Working With Heat

by Anne Calhoun

  “The first quiz, boys and girls, features singles with the words boys or girls, plural or singular, in the title. I’ll give you the band’s name. You give me the song title.”

  Milla’s knee bounced in excitement, until Charlie pressed his thigh to hers.

  Definitely a mutual attraction. A shiver zinged up her spine, raising gooseflesh on her bare arms.

  “Chilliwack.”

  “‘My Girl (Gone, Gone, Gone),’” Milla whispered as she scribbled it down.

  “Michael Jackson and Paul McCartney.”

  “Oh! Oh! ‘The Girl Is Mine’!” Kaitlin hissed. Milla nodded.

  “Don Henley.”

  “‘Boys of Summer,’” Milla, Kaitlin and Billy all chorused.

  “Manhattan Transfer.”

  “‘The Boy from New York City,’” Billy said confidently.

  “Cyndi Lauper.”

  “‘Girls Just Want to Have Fun,’” Charlie said.

  Milla smiled at him, her eyes alight. While Charlie was in and out of their apartment on a regular basis, he didn’t go out much other than to come to the pub quiz every week. “Nice one.”

  “You knew that answer.”

  “That’s not always the point.”

  “Pet Shop Boys,” the quizmaster continued.

  “Is that the answer?” Billy asked, looking up at the quizmaster.

  “No, ‘West End Girls’ is the answer,” Milla said and hummed the song’s chorus. “You know. East End boys and West End girls.”

  Charlie’s grin disappeared. He lifted his pint and finished it off. “Next round’s mine,” he said and got up.

  “It’s supposed to be mine,” Milla protested.

  “You’ve got this. I’ll get the drinks,” he said, but his smile didn’t quite reach his eyes.

  Milla watched him walk to the bar. By the way his smile shattered into shards, there was a story she didn’t know. But unlike many of her dates, Charlie didn’t talk about himself.

  She reached for his sleeve. “Just a half for me,” she said gently. Given the vibe humming between them, she wanted her wits about her.

  They played the next two rounds, placing near the bottom of the rankings thanks to back-to-back science-related rounds. Charlie went to say hello to a friend at another table. Milla snagged her phone from the pile to skim her social media accounts, and saw a new text.

  Why are you being such a bint about this?

  “Are you fucking kidding me?” Milla said into one of those random silences that fell in crowded rooms.

  Billy choked on a swallow of Guinness. Heads turned at the tables in their vicinity.

  “Sorry,” Milla apologized to the room in general.

  Kaitlin leaned over her shoulder. “Is that from...?”

  “Lamborghini Man? Yes, yes, it is.” She sat in the ready position, thumbs poised over the keyboard, considering her options. She’d snapped a photo of his car before she knew her blind date was sitting in it. She could post it with the registration tag blurred. Compensating much? would make a perfect tag.

  “What’s going on?” Charlie said, standing by the table.

  “Milla’s date texted her,” Elsa said.

  Charlie lifted an eyebrow. “Apologizing for being an arse, I assume.”

  Milla showed him the text. The smile disappeared from his mouth, and the muscles around his eyes tightened; in an instant Charlie went from being a good-natured artist willing to offer opinions on outfits to the girls who shared his house to someone who looked like he’d pull out a knife in an alley. And there’s the East End boy, she thought.

  “It’s no big deal, Charlie,” she said.

  “It means whore. Bitch. It’s a big fucking deal.”

  “It happens,” she said, and showed him the tweet with the picture of his car. “I posted about going on a date. People are asking why I’m at the pub quiz already. I could post this.”

  A muscle tightened in his jaw. “You’d do that?”

  Her anger passed as swiftly as it came. “No. I’m going to ignore him. It’s the worst thing I can do to an attention whore.”

  Elsa, Billy and Kaitlin were arguing over what to grab for dinner. “It’s not the worst thing I can do to him,” Charlie said, his tone hard and flat.

  He’d never gotten this angry at one of her dates before, although none of them had crossed the line into name-calling. They’d just been self-centered, angry, living with parents, fixated on a previous girlfriend or, as she saw now, just plain old lacking in chemistry.

  There was no lack of chemistry between her and Charlie. She took a chance. “I’d rather you walked me home. It’s been a very long week.”

  The light in his eyes changed, the heat tempering his anger into something softer, more interesting, more dangerous. “I can do that,” he said.

  “Curry it is,” Kaitlin said decisively. “You coming?”

  “I’m going home,” Milla said, keeping her voice casual. “I’ve got to work tomorrow.”

  “I’ll walk her home,” Charlie said. “I’m knackered, too.”

  London’s summer sunset stretched across the sky in hues of orange, pink and red. The air was warm, scented with city smells, exhaust fumes, rubber, the curries and kebabs from the Bangladeshi restaurants on nearly every block. Milla unlocked her bike and together they strolled down the street, Charlie with his hands in his pockets, Milla pushing the bike with one hand and snapping pics with her phone in the other. Charlie paused and looked around while she did. His movements were quick, glancing around, conveying an impression of contained energy, as if he’d learned to keep himself under control, but just barely. He’d told her once he was twenty-eight. She could only imagine him at her age, twenty-four. The price he’d paid to learn control was evident in his wary eyes, the set of his shoulders.

  “How’d you get into the habit of putting your life online?” he asked as he watched her.

  “My dad was an MP—military police, not member of Parliament—in the Marine Corps. We lived all over the world, just me and him, and the internet was the best way to stay in touch with family back home and with other kids I met and then moved away. I was pretty young when I started taking pictures and writing a travel blog. By the time I was in high school in Guam...” She paused to think. “No, it was Oman, just before Dad left the Corps. By then, I wasn’t just blogging, I was making videos and posting them to YouTube.” She shrugged. “By the time I started college, it was more than a hobby. Then my grandmother shared the YouTube channel with a friend who sent it to her daughter who worked at HuffPo. That’s when I started getting more followers, getting a little more traction.”

  “And here you are,” he said lightly, but shadows lingered in his eyes.

  She quickly cropped then uploaded the photo of the sunset. “You’re offline enough for both of us. We’re yin and yang, maintaining balance in the universe,” she added, flicking him a smile.

  He smiled back and opened his elbow, inviting her to loop her arm through his. She did, and once again the heat of his body seared through the thin cotton of his shirt. With her arm looped through his she couldn’t take pictures, but she didn’t want to let go, either. She tucked her phone in her front pocket and matched his slower pace. Funny, she thought. I couldn’t wait to get away from Lamborghini Man, but I don’t want to miss a moment of this walk.

  “How did you learn so much about ‘80s music?”

  “It’s the music my dad listened to, and I could count on VH1 or MTV in English wherever we were living. I watched Behind the Music, Where Are They Now, that kind of thing.” Something clicked into place inside her. With a sweeping gesture she took in Spitalfields. “The song. It’s about London’s East End.”

  “Yeah,” Charlie said. “You didn’t know that?”

  “The lyrics didn’t mean anything until now. So my date was doomed before it began. He’s a West End boy and I’m an East End girl,” she said with a laugh.

  Charlie’s lips twisted into a smile. “You’re
not really an East End girl.”

  “I live in the East End,” she protested.

  “I live in the East End,” he replied. “You use it as a base for all your travels. You must be getting itchy feet. Where’s the next trip?”

  “The Orient Express,” she said. It was a total turnaround for her. Rather than hopscotching through Europe on discount airfare, she would travel by train through to Istanbul. It was romantic, large scale, with a rich history to mine, and maybe the kind of thing that could catch an editor’s attention. A millennial’s perspective on a decidedly twentieth-century method of travel, through lands reshaped by war to a city with a history dating back nearly ten thousand years. The idea was either brilliant or complete pants. She wasn’t sure which.

  “The Orient Express still runs?”

  “Not as a single trip, but you can cobble together the same itinerary. I’ve almost saved up the money. Another couple of weeks and I’m off again.”

  “Sounds cool,” he said.

  His hip brushed hers with each step, the shift and flex of muscles and bones heating her from the inside out. “We haven’t seen much of you lately. The pub quiz, mostly. What’s going on?” she asked lightly.

  He cocked an eyebrow at her, but his attention was focused mostly on her thumb, gently tracing the old burns on his forearms revealed by his rolled-back sleeves. “I’ve been busy.”

  “A creative rush?” she asked, pushing a bit, curious to know how much he’d reveal, trying to piece together what she’d picked up from Elsa and Kaitlin, who had lived in the ground-floor flat longer than she had. Charlie was a glass artist who sold pieces in galleries around the world, he was from the East End and...he’d been married before.

  “You could say that,” he said as he unlocked the front door of the house he owned in Princelet Street. Milla bumped her bike up the steps and into the foyer, tiled in the original black-and-white octagonal tiles. The house reminded her of Charlie, a run-down Georgian on the outside, but the interior was an intriguing blend of old architectural details and new appliances and lighting.

  He hoisted her bike into the rack he’d installed when he realized all three girls walked or biked to save money and were afraid of having their bikes vandalized if they were locked up outside. Thoughtful, Milla added to the list in her mind.

  “Sounds like your readers aren’t doing a better job of picking your dates than the dating websites,” he said with a grunt.

  “Thanks,” Milla said. “All relationships fail until one doesn’t. I’m not going to close myself off just because someone calls me a name or a crashing bore backs me into a corner at a bar and natters on endlessly about the derivatives market or circuitry.”

  “Or glass.”

  “You’ve never backed me into a corner and yammered on endlessly about your art. I have to practically pry details out of you.”

  He paused in the entryway and let the door to the street close behind them. To the left was the door that opened into the flat she shared with Elsa and Kaitlin. In front of them were the stairs that led to the second and third floors, where he lived. Her heart started to pound in her chest, slow, deep thuds that pushed her blood through her veins in thick, heated pulses. He leaned against the wall opposite her, looking for all the world like a good male friend making sure his good female friend was safely in her flat before he went on his way. But with his hands shoved in his pockets and his shirt open at his throat, he was right out of her dreams. The summer sun gilded his hair, picked out glints of gold in his scruffy beard, highlighted his pulse at the base of his throat. He looked at her, his blue eyes dark and intense under his eyebrows, making him look just a bit dangerous.

  The wary look in his eyes told her everything she needed to know. He felt the connection, too, but wouldn’t take the first step. So she crossed the foyer and kissed him.

  The sharp edge of his scruff scratched deliciously at her lips as she brushed them back and forth across his mouth, tempting him to open them. When he did, she touched the tip of her tongue to his, tasting the Guinness he preferred. When she withdrew, his tongue traced the edges of her teeth, then her lower lip. She licked the spot, then bit it, watching his eyes drop to her mouth as she did.

  She closed the last couple of inches between them, and exhaled softly when her body pressed against his from her knees to her breasts. Everything that was soft about her—breasts, stomach, thighs—pressed against everything that was hard about him. Chest. Abdomen. His cock, thickening against her lower belly.

  His hand cupped her jaw, his thumbs brushing her cheekbones, then he bent his head and kissed her, using lips and teeth and tongue to capture her mouth. Charlie had learned patience handling sand heated until it became liquid, pliable. He’d learned how to seduce a woman by working with heat. He didn’t rush. He drew it out, nipping at her lips, tilting his head to kiss the corner of her mouth, then her jaw, before returning to her mouth and using his lips to open it farther, his tongue advancing in slow stages, until she stepped closer, giving most of her weight to his body, weaving her thigh between his. She put her hands on his hips and tucked her index and middle fingers through his belt loops, pulling him closer, letting herself get absorbed in the texture of his beard against her lips and tongue. He turned, seeking out her ear, nipping at the lobe.

  She bent her head to rest on his shoulder, felt the heat of his skin through the fine cotton of his shirt, smelled the scent of him, so elemental. Soap, skin, the heat he absorbed all day. He’d been her friend for months, but now there was the possibility of something more. “Invite me up.”

  His fingers trailed through her hair to her jaw. He brushed his thumb across her lips and said, “Are you sure?”

  There were a dozen good reasons not to do this, not to sleep with her friend. Ruining the friendship. Making things awkward between all five of them. But the look in Charlie’s eyes was one really good reason to do this, and Milla had never been one to act out of fear. She’d take a chance on the chemistry, knowing she’d put their friendship at stake.

  “I’m sure,” she said, and kissed him again.

  Chapter Two

  In the split second after Milla whispered, “Invite me up,” Charlie thought through all the reasons why this was a really bad idea. By the time he was Milla’s age, his ex-wife had burned him to a husk, both personally and professionally. He’d changed everything for her, moved out of the East End, polished up his accent, ignored the way glass called to him as an artist because he’d believed her dreams for them were better than his.

  Then she’d shattered those dreams in the most public, humiliating way.

  He’d crawled back to his roots, sown deep in the East End, to friends like Billy, to his family (who, for the most part, refrained from saying I told you that wouldn’t work when he’d stumbled out of the divorce with not even his pride). He’d apprenticed himself to a master glass artist, learned his art, nurtured relationships with the overseas galleries immune to his ex-wife’s influence, giving him an outlet for the work he created once he could even think about art again.

  Milla was impossible to slot into a neat little compartment like East End boy or West End girl. American, but born in England and raised all over the world. Living her life through her mobile to the point where he wanted to wing the bloody thing in the Thames. Maybe that was worse, falling for someone whose roots were sown in the internet.

  For four long years he’d fought to rebuild his life and career. Risking it all on someone whose idea of privacy was so warped it included asking total strangers to pick her dates wasn’t just a really bad idea. It was madness. But his body, home to the animal instincts that had led him wrong with Chelsea, the desires he’d taught himself to ignore, was saying this was the best idea he’d ever had.

  Lightning round to break the tie. His body won, his brain taken down by the roundhouse punch of desire lighting him up like molten glass. Peering into her big brown eyes, feeling the lush softness of her body against his, lit him up like only the
best kind of risk could. So very, very wrong, and yet so very, very right. Dangerous combination, that.

  But then she said she was sure and kissed him again, and he remembered what it was like to want, the power it gave another human being, the ceaseless grind of it.

  His hand slid from her jaw, down her shoulder, to clasp hers to lead her up the stairs. Unwilling to let go, he fumbled with his keys one-handed until he unlocked the big black door leading to his flat. Once he had them inside, he backed her into the door. Milla dropped her purse and phone and linked her now free hand with his. Charlie lifted them and pinned the backs of her hands to the door on either side of her head. She arched against him, soft and strong, giving him every reason to use his hips to push her hard against the door, channeling everything he had into the kiss. She angled her head and licked the upper bow of his lip, a maddening, teasing promise that was so like Milla. All surface, until you dove in and discovered the depths.

  His beard, now scratchy-soft from a string of days and nights at the hot shop, rasped against her chin and cheeks, the sound audible in the silence of his flat, and incredibly sexy. She writhed between him and the door, tugging first one wrist free, then the second. Reluctant to let her go completely, he rested his weight on his forearms on either side of her head. She ran her hands through the fine thick hair until her fingers met at his nape. He sank into the touch while she brushed her thumbs over his jaw.

  “I can shave,” he offered. Her chin was already pink. He usually forgot anything more than the basics of hygiene when he was in the middle of creating a piece, remembering when he startled himself in the mirror with his wild-man growth, and then he’d trim it down and start all over again. It was a good sign. During the weeks when all he made were the curving, swirling glass ornaments he sold regularly, he always remembered to shave.

  “Please don’t,” she said. She trailed her fingers down his throat to the first button on his shirt, and unfastened it, spreading the fabric and placing her open mouth against the hollow at the base of his throat.