Hot and Bothered

by Crystal Green

  “So you came here instead for your own personal signing?” Rochelle asked.

  “It’d get me a lot of points for the game,” he said.

  Gideon stepped forward. “So you’re still playing it, even though Loralei has been charged with assault.”

  “Sure. We already established our goals at the beginning, and it’s not my fault she got arrested. I’m totally going to win.”

  “And what do you get if you win?”

  The boy shrugged. “Prestige, man. Nobody here’s a gamer? You’d understand if you were.”

  Rochelle had played a game or two in her life, and she understood how good it felt to win, even if you didn’t get anything material in return. But this was beyond her understanding.

  She asked one last question: “And it was just you and Loralei playing, wracking up all these points?”

  “Uh-huh. We started off with low points for collecting Cherry images in our digital scrapbooks, went a little higher for coming up with new facts about Cherry, and went from there. Dude, you totally should’ve called us for your research, though.”

  Rochelle wondered how many points they’d get when she pursued stalking charges with the authorities.

  Aron continued. “Obviously, I knew you’d been in Rough and Tumble because of the interview by Cherry’s painting, so I’ve been checking town every day, coming into the saloon with all the rest of the tourists. I saw you take off here after the shit went down in the bar, and I figured that, in a house, your apes wouldn’t do such tight-assed security.”

  He leaned forward. “Really, Ms. Burton, me and Loralei never meant to hurt you. After I put that message on the bookstore poster and freaked everyone out, Loralei got the idea about the cherry juice and how talk-worthy that’d be. I didn’t think she’d really do it; she was actually just going to leave behind a note for you there . . .”

  Gideon interrupted. “Like ‘Cherry is an angel, you bitch’?”

  “That.” He went on like this was no biggie, either. “But you have to admit, the juice was such an awesome idea. You got some major play from that one, even more than from the bookstore poster.”

  Rochelle turned away from Aron. “I would’ve rather publicized my book the old-fashioned way.”

  “I said it was just a game, okay? Calm down.”

  Was this entitled little freak for real?

  Harry managed to loom even larger. Aron rolled his eyes at the inconvenience.

  “Don’t get me wrong,” he said. “This isn’t just about you, Ms. Burton. It’s really all about Cherry. Hey,” he suddenly said to Harry, “would you give me my phone so I can show her my Cherry scrapbook?” Turning back to Rochelle, he continued. “It’s the best. I found candid pictures of her with George Diluccio that weren’t in your book.”

  Just . . . whoa. This kid was the terror who’d kept her and her team on their toes. This. And with any luck, she was never going to see how far their game could’ve gone.

  Gideon stepped in front of Rochelle, putting an end to this. “I think we’re done here.”

  “No!” the kid said, and as he started to get up, Harry stood over him. “Come on. It was all a joke. We were just playing . . .”

  But Rochelle had already turned around, Gideon at her back, as they both went into the house.

  He slid the door closed behind them, and with that final thud, cut her off from her nightmare.

  That’s when the shaking started again.

  ***

  Gideon had done everything he could to soothe Rochelle, resting a hand on her back as she sat on the sofa, hunched over, her head in her hands. He could feel every quake under his palm.

  He rubbed her, tried to be her pillar as she’d confronted her creeper. Leave it to Rochelle to be the one to finally bring closure.

  “It’s over now,” he said.

  “Unless he was lying about it just being the two of them in that game.”

  “I don’t think he was giving us the runaround. He was pretty proud of himself for playing the game and was telling it straight. Besides, Boomer saw just two players online. We’ll know for sure when the cops get to the bottom of everything.”

  Speaking of the law, they’d arrived. Harry, Buzz, and Jonsey were talking to them outside as Aron was being led away. The boy actually craned his neck to get one last look at Rochelle through the glass door, and then he was gone, red hair and all.

  When the cop who remained behind came inside to question all of them about the creeper, Rochelle put on a courageous face. If Gideon hadn’t known any better, he would’ve said she’d already recovered and was chalking everything up to the price of being semifamous.

  But Gideon did know better. She was bothered, soul deep.

  Harry checked in with Gideon. “You got this, partner?”

  Gideon nodded. Harry was going to meet with the cops and follow through with the arrest of both creepers. Buzz and Jonsey were obviously itching to go with him, but they were loath to abandon Rochelle.

  “I got this,” Gideon said to them.

  They must’ve known that his comment meant so much more than what it seemed at the moment, because they gave him a look that said they’d recognized a change in their childhood friend.

  Buzz glanced at Gideon’s gray Stetson, still on the floor after having fallen off his head when he’d been shielding Rochelle. Then he gave Gideon a respectful nod. With one more glance at Rochelle, who was by now leaning back on the couch, staring out the patio window, Buzz and Jonsey came over to touch her shoulders.

  “We’ll be back later, Shel,” Buzz said. “Gideon’s here, though.”

  Jonsey said, “We’ll get these creepers put away.”

  “You do that,” she said softly, resting her hands on theirs.

  They squeezed her just before following Harry out the door.

  Afterward, the house was silent as she zoned out, taking emotional refuge in a place that Gideon knew well. It was a place that you sought after something terrible happened, a place that had cotton walls that numbed everything out.

  He’d visited that place a few times: first, after firefights in Iraq when he’d had friends die right next to him, and then again a few years ago, when he’d found his dad sitting next to his slumped mom by the pioneer graveyard in the dead of night as if everything was okay . . .

  The gunpowder burned on his face as if it was new, as if Rochelle had a mark of her own now on the inside of her where no one could see it. The ache of that possibility eclipsed the soreness of his jaw.

  “I’ve got to call Suzanne,” she finally said out of nowhere.

  “I already texted her.” Gideon took out his phone, held it up, and then put it on the manila-folder–covered coffee table. “I told her that you’re okay and asked her to give you a little time to yourself. She’s respecting that, although I’m pretty sure she thinks I’m being bossy, overstepping as your bodyguard.”

  But that wasn’t what he was any more—just a bodyguard. He hadn’t been just her BG for a while now, and only a fool wouldn’t see that.

  Rochelle was still in a daze, obviously trying to fit all the creeper pieces together, and Gideon wished he could pull her out of it.

  “Not long ago,” he said, “I actually accused your manager of setting up some creepers to scare up publicity for you.”

  Rochelle blinked and refocused on him. “You said that to her?”

  Good. He had a part of her back, and he tried for more. “I was only floating the idea to see how Suzanne would react. I don’t know if I actually suspected her of being the brainchild of what was going on but . . . Well, I was willing to be open to any theory to get this solved and make you safe.”

  She turned to him, her gaze there and not there. “Imagine—two dumb kids thinking they were doing me a favor with their gaming. The truth is stranger than . . .”

&nbs
p; “Fiction? All you have to do is read the news to see that they fit in perfectly with this world we live in. A crazy world that included a small town like Rough and Tumble and the people who lived here.”

  Somehow the day’s events had unlocked his memories of when he’d found his parents’ car at the graveyard, his dad raising a revolver at his own head . . .

  Gideon shook off the image. He’d done so well, putting it out of sight, out of mind. Why was it creeping back now?

  She was watching him with a gaze that was sad yet savvy. She gave his gunpowder mark an extra-long look, then sighed. “I’m sorry I broke down earlier. I didn’t mean to.”

  “You’re apologizing for how you reacted after we found a creeper in the backyard?”

  As she took in a shuddering breath, he couldn’t stop himself from reaching over to touch her cheek. Her breath clutched, and she closed her eyes.

  “I don’t like crying in front of people,” she said. “Even if it’s you, Gideon.”

  “Hey,” he said gently, “I told you I’m here for you to lean on. You don’t ever have to be ashamed of that.”

  Something in her gaze fell apart, but it was in a good way, one that had him thinking he’d gotten past a wall of some sort.

  He went a little further. “You don’t have to be ashamed about needing a shoulder to lean on, or arms to hold you, or . . .”

  A heart to love her?

  But this couldn’t be love, because love would only be the start of something awful. What there was in the beginning would play out too early, leaving behind only a big pile of debris.

  Just as he was least expecting it, she slid over to him and rested her head on his shoulder, taking him up on his offer.

  Rochelle, the last woman he’d ever thought would need someone like him.

  He wasn’t used to such a genuinely needy gesture from her, but then he allowed himself to hope, to feel, and he curled her into his arms. He buried his face in her honeysuckle hair, closing his eyes and thinking that this was finally so right.

  Hope coursed through his veins as the two of them sat there like that, a couple of people who needed each other in a way that had nothing to do with sex right now.

  “You came to my rescue again today,” she whispered. “I feel like such a princess for saying this, but . . .”

  “Don’t say I’m your white knight.”

  “Stop denying what you are. It’s like your dad’s still in this house, telling you you’re not worth anything.”

  “He wasn’t as bad in his later years.” And that’s the only reason Gideon had come back after being in the Army.

  “Then he was only like that when you were growing up, when it mattered the most?”

  He shrugged, and she slipped her arm around his waist, cuddling into him more. He thought there wasn’t a more perfect moment ever created.

  But then she had to break that illusion. “I can guess why you’re redoing everything about this house. You didn’t grow up here, but this is where your parents lived when they—”

  “Died.” That was the kind word for it because Gideon had managed to set it up so that it looked as if his father had been driving drunk that night and run the car off a nearby desert cliff.

  Yeah, regular death was a real kind notion.

  His breathing in synch with hers, he got even weaker, his body all liquid warmth now, making him think that she could chase away the bad memories and that he wouldn’t have to do a damned thing to keep them back.

  “You only want this house to have no trace of them,” she finally said.

  “It was the practical thing to do. I can’t really afford to relocate to a mansion like some people I know.”

  She laughed into his chest, and a surge of joy flew through him. He’d made her laugh, even in her darkest time.

  But the moment faded out, back to serious again.

  “You never did like to talk about your parents,” she said. “It’s my guess that you joined the military to get away from them until you returned to Rough and Tumble. Now, every time your dad or mom comes up in conversation, you still get a shadow in your eyes. You might not think I ever noticed, but I did.”

  He grabbed on to her harder. Who had ever cared about what was in his eyes? And how long would that last if she really knew who she’d left seventeen years ago? He was no hero.

  He couldn’t stand to have her think so, either, and he started to talk, partly from wanting to show her that leaving him was really a good idea in the long run, partly because he needed to see what was keeping her here now.

  And what would send her out the door.

  “You asked me the other day why I decided to become a bodyguard,” he said. “I didn’t quite tell you the truth.” He paused. “There was something that happened a few years ago, something that made me realize that I could prevent shit from happening instead of letting it happen. Something that rattled me until I found this . . .”

  “Calling?”

  Yeah, maybe it was a calling. Maybe that’s why he’d taken the whole no-getting-close-to-clients thing so seriously. That night by the graveyard, everything had changed, even as he had always acted as if nothing had changed at all.

  She breathed against him, and it felt so natural to have her there. He ventured telling her a little more.

  “Vow that you won’t tell this to anyone, Rochelle,” he said. “Not a soul.”

  She slightly moved her head against him, tensing a little bit as if she was about to tell him to stop where he was before he said too much, before it was too late. But he didn’t stop. Couldn’t. Now he had to see if what he was feeling for her was right, if it would last.

  And if it didn’t, he knew she’d never tell anyway.

  “You remember my dad,” he said. “How temperamental he was. How he and Mom were like flame and oil. They did pretty good whenever they were across the room from one another, but sometimes, when you got them too close together . . .”

  “Boom,” she said.

  “Yeah. Boom. And your uncle Dennis would take me in during every boom. So would your cousins, although Jonsey barely even fit his britches at the time.”

  “He used to watch you with the horses, thinking you were so cool.”

  It’d been nice to be looked up to like that back then, until Jonsey had become too big for those britches. It’d been nice to have another family, especially one that had a pretty cousin visiting every summer.

  She still held him, making him think that everything might not be as bad as he’d always thought it was, that the past was the past—that they could both live through anything as long as they had each other.

  The realization struck him, resonating with him. It gave him true courage.

  “My dad and mom . . .” he said. “I never understood why they stayed together. They were a catastrophic couple. Hell, I was even an accident for them.”

  She raised her head. “Don’t say that.”

  “It’s the truth.” He ran a hand over her dark hair. “No use in lying about it.”

  No use in lying about anything, was there?

  As she looked into his eyes again, searchingly, there was a hint of fear in them. She didn’t want him to go on, even if she’d asked about that gunpowder mark before.

  But he was finally ready to see if she would leave, even before she was scheduled to.

  “Everything about my parents was an accident,” he said. “Everything except their deaths.”

  16

  Rochelle couldn’t believe Gideon was revealing this much of himself to her; she’d felt safe in the assumption that he would always keep the most private parts of himself to himself, because that’s what they were about, wasn’t it—sex, fun, a release from all the adrenaline-fueled stress that was plaguing them lately?

  But he was going somewhere they shouldn’t be. Why couldn’
t he just let this lie? She already believed that he couldn’t have had anything to do with his parents’ deaths, even though the way he’d phrased it had her heart in overdrive. So why did he have to explain?

  She put a hand over her chest. This was too real. Everything had suddenly gotten too damned real with them.

  “Gideon . . .” she said.

  His gunpowder burn seemed blacker than ever as he looked down at her with those light brown eyes that’d also gone dark.

  “I didn’t kill my dad, if that’s what you’re thinking,” he said.

  “Of course you didn’t.” Okay. If he wasn’t stopping, then she could be here as a friend. Definitely. She was equipped to be one of those, but surely he knew there’d be nothing beyond that for them.

  Even so, her pulse scattered within her like buckshot, burning her.

  “I came close to killing him,” he said. “So goddamned close.”

  The anesthetic haze from the creeper had already worn off, but now she felt like she was in a different kind of limbo, one that left her lungs shallow, as if one long intake of breath would break apart the fragile webbing holding the moment together.

  “Everyone thinks my parents died in a car accident on the outskirts of town,” he said. “Drunk driving. And that would’ve been typical for my dad, hauling my prescription-drug–addled mom around in the passenger’s seat until he ran them off the road and down the side of a mountain. That’s what everyone assumed when my dad’s Buick was found months later in a gulch.” Gideon’s gaze hardened. “That’s not even near the truth, though.”

  He was so serious that it was as if he were telling her a war story from his time in the Army. The years had helped him to distance himself from the action; he had totally recovered from everything he’d endured.

  He almost made her think that he wouldn’t welcome any comforting.

  “From what I know,” he said, “my mom was depressed about losing the ranch. It’d been in her family for a couple generations, and she was ashamed that it went into foreclosure on her watch. I know that my dad felt the same way, and it killed him to see her in such a black hole. Believe it or not, when he and Mom weren’t fighting, he was the most loving man in creation, so he’d get protective of her.”