Turn Up the Heat

by Serena Bell

  They would definitely not be inviting him to sit at their table.

  If they knew the whole story…

  If they knew he’d spent more than seven years in a maximum security prison for assault, if they knew that the man he’d assaulted was a former cop and an esteemed member of his community, not to mention an elder gent with some heart troubles…

  Who beat my grandmother, Kincaid reminded himself. Who hurt her and stole everything that mattered to her.

  We don’t answer violence with violence, Nan had told him, more than once. When they’d listened to the radio and heard about Israelis fighting Palestinians, Serbs fighting Bosnians, Ukrainians fighting Russians. When he’d come home from school with a black eye and a bruised fist. There’s always another way.

  If Ben were his kid, what would he tell him about violence?

  Your father cut a man. Could have killed him.

  It made his chest hurt.

  Anyway, he didn’t really see a kid like Ben in the life he’d mapped out for himself. He didn’t really see kids at all, not in a life in which, probably—dreams of ownership aside—he’d be lucky to find steady minimum-wage work and occasional physical comfort with a woman who didn’t mind too much that he’d spent almost a decade behind bars.

  But that wouldn’t be Lily, because he couldn’t ask her to not mind that.

  He didn’t want her to not mind it.

  He minded it.

  He sliced through the flesh of the tomato, hating the way the skin gave under the blade.

  The other day, when he’d run into her in the diner, he’d been struck by how happy she looked with her friends. All fired up with flame in her cheeks, her features not classically beautiful but so damn cute it was all he could do not to lean over and kiss her on her nose and chin. Six times as cute when she was all animated like that, smiling at her friends, thinking about her future.

  A future that didn’t, shouldn’t, include him.

  Now he knew who she was, and where she belonged, and he knew enough to leave her alone so she could get on with being there.

  “Damn,” he said aloud.

  They all looked at him, and he got the feeling he’d startled them out of their thoughts, too. Maybe more pleasant ones than his.

  “I just remembered—”

  Lily didn’t believe him. He could see it on her face before the lie was even all the way out of his mouth.

  “I promised a friend I’d give him a ride—I’m so sorry. I’ve got to—”

  They all jumped up and assured him that of course it was okay, of course he needed to go do what he needed to do, but that he should come back. He should go get his friend where he needed to be, and then he should come back and join them for dinner, and if he couldn’t make it back by the time they started, they could heat it up for him—

  That was what Reg and Sierra said, anyway. Lily didn’t say anything. She just looked at him. And her look said, Don’t bullshit me, Caid.

  She walked him to his car.

  “Have I met your friend?” she asked.

  “No—I’ll introduce you guys sometime.”

  “What’s his name?”

  “Bruce,” said Kincaid.

  She didn’t bother to hide her doubt.

  “Lily—”

  “Look,” she said. “It’s okay. It was too much, right? The kids, and the domesticity. I told you, I’m not looking for that. I’m just—look, call me, okay?”

  “Okay,” he said, but he could tell she didn’t believe that, either.

  He could feel her eyes on him as he went down the front path, as he got in his car, as he pulled away.

  Chapter 14

  She stood outside the diner, looking in. She’d just finished her shift, and she was studying the place to see if she could figure out its contradictions. Why, despite the awfulness of Markos’s recipes and how stuck the diner was in the past, she was coming to love it, a little.

  It had been several days since the awkwardness at her sister’s house. She was mad, mad at Kincaid for freaking out, and mad at herself for giving him the opportunity. She knew Kincaid had lied about his friend needing a ride. After all, she’d seen his face when he was telling her the most difficult truth, and she knew the flat look he’d worn the other night just before he’d fled hadn’t been anything close to that.

  He had called her. Later that night, to apologize for not coming back for dinner. He’d told her to apologize to her sister and brother-in-law, too, and then he’d said, “I’ll see you around.”

  And all she’d been able to say was, “Okay.”

  She hadn’t, of course. Seen him around.

  She missed him, damn it.

  With a deep sigh, she resumed her analysis of the diner.

  There were so many good things about it. If Markos weren’t so tired, weren’t so angry, he could do so much. Tear out the wood paneling, refresh the decor. Add more seafood selections, because that’s what tourists really wanted most of the time. Dungeness crab and rockfish, Willapa Bay oysters. Northwest clam chowder.

  He could create a community area where Tierney Bay’s year-round denizens could gather even during tourist season, and he could appeal more to kids by giving out crayons and paper menus and even stickers.

  He could have holiday specials—like the turkey dinner she still fantasized about, and a huge Easter brunch.

  It was a terrific location, right in the center of the small strip that qualified as Tierney Bay’s Main Street, between the bookstore and the ice cream shop, with a view of the water, but the back deck had decayed so badly that sitting there was more punishment than prize. You might fall into the ocean if one more timber rotted through.

  If the diner were hers, she’d rebuild the deck, build an overhang, buy tables with central fire pits, install a few heat lamps, and pass out blankets to diners in September, October, April, and May. And she’d serve hot toddies and coffee-and-Kahlúas.

  She tried to picture the interior revamped, but she wasn’t a terribly visual person and design was her weakness. If she—when she—opened her restaurant, she’d have to hire an interior designer.

  What she could do was hear the sounds of conversation and laughter, and the clink of silverware. And she could smell the cooking—the bitter scent of well-toasted sourdough bread that she’d use in the sandwich she’d thought up this morning, heaped with caramelized onions, thin strips of red onion, grilled chicken, and blue cheese, the sweet vegetables and the slightly charred toast the perfect contrast.

  “Hey.”

  Her whole body prickled with awareness, and she didn’t have to turn her head to know who was standing next to her.

  “What are you doing?”

  Apparently they were just going to pretend that nothing had happened, that he hadn’t fled her sister’s house and lied to her. That made her mad all over again, but she couldn’t deny she was glad he was here.

  “I’m just…” She trailed off. It was a little embarrassing, actually, but then, this was Kincaid. She’d already told him her most embarrassing secrets. “I’m redesigning it.”

  “You’re thinking about your own cafe.”

  He said it like it was a real thing. Her own cafe. Like he had no doubt she could do it.

  “Yeah. I mean, we’re talking years out. Maybe decades. I still haven’t had my first job as a professional chef. But I like to think about it.”

  “So how would you set it up? If you could.”

  She told him what she’d been thinking, about the revamped menu and the community section and the outdoor deck, and he nodded.

  “But I don’t know about the inside. I’m the visual equivalent of tone deaf, sometimes.”

  He peered through the window. She used the time to admire the hard edge of his jaw, the knot of muscle that told her he’d spent tense hours, even if at the moment he looked relaxed and thoughtful. Okay, maybe she wasn’t totally visually tone deaf, because something in her body was resonating, and always had, to the sight of hi
m.

  “I’d tear out the wood paneling. And put up beadboard.”

  “Beadboard?”

  “You often see it below chair-rail level. Thin panels of real wood, kind of old-fashioned looking. Painted white, it would be great in there. And then you could do the trim in something darker. And—” He hesitated, frowning at the world beyond the window. “You could do models of lighthouses. Big ones. And maybe—” He grinned at her, full force, and it took her breath away. “Coils of rope, maybe.”

  She wrinkled her nose at him.

  “No, I’m serious. Like nautical rope, and life rings on the wall. And posters. Of the forts along the West Coast, or something like that.”

  She wanted to be cool and blow him off. She wanted to walk away and not want him. But it was impossible. He was standing so close and his voice was so low and intimate, and he was building her fantasy for her, like it mattered to him, too, and she wanted this moment to go on, not end.

  “I bet what stops Markos from redoing that place is the fireplace and counter. It would be expensive to hire someone to tear it out. And you’d have to have a vision for what to do next. Maybe make it look a little more like a galley kitchen?”

  She could see it now, and the food smells and the sounds of her imagined patrons filled up the space he’d imagined. For a moment, she felt it all, the joy of seeing her “regulars” stream through the door, the bustle and affection as they greeted her and each other and took their seats. The buzz of tourist season, and how the townies would both scorn it and welcome it for the new blood it brought into Tierney Bay.

  “Why?” His voice was casual, his arms crossed now as he leaned his weight on one foot. “You thinking of buying it?”

  She laughed, the tone short and disbelieving. “Me? I don’t have any money. And that’s forgetting how much it would cost to make all those changes.”

  “I’d do it for you for free,” he said.

  It was moot. It didn’t matter. She’d never be able to afford what Markos wanted. But his offer still meant something to her. “You know how to do all that work?”

  He nodded.

  “Tearing out the fireplace? Beadboard?”

  “Sure. I had to learn to be handy, living alone with Nan. By fifteen I could repair pretty much anything.”

  She sighed. “It’s never going to happen.”

  “So what,” he said. “Let’s just pretend.”

  He made her tell him how she wanted the kitchen set up, and told her how he’d do it, how he’d put in a new header and maybe even some columns. He had other ideas, too, how maybe she could put a water cooler and glasses over there, and bus tubs over here, how there would be some games and puzzles and toys that kids could bring to their tables…

  “You’d want people to come here and talk about things. Town politics, you know. You could have some events. Trivia night, story slams, I don’t know—stuff to get people talking.”

  It made her want to hug him, all these things he was thinking about her restaurant that didn’t even exist, how he was making this little world for her, not from wood and brick and stone but from words and ideas.

  And it made her want to push him away, too, because the better she got to know him, the more she liked him, the more she saw how he saw the world and people and even this town the way she did, so much goodness that just needed some space to be born.

  “You could have newspapers that people could buy—”

  “If newspapers even exist by the time I have enough money to do this.” And then, without segue, she demanded, “Kincaid, what are we doing?”

  He sighed.

  She was suddenly angry, angrier than she’d thought. Because he was confusing the hell out of her, running away from her family and then building her castles in the clouds—or restaurants from dust, in this case. “You think you can just—” Even though she’d done the same thing. Made the mistake of thinking that she could take what she wanted from him without things getting complicated.

  “No,” he said quickly. “No, I don’t. But I thought—we said—”

  “Yeah, I know what we said.”

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “I was wrong. I thought—I thought it would be easier than this. I thought we could do what we were doing, and then be done, and walk away. If I’d realized…”

  “How deep in I’d get?”

  This was worse than catching Fallon in a supply closet, worse than discovering that while she’d been endlessly trying to be the woman he wanted, he’d moved on. Because as hurt as she’d been by Fallon’s failure to love her, she understood now that she’d never loved Fallon enough to be really deeply hurt by him. Being really hurt took a whole different level of commitment, one she’d made entirely involuntarily, while she wasn’t even trying. It had happened without her wanting it, but now she had to pay the price for it.

  He was shaking his head. “How deep in I’d get.”

  She was still hearing the words, not quite fully registering them, when he kissed her.

  This kiss was a question, and a plea. It was not an order.

  She did her best to answer, twining her arms around his neck, opening to him, letting him in as deep as he wanted to go.

  They were both breathless when he broke the kiss. “Come home with me?”

  They left her car where she’d parked it in town and got into his. Not speaking. It was like the night on the beach when he’d driven her home afterward in silence, but this time they were going toward something. She didn’t know exactly what it would be, but she was pretty sure it would rearrange all the molecules in her life, and she only hoped she would recognize herself after it happened.

  She had the feeling she’d remember this moment forever, driving out of town beside him. The familiar buildings, like a child’s blocks lined up neatly along the short stretch that made up Tierney Bay’s main street. The big hotels up on the cliffs overlooking the ocean, once so full tourists called nine months in advance to book, now often not quite at capacity, even in the summer. After the hotels, the business district gave way to houses, clinging to their perches, overlooking the craggy rock formations that jutted here and there from the Pacific. Then they were on Highway 101, the rush of wind past the car echoing the rush of blood through her veins.

  Her body tingled with anticipation and fear. It was how full and open her heart felt that scared her the most.

  What happens next changes everything, she thought.

  But when they pulled up in front of Kincaid’s house, there was a car in front of it. An unfamiliar man leaned on the car, holding a laptop computer.

  “Holy fuck,” Kincaid said. “He got it.”

  —

  Kincaid threw the car door open and jogged to Grant, reaching for the laptop with his hands and his whole being, but Grant held it out of his reach, like a cafeteria bully.

  Kincaid might have lunged for it, but the passenger door creaked behind them and he remembered Lily.

  “You have to promise me—” Grant began, but Kincaid jerked his head in Lily’s direction and Grant stopped. “You have company.” He examined Lily thoughtfully, then gave Kincaid a quizzical look.

  Lily ambled up to them. She wore white capris, a peach tank top, and black flip-flops, and she looked like summer. Long, cool, good enough to eat. When he’d seen her standing outside the diner, he’d almost been able to walk by, but not quite.

  That was a lie. In a million years he never would have been able to walk by. He’d been drawn to her like a magnet, and he’d been drawn into her dream so deep it had felt like his own.

  Suddenly, he wanted to send Grant and the laptop away. To say, Take it away. I don’t care about that anymore.

  He shook it off, because even to think it was a betrayal of Nan. He had to follow this through, for all the stews and cookies and the hours she’d spent sitting with him at the kitchen table, keeping him company while he did his homework. For all the times she’d snuggled him in bed and told him she loved him, that as long as she lived a
nd forever after he would be loved. Because whatever it was he felt for Lily, Nan was the woman who’d taught him to make room in his heart for it.

  “That’s the laptop?” Lily’s face was bright with happiness. “Caid, that’s it?” He could see her excitement shining under the surface of her skin, and he wanted to draw her to him and taste it, share it.

  Grant’s eyes flicked to Lily’s face and back to Kincaid’s.

  Danger, Kincaid thought. “Yes, that’s the laptop.”

  “Caid! That’s amazing!”

  Grant narrowed his eyes at the two of them, and Kincaid could see him wondering and calculating, all lawyer.

  And he knew exactly where Grant’s calculations were going, because these were the things that had kept him up last night, late into the night, lying in bed with thoughts racing in his head like leaves kicking up in a fall wind. Kincaid had told Lily way too much and yet so thoroughly not enough, and that brew of knowledge and ignorance had the power to explode in his face. For days, weeks now, it had seemed possible to keep secrets from her, to lie to her by omission and to himself: She doesn’t need to know.

  Meanwhile he had tied her up and held her down. He had built scenes with her, told stories with their bodies. He had met her people and dreamed her future with her.

  What a mess he had made.

  “Kincaid.” Grant’s voice was heavy with warning.

  Lily, truly oblivious or choosing to ignore the tension in the air, stepped forward to extend her hand to Grant. “Nice to meet you. Lily McKee.”

  It wasn’t until she said it aloud that Kincaid realized she’d never told him her last name.

  His decisions, from the moment he’d gotten into the car to drive to Arnie Sinclair’s house to the moment he’d sandwiched Lily against the brick alleyway wall, loomed over him like a tsunami curling in to shore.

  Grant shook Lily’s hand, but his attention was wholly on Kincaid. “Can I talk to you in private a second?”

  Grant’s voice had the dark ring of an angry parent, and for an instant, Kincaid’s internal rowdy teenager rebelled. Then he shook it off. He wasn’t a kid. He wasn’t in trouble.

  Yet.

  Grant jerked his head, and Kincaid followed him out of Lily’s earshot.