Tempting Heat (Tempt Me Book 1)

by Sara Whitney

  She crossed her arms over her midsection and wrapped her trembling hands around her elbows. “No, Tom. I don’t need to—”

  He snatched the phone from the table and unlocked it himself. He was acting like the asshole she’d always thought he was, and he couldn’t bring himself to stop.

  “No texts since I don’t have your number, but you can’t be too careful around me, can you?” The words hurt to speak, but he pushed them out anyway, low and harsh. He opened his photo gallery with a furious jab of his finger, turning the screen toward her. “Here. See? Awful stuff.”

  He selected an image and started scrolling one by one.

  A shot of him and his buddy Sam at the bar on Wednesday night.

  A shot of Finn’s street on Thursday evening, the snowbanks crawling up the sides of the building opposite her apartment.

  A shot of flakes drifting past the streetlight on her corner.

  A shot of Finn, wrapped in a blanket up to her ears on Saturday night during the power outage, peering out the window and outlined in silvery moonlight.

  “Happy?”

  She shook her head. “No, I—”

  His hand clenched around his phone. “Fine, then how about this?” With a series of taps, he deleted all the photos he’d taken that weekend. They vanished with a whoosh, and fuck, if only he could empty his own memories as easily. She reached a hand out, maybe to stop him, maybe to encourage him to hurry out the door. He was too tired to care anymore.

  “Tom, wait. Please listen.”

  “No. I’m done.” He tugged on his coat and shouldered his bag, ready to put Finn behind him. Again. “Have a nice life, Huck.”

  He stepped through the door and let it fall shut behind him with a heavy slam, taking grim satisfaction that at least this time he was the one choosing to walk away.

  Fifteen

  Finn lasted fifteen whole seconds after Tom’s devastating exit before the tears started.

  Somehow, through a few careless words, her whole beautiful weekend had collapsed. She’d been too flustered by Josie’s anger and her own unexpected emotional one-eighty to find a way to make him listen.

  The tears came harder and harder, and the next thing she knew, Josie was there, damp from the shower, wrapping an arm around her shoulder and guiding her to the couch.

  “Sit.” She pushed Finn down onto the cushions and draped a blanket around her. She disappeared briefly and returned with a glass of water, a box of Kleenex, and a pair of leggings. “Put some pants on so we can talk.”

  Finn offered a soggy laugh at her roommate’s take-no-shit tone. “Yes, ma’am.” She pulled on the leggings, then sat back down to blow her nose and mop her face.

  After a moment, Josie sighed. “So I guess I didn’t handle that very well.”

  “Ya think?” Finn’s voice was scratchy from crying.

  “But can you blame me? He was straight, single, and beautiful, and I brought him home. How often do I hit the trifecta?” Her roommate tipped forward to wrap her hair in a towel-turban, craning her neck to peer up at Finn. “Except for your brother, of course.”

  “Please don’t refer to Jake as beautiful when I’m around.” Any mild amusement she felt over Josie’s futile crush on her workaholic brother was swept up in another small sob. “I don’t know what happened.”

  Josie tucked one leg underneath her and turned to face Finn. “Um, I happened. You clearly had some kind of major personal revelation this weekend, and then I came home and acted like a jealous bitch because…” She gestured helplessly. “I mean, I spent all weekend thinking about Tom! He’s hot. And he seemed nice.”

  “He is. And he is,” Finn said dully, her stomach roiling at the memory of the fight leaving Tom’s eyes. She could actually pinpoint the precise moment that he gave up on her. “He looked so broken when he left.”

  “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have gotten involved. You told me you believed he didn’t do it, and then I went and let my redhead out.”

  Act, then think. It’s how Josie always operated. Finn had borrowed a page from that playbook during the past few days, and look where it had gotten her. “It’s my fault too,” she said, wiping her eyes on the sleeve of her sweatshirt. “I didn’t tell you he’d stayed the weekend. And then I didn’t stand up for him. I made him feel unimportant when actually he’s so, so important.” Her head was too heavy for her neck to support, so she dropped it on Josie’s robe-covered shoulder.

  Josie smoothed Finn’s hair back from her forehead. “It’s not totally your fault. You unexpectedly reconnected with someone you used to care about. It sounds like it got really intense, really fast, and you probably didn’t know how to handle it because it didn’t fit into the goals in your Bullet Journal. Then I came home and made things worse. Your guy left, and you forgot how pants work. The end.”

  “That’s… actually pretty much it.” Finn snuffled. “I will say you got him right in his most vulnerable spot.”

  Josie shrugged, the motion jostling Finn’s head. “That seems to be my specialty.”

  Finn sat up and took one more swipe at her wet eyes. “Is your other specialty fixing things after you and I worked together to screw things up for me with the guy you brought home?”

  Josie slapped her hands on her thighs and then stood. “Absolutely not. My specialty is pouring the wine until you forget about your woes. I take it you were planning to stay home from work today?”

  Finn nodded. “We were going to—”

  Her roommate held up a hand. “I know what you were planning to do. I saw those abs.” She tapped out a quick text message, then looked up with a raised eyebrow. “The only acceptable alternative is getting good and day drunk. Richard’s on the way.”

  Three hours later, Finn was impervious to pain.

  “That guy wore my pants?” Richard grabbed the laptop from her and held it to his nose, barely avoiding dribbling wine on the keyboard.

  “Yep,” she said, grabbing his glass and stealing a sip for herself when she found her own empty. “And I swear to God, if you accidentally like a single thing on his timeline from my account, I will murder you.”

  “Girl, you think I don’t know how to social media stalk?” Richard snatched his glass back and took a closer look at the screen. “It’s actually a miracle that Calamity Josie found him without me around to nudge her away from the marrieds and the Marys.”

  Josie smacked Richard’s arm and swiped the laptop, scrolling on Tom’s Insta until she found a shot of the man in question in swim trunks at Oak Street Beach. “Oh my God. Those arms.”

  “He looked amaaaaazing in Richard’s shirts.” Finn had reached the swoony, dreamy stage of drunkenness where everything was rosy around the edges. “He also looked amazing out of Richard’s shirts.”

  “Staaahp. You’re making us all jealous.” Josie returned with a fresh bottle of wine to top off everyone’s glasses.

  “Not me.” Richard raised his newly full glass in a salute. “I proposed to Byron last night. We’re getting married!”

  Finn shrieked, and Josie shoved the laptop at her so she could wrap Richard into a hug. “Congratulations! Let me be your ring bearer? Please please please?”

  Richard ruffled Josie’s curls. “You can absolutely carry a white satin pillow down the aisle. But I now speak from a place of authority as a happily settled man. That means you all have to listen.”

  He paused to take a long gulp from his glass, and Finn leaned forward so she wouldn’t miss a word. But she misjudged her wine-enhanced ability to keep her balance and ended up toppling sideways, taking her full glass with her. Normally she’d freak over the stain seeping into her sweatshirt, but today she couldn’t bring herself to care. Too bad she was drinking merlot and not chardonnay.

  “Finn, my dear, the thing you have to understand is—” Richard began, only to be interrupted by a knock on the door.

  Finn’s soggy, foolish heart lurched. Tom had come back. She’d get the chance to apologize. They could try again. W
ell, again again.

  “Finn! Are you here?”

  Everything in her wilted. She knew that voice, and it didn’t belong to the man she most wanted to see. Still, its owner would probably remove the screws on the hinges if she didn’t let him in pronto, so she rolled her boneless self off the couch and slouched to the door.

  “Jake,” she muttered. “Why aren’t you at work? Is it a national holiday? Christmas was last month.”

  Her corporate-polish brother looked ragged round the edges, his black hair spiked in tufts around his head. “You weren’t. Answering. Your phone,” he ground out. “We discussed this.”

  He pointed an accusing finger at her, but she batted it away.

  “Pssht. I turned off my phone. Big protective brother isn’t the boss of me.”

  Jake’s nose twitched. “Are you drunk?”

  A noise inside the apartment made them both turn to see Josie’s and Richard’s heads pop over the back of the couch like a pair of lemurs.

  “Looking gooooooood, Jake! My replacement trifecta!” Josie accompanied her happy shout with a salute from her half-full wineglass.

  In response, Jake plowed his fingers through his hair, which explained its current state of dishevelment, and visibly counted to five before turning to her. “Grab your coat.”

  By her third cup of coffee, Finn forgave her brother for kidnapping her. Mostly.

  “Everything was fine,” she grumbled. “I was working through some things.”

  “You were drunk and wallowing,” he corrected.

  “Po-tay-to, po-tah-to. You could have at least let me change into something decent.”

  She gestured angrily at her wine-stained sweatshirt, but their sibling standoff was interrupted when the waitress buzzed by their table yet again to make sure Jake didn’t need anything, then almost tripped as she kept her eyes glued on him while she backed away. As usual, her handsome brother was impervious, his gaze on some important email or other on his phone.

  “You can go back to the office now. I’m fine.”

  He set his phone down and hit her with his best all-business stare. “Are you? Because I’m not quite sure why you’re in knots over your high school bully.”

  A wave of protectiveness surged inside her. “I told you I got it wrong. He wasn’t the bad guy in all that.”

  “Okay. But explain the ‘in knots’ part.”

  She dragged a fork through the remains of her breakfast-for-late-lunch pancakes. “I think…” Time for confession. “I think the reason I got so mad and stayed mad for so long was that deep down, I liked Tom. I more than liked him, even when I was with Dylan. Dylan was the high school bully, by the way.”

  Jake grimaced. “I never liked that guy.”

  “A letterman jacket is a powerful aphrodisiac for sixteen-year-old girls.”

  “Oh, I’m painfully aware,” he said wryly.

  She flashed a quick smile at her brother, who’d been too busy busting his ass making money in high school to mess around with sports. Then she took a deep breath and confronted a truth she’d kept tucked away for years.

  “I used to be so relieved when Tom would break up with whatever girl he was seeing, even though it was hypocritical as hell since I was with Dylan the whole time. When he posted those horrible things, I guess it felt easier to never speak to him again instead of asking myself why it hurt so much.” She shifted uncomfortably on the bench seat, not wanting to meet Jake’s steady brown eyes. “And then eight years later, he magically turned up in my apartment, and it was like I had the chance to work through all of it and maybe have a…”

  “A happy ending?” Jake finished her thought.

  She flushed and looked up. “Yeah. I thought maybe we could have a happy ending.”

  “And now you can’t?”

  Could they? Could she fix what she’d done, undo the hurt she’d caused?

  “I don’t know.”

  “Well, don’t you think you should at least try?”

  Dammit. She hated when Jake was right. Her only choice was to change the subject in the most obnoxious way possible. “So you’re still single, right? I don’t suppose you finally want to take Josie on a date?”

  He scoffed and reached for his all-important phone. “She’s busting my chops. Josie doesn’t actually want to go out with me.”

  “Um, everybody wants to go out with you. Our Uber driver wanted to go out with you.”

  He looked up from his phone, startled. “She did not.”

  “She followed us to the door of the restaurant and stared at your ass the whole time. And she double-parked to do it!”

  He waved a dismissive hand at her. “I’ll have time for that later. After I—”

  “—make partner at your big, important accounting firm,” she finished for him. “I know, I know.”

  They both fell silent, and Finn knew he was thinking about his eternal quest to sock away enough money so she and her mom would never have to lose sleep over it again, even though she was an employed adult and their mother had moved downstate to marry a nice man who owned a hardware store.

  “I’m so proud of everything you’ve accomplished,” she said quietly. “But I also worry about you.”

  The edges of his lips lifted. “I know. Same way I worry about you. Now,” he said, breaking their serious moment, “before I head back to the office, let’s discuss the best groveling techniques.”

  Sixteen

  “Oh good, you’re here.”

  Tom looked up from his laptop with a glare that he quickly wiped from his face. “Dr. Chadhoury. Hi.”

  The newest member of his dissertation committee entered his tiny office, which would be cramped even if it were only him occupying the space. Too bad he actually shared it with three other graduate students, like a veal.

  “I didn’t think I’d find you here. Aren’t Mondays your off-campus writing days?” she asked.

  He forced a polite smile. “I was anxious for a change of scenery after being cooped up.”

  Lies. In actuality, he couldn’t fathom being alone with his thoughts, so he’d come straight to campus, not even stopping by his apartment to shower or change. Then he’d driven away his officemates one by one with his poisonous mood. Hello, thoughts. I’m still alone with you, I see.

  “Well, good. I got your message that you couldn’t read some of my notes, so I stopped by to interpret.”

  Her notes. The notes that Finn had read aloud.

  Even conjuring her name in his mind shot a dart of pain into his heart. He’d come so close to capturing joy and holding it in his hands, only to see it slip away because… what, he couldn’t escape his past? Couldn’t summon the strength to fight for his future?

  “Tom?”

  The voice jostled him out of his reverie, and he realized he was staring into the middle distance while a senior member of the economics faculty waited for him to get his shit together.

  “Sorry.” He dragged a hand down his face. “I… it’s in this stack somewhere. I think.” He pointed at the pile of five-inch binders on his desk. His mind was too jumbled to figure out where he’d stashed her draft a few hours ago.

  The tall woman shrugged and adjusted her red silk sari, likely used to disorganized academics. “No worries. I’ll see if I scanned a copy before returning it to you.” Then she looked at him again. “Everything all right, Thomas? You seem distracted.”

  He offered her a weak smile. “Yes. Well, no. But it will be.”

  Her answering smile was full of understanding. “Good. It wouldn’t be graduate school if everything wasn’t bleak for a bit.”

  She excused herself, and Tom was alone once again. He still had a mountain of papers to grade, and he really did need to figure out what the hell Dr. Chadhoury had meant to recommend in her notes. But all he could bring himself to do was glare at the industrial beige wall in front of his desk and feel sorry for himself.

  Would every little thing remind him of Finn until the end of his days? Or would this
current pain eventually fade? And which fate was worse, the pain or the forgetting?

  He dropped his head to his desk. Maybe he ought to head home after all. He was only being productive at splashing his emotional mess all over the workplace. And then, maybe tomorrow, he’d go back to Finn’s apartment and camp out in her hallway until she was willing to—

  “Tom.”

  He lifted his head, then bolted upright. “Finn!”

  Shock kept him from coherent speech, and she took a tentative step into the small room.

  “I wasn’t sure where to find you, so I came to campus and kept asking and asking until I found your department.”

  As the surprise of Finn appearing in his doorway wore off, he became aware that she didn’t look like her usual immaculate self. Her right knee poked through a large hole in her leggings, and her sweatshirt had a blotchy red stain down the front. She looked hassled and bedraggled and absolutely perfect.

  He cleared his throat and did his level best to tamp down his hope. “What, no preprinted campus map? No organized list of questions?”

  She looked down at herself and shook her head in bemusement. “I didn’t want to wait. Or to plan. I had to find you.” She took a deep breath. “I’m here to grovel.”

  Warmth spread through him, even before she’d finished speaking, and all he wanted to do was scoop her up and never let her go. “That’s funny.” He kept his voice casual. “I was thinking about heading your way after class tomorrow to give you a chance to do exactly that.”

  “You were?” Her surprised smile was the best balm in the world for his aching heart.

  “I was. And then after you groveled, I was going to make you another omelet.”

  “Oh my. How generous.” Her lips twitched.

  “Well, I’m really good at it. I’d hate for you to miss out.” He folded his arms over his chest. “Go on then. Get your grovel on.”