold and stiff as the ice jangling in my diet coke.
“Anything interesting happen this week?” I asked. I’d probably asked it before our food came, too.
“Just the usual,” Sean said. “You know my schedule. Train, eat. Train, eat. Train, eat, fight.”
“When is your next fight?”
“Why?”
“Why?” I didn’t know how to answer that.
“It’s gonna happen when it happens. I’ll let you know if I’m busy or not.”
“I’m just wondering.”
“Don’t worry your pretty little head about that,” He flashed a grin. “It’s not needed.”
I hadn’t attended a single match after the first time. It’s not because I couldn’t handle seeing him in action. I liked seeing him block a punch. I liked seeing him land a solid kick. I could even handle seeing him draw blood or take a hit.
What I couldn’t handle was sitting in the middle of those rowdy, whooping crowds. It felt like entering some third world death match. There were a few other girls around and guards to keep the violence inside the ring, but I just never felt comfortable.
Still, maybe this detente between us was my fault. I couldn’t date a fighter without ever seeing him fight.
“Maybe I can come see your next one,” I said.
“It’s ok.”
“I’ll bring Jada or Jamal,” I said. “They love the energy. I’ll feel safe with them there.”
“No,” he said, more firmly. “Don’t do that.”
“You’re ordering me not to come?”
“It’s no order. I’m just saying you can’t. The tickets are sold out.”
“I thought you didn’t know where the next fight will be.”
He stared at me, not even blinking. “The event hoster has a lineup already, just not a date. It’s big.”
I had always loved how direct Sean was. He had never lied to me other than a little exaggeration here and there. I hadn’t even been sure he knew how.
Until now.
I left him staring at me and went back to my food. It might as well have been rubber now, but I didn’t care. I just needed something to keep my mouth busy. My mind spun with thoughts that I wouldn’t have considered just moments ago.
If he was willing to keep me from a fight, then anything was possible. Maybe it wasn’t so much our flame burning low. Maybe his heat had just turned elsewhere.
We finished the meal with nothing exchanged but the scrape of knives on porcelain and the gulps of underchewed food. Sean finished first and started glancing around. I tracked his eyes to see who they landed on. But they flitted around. I could only be certain they didn’t land on me.
I was more than ready for the bill when I finished. It would take a good gulp of alcohol to wash away the residue of this meal, but I’d rather find it alone.
Sean called the waiter over, but instead of the bill, he looked at me and said, “Desert?”
I shook my head, and the waiter left. The dawning migraine in my head dimmed, though. Maybe I was overreacting. Maybe Sean just wasn’t that hungry or something. There were dozens of reasons.
I wasn’t sure whose turn it was to pay, but Sean tossed in his card before I could move. After he signed the bill, we got up and walked right out the patio fence onto the sidewalk. We’d arrived separately, but parked in the same downtown garage.
“You feel like going to Giuseppe’s and getting something to drink?” I asked, as we turned into the garage. “I’ve been feeling stressed lately. It’d be great to loosen up.”
“Damn, baby, I’d love to,” he said. “But I’ve actually got to train a bit more.”
Train a bit more? He never trained at nights.
I looked back at his face. It’d given me so much pleasure once: pressed against my mouth, warming up other parts of me, or just plain breaking out into a gorgeous smile. Now it was dismissing me as coldly as a knockout ringer at his fights.
“It’s fine,” I said. “You go do what you need to do.”
“Cool.” His mouth hung open, but all that came after a few seconds was, “Thanks, baby. I’ll see you.”
He pecked me on the cheek, then headed off to his own SUV.
I stood by the mouth of the garage, hearing the winds creak street signs at my back, watching him disappear into the darkness.
All I could wonder was: Do we still have a real shot at a future?
Or was it just a question of how long I was willing to let this last.
CHAPTER TWO
“Is that boy taking you the opera or something?”
“What?” I asked.
Gina and I were sitting on the couch in the middle of a commercial break. Her hair was up in a bun and she was already in PJs for the day, but I was headed to the movies just as soon as my ride showed up.
She took a firmer look that made her look more ‘mom’ than little sister. “You’re dressed up awfully fancy.”
“Not that fancy.” I glanced down at the dark blue dress I had on and patted out a couple creases. “What am I supposed to wear to a movie?”
“These.” She kicked her legs up onto the coffee table.
“Yoga pants.”
“It’s a long movie right? Why don’t you want to be comfortable?”
“I’m comfortable.”
“Are you sure?”
Jeopardy came back on, and her attention turned, but I couldn’t focus at all.
No, I wasn’t comfortable, not in weeks. Even when I tried to prep for chemistry classes or practice for the cooking contest, I couldn’t think two thoughts without Sean popping up.
That’s the problem with having a brain capable of thought. It doesn’t exactly fall in line. I’d never thought much about free will, even in philosophy class. Not being able to reign in half my fears about this relationship had me reconsidering who was in charge up there.
Sean and I had hung out just once after the dinner to watch Netflix at his place. We’d sat a hair’s breadth apart, but you could almost hear an echo between us. Forget bad sex; he hadn’t made a pass at me at all. Even the arm he’d looped around me felt like a limp formality.
When the movie ended, he’d just stood and said he needed to rest up. I believed it. He’d yawned a dozen times in my ear already, each sounding like a scratch on chalkboard.
What I didn’t know was why.
There’d come a long quiet moment with me standing outside the door. Each of us looked over the other like we were nothing more than gum at a grocery checkout line. I’d seen then how silly it was. All I had to ask was what was going on, just voice my fear:
Do you still want me?
It was
the most fundamental of questions. The truth might be bad, but it couldn’t be worse than a secret.
I’d choked. The words had stuck in my mouth and only a faint hiss had left my lips. Sean had looked confused, planted a kiss and sent me on my way.
I was afraid that the same thing would happen today. At least we’d have the movie to talk about though. It had his favorite action star and my favorite actress in it together as CIA agents.
Maybe the topic of secrets would come up on its own.
I drummed my phone and tried to listen to Trebek. Gina was answering the questions with such ease that she’d toppled over onto the arm of the couch and curled up.
“I’ll take ‘O what?’ for $400, Alex,” the contestant said.
“Oooh,” Gina said. “This is all you Ms. Chemistry.”
“What’s the category supposed to be?” I asked.
Trebek answered instead on-screen: “This oxygen laden compound is vital in forming social bonds in animals and humans alike.”
“Oxytocin,” Gina and I shouted out together.
“I win,” Gina said.
“Pfft,” I said. “That was mine.”
“I’ll take ‘O What’ for $600,” the TV said.
“This tiny molecule is vital for keeping you safe from the sun. Breathe too much though, and it’ll burn you instead.”
“Oz-,” I started to say, but right then my phone shook.
“-one,” Gina said. “Hah, definitely got that one.”
I could barely hear her over the text I’d just gotten. It was from Sean.
Hey, baby. Can’t do tonight. Opportunity came up at the gym. Sorry.
I read it over and over, each of the words lifting up on its own.
Baby. Tonight. Opportunity. Gym.
No, I couldn’t figure out the meaning behind any of this. I did know one thing: it couldn’t be the truth.
Steam filled my skull. My head was about to rupture.
I shot up from my seat and tore out of the living room.
“Have a good time,” Gina called lazily over the sofa.
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