Valentines Heat IV

by Anne Lange, Nikki Dee Houston, Arianna Archer

  But the fires aren’t the only thing smoldering at Hillwood. When Cindy comes face-to-face with the real-life, fireman-calendar pinup, she’s left feeling shaky and gasping for breath. Their attraction is white-hot, the sex is sizzling, and there’s no such thing as enough when it comes to their lovemaking. But things turn nasty when a dark past comes back to haunt Cindy, jeopardizing her career before it’s even really begun…

  RUBY’S VALENTINE by Arianna Archer

  When Ruby killed Black-Eye Jack, not one person in Hamlin was surprised. No one doubted for a minute that she was the one who pulled the trigger. They found his truck in the parking lot of the Aces High Gentlemen’s Lounge early on Valentine’s Day. And they found Black-Eye inside it, slumped over on his right side, his brains on the seat next to him, his blood spackling the windshield. It was odd that nobody had heard a damn thing, considering that a Friday night at Aces High meant a full parking lot and plenty of action in the vehicles parked there.

  The cop they sent for Ruby—just one, because the chief knew it wouldn’t take a whole parade of law—dragged his feet all the way to her door. Officer Jude Cole knocked twice, too quiet for the purpose, with his hat in his hand. He scuffed the toe of one boot on the worn wood of her front porch. Jude had lost the finger shoot. No one had wanted to go get Ruby, so they’d actually shot for it. Not even a bulldog like Jer Dixon, who arrested people just to have someone to talk to in the cruiser, wanted to arrest her.

  Jude was especially unhappy to be standing on her front porch with handcuffs hanging off his belt and business to see to. He had history on this porch. He had history with Ruby. He’d gone to high school with her. Took her to the prom in their senior year, then took her in the back of his old F-150 afterward. Her first time; his best. They were a cliché but not, high school sweethearts in a small town.

  But Jude had fallen hard for her. Fallen all the way down the rabbit hole of young love. His friends had ribbed him; he’d had it bad. He’d never disagreed. There were some, Jude chief among them, who’d thought he and Ruby would get married for sure. Even before graduation, he had been planning how he’d ask her. He’d daydreamed the script, the setting, the cast. He was going to ask her momma for Ruby’s hand—her daddy had died when they were still in grade school. The whole town had gone to the funeral, and Jude had stood on this porch in his uncomfortable Sunday clothes while his mom and dad paid respects. He and Ruby had snuck off with a pie and eaten it with two plastic spoons, making themselves sick. To this day, Jude couldn’t eat cherry pie.

  But Ruby’d had other ideas. Her daydreams were worlds away from his. Her script, her cast of characters, and certainly her setting, were beyond him. Two weeks after graduation, on a sweltering June evening, they sat in Jude’s truck in the lot at Dairy Queen. Jude never saw it coming; she’d broken it off. No tears, no drama, no point arguing. She’d said she loved him, she really did. But Hamlin had gotten too small, too tight for her. She needed to breathe air that didn’t smell like hay and cow shit. She couldn’t stand the same places, same faces all around her. She was suffocated in sameness.

  Jude had been a casualty. He hadn’t eaten for nearly a week, had driven himself around with the radio blaring and furious boy-tears rolling down his face.

  Ruby had left town the following weekend, headed up north on a diesel-farting Greyhound. Jude had driven her to the station in his truck, her cheap Kmart suitcase in the back. He’d hoped he could change her mind. He’d said nothing out loud, but he’d been screaming inside. Stay, goddam it!

  Ruby had cried the whole way there. He’d cried the whole way back.

  She’d disappeared. She hadn’t come back at Christmas. Her momma got cards and flowers in the mail but no Ruby. Jude got nothing. Not a letter, not a phone call, not a single word in a cold text message. She was truly gone. He’d worked hard to close the hole she’d left in him, filling it with girls who lived in town, stayed in town, married other town guys, but not him. He was no longer the marrying kind, apparently. He wanted only Ruby. But Ruby had left, and she stayed away.

  Then last year, she came back. Her momma had passed suddenly, and Ruby came home for the funeral. Jude had no idea who’d notified her; he didn’t think she’d kept ties with anyone but her mother. Ruby rode into town on the back of Black-Eye’s bike, hair streaming like a flag out behind her, no helmet. After the funeral, Jude had stood on this same porch, drinking a beer from the bottle and making small talk with the other folks who’d come to the wake, who knew him historically, knew exactly what he was thinking when he looked at Ruby. Why?

  No one asked Ruby the question. Or any questions. She inherited the house, and she and Black-Eye moved in, bringing only belongings they’d carried with them. Ruby was there in Hamlin, but she kept herself apart, polite but shuttered. She didn’t revive her old friendships or join the various clubs—volleyball, gardening—that other women did. Old ladies patted her hand and clucked behind her back. Women her age said the same thing Jude was thinking, every single time Ruby crossed his mind: Why? Why had she left town, left a man like Jude Cole, and come back with…that one. Men said nothing at all about Ruby. They said nothing at all to Black-Eye.

  Ruby had disappeared like smoke, but she’d come back like a rumor. Folks saw her enough, out and about, never with Jack. They saw her in the grocery with her bruised face. At the Laundromat with a quarter-sized bald spot, angry and scabbed in the middle, where Jack had ripped out a handful of her red hair. Once or twice in the emergency room at Grewelling County General to splint a wrist or butterfly a gash.

  Everyone in town knew Black-Eye beat the living shit out of her on a regular basis. It wasn’t gossip, mainly because Ruby was plain as day about it:

  “Where’d you get that shiner, Ruby?”

  “My husband smacked me.”

  It wasn’t her shame, she said. It was his. And no one was going to settle her accounts but her—she made that clear. So, right or wrong, no one said a word about it to Jack. Jude included.

  Ruby opened the door and smiled at Jude. His breath caught in his throat; he gave a short cough to free it. She’d always been a beauty, a firecracker—red hair, green eyes, freckles everywhere, all temper and impulse.

  Damn if she doesn’t just give off sparks, Jude had thought more than once. He was thinking it right now. Then he noticed, belatedly, the purple lump stretching skin on her forehead, just above her left eye. His stomach coiled.

  “Well, hello, Jude Cole. Officer Cole,” she corrected herself. “I’m guessing this isn’t a social call.” Ruby waited a full five seconds before she stepped back and pushed open the wooden screen door to let him in. “Come on in anyway.”

  He stepped inside and laid his hat on the deacon’s bench next to the door. The house smelled like lemons. And cookies. Sweet and comfortable. It took him off guard for a second. He expected things to be less…pleasant. He saw the house hadn’t changed much since the last time he’d stood here, at the funeral. It was homey, decorated like all the others in this part of town, with flowered wallpaper that aged gracefully and white-painted crown molding. The buttery, wide, pine floor planks were scrubbed clean and nearly lustrous with care. A cheerful rag rug covered the floor under the coffee table.

  He expected there to be more of Black-Eyed Jack here, rough and destructive elements, piles of porno magazines and crushed beer cans, maybe. But no. There was no discernible evidence of Jack’s presence at all—no stink of left-behind weed smoke or spilled whiskey or man at all. Just the sweet scents of something good in the oven. Ruby might have lived her by herself, just like her momma had.

  “Get I get you a beer? Glass of tea?” she asked, leading Jude into the kitchen and pulling out a chair at the table. “Got some Coke in the fridge, and I bet I can find some Jack to mix in.”

  She was already pulling glasses out of a cupboard. It wasn’t a question.

  Jude cleared his throat. “As much as I’d love a beer, it’s probably not a good idea, it being ten o’clock in
the morning. Also, seeing as how you’re right; this isn’t a social call. Sweet tea would be good, thanks.”

  Jude watched her as she opened the fridge, took out a pitcher. He saw that her fridge was nearly empty: ketchup and mustard bottles, a few odd plastic containers filled with leftovers. Beer. No automatic ice maker. She pulled ice trays from the freezer and cracked the cubes into the glasses, dropping a couple on the floor. She toed the fugitives under the edge of the counter. “Angels’ share,” she said with a small grin.

  Ruby’s hair was beautiful, like liquid fire, in the light pouring through the window over the sink. He had never seen hair like that on anyone else; it looked electric, ablaze. Jude couldn’t take his eyes off it. His hands twitched, wanting to touch it. He could almost feel it waterfalling through his fingers, slippery as silk. He wasn’t imagining it. He was remembering. There was a pang, an almost painful stab of what…regret? anger? hunger? Jude forced his eyes away.

  She poured and set a glass of tea in front of him, then turned to fuss with a cookie jar, stacking cookies onto a plate.

  Ruby hadn’t changed much in the decade or so since high school. She’d cut that fine, flaming hair a little shorter, and she wore less makeup now. More comfortable in her own skin, she wasn’t covering her freckles anymore. Her jeans were Levi’s and snug fitting around her hips. “Boy hips,” a teenage Ruby used to call them, unhappy with her slender, coltish frame. He felt an intense urge to feel those hips again under his hands. She wore a white V-neck T-shirt, silver bangles on her wrists, no bra. Her feet were bare and her toenails were painted pale green. Jude struggled to keep his eyes off her breasts, but eye contact wasn’t much more comfortable. He shouldn’t have come; he should have bribed Jer or one of the other cops to do it.

  “Thank you, ma’am,” he said, lifting his glass and taking a sip of tea. “So…I guess you know why I’m here, Rube.”

  Ruby smiled mildly. “I figured you weren’t just now getting around to pay me a visit. Catch up on old times. I mean, if you hadn’t come ’round by now, I expected you weren’t going to.”

  “I’m not gonna say I wasn’t tempted, but that wouldn’t have been a great idea, would it? I’m thinking Jack would have busted us both up for it. Or you, anyway.”

  “Fair enough,” Ruby admitted, and came to the table with her plate of cookies. “Oatmeal raisin,” she said, and placed the plate on the table in front of him. “On account of they were Jack’s least favorite.”

  She smiled at him again and took the seat across from his at the scarred wooden table. Jude remembered having dinner at this table, Ruby’s mom dishing out fried chicken and mashed potatoes, peanut butter cookies with chocolate kisses pressed into their centers. He leaned forward and gestured with a finger at the knot on her forehead. He was careful not to actually touch it. The injury was fresh, more red than purple still, and looked painful. It would get dark. She’d be lucky if her eye didn’t blacken up underneath it.

  “He do this?” he asked, keeping his eyes on hers.

  “Who else?” she answered tartly. “It sure wasn’t the mailman. He also did this…” She lifted her hair and twisted in her seat to show him yellowing bruises on the back of her neck. “…and this.” She stood, unbuttoned her jeans, and slid them down her thighs. She turned around and Jude swallowed reflexively. There were belt stripes visible across her buttocks under the filmy fabric of her panties. Her cream-colored skin was scarred with welts, some fresh and some healed.

  She turned back around and folded her arms over her chest. Her expression surprised him. He was prepared for tears, rage, embarrassment…some display of difficult, ferocious emotion. Instead, her face was composed. She seemed calm, almost relaxed. She dropped her arms and pulled her jeans up slowly, but she left them open, the button fly undone. “Let’s just say Jack had a problem with his hands.”

  “I’d say it was you who had a problem with Jack’s hands,” he returned.

  “Potato, po-tah-to,” Ruby said and shrugged.

  “You’re right, it doesn’t matter. Jack’s dead, courtesy of you, and you’re going to jail for it. For him.” He tried, and mostly succeeded, to keep the bitterness from his voice. Did Ruby even see the terrible waste of it? It was all Jude could think of.

  She came alive, slapped her palm sharply down on the table. A cookie slid off the plate. “Oh hell, no, not for him! For me. What I did was one hundred percent about me. If I end up in jail, so be it. It’ll have been worth it, believe me.” She started to fasten her jeans, but froze when he got up and stepped toward her.

  Jude, quit this, he told himself, even as his feet brought him closer and closer to her. This is a very, very bad idea.

  He knew it, but he was unable to stop himself. He closed the distance between them, backing her gently against the edge of the sink. He’d stood at that sink more times than he could remember, dish towel in hand, drying the dishes Ruby rinsed and handed to him.

  Jude wrapped his hands around her upper arms. She was small, her head barely grazed his chin, and her fine, slender body weighed maybe half what his did. Black-Eye had outsized her by at least a hundred pounds and nearly a foot. Jude looked down into her green eyes, which were clear and bright. No sign of trouble there—no tear-swollen eyelids, bloodshot whites. Just her green, green eyes looking steadily back into his brown ones. He drew her against him, circled his arms around her. He held for a long moment, then let her go, and stepped away.

  “No, Rube,” Jude said, his quiet voice hard. “It’s not right. It’s not your fault. He would have killed you if you didn’t get to him first. There’s not a person alive in this town who wouldn’t say the same.” Then he dipped his head and brushed the wound on her forehead with tender lips. He heard her breathe in sharply, and he wondered if he’d hurt her. He released her arms and stepped backward, his eyes on hers. “It’s not right. I won’t let it happen.”

  He left her, striding to the staircase he knew led to her bedroom upstairs. He’d watched her come down those same steps on prom night so long ago, a fucking lifetime ago, with his dry throat strangling his breath, she was that goddamn pretty. Ruby’d worn a clover-green dress, tea-length, with cream-colored crinolines and extraordinarily high heels. She had a fine gold chain anklet on. He’d given it to her the previous summer, for her seventeenth birthday. His hands had shaken around the corsage he held, waiting to slip it onto her wrist. He’d never seen anyone so beautiful.

  Now he pounded up those stairs two at a time, trampling the memory.

  “Jude! Where are you going?” she yelled after him. She pulled the buttons together on her jeans and ran for the stairs, climbing behind him. “What are you doing up there? Jude!”

  Jude was in her bathroom, rummaging in the medicine cabinet. Plastic pill bottles and tubes of lip gloss and mascara hit the porcelain as they fell into the sink. He dropped a little cake of pearl-gray eye shadow and it broke apart with a plastic clatter, dusting the countertop with iridescent powder. Then Jude left the bathroom and stalked to the master bedroom. The room was clean, neat, surprisingly feminine. White crocheted bedspread over a quilt. Walls pale, buttermilk yellow. Again, he’d expected something different, something darker, less Ruby and more Jack.

  Jude guessed which night table was hers by the objects arranged on it—jar of hand cream, a book with a sunflower on the front. He strode toward it and knelt, then yanked open the drawer. He pushed his hands through the contents brusquely, rummaging around fiercely.

  “Jude?” Ruby said, stepping into the room behind him. “What…what the hell are you looking for?”

  Jude turned to her, still kneeling, and held up a hand. He was holding something out to her. A pill bottle. He shook it, the contents clattering almost cheerfully. “Sleeping pills,” he answered finally. “That’s what I was looking for.”

  Ruby walked to the edge of the bed and sat down in front of Jude. She sighed and held out her hand for the bottle. He placed it in her palm, and she spoke without looking at him. “The
doctor gave them to me in the hospital after I—that is, after Jack—broke my wrist, so I could get some sleep. But I never ended up taking them. Hell if I was gonna knock myself out like that. There was no way. I was used to sleeping with one eye open.” She gave a bitter little laugh; Jude didn’t even smile.

  “Ruby…listen.” He edged closer to her, so he was kneeling directly in front of her, then sat back on his heels. He placed his hands on her legs. Her jeans were worn soft over her knees. A small hole was starting on the left one. He was surprised to find himself absently rubbing his thumb over the spot. “You’re not going to jail now that you’re finally free. I won’t let it happen. You shouldn’t either. Why would you just give in without a fight?”

  “Jude, there’s nothing you or I—or anyone—can do about it. I’m guilty. I shot that son of a bitch…I killed him…and I’d do it over again any day of the week. I don’t care who knows. I warned him and warned him. I told him, flat out, if he hurt me one more time, I’d kill him. I was dead serious. Jack knew I meant it; he just didn’t care. He didn’t think I’d ever beat him. You have to understand, Jack knew it was gonna be him or me, and he was comfortable with his odds.

  “I’m not hiding from what I did, Jude. I’m owning up to it. That’s freedom, too, you know.”

  His expression was intense, his eyes burning. “Like hell it is. Living in a cage isn’t freedom.”

  “Maybe not, but honesty is,” she countered.

  “That’s bullshit, Ruby. You don’t have the luxury of ideals. You are looking at life in prison. I’m not going to let you go.”

  She sighed, weary and resigned. “Oh, Jude. Please stop. There’s nothing…there’s nothing for it. I’m okay. It will all work out okay.”

  Jude moved his hands from her knees to her thighs, his palms warming her skin through her jeans. “What can I do? There’s nothing I can do…it’s too late.”