Too Hot to Hold

by Stephanie Tyler

  There was a danger in remembering … but sometimes an even bigger one in forgetting.

  ———

  Why don’t you just forget about taking these crazy bands onwas something Kenny Waldron was used to hearing—a question he never answered. Instead he would just smile a secret smile and think of his three sons, who were wilder than any band he’d ever managed. Then he would sign the papers his lawyer put in front of him, committing him to manage what usually turned out to be a band on the verge of self-destruction, one that had been dumped by several managers before him, one that no one but Kenny was crazy enough to take on.

  There was crazy and then there wascrazy , and Kenny had been used to all kinds from the time he’d been a young wild boy himself growing up in the bayous of Louisiana. Married to Maggie at seventeen, they’d had their son, Chris, nine months later and had taken him on the road with them as they began a career of managing bands that would make them famous.

  By this time, Kenny was used to trouble, used to having his authority questioned. Used to things coming out all right in the end. Sometimes, it took his sons, and the bands, longer to figure that out.

  “We could’ve had a bigger deal if we hadn’t listened to him,” he heard the lead singer of his latest project whisper now to the other members of the group from behind the half-closed door.

  Kenny would speak to the kid later, privately, after the show was finished and the post-performance adrenaline had waned. When the kid was alone in his dressing room, after the fans—and the women—left, Kenny would remind the singer that this was all he had, right there.

  All you have is your soul.

  He would tell the kid that it was never a good idea to make a deal with the devil.

  Kenny had made a deal with the devil only once in his lifetime and considered it worth it to keep one of his three sons out of hell’s reach.

  “We did the right thing,” his wife, Maggie, had told him firmly thirteen years earlier as Kenny steered the SUV down the thruway that led from New York to Virginia.

  The three boys—Chris, Nick and Jake—had all been asleep in the backseat by that point, the trauma of the past days and weeks having taken its toll on each of them.

  “I know we did.” He’d held her hand, the way he had for all the years they’d been together, with no way of knowing she’d be dead nine months later, the cancer spreading quickly and quietly in an effort to evade both of their second sights. “I wish we could do this legally. Adopt Jake and Nick.”

  That wasn’t possible. Jake had recently lost his stepfather—an abusive man who’d nearly killed him—and going through the proper channels would’ve taken too long. Sad to say, the boy was never missed in the city, his disappearance had merely lightened an overworked social worker’s case file.

  No, Jake would have a good home with them now. There was no guilt in what they’d done.

  But things with Nick were far more complicated.

  “They’re still ours,” she’d said. “The way it was meant to be. That’s all that matters now.”

  That had been the truth. Although only Chris was their biological son, Kenny and Maggie had become involved in Nick’s and Jake’s lives quickly. They’d just moved to New York so Kenny could work with a new producer and record label he’d been developing, and Chris had met the two boys who would soon become his brothers on his very first day of school.

  The Waldron family had been there all of two weeks when Jake’s stepfather had died. And things were horribly wrong for Nick too, so Kenny had to work fast to stop that boy from running away.

  It had taken only a moment of concentration before Kenny’s gift of second sight led him to Nick, found him on the platform of the train station, ready to go and yet unable to actually leave.

  Kenny had watched as Nick let three different trains go by before he’d gone to sit next to him on the wooden bench and silently handed him the papers he’d had a lawyer draw up earlier that same day.

  They weren’t adoption papers, but they were the key to Nick’s emancipation in so many different ways.

  “Is this what you want?” he’d asked. Even at fourteen, Nick had been devastatingly handsome, an heir to a throne and part of a family so cursed Kenny knew Nick would spend a lifetime trying to escape it if he’d stayed.

  “It’s what I want.”

  “There’s no going back.” Kenny’s stomach had lurched every time he thought of what kind of man, what kind of father could blithely agree to publicly declare his son missing, believed dead, in exchange for an inheritance.

  “I don’t want to go back. I’m never going back,” Nick had ground out fiercely.

  “Then sign. And you never have to,” Kenny had told him quietly, felt Nick’s green eyes pierce through his in a silentthank you , for the way out he’d have never been able to achieve on his own. At least not back then.

  After Maggie’s death, Kenny had been as inconsolable as his sons, barely remembered the first years, when Chris went quiet and refused to acknowledge his own gift of second sight, when Jake pushed a paper at him and told him he was joining the military at fifteen. When Nick and Chris had tried to take themselves so far over the edge that there’d almost been no turning back for either of them.

  He’d woken up when both of them were arrested for stealing cars on the same night—what had started as a stupid hobby of hotwiring cars for joyrides had veered dangerously close to a way of life for the two boys on the verge of manhood.

  His three boys had all survived in a way that made his heart swell with pride. And with that, he should be happy, content, not restless, the way he’d been all night long.

  When he felt a chill shoot straight to his soul, he looked around the room until his gaze settled on the muted TV that had been turned to a twenty-four-hour news station.

  He saw the devil’s face—contorted in fake grief—on the big screen set up in the green room of the massive concert hall, where his latest out-of-control band was currently performing.

  The hair on the back of his neck stood on end and he said a silent prayer to both God and Maggie and hoped one of them was paying attention.

  Senator Winfield’s wife, Deidre, died early yesterday morning at the family home in New York from complications of lungcancer. The Winfields chose to wait twenty-four hours before announcing Deidre’s death so they could have time to mourn in private. Services will be held this weekend in a private memorial. The Winfields have a long history of both public and political service and an even longer history of family tragedy, beginning with the untimely death of the senator’s brother, William “Billy” Winfield, and followed by the still unconfirmed death of his youngest son, Cutter Nicholas Winfield, at age fourteen…

  “Cutter’s not coming home, is he?”

  Walter Winfield looked away from the television reports to see his eldest son standing in the doorway of his office. Eric, still looking very much like the star quarterback hedging for a tackle or routing out a kick path, leaned against the doorjamb. With his body poised in a forward motion of hunger, hair hanging over his forehead in a decidedly noncorporate length, he looked every inch the man Walter’s brother had been.

  Walter’s throat still tightened when he thought of Billy, killed in combat one month before Cutter was born.

  “He can’t,” Walter said finally. “He knows that.”

  Eric hesitated for a beat, and then muttered that his day had already been ruined. He walked farther into the office, not bothering to shut the door behind him the way he would during normal business hours. It was close to midnight, and they were the only two on the floor—and most likely in the entire building, save for a cleaning staff. “You still haven’t been able to get inside the will, have you?”

  “No. Not yet.”

  “Do you think there’s going to be a problem?”

  “I don’t. But if there is, I’ll take care of it, Eric.” Walter pushed back in his chair and sighed, feeling the weight of the world on his sixty-year-old shoulders
and hating it.

  He glanced at the note he’d prepared, one that would be picked up shortly and hand-delivered to Cutter by morning. Simple and to the point, the way he’d always taught his children to be. The way Deidre could never have acted, even later on when talking got too hard for her. And then he ripped it in half and threw it into the fireplace.

  Nick, as the man was known today, would hate him for the message, but his youngest had always found a reason to despise his father. Running away, first at twelve and again, for good, at fourteen, had proven the point.

  He would only have come home for his mother. Only if and when she’d called, and she never had.

  The Winfields were all about public face and private pain. This would prove to be no exception.

  CHAPTER 5

  Ineed to find someone,” Nick told Max, once he’d gotten onto base and into Max’s private sanctum sometime after 0500.

  Max sat at a long table, rows of computer monitors in front of him and overhead. “Do I havemissing persons stamped on my goddamned forehead?”

  “Aw, come on, man.” Nick slid into one of the chairs next to the captain and held his gaze steady.

  “You and your entire team owe me more favors, and you’d best be sure I’m keeping track. Got a nice little list. Between you and Saint and that goddamned brother of yours—”

  “Which one?”

  “You know which one,” Max snorted, and yeah, he was talking about Jake. Jake, who was seriously missing Izzy, as she was back working a short stint for Doctors Without Borders. At least work was keeping him busy.

  Both Jake and Chris had gone straight to base from their night out—as previously planned—for an earlier-than-0-dark-hundred flight for Coronado with the team’s senior chief, Mark Kendall, to participate in cross-training exercises. Nick and Saint and other teammates would remain in Virginia, as Nick was finishing up training of his own, training he’d had to put aside hurriedly when his team had gotten called away months earlier.

  Now Nick waited until Max stopped grumbling under his breath and finally told him, “All right, give me a few days and I’ll see what I can do.”

  “I don’t have a few days.”

  “Holy fuck, Devane, crawl out from my ass!” Max roared. But Nick stayed in his seat, remained unimpressed. “I don’t know where the hell you got your balls, kid.”

  “This guy was Kaylee Smith’s husband,” Nick said quietly as he slid the piece of paper with Aaron’s name on it, and the request for Nick’s old SITREP, toward Max.

  “Why didn’t you just say so to begin with?”

  “I never did like doing things the easy way.”

  “I thought you were shutting her down,” Max grumbled.

  “I was. I am.” Nick stood. “Can you get me Kaylee’s address as long as you’re searching? Maybe run her plate number for me now.”

  Max gave him a long stare, and then began to type the license plate number into the computer as he spoke. “You’re playing with fire on this one. You know that, right? Because you’re supposed to get this woman off your tail, not get involved in her life.”

  “I’m not getting involved in her life,” Nick insisted, even as his mind flashed back to last night, the way she’d have easily wrapped herself around him if he’d pushed.

  It felt like it had happened ten minutes ago, as if no time had passed, and the sensation of hard needles of cold water hitting his skin in the shower earlier had made him bare his teeth and hiss—it had done little for his hard-on, only served to make him think of the woman who had gotten him this aroused.

  He needed something to fill up the silence. He wanted the loud, pounding sounds of music, of combat—of sex. Tonight, none of that would do, at least not with a stranger, not that he hadn’t considered that possibility.

  Finding out that Deidre had died via a news report had thrown him. But losing himself in grief for a mother who’d never wanted him wouldn’t do shit for him anyway. Losing himself in Kaylee … that was a much different story.

  He left Max’s lair and headed to his own office, was down the hall moving toward his cubicle in the quiet area the SEALs often used to strategize, when he suddenly knew someone was on his six and far too close for comfort.

  He turned before the man could lay a hand on him, had his own palm poised to strike directly at the throat of whoever was stupid enough to attempt to sneak up on a military man just home from combat. Christ, they were all jumpy as hell when they got back, but with his aversion to being touched, he was the worst one of all.

  He just hid that last part better than most.

  It was his CO. Saint had his own palm raised and he was smiling. “Making sure you’re on your toes,” he drawled as he sauntered past Nick toward his own office.

  Nick flipped him the internal middle finger. “I put in for three days of leave, starting tomorrow,” he called after him.

  “Everything all right?”

  “Just something I need to take care of. No big deal.”

  “Take a week.”

  “I don’t need a week.”

  “Don’t fuck with me when I’m feeling generous,” Saint admonished. “You come back here with any part of your body in a cast and I’ll kill you.”

  “I’ll keep that in mind.”

  It was well after elevenP.M. by the time Kaylee put her current story to bed and headed home. She’d been in the office from five that morning with no sleep under her belt, having fought and talked with Carl all last night and into the early morning hours. He’d finally gotten dressed and out of her apartment, without saying good-bye. He’d slammed the door behind him in frustration and all of her strain had faded away.

  Free. She was free, until the thought of Aaron and his phone call weighed her down again.

  She’d spent those first early hours while the newspaper office was relatively quiet following up on the symbol on the patch Nick had handed her.

  The crudely stitched patch was still in her pocket now—its symbol, whose top half looked like a backward half moon, or a rhino’s horn if turned on its side, was the Akoben. After some quick research, she was able to determine its West African origins. It was also referred to as the war horn, a call to arms, a willingness to take action when necessary.

  It sounded like Aaron.

  She hadn’t told Nick that all the men Aaron had saved had been in Africa—the Congo, Zimbabwe. The Ivory Coast. West Africa. Maybe she should have—or maybe it held no significance whatsoever.

  And she didn’t owe Nick anything more than what she’d told him. Except the mere thought of his name made her heart race as if she was a sixteen-year-old with a massive crush, and she muttered to herself disgustedly as she headed down the hall toward her apartment.

  For the first time in a long time, she wished someone was waiting there for her.

  Sometimes that pain hit her like a physical blow. Somehow she always found herself surrounded by more people than someone could possibly ask for and yet she could never find the comfort she sought. Aaron had been her main source of both pain and pleasure, and when he’d broken her trust, he’d shattered her for what she figured to be the final time. Irreparable.

  She juggled takeout and her bags and worked the key in her lock. She lightly kicked the door open, cursing as some of the bags slipped, and she froze when she heard a low, rough laugh.

  Nick was waiting for her. Inside her apartment, which had been locked and alarmed.

  She really had to be careful about what she wished for, even as her belly twinged with a secret thrill at the sight of him there.

  The door had still been locked, the alarm was still armed. Her place was on the fifteenth floor, and she wondered if he’d climbed up the side of the building and gotten in through a window she’d forgotten to close.

  The alarm buzz continued as she stared at him.

  “Are you going to turn that off?” he asked.

  “How—”

  He pushed past her and punched in a code—hercode—and the
buzzing stopped. He also closed the door behind her and slid the lock into place. “You curse worse than a sailor.”

  “What the hell is going on here?” she finally demanded, giving up the fight and dropping her bags on the floor.

  “You wanted me.”

  “I wanted your help, not you breaking into my apartment.”

  He hadn’t moved, and was tall, so much taller than she was. “You’re going to have to be more specific about things next time.”

  “How did you know where I live?”

  “I ran your plates through the DMV.”

  “That can’t be legal,” she said. He didn’t answer, gave a small smile. “I don’t understand—are you here to help me, then, with Aaron?”

  “Thishas nothing to do with Aaron,” he told her before he brought his mouth down on hers, swept her into his arms—and the surge of desire was enough to make her knees buckle.

  The man tasted like sin, something she shouldn’t need or crave or want. Something she couldn’t resist. Her hands fisted in his hair as he brought his mouth down on hers, and the fire between them lit the same way it had when she’d borrowed his car.

  He’d take her here, right against the door, and it was all too fitting for what she suspected would be a quick escape route for him once the sex was over.

  She broke the kiss, yanked away from him and stared into the incredible green eyes that continued to watch her intently.

  “You want to go for a ride?” he asked.

  “You’re going to let me drive your car again?”

  “I wasn’t talking about cars.” His thumb brushed her cheek, moved down to trace her jaw.

  His touch was like a truth serum. “I told you that I was seeing someone.”

  “Yeah, you mentioned that. Do you want me to go, Kaylee? Because you should tell me that now. Right now.”

  “I’m not seeing him anymore.”

  “That was fast.”

  “Things have been happening that way for me lately.”