Burning Up

by Susan Andersen

  “I do.”

  “Because you need someone to pick out your paint colors.”

  “Well, among other things.”

  “Among oth—” She narrowed her eyes. “I need more specificity than that. Like what?”

  “Jeez, so many things I can hardly keep them straight. I need to see you smile first thing in the morning. To hear you swear under your breath when you slop paint outside your lines. To watch you with your family. I need your laughter and your take-no-bull attitude. God, Macy.” He blew out a breath. “I need you to hold me when I have bad days.”

  Her free hand had crept up to press against her heart as he’d talked. “And how long do you foresee needing me to do these things? Until you get tired of me?”

  “Are you kidding me? Hell, I can’t even imagine the day I would get tired of you.”

  “For a long while, then?”

  He nodded. Swallowed hard. “Maybe forever.”

  Her throat worked as she, too, swallowed. “I have a job, you know. In California.”

  “I know, but does it have to be done from there? Because if the answer to that is a big-ass yes, then maybe I’d better start trying to line up a firefighting job in L.A. for when my contract here runs out the end of December.”

  “You would do that?” Her eyes were big and hopeful, and his heartbeat calmed a fraction. “You told me you were tired of big-city firefighting. But you’d go back to it, give up your beautiful house, to be with me?”

  “Honey, I’d give ten years of my life to be with you.”

  “Oh, God,” she whispered. “Oh, God, Gabriel!” Gripping his shirt in both hands now, she raised onto her toes and kissed him with desperate passion. After several long moments that felt like a red-hot eternity and a blink of an eye at the same time, she ripped her mouth free and settled back on her needle-thin heels. “I love you, Gabriel. I can’t begin to even express how much I love you. I’d made up my mind to tell you tonight and to ask what your feelings, if any, were for me.” A smile spread across her face, making her shine like a candle beckoning him in out of a cold, dark night. “This is so much cooler!”

  “I’m glad you think so.” He pulled her up to straddle his waist again and carried her across the room. “So, is that a yes?”

  “That’s a hell yes.”

  He breathed a sigh of relief. “Thank God. I aged five years waiting for your answer.” Collapsing on the leather couch with her sitting astride him, he stroked his hands down her legs. And grinned up at her. “I’m feeling mighty fine now, though.”

  “You haven’t actually said it, you know.”

  “Huh?” For a second he was confused. Then comprehension struck. “Oh. Oh, shit, I haven’t, have I?” Wrapping his fingers around her wrists, he pulled her hands from where she’d braced them on his shoulders and held them between his own. “Macy O’—what’s your middle name?”

  “Joleen. What’s yours?”

  “I don’t have one.”

  “What?” She sat straighter on his lap. “For God’s sake, your mother couldn’t even be bothered to give you a damn middle name? I know it’s not nice to bad-mouth another’s mama, and Gabriel, I’m sorry, but the more I hear of yours the more I think she’s an idiot.”

  He choked on a laugh. Cleared his throat. “Ah, Macy Joleen O’James, I love you. More than I ever knew it was possible to love someone. I want to laugh with you when you’re happy and hold you when you’re sad and—hell, I don’t even know what all. This is uncharted territory for me, but I know that I Buzz Lightyear love you. You know—to infinity and beyond?”

  “Yeah? Well, I—can’t think of a darn thing to top that. So I Buzz Lightyear love you right back. And do we sound like a couple of middle school kids or what?”

  “Maybe, but it’s working for us, don’tcha think?”

  She laughed and kissed him, then laughed again. “I do.” She looked down at her wilting wrist corsage. “And in that vein, I guess it really is official. We’re going steady.”

  “Damn straight. And we’re agreed, right? You’re going to live with me, wherever we might end up?”

  “Yes. I definitely plan to look into how I can make it work from here, though, before I go uprooting everything you’ve worked for.”

  He shrugged. “That’d just be the gravy. Because here or California or frickin’ Siberia, as long as I’ve got you?” He tipped her onto her back on the couch and propped himself over her. “Then, baby, I’m the luckiest guy alive.”

  EPILOGUE

  “HAPPY HALLOWEEN!”

  A bitter wind blew into the house as Macy opened the front door to find Grace and Jack standing on the big covered porch. Reaching out, she hauled them into the great room. “Come in, come in. Man, it’s cold out there!”

  She slammed the door shut behind them, then gave her longtime friend a big hug. “It’s so good to see you! How’s the tour going?” Laughing, she bent to hug Grace, as well. “Sorry, I’m not ignoring you, but I’ve had the pleasure of your company lately. It seems like forever since I’ve laid eyes on Jack.”

  “Tell me about it,” Grace said, her face aglow, and Macy laughed again.

  “Yes, I imagine it seems even longer to you. Let me take your coats. Gabe’s down in the rec room manning the bar—when he’s not stacking logs on the hearth, that is.” She smiled wryly. “Good thing he’s a trained professional, because I swear he’s got enough wood piled up to torch all of Sugarville.” She studied Grace’s spiked hair, dark lipstick and dramatic eye makeup. “Whoa. I can hardly wait to see the rest of that costume.”

  “She rocks,” Jack agreed with a wicked smile. “Literally.” Giving Macy a comprehensive up and down, his eyebrows furrowed. “Which is more than I can say for you. Bloody hell, Mace, you call that a costume? What happened to the queen of dress-up?”

  Grace gave his arm a gentle smack. “Be nice.” But she, too, looked perplexed when she looked at Macy’s conservative skirt and blouse, at her subdued French twist and neutral makeup. Yet all she said was, “Are you hanging the coats in the closet here?”

  “No, I’m throwing them on the bed up in our room.”

  The doorbell rang again and Grace said, “Go ahead and get that. We’ll go dump our stuff.”

  “Thanks, that’d be great. Then head down to the basement.” Whirling away, she pulled the door open. “Happy Halloween!”

  A short while later, she followed the last of their guests down the stairs, smiling as she looked around at the costumed crowd chatting and drinking and eating the hors d’oeuvres she and Gabriel had prepared. “Where’s Grace and Jack?” she asked Gabe when she noticed their absence.

  He looked up from the wine he was pouring for the date of one of his crew. “Beats the hell out of me. I don’t think they’ve arrived yet.” He handed the woman her glass, who carried it over to the group of firemen by the pool table.

  “Yes, they have. They got here a good ten minutes ag—oh, hell. They were headed for the bedroom to drop off their coats the last time I saw them.”

  He grinned at her. “Problem solved.”

  “Except that I’ve been in and out of the bedroom myself a couple times since with other people’s coats.” She thought about it a moment. “But I didn’t go into the bathroom.”

  “And you didn’t hear anything? Grace must be a lot quieter than you.”

  “Cute.” She smacked his forearm. “Jeez, remind me to wipe down the counter before I set my toothbrush on it.”

  Moments later, the couple in question sauntered in, and Macy had to grin, for they both looked very relaxed. Then she noticed their costumes and laughed out loud. She seemed to spend a lot of time doing that these days.

  “That is just too cool,” she said, crossing over to give Jack’s argyle sweater vest, cords and bow tie a once-over, then grinned at the black heavy-rimmed glasses on his nose. “You’re the schoolteacher, I take it?”

  But it was Grace who really tickled her. Because the couple had obviously traded personas
for the evening and her quiet, conservative-dressing friend was a rock-and-roll queen in an extremely short black skirt and a leather vest over a mesh body stocking that made her look as if she were tattooed from wrist to shoulder and neck to her midcalf boots.

  “That is so smack,” she said. “I thought Auntie Lenore and Uncle Bud were unbeatable in their pig outfits, but you win best costume, hands down.”

  “Isn’t she great?” Charlie’s mom, Shannon, demanded, slinging a psychedelic-fabric-clad arm around her smaller friend. “I thought Gabe’s Buzz Lightyear was the best before I saw her.” She studied Macy. “You’re kind of a surprise, though. I thought you’d really pull out all the stops, so I didn’t quite expect this. What are you supposed to be, a junior leaguer?”

  “Um, excuse me?” a male voice said before Macy could answer, and she turned to see Brian Dawson, one of the AAE boys, standing behind her.

  “Sorry to interrupt,” the Dr. Spock–costumed young man said, “but can you tell me where you put our coats?”

  For the next half hour she was busy with hostess duties, but she and Gabe exchanged secret smiles whenever their eyes met. God, she was happy.

  Her work was actually going great from here. While she’d flown to L.A. a couple of times to meet with recording artists and present the concepts she’d envisioned for their songs, the truly time-consuming part of her job was coming up with the initial ideas and designing the storyboards, and that could be done from Sugarville as easily as L.A. or Nashville. And since she was still in the process of building her career she was able to figure out things as she went, working into it slowly—although ever since an early buzz for one of her first videos took off a couple of weeks ago, she’d found herself with twice as many potential clients. Talk of a nomination for Best Concept Video at the VMA awards was already making the rounds, but it was too early to put any stock in that.

  All the same, it was very exciting—and good for business.

  “Hey, baby girl.”

  She looked up to see her aunt and Janna crossing the room toward her, and she grinned as she did every time she saw Auntie’s pillow-stuffed sow costume. Lenore had added curly tails to her and Bud’s one-piece pink union suits and designed ears and snouts for them to wear. But it was the double row of baby-bottle nipples she’d sewn down the front of hers that made the costume such a kick.

  “You need any help?” her aunt asked now.

  “I was thinking about setting out the buffet so folks can dish up whenever they’re hungry.”

  “Great. We’ll give you a hand.”

  Up in the kitchen, they gathered everything in preparation to taking it down to the table. “Gabriel misses your cooking a lot, Auntie,” she said. “But he sure is full of himself for how well your pork verde recipe turned out.”

  Lenore laughed. “Yes, that’s a tough one, throwing both ingredients into one Crock-Pot.”

  “Ah, but we mustn’t forget shredding the meat once it’s cooked—not to mention cutting up all the condiments that go on the tortillas with it. He even made the guacamole.”

  Lenore gave her a tender smile. “It’s nice to see how much your love has opened that boy up. He smiles much more often than he used to.”

  “I like the way he’s opened himself to his crew. They were all hit hard by Solberg’s betrayal, but they’ve become closer knit, I think, because of it.”

  “And that’s all very important,” Janna cut in with an ironic smile, “but I want to talk about the truly critical stuff. Like, what is the deal with that costume, Macy? I get dressing against type, but what exactly are you supposed to be?”

  “An engaged woman.”

  “A what? What the hell is an—” Her cousin’s eyes rounded when Macy extended her left hand and she saw the solitaire gracing her ring finger.

  Janna grabbed Macy’s hand and inspected the one-carat emerald-cut diamond—only tearing her gaze away from its simple platinum setting when her mother hipped her out of the way and said, “Move aside and let me get a look at that.”

  Janna eyed Macy. “You’re engaged?”

  Flush with the excitement and happiness she’d been carrying inside since Gabe had presented her with the ring that morning, she nodded.

  Her aunt and cousin look at her. Looked at each other.

  And screamed in unison.

  HEARING IT DOWNSTAIRS, conversations stopped mid word and Gabe, looking up at the ceiling, broke into a grin.

  Jack and Grace, with whom he’d been conversing, looked at him questioningly. “I’ve sensed something afoot ever since we got here,” Jack said. “What the feck is going on, mate?”

  “The cat is out of the bag, is my guess.”

  “And what, precisely,” Grace demanded, “does that mean?”

  “She’s an engaged woman!” Janna whooped as she strode into the rec room one step ahead of Macy and Lenore. “That strange-ass costume that nobody gets? It’s a freakin’ front to keep everyone’s eyes off her ring finger until she and Gabe could announce they’re engaged!”

  “Which I guess you’ve now done for them,” her mother said dryly.

  “Huh? Oh. Yeah. I guess I have. Sorry.” But she laughed and threw herself at Gabe to give him a big hug. “Congratulations! I’m sooo happy for you both!”

  Noise and laughter engulfed them as everyone gathered around talking at once, the women to inspect the diamond he’d agonized over during two separate visits to the jeweler’s and the men to slap him on the back in congratulations. “When are you getting married?” Bud demanded.

  “We haven’t decided,” Macy told her uncle as she wrapped her arm around Gabe’s waist and leaned into him. “May sounds like a great month to us, but then so does September. We finally decided we’d pick one or the other by Thanksgiving.”

  “I’m just happy everyone knows,” Gabe said, holding her to him as they moved toward the bar where he’d stored several bottles of champagne. “I’ve got witnesses now. She can’t back out.”

  Everyone laughed, but he was half-serious. He still couldn’t believe that happiness of this magnitude was attached to him.

  As if she could divine his thoughts, Macy looked up at him, and her beautiful green-and-gold eyes radiated love. “That is such a nonstarter, I can’t even begin to wrap my mind around the thought,” she assured him with quiet seriousness. “I love you, Gabriel, like I never knew it was possible to love someone. And in no scenario can I ever picture a day when I won’t.”

  Then she laughed, rolled up her skirt, took off her shirt to reveal the black satin bustier underneath and pulled the wire comb holding her French twist from her do. Shaking out her hair, she reached behind the bar for a pair of translucent black-veined wings and donned them. Then, slapping a little black beanie topped with two big sliver orbs and black antennae at a rakish angle on her head, she looked up at him.

  “So, baby?” she said with that smile that grabbed him by the short hairs every time. “I guess you’re stuck with this fly girl for the rest of your life.”

  AUNTIE LENORE’S OLD-FASHIONED BUTTERMILK FRIED CHICKEN

  3 (3 to 4 pound) whole chickens, cut into pieces, washed and patted dry

  2 quarts old-fashioned buttermilk

  2 cups shortening

  4 cups all-purpose flour

  1½ teaspoons kosher salt

  1½ teaspoons ground black pepper

  Place chicken in a large bowl, coat with buttermilk and cover. Marinate in refrigerator (overnight, if you’ve got the time, for four to eight hours if you don’t).

  Heat the shortening in a large cast-iron skillet over medium-high heat. In a large Ziploc bag, combine the flour, salt and pepper. Remove chicken from buttermilk a piece at a time and shake in the bag to coat, then carefully place in the skillet. Fry over medium-high heat until pieces are browned on one side, then turn and brown other side until chicken pieces are a deep golden-brown, and the juices run clear.

  Reminder: These are boardinghouse portions—you might want to cut recipe
to one chicken, 1 cup shortening, 1 quart buttermilk, 2 cups flour and one each teaspoon salt and pepper.

  AUNTIE LENORE’S (AND SUE BELL’S) SUGAR COOKIE RECIPE

  1 cup sugar

  1 cup butter

  Cream together

  Mix in 3 eggs and 1 teaspoon vanilla.

  3 cups flour

  1 teaspoon each soda and salt

  2 teaspoons cream of tartar

  Mix well with wet ingredients, cover and refrigerate overnight.

  Roll out and cut in shapes.

  Bake at 375 degrees for 10–15 minutes until golden brown.

  Let cool.

  Icing

  1 egg white, beaten until stiff but not dry

  Mix together:

  1½ cups powdered sugar

  ½ teaspoon vanilla

  1–2 drops food color

  Beat in with egg whites. Frost and set.

  (Auntie L did the work for you on this one and cut it down for a smaller crowd. Double or triple if you want lots and lots of cookies)

  ISBN: 978-1-4268-6555-8

  BURNING UP

  Copyright © 2010 by Susan Andersen

  All rights reserved. Except for use in any review, the reproduction or utilization of this work in whole or in part in any form by any electronic, mechanical or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including xerography, photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, is forbidden without the written permission of the publisher, Harlequin Enterprises Limited, 225 Duncan Mill Road, Don Mills, Ontario M3B 3K9, Canada.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is entirely coincidental.