Slow Heat in Heaven

by Sandra Brown

  That reminded her of why she had detained him. "Cash, didn't you tell me that two of the rigs had flat tires when you got to the landing yesterday morning?"

  "Oui, but they've been taken care of. I changed the flats myself. The tires are being repaired at Otis's garage."

  "I'm not worried about the tires," she murmured ab­sently. "Doesn't that strike you as unusual and unlikely?"

  "What?"

  "That two rigs would have flat tires on the same morn­ing."

  "Coincidence." Her worried frown indicated that she wasn't so sure. "You don't think so?"

  The deep breath she drew lifted her breasts and delin­eated them against her blouse. She wasn't aware of that, nor that the involuntary motion had drawn his eyes. Since the day she had asked him to resume his position with the company, she had been careful to wear modest clothing, not because she felt bound to obey his high-handed direc­tives, but because she didn't want to warrant his criticism.

  "I suppose it's just a crazy coincidence. I probably wouldn't have thought any more about it except. . ."

  "Go on. What?"

  Feeling rather foolish, she looked directly at him. "This morning when I got here, the office door was standing ajar. You didn't arrive before me, did you?"

  He shook his head. His brows were pulled into a V across his forehead. "Wind?"

  "What wind?" she asked with a soft laugh. "I would give my eye teeth to feel a good stiff breeze. Besides, the door was locked. I make certain of that every night before I leave. Did you come in behind me last night to use the telephone?"

  He smiled lopsidedly and shook his head no. "What are you getting at? That the track tires could have been tam­pered with?"

  "No, I guess not. It sounds ridiculous, doesn't it?" She rubbed the back of her neck. The nagging suspicions she had nursed ail day sounded ludicrous when spoken aloud. She wished she had heeded her earlier instinct and kept them to herself.

  "Was anything in the office missing?"

  "No."

  "Disturbed?"

  "No."

  "No signs of vandalism?"

  She denied that, too, with a shake of her head. "It just made me feel creepy."

  "I'm sure it's nothing to worry about. But maybe you'd better start going home earlier. Don't stay here so late by yourself."

  "Ken said the same thing. He's been driving over to follow me home every night."

  "Howell?" Cash's brows drew even closer together. "Was he here the night before last?"

  "Yes," she replied, mystified by the question. "Why?"

  "Did he go anywhere near the garage?"

  She shot him a sour look. "Don't be absurd."

  "It's not so absurd. Howell has got two good reasons to be severely pissed off."

  "What?"

  "You taking over the management of Crandall Logging. And the gossip circulating about us."

  "Us?" She knew what was coming. The only reason she had asked was that she was curious to see how much he knew. She braced herself for whatever he might say.

  "Us. You and me. Folks say that business isn't all we're doing together. They've put us in the same bed. And they say we're having a damn good time there."

  Her preparations fell short. She didn't sustain the blow of his words at all. In fact they caused her breath to catch. She said nothing; she couldn't, no more than she could escape his compelling stare, which, like a chameleon, changed color to match the background. One second it was gray, the next mossy green, the next agate.

  "Now if you were Howell, wouldn't you be feeling like shit?"

  "Ken's got no reason to hold a grudge. I haven't in­fringed on his work at the downtown office. As for the other, even though it's silly gossip, it's none of his busi­ness. He's married to my sister."

  "Right," Cash drawled, taking a long drink from his beer. "But he can't stand the thought of me sampling what he threw away. Finished?"

  Schyler had once again been rendered mute. Finally she asked hoarsely, "What?"

  "Finished?" He nodded down at the can of beer she was mindlessly strangling with both hands.

  "Oh, not quite."

  "Well, what have we here?"

  Schyler was shakily raising the can of beer to her mouth, when Cash bent from the waist and scooped something up from the muddy ground near her feet. She went rigid with terror when she saw the writhing body of the snake dan­gling by its tail from his hand. Its dark-banded body was a good two feet long. Its head was black. Inside its open mouth Schyler could see the pinkish-white membrane from which it drew its nickname.

  Cash casually swung the snake backward, then let his hand fly as though he were fishing with a casting rod. The cottonmouth tumbled end over end in the air before making a splash in the center of the viscous bayou.

  Schyler's eyes backtracked from the dark green splash it made to Cash. "That was a water moccasin," she wheezed.

  "Um-huh. Ready to head back?"

  "And you just picked it up."

  Then he noticed her apparent dismay and said wryly, "I was raised on the banks of the bayou, Schyler. I'm not afraid of snakes. Any snake." He reached down and drew her up. He ran his warm, rough palms over her upper arms. "I guess you are, though. You've got goose bumps." As his hand continued to rub the raised flesh, he whis­pered, "Not too many snakes make it as far as the mansion, do they?"

  Keeping one hand around her elbow, he guided her back toward the landing. Her knees were trembling. The alter­cation with the cottonmouth had been unsettling. So had his cavalier treatment of it. So was his soft touch and his hot stare and every sexy word that came out of his mouth.

  When they reached his pickup, she slumped against the side of it. "Before I forget," she said, "there's something else I wanted to talk to you about."

  "I'm listening."

  "Today I made an appointment to meet with Joe Endicott, Jr. at his paper mill."

  "Over in East Texas?"

  "Yes. We've dealt with them before."

  "I remember. They gave us several good contracts."

  "That's been a few years ago. Do you know why they stopped doing business with us?"

  "No."

  "Neither do I. He treated me coolly, but I finally wore down his resistance and he granted me an appointment. It's on the twelfth." She paused to draw a breath. "Cash, will you go with me?"

  He looked surprised but replied quickly, "Sure."

  "I would appreciate it. I'll need your expertise. I got the impression that they need quality timber and have just about depleted their regular suppliers. This could mean a big contract for us. If we can fill their requirements, I might be able to pay off the note at the bank with this order alone."

  She was no longer sensitive to discussing family busi­ness with him. Since they'd been working together, she had discovered that if anybody had the inside track on Crandall Logging, it was Cash. He knew what dire straits she was in and there was no sense in putting up a falsely optimistic front.

  "Glad to oblige," he said. "Aren't you finished with that beer yet?"

  She nodded and passed him the can, which was still a third full. He drank the rest of it himself and tossed the empty into the back of the truck with the two of his.

  He curled his fingers over the edge of the truck and straightened his arms, bracing himself against it. His taut, well-shaped rear stuck out. One knee was bent. He turned only his head and looked at her. "You never did come to like beer much, did you?" Schyler looked away. "I guess that beer bust at Thibodaux Pond turned you against it for­ever."

  She stared at the first evening star, showing up silver and shiny against the indigo sky. "I wondered if you remem­bered that."

  "I remember."

  She bowed her head so far that her chin nearly touched her chest. "When I thought about it later, I got so scared for what could have happened."

  "You were about to get into a heap of trouble and you were only. . . what? Fourteen? Fifteen?"

  "Fifteen."

  He let the tension in
his arms go slack. With an econ­omy of movement, he turned and propped one side of his body against the truck so that he was now facing her. Schyler didn't look at him, but she could feel his eyes on her.

  "My mother had died only a few months before that." She couldn't understand why she felt she owed him an explanation for her behavior that night so long ago. But she couldn't hold it back. "She . . . my mother. . . never was a very attentive parent. What I mean is," she rushed to say, "she didn't dote on us the way Cotton did. She was always distracted by other things."

  Cash said nothing. "But she was the rule-maker, the dis­ciplinarian. She and Cotton disagreed more often over how Tricia and I should be raised than they did over anything else."

  Of course one of their disagreements had resulted in Cotton's banishment from Macy's bedroom. But that had been before she came along. Schyler had never known a time when they'd shared a bedroom. She remembered being shocked to learn at age eight that in most families the mama and daddy slept not only in the same room, but also in the same bed.

  "Anyway," she continued, "when Mama died, Tricia and I started testing the perimeters of Cotton's control. I knew that he wouldn't approve of the beer bust. He had bought me a new car, even though my license was restricted. I wanted to go to that party at the pond and show my new car off to all those older kids. I guess I wanted them to think that my mother's death hadn't fazed me." She drew a staggering little breath. "So I went."

  "And met up with Darrell Hopkins."

  Laughing derisively, she glanced up at him. "How do you remember that?"

  "I remember a lot of things about that night." His voice turned husky. "You had on a white dress. I remember how the light from the bonfire picked you out from everybody else. It was made of that material with the little holes is it."

  "Eyelet."

  "I guess. Your hair was longer than it is now and was sorta pulled up here with a clip." He made a gesture.

  "I can't believe you remember that well."

  "Oh, I remember. Because I'll never forget that horny kid's hands groping your backside while you danced with him."

  Schyler stopped laughing. She lowered her gaze. "Things went too far before I realized what was happening. One minute it all seemed very romantic, dancing under the sky on the shore of the pond with an 'older man.' The next minute, he was grabbing at me. I panicked and started fighting him off."

  She lifted her eyes to his. "That's when you interfered. You came out of nowhere. I remember wondering later, when I was lucid, where you had come from and what you were doing there. I hadn't seen you in ages."

  "I was home on leave from Fort Polk."

  Her memory quickened. "You had a GI haircut."

  He ran his hand through his long hair, smiling. "Oui. I was cruising the drag downtown and heard about a helluva party with plenty of beer going on out at the pond, thought

  I'd go out there and see what kind of action I could scare up."

  "You ended up taking me home to Daddy."

  "Not before pounding the crap out of Darrell Hopkins. You know, last time I saw him, which wasn't too long ago, he crossed the street to avoid me. He still has a chipped front tooth." Cash closed the lingers of his left hand into a tight fist. "He should have known not to engage in a fight with a soldier on his way to jungle warfare."

  Schyler's mellow expression turned serious. "You barely knew me. What made you do it, Cash?"

  The air between them seemed to grow thick and electric, as expectant as right before a thunderstorm. His eyes wan­dered over her face. "Maybe I was jealous. Maybe I wanted to dance with you so I could be the one feeling you up."

  He meant to be insulting. Schyler felt like crying and wasn't sure why. "I don't believe that, Cash. I think you did it to be nice."

  "I told you before, I'm never nice. Especially with a woman."

  "But I was a girl then. I think you interfered because you didn't want an innocent girl to get hurt."

  "Could be." He tried to sound nonchalant, but his voice was deep and low. He couldn't keep his eyes away from hers. "But I don't think so."

  "Why?"

  "Because I liked having your head in my lap too much. Remember that?"

  "No."

  "Liar."

  "I don't remember!"

  "Well you should. On the drive home, you laid your head on my thigh. I can still see your hair spread out over my lap. It looked and felt so silky, so sexy. It went. . . everywhere." His eyes turned dark and moved down to her mouth. "I should have taken what I felt I had coming while I had the chance, what I felt I was owed for doing my good deed."

  "And what was that?"

  Slowly his hand came up out of the darkness. His lingers closed around the back of her neck. His thumb stroked her throat. He drew her forward, until the tips of her breasts grazed his chest. "A taste of you."

  "Is that why you kissed me the other day? You felt you had it coming?"

  "I kissed you for the same reason I do everything else, because I damn well wanted to."

  "Obviously you wanted to the night of the beer bust. Why didn't you then?"

  The shield that often screened his eyes dropped into place. "Other things got in the way."

  "Like Cotton."

  "Yeah, like Cotton."

  "Why did he get so angry with you? If it hadn't been for you, I could have lost my virginity to a beer-guzzling, randy kid. I hadn't drank much. Maybe two beers, but that was enough to make me tipsy and to cloud my judgment."

  "So you don't remember everything about that night?"

  Schyler was puzzled by the wariness in his expression. "Not really," she answered slowly, probing her memory for evasive facts. "I remember seeing Darrell lying uncon­scious on the ground, bleeding from his mouth and nose. I wanted to help him, to make sure he was all right, but you practically dragged me to my car. My car," she exclaimed. "You drove me home in my car?"

  "Oui."

  "Then how'd you get back to Thibodaux Pond to pick up your own?"

  "I walked from Belle Terre to the highway and hitched a ride."

  She had never pieced together all the sketchy details of that night. Now it seemed important that she do so, though she couldn't say why.

  Cash had saved her from disgrace, but had characteristi­cally turned the situation to Ms advantage. It had been in the front seat of the shiny, new Mustang Cotton had given her that she had lain her head in Cash's lap. That made it seem even more forbidden, more erotic, more reason for Cotton to have lost his temper.

  She looked at Cash again. "Cotton got angry, didn't he?"

  "Not surprising. His pride and joy was brought home drunk."

  "Yes, but he was furious with you. Why? It wasn't your fault." Her mind went on a frustrating search for tidbits of memory. "When we got to Belle Terre, you half carried me up the front steps. The veranda Sights came on. And. . ." She paused, closing her eyes, conjuring up a mental pic­ture. "And Cotton was standing there."

  "Looking as fearsome as Saint Peter at the pearly gates," Cash supplied caustically. "Without even waiting for an explanation, he started thundering at me. Veda came out and hustled you inside and upstairs."

  "I remember." Laughing softly, Schyler added, "She un­dressed me and tucked me into bed. She scolded me for exercising poor judgment and condemned white trash boys who showed no respect for decent young girls like the Crandall sisters."

  She recalled Veda brushing the "so silky, so sexy" blond hair that had been spread across Monique Boudreaux's bastard son's lap just minutes earlier.

  God rest Veda, Schyler thought, smiling pensively. She would have given Cash a thrashing herself that night if she could have. As it was, he had taken a tongue-lashing from Cotton. While she was upstairs being lulled to sleep by Veda, Cash was being unjustly accused.

  "You took the blame, didn't you?" she asked him, puz­zled. "You bore the brunt of Cotton's wrath." Gazing into near space, she continued as recollections, like pages of a book, unfolded for her. "I remember hearing the
two of you all the way upstairs shouting at each other. Cotton didn't understand that you weren't the one who gave me beer."

  "Cotton refused to understand it," Cash said bitterly.

  "He should have been thanking you, but he just kept yelling about—" The book was suddenly slammed shut. The pages stopped turning. Her search had led to a dead end, and like all dead ends, it was frustrating. "What was Cotton yelling at you about that night?"

  "Bringing you home drunk."

  "Something else," she insisted.

  "I don't remember," he said curtly. He swiftly ducked his head and brushed a kiss across her lips. "What the hell difference does it make anyway? It's ancient history."

  It made a difference. She knew it. There was something significant here being left unsaid, something more impor­tant than Cash wanted to let on.

  "Why won't you help me remember?"

  "I'd rather make some memories," he whispered against her neck. "But if you want to re-create the past, we'll go for a ride in your car now. I'll drive. You can lay your head in my lap again." He cupped her head between his hands and gave her a brief, but thorough, kiss. "While it's there, maybe you can think of something else to do with your mouth besides talk about days gone by."

  "Don't!" she cried, angry over his easy dismissal of the subject. "I need to talk to you about this, Cash."

  "Talking's a waste of time between a man and a woman." He coiled his arm around her waist and drew her closer. "Tell you what, if it's a walk down memory lane you want, let's take the rest of the six-pack to Thibodaux Pond." He dropped a quick kiss on the tip of her nose. "We could drink some beer. Get naked. Skinny-dip." He kissed her mouth, thrusting his tongue between her lips. "We'll roll in the grass. Engage in some heavy foreplay. I'll kiss you all over. My tongue will stroke you senseless." His lips claimed hers again. The kiss was as rough and wanton as his fingertips on the raised center of her breast. "Who knows? I might get luckier than Hopkins."

  Schyler pushed him away and wiped his kiss off her mouth. Her breasts rose and fell with indignation, and to her mortification, arousal. "I should have shot you when I had the chance."

  He gave her a slow, lazy smile. "And I should have raped you when I had my chance. 'Night, Miss Schyler." He turned his back on her and sauntered off into the dark­ness.