COMING IN HOT
JENNIFER BERNARD
CONTENTS
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
About the Author
Acknowledgments
Also by Jennifer Bernard
1
The man sitting at the back of Carolyn Moore’s class looked nothing like her usual students. Starting with the fact that he was male, since most of the students in Renaissance Art History 201 were women. Then there was the fact that he was a full-grown adult male, not a kid who'd barely reached drinking age. Not to mention the additional facts of his size and appearance, which were big and imposing. Attractive, one might even say, if broad shoulders, intense dark eyes, and black leather jackets were your thing.
A peaceful art history teacher like herself should certainly not find someone like him attractive. But he actually reminded her of a painting she loved, a Bronzino portrait of a man aiming his smoldering gaze directly at the viewer. So to be completely honest with herself, the mystery man did push a few of her buttons.
But she could deal with that kind of unsettling stare a lot better in an oil painting than in the back of her classroom. He'd slipped in midway through her lecture on the technique of chiaroscuro and immediately thrown her off stride.
She cleared her throat and checked her notes. "Does anyone here know the precise meaning of the term chiaroscuro? Any Italian speakers in the house?"
A few students volunteered words like "cappuccino," and "Prada," which made her laugh. The blond kid in the middle row looked lost in a dream, as usual. One student surreptitiously checked her phone.
"No Google," Carolyn said with a smile. "We can figure this one out. Let's start with the last part, "scuro." What other words contain that root?"
Again, no answer.
"I'm thinking of a common word, very familiar, not at all…" She dragged it out as a teasing hint.
"Obscure!" someone exclaimed.
"Exactly. Obscure means hidden, hard to find, because it's … what?"
"In the dark? Scuro means dark!" A student in the front row bounced in her seat, thrilled that she'd come up with the answer, then slouched back down. They were always so anxious about playing it cool, sometimes it made Carolyn sad. Was there something wrong with getting excited and passionate? She always tried to encourage that in her students.
"Yes!" She stepped away from the podium where her laptop was set up with slides and high-fived the student. "You're correct, scuro means dark. So you can probably guess what chiaro means as well."
A brief silence followed, interrupted by the man at the back of the class. The man in black.
"Light," he said in a voice so deep and resonant it sent a chill down her spine. It brought to mind the image of the last dregs of black coffee in a pot that had been left on overnight. Late nights, rough times, danger, adventure, somehow it was all there in that one softly spoken word.
In the middle row, the blond boy—Aiden something—craned his neck to see who had spoken. Then he wheeled back around and slouched deep in his seat. The girls in the class looked too, so Carolyn found herself responding to an array of turned heads.
"Correct. Chiaro, in this context, means light."
She pretended to check her student roster, but she certainly had no need to. There was no way this man had enrolled in her class midterm. "I'm sorry, are you a student here?"
"I'm just visiting the campus." He moved his jacket to show his stick-on visitor's badge. "I'm sorry to interrupt."
"No problem." Although, eyeing him more closely, she wasn't entirely sure that was true. She could spot several potential problems, or at least distractions. The width of his shoulders. The sensual fullness of his lips. And most especially, the way he was looking—or glaring—at her. Wary. Suspicious. Curious. Hot. Or some heady, confusing mixture of all of the above.
"If you were a student, you'd get a high five." She smiled at him brightly, determined not to allow a dangerously attractive visitor to disrupt her class. Tapping her laser pointer on the podium, she brought her students back to attention. Or tried, anyway. Several were too fascinated by the stranger to get back into Renaissance painting mode.
"Chiaroscuro is the treatment of light and shade. It's a technique that uses strong contrast between light and dark to create a three-dimensional effect. It was developed during the Renaissance by masters of oil painting like Leonardo da Vinci and Rembrandt. They were looking for drama, for impact—we might call it the ‘wow’ factor today. These masters figured out how to manipulate the effect of a light source falling against a solid dark object. I'm going to show some slides now, and I want you guys to look for where the light is coming from and how it helps illuminate the subject of the painting."
She tapped a button on her laptop to play her slide show. Then she looked up and realized that the person closest to the light switch happened to be the solid dark object of the man in black.
"Sir, would you mind hitting that light behind you?" she asked him.
He twisted around to locate the light switch. Her eyes widened at the sight of his powerful torso and big hand reaching for the wall. He turned his head at the last minute, so the last thing she saw before the room went dark was that intense gaze of his. Wowza. It really packed a punch. Everything about him did. He was like a truckload of TNT plopped into a meadow of college-student flowers.
With the room in darkness, she let out a long breath, calling on some yoga breathing to regain her cool. Just because she spent most of her time with kids under the age of twenty didn't mean she couldn't handle an adult. Even if it was an intensely male sort of adult.
She too was an adult, after all. Granted, an adult who'd gone quite some time without any intimate contact with a man. Also known as sex.
Sex. Bad thought. Don't go there. Look at the slides. Talk about Caravaggio. Yes.
"Notice how you don't really know where that light comes from or what's producing it? It doesn't matter. It's only there to create the dramatic contrast that enables us to get the full impact of this portrait. In case you were wondering, this technique isn't confined to Renaissance oil paintings. Can anyone tell me who else uses chiaroscuro?"
"Black-and-white photography?" someone suggested.
"Yup. Exactly." She drew in another deep breath. Thank goodness, she was back in the groove now. The stranger was just a minor, temporary glitch. This was her class, she was in control.
She switched to the next slide. "Now not everyone was in favor of chiaroscuro. This portrait of the Queen of England is set in an open meadow with no sources of shade anywhere nearby. As you can see, the effect is serene rather than dramatic. Does anyone have any theories about why chiaroscuro would be controversial?"
Silence while the students gazed at the pleasant portrait of Queen Elizabeth I. She looked at the back of the class. The stranger, head tilted, was surveying the slide with a
thoughtful expression. Talk about chiaroscuro … his eyes were deep pools in the minimal light cast by the projector.
Suddenly she wanted to hear what an adult man would say instead of a twenty-year-old. It wasn't really fair. He was a visitor, not a student paying for his education. But no one else seemed eager to step up with their thoughts. So she addressed the man in black.
"You in the back, by the light switch. Why do you think chiaroscuro would find opponents in the art world at that time?"
His gaze flicked to her, as if in surprise. But he didn't hesitate. "Some people would rather not deal with the shadows. You might even say most people."
A shiver passed through her. That was exactly why she'd wanted his reaction, to hear someone with experience speak. But at the same time, his words hit close to home. Unintentionally, of course. He knew nothing about her. But still, it was enough to give her a little chill.
"Right. Here's a quote from the artist who painted this portrait. "Seeing that best to show oneself needeth no shadow of place but rather the open light…Her Majesty chose to sit in the open alley of a goodly garden where no tree was near, nor any shadow at all. So…" She turned back to the students. "What say you, young members of the twenty-first century? Do you prefer the more open lighting in this painting, or the chiaroscuro effect in something like this famous Rembrandt portrait, An Old Man in Red? Are the subjects revealed more by direct sunlight or by the use of shadows?"
Finally the students seemed to get it. Discussion erupted as they looked back and forth between the two examples.
Carolyn grinned happily. There was nothing she loved more than when her students stopped daydreaming or looking at their phones and actually engaged in the material. And really, she had to thank the man in black for that. He'd been willing to dive in with an answer despite not even being enrolled in the class.
She looked toward the back of the room to offer some kind of "thank you" to the mystery man.
But he was gone.
2
Tobias Knight strode across the pretty pastoral campus of Evergreen, picturing himself like some kind of ogre trampling through a magical fairyland. He felt about a foot taller than everyone else here, even though there were plenty of football players and the like wandering around the central landscaped area called the "quadrangle." Maybe his extra years made the difference, or his time in the army, or his naturally fiery temperament.
Whatever it was, he felt about as alien to these students and this environment as a warrior at a tea party.
Weirdly, he hadn't felt that way in Carolyn Moore's class. Something about the way she looked at him, as if she really wanted to know what he thought, had gotten to him. Plus, she was beautiful, with all that ash-blond hair and luminous gray-blue eyes under delicately arched eyebrows. He didn't normally notice eyebrows. But she had the kind of face you just wanted to stare at forever and figure out what made it so appealing.
No wonder his little brother Aiden was in love with her.
"A golden goddess," he'd called her in his letter explaining his decision to transfer from Evergreen. He’d quoted some poem--"Like the first evening star bright against the infinite sky." He’d even confessed to staying up late writing her love letters.
Good God. The poor kid was hooked harder than a trout. And if Carolyn Moore chose to, she could reel him in and get a small fortune for her trouble. Aiden, like all of the Knight brothers, had a trust from his share of their father's life insurance. Will had used his to buy a house and raise Aiden. Tobias and Ben had used theirs as the startup capital for Knight and Day Flight Tours, their new flightseeing business. Aiden, still only nineteen, needed Will's permission to access his trust.
He'd asked for exactly that in the letter that had sent all the brothers into a panic. Aiden wanted to transfer to Jupiter Point Community College, and use funds from his trust to win over his "golden goddess." The kid had lost his damn mind.
So far, Aiden had refused to identify the "golden goddess." The fact that he refused to give any other details pointed in the direction of someone they wouldn't approve of. So Tobias had combed through his schedule and located all the female professors on the list. One was nearly sixty and sported a gray braid down her back. Another was a proud-and-very-out black lesbian. That left the blond and lovely adjunct professor Carolyn Moore as the only potential “golden goddess.”
A little more research had revealed the fact that Carolyn Moore was on staff at JPCC, and was only teaching at Evergreen for one semester.
Bingo.
Tobias had volunteered to come to Evergreen and rescue Aiden from making the worst mistake of his life. He hadn't planned to participate in Ms. Gold Digger's class on Renaissance art, but every mission had its unexpected moments.
Footfalls came pounding after him, and someone grabbed the back of his jacket. Good thing he knew it had to be Aiden, or his unknown accoster would have gotten a shock. Special Forces training died hard.
"What the hell are you doing here, Tobias?"
Tobias turned to see his youngest brother glaring at him. His blond hair stuck up in bedhead spikes. He wore torn jeans and a t-shirt that said, Ride the Wave, with a picture of a surfer wearing headphones. For a moment, just a brief one, Tobias wondered what his life would have been like if he hadn't joined the army, if he'd gone to college the way his counselors had urged him. But life had sent him in a different direction. Once a warrior, always a warrior, he supposed.
Aiden, on the other hand, was a sunny, sweet-natured kid. He was naive, and this was his first time entering the big bad world. Granted, Evergreen College didn't really fit the "big bad" description, but appearances could be deceiving. A beautiful, soft-eyed blonde could well be a scheming gold digger, and how would Aiden have any clue about it?
He wouldn't. That was Tobias’s job. He had one mission—save his brother from squandering his future on a con woman.
"Good to see you, kid." Tobias reached out to squeeze his brother's shoulder. Aiden looked too pissed to risk anything more than that, like an actual hug. "You don't look too happy to see me, though."
"That depends. I mean, yeah. I'm kind of happy." Aiden eyed him with blatant suspicion. With his blond good looks, he resembled their mother, whereas Tobias had gotten his darker coloring from their father. "But if you're here to talk me out of leaving Evergreen, you can forget it."
"I don't know why you'd want to leave." Tobias shoved his hands in his pockets and gazed around at the sweeping lawns and winding pathways shaded by oak and pine trees. "It's a nice campus."
"I told you all why I wanted to leave." Aiden lifted his chin and shifted his backpack, which he'd slung over one shoulder. "And I'm not changing my mind."
Tobias surveyed his younger brother and thought about the last time he'd seen him. Aiden had come home for a long weekend and the four brothers had held a family meeting. Even though Will was a deputy sheriff and Tobias and Ben had both recently left the armed forces, Aiden had been the one who had fearlessly confronted the elephant in the room—the murder of their father.
Aiden might look young—he was young—but he was no pushover.
"Hey, you're over eighteen. You can make your own choices," Tobias told him. Of course he hoped to talk him out of this choice, but he couldn't do that if Aiden got stubborn right off the bat. "Can we go somewhere and talk? Do you have another class now?"
"No, I have a break until my Geology class." Aiden glanced around the quadrangle. "Do you want coffee? We could go to the Caf. It's your basic cafeteria, but not too bad."
"Works for me."
As they walked toward the Caf—which had a paved courtyard dotted with tables—Aiden peppered him with questions. "Do you want to see my dorm? How long are you here for? When are you going back to Jupiter Point?"
"No specific plans yet, young blood." Tobias ruffled his hair affectionately. "Just thought it would be cool to see you living the life. My little goofball brother, a college student. What do you know."
Aiden
grinned at him. Now that Tobias had acknowledged his sovereignty over his own life, he'd apparently relaxed his guard. "College is pretty cool, Tobias. There are students from all over here. My roommate is from India, how cool is that?"
"Very cool. How are the parties?"
"I hardly ever party because I'm studying so much." He plastered that innocent smile on his face, the one Tobias remembered well from his younger years.
"Busted," he said good-naturedly. "But don't worry, Will doesn't have to know."
Will was the one who had raised Aiden after their father's murder. He'd done a great job, of course, but if you asked Tobias, he'd held the reins a little too tight.
"Does Will know you're here?" Aiden asked.
"He does. He said to give you a hug. So here you go." Tobias pulled his brother into a one-armed side hug from which Aiden emerged with his hair even more mussed.
"Jeez, Tobias, you're like a two-ton truck." Aiden grumbled as he adjusted his backpack. They'd reached the edge of the outdoor patio of the Caf. Students filled the tables, laughing, eating, chatting, checking their phones, listening to their headphones. Tobias felt about a thousand years old compared to the youthfulness of these kids.
"You know what I feel like right now?" Aiden complained. "I feel like one of those kids who hires a bodyguard to scare bullies away. Do you have to scowl so much?"
Tobias relaxed his face. He hadn't realized he was scowling. "I'm not trying to scare anyone. You've heard of 'resting bitch face?' I figured out that I have 'resting fuck-you face.'"
Aiden howled with laughter. The sound lightened Tobias’s heart. That was the sound of life, right there. Young, innocent life. Protecting that innocence was his job here.
Aiden spotted a table being vacated by a group of girls. "You go claim that table and I'll get the coffee."
"I can get the coffee," Tobias protested. He was the big brother, wasn't that his job?
"Nope. I got it. I prepaid a hundred dollars so I can come get a drink whenever I want. This is my turf, Tobias. My treat."
Tobias gave in and went to claim the table while Aiden disappeared through the glass doors into the Caf's inner workings. He sank into a chair and stretched out his legs. Since he and Ben had started Knight and Day Flight Tours, he didn't get nearly as much hardcore exercise as he was used to. Maybe he ought to hit the gym when he got home, or go for a trail run in the hills, or—
Coming In Hot (Jupiter Point Book 6) Page 1
