Can't Stand the Heat?

by Margaret Watson

  She put her head down as she hurried out the door. The evening was chilly, and she’d left her coat behind, but nothing could make her go back into the Harp.

  When she reached her car, she realized she’d left her purse and car keys in the pub, too. She leaned her forehead against the roof, tears flowing faster, until she heard footsteps crunching over the gravel.

  “Jen, wait.”

  Walker. She couldn’t bear to look at him. She began to run. Her side ached and her lungs heaved, but she wouldn’t stop.

  He caught up as she reached her house. Stepping in front of her, he ran backward. Slowing her down. Forcing her to face him.

  “Jen, please. Stop.”

  She slowed, then faltered to a halt. Dragging in deep breaths, she bent over, hands on her knees.

  When she could speak, she said, “Why did you follow me?”

  He stared at her, astonished. Bewildered. “Did you think I wouldn’t? That I would let you walk out and not do or say anything?”

  She wanted to step around him and finish her escape. But, just like at the Harp, some things were better faced immediately. “Why not?” she asked wearily.

  “You can’t believe I did that deliberately. That I put that game on the screen, knowing she looked like you.”

  Jen lifted one shoulder. “Kind of hard to miss, Walker.”

  “I haven’t seen her for months.” He closed his eyes and took a deep breath. “I mean, of course I have, but I didn’t see her.”

  Sweat was drying on her skin, and she shivered. “I meant what I said at the Harp. I don’t blame you. I owed you. Yes, it was humiliating, but I deserved it. I humiliated you in front of the whole school. But did you have to do it with Nick there? God! You think he’s your son, but you still let him see that? Slap him with the knowledge that his mother had sex with you?”

  “Do you really think I would do that? To you or Nick?”

  She closed her eyes and wiped away the tears that had streamed down her face all the way home. Nick knew. Tony knew. What was next?

  “You’re cold. Let’s go inside.” He put his hand on her lower back and steered her up the steps, through the porch and into the living room. “How about some tea?”

  This was her house. He wasn’t going to take care of her in her own place. “I’m fine.”

  Walker stood stiffly in the center of the room, hands in his pockets, as if bracing himself for a blow. “Will you give me a chance to explain?”

  She stayed out of his reach, hugging herself to stop the shaking. Because she was cold. That’s all.

  One side of his mouth curved. “A little intimidating,” he murmured. “No wonder I thought of you when I created my kick-ass, take-no-prisoners character. I designed her a long time ago,” he continued. “Before I had a game for her. Were you the model? Apparently so. But I swear, Jen, I didn’t do it deliberately. Heck, I haven’t thought about you for years.” He reached for her hand, but she pulled it away. “Until I came back to Otter Tail.”

  “I get that you used me as your villain. But did you have to use the tattoo?” Her face burned as if she’d been slapped. “Everyone is going to realize…”

  “No one’s going to realize anything. It’s a game, Jen. Make-believe. Of course she had a tattoo. It’s part of her persona.” He tucked a stray strand of hair behind her ear. “I’m so sorry. I’ll change it before it goes public.”

  She studied his eyes and saw only remorse. Apology. There was no guilt in his clear gaze.

  She doubted he was a good enough actor to hide that.

  “All right, Walker, I believe you didn’t do it on purpose. It was horribly humiliating, but now I know how you must have felt after…after I seduced you. When you were expelled. It doesn’t feel good.”

  “I saw Tony stop you. What are you going to say to him?”

  “Oh, God, I have no idea.” She pressed her palms against her hot cheeks. “He knows. And from now on, every time we fight about something, he’ll throw that at me.”

  “What happened, Jen? With you and Tony.” Walker started to reach for her again, then dropped his hand. “Tell me about your marriage.”

  He had the right to ask. Her relationship with Tony was the reason she’d asked him to change that grade.

  “He didn’t ask me to sleep with you,” she said in a low voice. “I never intended to. It just…got out of hand.” She stared down, remembering the way she’d flirted with Walker. The painfully eager expression on his face. He’d been an earnest boy, serious and sweet. So different from cocky, confident Tony.

  Back in high school, Walker would push his glasses higher on his nose when he was nervous. He’d pushed them up a lot that day. She remembered how his hand had shaken when she took it to lead him into that closet. The way he’d kissed her, as if she was infinitely precious.

  “I never told Tony,” she said.

  “But now he knows.”

  “Yes. I’m such a hypocrite.” She swallowed hard. “I betrayed him, too. If Nick isn’t his son… We had a lot of problems, but he didn’t deserve that.”

  “It was a crappy thing to do to him. But you weren’t married to him when we had sex.”

  “I was in love with him. Committed to him. That’s just as bad. I never even considered he wasn’t Nick’s dad….”

  “How come you two didn’t make it?”

  She stared out the window, unseeing. “He lost his baseball scholarship when the principal found out what you’d done. So instead of college, he went straight to the minors. He traveled a lot. I was alone at home with a baby. Being married wasn’t what either of us thought it would be.”

  “You were young.”

  “We made a lot of grown-up mistakes.” She dropped onto the couch, curled her knees into her chest and wrapped her arms around them. “He blew out his rotator cuff, and that was the end of baseball. He got the job as a cop in Green Bay, but things were never the same.

  “The final blow was probably as much my fault as his. He cheated on me. Neither of us was happy. He wasn’t what I wanted, and I couldn’t be what he wanted, either.” She tugged at a loose thread on the couch cushion. “Everything came to a head one night when I got home early from a visit to my parents. Tommy was going to a birthday party the next day, and I didn’t want to take a chance on traffic.

  “It was late, close to midnight. Both the boys were asleep in the car. When I pulled up to the house, the lights were all on, so I knew Tony was there. I left the boys in the car and went in to get him. I wanted him to carry Tommy to bed so he wouldn’t wake up.”

  Walker sat next to her, took her hands in his and uncurled her fists. Her nails were digging painfully into her palms. He smoothed them out, then twined his fingers with hers.

  He let go of one of her hands and pulled her against his chest. His heart thumped beneath her ear, steady and strong. Reassuring.

  “He was in my kitchen with a woman. Naked. Having sex on my table.” Her throat closed. “I loved that kitchen. Loved everything about it. Cooking was the only time I was really happy.” Jen took a deep breath, let it out slowly. “I’d found that table at a yard sale, spent hours stripping it, then refinishing it until it was perfect. And he was using it to bang some blonde with plastic breasts.”

  Walker wrapped his arms around Jen and rocked her while she cried, deep, wrenching sobs that tore at her throat and made her chest ache. By the time they slowed, his shirt was wet and she was drained. He rubbed her back while she hiccuped, and when she was sure she could talk without breaking down again, she pushed away from him.

  “He betrayed me. But our marriage was over long before that.”

  “Why did you sleep with me?” he asked abruptly. “Back then.”

  She raised her head to look at him. “Truth?”

  “Tell me.”

  “I wasn’t planning that. But when you kissed me, touched me…” She cupped his cheek. “It had never been like that for me before. You were so tender. So careful with me. You made me feel c
herished.”

  She let her hand fall away. “Afterward, I was so ashamed. I’d been using you, and you were loving me.”

  He brushed the tears from her cheeks. “You know I had a crush on you. Had for a long time. I thought I’d died and gone to heaven.”

  “Too bad it was really hell.”

  He smiled. “I wouldn’t say that. Purgatory, maybe.”

  He pressed a kiss into her palm, and desire shuddered through her. Crazy to want him now. But she did.

  Not just wanted him. She needed him to fill the empty places inside her. To make her feel whole again.

  Before Walker had come back, she hadn’t felt whole in a very long time.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  WALKER PRESSED A KISS into her palm, and just that small touch of his mouth made her tremble. “I want you, Walker.”

  He closed his eyes. “Can’t do it, Jen. Not now.”

  “What?” Humiliated, she jumped to her feet.

  “There’s nothing I want more,” he said fiercely. “But there are rules.”

  “What are you talking about? What rules?” She tried to tug her hand away, but he held on effortlessly.

  “On top of everything else, you don’t take advantage of a woman when she’s fragile.”

  “You think I’m fragile? That I don’t know what I want?” She yanked again, and he let her go.

  “You’re upset. You need to be comforted. And as much as I want you, Jen, I want it to be for the right reasons when we make love.”

  “You want some reasons? I lie in bed at night and think about you, Walker. About how I want to touch you. How I want you to touch me.”

  She stared at him, not caring that she’d made herself vulnerable. “I try to think of excuses to go to that motel you’re staying in.”

  “You’re making it hard to do the right thing, Jen.” He held her gaze. “Almost impossible.”

  “Almost impossible?” She leaned in, lost in the need in his eyes, the heat pouring off his body and warming hers. “I’ll have to work harder, then.”

  She’d never begged anyone to make love with her. What had happened to the woman who used to live in her body?

  She’d fallen in love with Walker Barnes. Eventually, she’d grasp the irony of that fact.

  Right now, nothing mattered besides Walker.

  She tugged at his hand. “Come with me,” she murmured.

  “Jen,” he groaned, his mouth over hers. “Are you sure?”

  “I’ve never been more sure of anything.” She swayed toward him, inhaled his scent, memorized the shape of his back, the curve of his hip, the way he gasped when she touched him.

  He opened the buttons on her shirt before she realized what he was doing.

  His hands were warm as he brushed the edges of the shirt away, revealing her bright pink bra. “I think I have a new favorite color.” He nuzzled the cleft between her breasts as he trailed his fingers over her.

  “Take off your shirt,” he said.

  She let it slide to the floor, and he ran his hand over her stomach, her sides, her arms, her back, loosening her bra and sliding the straps down her shoulders.

  He stared at her, before gently pulling the bra off and tossing it on the couch. “You’re so beautiful,” he whispered. “More beautiful than I remembered.” He cupped her, then rubbed her nipples with his thumbs. She couldn’t hold back her cry as she arched into him.

  He picked up her discarded clothing and took her hand. “Where’s your bedroom?”

  “Upstairs.” Her voice shook as she led him up there. She’d never bothered to get new furniture, and her dresser was scuffed and scratched. The mattress on the bed sagged in the middle, and the posters of Mel Gibson in Braveheart and Garth Brooks on stage were old and faded. It looked like a shrine to her high school days.

  As if she’d been frozen in time since her senior year.

  She turned into his arms and kissed him. “I’m not fragile or upset, Walker,” she said, nuzzling his ear. “I want you.” She took his hand and placed it on her bare breast, so he could feel her heart racing.

  Then she locked the door and tugged his shirt out of his slacks. His muscles tensed and quivered when she touched him. When she opened his shirt and pressed her mouth to his muscled abdomen, he drew her against him.

  “Mmm, good idea,” he said, lowering his head to her stomach. As he teased her with his mouth, he unbuttoned her jeans and slid them down. She collapsed onto the bed.

  His eyes darkened as he looked at her, wearing only sheer pink panties that matched her bra. “Turn over,” he said, his voice hoarse.

  She rolled onto her stomach, and he drew the elastic down and traced the tattoo on her hip. Then he pulled off the underwear and kissed that tattoo. “Sun and moon. Light and dark. I dreamed about this.”

  She looked over her shoulder, and he leaned up and kissed her. “I’m sorry about the game. I’ll change the graphic before we release it.”

  “It’s okay,” she managed to say. “I’m not thinking about the game anymore.” She rolled onto her back and reached for him.

  Instead of following her onto the bed, he knelt between her legs and put his mouth on her. “Walker,” she cried as desire swamped her. In a few moments she was writhing against him, mindless with need, making sounds she barely recognized as her own.

  She cried his name as a climax exploded through her, and he held her as the pleasure went on and on. Finally, when she was limp in his arms, he shoved off his clothes, rolled on a condom and slid into her.

  They fit together perfectly, as she’d known they would. As they had in all her dreams. “Walker,” she murmured as she held him tightly and wrapped her legs around him. “Love me.”

  “I am. I will.” He buried his face in her neck. This time when she came, he was with her.

  THE SOUND OF VOICES roused Walker, and he looked up, disoriented. Who was that?

  He wasn’t at the motel, he realized the next moment. He was curled around Jen, their legs entwined, his hand cupping her breast. In her bedroom.

  He glanced at the clock. At midnight.

  A door slammed in the distance, and she stirred. She smoothed her hand over his hip, then smiled at him. “I guess it wasn’t a dream,” she murmured as she kissed him.

  He touched his fingers to her lips. “Shh. Your parents and the boys are home,” he breathed into her ear. The boys. Nick. How could he have made love with her without telling her what he’d done? Without telling her he’d sent in that sample?

  Her eyes widened and she grabbed his wrist. “Oh, God. We fell asleep. Did I lock the bedroom door? Oh, my God. I didn’t.”

  “You did. I remember. Shh.” His arms tightened around her. What if her parents found him here?

  What if Nick did? What would he think?

  Walker and Jen were adults. He didn’t care what her parents thought.

  Nick was a different story.

  “Mom?” That was Tommy, calling up the stairs from the first floor.

  “Hush, Tommy. She’s asleep. You can talk to her in the morning,” Jen’s mother said.

  “Go to bed, boys,” Al added. “It’s late and you have school tomorrow.”

  The kids’ answers were indistinct. Finally, Walker heard them clattering down to their room in the basement.

  He reached over Jen and switched off the lamp on the nightstand, then kissed her neck as they listened to her parents moving around on the first floor. When they started up the stairs, she tensed in his arms.

  They lay still as the shadows of two sets of feet passed Jen’s bedroom. Moments later, the hall light went out and a door closed.

  He let out his breath, and Jen shifted so she could murmur into his ear, “They read for a while before they go to sleep. You need to stay for another hour or so.”

  “That’s going to be a real hardship,” he said, stroking his palm down her back and over her hip. “I’m not sure how I’ll hold up. I may have to distract myself.”

  She batted
his hand away, but she was smiling. “I thought the game was bad, but this is real humiliation. To be thirty-two years old and caught in bed by my parents.”

  “We’re not caught yet, but keep talking and we will be. I’ll have to figure out a way to keep you quiet.”

  He kissed her again, drawing her lower lip into his mouth and sucking on it. She smiled, then giggled against his lips.

  “What?”

  “You don’t think this is funny?” She buried her face in her pillow as her shoulders shook with laughter. “I should be worrying about Nick doing this. Not worrying about being caught doing it myself.”

  Nick. When Walker had begun pursuing Jen, it had been about Nick. He’d barely given the kid a thought tonight. Lying here, holding her, he couldn’t think of anything but Jen. About how much he’d wanted her. How much he wanted her again. How he was afraid he’d never get enough of her.

  To hide his uneasiness, he slid his leg between hers and touched her tattoo. “We have some time to kill,” he whispered. “Any ideas?”

  THE HOUSE WAS DARK and still hours later when he tiptoed down the stairs after Jen. She eased the front door open, and he followed her onto the screened porch, where the streetlight shining through the window turned the light robe she wore almost transparent. The curves revealed by the sheer cotton robe made him itch to burrow his hands beneath it and touch her again. Then he saw two school backpacks, carelessly dumped on the floor, and he put his hands in his pockets.

  He had feelings for Jen, he realized uneasily. More than he’d imagined he would. It made him understand what he’d done. The miscalculation he’d made.

  There were consequences to sending that sample in, consequences he hadn’t cared about when he’d dropped it in the mail.

  What he’d done, sending in that DNA test without her permission, was wrong. So wrong. He’d broken her trust. Even worse, he’d made love with her, without making it right.

  He had to resolve this. He didn’t think Jen had been playing games tonight. And he was afraid he hadn’t been, either.

  “Jen,” he began in a low voice.

  “My parents’ bedroom is right above us. Do you want to get caught?” She leaned into him. “Are you some kind of exhibitionist?”