Hot as Sin (Contemporary Romance Box Set)

by Katherine Lace

  I reassure her quickly. “No, no, I’m fine. It was just in one apartment, down on the second floor. I think there was damage there, but nowhere else.”

  “Well, thank God for that.” She relaxes, but I can tell she’s still concerned. I can also tell she knows there’s more to the story, and that she’s going to wait until I tell her.

  “There… Well, there was some damage to my place.” Before she can freak out again, I add, “This fireman busted in and broke my front door and the bathroom door. The dead bolt still works, but it’s a little precarious. I piled furniture in front of it last night.”

  “He broke your door?” Mel sounds about as affronted as I was. “Did he not know how to knock?”

  “I was in the shower. Couldn’t hear him. And for some reason my smoke alarm didn’t go off. I just checked the batteries a couple months ago.”

  “You’re supposed to change those when they change the clocks.”

  Oh, great. Another lecture. “I’m aware,” I shoot back. “But I tested them and everything was fine.”

  “Did you check…” She stops suddenly, and her expression changes. Eyeing me narrowly, she says, “Wait. He broke into your bathroom? And you were in the shower?”

  “Yes.” The anger from last night starts bubbling back up. “And he just busts right in and drags me out, says the whole building has to be evacuated—”

  “Wait wait wait wait,” Mel breaks in. “He dragged you out of the shower? While you were naked?”

  Now my face is getting warm. I shouldn’t have brought this up. Mel is my sister, though. Theoretically she should be supportive, right? “Well, yeah. I grabbed the shower curtain, and then he gave me a second to get a towel, but mostly he just dragged me right out. And then there turns out to not even be a fire on my floor. Can you believe that shit?”

  “Was he hot?”

  My mouth is open to continue my tirade, but when she says that, it clicks back shut again. “What?”

  “Was he hot? I mean, was he one of those good-looking, we-want-you-naked-in-a-calendar firemen, or one of the old dried-up ones?”

  “I can’t believe you’re even asking me that question.”

  “Oh, c’mon, Maddy. A fireman busts into your apartment and you can’t take a minute to notice if he’s hot? He’s a real hero! You like heroes—you have pictures of Thor and Captain America all over your apartment.”

  She has me there. I do have a thing for heroes. More of the superhero variety than the fireman variety, though. “Okay, fine. He was…not unattractive.”

  “Ha! There. You see? You should ask him out!”

  “What?” Man, that escalated quickly. “I should ask him out? On the basis of what? That he’s already seen me naked so we can get that awkward part out of the way?”

  Mel shrugs. “Sure. Why not? I mean, how long has it been since you’ve dated?”

  “A long time.” Truthfully I’ve been on maybe two dates since Christopher was born, and both were disasters. It’s not exactly easy to attract a man when you spend big chunks of your day covered in spit-up and baby poo. “What does that have to do with anything?”

  “You could use a boyfriend. Maybe you’d be a little less uptight.”

  “I’m not uptight.”

  “You’re totally uptight.”

  She’s sending my hackles up, which is probably what she’s after, but I can’t help snapping at her. Sisters, man. They always know exactly where to poke you.

  “I’m doing just fine on my own, Mel,” I inform her, a little more loudly than I’d intended. “I’ve got a good job and Christopher’s healthy and until last night I had a nice apartment with doors that worked. I don’t need to be looking for a boyfriend under every stray rock.”

  “Mama mad!” I hear Christopher say from the living room. I look over to see him grinning at me. He’s got one hand under the couch, but there’s still no sign of Sparks.

  “Mama’s fine,” I tell him, quieting my voice. I give Mel a sharp look.

  “Oh, lighten up, Mads,” she says, laughing openly at me now.

  I shake my head at her. My anger’s fading—I know she was just ribbing me—but my single-parent status is a sore spot with me, and she knows it. It just seems kind of mean for her to tease me about it. “And,” I add, “if I get into a school, I’ll have even less time. So no, I’m not auditioning every fireman who busts through my door to see if he’d be an appropriate boyfriend.”

  “Oh, oh!” Mel says, apparently apropos of nothing, and she lifts a finger in the air and heads to the kitchen. I follow her, curious, as she stops at the table and starts sorting through a pile of mail. “You got a letter. It went to Mom and Dad’s, and I grabbed it for you.” With a bit of a triumphant flair, she whips a business-size letter out of the pile and presents it.

  I stare at it like it’s a poisonous snake. “Who’s it from?” I don’t even want to know. There are so many possibilities. And if I get too invested in it being the letter I really want—well, that way lies only tears.

  “It’s from the Seattle College of Veterinary Medicine,” she announces, and she sounds like she’s presenting an Oscar. “Open it.”

  It’s the letter. The letter. I’m afraid to touch it.

  Mel’s brow scrunches up and she half smiles at me like she can’t figure out what the hell is wrong with me. Which is fine—I can’t figure out what the hell is wrong with me, either. Finally I make myself take the letter, fold it in half, and shove it into my purse.

  “Open it,” Mel says again.

  “I can’t. Not yet.”

  “Why not? Isn’t the suspense going to kill you?”

  I take a deep breath, considering. “No. I just can’t look at it right now. If it’s not…” I stop, gather myself, trying to find the right words. “If it’s not what I want it to be, I’ll be a mess all day at work, and I can’t have that. I need to be able to focus.”

  “Do you think there’s actually a chance you didn’t get in?”

  “Of course there’s a chance I didn’t get in! They don’t take just anybody, Mel.” Sometimes her overly positive outlook just makes me tired.

  Then again, things have always come easily for Mel. She’s the one with the happy marriage, a handsome husband who dotes on her, and the nice house in a tree-lined, suburban street. I’m the one who got knocked up right out of college and then didn’t get married.

  I’ve always wanted to go to vet school, but having Christopher sidelined those plans. If his dad had decided to stick around, maybe I could have managed it, but no. Troy hightailed it out of town as soon as he realized babies cry in the middle of the night.

  “You got in,” Mel says, her tone so firm that for a second I wonder if I didn’t see the letter right, and she actually opened it and read it. “I know you did.”

  I give a sigh. “I hope so. I really do. I don’t know how the hell I’m going to swing it, but I want this really bad, Mel. And I think I’m ready to tackle it.”

  She reaches out and pats my hand. “It’s all going to work out.”

  “I hope so.” Finally I take a step back toward the door. Christopher has gone quiet, which is probably a bad sign. “Well, off to work. I promise I’ll let you know what it says when I open it.”

  “Okay. Don’t forget.”

  “I won’t.”

  I actually do manage to forget about the letter for the rest of the day, mostly because it’s super busy at the veterinary office where I work. There are a lot of animals coming in for their yearly vaccinations, plus the occasional injury or illness. Fortunately there are no tragedies today. I hate it when we have to deal with those.

  Finally it’s time to shut things down for the evening. I lock the front door and lower the blinds, then head back to the desk to finish up my end-of-the-day paperwork.

  Which is when somebody starts pounding on the front door.

  I’m having flashbacks of being dragged out of my shower as I go back to the front door. Tweaking the blinds, I look ou
t to see who’s knocking.

  It’s a man. Of course it’s a man. A woman would have seen that we were closed and gone home. But this guy’s knocking on the door insistently with one hand, clinging to a cat carrier with the other. It’s a big cat carrier. What’s he got in there, a panther?

  Then I look closer at his face. He’s very good-looking. Blondish hair, gray eyes…

  At first I think the flashbacks are causing me to hallucinate. It can’t be Jesse the Fireman from last night. But it is. All six-foot-whatever of him, in jeans and a flannel shirt, holding a cat carrier and banging on the office door. The breath catches in my chest when he rakes an impatient hand through his blond wave, which is thick enough to cover his ears. I didn’t really notice it before—it was hidden under his helmet.

  I unlock the door and open it, frowning.

  “Trying to knock this door down, too?” I say, my tone a little sharp.

  A catlike smile staggers across his face when he recognizes me, his eyes flicking to my name tag. “Hey there, Maddy.” He pauses, and I know damn well what’s coming next. His smirk gives it away. “I almost didn’t recognize you without the shower curtain.”

  Heat crawls up my neck. Ass. Then I smile at him. “Sorry, we’re closed.”

  “Hold on—I’ve got an appointment.”

  “No, you had an appointment. Half an hour ago.”

  His lips twitch. “You’re going to give me a hard time, aren’t you?”

  “You mean like you did yesterday?” I’m relishing the panic on his face.

  “Come on. I was doing my job.”

  “Just like I am right now.” I lift my shoulders in a shrug. “Oh well.”

  He grabs the door before I close it, stooping down slightly so that I can’t miss his deep-blue gaze. “I’m begging you. I can’t go back to my place with this damn cat. Please.”

  Begging looks nice on Jesse the Fireman, even though he’s not really good at it. He looks like he might yank open the door, grab my waist, and push me aside no matter what I say. My imagination takes it a step further as I visualize him stepping inside boldly, his thick arms wrapping around me to lift me onto the counter.

  Damn it, Maddy. Stop this right now.

  But I can’t. Not while he’s looking at me like that. He’d better not be imagining me naked, although I know damn well he is. The thought makes me warm. Very warm. Extremely warm. Tingly, even. I force it away, reminding myself that I’m still pissed at him. And I’ve still got a couple of doors to get repaired and no idea how I’ll pay for them. It’s not like I can just conjure money out of thin air.

  I open the door, allowing him to walk inside. “You had an appointment?” I remember seeing a stray name on the schedule, but I’ve been so busy all day I didn’t take much time to look at it.

  “Yeah.” He has the courtesy to look sheepish. “I’m a little late. Okay, a half hour late. But it’s the cat’s fault.” He waves the cat carrier vaguely, and I notice his flannel sleeves are rolled up to his elbows. His forearms are covered with deep, red scratches. A few of them look like they drew blood. “He didn’t want to get in the carrier.”

  “Damn.” I gesture toward his arm, which bears about eight long, reddened scratches, inflamed on the edges. How a guy his size could be bested by a cat—even a gigantic Maine Coon—is beyond me. I find myself fighting back a laugh. “What happened? Did he hold you at gunpoint? I mean, he’s a cat. And you’re, like…a fireman.”

  He looks chagrined, sheepish, and offended all at the same time, which is a lot to pack into one expression. “He’s a horrible cat,” he says, then looks like he wishes he hadn’t. “The bastard hates me. I don’t know why. I haven’t done anything to him, I swear. I think there’s something wrong with him. Cats do shit like this when they’re sick, right? Maybe he’s got something in his paw, or, I don’t know, colic or something.”

  “Babies have colic.” I know this from personal experience. “Cats do not have colic.”

  “Whatever. I just want to see the vet to be sure he’s…normal. I don’t want to have to go through this again tomorrow.” His forlorn expression indicates his lacerated arms.

  I fold my arms across my chest and give him an arch look. I’ve got Jesse right where I want him. Only problem is, I’m not sure what to do with him. Well, part of my brain is definitely coming up with ideas, but none of them would be appropriate for my office. Not even after hours. Plus the doctor is still here, and I doubt she’d approve of me having naked monkey sex with a fireman on my desk.

  Under the circumstances, I don’t have much choice but to settle for petty revenge. “So we’re asking for favors now, are we?”

  He moves closer to my desk and sets the cat carrier on it. The cat inside hisses. I’ve never heard a cat hiss that loudly before. There’s a loud thump as the cat flings himself against the side of the carrier, and the carrier itself almost flies off the table. Jesse grabs it almost automatically, like this has happened on more than one occasion. I have to give him credit for impressively fast reflexes.

  He doesn’t seem to have even noticed what he did. Instead he’s looking me in the eyes. Heat crawls up my neck to burn my cheeks.

  “Look, I’m really sorry about what happened last night.” He sounds sincere, but like he feels like he needs to be sincere. Like he’s saying this because he wants me to help him out. Which of course he does. But if I can get something out of him, too, so much the better. So I just wait.

  “I’m sorry I broke the door,” he adds. By now his hand is clenching and unclenching on the handle of the cat carrier, the tendons in his forearms flexing and releasing. He has very nice forearms. They’d look even nicer if they weren’t covered in six-inch-long cat scratches.

  I fold my arms over my chest and lift my eyebrows. “Go on. I’d like to hear more.”

  Jesse almost rolls his eyes, but stops just in time, so abruptly it looks like he might have hurt himself. He takes a second to consider what kind of “more” I want to hear. “The cat is a terror. I think he might be possessed. Maybe he has worms. Do cats go crazy when they have worms?”

  “Not generally.”

  “What do you think is wrong with him, then?”

  “He doesn’t like you,” I say, even though that’s probably not the case. “I bet a lot of people don’t like you. Like people you manhandle out of their showers. Or people whose doors you break.”

  His lips press into a thin line. “You’re not going to let that go, are you?”

  “Hell no, I’m not. I still have to fix those doors, you know.”

  He’s starting to get a little red all along the edges of his ears. “Fine. Fine. How about I take care of them for you? Shit, I’ll come by and fix them myself. No charge. I’m handy. I can do that stuff.”

  I believe him. I could feel all his muscles when he was carrying me out of my apartment, but now I can see them. Rounded pecs pressing against the cotton of his T-shirt. Biceps that strain the shirt’s short sleeves. Big shoulders, a solid neck—not too thick, though. His stomach is flat and firm, and I can only imagine what his ass looks like in those jeans. Probably round and grabbable. I can picture him working on the doors, all those muscles flexing. Maybe he’d take his shirt off and be all sweaty and shining…

  I realize I haven’t said anything for a few seconds. Suddenly my cheeks go warm, and I wonder if he can tell where my mind just wandered. But when I look back at his face, all I see is desperation. And finally, in a low, tortured voice, he says, “Please?”

  He’s begging. He’s actually begging. Like he thinks I’m the only person in the entire world who can save him.

  I like this little twist. How often does a girl have a hot, hunky guy at her mercy, after all? Especially a girl like me. I’m dorky, geeky, and I’ve been out of the dating market so long I don’t even know what the etiquette is anymore.

  Begging seems like a good place to start, though. “It’s up to the doctor. Normally we don’t stay open for people who show up late. We al
so charge extra for missing your appointment.”

  His face crumples. “How much extra?”

  “Fifty dollars.” I feel almost bad lowering the boom on him like that, but it’s the policy of the practice. “You have to consider how much you inconvenience the other patients when you show up late.”

  “There are no other patients.”

  “Then you’ve inconvenienced the doctor. She wants to go home. I want to go home. We all want to go home.”

  The desperation is back in his eyes, and there’s a blue vein throbbing on his temple. “I don’t want to go home. Don’t you get it? This cat is ruining my damn life.”

  “I seriously doubt that.”

  But he sounds serious. He looks serious. He is actually scared to death of his cat. “I need to fix him.”

  “He hasn’t been fixed? That could explain a lot right there.” I make a move toward the carrier, prepared to pull out the big cat and check to see if he still owns all his man-cat parts.

  “No, no, that’s not what I meant.” He tips the carrier so it’s just out of my reach. “His balls are gone and all that. I just need him to behave.”

  “Maybe you should just be nicer to him.”

  “I am nice!” That vein is throbbing so hard and so fast I could dance to it. “I am so nice! That’s what I don’t get. He’s just—”

  Dr. Raczek picks that moment to poke her head out. Jesse stops talking immediately, swallowing whatever else he was going to say about his apparently homicidal feline. “What’s going on, Maddy?”

  “Mr. …” I stop, realizing I don’t know Jesse the Fireman’s last name.

  “King,” he offers.

  “Mr. King here is a half hour late for his appointment, but he wants to see you because his cat is having problems.”

  Dr. Raczek frowns, glancing back and forth between me and Jesse and landing another look on the big cat carrier. “Is the cat sick?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Is it an emergency?” She’s giving Jesse the once-over, I can tell, taking in the scratches on his arms and the way the cat carrier lurches a few inches across the desk every minute or so. The cat has stopped its loud hissing, but it’s making noises now, little chitters that sound like incredibly pissed-off birds.